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  • Silverlight Tree View with Multiple Levels

    - by psheriff
    There are many examples of the Silverlight Tree View that you will find on the web, however, most of them only show you how to go to two levels. What if you have more than two levels? This is where understanding exactly how the Hierarchical Data Templates works is vital. In this blog post, I am going to break down how these templates work so you can really understand what is going on underneath the hood. To start, let’s look at the typical two-level Silverlight Tree View that has been hard coded with the values shown below: <sdk:TreeView>  <sdk:TreeViewItem Header="Managers">    <TextBlock Text="Michael" />    <TextBlock Text="Paul" />  </sdk:TreeViewItem>  <sdk:TreeViewItem Header="Supervisors">    <TextBlock Text="John" />    <TextBlock Text="Tim" />    <TextBlock Text="David" />  </sdk:TreeViewItem></sdk:TreeView> Figure 1 shows you how this tree view looks when you run the Silverlight application. Figure 1: A hard-coded, two level Tree View. Next, let’s create three classes to mimic the hard-coded Tree View shown above. First, you need an Employee class and an EmployeeType class. The Employee class simply has one property called Name. The constructor is created to accept a “name” argument that you can use to set the Name property when you create an Employee object. public class Employee{  public Employee(string name)  {    Name = name;  }   public string Name { get; set; }} Finally you create an EmployeeType class. This class has one property called EmpType and contains a generic List<> collection of Employee objects. The property that holds the collection is called Employees. public class EmployeeType{  public EmployeeType(string empType)  {    EmpType = empType;    Employees = new List<Employee>();  }   public string EmpType { get; set; }  public List<Employee> Employees { get; set; }} Finally we have a collection class called EmployeeTypes created using the generic List<> class. It is in the constructor for this class where you will build the collection of EmployeeTypes and fill it with Employee objects: public class EmployeeTypes : List<EmployeeType>{  public EmployeeTypes()  {    EmployeeType type;            type = new EmployeeType("Manager");    type.Employees.Add(new Employee("Michael"));    type.Employees.Add(new Employee("Paul"));    this.Add(type);     type = new EmployeeType("Project Managers");    type.Employees.Add(new Employee("Tim"));    type.Employees.Add(new Employee("John"));    type.Employees.Add(new Employee("David"));    this.Add(type);  }} You now have a data hierarchy in memory (Figure 2) which is what the Tree View control expects to receive as its data source. Figure 2: A hierachial data structure of Employee Types containing a collection of Employee objects. To connect up this hierarchy of data to your Tree View you create an instance of the EmployeeTypes class in XAML as shown in line 13 of Figure 3. The key assigned to this object is “empTypes”. This key is used as the source of data to the entire Tree View by setting the ItemsSource property as shown in Figure 3, Callout #1. Figure 3: You need to start from the bottom up when laying out your templates for a Tree View. The ItemsSource property of the Tree View control is used as the data source in the Hierarchical Data Template with the key of employeeTypeTemplate. In this case there is only one Hierarchical Data Template, so any data you wish to display within that template comes from the collection of Employee Types. The TextBlock control in line 20 uses the EmpType property of the EmployeeType class. You specify the name of the Hierarchical Data Template to use in the ItemTemplate property of the Tree View (Callout #2). For the second (and last) level of the Tree View control you use a normal <DataTemplate> with the name of employeeTemplate (line 14). The Hierarchical Data Template in lines 17-21 sets its ItemTemplate property to the key name of employeeTemplate (Line 19 connects to Line 14). The source of the data for the <DataTemplate> needs to be a property of the EmployeeTypes collection used in the Hierarchical Data Template. In this case that is the Employees property. In the Employees property there is a “Name” property of the Employee class that is used to display the employee name in the second level of the Tree View (Line 15). What is important here is that your lowest level in your Tree View is expressed in a <DataTemplate> and should be listed first in your Resources section. The next level up in your Tree View should be a <HierarchicalDataTemplate> which has its ItemTemplate property set to the key name of the <DataTemplate> and the ItemsSource property set to the data you wish to display in the <DataTemplate>. The Tree View control should have its ItemsSource property set to the data you wish to display in the <HierarchicalDataTemplate> and its ItemTemplate property set to the key name of the <HierarchicalDataTemplate> object. It is in this way that you get the Tree View to display all levels of your hierarchical data structure. Three Levels in a Tree View Now let’s expand upon this concept and use three levels in our Tree View (Figure 4). This Tree View shows that you now have EmployeeTypes at the top of the tree, followed by a small set of employees that themselves manage employees. This means that the EmployeeType class has a collection of Employee objects. Each Employee class has a collection of Employee objects as well. Figure 4: When using 3 levels in your TreeView you will have 2 Hierarchical Data Templates and 1 Data Template. The EmployeeType class has not changed at all from our previous example. However, the Employee class now has one additional property as shown below: public class Employee{  public Employee(string name)  {    Name = name;    ManagedEmployees = new List<Employee>();  }   public string Name { get; set; }  public List<Employee> ManagedEmployees { get; set; }} The next thing that changes in our code is the EmployeeTypes class. The constructor now needs additional code to create a list of managed employees. Below is the new code. public class EmployeeTypes : List<EmployeeType>{  public EmployeeTypes()  {    EmployeeType type;    Employee emp;    Employee managed;     type = new EmployeeType("Manager");    emp = new Employee("Michael");    managed = new Employee("John");    emp.ManagedEmployees.Add(managed);    managed = new Employee("Tim");    emp.ManagedEmployees.Add(managed);    type.Employees.Add(emp);     emp = new Employee("Paul");    managed = new Employee("Michael");    emp.ManagedEmployees.Add(managed);    managed = new Employee("Sara");    emp.ManagedEmployees.Add(managed);    type.Employees.Add(emp);    this.Add(type);     type = new EmployeeType("Project Managers");    type.Employees.Add(new Employee("Tim"));    type.Employees.Add(new Employee("John"));    type.Employees.Add(new Employee("David"));    this.Add(type);  }} Now that you have all of the data built in your classes, you are now ready to hook up this three-level structure to your Tree View. Figure 5 shows the complete XAML needed to hook up your three-level Tree View. You can see in the XAML that there are now two Hierarchical Data Templates and one Data Template. Again you list the Data Template first since that is the lowest level in your Tree View. The next Hierarchical Data Template listed is the next level up from the lowest level, and finally you have a Hierarchical Data Template for the first level in your tree. You need to work your way from the bottom up when creating your Tree View hierarchy. XAML is processed from the top down, so if you attempt to reference a XAML key name that is below where you are referencing it from, you will get a runtime error. Figure 5: For three levels in a Tree View you will need two Hierarchical Data Templates and one Data Template. Each Hierarchical Data Template uses the previous template as its ItemTemplate. The ItemsSource of each Hierarchical Data Template is used to feed the data to the previous template. This is probably the most confusing part about working with the Tree View control. You are expecting the content of the current Hierarchical Data Template to use the properties set in the ItemsSource property of that template. But you need to look to the template lower down in the XAML to see the source of the data as shown in Figure 6. Figure 6: The properties you use within the Content of a template come from the ItemsSource of the next template in the resources section. Summary Understanding how to put together your hierarchy in a Tree View is simple once you understand that you need to work from the bottom up. Start with the bottom node in your Tree View and determine what that will look like and where the data will come from. You then build the next Hierarchical Data Template to feed the data to the previous template you created. You keep doing this for each level in your Tree View until you get to the last level. The data for that last Hierarchical Data Template comes from the ItemsSource in the Tree View itself. NOTE: You can download the sample code for this article by visiting my website at http://www.pdsa.com/downloads. Select “Tips & Tricks”, then select “Silverlight TreeView with Multiple Levels” from the drop down list.

