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• Why lock-free data structures just aren't lock-free enough

  - by Alex.Davies

  Today's post will explore why the current ways to communicate between threads don't scale, and show you a possible way to build scalable parallel programming on top of shared memory. The problem with shared memory Soon, we will have dozens, hundreds and then millions of cores in our computers. It's inevitable, because individual cores just can't get much faster. At some point, that's going to mean that we have to rethink our architecture entirely, as millions of cores can't all access a shared memory space efficiently. But millions of cores are still a long way off, and in the meantime we'll see machines with dozens of cores, struggling with shared memory. Alex's tip: The best way for an application to make use of that increasing parallel power is to use a concurrency model like actors, that deals with synchronisation issues for you. Then, the maintainer of the actors framework can find the most efficient way to coordinate access to shared memory to allow your actors to pass messages to each other efficiently. At the moment, NAct uses the .NET thread pool and a few locks to marshal messages. It works well on dual and quad core machines, but it won't scale to more cores. Every time we use a lock, our core performs an atomic memory operation (eg. CAS) on a cell of memory representing the lock, so it's sure that no other core can possibly have that lock. This is very fast when the lock isn't contended, but we need to notify all the other cores, in case they held the cell of memory in a cache. As the number of cores increases, the total cost of a lock increases linearly. A lot of work has been done on "lock-free" data structures, which avoid locks by using atomic memory operations directly. These give fairly dramatic performance improvements, particularly on systems with a few (2 to 4) cores. The .NET 4 concurrent collections in System.Collections.Concurrent are mostly lock-free. However, lock-free data structures still don't scale indefinitely, because any use of an atomic memory operation still involves every core in the system. A sync-free data structure Some concurrent data structures are possible to write in a completely synchronization-free way, without using any atomic memory operations. One useful example is a single producer, single consumer (SPSC) queue. It's easy to write a sync-free fixed size SPSC queue using a circular buffer*. Slightly trickier is a queue that grows as needed. You can use a linked list to represent the queue, but if you leave the nodes to be garbage collected once you're done with them, the GC will need to involve all the cores in collecting the finished nodes. Instead, I've implemented a proof of concept inspired by this intel article which reuses the nodes by putting them in a second queue to send back to the producer. * In all these cases, you need to use memory barriers correctly, but these are local to a core, so don't have the same scalability problems as atomic memory operations. Performance tests I tried benchmarking my SPSC queue against the .NET ConcurrentQueue, and against a standard Queue protected by locks. In some ways, this isn't a fair comparison, because both of these support multiple producers and multiple consumers, but I'll come to that later. I started on my dual-core laptop, running a simple test that had one thread producing 64 bit integers, and another consuming them, to measure the pure overhead of the queue. So, nothing very interesting here. Both concurrent collections perform better than the lock-based one as expected, but there's not a lot to choose between the ConcurrentQueue and my SPSC queue. I was a little disappointed, but then, the .NET Framework team spent a lot longer optimising it than I did. So I dug out a more powerful machine that Red Gate's DBA tools team had been using for testing. It is a 6 core Intel i7 machine with hyperthreading, adding up to 12 logical cores. Now the results get more interesting. As I increased the number of producer-consumer pairs to 6 (to saturate all 12 logical cores), the locking approach was slow, and got even slower, as you'd expect. What I didn't expect to be so clear was the drop-off in performance of the lock-free ConcurrentQueue. I could see the machine only using about 20% of available CPU cycles when it should have been saturated. My interpretation is that as all the cores used atomic memory operations to safely access the queue, they ended up spending most of the time notifying each other about cache lines that need invalidating. The sync-free approach scaled perfectly, despite still working via shared memory, which after all, should still be a bottleneck. I can't quite believe that the results are so clear, so if you can think of any other effects that might cause them, please comment! Obviously, this benchmark isn't realistic because we're only measuring the overhead of the queue. Any real workload, even on a machine with 12 cores, would dwarf the overhead, and there'd be no point worrying about this effect. But would that be true on a machine with 100 cores? Still to be solved. The trouble is, you can't build many concurrent algorithms using only an SPSC queue to communicate. In particular, I can't see a way to build something as general purpose as actors on top of just SPSC queues. Fundamentally, an actor needs to be able to receive messages from multiple other actors, which seems to need an MPSC queue. I've been thinking about ways to build a sync-free MPSC queue out of multiple SPSC queues and some kind of sign-up mechanism. Hopefully I'll have something to tell you about soon, but leave a comment if you have any ideas.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, November 22, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, November 22, 2010Popular ReleasesSQL Monitor: SQLMon 1.1: changes: 1.added sql job monitoring; 2.added settings save/loadASP.NET MVC Project Awesome (jQuery Ajax helpers): 1.3.1 and demos: A rich set of helpers (controls) that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. These helpers include Autocomplete, AjaxDropdown, Lookup, Confirm Dialog, Popup Form and Pager tested on mozilla, safari, chrome, opera, ie 9b/8/7/6DotSpatial: DotSpatial 11-21-2010: This release introduces the following Fixed bugs related to dispose, which caused issues when reordering layers in the legend Fixed bugs related to assigning categories where NULL values are in the fields New fast-acting resize using a bitmap "prediction" of what the final resize content will look like. ImageData.ReadBlock, ImageData.WriteBlock These allow direct file access for reading or writing a rectangular window. Bitmaps are used for holding the values. Removed the need to stor...Minemapper - dynamic mapping for Windows: Minemapper v0.1.0: Pan by: dragging the mouse using the buttons Zoom by: scrolling the mouse wheel using the buttons using the slider Night support Biome support Skylight support Direction support: East West Height slicingMDownloader: MDownloader-0.15.24.6966: Fixed Updater; Fixed minor bugs;WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.1: Version: 2.0.0.1 (Milestone 1): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Remark The sample applications are using Microsoft’s IoC container MEF. However, the WPF Application Framework (WAF) doesn’t force you to use the same IoC container in your application. You can use ...Smith Html Editor: Smith Html Editor V0.75: The first public release.MiniTwitter: 1.59: MiniTwitter 1.59 ???? ?? User Streams ????????????????? ?? ?????????????? ???????? ?????????????.NET Extensions - Extension Methods Library for C# and VB.NET: Release 2011.01: Added new extensions for - object.CountLoopsToNull Added new extensions for DateTime: - DateTime.IsWeekend - DateTime.AddWeeks Added new extensions for string: - string.Repeat - string.IsNumeric - string.ExtractDigits - string.ConcatWith - string.ToGuid - string.ToGuidSave Added new extensions for Exception: - Exception.GetOriginalException Added new extensions for Stream: - Stream.Write (overload) And other new methods ... Release as of dotnetpro 01/2011Code Sample from Microsoft: Visual Studio 2010 Code Samples 2010-11-19: Code samples for Visual Studio 2010Prism Training Kit: Prism Training Kit 4.0: Release NotesThis is an updated version of the Prism training Kit that targets Prism 4.0 and added labs for some of the new features of Prism 4.0. This release consists of a Training Kit with Labs on the following topics Modularity Dependency Injection Bootstrapper UI Composition Communication MEF Navigation Note: Take into account that this is a Beta version. If you find any bugs please report them in the Issue Tracker PrerequisitesVisual Studio 2010 Microsoft Word 2...Free language translator and file converter: Free Language Translator 2.2: Starting with version 2.0, the translator encountered a major redesign that uses MEF based plugins and .net 4.0. I've also fixed some bugs and added support for translating subtitles that can show up in video media players. Version 2.1 shows the context menu 'Translate' in Windows Explorer on right click. Version 2.2 has links to start the media file with its associated subtitle. Download the zip file and expand it in a temporary location on your local disk. At a minimum , you should uninstal...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts v3.6.4 Released: Hi, Today we are releasing Visifire 3.6.4 with few bug fixes: * Multi-line Labels were getting clipped while exploding last DataPoint in Funnel and Pyramid chart. * ClosestPlotDistance property in Axis was not behaving as expected. * In DateTime Axis, Chart threw exception on mouse click over PlotArea if there were no DataPoints present in Chart. * ToolTip was not disappearing while changing the DataSource property of the DataSeries at real-time. * Chart threw exception ...Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks 2008R2 SR1: Sample Databases for Microsoft SQL Server 2008R2 (SR1)This release is dedicated to the sample databases that ship for Microsoft SQL Server 2008R2. See Database Prerequisites for SQL Server 2008R2 for feature configurations required for installing the sample databases. See Installing SQL Server 2008R2 Databases for step by step installation instructions. The SR1 release contains minor bug fixes to the installer used to create the sample databases. There are no changes to the databases them...VidCoder: 0.7.2: Fixed duplicated subtitles when running multiple encodes off of the same title.Craig's Utility Library: Craig's Utility Library Code 2.0: This update contains a number of changes, added functionality, and bug fixes: Added transaction support to SQLHelper. Added linked/embedded resource ability to EmailSender. Updated List to take into account new functions. Added better support for MAC address in WMI classes. Fixed Parsing in Reflection class when dealing with sub classes. Fixed bug in SQLHelper when replacing the Command that is a select after doing a select. Fixed issue in SQL Server helper with regard to generati...MFCMAPI: November 2010 Release: Build: 6.0.0.1023 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the tool, get the executable. If you want to debug it, get the symbol file and the source. The 64 bit build will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit build, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeDotNetNuke® Community Edition: 05.06.00: Major HighlightsAdded automatic portal alias creation for single portal installs Updated the file manager upload page to allow user to upload multiple files without returning to the file manager page. Fixed issue with Event Log Email Notifications. Fixed issue where Telerik HTML Editor was unable to upload files to secure or database folder. Fixed issue where registration page is not set correctly during an upgrade. Fixed issue where Sendmail stripped HTML and Links from emails...mVu Mobile Viewer: mVu Mobile Viewer 0.7.10.0: Tube8 fix.EPPlus-Create advanced Excel 2007 spreadsheets on the server: EPPlus 2.8.0.1: EPPlus-Create advanced Excel 2007 spreadsheets on the serverNew Features Improved chart support Different chart-types series on the same chart Support for secondary axis and a lot of new properties Better styling Encryption and Workbook protection Table support Import csv files Array formulas ...and a lot of bugfixesNew Projects.NET 4 Workflow Activities for Citrix: .NET 4 based workflow activities targeting the Citrix infrastructure.Age calculator: It calculates the age of a person in days on specification of date of birth.Another Azure Demo Project: An Azure demo project - based on the one we (Johan Danforth and Dag König) showed on the Swedish Azure Summit.ASP.NET Layered Web Application: N-Layered Web Applications with ASP.NET based on the article by Imar Spaanjaars.Binzlog: Donet ????。Build Solution: Buid Visual Studio applications with .Net code.CondominioOnline: Projeto para o desenvolvimento colaborativo dos diagramas de desenvolvimento.Create Dynamic UI with WPF: Create Dynamic UI with WPFDNN Fanbox: dot net nuke plugin facebook fanboxDNN Tweet: DNN Tweet is a twitter plugin for DotnetNuke DotNetNuke Notes: dnnNotes allows you to create simple notes that are stored on your DotNetNuke site.Easy Login PHP Script: Give your site a professional looking Members Area with this completely FREE and easy-to-use PHP script! Developed in PHP and uses MySQL as a database backend. Go on, click here, you know you want to! :DFind Nigerian Traditional Fashion Styles: NaijaTradStyles is a social network for Nigerians all over the world to promote the Nigerian economy, designs and cultures, fashion designers and individuals. This site allows users to share fashion ideas, activities, events, and interests within their individual networks. The GreenArrow: Just a simple mark-locate-click automation tool by comparing graphic pieces. GreenArrow makes it easier for automation script writer to handle UI elements which cannot be located by normal methods, like keyword or classid. Libero API for Fusion Charts in ASP.Net: Libero.FusionChartsAPI is made for Asp.Net (Webforms and MVC) developers to make easier to implement Fusion Charts in their projects. It is developed in framework .Net 4 (but supports framework 3.5) to target ASP.Net projects. Minemapper - dynamic mapping for Windows: Minemapper is an interactive, dynamic mapper for Minecraft. It uses mcmap to generate small map image tiles, then lets you pan and zoom around, quickly generating new tiles as needed.MoodleAzure: Enable Moodle 1.9.9 to run on Windows Azure and SQL AzureOpalis Active Directory Extension: A Opalis Integration Pack Project for Active Directory Integration. Done with C# Directory Services.Quick Finger SDK: Quick Finger SDK helps you to build a wide range of applications to use fingerprint recognition. Quick Finger SDK makes it easier for developers to integrate fingerprint recognition into their software. It's developed in Visual C++. Regex Batch Replacer (Multi-File): Regex Batch Replacer uses regular expression to find and replace text in multiple files.RiverRaid X: A clone of the classic Atari 2600 arcade game, River Raid. Uses XNA 4.0 and Neat game engine (http://neat.codeplex.com)SharePoint Commander: SharePoint 2010 administrative tool for developers and administrators.StreamerMatch: A tool for streamers, focused at Starcraft II at the moment.Tab Web Part: This solution is used to present the WebParts in a tab like user interface. It is tested on a SharePoint 2010 sandboxed solution. With this solution, all the WebParts added in a particular zone will appear in a tab kind of interface in the design mode. The javascript transformsTomato: XNA-based rendering middleware.UnicornObjects: todoVina: VinaWPF Photo/Image Manager: A WPF playground for many projects, including an image viewer, filters, image modification, photo organization, etc.WXQCW: wxqcw news platformYobbo Guitar: Yobbo guitar is a web application developed in ASP.NET that allows users to share guitar songs and chord progressions.

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• Ranking - an Introduction

  - by PointsToShare

  © 2011 By: Dov Trietsch. All rights reserved Ranking Ranking is quite common in the internet. Readers are asked to rank their latest reading by clicking on one of 5 (sometimes 10) stars. The number of stars is then converted to a number and the average number of stars as selected by all the readers is proudly (or shamefully) displayed for future readers. SharePoint 2007 lacked this feature altogether. SharePoint 2010 allows the users to rank items in a list or documents in a library (the two are actually the same because a library is actually a list). But in SP2010 the computation of the average is done later on a timer rather than on-the-spot as it should be. I suspect that the reason for this shortcoming is that they did not involve a mathematician! Let me explain. Ranking is kept in a related list. When a user rates a document the rank-list is added an item with the item id, the user name, and his number of stars. The fact that a user already ranked an item prevents him from ranking it again. This prevents the creator of the item from asking his mother to rank it a 5 and do it 753 times, thus stacking the ballot. Some systems will allow a user to change his rating and this will be done by updating the rank-list item. Now, when the timer kicks off, the list is spanned and for each item the rank-list items containing this id are summed up and divided by the number of votes thus yielding the new average. This is obviously very time consuming and very server intensive. In the 18th century an early actuary named James Dodson used what the great Augustus De Morgan (of De Morgan’s law) later named Commutation tables. The labor involved in computing a life insurance premium was staggering and also very error prone. Clerks with pencil and paper would multiply and add mountains of numbers to do the task. The more steps the greater the probability of error and the more expensive the process. Commutation tables created a “summary” of many steps and reduced the work 100 fold. So had Microsoft taken a lesson in the history of computation, they would have developed a much faster way for rating that may be done in real-time and is also 100 times faster and less CPU intensive. How do we do this? We use a form of commutation. We always keep the number of votes and the total of stars. One simple division gives us the average. So we write an event receiver. When a vote is added, we just add the stars to the total-stars and 1 to the number of votes. We then recomputed the average. When a vote is updated, we reduce the total by the old vote, increase it by the new vote and leave the number of votes the same. Again we do the division to get the new average. When a vote is deleted (highly unlikely and maybe even prohibited), we reduce the total by that vote and reduce the number of votes by 1… Gone are the days of spanning lists, counting items, and tallying votes and we have no need for a timer process to run it all. This is the first of a few treatises on ranking. Even though I discussed the math and the history thereof, in here I am only going to solve the presentation issue. I wanted to create the CSS and Jscript needed to display the stars, create the various effects like hovering and clicking (onmouseover, onmouseout, onclick, etc.) and I wanted to create a general solution with any number of stars. When I had it all done, I created the ranking game so that I could test it. The game is interesting in and on itself, so here it is (or go to the games page and select “rank the stars”). BTW, when you play it, look at the source code and see how it was all done.  Next, how the 5 stars are displayed in the New and Update forms. When the whole set of articles will be done, you’ll be able to create the complete solution. That’s all folks!

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• Five Reasons to Attend PLM Summit 2013: The Conference Formerly Known as AGILITY

  - by Terri Hiskey

  As we approach the end of 2012, we are also closing in on the last couple of weeks that Agile customers and prospects can register for the upcoming PLM Summit 2013 for the bargain early bird rate of $195. Register now to secure your spot! The Conference Formerly Known as AGILITY... Long-time Agile customers may remember AGILITY, which was Agile's PLM customer conference that was held on an annual basis prior to Oracle's acquisiton of Agile in 2007. In February 2012, due to feedback we received from our Agile PLM community, we successfully resurrected the AGILITY conference and renamed it the PLM Summit. The PLM Summit was so well received and well-attended, that we are doing it again in 2013. This upcoming PLM Summit is being co-located in San Francisco under the overarching banner of the Oracle Value Chain Summit, and will be held alongside several other Oracle customer conferences that cover a range of value chain solutions, including Value Chain Planning, Value Chain Execution, Procurement, Maintenance and Manufacturing. This setup offers PLM attendees the best of all worlds--the opportunity to participate and learn about PLM in smaller, focused sessions by product and by industry, while also giving attendees the chance to see how PLM works together with other critical enterprise applications that address other important aspects of the value chain. Top Five Reasons to Attend the PLM Summit 2013 In the spirit of all of the end-of-the-year lists that are currently popping up, here is a list of the top five reasons to attend the PLM Summit for anyone out there needs a little extra encouragement to register: 1. The Best Opportunities for Customer Networking   The PLM Summit offers attendees numerous opportunities to learn and network with fellow Agile users. Customer stories are featured in keynote and breakout presentations and the schedule allows for plenty of networking time during breakfasts, lunches, breaks and dinners. Customer networking is the number one reason that Agile users attend the PLM Summit. Read what attendees thought of the most recent PLM Summit: "Hearing about the implementation of Agile products from a customers’ perspective is invaluable." - Director of Quality Assurance & Regulatory Affairs, leading medical device manufacturer "Understanding the scope of other companies’ projects and the lessons learned made attending this event well worth my time." - Director of Test Engineering, global industrial manufacturer "The most beneficial thing about attending this event is the opportunity to network with other customers with similar experiences." - Director of Business Process Improvement, leading high technology company Come to the PLM Summit and play an active role within the PLM community: swap war stories and business cards, connect on LinkedIn and Facebook, share your stories and discuss the sessions from each day. Register now! 2. It's Educational! The PLM Summit is the premier educational event for anyone in the Agile PLM community. There are nearly 40 PLM-focused in-depth educational sessions led by Agile PLM experts, customers and partners that will cover a range of specific product and industry-focused topics. Keynotes will give attendees a broad overview of the entire Agile PLM footprint, while sessions will delve deeply into specific product functionality and customer case studies. There is truly something for everyone. Check out the latest agenda for view of all the sessions. 3. Visit with the PLM Partner Community Our partners play a significant and important role within the Agile PLM community. At the PLM Summit, attendees will be able to meet and mingle with several of the top Oracle Agile PLM partners including: Deloitte, Domain, GoEngineer, Hitachi Consulting, IBM, Kalypso, KPIT Cummins (CPG Solutions), Perception Software, Verdant, Xavor and ZeroWaitState. Go here for a complete list of all the Value Chain Summit sponsors. 4. See Agile PLM in Action at our Dedicated PLM Demo Pods At the PLM Summit, attendees will have the chance to see Agile PLM in action at dedicated PLM demo pods, manned by expert members of our Agile PLM team. If you would like to see up close specific Agile PLM functionality, or if you have a question on how to extend the scope of your current implemention or if you want a better understanding of how to leverage Agile PLM to address specific use-cases, stop by one of the Agile PLM demo pods and engage the Agile PLM experts on hand at the PLM Summit. 5. Spend Some Time in Lovely San Francisco Still on the fence about the upcoming PLM Summit? Remember that it is being held in San Francisco, which is a fantastic city for a getaway. After spending time learning and networking about PLM, take an extra day or two to escape the dreary winter and enjoy the beautiful scenery and the unique actitivies offered only by the City by the Bay. You will walk away from the conference not only with renewed excitement about Agile PLM, but feeling rejuvenated in general.

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• ASP.NET WebAPI Security 2: Identity Architecture

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  Pedro has beaten me to the punch with a detailed post (and diagram) about the WebAPI hosting architecture. So go read his post first, then come back so we can have a closer look at what that means for security. The first important takeaway is that WebAPI is hosting independent-  currently it ships with two host integration implementations – one for ASP.NET (aka web host) and WCF (aka self host). Pedro nicely shows the integration into the web host. Self hosting is not done yet so we will mainly focus on the web hosting case and I will point out security related differences when they exist. The interesting part for security (amongst other things of course) is the HttpControllerHandler (see Pedro’s diagram) – this is where the host specific representation of an HTTP request gets converted to the WebAPI abstraction (called HttpRequestMessage). The ConvertRequest method does the following: Create a new HttpRequestMessage. Copy URI, method and headers from the HttpContext. Copies HttpContext.User to the Properties<string, object> dictionary on the HttpRequestMessage. The key used for that can be found on HttpPropertyKeys.UserPrincipalKey (which resolves to “MS_UserPrincipal”). So the consequence is that WebAPI receives whatever IPrincipal has been set by the ASP.NET pipeline (in the web hosting case). Common questions are: Are there situations where is property does not get set? Not in ASP.NET – the DefaultAuthenticationModule in the HTTP pipeline makes sure HttpContext.User (and Thread.CurrentPrincipal – more on that later) are always set. Either to some authenticated user – or to an anonymous principal. This may be different in other hosting environments (again more on that later). Why so generic? Keep in mind that WebAPI is hosting independent and may run on a host that materializes identity completely different compared to ASP.NET (or .NET in general). This gives them a way to evolve the system in the future. How does WebAPI code retrieve the current client identity? HttpRequestMessage has an extension method called GetUserPrincipal() which returns the property as an IPrincipal. A quick look at self hosting shows that the moral equivalent of HttpControllerHandler.ConvertRequest() is HttpSelfHostServer.ProcessRequestContext(). Here the principal property gets only set when the host is configured for Windows authentication (inconsisteny). Do I like that? Well – yes and no. Here are my thoughts: I like that it is very straightforward to let WebAPI inherit the client identity context of the host. This might not always be what you want – think of an ASP.NET app that consists of UI and APIs – the UI might use Forms authentication, the APIs token based authentication. So it would be good if the two parts would live in a separate security world. It makes total sense to have this generic hand off point for identity between the host and WebAPI. It also makes total sense for WebAPI plumbing code (especially handlers) to use the WebAPI specific identity abstraction. But – c’mon we are running on .NET. And the way .NET represents identity is via IPrincipal/IIdentity. That’s what every .NET developer on this planet is used to. So I would like to see a User property of type IPrincipal on ApiController. I don’t like the fact that Thread.CurrentPrincipal is not populated. T.CP is a well established pattern as a one stop shop to retrieve client identity on .NET.  That makes a lot of sense – even if the name is misleading at best. There might be existing library code you want to call from WebAPI that makes use of T.CP (e.g. PrincipalPermission, or a simple .Name or .IsInRole()). Having the client identity as an ambient property is useful for code that does not have access to the current HTTP request (for calling GetUserPrincipal()). I don’t like the fact that that the client identity conversion from host to WebAPI is inconsistent. This makes writing security plumbing code harder. I think the logic should always be: If the host has a client identity representation, copy it. If not, set an anonymous principal on the request message. Btw – please don’t annoy me with the “but T.CP is static, and static is bad for testing” chant. T.CP is a getter/setter and, in fact I find it beneficial to be able to set different security contexts in unit tests before calling in some logic. And, in case you have wondered – T.CP is indeed thread static (and the name comes from a time where a logical operation was bound to a thread – which is not true anymore). But all thread creation APIs in .NET actually copy T.CP to the new thread they create. This is the case since .NET 2.0 and is certainly an improvement compared to how Win32 does things. So to sum it up: The host plumbing copies the host client identity to WebAPI (this is not perfect yet, but will surely be improved). or in other words: The current WebAPI bits don’t ship with any authentication plumbing, but solely use whatever authentication (and thus client identity) is set up by the host. WebAPI developers can retrieve the client identity from the HttpRequestMessage. Hopefully my proposed changes around T.CP and the User property on ApiController will be added. In the next post, I will detail how to add WebAPI specific authentication support, e.g. for Basic Authentication and tokens. This includes integrating the notion of claims based identity. After that we will look at the built-in authorization bits and how to improve them as well. Stay tuned.

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• How do you use blog content?

  - by fatherjack

  Do you write a blog, have you ever thought about it? I think people fall into one of a few categories when it comes to blogs, especially blogs with technical content. Writing articles furiously - daily, twice daily and reading dozens of others. Writing the odd piece of content and read plenty of others' output. Started a blog once and its fizzled out but reading lots. Thought about starting a blog someday but never got around to it, hopping into the occasional blog when a link or a Tweet takes them there. Never thought about writing one but often catching content from them when Google (or other preferred search engine) finds content related to their search. Now I am not saying that either of these is right or wrong, nor am I saying that anyone should feel any compulsion to be in any particular category. What I would say is that you as a blog reader have the power to move blog writers from one category to another. How, you might ask? How do I have any power over a blog writer? It is very simple - feedback. If you give feedback then the blog writer knows that they are reaching an audience, if there is no response then they we are simply writing down our thoughts for what could amount to nothing more than a feeble amount of exercise and a few more key stokes towards the onset of RSI. Most blogs have a mechanism to alert the writer when there are comments, and personally speaking, if an email is received saying there has been a response to a blog article then there is a rush of enthusiasm, a moment of excitement that someone is actually reading and considering the text that was submitted and made available for the whole world to read. I am relatively new to this blog game and could be in some extended honeymoon period as I have also recently been incorporated into the Simple Talk 'stable'. I can understand that once you get to the "Dizzy Heights of Ozar" (www.brentozar.com) then getting comments and feedback might not be such a pleasure and may even be rather more of a chore but that, I guess, is the price of fame. For us mere mortals starting out blogging, getting feedback (or even at the moment for me, simply the hope of getting feedback) is what keeps it going. The hope that you will pick a topic that hasn't been done recently by Brad McGehee, Grant Fritchey,  Paul Randall, Thomas LaRock or any one of the dozen of rock star bloggers listed here or others from SQLServerPedia and so on, and then do it well enough to be found, reviewed, or <shudder> (re)tweeted to bring more visitors is what we are striving for, along with the fact that the content we might produce is something that will be of benefit to others. There is only so much point to typing content that no-one is reading and putting it on a blog. You may as well just write it in a diary. A technical blog is not like, say, a blog covering photography techniques where the way to frame and take a picture stands true whether it was written last week, last year or last century - technical content goes sour, quite quickly. There isn't much call for articles about yesterdays technology unless its something that still applies to current versions too, so some content written no more than 2 years ago isn't worth having now. The combination of a piece of content that you know is going to not last long and the fact that no-one reads it is a strong force against writing anything else. Getting feedback counters that despair and gives a value to writing something new. I would say that any feedback is good but there are obviously comments that are just so negative or otherwise badly phrased that they would hasten the demise of a blog but, in general most feedback will encourage a writer. It may not be a comment that supports or agrees with the main theme of a post but if it generates discussion or opens up a previously unexplored viewpoint it is contributing to the blog and is therefore encouraging to the writer. Even if you only say "thank you" before you leave a blog, having taken a section of script to use for yourself or having been given a few links to some content that has widened your knowledge it will be so welcome to the blog owner. Isn't it also the decent thing to do, acknowledging that you have benefited from another's efforts?

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• concurrency::accelerator

  - by Daniel Moth

  Overview An accelerator represents a "target" on which C++ AMP code can execute and where data can reside. Typically (but not necessarily) an accelerator is a GPU device. Accelerators are represented in C++ AMP as objects of the accelerator class. For many scenarios, you do not need to obtain an accelerator object, since the runtime has a notion of a default accelerator, which is what it thinks is the best one in the system. Examples where you need to deal with accelerator objects are if you need to pick your own accelerator (based on your specific criteria), or if you need to use more than one accelerators from your app. Construction and operator usage You can query and obtain a std::vector of all the accelerators on your system, which the runtime discovers on startup. Beyond enumerating accelerators, you can also create one directly by passing to the constructor a system-wide unique path to a device if you know it (i.e. the “Device Instance Path” property for the device in Device Manager), e.g. accelerator acc(L"PCI\\VEN_1002&DEV_6898&SUBSYS_0B001002etc"); There are some predefined strings (for predefined accelerators) that you can pass to the accelerator constructor (and there are corresponding constants for those on the accelerator class itself, so you don’t have to hardcode them every time). Examples are the following: accelerator::default_accelerator represents the default accelerator that the C++ AMP runtime picks for you if you don’t pick one (the heuristics of how it picks one will be covered in a future post). Example: accelerator acc; accelerator::direct3d_ref represents the reference rasterizer emulator that simulates a direct3d device on the CPU (in a very slow manner). This emulator is available on systems with Visual Studio installed and is useful for debugging. More on debugging in general in future posts. Example: accelerator acc(accelerator::direct3d_ref); accelerator::direct3d_warp represents a target that I will cover in future blog posts. Example: accelerator acc(accelerator::direct3d_warp); accelerator::cpu_accelerator represents the CPU. In this first release the only use of this accelerator is for using the staging arrays technique that I'll cover separately. Example: accelerator acc(accelerator::cpu_accelerator); You can also create an accelerator by shallow copying another accelerator instance (via the corresponding constructor) or simply assigning it to another accelerator instance (via the operator overloading of =). Speaking of operator overloading, you can also compare (for equality and inequality) two accelerator objects between them to determine if they refer to the same underlying device. Querying accelerator characteristics Given an accelerator object, you can access its description, version, device path, size of dedicated memory in KB, whether it is some kind of emulator, whether it has a display attached, whether it supports double precision, and whether it was created with the debugging layer enabled for extensive error reporting. Below is example code that accesses some of the properties; in your real code you'd probably be checking one or more of them in order to pick an accelerator (or check that the default one is good enough for your specific workload): void inspect_accelerator(concurrency::accelerator acc) { std::wcout << "New accelerator: " << acc.description << std::endl; std::wcout << "is_debug = " << acc.is_debug << std::endl; std::wcout << "is_emulated = " << acc.is_emulated << std::endl; std::wcout << "dedicated_memory = " << acc.dedicated_memory << std::endl; std::wcout << "device_path = " << acc.device_path << std::endl; std::wcout << "has_display = " << acc.has_display << std::endl; std::wcout << "version = " << (acc.version >> 16) << '.' << (acc.version & 0xFFFF) << std::endl; } accelerator_view In my next blog post I'll cover a related class: accelerator_view. Suffice to say here that each accelerator may have from 1..n related accelerator_view objects. You can get the accelerator_view from an accelerator via the default_view property, or create new ones by invoking the create_view method that creates an accelerator_view object for you (by also accepting a queuing_mode enum value of deferred or immediate that we'll also explore in the next blog post). Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• Working with Reporting Services Filters–Part 1