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, February 24, 2011

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, February 24, 2011Popular ReleasesInstant Feature Builder for Visual Studio 2010: Instant Feature Builder 1.2: This is the binary version of the Instant Feature Builder. Once downloaded, double click to install into Visual Studio. Version 1.2 fixes: Rename FX to IFB to shorten path lengths Fix issue in ExecuteCommand Fix issue to workaround problem with VS Template writer The Instant Feature Builder is a tool which enables you, via drag-and-drop, to build a specific type of Visual Studio extension (VSIX) known as a Feature Extension. A Feature Extension packages project and/or item templates,...DirectQ: Release 1.8.7 (Beta): Beta release of 1.8.7 to get feedback on what works well, what doesn't work well, and what doesn't work at all. D3D9 hardware with ps2.0 a must. Faster, more streamlined and more integrated rendering capabilities with additional MP features and support.Smartkernel: Smartkernel: ????,??????Chiave File Encryption: Chiave 0.9.1: Application for file encryption and decryption using 512 Bit rijndael encyrption algorithm with simple to use UI. Its written in C# and compiled in .Net version 3.5. It incorporates features of Windows 7 like Jumplists, Taskbar progress and Aero Glass. Change Log from 0.9 Beta to 0.9.1: ======================= >Added option for system shutdown, sleep, hibernate after operation completed. >Minor Changes to the UI. >Numerous Bug fixes. Feedbacks are Welcome!....DotNetNuke® Store: 03.00.00: What's New in this release? IMPORTANT: this version requires DotNetNuke 04.06.02 or higher! DO NOT REPORT BUGS HERE IN THE ISSUE TRACKER, INSTEAD USE THE DotNetNuke Store Forum! This version is the same code base as the version 02.01.51 RC, just some cleaning and source code release before submition to the release tracker for "official" release.ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.45.2: New on this release: 1) Added data validation. See Data Validation 2) Deleting or clearing cells deletes the hyperlinks too. New on v0.45.1 1) Fixed issues 6237, 6240 New on v0.45.2 1) Fixed issues 6257, 6266 New Examples Data ValidationOMEGA CMS: OMEGA CMA - Alpha 0.2: A few fixes for OMEGA Framework (DLL) A few tweeks for OMEGA CMSCoding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.2: New control, Toast Prompt! Removed progress bar since Silverlight Toolkit Feb 2010 has it.Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.7: Service release fixing 31 issues. A full changelog will be available with the final stable release of 4.7 Important when upgradingUpgrade as if it was a patch release (update /bin, /umbraco and /umbraco_client). For general upgrade information follow the guide found at http://our.umbraco.org/wiki/install-and-setup/upgrading-an-umbraco-installation 4.7 requires the .NET 4.0 framework Web.Config changes Update the web web.config to include the 4 changes found in (they're clearly marked in...HubbleDotNet - Open source full-text search engine: V1.1.0.0: Add Sqlite3 DBAdapter Add App Report when Query Cache is Collecting. Improve the performance of index through Synchronize. Add top 0 feature so that we can only get count of the result. Improve the score calculating algorithm of match. Let the score of the record that match all items large then others. Add MySql DBAdapter Improve performance for multi-fields sort . Using hash table to access the Payload data. The version before used bin search. Using heap sort instead of qui...Xen: Graphics API for XNA: Xen 2.0: This is the final release of Xen; Xen 2.0. Xen 2.0 supports PC and Xbox 360 running XNA 4. The documentation download is coming soon Due to restrictions in XNA 4, Building Xen requires a DirectX 10 capable video card (Xen applications can still run on Windows Xp and DirectX 9 video cards)Silverlight????[???]: silverlight????[???]2.0: ???????,?????,????????silverlight??????。DBSourceTools: DBSourceTools_1.3.0.0: Release 1.3.0.0 Changed editors from FireEdit to ICSharpCode.TextEditor. Complete re-vamp of Intellisense ( further testing needed). Hightlight Field and Table Names in sql scripts. Added field dropdown on all tables and views in DBExplorer. Added data option for viewing data in Tables. Fixed comment / uncomment bug as reported by tareq. Included Synonyms in scripting engine ( nickt_ch ).IronPython: 2.7 Release Candidate 1: We are pleased to announce the first Release Candidate for IronPython 2.7. This release contains over two dozen bugs fixed in preparation for 2.7 Final. See the release notes for 60193 for details and what has already been fixed in the earlier 2.7 prereleases. - IronPython TeamCaliburn Micro: A Micro-Framework for WPF, Silverlight and WP7: Caliburn.Micro 1.0 RC: This is the official Release Candicate for Caliburn.Micro 1.0. The download contains the binaries, samples and VS templates. VS Templates The templates included are designed for situations where the Caliburn.Micro source needs to be embedded within a single project solution. This was targeted at government and other organizations that expressed specific requirements around using an open source project like this. NuGet This release does not have a corresponding NuGet package. The NuGet pack...Caliburn: A Client Framework for WPF and Silverlight: Caliburn 2.0 RC: This is the official Release Candidate for Caliburn 2.0. It contains all binaries, samples and generated code docs.Rawr: Rawr 4.0.20 Beta: Rawr is now web-based. The link to use Rawr4 is: http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.phpThis is the Cataclysm Beta Release. More details can be found at the following link http://rawr.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=237262 As of the 4.0.16 release, you can now also begin using the new Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!This is a pre-alpha release of the WPF version, there are likely to be a lot of issues. If you have a problem, please follow the Posting Guidelines and put it into the Issue Trac...MiniTwitter: 1.66: MiniTwitter 1.66 ???? ?? ?????????? 2 ??????????????????? User Streams ?????????Windows Phone 7 Isolated Storage Explorer: WP7 Isolated Storage Explorer v1.0 Beta: Current release features:WPF desktop explorer client Visual Studio integrated tool window explorer client (Visual Studio 2010 Professional and above) Supported operations: Refresh (isolated storage information), Add Folder, Add Existing Item, Download File, Delete Folder, Delete File Explorer supports operations running on multiple remote applications at the same time Explorer detects application disconnect (1-2 second delay) Explorer confirms operation completed status Explorer d...Silverlight Toolkit: Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit - Feb 2011: Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit OverviewSilverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit offers developers additional controls for Windows Phone application development, designed to match the rich user experience of the Windows Phone 7. Suggestions? Features? Questions? Ask questions in the Create.msdn.com forum. Add bugs or feature requests to the Issue Tracker. Help us shape the Silverlight Toolkit with your feedback! Please clearly indicate that the work items and issues are for the phone t...New ProjectsCompetition Management Platform: Paragliding Competition Management PlatformCS424 B2 Group - Car Management: CS424 B2 Group - Car ManagementEMS: The main aim of the system to perform environment inventorization.EVVA: EVVA ist ein Softwareprojekt zur Unterstützung privater Arbeitsvermittler FileSocialVB: A library to work with the filesocial.com web site and API through VB.NET. This is actually an offshoot of the http://twittervb.codeplex.com project. Though smaller, this will lead to a more compact library.Hash Crack - IGProgram: Hash Crack is a software program for hashes and passwords cracking. Hash Crack use dictionary or set of symbols for hashes cracking, and also support pwdump file format for Windows passwords cracking NTHash MD4. MD2, MD4, MD5, SHA1, SHA256, SHA384, SHA512Imail Spammer Killer: Bots seem to love picking off the weak passwords of IpSwitch IMail v10 users and using SMTP auth to spam the world with their new found account access. This project is a windows service to isolate and stop this activity by disabling the violated user account as it occurs.JVS2USB: Montage permettant de relier une IO ( capcom / Sega ) sur un PC via l'USB !!Library Reminder: Library ReminderMAVI: mobile application for the visually impaired: bill recognition & tag and recognize objects based on a specific stickerMessage splliting without envelope in Biztalk 2009: Message splitting without envelope in Biztalk 2009. The project contains: - Source Code - Examples Article describing how to make it:Microsoft translator: Language translator designed to test Microsoft Translator web service API In Windows Phone 7 developed using Visual Studio 2010 in C#mrmuffin: Mr Muffin WP7 game for childrenNetwork Monitor: Simple application with a vu-meter style display of recent incoming network traffic. - Requires .NET 4, - Requires WinPCap (http://www.winpcap.org/) - Only tested to run under Windows 7NPhysics: NPhysics - Physical Data Types for .NETOpen SimRacing Results: Open SimRacing Results aims to provide an open standard for race results of PC SimRacing games (like iRacing, rFactor, NR2003, ...), allowing developers of league management systems to use a unique interface to get the results from, regardless of the simulation used.Orchard Image Gallery: Orchard Image Gallery project is intented to provide a Image Gallery content part and/or widget for the Orchard Project.Planning Poker for Windows Phone 7: Play planning poker on your Windows Phone 7.Publishing and consuming WCF in Biztalk 2009 and Visual Studio 2008: The file contains: Biztalk 2009 Project, C# Console Project, Example. Push Notification for Windows Phone 7 in php: WindowsPhonePushNotification enables you to use Microsoft Push Notification Service in phpQuksace Agjke: For more information, please visit <http://students.cs.tamu.edu/abe/IS_and_R/HW3/quksace%20agjke.html>. http://students.cs.tamu.edu/abe/IS_and_R/HW3/quksace%20agjke.html Read: a "GNU Make"-like utility for viewing Readme files: Read is a simple program to easily load and read README files on a UNIX-compliant system. It works in a similar way to GNU Make by searching a directory for a compatible file, in this case a Readme file, and loading it for reading using a text editor or viewer.SQL CE 3.5 persistence mapper for ECO IV: May need some adjustments for ECO V/VI, definitely needs some rewrite to support SQL CE 4.0 fullySQL Server Job Failure Notification System: A simple means of ensuring you know when SQLAgent jobs fail.SuperQuery: SuperQuery makes it easy to run the same batch of SQL across several databases on different SQL servers. SuperQuery supports all editions and versions of SQL Server from 2000 onwards. It is developed in C# using .NET 4 Client Profile.System.Net.Mail Extended: An Extension to the System.Net.Mail Namespace, adding a POP3 Client, Enhanced SMTP Client, IMAP Client, POP3 Server, SMTP Server, and IMAP Serve, all written in Visual C#.wow-combatlogs: A PowerShell module for working with combat logs generated by World of Warcraft.WPF UndoManager: WPF UndoManager provides a simple Undomanager on the base of WPF's CommandPattern. It use an implementation of the ICommand-interface to manage a history of actions.XO / TicTacToe game: Dynamic sized XO / TicTacToe game for Windows Phone 7 Build using Visual Studio 2010 and C#

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  • Laissez les bon temps rouler! (Microsoft BI Conference 2010)

    - by smisner
    "Laissez les bons temps rouler" is a Cajun phrase that I heard frequently when I lived in New Orleans in the mid-1990s. It means "Let the good times roll!" and encapsulates a feeling of happy expectation. As I met with many of my peers and new acquaintances at the Microsoft BI Conference last week, this phrase kept running through my mind as people spoke about their plans in their respective businesses, the benefits and opportunities that the recent releases in the BI stack are providing, and their expectations about the future of the BI stack. Notwithstanding some jabs here and there to point out the platform is neither perfect now nor will be anytime soon (along with admissions that the competitors are also not perfect), and notwithstanding several missteps by the event organizers (which I don't care to enumerate), the overarching mood at the conference was positive. It was a refreshing change from the doom and gloom hovering over several conferences that I attended in 2009. Although many people expect economic hardships to continue over the coming year or so, everyone I know in the BI field is busier than ever and expects to stay busy for quite a while. Self-Service BI Self-service was definitely a theme of the BI conference. In the keynote, Ted Kummert opened with a look back to a fairy tale vision of self-service BI that he told in 2008. At that time, the fairy tale future was a time when "every end user was able to use BI technologies within their job in order to move forward more effectively" and transitioned to the present time in which SQL Server 2008 R2, Office 2010, and SharePoint 2010 are available to deliver managed self-service BI. This set of technologies is presumably poised to address the needs of the 80% of users that Kummert said do not use BI today. He proceeded to outline a series of activities that users ought to be able to do themselves--from simple changes to a report like formatting or an addtional data visualization to integration of an additional data source. The keynote then continued with a series of demonstrations of both current and future technology in support of self-service BI. Some highlights that interested me: PowerPivot, of course, is the flagship product for self-service BI in the Microsoft BI stack. In the TechEd keynote, which was open to the BI conference attendees, Amir Netz (twitter) impressed the audience by demonstrating interactivity with a workbook containing 100 million rows. He upped the ante at the BI keynote with his demonstration of a future-state PowerPivot workbook containing over 2 billion records. It's important to note that this volume of data is being processed by a server engine, and not in the PowerPivot client engine. (Yes, I think it's impressive, but none of my clients are typically wrangling with 2 billion records at a time. Maybe they're thinking too small. This ability to work quickly with large data sets has greater implications for BI solutions than for self-service BI, in my opinion.) Amir also demonstrated KPIs for the future PowerPivot, which appeared to be easier to implement than in any other Microsoft product that supports KPIs, apart from simple KPIs in SharePoint. (My initial reaction is that we have one more place to build KPIs. Great. It's confusing enough. I haven't seen how well those KPIs integrate with other BI tools, which will be important for adoption.) One more PowerPivot feature that Amir showed was a graphical display of the lineage for calculations. (This is hugely practical, especially if you build up calculations incrementally. You can more easily follow the logic from calculation to calculation. Furthermore, if you need to make a change to one calculation, you can assess the impact on other calculations.) Another product demonstration will be available within the next 30 days--Pivot for Reporting Services. If you haven't seen this technology yet, check it out at www.getpivot.com. (It definitely has a wow factor, but I'm skeptical about its practicality. However, I'm looking forward to trying it out with data that I understand.) Michael Tejedor (twitter) demonstrated a feature that I think is really interesting and not emphasized nearly enough--overshadowed by PowerPivot, no doubt. That feature is the Microsoft Business Intelligence Indexing Connector, which enables search of the content of Excel workbooks and Reporting Services reports. (This capability existed in MOSS 2007, but was more cumbersome to implement. The search results in SharePoint 2010 are not only cooler, but more useful by describing whether the content is found in a table or a chart, for example.) This may yet be the dawning of the age of self-service BI - a phrase I've heard repeated from time to time over the last decade - but I think BI professionals are likely to stay busy for a long while, and need not start looking for a new line of work. Kummert repeatedly referenced strategic BI solutions in contrast to self-service BI to emphasize that self-service BI is not a replacement for the services that BI professionals provide. After all, self-service BI does not appear magically on user desktops (or whatever device they want to use). A supporting infrastructure is necessary, and grows in complexity in proportion to the need to simplify BI for users. It's one thing to hear the party line touted by Microsoft employees at the BI keynote, but it's another to hear from the people who are responsible for implementing and supporting it within an organization. Rob Collie (blog | twitter), Kasper de Jonge (blog | twitter), Vidas Matelis (site | twitter), and I were invited to join Andrew Brust (blog | twitter) as he led a Birds of a Feather session at TechEd entitled "PowerPivot: Is It the BI Deal-Changer for Developers and IT Pros?" I would single out the prevailing concern in this session as the issue of control. On one side of this issue were those who were concerned that they would lose control once PowerPivot is implemented. On the other side were those who believed that data should be freely accessible to users in PowerPivot, and even acknowledgment that users would get the data they want even if it meant they would have to manually enter into a workbook to have it ready for analysis. For another viewpoint on how PowerPivot played out at the conference, see Rob Collie's observations. Collaborative BI I have been intrigued by the notion of collaborative BI for a very long time. Before I discovered BI, I was a Lotus Notes developer and later a manager of developers, working in a software company that enabled collaboration in the legal industry. Not only did I help create collaborative systems for our clients, I created a complete project management from the ground up to collaboratively manage our custom development work. In that case, collaboration involved my team, my client contacts, and me. I was also able to produce my own BI from that system as well, but didn't know that's what I was doing at the time. Only in recent years has SharePoint begun to catch up with the capabilities that I had with Lotus Notes more than a decade ago. Eventually, I had the opportunity at that job to formally investigate BI as another product offering for our software, and the rest - as they say - is history. I built my first data warehouse with Scott Cameron (who has also ventured into the authoring world by writing Analysis Services 2008 Step by Step and was at the BI Conference last week where I got to reminisce with him for a bit) and that began a career that I never imagined at the time. Fast forward to 2010, and I'm still lauding the virtues of collaborative BI, if only the tools will catch up to my vision! Thus, I was anxious to see what Donald Farmer (blog | twitter) and Rita Sallam of Gartner had to say on the subject in their session "Collaborative Decision Making." As I suspected, the tools aren't quite there yet, but the vendors are moving in the right direction. One thing I liked about this session was a non-Microsoft perspective of the state of the industry with regard to collaborative BI. In addition, this session included a better demonstration of SharePoint collaborative BI capabilities than appeared in the BI keynote. Check out the video in the link to the session to see the demonstration. One of the use cases that was demonstrated was linking from information to a person, because, as Donald put it, "People don't trust data, they trust people." The Microsoft BI Stack in General A question I hear all the time from students when I'm teaching is how to know what tools to use when there is overlap between products in the BI stack. I've never taken the time to codify my thoughts on the subject, but saw that my friend Dan Bulos provided good insight on this topic from a variety of perspectives in his session, "So Many BI Tools, So Little Time." I thought one of his best points was that ideally you should be able to design in your tool of choice, and then deploy to your tool of choice. Unfortunately, the ideal is yet to become real across the platform. The closest we come is with the RDL in Reporting Services which can be produced from two different tools (Report Builder or Business Intelligence Development Studio's Report Designer), manually, or by a third-party or custom application. I have touted the idea for years (and publicly said so about 5 years ago) that eventually more products would be RDL producers or consumers, but we aren't there yet. Maybe in another 5 years. Another interesting session that covered the BI stack against a backdrop of competitive products was delivered by Andrew Brust. Andrew did a marvelous job of consolidating a lot of information in a way that clearly communicated how various vendors' offerings compared to the Microsoft BI stack. He also made a particularly compelling argument about how the existence of an ecosystem around the Microsoft BI stack provided innovation and opportunities lacking for other vendors. Check out his presentation, "How Does the Microsoft BI Stack...Stack Up?" Expo Hall I had planned to spend more time in the Expo Hall to see who was doing new things with the BI stack, but didn't manage to get very far. Each time I set out on an exploratory mission, I got caught up in some fascinating conversations with one or more of my peers. I find interacting with people that I meet at conferences just as important as attending sessions to learn something new. There were a couple of items that really caught me eye, however, that I'll share here. Pragmatic Works. Whether you develop SSIS packages, build SSAS cubes, or author SSRS reports (or all of the above), you really must take a look at BI Documenter. Brian Knight (twitter) walked me through the key features, and I must say I was impressed. Once you've seen what this product can do, you won't want to document your BI projects any other way. You can download a free single-user database edition, or choose from more feature-rich standard or professional editions. Microsoft Press ebooks. I also stopped by the O'Reilly Media booth to meet some folks that one of my acquisitions editors at Microsoft Press recommended. In case you haven't heard, Microsoft Press has partnered with O'Reilly Media for distribution and publishing. Apart from my interest in learning more about O'Reilly Media as an author, an advertisement in their booth caught me eye which I think is a really great move. When you buy Microsoft Press ebooks through the O'Reilly web site, you can receive it in any (or all) of the following formats where possible: PDF, epub, .mobi for Kindle and .apk for Android. You also have lifetime DRM-free access to the ebooks. As someone who is an avid collector of books, I fnd myself running out of room for storage. In addition, I travel a lot, and it's hard to lug my reference library with me. Today's e-reader options make the move to digital books a more viable way to grow my library. Having a variety of formats means I am not limited to a single device, and lifetime access means I don't have to worry about keeping track of where I've stored my files. Because the e-books are DRM-free, I can copy and paste when I'm compiling notes, and I can print pages when necessary. That's a winning combination in my mind! Overall, I was pleased with the BI conference. There were many more sessions that I couldn't attend, either because the room was full when I got there or there were multiple sessions running concurrently that I wanted to see. Fortunately, many of the sessions are accessible for viewing online at http://www.msteched.com/2010/NorthAmerica along with the TechEd sessions. You can spot the BI sessions by the yellow skyline on the title slide of the presentation as shown below. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • SQL Server 08 Express error when connecting to localhost - "Timeout expired". Works with ::1 or 127