  - by smisner

  There are two ways that you can filter data in Reporting Services. The first way, which usually provides a faster performance, is to use query parameters to apply a filter using the WHERE clause in a SQL statement. In that case, the structure of the filter depends upon the syntax recognized by the source database. Another way to filter data in Reporting Services is to apply a filter to a dataset, data region, or a group. Using this latter method, you can even apply multiple filters. However, the use of filter operators or the setup of multiple filters is not always obvious, so in this series of posts, I'll provide some more information about the configuration of filters. First, why not use query parameters exclusively for filtering? Here are a few reasons: You might want to apply a filter to part of the report, but not all of the report. Your dataset might retrieve data from a stored procedure, and doesn't allow you to pass a query parameter for filtering purposes. Your report might be set up as a snapshot on the report server and, in that case, cannot be dynamically filtered based on a query parameter. Next, let's look at how to set up a report filter in general. The process is the same whether you are applying the filter to a dataset, data region, or a group. When you go to the Filters page in the Properties dialog box for whichever of these items you selected (dataset, data region, group), you click the Add button to create a new filter. The interface looks like this: The Expression field is usually a field in the dataset, so to make it easier for you to make a selection,the drop-down list displays all of the current dataset fields. But notice the expression button to the right, which means that you can set up any type of expression-not just a dataset field. To the right of the expression button, you'll find a data type drop-down list. It's important to specify the correct data type for the field or expression you're using. Now for the operators. Here's a list of the options that you have: This Operator Performs This Action =, <>, >, >=, <, <=, Like Compares expression to value Top N, Bottom N Compares expression to Top (Bottom) set of N values (N = integer) Top %, Bottom % Compares expression to Top (Bottom) N percent of values (N = integer or float) Between Determines whether expression is between two values, inclusive In Determines whether expression is found in list of values Last, the Value is what you're comparing to the expression using the operator. The construction of a filter using some operators (=, <>, >, etc.) is fairly simple. If my dataset (for AdventureWorks data) has a Category field, and I have a parameter that prompts the user for a single category, I can set up a filter like this: Expression Data Type Operator Value [Category] Text = [@Category] But if I set the parameter to accept multiple values, I need to change the operator from = to In, just as I would have to do if I were using a query parameter. The parameter expression, [@Category], which translates to =Parameters!Category.Value, doesn’t need to change because it represents an array as soon as I change the parameter to allow multiple values. The “In” operator requires an array. With that in mind, let’s consider a variation on Value. Let’s say that I have a parameter that prompts the user for a particular year – and for simplicity’s sake, this parameter only allows a single value, and I have an expression that evaluates the previous year based on the user’s selection. Then I want to use these two values in two separate filters with an OR condition. That is, I want to filter either by the year selected OR by the year that was computed. If I create two filters, one for each year (as shown below), then the report will only display results if BOTH filter conditions are met – which would never be true. Expression Data Type Operator Value [CalendarYear] Integer = [@Year] [CalendarYear] Integer = =Parameters!Year.Value-1 To handle this scenario, we need to create a single filter that uses the “In” operator, and then set up the Value expression as an array. To create an array, we use the Split function after creating a string that concatenates the two values (highlighted in yellow) as shown below. Expression Data Type Operator Value =Cstr(Fields!CalendarYear.Value) Text In =Split( CStr(Parameters!Year.Value) + ”,” + CStr(Parameters!Year.Value-1) , “,”) Note that in this case, I had to apply a string conversion on the year integer so that I could concatenate the parameter selection with the calculated year. Pay attention to the second argument of the Split function—you must use a comma delimiter for the result to work correctly with the In operator. I also had to change the Expression value from [CalendarYear] (or =Fields!CalendarYear.Value) so that the expression would return a string that I could compare with the values in the string array. More fun with filter expressions in future posts!

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• .NET Security Part 2

  - by Simon Cooper

  So, how do you create partial-trust appdomains? Where do you come across them? There are two main situations in which your assembly runs as partially-trusted using the Microsoft .NET stack: Creating a CLR assembly in SQL Server with anything other than the UNSAFE permission set. The permissions available in each permission set are given here. Loading an assembly in ASP.NET in any trust level other than Full. Information on ASP.NET trust levels can be found here. You can configure the specific permissions available to assemblies using ASP.NET policy files. Alternatively, you can create your own partially-trusted appdomain in code and directly control the permissions and the full-trust API available to the assemblies you load into the appdomain. This is the scenario I’ll be concentrating on in this post. Creating a partially-trusted appdomain There is a single overload of AppDomain.CreateDomain that allows you to specify the permissions granted to assemblies in that appdomain – this one. This is the only call that allows you to specify a PermissionSet for the domain. All the other calls simply use the permissions of the calling code. If the permissions are restricted, then the resulting appdomain is referred to as a sandboxed domain. There are three things you need to create a sandboxed domain: The specific permissions granted to all assemblies in the domain. The application base (aka working directory) of the domain. The list of assemblies that have full-trust if they are loaded into the sandboxed domain. The third item is what allows us to have a fully-trusted API that is callable by partially-trusted code. I’ll be looking at the details of this in a later post. Granting permissions to the appdomain Firstly, the permissions granted to the appdomain. This is encapsulated in a PermissionSet object, initialized either with no permissions or full-trust permissions. For sandboxed appdomains, the PermissionSet is initialized with no permissions, then you add permissions you want assemblies loaded into that appdomain to have by default: PermissionSet restrictedPerms = new PermissionSet(PermissionState.None); // all assemblies need Execution permission to run at all restrictedPerms.AddPermission( new SecurityPermission(SecurityPermissionFlag.Execution)); // grant general read access to C:\config.xml restrictedPerms.AddPermission( new FileIOPermission(FileIOPermissionAccess.Read, @"C:\config.xml")); // grant permission to perform DNS lookups restrictedPerms.AddPermission( new DnsPermission(PermissionState.Unrestricted)); It’s important to point out that the permissions granted to an appdomain, and so to all assemblies loaded into that appdomain, are usable without needing to go through any SafeCritical code (see my last post if you’re unsure what SafeCritical code is). That is, partially-trusted code loaded into an appdomain with the above permissions (and so running under the Transparent security level) is able to create and manipulate a FileStream object to read from C:\config.xml directly. It is only for operations requiring permissions that are not granted to the appdomain that partially-trusted code is required to call a SafeCritical method that then asserts the missing permissions and performs the operation safely on behalf of the partially-trusted code. The application base of the domain This is simply set as a property on an AppDomainSetup object, and is used as the default directory assemblies are loaded from: AppDomainSetup appDomainSetup = new AppDomainSetup { ApplicationBase = @"C:\temp\sandbox", }; If you’ve read the documentation around sandboxed appdomains, you’ll notice that it mentions a security hole if this parameter is set correctly. I’ll be looking at this, and other pitfalls, that will break the sandbox when using sandboxed appdomains, in a later post. Full-trust assemblies in the appdomain Finally, we need the strong names of the assemblies that, when loaded into the appdomain, will be run as full-trust, irregardless of the permissions specified on the appdomain. These assemblies will contain methods and classes decorated with SafeCritical and Critical attributes. I’ll be covering the details of creating full-trust APIs for partial-trust appdomains in a later post. This is how you get the strongnames of an assembly to be executed as full-trust in the sandbox: // get the Assembly object for the assembly Assembly assemblyWithApi = ... // get the StrongName from the assembly's collection of evidence StrongName apiStrongName = assemblyWithApi.Evidence.GetHostEvidence<StrongName>(); Creating the sandboxed appdomain So, putting these three together, you create the appdomain like so: AppDomain sandbox = AppDomain.CreateDomain( "Sandbox", null, appDomainSetup, restrictedPerms, apiStrongName); You can then load and execute assemblies in this appdomain like any other. For example, to load an assembly into the appdomain and get an instance of the Sandboxed.Entrypoint class, implementing IEntrypoint, you do this: IEntrypoint o = (IEntrypoint)sandbox.CreateInstanceFromAndUnwrap( "C:\temp\sandbox\SandboxedAssembly.dll", "Sandboxed.Entrypoint"); // call method the Execute method on this object within the sandbox o.Execute(); The second parameter to CreateDomain is for security evidence used in the appdomain. This was a feature of the .NET 2 security model, and has been (mostly) obsoleted in the .NET 4 model. Unless the evidence is needed elsewhere (eg. isolated storage), you can pass in null for this parameter. Conclusion That’s the basics of sandboxed appdomains. The most important object is the PermissionSet that defines the permissions available to assemblies running in the appdomain; it is this object that defines the appdomain as full or partial-trust. The appdomain also needs a default directory used for assembly lookups as the ApplicationBase parameter, and you can specify an optional list of the strongnames of assemblies that will be given full-trust permissions if they are loaded into the sandboxed appdomain. Next time, I’ll be looking closer at full-trust assemblies running in a sandboxed appdomain, and what you need to do to make an API available to partial-trust code.

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• 3 Ways to Make Steam Even Faster

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Have you ever noticed how slow Steam’s built-in web browser can be? Do you struggle with slow download speeds? Or is Steam just slow in general? These tips will help you speed it up. Steam isn’t a game itself, so there are no 3D settings to change to achieve maximum performance. But there are some things you can do to speed it up dramatically. Speed Up the Steam Web Browser Steam’s built-in web browser — used in both the Steam store and in Steam’s in-game overlay to provide a web browser you can quickly use within games – can be frustratingly slow on many systems. Rather than the typical speed we’ve come to expect from Chrome, Firefox, or even Internet Explorer, Steam seems to struggle. When you click a link or go to a new page, there’s a noticeable delay before the new page appears — something that doesn’t happen in desktop browsers. Many people seem to have made peace with this slowness, accepting that Steam’s built-in browser is just bad. However, there’s a trick that will eliminate this delay on many systems and make the Steam web browser fast. This problem seems to arise from an incompatibility with the Automatically Detect Proxy Settings option, which is enabled by default on Windows. This is a compatibility option that very few people should actually need, so it’s safe to disable it. To disable this option, open the Internet Options dialog — press the Windows key to access the Start menu or Start screen, type Internet Options, and click the Internet Options shortcut. Select the Connections tab in the Internet Options window and click the LAN settings button. Uncheck the Automatically detect settings option here, then click OK to save your settings. If you experienced a significant delay every time a web page loaded in Steam’s web browser, it should now be gone. In the unlikely event that you encounter some sort of problem with your network connection, you could always re-enable this option. Increase Steam’s Game Download Speed Steam attempts to automatically select the nearest download server to your location. However, it may not always select the ideal download server. Or, in the case of high-traffic events like big seasonal sales and huge game launches, you may benefit from selecting a less-congested server. To do this, open Steam’s settings by clicking the Steam menu in Steam and selecting Settings. Click over to the Downloads tab and select the closest download server from the Download Region box. You should also ensure that Steam’s download bandwidth isn’t limited from here. You may want to restart Steam and see if your download speeds improve after changing this setting. In some cases, the closest server might not be the fastest. One a bit farther away could be faster if your local server is more congested, for example. Steam once provided information about content server load, which allowed you to select a regional server that wasn’t under high-load, but this information no longer seems to be available. Steam still provides a page that shows you the amount of download activity happening in different regions, including statistics about the difference in download speeds in different US states, but this information isn’t as useful. Accelerate Steam and Your Games One way to speed up all your games — and Steam itself —  is by getting a solid-state drive and installing Steam to it. Steam allows you to easily move your Steam folder — at C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam by default — to another hard drive. Just move it like you would any other folder. You can then launch the Steam.exe program as if you had never moved Steam’s files. Steam also allows you to configure multiple game library folders. This means that you can set up a Steam library folder on a solid-state drive and one on your larger magnetic hard drive. Install your most frequently played games to the solid-state drive for maximum speed and your less frequently played ones to the slower magnetic hard drive to save SSD space. To set up additional library folders, open Steam’s Settings window and click the Downloads tab. You’ll find the Steam Library Folders option here. Click the Add Library Folder button and create a new game library on another hard drive. When you install a game in Steam, you’ll be asked which library folder you want to install it to. With the proxy compatibility option disabled, the correct download server chosen, and Steam installed to a fast SSD, it should be a speed demon. There’s not much more you can do to speed up Steam, short of upgrading other hardware like your computer’s CPU. Image Credit: Andrew Nash on Flickr     

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• Caveats with the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests in IIS 7/8