    - by Adam A
    EDIT New info: Navigating to localhost:1434 in Chrome gives me an "ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE", while other ports give me an "Oops! This link appears to be broken". So it seems to binding ok there? So here's my setup so far: I've configured Windows Firewall to allow TCP on 1433 and UDP on 1434. I've set up SQL Server to use any IP on Port 1433 (using the SQL Server Configuration Manager). My hosts file contains the default entries ("127.0.0.1 localhost" and "::1 localhost"). I sometimes have a debug session of Visual Web Developer running a webserver, but it's on a specific port (localhost:5XXXX). What I've tried: I CAN ping localhost in a cmd prompt. I CAN connect to the database through SSMS if I specify 127.0.0.1 or ::1 as the server name. I CAN'T connect to the database through SSMS (or ADO.NET) if I specify localhost as the server name. I've tried both Windows and SQL Authentication The error I get is the standard Can't connect to localhost. Additional Information -- Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding. (Microsoft Sql Server) Other considerations: Stopping the Visual Web Developer web server from the taskbar doesn't affect the sql problem. The SQL error log says that it's listening on some piped name url at start up (I don't see how this would affect localhost but not 127.0.0.1 though). I could probably just use 127.0.0.1 everywhere, but it scares me that localhost isn't working and I'd like to figure out why. I'm not much of a networking or sql server guy so I'm stuck. If you want me to try anything to help diagnose just put it in a comment and I'll give it a go. Netstat results: Setting SDK environment relative to C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.1 Targeting Windows Server 2008 x86 DEBUG C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.1netstat -ano | findstr 1434 UDP 0.0.0.0:1434 *:* 6868 UDP [::]:1434 *:* 6868 C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.1netstat -ano | findstr 1433 TCP 0.0.0.0:1433 0.0.0.0:0 LISTENING 2268 TCP 127.0.0.1:1433 127.0.0.1:50758 ESTABLISHED 2268 TCP 127.0.0.1:50758 127.0.0.1:1433 ESTABLISHED 5008 TCP [::]:1433 [::]:0 LISTENING 2268 TCP [::1]:1433 [::1]:51202 ESTABLISHED 2268 TCP [::1]:1433 [::1]:51616 ESTABLISHED 2268 TCP [::1]:51202 [::1]:1433 ESTABLISHED 5008 TCP [::1]:51616 [::1]:1433 ESTABLISHED 5008 C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.1 SQL Server Log File: In case it helps 2010-01-30 12:58:59.01 Server Microsoft SQL Server 2008 (SP1) - 10.0.2531.0 (Intel X86) Mar 29 2009 10:27:29 Copyright (c) 1988-2008 Microsoft Corporation Express Edition on Windows NT 6.0 (Build 6002: Service Pack 2) 2010-01-30 12:58:59.01 Server (c) 2005 Microsoft Corporation. 2010-01-30 12:58:59.01 Server All rights reserved. 2010-01-30 12:58:59.01 Server Server process ID is 2268. 2010-01-30 12:58:59.01 Server System Manufacturer: 'Dell Inc.', System Model: 'Inspiron 1545'. 2010-01-30 12:58:59.01 Server Authentication mode is MIXED. 2010-01-30 12:58:59.02 Server Logging SQL Server messages in file 'c:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.SQLEXPRESS\MSSQL\Log\ERRORLOG'. 2010-01-30 12:58:59.02 Server This instance of SQL Server last reported using a process ID of 7396 at 1/30/2010 12:57:38 PM (local) 1/30/2010 5:57:38 PM (UTC). This is an informational message only; no user action is required. 2010-01-30 12:58:59.02 Server Registry startup parameters: -d c:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.SQLEXPRESS\MSSQL\DATA\master.mdf -e c:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.SQLEXPRESS\MSSQL\Log\ERRORLOG -l c:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.SQLEXPRESS\MSSQL\DATA\mastlog.ldf 2010-01-30 12:58:59.02 Server SQL Server is starting at normal priority base (=7). This is an informational message only. No user action is required. 2010-01-30 12:58:59.02 Server Detected 2 CPUs. This is an informational message; no user action is required. 2010-01-30 12:58:59.08 Server Using dynamic lock allocation. Initial allocation of 2500 Lock blocks and 5000 Lock Owner blocks per node. This is an informational message only. No user action is required. 2010-01-30 12:58:59.17 Server Node configuration: node 0: CPU mask: 0x00000003 Active CPU mask: 0x00000003. This message provides a description of the NUMA configuration for this computer. This is an informational message only. No user action is required. 2010-01-30 12:58:59.30 spid7s Starting up database 'master'. 2010-01-30 12:58:59.41 spid7s Recovery is writing a checkpoint in database 'master' (1). This is an informational message only. No user action is required. 2010-01-30 12:58:59.67 spid7s FILESTREAM: effective level = 0, configured level = 0, file system access share name = 'SQLEXPRESS'. 2010-01-30 12:58:59.92 spid7s SQL Trace ID 1 was started by login "sa". 2010-01-30 12:58:59.94 spid7s Starting up database 'mssqlsystemresource'. 2010-01-30 12:58:59.95 spid7s The resource database build version is 10.00.2531. This is an informational message only. No user action is required. 2010-01-30 12:59:00.82 spid7s Server name is 'DELL\SQLEXPRESS'. This is an informational message only. No user action is required. 2010-01-30 12:59:00.83 Server A self-generated certificate was successfully loaded for encryption. 2010-01-30 12:59:00.84 Server Server is listening on [ 'any' 1433]. 2010-01-30 12:59:00.84 Server Server is listening on [ 'any' 1433]. 2010-01-30 12:59:00.84 spid10s Starting up database 'model'. 2010-01-30 12:59:00.85 Server Server local connection provider is ready to accept connection on [ \\.\pipe\SQLLocal\SQLEXPRESS ]. 2010-01-30 12:59:00.86 Server Server local connection provider is ready to accept connection on [ \\.\pipe\MSSQL$SQLEXPRESS\sql\query ]. 2010-01-30 12:59:00.86 Server Dedicated administrator connection support was not started because it is disabled on this edition of SQL Server. If you want to use a dedicated administrator connection, restart SQL Server using the trace flag 7806. This is an informational message only. No user action is required. 2010-01-30 12:59:00.87 Server The SQL Server Network Interface library could not register the Service Principal Name (SPN) for the SQL Server service. Error: 0x54b, state: 3. Failure to register an SPN may cause integrated authentication to fall back to NTLM instead of Kerberos. This is an informational message. Further action is only required if Kerberos authentication is required by authentication policies. 2010-01-30 12:59:00.87 spid7s Informational: No full-text supported languages found. 2010-01-30 12:59:00.87 Server SQL Server is now ready for client connections. This is an informational message; no user action is required. 2010-01-30 12:59:00.91 spid7s Starting up database 'msdb'. 2010-01-30 12:59:01.21 spid10s Clearing tempdb database. 2010-01-30 12:59:02.78 spid10s Starting up database 'tempdb'. 2010-01-30 12:59:03.30 spid13s The Service Broker protocol transport is disabled or not configured. 2010-01-30 12:59:03.30 spid13s The Database Mirroring protocol transport is disabled or not configured. 2010-01-30 12:59:03.31 spid7s Recovery is complete. This is an informational message only. No user action is required. 2010-01-30 12:59:03.31 spid13s Service Broker manager has started.