  - by Rick Strahl

  One of the nice enhancements in IIS 7 (and now 8) is the ability to be able to intercept non-managed - ie. non ASP.NET served - requests from within ASP.NET managed modules. This opened up a ton of new functionality that could be applied across non-managed content using .NET code. I thought I had a pretty good handle on how IIS 7's Integrated mode pipeline works, but when I put together some samples last tonight I realized that the way that managed and unmanaged requests fire into the pipeline is downright confusing especially when it comes to the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests attribute. There are a number of settings that can affect whether a managed module receives non-ASP.NET content requests such as static files or requests from other frameworks like PHP or ASP classic, and this is topic of this blog post. Native and Managed Modules The integrated mode IIS pipeline for IIS 7 and later - as the name suggests - allows for integration of ASP.NET pipeline events in the IIS request pipeline. Natively IIS runs unmanaged code and there are a host of native mode modules that handle the core behavior of IIS. If you set up a new IIS site or application without managed code support only the native modules are supported and fired without any interaction between native and managed code. If you use the Integrated pipeline with managed code enabled however things get a little more confusing as there both native modules and .NET managed modules can fire against the same IIS request. If you open up the IIS Modules dialog you see both managed and unmanaged modules. Unmanaged modules point at physical files on disk, while unmanaged modules point at .NET types and files referenced from the GAC or the current project's BIN folder. Both native and managed modules can co-exist and execute side by side and on the same request. When running in IIS 7 the IIS pipeline actually instantiates a the ASP.NET  runtime (via the System.Web.PipelineRuntime class) which unlike the core HttpRuntime classes in ASP.NET receives notification callbacks when IIS integrated mode events fire. The IIS pipeline is smart enough to detect whether managed handlers are attached and if they're none these notifications don't fire, improving performance. The good news about all of this for .NET devs is that ASP.NET style modules can be used for just about every kind of IIS request. All you need to do is create a new Web Application and enable ASP.NET on it, and then attach managed handlers. Handlers can look at ASP.NET content (ie. ASPX pages, MVC, WebAPI etc. requests) as well as non-ASP.NET content including static content like HTML files, images, javascript and css resources etc. It's very cool that this capability has been surfaced. However, with that functionality comes a lot of responsibility. Because every request passes through the ASP.NET pipeline if managed modules (or handlers) are attached there are possible performance implications that come with it. Running through the ASP.NET pipeline does add some overhead. ASP.NET and Your Own Modules When you create a new ASP.NET project typically the Visual Studio templates create the modules section like this: <system.webServer> <validation validateIntegratedModeConfiguration="false" /> <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" > </modules> </system.webServer> Specifically the interesting thing about this is the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequest="true" flag, which seems to indicate that it controls whether any registered modules always run, even when the value is set to false. Realistically though this flag does not control whether managed code is fired for all requests or not. Rather it is an override for the preCondition flag on a particular handler. With the flag set to the default true setting, you can assume that pretty much every IIS request you receive ends up firing through your ASP.NET module pipeline and every module you have configured is accessed even by non-managed requests like static files. In other words, your module will have to handle all requests. Now so far so obvious. What's not quite so obvious is what happens when you set the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequest="false". You probably would expect that immediately the non-ASP.NET requests no longer get funnelled through the ASP.NET Module pipeline. But that's not what actually happens. For example, if I create a module like this:<add name="SharewareModule" type="HowAspNetWorks.SharewareMessageModule" /> by default it will fire against ALL requests regardless of the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests flag. Even if the value runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="false", the module is fired. Not quite expected. So what is the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests really good for? It's essentially an override for managedHandler preCondition. If I declare my handler in web.config like this:<add name="SharewareModule" type="HowAspNetWorks.SharewareMessageModule" preCondition="managedHandler" /> and the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="false" my module only fires against managed requests. If I switch the flag to true, now my module ends up handling all IIS requests that are passed through from IIS. The moral of the story here is that if you intend to only look at ASP.NET content, you should always set the preCondition="managedHandler" attribute to ensure that only managed requests are fired on this module. But even if you do this, realize that runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" can override this setting. runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests and Http Application Events Another place the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequest attribute affects is the Global Http Application object (typically in global.asax) and the Application_XXXX events that you can hook up there. So while the events there are dynamically hooked up to the application class, they basically behave as if they were set with the preCodition="managedHandler" configuration switch. The end result is that if you have runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" you'll see every Http request passed through the Application_XXXX events, and you only see ASP.NET requests with the flag set to "false". What's all that mean? Configuring an application to handle requests for both ASP.NET and other content requests can be tricky especially if you need to mix modules that might require both. Couple of things are important to remember. If your module doesn't need to look at every request, by all means set a preCondition="managedHandler" on it. This will at least allow it to respond to the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="false" flag and then only process ASP.NET requests. Look really carefully to see whether you actually need runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" in your applications as set by the default new project templates in Visual Studio. Part of the reason, this is the default because it was required for the initial versions of IIS 7 and ASP.NET 2 in order to handle MVC extensionless URLs. However, if you are running IIS 7 or later and .NET 4.0 you can use the ExtensionlessUrlHandler instead to allow you MVC functionality without requiring runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true": <handlers> <remove name="ExtensionlessUrlHandler-Integrated-4.0" /> <add name="ExtensionlessUrlHandler-Integrated-4.0" path="*." verb="GET,HEAD,POST,DEBUG,PUT,DELETE,PATCH,OPTIONS" type="System.Web.Handlers.TransferRequestHandler" preCondition="integratedMode,runtimeVersionv4.0" /> </handlers> Oddly this is the default for Visual Studio 2012 MVC template apps, so I'm not sure why the default template still adds runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" is - it should be enabled only if there's a specific need to access non ASP.NET requests. As a side note, it's interesting that when you access a static HTML resource, you can actually write into the Response object and get the output to show, which is trippy. I haven't looked closely to see how this works - whether ASP.NET just fires directly into the native output stream or whether the static requests are re-routed directly through the ASP.NET pipeline once a managed code module is detected. This doesn't work for all non ASP.NET resources - for example, I can't do the same with ASP classic requests, but it makes for an interesting demo when injecting HTML content into a static HTML page :-) Note that on the original Windows Server 2008 and Vista (IIS 7.0) you might need a HotFix in order for ExtensionLessUrlHandler to work properly for MVC projects. On my live server I needed it (about 6 months ago), but others have observed that the latest service updates have integrated this functionality and the hotfix is not required. On IIS 7.5 and later I've not needed any patches for things to just work. Plan for non-ASP.NET Requests It's important to remember that if you write a .NET Module to run on IIS 7, there's no way for you to prevent non-ASP.NET requests from hitting your module. So make sure you plan to support requests to extensionless URLs, to static resources like files. Luckily ASP.NET creates a full Request and full Response object for you for non ASP.NET content. So even for static files and even for ASP classic for example, you can look at Request.FilePath or Request.ContentType (in post handler pipeline events) to determine what content you are dealing with. As always with Module design make sure you check for the conditions in your code that make the module applicable and if a filter fails immediately exit - minimize the code that runs if your module doesn't need to process the request.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in IIS7   ASP.NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Answers to “What source control system do you use?” (and some winners)

  - by jamiet

  About a month ago I posed a question here on my blog SQL Server devs–what source control system do you use, if any? (answer and maybe win free stuff) in which I asked SQL Server developers to answer the following questions: Are you putting your SQL Server code into a source control system? If so, what source control server software (e.g. TFS, Git, SVN, Mercurial, SourceSafe, Perforce) are you using? What source control client software are you using (e.g. TFS Team Explorer, Tortoise, Red Gate SQL Source Control, Red Gate SQL Connect, Git Bash, etc…)? Why did you make those particular software choices? Any interesting anecdotes to share in regard to your use of source control and SQL Server? I had some really great responses (I highly recommend going and reading them). I promised that the five best, most thought-provoking, responses (as determined by me) would win one of five pairs of licenses for Red Gate SQL Source Control and Red Gate SQL Connect; here are the five that I chose (note that if you responded but did not leave a means of getting in touch then you weren’t considered for one of the prizes – sorry): In general, I don't think the management overhead and licensing cost associated with TFS is worthwhile if all you're doing is using source control. To get value from TFS, at a minimum you need to be using team build, and possibly other stuff as well, such as the sharepoint integration. If that's all you need, then svn with Tortoise would be my first choice. If you want to add build automation later, you can do this with cruisecontrol (is it still called that?), JetBrains, etc. For a long time I thought that Redgate's claims about "bridging the SSMS-VS divide" were a load of hot air, since in my experience anyone who knew what they were doing was using Visual Studio, in particular SSDT and its predecessors. However, on a recent client I was putting in source control for the first time, and I discovered that the "divide" really does exist. That client has ended up using svn with Redgate SQL Source Control, with no build automation, but with scope to add it in the future. Gavin Campbell I think putting the DB under source control is a great idea.  I have issues with the earlier versions of SQL Source Control in that it provides little help in versioning the DB. I think the latest version merges SQL Compare and SQL Source Control together.  Which is how it should have been all along. Sure I have the DB scripts in SVN, but I can't automate DB builds and changes without more tools.  Frankly I'm surprised databases don't have some sort of versioning built into them. Nick Portelli Source control has been immensely useful and saved me from a lot of rework on more than one occasion.  I have learned that you have to be extremely careful checking in data.  Our system is internal only so during the system production run once a week, if there is a problem that I can fix easily(for example, a control table points to a file in the wrong environment), I'll do it directly in production so the run can continue as soon as possible since we have a specified time window.  We do full test runs to minimize this but it has come up once or twice.  We use Red-Gate source control to "push" from the test environment to the production environment.  There have been a couple of occasions where the test environment with the wrong setting was pushed back over the production environment because the change was made only in production.  Gotta keep an eye on that. Alan Dykes Goodness is it manual.  And can be extremely painful at times.  Not only are we running thin, we are constrained on the tools we can get ($$ must mean free).  Certainly no excuse, and a great opportunity to improve my skills by learning new things.  But...  Getting buy in a on a proven process or methodology is hard, takes time, and diverts us from development.  If SQL Source Control is easy to use and proven oh boy could you get some serious fans around here!  Seriously though, as the "accidental dba" of this shop any new ideas / easy to implement tools can make a world of difference in productivity and most importantly accuracy.  Manual = bad. :) John Hennesey (who left his email address) The one thing I would love to know more about is the unique challenges of working with databases as source code - you can store scripts, but are they written as deployment scripts with all the logic about how to apply them to an existing DB? Where is that baseline DB? Where's the data? How does a team share the data and the code? It's a real challenge. Merrill Aldrich Congratulations to the five of you. Red Gate will be in touch with you soon about your free licenses. Thank you to all those that responded. And again, go and check out all the responses – those above are only small proportion from what is a very interesting comment thread. @Jamiet

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• Sea Monkey Sales & Marketing, and what does that have to do with ERP?

  - by user709270

  Tier One Defined By Lyle Ekdahl, Oracle JD Edwards Group Vice President and General Manager  I recently became aware of the latest Sea Monkey Sales & Marketing tactic. Wait now, what is Sea Monkey Sales & Marketing and what does that have to do with ERP? Well if you grew up in USA during the 50’s, 60’s and maybe a bit in the early 70’s there was a unifying media of culture known as the comic book. I was a big Iron Man fan. I always liked the troubled hero aspect of Tony Start and hey he was a technologist. This is going somewhere, just hold on. Of course comic books like most media contained advertisements. Ninety pound weakling transformed by Charles Atlas in just 15 minutes per day. Baby Ruth, Juicy Fruit Gum and all assortments of Hostess goodies were on display. The best ad was for the “Amazing Live Sea-Monkeys – The real live fun-pets you grow yourself!” These ads set the standard for exaggeration and half-truth; “…they love attention…so eager to please, they can even be trained…” The cartoon picture on the ad is of a family of royal looking sea creatures – daddy, mommy, son and little sis – sea monkey? There was a disclaimer at the bottom in fine print, “Caricatures shown not intended to depict Artemia.” Ok what ten years old knows what the heck artemia is? Well you grow up fast once you’ve been separated from your buck twenty five plus postage just to discover that it is brine shrimp. Really dumb brine shrimp that don’t take commands or do tricks. Unfortunately the technology industry is full of sea monkey sales and marketing. Yes believe it or not in some cases there is subterfuge and obfuscation used to secure contracts. Hey I get it; the picture on the box might not be the actual size. Make up what you want about your product, but here is what I don’t like, could you leave out the obvious falsity when it comes to my product, especially the negative stuff. So here is the latest one – “Oracle’s JD Edwards is NOT tier one”. Really? Definition please! Well a whole host of googleable and reputable sources confirm that a tier one vendor is large, well known, and enjoys national and international recognition. Let me see large, so thousands of customers? Oh and part of the world’s largest business software and hardware corporation? Check and check JD Edwards has that and that. Well known, enjoying national and international recognition? Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne is available in 21 languages and is directly localized in 33 countries that support some of the world’s largest multinationals and many midsized domestic market companies. Something on the order of half the JD Edwards customer base is outside North America. My passport is on its third insert after 2 years and not from vacations. So if you don’t mind I am going to mark national and international recognition in the got it column. So what else is there? Well let me offer a few criteria. Longevity – The JD Edwards products benefit from 35+ years of intellectual property development; through booms, busts, mergers and acquisitions, we are still here Vision & innovation – JD Edwards is the first full suite ERP to run on the iPad as just one example Proven track record of execution – Since becoming part of Oracle, JD Edwards has released to the market over 20 deliverables including major release, point releases, new apps modules, tool releases, integrations…. Solid, focused functionality with a flexible, interoperable, extensible underlying architecture – JD Edwards offers solid core ERP with specialty modules for verticals all delivered on a well defined independent tools layer that helps enable you to scale your business without an ERP reimplementation A continuation plan – Oracle’s JD Edwards offers our customers a 6 year roadmap as well as interoperability with Oracle’s next generation of applications Oh I almost forgot that the expert sources agree on one additional thing, tier one may be a preferred vendor that offers product and services to you with appealing value. You should check out the TCO studies of JD Edwards. I think you will see what the thousands of customers that rely on these products to run their businesses enjoy – that is the tier one solution with the lowest TCO. Oh and if you get an offer to buy an ERP for no license charge, remember the picture on the box might not be the actual size. 

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• Superpower Your Touchpad Computer with Scrybe

  - by Matthew Guay

  Are you looking for a way to help your Touchpad computer make you more productive?  Here’s a quick look at Scrybe, a new application from Synaptics that lets you superpower it. Touchpad devices have become increasingly more interesting as they’ve included support for multi-touch gestures.  Scrybe takes it to the next level and lets you use your touchpad as an application launcher.  You can launch any application, website, or complete many common commands on your computer with a simple gesture.  Scrybe works with most modern Synaptics touchpads, which are standard on most laptops and netbooks.  It is optimized for newer multi-touch touchpads, but can also work with standard single-touch touchpads.  It works on Windows 7, Vista, and XP, so chances are it will work with your laptop or netbook. Get Started With Scrybe Head over to the Scrybe website and download the latest version (link below).  You are asked to enter your email address, name, and information about your computer…but you actually only have to enter your email address.  Click Download when finished. Run the installer when it’s download.  It will automatically download the latest Synaptics driver for your touchpad and any other components needed for Scrybe.  Note that the Scrybe installer will ask to install the Yahoo! toolbar, so uncheck this to avoid adding this worthless browser toolbar. Using Scrybe To open an application or website with a gesture, press 3 fingers on your touchpad at once, or if your touchpad doesn’t support multi-touch gestures, then press Ctrl+Alt and press 1 finger on your touchpad.  This will open the Scrype input pane; start drawing a gesture, and you’ll see it on the grey square.  The input pane shows some default gestures you can try. Here we drew an “M”, which opens our default Music player.  As soon as you finish the gesture and lift up your finger, Scrybe will open the application or website you selected. A notification balloon will let you know what gesture was preformed. When you’re entering your gesture, the input pane will show white “ink”.  The “ink” will turn blue if the command is recognized, but will turn red if it isn’t.  If Scrybe doesn’t recognize your command, press 3 fingers and try again. Scrybe Control Panel You can open the Scrybe Control panel to enter or change commands by entering a box-like gesture, or right-clicking the Scrybe icon in your system tray and selecting “Scrybe Control Panel”. Scrybe has many pre-configured gestures that you can preview and even practice. All of the gestures in the Popular tab are preset and cannot be changed.  However, the ones in the favorites tab can be edited.  Select the gesture you wish to edit, and click the gear icon to change it.  Here we changed the email gesture to open Hotmail instead of the default Yahoo Mail. Scrybe can also help you perform many common Windows commands such as Copy and Undo.  Select the Tools tab to see all of these commands.   Scrybe has many settings you may wish to change.  Select the Preferences button in the Control Panel to change these.  Here’s some of the settings we changed. Uncheck “Display a message” to turn off the tooltip notifications when you enter a gesture Uncheck “Show symbol hints” to turn off the sidebar on the input pane Select the search engine you want to open with the Search Gesture.  The default is Yahoo, but you can choose your favorite. Adding a new Scrybe Gesture The default Scrybe options are useful, but the best part is that you can assign gestures to your own programs or websites.  Open the Scrybe control panel, and click the plus sign on the bottom left corner.  Enter a name for your gesture, and then choose if it is for a website or an application. If you want the gesture to open a website, enter the address in the box. Alternately, if you want your gesture to open an application, select Launch Application and then either enter the path to the application, or click the button beside the Launch field and browse to it. Now click the down arrow on the blue box and choose one of the gestures for your application or website. Your new gesture will show up under the Favorites tab in the Scrybe control panel, and you can use it whenever you want from Scrybe, or practice the gesture by selecting the Practice button. Conclusion If you enjoy multi-touch gestures, you may find Scrybe very useful on your laptop or netbook.  Scrybe recognizes gestures fairly easily, even if you don’t enter them perfectly correctly.  Just like pinch-to-zoom and two-finger scroll, Scrybe can quickly become something you miss on other laptops. Download Scrybe (registration required) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Fixing Firefox Scrolling Problems with Dell Synaptics TouchpadRemove Synaptics Touchpad Icon from System TrayRoll Back Troublesome Device Drivers in Windows VistaChange Your Computer Name in Windows 7 or VistaLet Somebody Use Your Computer Without Logging Off in Ubuntu TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Fun with 47 charts and graphs Tomorrow is Mother’s Day Check the Average Speed of YouTube Videos You’ve Watched OutlookStatView Scans and Displays General Usage Statistics How to Add Exceptions to the Windows Firewall Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott

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• 7 reasons you had to be at JavaOne Latin America 2012

  - by Bruno.Borges

  Yesterday was 12/12/12, and everybody went crazy on Twitter with cool memes like this one. And maybe you are now wondering why I mentioned 7 (seven) on the blog title. Because I want to play numbers? Yes! Today is 7 days after JavaOne Latin America 2012 is over (... and I had to figure out an excuse for taking so long to blog about it...). So unless you were at JavaOne Latin America this year, here are 7 things you missed: OTN Lounge mini-theatreThere was a mini-theatre holding several lightning talks. We had people from SouJava JUG, GoJava JUG, Globalcode, and several other Java gurus and companies running demos, talks, and even more. For example, @drspockbr talked about the ScrumToys project, that demonstrates the power of JSF. Hands On Lab for JAX-RS and WebSocketsOne of the cool things to do during JavaOne is to come to these Hands On labs and really do something using new technologies with the help of experts. This one in particular, was covered by me, Arun Gupta, and Reza Rahman. The HOL had more people than laptops (and we had 48 laptops!) interested on understanding and learning about the new stuff that is coming within Java EE 7. Things like JAX-RS, Server-sent Events and WebSockets. Hey, if you want to try this HOL by yourself, it is available on Github, so go for it! If you have questions, just let me know! Java Community KeynoteThis keynote presented a lot of cool things like startups using Java in their projects, the Duke Awards, SouJava winning the JCP Outstanding Award, the Java Band, and even more! It was really a space where the Java community could present what they are doing and what they want to do. There's a lot of interest on the Adopt-a-JSR program and the Adopt-OpenJDK. There's also an Adopt-a-JavaEE-JSR program! Take a look if you want to participate and Make the Future Java. Java EE (JMS, JAX-RS) sessions from Reza Rahman, the HeavyMetal guyReza is a well know professional and Java EE enthusiast from the communitty who just joined Oracle this year. His sessions were very well attended, perhaps because of a high interest on the new things coming to Java EE 7 like JMS 2.0 and JAX-RS 2.0. If you want to look at what he did at this JavaOne edition, read his blog post. By the way, if you like Java and heavymetal, you should follow him on Twitter as well! :-) Java EE (WebSockets, HTML5) sessions from Arun Gupta, the GlassFish guyIf you don't know Arun Gupta, no worries. You will have time to know about him while you read his Java EE 6 Pocket Guide. Arun has been evangelizing Java EE for a long time, and is now spreading his word about the new upcoming version Java EE 7. He gave one talk about HTML5 Productivity on the Java EE 7 platform, and another one on building web apps with WebSockets. Pretty neat! Arun blogged about JavaOne Latin America as well. Read it here. Java Embedded and JavaFXIf there are two things that are really trending in the Java World right now besides Java EE 7, certainly they are JavaFX and Java Embedded. There were 14 talks covering Java Embedded, from Java Cards to Raspberry.pi, from Java ME to Java on your TV with Ginga-J. The Internet of Things is becoming true, and Java is the only platform today that can connect it all in an standardized and concise way. JavaFX gained a lot of attention too. There were 8 sessions covering what the platform has to offer in terms of Rich User Experience. The JavaFX Scene Builder is an awesome tool to start playing designing an UI, and coding for JavaFX is like coding Swing with 8 hands, one holding your coffee cup. You can achieve a lot, with your two hands (unless, you really have 8 hands, then you can achieve 4 times more :-). If you want to read more about JavaFX, go to Stephen Chin's blog post. GlassFish and Friends Party, 1st edition at JavaOne Lating AmericaThis is probably the thing that I'm most proud. We brought to Brasil the tradition of holding a happy hour for all GlassFish, Java EE friends. This party started almost 7 years ago in San Francisco, and it was about time to bring it to Brazil! The party happened on Tuesday night, right after JavaOne General Keynote, at the Tribeca Pub. We had about 80 attendees and met a lot of Java EE developers there! People from JUGs, Oracle, Locaweb and Red Hat showed up too, including some execs from Oracle that didn't resist and could not miss a party like this one.Lots of caipirinhas, beer and food to everyone, some cool music... even The Fish walking around the party with Juggy!You can see more photos from the party on an album I shared with the recently created GlassFish Brasil community on Google+ here (but you may be more interested in joining the GlassFish english community). There's also more pictures that Arun took and shared on this link. So now you may want to consider coming to Brazil next year! Java EE 7 is on its way, and Brazil is happily and patiently waiting for it, with a lot of enthusiasm. By the way, GlassFish and Java EE 6 just celebrated a Happy Birthday!

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• .NET Security Part 3

  - by Simon Cooper

  You write a security-related application that allows addins to be used. These addins (as dlls) can be downloaded from anywhere, and, if allowed to run full-trust, could open a security hole in your application. So you want to restrict what the addin dlls can do, using a sandboxed appdomain, as explained in my previous posts. But there needs to be an interaction between the code running in the sandbox and the code that created the sandbox, so the sandboxed code can control or react to things that happen in the controlling application. Sandboxed code needs to be able to call code outside the sandbox. Now, there are various methods of allowing cross-appdomain calls, the two main ones being .NET Remoting with MarshalByRefObject, and WCF named pipes. I’m not going to cover the details of setting up such mechanisms here, or which you should choose for your specific situation; there are plenty of blogs and tutorials covering such issues elsewhere. What I’m going to concentrate on here is the more general problem of running fully-trusted code within a sandbox, which is required in most methods of app-domain communication and control. Defining assemblies as fully-trusted In my last post, I mentioned that when you create a sandboxed appdomain, you can pass in a list of assembly strongnames that run as full-trust within the appdomain: // get the Assembly object for the assembly Assembly assemblyWithApi = ... // get the StrongName from the assembly's collection of evidence StrongName apiStrongName = assemblyWithApi.Evidence.GetHostEvidence<StrongName>(); // create the sandbox AppDomain sandbox = AppDomain.CreateDomain( "Sandbox", null, appDomainSetup, restrictedPerms, apiStrongName); Any assembly that is loaded into the sandbox with a strong name the same as one in the list of full-trust strong names is unconditionally given full-trust permissions within the sandbox, irregardless of permissions and sandbox setup. This is very powerful! You should only use this for assemblies that you trust as much as the code creating the sandbox. So now you have a class that you want the sandboxed code to call: // within assemblyWithApi public class MyApi { public static void MethodToDoThings() { ... } } // within the sandboxed dll public class UntrustedSandboxedClass { public void DodgyMethod() { ... MyApi.MethodToDoThings(); ... } } However, if you try to do this, you get quite an ugly exception: MethodAccessException: Attempt by security transparent method ‘UntrustedSandboxedClass.DodgyMethod()’ to access security critical method ‘MyApi.MethodToDoThings()’ failed. Security transparency, which I covered in my first post in the series, has entered the picture. Partially-trusted code runs at the Transparent security level, fully-trusted code runs at the Critical security level, and Transparent code cannot under any circumstances call Critical code. Security transparency and AllowPartiallyTrustedCallersAttribute So the solution is easy, right? Make MethodToDoThings SafeCritical, then the transparent code running in the sandbox can call the api: [SecuritySafeCritical] public static void MethodToDoThings() { ... } However, this doesn’t solve the problem. When you try again, exactly the same exception is thrown; MethodToDoThings is still running as Critical code. What’s going on? By default, a fully-trusted assembly always runs Critical code, irregardless of any security attributes on its types and methods. This is because it may not have been designed in a secure way when called from transparent code – as we’ll see in the next post, it is easy to open a security hole despite all the security protections .NET 4 offers. When exposing an assembly to be called from partially-trusted code, the entire assembly needs a security audit to decide what should be transparent, safe critical, or critical, and close any potential security holes. This is where AllowPartiallyTrustedCallersAttribute (APTCA) comes in. Without this attribute, fully-trusted assemblies run Critical code, and partially-trusted assemblies run Transparent code. When this attribute is applied to an assembly, it confirms that the assembly has had a full security audit, and it is safe to be called from untrusted code. All code in that assembly runs as Transparent, but SecurityCriticalAttribute and SecuritySafeCriticalAttribute can be applied to individual types and methods to make those run at the Critical or SafeCritical levels, with all the restrictions that entails. So, to allow the sandboxed assembly to call the full-trust API assembly, simply add APCTA to the API assembly: [assembly: AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers] and everything works as you expect. The sandboxed dll can call your API dll, and from there communicate with the rest of the application. Conclusion That’s the basics of running a full-trust assembly in a sandboxed appdomain, and allowing a sandboxed assembly to access it. The key is AllowPartiallyTrustedCallersAttribute, which is what lets partially-trusted code call a fully-trusted assembly. However, an assembly with APTCA applied to it means that you have run a full security audit of every type and member in the assembly. If you don’t, then you could inadvertently open a security hole. I’ll be looking at ways this can happen in my next post.

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• How to Audit and Monitor BI Publisher Reports Access?

  - by kanichiro.nishida

  Do you know who is accessing to which report at what time at your reporting environment ? As you delivered the BI Publisher reports to the production environment and your users start using them as part of their daily business operations you might wonder such questions. With compliance becoming an integral part of any business requirement, auditing your reporting environment is also becoming one of the most critical and hot agenda in today’s enterprise reporting deployments. Also, I believe that auditing the reporting environment is not just for the compliance, but also the way to understand how your users are using the reports and be able to improve the user reporting experience. BI Publisher have introduced Enterprise Level Auditing feature with its 11G release, with an integration of Oracle Fusion Middleware Audit Framework, which comes out of the box with the installation. Yes, this is another great example of the benefit of its tight integration with Fusion Middleware introduced with BI Publisher 11g release. What Information Can I Know about our Reporting Environment? With this new Auditing feature you can now gain the following insights. When a particular user login or logout What report is accessed by who and when and how How long does it take to process a particular report Yes, it’s all there. This is a great news for 10G users, right ? I used to be one of them working with many different IT organizations and were craving for this, but it’s here now with 11G! How Can I Access to the Auditing Information? With the Fusion Middleware Auditing Framework, BI Publisher feed such information either to a log file or to a database. If you decided to get the data into the database then, of course you know, you can use BI Publisher to report and publish, or visualize the data to gain more insights. One thing though, in order to feed the data it requires a few extra steps, which I’ll cover it later.  Regardless of whether it’s the log file or the database to store the Auditing data, first, you need to enable the Auditing feature, which is not enabled as default. So, let’s take a look at how to enable it. How to Enable Auditing Feature? Here is a quick list of the steps: Enable Auditing related properties in BI Publisher configuration file Copy component_events.xml file to Fusion Middleware Audit Framework’s location Enable Auditing Policy with Fusion Middleware Control (Enterprise Manager) Restart WebLogic Server Enable Auditing related properties in BI Publisher configuration file Open xmlp-server-config.xml file, which is located under $BI_HOME/ user_projects/domains/bifoundation_domain/config/bipublisher/repository/Admin/Configuration directory. Set the following three properties values to ‘true’. AUDIT_ENABLED MONITORING_ENABLED AUDIT_JPS_INTEGRATION The ‘AUDIT_JPS_INTEGRATION’ is not in the file as default, so you need to add this. Here is an example of how it looks for the xmlp-server-config.xml file after the modification. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?><xmlpConfigxmlns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/oxp/xmlp"> <property name="SAW_SERVER" value="adc6160510"/> <property name="SAW_SESSION_TIMEOUT" value="90"/> <property name="DEBUG_LEVEL" value="exception"/> <property name="SAW_PORT" value="7001"/> <property name="SAW_PASSWORD" value=""/> <property name="SAW_PROTOCOL" value="http"/> <property name="SAW_VERSION" value="v6"/> <property name="SAW_USERNAME" value=""/> <property name="SAW_URL_SUFFIX" value="analytics/saw.dll"/> <property name="MONITORING_ENABLED" value="true"/> <property name="MONITORING_DEFAULT_HISTORY_SIZE" value="30"/> <property name="AUDIT_ENABLED" value="true"/> <property name="JSESSION_RESET_DISABLED" value="true"/> <property name="SECURITY_MODEL" value="ORACLE_AS_JPS"/> <property name="AUDIT_JPS_INTEGRATION" value="true"/> </xmlpConfig>   Copy component_events.xml file to Audit Framework’s location There is a Audit related configuration file provided by BI Publisher that needs to be copied to the Audit Framework location. 1. Go to the following directory. $BI_HOME /oracle_common/modules/oracle.iau_11.1.1/components 2. Create a directory called ‘xmlpserver’ 3. Copy component_events.xml file from /user_projects/domains/bifoundation_domain/config/bipublisher/repository/Admin/Audit To the newly created ‘xmlpserver’ directory. Enable Auditing Policy with Fusion Middleware Control (EM) Now you can set a level of the auditing for each BI Publisher’s auditing type by using Fusion Middleware Control (a.k.a. Enterprise Manager). 1. Login to Fusion Middleware Control UI http://hostname:port/em (e.g. reporting.oracle.com:7001/em) 2. Access to Audit Policy configuration UI from the menu Under WebLogic Domain, right-click bifoundation_domain, select Security and then click Audit Policy.   3. Set Audit Level for BI Publisher. While you can select ‘Custom’ to set a customized level of Auditing for each component, I’m selecting ‘Medium’ for this exercise.   Restart WebLogic Server After all the above settings, now you need to restart the WebLogic Server instance in order to take those changes in effect. If you’re on Windows you can simply do this by selecting ‘Stop BI Servers’ and ‘Start BI Servers’ from the Start menu. If you’re on Linux then you can run ‘stopWebLogic.sh’ and ‘startWebLogic.sh’, which can be found under $BI_HOME/user_projects/domains/bifoundation_domain/bin Start Auditing! Now assuming that you have completed the above steps successfully, then from this point on any reporting activity should be audited and stored in the auditing log file, which can be found at $BI_HOME/user_projects/domains/bifoundation_domain/servers/AdminServer/logs/auditlogs/xmlpserver/audit.log And here is a sample of the log file: 2011-02-18 02:25:49.928 "" "ReportRendering" true - "82d4bdc47b99b33c:-7e3f334f:12e365c4d9c:-8000-0000000000000022,0" - - - - "bipublisher(11.1.1)" "ReportExecution" "200" "" "/Sample Lite/Published Reporting/Reports/Balance Letter.xdo" "pdf" "RTF Corp Styles" "en_US" - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 86608512 486989824 24517 169 - - - 2011-02-18 02:25:49.929 "steve.jobs" "ReportRequest" true - "82d4bdc47b99b33c:-7e3f334f:12e365c4d9c:-8000-0000000000000022,0" - - - - "bipublisher(11.1.1)" "ReportAccess" "200" "" "" "pdf" "RTF Corp Styles" - - - true - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 2011-02-18 03:25:49.554 "" "ReportDataProcess" true - "82d4bdc47b99b33c:-7e3f334f:12e365c4d9c:-8000-0000000000000022,0" - - - - "bipublisher(11.1.1)" "ReportExecution" "260" "" "/Sample Lite/Published Reporting/Reports/Balance Letter.xdo" - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 34980200 554033152 - 134 - - - 2011-02-18 03:25:50.282 "" "ReportRendering" true - "82d4bdc47b99b33c:-7e3f334f:12e365c4d9c:-8000-0000000000000022,0" - - - - "bipublisher(11.1.1)" "ReportExecution" "263" "" "/Sample Lite/Published Reporting/Reports/Balance Letter.xdo" "pdf" "RTF Corp Styles" "en_US" - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 16158944 554033152 24517 503 - - - 2011-02-18 03:25:50.282 "steve.jobs" "ReportRequest" true - "82d4bdc47b99b33c:-7e3f334f:12e365c4d9c:-8000-0000000000000022,0" - - - - "bipublisher(11.1.1)" "ReportAccess" "263" "" "" "pdf" "RTF Corp Styles" - - - true - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 2011-02-18 03:30:00.448 "barack.obama" "UserLogin" true - "82d4bdc47b99b33c:-7e3f334f:12e365c4d9c:-8000-0000000000000406,0" - - - - "bipublisher(11.1.1)" "UserSession" "26" "" - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - From the above log file you can tell a user ‘steve.jobs’ was running some reports like ‘Balance Letter’ around afternoon on 2/18 and another user ‘barack.obama’ logged into the system at 3:30 on the same day. Yes, every login and log out will be recorded, and every report access will be recorded in this log file. Now, looking at this text file to understand what’s going on is pretty overwhelming. And accessing to this log file, which is located at the server’s file system where the BI Publisher/WebLogic Server are running, is another challenge in typical deployment scenarios. And that’s where the database storage option for the Auditing data  comes into a picture. I’ll talk about this tomorrow, so stay tuned!  