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  • Sorting Algorithms

    - by MarkPearl
    General Every time I go back to university I find myself wading through sorting algorithms and their implementation in C++. Up to now I haven’t really appreciated their true value. However as I discovered this last week with Dictionaries in C# – having a knowledge of some basic programming principles can greatly improve the performance of a system and make one think twice about how to tackle a problem. I’m going to cover briefly in this post the following: Selection Sort Insertion Sort Shellsort Quicksort Mergesort Heapsort (not complete) Selection Sort Array based selection sort is a simple approach to sorting an unsorted array. Simply put, it repeats two basic steps to achieve a sorted collection. It starts with a collection of data and repeatedly parses it, each time sorting out one element and reducing the size of the next iteration of parsed data by one. So the first iteration would go something like this… Go through the entire array of data and find the lowest value Place the value at the front of the array The second iteration would go something like this… Go through the array from position two (position one has already been sorted with the smallest value) and find the next lowest value in the array. Place the value at the second position in the array This process would be completed until the entire array had been sorted. A positive about selection sort is that it does not make many item movements. In fact, in a worst case scenario every items is only moved once. Selection sort is however a comparison intensive sort. If you had 10 items in a collection, just to parse the collection you would have 10+9+8+7+6+5+4+3+2=54 comparisons to sort regardless of how sorted the collection was to start with. If you think about it, if you applied selection sort to a collection already sorted, you would still perform relatively the same number of iterations as if it was not sorted at all. Many of the following algorithms try and reduce the number of comparisons if the list is already sorted – leaving one with a best case and worst case scenario for comparisons. Likewise different approaches have different levels of item movement. Depending on what is more expensive, one may give priority to one approach compared to another based on what is more expensive, a comparison or a item move. Insertion Sort Insertion sort tries to reduce the number of key comparisons it performs compared to selection sort by not “doing anything” if things are sorted. Assume you had an collection of numbers in the following order… 10 18 25 30 23 17 45 35 There are 8 elements in the list. If we were to start at the front of the list – 10 18 25 & 30 are already sorted. Element 5 (23) however is smaller than element 4 (30) and so needs to be repositioned. We do this by copying the value at element 5 to a temporary holder, and then begin shifting the elements before it up one. So… Element 5 would be copied to a temporary holder 10 18 25 30 23 17 45 35 – T 23 Element 4 would shift to Element 5 10 18 25 30 30 17 45 35 – T 23 Element 3 would shift to Element 4 10 18 25 25 30 17 45 35 – T 23 Element 2 (18) is smaller than the temporary holder so we put the temporary holder value into Element 3. 10 18 23 25 30 17 45 35 – T 23   We now have a sorted list up to element 6. And so we would repeat the same process by moving element 6 to a temporary value and then shifting everything up by one from element 2 to element 5. As you can see, one major setback for this technique is the shifting values up one – this is because up to now we have been considering the collection to be an array. If however the collection was a linked list, we would not need to shift values up, but merely remove the link from the unsorted value and “reinsert” it in a sorted position. Which would reduce the number of transactions performed on the collection. So.. Insertion sort seems to perform better than selection sort – however an implementation is slightly more complicated. This is typical with most sorting algorithms – generally, greater performance leads to greater complexity. Also, insertion sort performs better if a collection of data is already sorted. If for instance you were handed a sorted collection of size n, then only n number of comparisons would need to be performed to verify that it is sorted. It’s important to note that insertion sort (array based) performs a number item moves – every time an item is “out of place” several items before it get shifted up. Shellsort – Diminishing Increment Sort So up to now we have covered Selection Sort & Insertion Sort. Selection Sort makes many comparisons and insertion sort (with an array) has the potential of making many item movements. Shellsort is an approach that takes the normal insertion sort and tries to reduce the number of item movements. In Shellsort, elements in a collection are viewed as sub-collections of a particular size. Each sub-collection is sorted so that the elements that are far apart move closer to their final position. Suppose we had a collection of 15 elements… 10 20 15 45 36 48 7 60 18 50 2 19 43 30 55 First we may view the collection as 7 sub-collections and sort each sublist, lets say at intervals of 7 10 60 55 – 20 18 – 15 50 – 45 2 – 36 19 – 48 43 – 7 30 10 55 60 – 18 20 – 15 50 – 2 45 – 19 36 – 43 48 – 7 30 (Sorted) We then sort each sublist at a smaller inter – lets say 4 10 55 60 18 – 20 15 50 2 – 45 19 36 43 – 48 7 30 10 18 55 60 – 2 15 20 50 – 19 36 43 45 – 7 30 48 (Sorted) We then sort elements at a distance of 1 (i.e. we apply a normal insertion sort) 10 18 55 60 2 15 20 50 19 36 43 45 7 30 48 2 7 10 15 18 19 20 30 36 43 45 48 50 55 (Sorted) The important thing with shellsort is deciding on the increment sequence of each sub-collection. From what I can tell, there isn’t any definitive method and depending on the order of your elements, different increment sequences may perform better than others. There are however certain increment sequences that you may want to avoid. An even based increment sequence (e.g. 2 4 8 16 32 …) should typically be avoided because it does not allow for even elements to be compared with odd elements until the final sort phase – which in a way would negate many of the benefits of using sub-collections. The performance on the number of comparisons and item movements of Shellsort is hard to determine, however it is considered to be considerably better than the normal insertion sort. Quicksort Quicksort uses a divide and conquer approach to sort a collection of items. The collection is divided into two sub-collections – and the two sub-collections are sorted and combined into one list in such a way that the combined list is sorted. The algorithm is in general pseudo code below… Divide the collection into two sub-collections Quicksort the lower sub-collection Quicksort the upper sub-collection Combine the lower & upper sub-collection together As hinted at above, quicksort uses recursion in its implementation. The real trick with quicksort is to get the lower and upper sub-collections to be of equal size. The size of a sub-collection is determined by what value the pivot is. Once a pivot is determined, one would partition to sub-collections and then repeat the process on each sub collection until you reach the base case. With quicksort, the work is done when dividing the sub-collections into lower & upper collections. The actual combining of the lower & upper sub-collections at the end is relatively simple since every element in the lower sub-collection is smaller than the smallest element in the upper sub-collection. Mergesort With quicksort, the average-case complexity was O(nlog2n) however the worst case complexity was still O(N*N). Mergesort improves on quicksort by always having a complexity of O(nlog2n) regardless of the best or worst case. So how does it do this? Mergesort makes use of the divide and conquer approach to partition a collection into two sub-collections. It then sorts each sub-collection and combines the sorted sub-collections into one sorted collection. The general algorithm for mergesort is as follows… Divide the collection into two sub-collections Mergesort the first sub-collection Mergesort the second sub-collection Merge the first sub-collection and the second sub-collection As you can see.. it still pretty much looks like quicksort – so lets see where it differs… Firstly, mergesort differs from quicksort in how it partitions the sub-collections. Instead of having a pivot – merge sort partitions each sub-collection based on size so that the first and second sub-collection of relatively the same size. This dividing keeps getting repeated until the sub-collections are the size of a single element. If a sub-collection is one element in size – it is now sorted! So the trick is how do we put all these sub-collections together so that they maintain their sorted order. Sorted sub-collections are merged into a sorted collection by comparing the elements of the sub-collection and then adjusting the sorted collection. Lets have a look at a few examples… Assume 2 sub-collections with 1 element each 10 & 20 Compare the first element of the first sub-collection with the first element of the second sub-collection. Take the smallest of the two and place it as the first element in the sorted collection. In this scenario 10 is smaller than 20 so 10 is taken from sub-collection 1 leaving that sub-collection empty, which means by default the next smallest element is in sub-collection 2 (20). So the sorted collection would be 10 20 Lets assume 2 sub-collections with 2 elements each 10 20 & 15 19 So… again we would Compare 10 with 15 – 10 is the winner so we add it to our sorted collection (10) leaving us with 20 & 15 19 Compare 20 with 15 – 15 is the winner so we add it to our sorted collection (10 15) leaving us with 20 & 19 Compare 20 with 19 – 19 is the winner so we add it to our sorted collection (10 15 19) leaving us with 20 & _ 20 is by default the winner so our sorted collection is 10 15 19 20. Make sense? Heapsort (still needs to be completed) So by now I am tired of sorting algorithms and trying to remember why they were so important. I think every year I go through this stuff I wonder to myself why are we made to learn about selection sort and insertion sort if they are so bad – why didn’t we just skip to Mergesort & Quicksort. I guess the only explanation I have for this is that sometimes you learn things so that you can implement them in future – and other times you learn things so that you know it isn’t the best way of implementing things and that you don’t need to implement it in future. Anyhow… luckily this is going to be the last one of my sorts for today. The first step in heapsort is to convert a collection of data into a heap. After the data is converted into a heap, sorting begins… So what is the definition of a heap? If we have to convert a collection of data into a heap, how do we know when it is a heap and when it is not? The definition of a heap is as follows: A heap is a list in which each element contains a key, such that the key in the element at position k in the list is at least as large as the key in the element at position 2k +1 (if it exists) and 2k + 2 (if it exists). Does that make sense? At first glance I’m thinking what the heck??? But then after re-reading my notes I see that we are doing something different – up to now we have really looked at data as an array or sequential collection of data that we need to sort – a heap represents data in a slightly different way – although the data is stored in a sequential collection, for a sequential collection of data to be in a valid heap – it is “semi sorted”. Let me try and explain a bit further with an example… Example 1 of Potential Heap Data Assume we had a collection of numbers as follows 1[1] 2[2] 3[3] 4[4] 5[5] 6[6] For this to be a valid heap element with value of 1 at position [1] needs to be greater or equal to the element at position [3] (2k +1) and position [4] (2k +2). So in the above example, the collection of numbers is not in a valid heap. Example 2 of Potential Heap Data Lets look at another collection of numbers as follows 6[1] 5[2] 4[3] 3[4] 2[5] 1[6] Is this a valid heap? Well… element with the value 6 at position 1 must be greater or equal to the element at position [3] and position [4]. Is 6 > 4 and 6 > 3? Yes it is. Lets look at element 5 as position 2. It must be greater than the values at [4] & [5]. Is 5 > 3 and 5 > 2? Yes it is. If you continued to examine this second collection of data you would find that it is in a valid heap based on the definition of a heap.

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  • Transformation of Product Management in Telecommunications for Rapid Launch of Next Generation Products