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• How to Secure a Data Role by Multiple Business Units

  - by Elie Wazen

  In this post we will see how a Role can be data secured by multiple Business Units (BUs).  Separate Data Roles are generally created for each BU if a corresponding data template generates roles on the basis of the BU dimension. The advantage of creating a policy with a rule that includes multiple BUs is that while mapping these roles in HCM Role Provisioning Rules, fewer number of entires need to be made. This could facilitate maintenance for enterprises with a large number of Business Units. Note: The example below applies as well if the securing entity is Inventory Organization. Let us take for example the case of a user provisioned with the "Accounts Payable Manager - Vision Operations" Data Role in Fusion Applications. This user will be able to access Invoices in Vision Operations but will not be able to see Invoices in Vision Germany. Figure 1. A User with a Data Role restricting them to Data from BU: Vision Operations With the role granted above, this is what the user will see when they attempt to select Business Units while searching for AP Invoices. Figure 2.The List Of Values of Business Units is limited to single one. This is the effect of the Data Role granted to that user as can be seen in Figure 1 In order to create a data role that secures by multiple BUs,  we need to start by creating a condition that groups those Business Units we want to include in that data role. This is accomplished by creating a new condition against the BU View .  That Condition will later be used to create a data policy for our newly created Role.  The BU View is a Database resource and  is accessed from APM as seen in the search below Figure 3.Viewing a Database Resource in APM The next step is create a new condition,  in which we define a sql predicate that includes 2 BUs ( The ids below refer to Vision Operations and Vision Germany).  At this point we have simply created a standalone condition.  We have not used this condition yet, and security is therefore not affected. Figure 4. Custom Role that inherits the Purchase Order Overview Duty We are now ready to create our Data Policy.  in APM, we search for our newly Created Role and Navigate to “Find Global Policies”.  we query the Role we want to secure and navigate to view its global policies. Figure 5. The Job Role we plan on securing We can see that the role was not defined with a Data Policy . So will create one that uses the condition we created earlier.   Figure 6. Creating a New Data Policy In the General Information tab, we have to specify the DB Resource that the Security Policy applies to:  In our case this is the BU View Figure 7. Data Policy Definition - Selection of the DB Resource we will secure by In the Rules Tab, we  make the rule applicable to multiple values of the DB Resource we selected in the previous tab.  This is where we associate the condition we created against the BU view to this data policy by entering the Condition name in the Condition field Figure 8. Data Policy Rule The last step of Defining the Data Policy, consists of  explicitly selecting  the Actions that are goverened by this Data Policy.  In this case for example we select the Actions displayed below in the right pane. Once the record is saved , we are ready to use our newly secured Data Role. Figure 9. Data Policy Actions We can now see a new Data Policy associated with our Role.  Figure 10. Role is now secured by a Data Policy We now Assign that new Role to the User.  Of course this does not have to be done in OIM and can be done using a Provisioning Rule in HCM. Figure 11. Role assigned to the User who previously was granted the Vision Ops secured role. Once that user accesses the Invoices Workarea this is what they see: In the image below the LOV of Business Unit returns the two values defined in our data policy namely: Vision Operations and Vision Germany Figure 12. The List Of Values of Business Units now includes the two we included in our data policy. This is the effect of the data role granted to that user as can be seen in Figure 11

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• How to write a generic service in WCF

  - by rezaxp

  In one of my recent projects I needed a generic service as a facade to handle General activities such as CRUD.Therefor I searched as Many as I could but there was no Idea on generic services so I tried to figure it out by my self.Finally,I found a way :Create a generic contract as below :[ServiceContract] public interface IEntityReadService<TEntity>         where TEntity : EntityBase, new()     {         [OperationContract(Name = "Get")]         TEntity Get(Int64 Id);         [OperationContract(Name = "GetAll")]         List<TEntity> GetAll();         [OperationContract(Name = "GetAllPaged")]         List<TEntity> GetAll(int pageSize, int currentPageIndex, ref int totalRecords);         List<TEntity> GetAll(string whereClause, string orderBy, int pageSize, int currentPageIndex, ref int totalRecords);            }then create your service class :  public class GenericService<TEntity> :IEntityReadService<TEntity> where TEntity : EntityBase, new() {#region Implementation of IEntityReadService<TEntity>         public TEntity Get(long Id)         {             return BusinessController.Get(Id);         }         public List<TEntity> GetAll()         {             try             {                 return BusinessController.GetAll().ToList();             }             catch (Exception ex)             {                                  throw;             }                      }         public List<TEntity> GetAll(int pageSize, int currentPageIndex, ref int totalRecords)         {             return                 BusinessController.GetAll(pageSize, currentPageIndex, ref totalRecords).ToList();         }         public List<TEntity> GetAll(string whereClause, string orderBy, int pageSize, int currentPageIndex, ref int totalRecords)         {             return                 BusinessController.GetAll(pageSize, currentPageIndex, ref totalRecords, whereClause, orderBy).ToList();         }         #endregion} Then, set your EndPoint configuration in this way :<endpoint address="myAddress" binding="basicHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="myBindingConfiguration1" contract="Contracts.IEntityReadService`1[[Entities.mySampleEntity, Entities]], Service.Contracts" />

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• Top 5 Developer Enabling Nuggets in MySQL 5.6

  - by Rob Young

  MySQL 5.6 is truly a better MySQL and reflects Oracle's commitment to the evolution of the most popular and widelyused open source database on the planet.  The feature-complete 5.6 release candidate was announced at MySQL Connect in late September and the production-ready, generally available ("GA") product should be available in early 2013.  While the message around 5.6 has been focused mainly on mass appeal, advanced topics like performance/scale, high availability, and self-healing replication clusters, MySQL 5.6 also provides many developer-friendly nuggets that are designed to enable those who are building the next generation of web-based and embedded applications and services. Boiling down the 5.6 feature set into a smaller set, of simple, easy to use goodies designed with developer agility in mind, these things deserve a quick look:Subquery Optimizations Using semi-JOINs and late materialization, the MySQL 5.6 Optimizer delivers greatly improved subquery performance. Specifically, the optimizer is now more efficient in handling subqueries in the FROM clause; materialization of subqueries in the FROM clause is now postponed until their contents are needed during execution. Additionally, the optimizer may add an index to derived tables during execution to speed up row retrieval. Internal tests run using the DBT-3 benchmark Query #13, shown below, demonstrate an order of magnitude improvement in execution times (from days to seconds) over previous versions. select c_name, c_custkey, o_orderkey, o_orderdate, o_totalprice, sum(l_quantity)from customer, orders, lineitemwhere o_orderkey in (                select l_orderkey                from lineitem                group by l_orderkey                having sum(l_quantity) > 313  )  and c_custkey = o_custkey  and o_orderkey = l_orderkeygroup by c_name, c_custkey, o_orderkey, o_orderdate, o_totalpriceorder by o_totalprice desc, o_orderdateLIMIT 100;What does this mean for developers?  For starters, simplified subqueries can now be coded instead of complex joins for cross table lookups: SELECT title FROM film WHERE film_id IN (SELECT film_id FROM film_actor GROUP BY film_id HAVING count(*) > 12); And even more importantly subqueries embedded in packaged applications no longer need to be re-written into joins.  This is good news for both ISVs and their customers who have access to the underlying queries and who have spent development cycles writing, testing and maintaining their own versions of re-written queries across updated versions of a packaged app.The details are in the MySQL 5.6 docs. Online DDL OperationsToday's web-based applications are designed to rapidly evolve and adapt to meet business and revenue-generationrequirements. As a result, development SLAs are now most often measured in minutes vs days or weeks. For example, when an application must quickly support new product lines or new products within existing product lines, the backend database schema must adapt in kind, and most commonly while the application remains available for normal business operations.  MySQL 5.6 supports this level of online schema flexibility and agility by providing the following new ALTER TABLE online DDL syntax additions:  CREATE INDEX DROP INDEX Change AUTO_INCREMENT value for a column ADD/DROP FOREIGN KEY Rename COLUMN Change ROW FORMAT, KEY_BLOCK_SIZE for a table Change COLUMN NULL, NOT_NULL Add, drop, reorder COLUMN Again, the details are in the MySQL 5.6 docs. Key-value access to InnoDB via Memcached APIMany of the next generation of web, cloud, social and mobile applications require fast operations against simple Key/Value pairs. At the same time, they must retain the ability to run complex queries against the same data, as well as ensure the data is protected with ACID guarantees. With the new NoSQL API for InnoDB, developers have allthe benefits of a transactional RDBMS, coupled with the performance capabilities of Key/Value store.MySQL 5.6 provides simple, key-value interaction with InnoDB data via the familiar Memcached API.  Implemented via a new Memcached daemon plug-in to mysqld, the new Memcached protocol is mapped directly to the native InnoDB API and enables developers to use existing Memcached clients to bypass the expense of query parsing and go directly to InnoDB data for lookups and transactional compliant updates.  The API makes it possible to re-use standard Memcached libraries and clients, while extending Memcached functionality by integrating a persistent, crash-safe, transactional database back-end.  The implementation is shown here:So does this option provide a performance benefit over SQL?  Internal performance benchmarks using a customized Java application and test harness show some very promising results with a 9X improvement in overall throughput for SET/INSERT operations:You can follow the InnoDB team blog for the methodology, implementation and internal test cases that generated these results here. How to get started with Memcached API to InnoDB is here. New Instrumentation in Performance SchemaThe MySQL Performance Schema was introduced in MySQL 5.5 and is designed to provide point in time metrics for key performance indicators.  MySQL 5.6 improves the Performance Schema in answer to the most common DBA and Developer problems.  New instrumentations include: Statements/Stages What are my most resource intensive queries? Where do they spend time? Table/Index I/O, Table Locks Which application tables/indexes cause the most load or contention? Users/Hosts/Accounts Which application users, hosts, accounts are consuming the most resources? Network I/O What is the network load like? How long do sessions idle? Summaries Aggregated statistics grouped by statement, thread, user, host, account or object. The MySQL 5.6 Performance Schema is now enabled by default in the my.cnf file with optimized and auto-tune settings that minimize overhead (< 5%, but mileage will vary), so using the Performance Schema ona production server to monitor the most common application use cases is less of an issue.  In addition, new atomic levels of instrumentation enable the capture of granular levels of resource consumption by users, hosts, accounts, applications, etc. for billing and chargeback purposes in cloud computing environments.The MySQL docs are an excellent resource for all that is available and that can be done with the 5.6 Performance Schema. Better Condition Handling - GET DIAGNOSTICSMySQL 5.6 enables developers to easily check for error conditions and code for exceptions by introducing the new MySQL Diagnostics Area and corresponding GET DIAGNOSTICS interface command. The Diagnostic Area can be populated via multiple options and provides 2 kinds of information:Statement - which provides affected row count and number of conditions that occurredCondition - which provides error codes and messages for all conditions that were returned by a previous operation The addressable items for each are: The new GET DIAGNOSTICS command provides a standard interface into the Diagnostics Area and can be used via the CLI or from within application code to easily retrieve and handle the results of the most recent statement execution.  An example of how it is used might be:mysql> DROP TABLE test.no_such_table; ERROR 1051 (42S02): Unknown table 'test.no_such_table' mysql> GET DIAGNOSTICS CONDITION 1 -> @p1 = RETURNED_SQLSTATE, @p2 = MESSAGE_TEXT; mysql> SELECT @p1, @p2; +-------+------------------------------------+| @p1   | @p2                                | +-------+------------------------------------+| 42S02 | Unknown table 'test.no_such_table' | +-------+------------------------------------+ Options for leveraging the MySQL Diagnotics Area and GET DIAGNOSTICS are detailed in the MySQL Docs.While the above is a summary of some of the key developer enabling 5.6 features, it is by no means exhaustive. You can dig deeper into what MySQL 5.6 has to offer by reading this developer zone article or checking out "What's New in MySQL 5.6" in the MySQL docs.BONUS ALERT!  If you are developing on Windows or are considering MySQL as an alternative to SQL Server for your next project, application or shipping product, you should check out the MySQL Installer for Windows.  The installer includes the MySQL 5.6 RC database, all drivers, Visual Studio and Excel plugins, tray monitor and development tools all a single download and GUI installer.   So what are your next steps? Register for Dec. 13 "MySQL 5.6: Building the Next Generation of Web-Based Applications and Services" live web event.  Hurry!  Seats are limited. Download the MySQL 5.6 Release Candidate (look under the Development Releases tab) Provide Feedback <link to http://bugs.mysql.com/> Join the Developer discussion on the MySQL Forums Explore all MySQL Products and Developer Tools As always, thanks for your continued support of MySQL!