    - by raul.goycoolea
    @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }a:link, span.MsoHyperlink { color: blue; text-decoration: underline; }a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed { color: purple; text-decoration: underline; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } The Telecom industry continues to evolve through disruptive products, uncertain markets, shorter product lifecycles and convergence of technologies. Today’s market has moved from network centric to consumer centric and focuses primarily on the customer experience. It has resulted in several product management challenges such as an increased complexity and volume of offerings, creating product variants, accelerating time-to-market, ability to provide multiple product views for varied stakeholders, leveraging OSS intelligence to BSS layer, product co-creation and increasing audit and security concerns for service providers. The document discusses how enterprise product management enabled by PLM-based product catalogue solutions helps to launch next generation products rapidly in the context of the Telecommunication Industry.   1.0.       Introduction   Figure 1: Business Scenario   Modern business demands the launch of complex products in a very short timeframe and effecting changes in the price plan faster without IT intervention. One of the key transformation initiatives companies are focusing on is in the area of product management transformation and operational efficiency improvement. As part of these initiatives, companies are investing in best- in-class COTs-based Product Management solutions developed on industry-wide standards.   The new COTs packages are planned to integrate with existing or new B/OSS systems to provide a strategic end-to-end agile solution for reduced time-to-market and order journey time. In addition, system rationalization is being undertaken to phase out legacy systems and migrate to strategic systems.   2.0.       An Overview of Product Management in Telecom   Product data in telecom is multi- dimensional and difficult to manage. It increased significantly due to the complexity of the product, product offerings on the converged network, increased volume of offerings, bundled offering structures and ever increasing regulatory requirements.   In addition, the shrinking product lifecycle in telecom makes it difficult to manage the dynamic product data. Mergers and acquisitions coupled with organic growth pose major challenges in product portfolio management. It is a roadblock in the journey towards becoming an agile organization.       Figure 2: Complexity in Product Management   Network Technology’ is the new dimension in telecom product management where the same products are realized through different networks i.e., Soiled network to Converged network. Consequently, the product solution is different.     Figure 3: Current Scenario - Pain Points in Product Management   The major business implications arising out of the current scenario are slow time-to-market and an inefficient process that affects innovation.   3.0. Transformation of Next Generation Product Management   Companies must focus on their Product Management Transformation Journey in the areas of:   ·       Management of single truth of product information across the organization/geographies which is currently managed in heterogeneous systems   ·       Management of the Intellectual Property (IP) on the product concept and partnership in the design of discrete components to integrate into the system   ·       Leveraging structured and unstructured product data within the extended enterprise to extract consumer insights and drive innovation   ·       Management of effective operational separation to comply with regulatory bodies   ·       Reuse of existing designs and add relevant features such as value-added services to enable effective product bundling     Figure 4: Next generation needs   PLM-based Enterprise Product Catalogue solutions efficiently address the above requirements and act as an enabler towards product management transformation and rapid product launch.   4.0. PLM-based Enterprise Product Management     Figure 5: PLM-based Enterprise Product Mastering   Enterprise Product Management (EPM) enables the business to manage complex product attributes of data in complex environments. Product Mastering helps create a 'single view' of the product by creating a business-driven, IT-supported environment where a global 'single truth record' is created, managed and reused.   4.1 The Business Case for Telco PLM-based solutions for Enterprise Product Management   ·       Telco PLM-based Product Mastering solutions provide a centralized authoring environment for product definition and control of all product data and rules   ·       PLM packages are designed to support multiple perspectives of product data (ordering perspective, billing perspective, provisioning perspective)   ·       Maintains relationships/links between different elements of the entire product definition   ·       Telco PLM packages are specialized in next generation lifecycle management requirements of products such as revision and state management, test and release management, role management and impact analysis)   ·       Takes into consideration all aspects of OSS product requirements compared to CRM product catalogue solutions where the product data managed is mostly order oriented and transactional     ·       New breed of Telco PLM packages are designed with 'open' standards such as SID and eTOM. They are interoperable, support integration frameworks such as subscription and notification.   ·       Telco PLM packages have developed good collaboration frameworks to integrate suppliers and partners into the product development value chain   4.2 Various Architectures/Approaches for Product Mastering using Telco PLM systems   4. 2.a Single Central Product Management (Mastering) Approach   Figure 6: Single Central Product Management (Master) Approach       This approach is implemented across verticals such as aerospace and automotive. It focuses on a physically centralized product master to which other sources are dependent on. The product definition data (Product bundles, service bundles, price plans, offers and discounts, product configuration rules and market campaigns) is created and maintained physically in a centralized environment. In addition, the product definition/authoring environment is centralized. The existing legacy product definition data available in CRM product catalogue, billing catalogue and the legacy product catalogue is migrated to the centralized PLM-based Enterprise Product Management solution.   Architectural changes must be made in the existing business landscape of applications to create and revise data because the applications have to refer to the central repository for approvals and validation of product configurations. It is achieved by modifying how the applications write data or how the applications can be adapted to use the rules to be managed and published.   Complete product configuration validation will be done in enterprise / central product catalogue and final configuration will be sent to the B/OSS system through the SOA compliant product distribution architecture. The approach/architecture enables greater control in terms of product data management and product data governance.   4.2.b Federated Product Management (Mastering) Architecture     Figure 7: Federated Product Management (Mastering) Architecture   In the federated product mastering approach, the basic unique product definition data (product id, description product hierarchy, basic price plans and simple product design rules) will be centrally created and will be maintained. And, the advanced product definition (Product bundling, promotions, offers & discount plans) will be created in respective down stream OSS systems. The advanced product definition (Product bundling, promotions, offers and discount plans) will be created in respective downstream OSS systems.   For example, basic product definitions such as attributes, product hierarchy and basic price plans will be created and maintained in Enterprise/Central product reference catalogue and distributed to downstream OSS systems. Respective downstream OSS systems build product bundles, promotions, advanced price plans over the basic product definition and master the advanced product definition. Central reference database accesses the respective other source product master data and assembles a point-in-time consolidated view of the product. The approach is typically adapted in some merger and acquisition scenarios where there is a low probability of a central physical authority managing the data. In addition, the migration effort in this case is minimal and there are no big architectural changes to the organization application landscape. However, this approach will not result in better product data management and data governance.   5.0 Customer Scenario – Before EPC deployment   A leading global telecommunications service provider wanted to launch a quad play and triple play service offering in the shortest possible lead time. The service provider was offering Broadband and VoIP services to customers. The company wanted to reuse a majority of the Broadband services and price plans and bundle them with new wireless and IPTV services for quad play and triple play. The challenges in launching the new service offerings were:       Figure 8: Triple Play Plan   ·       Broadband product data was stored in multiple product catalogues (CRM catalogue, Billing catalogue, spread sheets)   ·       Product managers spent a lot of time performing tasks involving duplication or re-keying of data. Manual effort caused errors, cost and time over-runs.   ·       No effective product and price data governance mechanism. Price change issues arising from the lack of data consistency across systems resulted in leakage of customer value and revenue.   ·       Product data had re-usability issues and was not in a structured format. It resulted in uncontrolled product portfolio creation and product management issues.   ·       Lack of enterprise product model resulted into product distribution challenges and thus delays in product launch.   ·       Designers are constrained by existing legacy product management solutions to model product/service requirements and product configuration rules such as upgrading, downgrading and cross selling.    5.1 Customer Scenario - After EPC deployment     Figure 9: SOA-based end-to-end EPC Solution   The company deployed PLM-based Enterprise Product Catalogue solutions to launch quad play service after evaluating various product catalogues. The broadband product offering, service and price data were migrated to the new system, and the product and price plan hierarchy for new offerings were created using the entities defined in the Enterprise Product Model. Supplier product catalogue data such as routers and set up boxes were loaded onto the new solution through SOA-based web service. Price plans and configuration rules were built in the new system. The validated final product configurations were extracted from the product catalogue in a SID format and were distributed to the downstream B/OSS systems through exposed SOA-based web services. The transformations required for the B/OSS system were handled using the transformation layer as part of the solution.   6.0 How PLM enabled Product Management Transformation         Figure 10: Product Management Transformation     PLM-based Product Catalogue Solution helped the customer reduce the product launch cycle time by 30% and enable transformation of Product Management for next generation services.   7.0 Conclusion   On the one hand, the telecom industry is undergoing changes due to disruptions, uncertain product markets and increased complexity of products. On the other hand, the ARPU is decreasing year-on-year. Communications Service Providers are embarking on convergence, bundled service offerings, flexibility to cross-sell and up-sell, introduce new value-added services, leverage Web 2.0 concepts and network capabilities. Consequently, large scale IT transformation initiatives to improve their ARPU supporting network and business transformations are a business imperative. Product Management has become a focus area. Companies are investing in best-in- class COTS solutions to reduce time-to-market, ensure rapid service delivery and improve operational efficiency. An efficient PLM-based enterprise product mastering solution plays a key role in achieving zero touch automation and rapid product launch.   References:   1.     Preston G.Smith, Donald G.Reineristsem, Van Nostrand Reinhold “Developing Products in Half the time”.   2.     John G. Innes, "Achieving Successful Product Change", Pitman Publishing.   3.     D T Pham and R M Setchi (16th Jan, 2001) "Authoring environment for documentation development" University of Wales Cardiff, U.K., Proceedings on Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Vol. 215, Part B.   4.     Oracle Product Hub for Communications:   http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/master-data-management/product-hub-082059.html  

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  • Exalogic 2.0.1 Tea Break Snippets - Scripting Asset Creation

    - by The Old Toxophilist
    So far in this series we have looked at creating asset within the EMOC BUI but the Exalogic 2.0.1 installation also provide the Iaas cli as an alternative to most of the common functionality available within EMOC. The IaaS cli interface provides access to the functions that are available to a user logged into the BUI with the CloudUser Role. As such not all functionality is available from the command line interface however having said that the IaaS cli provides all the functionality required to create the Assets within a specific Account (Tenure). Because these action are common and repeatable I decided to wrap the functionality within a simple script that takes a simple input file and creates the Asset. Following the Script through will show us the required steps needed to create the various Assets within an Account and hence I will work through the various functions within the script below describing the steps. You will note from the various steps within the script that it is designed to pause between actions allowing the proceeding action to complete. The reason for this is because we could swamp EMOC with a series of actions and may end up with a situation where we are trying to action a Volume attached before the creation of the vServer and Volume have completed. processAssets() This function simply reads through the passed input file identifying what assets need to be created. An example of the input file can be found below. It can be seen that the input file can be used to create Assets in multiple Accounts during a single run. The order of the entries define the functions that need to be actioned as follows: Input Command Iaas Actions Parameters Production:Connect akm-describe-accounts akm-create-access-key iaas-create-key-pair iaas-describe-vnets iaas-describe-vserver-types iaas-describe-server-templates Username Password Production:Create|vServer iaas-run-vserver vServer Name vServer Type Name Template Name Comma separated list of network names which the vServer will connect to. Comma separated list of IPs for the specified networks. Production:Create|Volume iaas-create-volume Volume Name Volume Size Production:Attach|Volume iaas-attach-volumes-to-vserver vServer Name Comma separated list of volume names Production:Disconnect iaas-delete-key-pair akm-delete-access-key None connectToAccount() It can be seen from the connectToAccount function that before we can execute any Asset creation we must first connect to the appropriate account. To do this we will need the ID associated with the Account. This can be found by executing the akm-describe-accounts cli command which will return a list of all Accounts and there IDs. Once we have the Account ID we generate and Access key using the akm-create-access-key command and then a keypair with the iaas-create-key-pair command. At this point we now have all the information we need to access the specific named account. createVServer() This function simply retrieved the information from the input line and then will create the vServer using the iaas-run-vserver cli command. Reading the function you will notice that it takes the various input names for vServer Type, Template and Networks and converts them into the appropriate IDs. The IaaS cli will not work directly with component names and hence all IDs need to be found. createVolume() Function that simply takes the Volume name and Size then executes the iaas-create-volume command to create the volume. attachVolume() Takes the name of the Volume, which we may have just created, and a Volume then identifies the appropriate IDs before assigning the Volume to the vServer with the iaas-attach-volumes-to-vserver. disconnectFromAccount() Once we have finished connecting to the Account we simply remove the key pair with iaas-delete-key-pair and the access key with akm-delete-access-key although it may be useful to keep this if ssh is required and you do not subsequently modify the sshd information to allow unsecured access. By default the key is required for ssh access when a vServer is created from the command-line. CreateAssets.sh 1 export OCCLI=/opt/sun/occli/bin 2 export IAAS_HOME=/opt/oracle/iaas/cli 3 export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/latest 4 export IAAS_BASE_URL=https://127.0.0.1 5 export IAAS_ACCESS_KEY_FILE=iaas_access.key 6 export KEY_FILE=iaas_access.pub 7 #CloudUser used to create vServers & Volumes 8 export IAAS_USER=exaprod 9 export IAAS_PASSWORD_FILE=root.pwd 10 export KEY_NAME=cli.recreate 11 export INPUT_FILE=CreateAssets.in 12 13 export ACCOUNTS_FILE=accounts.out 14 export VOLUMES_FILE=volumes.out 15 export DISTGRPS_FILE=distgrp.out 16 export VNETS_FILE=vnets.out 17 export VSERVER_TYPES_FILE=vstype.out 18 export VSERVER_FILE=vserver.out 19 export VSERVER_TEMPLATES=template.out 20 export KEY_PAIRS=keypairs.out 21 22 PROCESSING_ACCOUNT="" 23 24 function cleanTempFiles() { 25 rm -f $ACCOUNTS_FILE $VOLUMES_FILE $DISTGRPS_FILE $VNETS_FILE $VSERVER_TYPES_FILE $VSERVER_FILE $VSERVER_TEMPLATES $KEY_PAIRS $IAAS_PASSWORD_FILE $KEY_FILE $IAAS_ACCESS_KEY_FILE 26 } 27 28 function connectToAccount() { 29 if [[ "$ACCOUNT" != "$PROCESSING_ACCOUNT" ]] 30 then 31 if [[ "" != "$PROCESSING_ACCOUNT" ]] 32 then 33 $IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-delete-key-pair --key-name $KEY_NAME --access-key-file $IAAS_ACCESS_KEY_FILE 34 $IAAS_HOME/bin/akm-delete-access-key $AK 35 fi 36 PROCESSING_ACCOUNT=$ACCOUNT 37 IAAS_USER=$ACCOUNT_USER 38 echo "$ACCOUNT_PASSWORD" > $IAAS_PASSWORD_FILE 39 $IAAS_HOME/bin/akm-describe-accounts --sep "|" > $ACCOUNTS_FILE 40 while read line 41 do 42 ACCOUNT_ID=${line%%|*} 43 line=${line#*|} 44 ACCOUNT_NAME=${line%%|*} 45 # echo "Id = $ACCOUNT_ID" 46 # echo "Name = $ACCOUNT_NAME" 47 if [[ "$ACCOUNT_NAME" == "$ACCOUNT" ]] 48 then 49 echo "Found Production Account $line" 50 AK=`$IAAS_HOME/bin/akm-create-access-key --account $ACCOUNT_ID --access-key-file $IAAS_ACCESS_KEY_FILE` 51 KEYPAIR=`$IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-create-key-pair --key-name $KEY_NAME --key-file $KEY_FILE` 52 echo "Connected to $ACCOUNT_NAME" 53 break 54 fi 55 done < $ACCOUNTS_FILE 56 fi 57 } 58 59 function disconnectFromAccount() { 60 $IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-delete-key-pair --key-name $KEY_NAME --access-key-file $IAAS_ACCESS_KEY_FILE 61 $IAAS_HOME/bin/akm-delete-access-key $AK 62 PROCESSING_ACCOUNT="" 63 } 64 65 function getNetworks() { 66 $IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-describe-vnets --sep "|" > $VNETS_FILE 67 } 68 69 function getVSTypes() { 70 $IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-describe-vserver-types --sep "|" > $VSERVER_TYPES_FILE 71 } 72 73 function getTemplates() { 74 $IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-describe-server-templates --sep "|" > $VSERVER_TEMPLATES 75 } 76 77 function getVolumes() { 78 $IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-describe-volumes --sep "|" > $VOLUMES_FILE 79 } 80 81 function getVServers() { 82 $IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-describe-vservers --sep "|" > $VSERVER_FILE 83 } 84 85 function getNetworkId() { 86 while read line 87 do 88 NETWORK_ID=${line%%|*} 89 line=${line#*|} 90 NAME=${line%%|*} 91 if [[ "$NAME" == "$NETWORK_NAME" ]] 92 then 93 break 94 fi 95 done < $VNETS_FILE 96 } 97 98 function getVSTypeId() { 99 while read line 100 do 101 VSTYPE_ID=${line%%|*} 102 line=${line#*|} 103 NAME=${line%%|*} 104 if [[ "$VSTYPE_NAME" == "$NAME" ]] 105 then 106 break 107 fi 108 done < $VSERVER_TYPES_FILE 109 } 110 111 function getTemplateId() { 112 while read line 113 do 114 TEMPLATE_ID=${line%%|*} 115 line=${line#*|} 116 NAME=${line%%|*} 117 if [[ "$TEMPLATE_NAME" == "$NAME" ]] 118 then 119 break 120 fi 121 done < $VSERVER_TEMPLATES 122 } 123 124 function getVolumeId() { 125 while read line 126 do 127 export VOLUME_ID=${line%%|*} 128 line=${line#*|} 129 NAME=${line%%|*} 130 if [[ "$NAME" == "$VOLUME_NAME" ]] 131 then 132 break; 133 fi 134 done < $VOLUMES_FILE 135 } 136 137 function getVServerId() { 138 while read line 139 do 140 VSERVER_ID=${line%%|*} 141 line=${line#*|} 142 NAME=${line%%|*} 143 if [[ "$VSERVER_NAME" == "$NAME" ]] 144 then 145 break; 146 fi 147 done < $VSERVER_FILE 148 } 149 150 function getVServerState() { 151 getVServers 152 while read line 153 do 154 VSERVER_ID=${line%%|*} 155 line=${line#*|} 156 NAME=${line%%|*} 157 line=${line#*|} 158 line=${line#*|} 159 VSERVER_STATE=${line%%|*} 160 if [[ "$VSERVER_NAME" == "$NAME" ]] 161 then 162 break; 163 fi 164 done < $VSERVER_FILE 165 } 166 167 function pauseUntilVServerRunning() { 168 # Wait until the Server is running before creating the next 169 getVServerState 170 while [[ "$VSERVER_STATE" != "RUNNING" ]] 171 do 172 getVServerState 173 echo "$NAME $VSERVER_STATE" 174 if [[ "$VSERVER_STATE" != "RUNNING" ]] 175 then 176 echo "Sleeping......." 177 sleep 60 178 fi 179 if [[ "$VSERVER_STATE" == "FAILED" ]] 180 then 181 echo "Will Delete $NAME in 5 Minutes....." 182 sleep 300 183 deleteVServer 184 echo "Deleted $NAME waiting 5 Minutes....." 185 sleep 300 186 break 187 fi 188 done 189 # Lets pause for a minute or two 190 echo "Just Chilling......" 191 sleep 60 192 echo "Ahhhhh we're getting there......." 193 sleep 60 194 echo "I'm almost at one with the universe......." 195 sleep 60 196 echo "Bong Reality Check !" 197 } 198 199 function deleteVServer() { 200 $IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-terminate-vservers --force --vserver-ids $VSERVER_ID 201 } 202 203 function createVServer() { 204 VSERVER_NAME=${ASSET_DETAILS%%|*} 205 ASSET_DETAILS=${ASSET_DETAILS#*|} 206 VSTYPE_NAME=${ASSET_DETAILS%%|*} 207 ASSET_DETAILS=${ASSET_DETAILS#*|} 208 TEMPLATE_NAME=${ASSET_DETAILS%%|*} 209 ASSET_DETAILS=${ASSET_DETAILS#*|} 210 NETWORK_NAMES=${ASSET_DETAILS%%|*} 211 ASSET_DETAILS=${ASSET_DETAILS#*|} 212 IP_ADDRESSES=${ASSET_DETAILS%%|*} 213 # Get Ids associated with names 214 getVSTypeId 215 getTemplateId 216 # Convert Network Names to Ids 217 NETWORK_IDS="" 218 while true 219 do 220 NETWORK_NAME=${NETWORK_NAMES%%,*} 221 NETWORK_NAMES=${NETWORK_NAMES#*,} 222 getNetworkId 223 if [[ "$NETWORK_IDS" != "" ]] 224 then 225 NETWORK_IDS="$NETWORK_IDS,$NETWORK_ID" 226 else 227 NETWORK_IDS=$NETWORK_ID 228 fi 229 if [[ "$NETWORK_NAME" == "$NETWORK_NAMES" ]] 230 then 231 break 232 fi 233 done 234 # Create vServer 235 echo "About to execute : $IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-run-vserver --name $VSERVER_NAME --key-name $KEY_NAME --vserver-type $VSTYPE_ID --server-template-id $TEMPLATE_ID --vnets $NETWORK_IDS --ip-addresses $IP_ADDRESSES" 236 $IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-run-vserver --name $VSERVER_NAME --key-name $KEY_NAME --vserver-type $VSTYPE_ID --server-template-id $TEMPLATE_ID --vnets $NETWORK_IDS --ip-addresses $IP_ADDRESSES 237 pauseUntilVServerRunning 238 } 239 240 function createVolume() { 241 VOLUME_NAME=${ASSET_DETAILS%%|*} 242 ASSET_DETAILS=${ASSET_DETAILS#*|} 243 VOLUME_SIZE=${ASSET_DETAILS%%|*} 244 # Create Volume 245 echo "About to execute : $IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-create-volume --name $VOLUME_NAME --size $VOLUME_SIZE" 246 $IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-create-volume --name $VOLUME_NAME --size $VOLUME_SIZE 247 # Lets pause 248 echo "Just Waiting 30 Seconds......" 249 sleep 30 250 } 251 252 function attachVolume() { 253 VSERVER_NAME=${ASSET_DETAILS%%|*} 254 ASSET_DETAILS=${ASSET_DETAILS#*|} 255 VOLUME_NAMES=${ASSET_DETAILS%%|*} 256 # Get vServer Id 257 getVServerId 258 # Convert Volume Names to Ids 259 VOLUME_IDS="" 260 while true 261 do 262 VOLUME_NAME=${VOLUME_NAMES%%,*} 263 VOLUME_NAMES=${VOLUME_NAMES#*,} 264 getVolumeId 265 if [[ "$VOLUME_IDS" != "" ]] 266 then 267 VOLUME_IDS="$VOLUME_IDS,$VOLUME_ID" 268 else 269 VOLUME_IDS=$VOLUME_ID 270 fi 271 if [[ "$VOLUME_NAME" == "$VOLUME_NAMES" ]] 272 then 273 break 274 fi 275 done 276 # Attach Volumes 277 echo "About to execute : $IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-attach-volumes-to-vserver --vserver-id $VSERVER_ID --volume-ids $VOLUME_IDS" 278 $IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-attach-volumes-to-vserver --vserver-id $VSERVER_ID --volume-ids $VOLUME_IDS 279 # Lets pause 280 echo "Just Waiting 30 Seconds......" 281 sleep 30 282 } 283 284 function processAssets() { 285 while read line 286 do 287 ACCOUNT=${line%%:*} 288 line=${line#*:} 289 ACTION=${line%%|*} 290 line=${line#*|} 291 if [[ "$ACTION" == "Connect" ]] 292 then 293 ACCOUNT_USER=${line%%|*} 294 line=${line#*|} 295 ACCOUNT_PASSWORD=${line%%|*} 296 connectToAccount 297 298 ## Account Info 299 getNetworks 300 getVSTypes 301 getTemplates 302 303 continue 304 fi 305 if [[ "$ACTION" == "Create" ]] 306 then 307 ASSET=${line%%|*} 308 line=${line#*|} 309 ASSET_DETAILS=$line 310 if [[ "$ASSET" == "vServer" ]] 311 then 312 createVServer 313 314 continue 315 fi 316 if [[ "$ASSET" == "Volume" ]] 317 then 318 createVolume 319 320 continue 321 fi 322 fi 323 if [[ "$ACTION" == "Attach" ]] 324 then 325 ASSET=${line%%|*} 326 line=${line#*|} 327 ASSET_DETAILS=$line 328 if [[ "$ASSET" == "Volume" ]] 329 then 330 getVolumes 331 getVServers 332 attachVolume 333 334 continue 335 fi 336 fi 337 if [[ "$ACTION" == "Connect" ]] 338 then 339 disconnectFromAccount 340 341 continue 342 fi 343 done < $INPUT_FILE 344 } 345 346 # Should Parameterise this 347 348 while [ $# -gt 0 ] 349 do 350 case "$1" in 351 -a) INPUT_FILE="$2"; shift;; 352 *) echo ""; echo >&2 \ 353 "usage: $0 [-a <Asset Definition File>] (Default is CreateAssets.in)" 354 echo""; exit 1;; 355 *) break;; 356 esac 357 shift 358 done 359 360 361 362 363 processAssets 364 365 echo "**************************************" 366 echo "***** Finished Creating Assets *****" 367 echo "**************************************" 368 CreateAssetsProd.in Production:Connect|exaprod|welcome1 Production:Create|vServer|VS006|VSTProduction|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-otd-prod,vn-prod-web,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.223.13,192.168.0.13,10.117.81.67,172.17.0.14 Production:Create|vServer|VS007|VSTProduction|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-otd-prod,vn-prod-web,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.223.14,192.168.0.14,10.117.81.68,172.17.0.15 Production:Create|vServer|VS008|VSTProduction|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-wls-prod,vn-prod-web,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.225.61,192.168.0.61,10.117.81.61,172.17.0.16 Production:Create|vServer|VS009|VSTProduction|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-wls-prod,vn-prod-web,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.225.62,192.168.0.62,10.117.81.62,172.17.0.17 Production:Create|vServer|VS000|VSTProduction|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-wls-prod,vn-prod-web,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.225.63,192.168.0.63,10.117.81.63,172.17.0.18 Production:Create|vServer|VS001|VSTProduction|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-wls-prod,vn-prod-web,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.225.64,192.168.0.64,10.117.81.64,172.17.0.19 Production:Create|vServer|VS002|VSTProduction|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-wls-prod,vn-prod-web,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.225.65,192.168.0.65,10.117.81.65,172.17.0.20 Production:Create|vServer|VS003|VSTProduction|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-wls-prod,vn-prod-web,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.225.66,192.168.0.66,10.117.81.66,172.17.0.21 Production:Create|Volume|VS006|50 Production:Create|Volume|VS007|50 Production:Create|Volume|VS008|50 Production:Create|Volume|VS009|50 Production:Create|Volume|VS000|50 Production:Create|Volume|VS001|50 Production:Create|Volume|VS002|50 Production:Create|Volume|VS003|50 Production:Attach|Volume|VS006|VS006 Production:Attach|Volume|VS007|VS007 Production:Attach|Volume|VS008|VS008 Production:Attach|Volume|VS009|VS009 Production:Attach|Volume|VS000|VS000 Production:Attach|Volume|VS001|VS001 Production:Attach|Volume|VS002|VS002 Production:Attach|Volume|VS003|VS003 Production:Disconnect Development:Connect|exadev|welcome1 Development:Create|vServer|VS014|VSTDevelopment|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-development,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.224.24,10.117.81.71,172.17.0.24 Development:Create|vServer|VS015|VSTDevelopment|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-development,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.224.25,10.117.81.72,172.17.0.25 Development:Create|vServer|VS016|VSTDevelopment|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-development,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.224.26,10.117.81.73,172.17.0.26 Development:Create|vServer|VS017|VSTDevelopment|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-development,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.224.27,10.117.81.74,172.17.0.27 Development:Create|vServer|VS018|VSTDevelopment|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-development,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.224.28,10.117.81.75,172.17.0.28 Development:Create|vServer|VS019|VSTDevelopment|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-development,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.224.29,10.117.81.76,172.17.0.29 Development:Create|vServer|VS020|VSTDevelopment|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-development,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.224.30,10.117.81.77,172.17.0.30 Development:Create|vServer|VS021|VSTDevelopment|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-development,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.224.31,10.117.81.78,172.17.0.31 Development:Create|vServer|VS022|VSTDevelopment|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-development,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.224.32,10.117.81.79,172.17.0.32 Development:Create|vServer|VS023|VSTDevelopment|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-development,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.224.33,10.117.81.80,172.17.0.33 Development:Create|vServer|VS024|VSTDevelopment|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-development,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.224.34,10.117.81.81,172.17.0.34 Development:Create|vServer|VS025|VSTDevelopment|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-development,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.224.35,10.117.81.82,172.17.0.35 Development:Create|vServer|VS026|VSTDevelopment|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-development,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.224.36,10.117.81.83,172.17.0.36 Development:Create|vServer|VS027|VSTDevelopment|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-development,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.224.37,10.117.81.84,172.17.0.37 Development:Create|Volume|VS014|50 Development:Create|Volume|VS015|50 Development:Create|Volume|VS016|50 Development:Create|Volume|VS017|50 Development:Create|Volume|VS018|50 Development:Create|Volume|VS019|50 Development:Create|Volume|VS020|50 Development:Create|Volume|VS021|50 Development:Create|Volume|VS022|50 Development:Create|Volume|VS023|50 Development:Create|Volume|VS024|50 Development:Create|Volume|VS025|50 Development:Create|Volume|VS026|50 Development:Create|Volume|VS027|50 Development:Attach|Volume|VS014|VS014 Development:Attach|Volume|VS015|VS015 Development:Attach|Volume|VS016|VS016 Development:Attach|Volume|VS017|VS017 Development:Attach|Volume|VS018|VS018 Development:Attach|Volume|VS019|VS019 Development:Attach|Volume|VS020|VS020 Development:Attach|Volume|VS021|VS021 Development:Attach|Volume|VS022|VS022 Development:Attach|Volume|VS023|VS023 Development:Attach|Volume|VS024|VS024 Development:Attach|Volume|VS025|VS025 Development:Attach|Volume|VS026|VS026 Development:Attach|Volume|VS027|VS027 Development:Disconnect This entry was originally posted on the The Old Toxophilist Site.