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• Data Integration 12c Raising the Big Data Roof at Oracle OpenWorld

  - by Tanu Sood

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS Mincho";} Author: Dain Hansen, Director, Oracle It was an exciting OpenWorld 2013 for us in the Data Integration track. Our theme this year was all about ‘being future ready’ - previewing one of our biggest releases this year: Oracle Data Integration 12c. Just this week we followed up with this preview by announcing the general availability of 12c release for Oracle’s key data integration products: Oracle Data Integrator 12c and Oracle GoldenGate 12c. The new release delivers extreme performance, increase IT productivity, and simplify deployment, while helping IT organizations to keep pace with new data-oriented technology trends including cloud computing, big data analytics, real-time business intelligence. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS Mincho";} Mark Hurd's keynote on day one set the tone for the Data Integration sessions. Mark focused on big data analytics and the changing consumer expectations. Especially real-time insight is a key theme for Oracle overall and data integration products. In Mark Hurd's keynote we heard from key customers, such as Airbus and Thomson Reuters, how real-time analysis of operational data including machine data creates value, in some cases even saves lives. Thomas Kurian gave a deeper look into Oracle's big data and fast data solutions. In the initial lead Data Integration track session - Brad Adelberg, VP of Development, presented Oracle’s Data Integration 12c product strategy based on key trends from the initial OpenWorld keynotes. Brad talked about how Oracle's data integration products address the new data integration requirements that evolved with cloud computing, big data, and changing consumer expectations and how they set the key themes in our products’ road map. Brad explained why and how fast-time to value, high-performance and future-ready solutions is the top focus areas for product development. If you were not able to attend OpenWorld or this session I recommend reading the white paper: Five New Data Integration Requirements and How to Meet them with Oracle Data Integration, which provides an in-depth look into how Oracle addresses the new trends in the DI market. Following Brad’s session, Nick Wagner provided in depth review of Oracle GoldenGate’s latest features and roadmap. Nick discussed how Oracle GoldenGate’s tight integration with Oracle Database sets the product apart from the competition. We also heard that heterogeneity of the product is still a major focus for GoldenGate’s development and there will be more news on that front when there is a major release. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS Mincho";} After GoldenGate’s product strategy session, Denis Gray from the PM team presented Oracle Data Integrator’s product strategy session, talking about the latest and greatest on ODI. Another good session was delivered by long-time GoldenGate users, Comcast.  Jason Hurd and Amit Patel of Comcast talked about the various use cases they deploy Oracle GoldenGate throughout their enterprise, from database upgrades, feeding reporting systems, to active-active database synchronization.  The Comcast team shared many good tips on how to use GoldenGate for both zero downtime upgrades and active-active replication with conflict management requirement. One of our other important goals we had this year for the Data Integration track at OpenWorld was hearing from our customers. We ended day 1 on just that, with a wonderful award ceremony for Oracle Excellence Awards for Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation. The ceremony was held in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Congratulations to Royal Bank of Scotland and Yalumba Wine Company, the winners in the Data Integration category. You can find more information on the award and the winners in our previous blog post: 2013 Oracle Excellence Awards for Fusion Middleware Innovation… Selected for their innovation use of Oracle’s Data Integration products; the winners for the Data Integration Category are Royal Bank of Scotland and The Yalumba Wine Company. Congratulations!!! Royal Bank of Scotland’s Market and International Banking division provides clients across the globe with seamless trading and competitive pricing, underpinned by a deep knowledge of risk management across the full spectrum of financial products. They handle millions of transactions daily to keep the lifeblood of their clients’ businesses flowing – whether through payment management solutions or through bespoke trade finance solutions. Royal Bank of Scotland is leveraging Oracle GoldenGate and Oracle Data Integrator along with Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition and the Oracle Database for a variety of solutions. Mainly, Oracle GoldenGate and Oracle Data Integrator are used to feed their data warehouse – providing a real-time data integration solution that feeds transactional data to their analytics system in minutes to enable improved decision making with timely, accurate data for their business users. Oracle Data Integrator’s in-database transformation capabilities and its ability to integrate with Oracle GoldenGate for real-time data capture is the foundation of this implementation. This solution makes it such that changes happening in the analytics systems are available the same day they are deployed on the operational system with 100% data quality guaranteed. Additionally, the solution has helped to reduce their operational database size from 150GB to 10GB. Impressive! Now what if I told you this solution was built in 3 months and had a less than 6 month return on investment? That’s outstanding! The Yalumba Wine Company is situated in the Barossa Valley of Australia. It is the oldest family owned winery in Australia with a unique way of aging their wines in specially crafted 100 liter barrels. Did you know that “Yalumba” is Aboriginal for “all the land around”? The Yalumba Wine Company is growing rapidly, and was in need of introducing a more modern standard to the existing manufacturing processes to meet globalization demands, overall time-to-market, and better operational efficiency objectives of product development. The Yalumba Wine Company worked with a partner, Bristlecone to develop a unique solution whereby Oracle Data Integrator is leveraged to pull data from Salesforce.com and JD Edwards, in addition to their other pre-existing source systems, for consumption into their data warehouse. They have emphasized the overall ease of developing integration workflows with Oracle Data Integrator. The solution has brought better visibility for the business users, shorter data loading and transformation performance to their data warehouse with rapid incorporation of new data sources, and a solid future-proof foundation for their organization. Moving forward, they plan on leveraging more from Oracle’s Data Integration portfolio. Terrific! In addition to these two customers on Tuesday we featured many other important Oracle Data Integrator and Oracle GoldenGate customers. On Tuesday the GoldenGate panel included: Land O’Lakes, Smuckers, and Veolia Water. Besides giving us yummy nutrition and healthy water, these companies have another aspect in common. They all use GoldenGate to boost their ERP application. Please read the recap by Irem Radzik. On Wednesday, the ODI Panel included: Barry Ralston and Ryan Weber of Infinity Insurance, Paul Stracke of Paychex Inc., and Ian Wall of Vertex Pharmaceuticals for a session filled with interesting projects, use cases and approaches to leveraging Oracle Data Integrator. Please read the recap by Sandrine Riley for more. Thanks to everyone who joined with us and we hope to stay connected! To hear more about our Data Integration12c products join us in an upcoming webcast to learn more. Follow us www.twitter.com/ORCLGoldenGate or goto our website at www.oracle.com/goto/dataintegration

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, January 08, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, January 08, 2011Popular ReleasesExtended WPF Toolkit: Extended WPF Toolkit - 1.3.0: What's in the 1.3.0 Release?BusyIndicator ButtonSpinner ChildWindow ColorPicker - Updated (Breaking Changes) DateTimeUpDown - New Control Magnifier - New Control MaskedTextBox - New Control MessageBox NumericUpDown RichTextBox RichTextBoxFormatBar - Updated .NET 3.5 binaries and SourcePlease note: The Extended WPF Toolkit 3.5 is dependent on .NET Framework 3.5 and the WPFToolkit. You must install .NET Framework 3.5 and the WPFToolkit in order to use any features in the To...sNPCedit: sNPCedit v0.9d: added elementclient coordinate catcher to catch coordinates select a target (ingame) i.e. your char, npc or monster than click the button and coordinates+direction will be transfered to the selected row in the table corrected labels from Rot to Direction (because it is a vector)AutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.5.2: Implemented the Auto Updater Fix: Your settings will no longer be cleared with new releases of AutoLoL The mastery Editor and Browser now have their own tabs instead of nested tabs The Browser tab will only show the masteries matching ALL filters instead of just one Added a 'Browse' button in the Mastery Editor tab to open the Masteries Directory The Browser tab now shows a message when there are no mastery files in the Masteries Directory Fix: Fixed the Save As dialog again, for ...Ionics Isapi Rewrite Filter: 2.1 latest stable: V2.1 is stable, and is in maintenance mode. This is v2.1.1.25. It is a bug-fix release. There are no new features. 28629 29172 28722 27626 28074 29164 27659 27900 many documentation updates and fixes proper x64 build environment. This release includes x64 binaries in zip form, but no x64 MSI file. You'll have to manually install x64 servers, following the instructions in the documentation.StyleCop for ReSharper: StyleCop for ReSharper 5.1.14980.000: A considerable amount of work has gone into this release: Huge focus on performance around the violation scanning subsystem: - caching added to reduce IO operations around reading and merging of settings files - caching added to reduce creation of expensive objects Users should notice condsiderable perf boost and a decrease in memory usage. Bug Fixes: - StyleCop's new ObjectBasedEnvironment object does not resolve the StyleCop installation path, thus it does not return the correct path ...VivoSocial: VivoSocial 7.4.1: New release with bug fixes and updates for performance.SSH.NET Library: 2011.1.6: Fixes CommandTimeout default value is fixed to infinite. Port Forwarding feature improvements Memory leaks fixes New Features Add ErrorOccurred event to handle errors that occurred on different thread New and improve SFTP features SftpFile now has more attributes and some operations Most standard operations now available Allow specify encoding for command execution KeyboardInteractiveConnectionInfo class added for "keyboard-interactive" authentication. Add ability to specify bo....NET Extensions - Extension Methods Library for C# and VB.NET: Release 2011.03: Added lot's of new extensions and new projects for MVC and Entity Framework. object.FindTypeByRecursion Int32.InRange String.RemoveAllSpecialCharacters String.IsEmptyOrWhiteSpace String.IsNotEmptyOrWhiteSpace String.IfEmptyOrWhiteSpace String.ToUpperFirstLetter String.GetBytes String.ToTitleCase String.ToPlural DateTime.GetDaysInYear DateTime.GetPeriodOfDay IEnumberable.RemoveAll IEnumberable.Distinct ICollection.RemoveAll IList.Join IList.Match IList.Cast Array.IsNullOrEmpty Array.W...VidCoder: 0.8.0: Added x64 version. Made the audio output preview more detailed and accurate. If the chosen encoder or mixdown is incompatible with the source, the fallback that will be used is displayed. Added "Auto" to the audio mixdown choices. Reworked non-anamorphic size calculation to work better with non-standard pixel aspect ratios and cropping. Reworked Custom anamorphic to be more intuitive and allow display width to be set automatically (Thanks, Statick). Allowing higher bitrates for 6-ch....NET Voice Recorder: Auto-Tune Release: This is the source code and binaries to accompany the article on the Coding 4 Fun website. It is the Auto Tuner release of the .NET Voice Recorder application.BloodSim: BloodSim - 1.3.2.0: - Simulation Log is now automatically disabled and hidden when running 10 or more iterations - Hit and Expertise are now entered by Rating, and include option for a Racial Expertise bonus - Added option for boss to use a periodic magic ability (Dragon Breath) - Added option for boss to periodically Enrage, gaining a Damage/Attack Speed buffEnhSim: EnhSim 2.2.9 BETA: 2.2.9 BETAThis release supports WoW patch 4.03a at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Added in the Gobl...xUnit.net - Unit Testing for .NET: xUnit.net 1.7 Beta: xUnit.net release 1.7 betaBuild #1533 Important notes for Resharper users: Resharper support has been moved to the xUnit.net Contrib project. Important note for TestDriven.net users: If you are having issues running xUnit.net tests in TestDriven.net, especially on 64-bit Windows, we strongly recommend you upgrade to TD.NET version 3.0 or later. This release adds the following new features: Added support for ASP.NET MVC 3 Added Assert.Equal(double expected, double actual, int precision)...Json.NET: Json.NET 4.0 Release 1: New feature - Added Windows Phone 7 project New feature - Added dynamic support to LINQ to JSON New feature - Added dynamic support to serializer New feature - Added INotifyCollectionChanged to JContainer in .NET 4 build New feature - Added ReadAsDateTimeOffset to JsonReader New feature - Added ReadAsDecimal to JsonReader New feature - Added covariance to IJEnumerable type parameter New feature - Added XmlSerializer style Specified property support New feature - Added ...DbDocument: DbDoc Initial Version: DbDoc Initial versionASP .NET MVC CMS (Content Management System): Atomic CMS 2.1.2: Atomic CMS 2.1.2 release notes Atomic CMS installation guide N2 CMS: 2.1: N2 is a lightweight CMS framework for ASP.NET. It helps you build great web sites that anyone can update. Major Changes Support for auto-implemented properties ({get;set;}, based on contribution by And Poulsen) All-round improvements and bugfixes File manager improvements (multiple file upload, resize images to fit) New image gallery Infinite scroll paging on news Content templates First time with N2? Try the demo site Download one of the template packs (above) and open the proj...Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 0.1.11.10: IMPORTANT CHANGESThis release changes the way some WURFL capabilities and attributes are exposed to .NET developers. If you cast MobileCapabilities to return some values then please read the Release Note before implementing this release. The following code snippet can be used to access any WURFL capability. For instance, if the device is a tablet: string capability = Request.Browser["is_tablet"]; SummaryNew attributes have been added to the redirect section: originalUrlAsQueryString If se...Wii Backup Fusion: Wii Backup Fusion 1.0: - Norwegian translation - French translation - German translation - WBFS dump for analysis - Scalable full HQ cover - Support for log file - Load game images improved - Support for image splitting - Diff for images after transfer - Support for scrubbing modes - Search functionality for log - Recurse depth for Files/Load - Show progress while downloading game cover - Supports more databases for cover download - Game cover loading routines improvedBlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.0: Get DotNetBlogEngine for 3 Months Free! Click Here for More Info 3 Months FREE – BlogEngine.NET Hosting – Click Here! If you want to set up and start using BlogEngine.NET right away, you should download the Web project. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. If you are upgrading from a previous version of BlogEngine.NET, please take a look at the Upgrading to BlogEngine.NET 2.0 instructions. To get started, be sure to check out our installatio...New Projects2011 Scripting Games: Track Changes for the 2011 Scripting Games to be hosted on PoshCode by the Microsoft Scripting Guys and the PowerShell community. ADO.NET Unit Testable Repository Generator: Generates a strongly-typed Object Context and POCO Entities from your EDMX file. Additionally a Repository and an abstract Unit Test for the Repository is created (with a mock for the ObjectContext and mock for the ObjectSets). Bases on the "ADO.NET C# POCO Entity Generator".AshpazKhone: ???AVAilable Rooms: AVAilable Rooms Can be used to show and book rooms on an exchange serverContentManager: Content Manger for SAP Kpro exports the data pool of a content-server by PHIOS-Lists (txt-files) into local binary files. Afterwards this files can be imported in a SAP content-repository . The whole List of the PHIOS Keys can also be downloaded an splitted in practical units.CSLauncher: CSLauncher is a small application providing a launching interface similar to Counter Strike's weapons selection menu. You can organize your favorite applications in CSLauncher in the order you wish, then launch them by remembering their numbers.DbMetadata: A simple lightweight library used to retrieve database metadata.DotNetSiemensPLCToolBoxLibrary: DotNetSiemensPLCToolBoxLibrary A Library for working with Siemens Step5 and Step7 Projects, connecting to S5 or S7 PLC's.EmptyX: EmptyX is a game developped with c# and xna for the XNA CHALLENGE in AlgeriaERASMUS: Erasmus šitFaceDeBouc: Simplebook, le nouveau Facebook CPE! Technlogies .NET Serveur: - BDD SQLServer - Logique métier - Web services Clients: - client lourd WPF - client léger ASP.NETFunction resolver: Application using .NET Expression trees to resolve a function for a set of numbersMLRobotic: Programme de gestion MLRobotic 2011 Sissa ProjectMS CRM Multiple Attachment Download Application: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 currently does not have a built in way for CRM Administrators to Export multiple attachments from the database and store it on a local directory on the Server or the local PC. This application allows you to do so.Open Data Publisher: Open Data Publisher is a C# MVC application that allows you to quickly and easily publish data from SQL Server tables and views using the OData protocol, and present data from OData and static sources to the public for download and exploration.OttawaZagreb1: Test projectPrague: ????? ?? ???? ??????PSSplunk: PSSplunk is a set of Powershell cmdlets that use the RESTFUL API provided by www.splunk.com The goal is provide access to all of Splunks configuration and search features from the CLI without having to have Splunk installed locally.Reactive C#: Reactive language extensions for C#SemanaWebcasts: Projeto para semana de webcasts.Steward: Personal StewardSVNUG.Tracker: SVNUG.Tracker is an example task tracking application used as a presentation project for the Sangamon Valley .NET User Group (svnug.com). The purpose of SVNUG.Tracker is to be a common problem domain for exercising new .NET technology. SVNUG.Tracker is written in C# 4.The Silverlight Cookbook - A Reference Application for Silverlight 4 LOB Apps: The Silverlight Cookbook is a .NET example application that demonstrates how to build a full-blown line-of-business app using the reference architecture explained at: http://www.dennisdoomen.net/search/label/Silverlight Vkontakte Wpf Client: This is a simple client for social network Vkontakte. It can send message to your friends, download audio files or play it,list user video. Also you can view user status and change yours.Windows Phone Multilingual Keyboard: Multilingual keyboard for Windows Phone 7WPF Controls & MVVM Practices: WPF Controls contains various controls that can be used in applications. Currently Featured * FilteredListBox (filter and selected items notification) * IsDirty functionality for a ViewModel model

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• Using Hadooop (HDInsight) with Microsoft - Two (OK, Three) Options