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  • Upload Certificate and Key to RUEI in order to decrypt SSL traffic

    - by stefan.thieme(at)oracle.com
    So you want to monitor encrypted traffic with your RUEI collector ?Actually this is an easy thing if you follow the lines below...I will start out with creating a pair of snakeoil (so called self-signed) certificate and key with the make-ssl-cert tool which comes pre-packaged with apache only for the purpose of this example.$ sudo make-ssl-cert generate-default-snakeoil$ sudo ls -l /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     615 2010-06-07 10:03 /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem-rw-r----- 1 root ssl-cert 891 2010-06-07 10:03 /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.keyRUEI Configuration of Security SSL Keys You will most likely get these two files from your Certificate Authority (CA) and/or your system administrators should be able to extract this from your WebServer or LoadBalancer handling SSL encryption for your infrastructure.Now let's look at the content of these two files, the certificate (apache assumes this is in PEM format) is called a public key and the private key is used by the apache server to encrypt traffic for a client using the certificate to initiate the SSL connection with the server.In case you already know that these two match, you simply have to paste them in one text file and upload this text file to your RUEI instance.$ sudo cat /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key > /tmp/ruei.cert_and_key$ sudo cat /tmp/ruei.cert_and_key -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----- MIIBmTCCAQICCQD7O3XXwVilWzANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQUFADARMQ8wDQYDVQQDEwZ1 YnVudHUwHhcNMTAwNjA3MDgwMzUzWhcNMjAwNjA0MDgwMzUzWjARMQ8wDQYDVQQD EwZ1YnVudHUwgZ8wDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQADgY0AMIGJAoGBALbs+JnI+p+K7Iqa SQZdnYBxOpdRH0/9jt1QKvmH68v81h9+f1Z2rVR7Zrd/l+ruE3H9VvuzxMlKuMH7 qBX/gmjDZTlj9WJM+zc0tSk+e2udy9he20lGzTxv0vaykJkuKcvSWNk4WE9NuAdg IHZvjKgoTSVmvM1ApMCg69nyOy97AgMBAAEwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEFBQADgYEAk2rv VEkxR1qPSpJiudDuGUHtWKBKWiWbmSwI3REZT+0vG+YDG5a55NdxgRk3zhQntqF7 gNYjKxblBByBpY7W0ci00kf7kFgvXWMeU96NSQJdnid/YxzQYn0dGL2rSh1dwdPN NPQlNSfnEQ1yxFevR7aRdCqTbTXU3mxi8YaSscE= -----END CERTIFICATE----- -----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY----- MIICXgIBAAKBgQC27PiZyPqfiuyKmkkGXZ2AcTqXUR9P/Y7dUCr5h+vL/NYffn9W dq1Ue2a3f5fq7hNx/Vb7s8TJSrjB+6gV/4Jow2U5Y/ViTPs3NLUpPntrncvYXttJ Rs08b9L2spCZLinL0ljZOFhPTbgHYCB2b4yoKE0lZrzNQKTAoOvZ8jsvewIDAQAB AoGBAJ7LCWeeUwnKNFqBYmD3RTFpmX4furnal3lBDX0945BZtJr0WZ/6N679zIYA aiVTdGfgjvDC9lHy3n3uctRd0Jqdh2QoSSxNBhq5elIApNIIYzu7w/XI/VhGcDlA b6uadURQEC2q+M8YYjw3mwR2omhCWlHIViOHe/9T8jfP/8pxAkEA7k39WRcQildH DFKcj7gurqlkElHysacMTFWf0ZDTEUS6bdkmNXwK6mH63BlmGLrYAP5AMgKgeDf8 D+WRfv8YKQJBAMSCQ7UGDN3ysyfIIrdc1RBEAk4BOrKHKtD5Ux0z5lcQkaCYrK8J DuSldreN2yOhS99/S4CRWmGkTj04wRSnjwMCQQCaR5mW3QzTU4/m1XEQxsBKSdZE 2hMSmsCmhuSyK13Kl0FPLr/C7qyuc4KSjksABa8kbXaoKfUz/6LLs+ePXZ2JAkAv +mIPk5+WnQgS4XFgdYDrzL8HTpOHPSs+BHG/goltnnT/0ebvgXWqa5+1pyPm6h29 PrYveM2pY1Va6z1xDowDAkEAttfzAwAHz+FUhWQCmOBpvBuW/KhYWKZTMpvxFMSY YD5PH6NNyLfBx0J4nGPN5n/f6il0s9pzt3ko++/eUtWSnQ== -----END RSA PRIVATE KEY----- Simply click on the add new key and browse for the cert_and_key file on your desktop which you concatenated earlier using any text editor. You may need to add a passphrase in order to decrypt the RSA key in some cases (it should tell you BEGIN ENCRYPTED PRIVATE KEY in the header line). I will show you the success screen after uploading the certificate to RUEI. You may want to restart your collector once you have uploaded all the certificate/key pairs you want to use in order to make sure they get picked up asap.You should be able to see the number of SSL Connections rising in the Collector statistics screen below. The figures for decrypt errors should slowly go down and the usage figures for your encryption algortihm on the subsequent SSL Encryption screen should go up. You should be 100% sure everything works fine by now, otherwise see below to distinguish the remaining 1% from your 99% certainty.Verify Certificate and Key are matchingYou can compare the modulus of private key and public certificate and they should match in order for the key to fit the lock. You only want to make sure they both fit each other.We are actually interested only in the following details of the two files, which can be determined by using the -subject, -dates and -modulus command line switches instead of the complete -text output of the x509 certificate/rsa key contents.$ sudo openssl x509 -noout -subject -in /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pemsubject= /CN=ubuntu$ sudo openssl x509 -noout -dates -in /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pemnotBefore=Jun  7 08:03:53 2010 GMTnotAfter=Jun  4 08:03:53 2020 GMT$ sudo openssl x509 -noout -modulus -in /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem Modulus=B6ECF899C8FA9F8AEC8A9A49065D9D80713A97511F4FFD8EDD502AF987EBCBFCD61F7E7F5676AD547B66B77F97EAEE1371FD56FBB3C4C94AB8C1FBA815FF8268C3653963F5624CFB3734B5293E7B6B9DCBD85EDB4946CD3C6FD2F6B290992E29CBD258D938584F4DB8076020766F8CA8284D2566BCCD40A4C0A0EBD9F23B2F7B $ sudo openssl rsa -noout -modulus -in /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.keyModulus=B6ECF899C8FA9F8AEC8A9A49065D9D80713A97511F4FFD8EDD502AF987EBCBFCD61F7E7F5676AD547B66B77F97EAEE1371FD56FBB3C4C94AB8C1FBA815FF8268C3653963F5624CFB3734B5293E7B6B9DCBD85EDB4946CD3C6FD2F6B290992E29CBD258D938584F4DB8076020766F8CA8284D2566BCCD40A4C0A0EBD9F23B2F7BAs you can see the modulus matches exactly and we have the proof that the certificate has been created using the private key. OpenSSL Certificate and Key DetailsAs I already told you, you do not need all the greedy details, but in case you want to know it in depth what is actually in those hex-blocks can be made visible with the following commands which show you the actual content in a human readable format.Note: You may not want to post all the details of your private key =^) I told you I have been using a self-signed certificate only for showing you these details.$ sudo openssl rsa -noout -text -in /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.keyPrivate-Key: (1024 bit)modulus:    00:b6:ec:f8:99:c8:fa:9f:8a:ec:8a:9a:49:06:5d:    9d:80:71:3a:97:51:1f:4f:fd:8e:dd:50:2a:f9:87:    eb:cb:fc:d6:1f:7e:7f:56:76:ad:54:7b:66:b7:7f:    97:ea:ee:13:71:fd:56:fb:b3:c4:c9:4a:b8:c1:fb:    a8:15:ff:82:68:c3:65:39:63:f5:62:4c:fb:37:34:    b5:29:3e:7b:6b:9d:cb:d8:5e:db:49:46:cd:3c:6f:    d2:f6:b2:90:99:2e:29:cb:d2:58:d9:38:58:4f:4d:    b8:07:60:20:76:6f:8c:a8:28:4d:25:66:bc:cd:40:    a4:c0:a0:eb:d9:f2:3b:2f:7bpublicExponent: 65537 (0x10001)privateExponent:    00:9e:cb:09:67:9e:53:09:ca:34:5a:81:62:60:f7:    45:31:69:99:7e:1f:ba:b9:da:97:79:41:0d:7d:3d:    e3:90:59:b4:9a:f4:59:9f:fa:37:ae:fd:cc:86:00:    6a:25:53:74:67:e0:8e:f0:c2:f6:51:f2:de:7d:ee:    72:d4:5d:d0:9a:9d:87:64:28:49:2c:4d:06:1a:b9:    7a:52:00:a4:d2:08:63:3b:bb:c3:f5:c8:fd:58:46:    70:39:40:6f:ab:9a:75:44:50:10:2d:aa:f8:cf:18:    62:3c:37:9b:04:76:a2:68:42:5a:51:c8:56:23:87:    7b:ff:53:f2:37:cf:ff:ca:71prime1:    00:ee:4d:fd:59:17:10:8a:57:47:0c:52:9c:8f:b8:    2e:ae:a9:64:12:51:f2:b1:a7:0c:4c:55:9f:d1:90:    d3:11:44:ba:6d:d9:26:35:7c:0a:ea:61:fa:dc:19:    66:18:ba:d8:00:fe:40:32:02:a0:78:37:fc:0f:e5:    91:7e:ff:18:29prime2:    00:c4:82:43:b5:06:0c:dd:f2:b3:27:c8:22:b7:5c:    d5:10:44:02:4e:01:3a:b2:87:2a:d0:f9:53:1d:33:    e6:57:10:91:a0:98:ac:af:09:0e:e4:a5:76:b7:8d:    db:23:a1:4b:df:7f:4b:80:91:5a:61:a4:4e:3d:38:    c1:14:a7:8f:03exponent1:    00:9a:47:99:96:dd:0c:d3:53:8f:e6:d5:71:10:c6:    c0:4a:49:d6:44:da:13:12:9a:c0:a6:86:e4:b2:2b:    5d:ca:97:41:4f:2e:bf:c2:ee:ac:ae:73:82:92:8e:    4b:00:05:af:24:6d:76:a8:29:f5:33:ff:a2:cb:b3:    e7:8f:5d:9d:89exponent2:    2f:fa:62:0f:93:9f:96:9d:08:12:e1:71:60:75:80:    eb:cc:bf:07:4e:93:87:3d:2b:3e:04:71:bf:82:89:    6d:9e:74:ff:d1:e6:ef:81:75:aa:6b:9f:b5:a7:23:    e6:ea:1d:bd:3e:b6:2f:78:cd:a9:63:55:5a:eb:3d:    71:0e:8c:03coefficient:    00:b6:d7:f3:03:00:07:cf:e1:54:85:64:02:98:e0:    69:bc:1b:96:fc:a8:58:58:a6:53:32:9b:f1:14:c4:    98:60:3e:4f:1f:a3:4d:c8:b7:c1:c7:42:78:9c:63:    cd:e6:7f:df:ea:29:74:b3:da:73:b7:79:28:fb:ef:    de:52:d5:92:9d$ sudo openssl x509 -noout -text -in /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pemCertificate:    Data:        Version: 1 (0x0)        Serial Number:            fb:3b:75:d7:c1:58:a5:5b        Signature Algorithm: sha1WithRSAEncryption        Issuer: CN=ubuntu        Validity            Not Before: Jun  7 08:03:53 2010 GMT            Not After : Jun  4 08:03:53 2020 GMT        Subject: CN=ubuntu        Subject Public Key Info:            Public Key Algorithm: rsaEncryption            RSA Public Key: (1024 bit)                Modulus (1024 bit):                    00:b6:ec:f8:99:c8:fa:9f:8a:ec:8a:9a:49:06:5d:                    9d:80:71:3a:97:51:1f:4f:fd:8e:dd:50:2a:f9:87:                    eb:cb:fc:d6:1f:7e:7f:56:76:ad:54:7b:66:b7:7f:                    97:ea:ee:13:71:fd:56:fb:b3:c4:c9:4a:b8:c1:fb:                    a8:15:ff:82:68:c3:65:39:63:f5:62:4c:fb:37:34:                    b5:29:3e:7b:6b:9d:cb:d8:5e:db:49:46:cd:3c:6f:                    d2:f6:b2:90:99:2e:29:cb:d2:58:d9:38:58:4f:4d:                    b8:07:60:20:76:6f:8c:a8:28:4d:25:66:bc:cd:40:                    a4:c0:a0:eb:d9:f2:3b:2f:7b                Exponent: 65537 (0x10001)    Signature Algorithm: sha1WithRSAEncryption        93:6a:ef:54:49:31:47:5a:8f:4a:92:62:b9:d0:ee:19:41:ed:        58:a0:4a:5a:25:9b:99:2c:08:dd:11:19:4f:ed:2f:1b:e6:03:        1b:96:b9:e4:d7:71:81:19:37:ce:14:27:b6:a1:7b:80:d6:23:        2b:16:e5:04:1c:81:a5:8e:d6:d1:c8:b4:d2:47:fb:90:58:2f:        5d:63:1e:53:de:8d:49:02:5d:9e:27:7f:63:1c:d0:62:7d:1d:        18:bd:ab:4a:1d:5d:c1:d3:cd:34:f4:25:35:27:e7:11:0d:72:        c4:57:af:47:b6:91:74:2a:93:6d:35:d4:de:6c:62:f1:86:92:        b1:c1The above output can also be seen if you direct your browser client to your website and check the certificate sent by the server to your browser. You will be able to lookup all the details including the validity dates, subject common name and the public key modulus.Capture an SSL connection using WiresharkAnd as you would have expected, looking at the low-level tcp data that has been exchanged between the client and server with a tcp-diagnostics tool (i.e. wireshark/tcpdump) you can also see the modulus in there.These were the settings I used to capture all traffic on the local loopback interface, matching the filter expression: tcp and ip and host 127.0.0.1 and port 443. This tells Wireshark to leave out any other information, I may not have been interested in showing you.