  - by BuckWoody

  Microsoft has many tools for “Big Data”. In fact, you need many tools – there’s no product called “Big Data Solution” in a shrink-wrapped box – if you find one, you probably shouldn’t buy it. It’s tempting to want a single tool that handles everything in a problem domain, but with large, complex data, that isn’t a reality. You’ll mix and match several systems, open and closed source, to solve a given problem. But there are tools that help with handling data at large, complex scales. Normally the best way to do this is to break up the data into parts, and then put the calculation engines for that chunk of data right on the node where the data is stored. These systems are in a family called “Distributed File and Compute”. Microsoft has a couple of these, including the High Performance Computing edition of Windows Server. Recently we partnered with Hortonworks to bring the Apache Foundation’s release of Hadoop to Windows. And as it turns out, there are actually two (technically three) ways you can use it. (There’s a more detailed set of information here: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/solutions-technologies/business-intelligence/big-data.aspx, I’ll cover the options at a general level below)  First Option: Windows Azure HDInsight Service  Your first option is that you can simply log on to a Hadoop control node and begin to run Pig or Hive statements against data that you have stored in Windows Azure. There’s nothing to set up (although you can configure things where needed), and you can send the commands, get the output of the job(s), and stop using the service when you are done – and repeat the process later if you wish. (There are also connectors to run jobs from Microsoft Excel, but that’s another post)   This option is useful when you have a periodic burst of work for a Hadoop workload, or the data collection has been happening into Windows Azure storage anyway. That might be from a web application, the logs from a web application, telemetrics (remote sensor input), and other modes of constant collection.   You can read more about this option here:  http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2012/10/24/getting-started-with-windows-azure-hdinsight-service.aspx Second Option: Microsoft HDInsight Server Your second option is to use the Hadoop Distribution for on-premises Windows called Microsoft HDInsight Server. You set up the Name Node(s), Job Tracker(s), and Data Node(s), among other components, and you have control over the entire ecostructure.   This option is useful if you want to  have complete control over the system, leave it running all the time, or you have a huge quantity of data that you have to bulk-load constantly – something that isn’t going to be practical with a network transfer or disk-mailing scheme. You can read more about this option here: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/solutions-technologies/business-intelligence/big-data.aspx Third Option (unsupported): Installation on Windows Azure Virtual Machines  Although unsupported, you could simply use a Windows Azure Virtual Machine (we support both Windows and Linux servers) and install Hadoop yourself – it’s open-source, so there’s nothing preventing you from doing that.   Aside from being unsupported, there are other issues you’ll run into with this approach – primarily involving performance and the amount of configuration you’ll need to do to access the data nodes properly. But for a single-node installation (where all components run on one system) such as learning, demos, training and the like, this isn’t a bad option. Did I mention that’s unsupported? :) You can learn more about Windows Azure Virtual Machines here: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/home/scenarios/virtual-machines/ And more about Hadoop and the installation/configuration (on Linux) here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Hadoop And more about the HDInsight installation here: http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/install.aspx?appid=HDINSIGHT-PREVIEW Choosing the right option Since you have two or three routes you can go, the best thing to do is evaluate the need you have, and place the workload where it makes the most sense.  My suggestion is to install the HDInsight Server locally on a test system, and play around with it. Read up on the best ways to use Hadoop for a given workload, understand the parts, write a little Pig and Hive, and get your feet wet. Then sign up for a test account on HDInsight Service, and see how that leverages what you know. If you're a true tinkerer, go ahead and try the VM route as well. Oh - there’s another great reference on the Windows Azure HDInsight that just came out, here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/brunoterkaly/archive/2012/11/16/hadoop-on-azure-introduction.aspx  

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• New release of Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework is available for download - March 2011

  - by Jialiang

  A new release of Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework is available on March 8th. Download address: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62267#DownloadId=215627 You can download individual code samples or browse code samples grouped by technology in the updated code sample index. If it’s the first time that you hear about Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework, please read this Microsoft News Center article http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2011/jan11/01-13codeframework.mspx, or watch the introduction video on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO5Li3APU58, or read the introduction on our homepage http://1code.codeplex.com/. -------------- New Silverlight code samples CSSLTreeViewCRUDDragDrop Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215808 The code sample was created by Amit Dey. It demonstrates a custom TreeView with added functionalities of CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) and drag-and-drop operations. Silverlight TreeView control with CRUD and drag & drop is a frequently asked programming question in Silverlight  forums. Many customers also requested this code sample in our code sample request service. We hope that this sample can reduce developers' efforts in handling this typical programming scenario. The following blog article introduces the sample in detail: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/codefx/archive/2011/02/15/silverlight-treeview-control-with-crud-and-drag-amp-drop.aspx. CSSL4FileDragDrop and VBSL4FileDragDrop Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215809 http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215810 The code sample demonstrates the new drag&drop feature of Silverlight 4 to implement dragging picures from the local file system to a Silverlight application.   Sometimes we want to change SiteMapPath control's titles and paths according to Query String values. And sometimes we want to create the SiteMapPath dynamically. This code sample shows how to achieve these goals by handling SiteMap.SiteMapResolve event. CSASPNETEncryptAndDecryptConfiguration, VBASPNETEncryptAndDecryptConfiguration Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215027 http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215106 In this sample, we encrypt and decrypt some sensitive information in the config file of a web application by using the RSA asymmetric encryption. This project contains two snippets. The first one demonstrates how to use RSACryptoServiceProvider to generate public key and the corresponding private key and then encrypt/decrypt string value on page. The second part shows how to use RSA configuration provider to encrypt and decrypt configuration section in web.config of web application. connectionStrings section in plain text: Encrypted connectionString:  Note that if you store sensitive data in any of the following configuration sections, we cannot encrypt it by using a protected configuration provider <processModel> <runtime> <mscorlib> <startup> <system.runtime.remoting> <configProtectedData> <satelliteassemblies> <cryptographySettings> <cryptoNameMapping> CSASPNETFileUploadStatus Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215028 I believe ASP.NET programmers will like this sample, because in many cases we need customers know the current status of the uploading files, including the upload speed and completion percentage and so on. Under normal circumstances, we need to use COM components to accomplish this function, such as Flash, Silverlight, etc. The uploading data can be retrieved in two places, the client-side and the server-side. For the client, for the safety factors, the file upload status information cannot be got from JavaScript or server-side code, so we need COM component, like Flash and Silverlight to accomplish this, I do not like this approach because the customer need to install these components, but also we need to learn another programming framework. For the server side, we can get the information through coding, but the key question is how to tell the client results. In this case, We will combine custom HTTPModule and AJAX technology to illustrate how to analyze the HTTP protocol, how to break the file request packets, how to customize the location of the server-side file caching, how to return the file uploading status back to the client and so on . CSASPNETHighlightCodeInPage, VBASPNETHighlightCodeInPage Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215029 http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215108 This sample imitates a system that needs display the highlighted code in an ASP.NET page . As a matter of fact, sometimes we input code like C# or HTML in a web page and we need these codes to be highlighted for a better reading experience. It is convenient for us to keep the code in mind if it is highlighted. So in this case, the sample shows how to highlight the code in an ASP.NET page. It is not difficult to highlight the code in a web page by using String.Replace method directly. This  method can return a new string in which all occurrences of a specified string in the current instance are replaced with another specified string. However, it may not be a good idea, because it's not extremely fast, in fact, it's pretty slow. In addition, it is hard to highlight multiple keywords by using String.Replace method directly. Sometimes we need to copy source code from visual studio to a web page, for readability purpose, highlight the code is important while set the different types of keywords to different colors in a web page by using String.Replace method directly is not available. To handle this issue, we need to use a hashtable variable to store the different languages of code and their related regular expressions with matching options. Furthermore, define the css styles which used to highlight the code in a web page. The sample project can auto add the style object to the matching string of code. A step-by-step guide illustrating how to highlight the code in an ASP.NET page: 1. the HighlightCodePage.aspx page Choose a type of language in the dropdownlist control and paste the code in the textbox control, then click the HighLight button. 2.  Display the highlighted code in an ASP.NET page After user clicks the HighLight button, the highlighted code will be displayed at right side of the page.        CSASPNETPreventMultipleWindows Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215032 This sample demonstrates a step-by-step guide illustrating how to detect and prevent multiple windows or tab usage in Web Applications. The sample imitates a system that need to prevent multiple windows or tabs to solve some problems like sharing sessions, protect duplicated login, data concurrency, etc. In fact, there are many methods achieving this goal. Here we give a solution of use JavaScript, Sample shows how to use window.name property check the correct links and throw other requests to invalid pages. This code-sample use two user controls to make a distinction between base page and target page, user only need drag different controls to appropriate web form pages. so user need not write repetitive code in every page, it will make coding work lightly and convenient for modify your code.  JSVirtualKeyboard Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215093 This article describes an All-In-One framework sample that demonstrates a step-by-step guide illustrating how to build a virtual keyboard in your HTML page. Sometimes we may need to offer a virtual keyboard to let users input something without their real keyboards. This scenario often occurs when users will enter their password to get access to our sites and we want to protect the password from some kinds of back-door software, a Key-logger for example, and we will find a virtual keyboard on the page will be a good choice here. To create a virtual keyboard, we firstly need to add some buttons to the page. And when users click on a certain button, the JavaScript function handling the onclick event will input an appropriated character to the textbox. That is the simple logic of this feature. However, if we indeed want a virtual keyboard to substitute for the real keyboard completely, we will need more advanced logic to handle keys like Caps-Lock and Shift etc. That will be a complex work to achieve. CSASPNETDataListImageGallery Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62261#DownloadId=215267 This code sample demonstrates how to create an Image Gallery application by using the DataList control in ASP.NET. You may find the Image Gallery is widely used in many social networking sites, personal websites and E-Business websites. For example, you may use the Image Gallery to show a library of personal uploaded images on a personal website. Slideshow is also a popular tool to display images on websites. This code sample demonstrates how to use the DataList and ImageButton controls in ASP.NET to create an Image Gallery with image navigation. You can click on a thumbnail image in the Datalist control to display a larger version of the image on the page. This sample code reads the image paths from a certain directory into a FileInfo array. Then, the FileInfo array is used to populate a custom DataTable object which is bound to the Datalist control. This code sample also implements a custom paging system that allows five images to be displayed horizontally on one page. The following link buttons are used to implement a custom paging system:   •     First •     Previous •     Next •     Last Note We recommend that you use this method to load no more than five images at a time. You can also set the SelectedIndex property for the DataList control to limit the number of the thumbnail images that can be selected. To indicate which image is selected, you can set the SelectedStyle property for the DataList control. VBASPNETSearchEngine Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215112 This sample shows how to implement a simple search engine in an ASP.NET web site. It uses LIKE condition in SQL statement to search database. Then it highlights keywords in search result by using Regular Expression and JavaScript. New Windows General code samples CSCheckEXEType, VBCheckEXEType Downloads: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215045 http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215120 The sample demonstrates how to check an executable file type.  For a given executable file, we can get 1 whether it is a console application 2 whether it is a .Net application 3 whether it is a 32bit native application. 4 The full display name of a .NET application, e.g. System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089, processorArchitecture=MSIL New Internet Explorer code samples CSIEExplorerBar, VBIEExplorerBar Downloads: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215060 http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215133 The sample demonstrates how to create and deploy an IE Explorer Bar which could list all the images in a web page. CSBrowserHelperObject, VBBrowserHelperObject Downloads: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215044 http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215119 The sample demonstrates how to create and deploy a Browser Helper Object,  and the BHO in this sample is used to disable the context menu in IE. New Windows Workflow Foundation code samples CSWF4ActivitiesCorrelation Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215085 Consider that there are two such workflow instances:       start                                   start          |                                           | Receive activity      Receive activity         |                                           | Receive2 activity      Receive2 activity         |                                           | A WCF request comes to call the second Receive2 activity. Which one should take care of the request? The answer is Correlation. This sample will show you how to correlate two workflow service to work together. -------------- New ASP.NET code samples CSASPNETBreadcrumbWithQueryString Download: http://1code.codeplex.com/releases/view/62253#DownloadId=215022

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• Is this proper OO design for C++?

  - by user121917

  I recently took a software processes course and this is my first time attempting OO design on my own. I am trying to follow OO design principles and C++ conventions. I attempted and gave up on MVC for this application, but I am trying to "decouple" my classes such that they can be easily unit-tested and so that I can easily change the GUI library used and/or the target OS. At this time, I have finished designing classes but have not yet started implementing methods. The function of the software is to log all packets sent and received, and display them on the screen (like WireShark, but for one local process only). The software accomplishes this by hooking the send() and recv() functions in winsock32.dll, or some other pair of analogous functions depending on what the intended Target is. The hooks add packets to SendPacketList/RecvPacketList. The GuiLogic class starts a thread which checks for new packets. When new packets are found, it utilizes the PacketFilter class to determine the formatting for the new packet, and then sends it to MainWindow, a native win32 window (with intent to later port to Qt).1 Full size image of UML class diagram Here are my classes in skeleton/header form (this is my actual code): class PacketModel { protected: std::vector<byte> data; int id; public: PacketModel(); PacketModel(byte* data, unsigned int size); PacketModel(int id, byte* data, unsigned int size); int GetLen(); bool IsValid(); //len >= sizeof(opcode_t) opcode_t GetOpcode(); byte* GetData(); //returns &(data[0]) bool GetData(byte* outdata, int maxlen); void SetData(byte* pdata, int len); int GetId(); void SetId(int id); bool ParseData(char* instr); bool StringRepr(char* outstr); byte& operator[] (const int index); }; class SendPacket : public PacketModel { protected: byte* returnAddy; public: byte* GetReturnAddy(); void SetReturnAddy(byte* addy); }; class RecvPacket : public PacketModel { protected: byte* callAddy; public: byte* GetCallAddy(); void SetCallAddy(byte* addy); }; //problem: packets may be added to list at any time by any number of threads //solution: critical section associated with each packet list class Synch { public: void Enter(); void Leave(); }; template<class PacketType> class PacketList { private: static const int MAX_STORED_PACKETS = 1000; public: static const int DEFAULT_SHOWN_PACKETS = 100; private: vector<PacketType> list; Synch synch; //wrapper for critical section public: void AddPacket(PacketType* packet); PacketType* GetPacket(int id); int TotalPackets(); }; class SendPacketList : PacketList<SendPacket> { }; class RecvPacketList : PacketList<RecvPacket> { }; class Target //one socket { bool Send(SendPacket* packet); bool Inject(RecvPacket* packet); bool InitSendHook(SendPacketList* sendList); bool InitRecvHook(RecvPacketList* recvList); }; class FilterModel { private: opcode_t opcode; int colorID; bool bFilter; char name[41]; }; class FilterFile { private: FilterModel filter; public: void Save(); void Load(); FilterModel* GetFilter(opcode_t opcode); }; class PacketFilter { private: FilterFile filters; public: bool IsFiltered(opcode_t opcode); bool GetName(opcode_t opcode, char* namestr); //return false if name does not exist COLORREF GetColor(opcode_t opcode); //return default color if no custom color }; class GuiLogic { private: SendPacketList sendList; RecvPacketList recvList; PacketFilter packetFilter; void GetPacketRepr(PacketModel* packet); void ReadNew(); void AddToWindow(); public: void Refresh(); //called from thread void GetPacketInfo(int id); //called from MainWindow }; I'm looking for a general review of my OO design, use of UML, and use of C++ features. I especially just want to know if I'm doing anything considerably wrong. From what I've read, design review is on-topic for this site (and off-topic for the Code Review site). Any sort of feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading this.

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