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  • The Windows Store... why did I sign up with this mess again?

    - by FransBouma
    Yesterday, Microsoft revealed that the Windows Store is now open to all developers in a wide range of countries and locations. For the people who think "wtf is the 'Windows Store'?", it's the central place where Windows 8 users will be able to find, download and purchase applications (or as we now have to say to not look like a computer illiterate: <accent style="Kentucky">aaaaappss</accent>) for Windows 8. As this is the store which is integrated into Windows 8, it's an interesting place for ISVs, as potential customers might very well look there first. This of course isn't true for all kinds of software, and developer tools in general aren't the kind of applications most users will download from the Windows store, but a presence there can't hurt. Now, this Windows Store hosts two kinds of applications: 'Metro-style' applications and 'Desktop' applications. The 'Metro-style' applications are applications created for the new 'Metro' UI which is present on Windows 8 desktop and Windows RT (the single color/big font fingerpaint-oriented UI). 'Desktop' applications are the applications we all run and use on Windows today. Our software are desktop applications. The Windows Store hosts all Metro-style applications locally in the store and handles the payment for these applications. This means you upload your application (sorry, 'app') to the store, jump through a lot of hoops, Microsoft verifies that your application is not violating a tremendous long list of rules and after everything is OK, it's published and hopefully you get customers and thus earn money. Money which Microsoft will pay you on a regular basis after customers buy your application. Desktop applications are not following this path however. Desktop applications aren't hosted by the Windows Store. Instead, the Windows Store more or less hosts a page with the application's information and where to get the goods. I.o.w.: it's nothing more than a product's Facebook page. Microsoft will simply redirect a visitor of the Windows Store to your website and the visitor will then use your site's system to purchase and download the application. This last bit of information is very important. So, this morning I started with fresh energy to register our company 'Solutions Design bv' at the Windows Store and our two applications, LLBLGen Pro and ORM Profiler. First I went to the Windows Store dashboard page. If you don't have an account, you have to log in or sign up if you don't have a live account. I signed in with my live account. After that, it greeted me with a page where I had to fill in a code which was mailed to me. My local mail server polls every several minutes for email so I had to kick it to get it immediately. I grabbed the code from the email and I was presented with a multi-step process to register myself as a company or as an individual. In red I was warned that this choice was permanent and not changeable. I chuckled: Microsoft apparently stores its data on paper, not in digital form. I chose 'company' and was presented with a lengthy form to fill out. On the form there were two strange remarks: Per company there can just be 1 (one, uno, not zero, not two or more) registered developer, and only that developer is able to upload stuff to the store. I have no idea how this works with large companies, oh the overhead nightmares... "Sorry, but John, our registered developer with the Windows Store is on holiday for 3 months, backpacking through Australia, no, he's not reachable at this point. M'yeah, sorry bud. Hey, did you fill in those TPS reports yesterday?" A separate Approver has to be specified, which has to be a different person than the registered developer. Apparently to Microsoft a company with just 1 person is not a company. Luckily we're with two people! *pfew*, dodged that one, otherwise I would be stuck forever: the choice I already made was not reversible! After I had filled out the form and it was all well and good and accepted by the Microsoft lackey who had to write it all down in some paper notebook ("Hey, be warned! It's a permanent choice! Written down in ink, can't be changed!"), I was presented with the question how I wanted to pay for all this. "Pay for what?" I wondered. Must be the paper they were scribbling the information on, I concluded. After all, there's a financial crisis going on! How could I forget! Silly me. "Ok fair enough". The price was 75 Euros, not the end of the world. I could only pay by credit card, so it was accepted quickly. Or so I thought. You see, Microsoft has a different idea about CC payments. In the normal world, you type in your CC number, some date, a name and a security code and that's it. But Microsoft wants to verify this even more. They want to make a verification purchase of a very small amount and are doing that with a special code in the description. You then have to type in that code in a special form in the Windows Store dashboard and after that you're verified. Of course they'll refund the small amount they pull from your card. Sounds simple, right? Well... no. The problem starts with the fact that I can't see the CC activity on some website: I have a bank issued CC card. I get the CC activity once a month on a piece of paper sent to me. The bank's online website doesn't show them. So it's possible I have to wait for this code till October 12th. One month. "So what, I'm not going to use it anyway, Desktop applications don't use the payment system", I thought. "Haha, you're so naive, dear developer!" Microsoft won't allow you to publish any applications till this verification is done. So no application publishing for a month. Wouldn't it be nice if things were, you know, digital, so things got done instantly? But of course, that lackey who scribbled everything in the Big Windows Store Registration Book isn't that quick. Can't blame him though. He's just doing his job. Now, after the payment was done, I was presented with a page which tells me Microsoft is going to use a third party company called 'Symantec', which will verify my identity again. The page explains to me that this could be done through email or phone and that they'll contact the Approver to verify my identity. "Phone?", I thought... that's a little drastic for a developer account to publish a single page of information about an external hosted software product, isn't it? On Facebook I just added a page, done. And paying you, Microsoft, took less information: you were happy to take my money before my identity was even 'verified' by this 3rd party's minions! "Double standards!", I roared. No-one cared. But it's the thought of getting it off your chest, you know. Luckily for me, everyone at Symantec was asleep when I was registering so they went for the fallback option in case phone calls were not possible: my Approver received an email. Imagine you have to explain the idiot web of security theater I was caught in to someone else who then has to reply a random person over the internet that I indeed was who I said I was. As she's a true sweetheart, she gave me the benefit of the doubt and assured that for now, I was who I said I was. Remember, this is for a desktop application, which is only a link to a website, some pictures and a piece of text. No file hosting, no payment processing, nothing, just a single page. Yeah, I also thought I was crazy. But we're not at the end of this quest yet. I clicked around in the confusing menus of the Windows Store dashboard and found the 'Desktop' section. I get a helpful screen with a warning in red that it can't find any certified 'apps'. True, I'm just getting started, buddy. I see a link: "Check the Windows apps you submitted for certification". Well, I haven't submitted anything, but let's see where it brings me. Oh the thrill of adventure! I click the link and I end up on this site: the hardware/desktop dashboard account registration. "Erm... but I just registered...", I mumbled to no-one in particular. Apparently for desktop registration / verification I have to register again, it tells me. But not only that, the desktop application has to be signed with a certificate. And not just some random el-cheapo certificate you can get at any mall's discount store. No, this certificate is special. It's precious. This certificate, the 'Microsoft Authenticode' Digital Certificate, is the only certificate that's acceptable, and jolly, it can be purchased from VeriSign for the price of only ... $99.-, but be quick, because this is a limited time offer! After that it's, I kid you not, $499.-. 500 dollars for a certificate to sign an executable. But, I do feel special, I got a special price. Only for me! I'm glowing. Not for long though. Here I started to wonder, what the benefit of it all was. I now again had to pay money for a shiny certificate which will add 'Solutions Design bv' to our installer as the publisher instead of 'unknown', while our customers download the file from our website. Not only that, but this was all about a Desktop application, which wasn't hosted by Microsoft. They only link to it. And make no mistake. These prices aren't single payments. Every year these have to be renewed. Like a membership of an exclusive club: you're special and privileged, but only if you cough up the dough. To give you an example how silly this all is: I added LLBLGen Pro and ORM Profiler to the Visual Studio Gallery some time ago. It's the same thing: it's a central place where one can find software which adds to / extends / works with Visual Studio. I could simply create the pages, add the information and they show up inside Visual Studio. No files are hosted at Microsoft, they're downloaded from our website. Exactly the same system. As I have to wait for the CC transcripts to arrive anyway, I can't proceed with publishing in this new shiny store. After the verification is complete I have to wait for verification of my software by Microsoft. Even Desktop applications need to be verified using a long list of rules which are mainly focused on Metro-style applications. Even while they're not hosted by Microsoft. I wonder what they'll find. "Your application wasn't approved. It violates rule 14 X sub D: it provides more value than our own competing framework". While I was writing this post, I tried to check something in the Windows Store Dashboard, to see whether I remembered it correctly. I was presented again with the question, after logging in with my live account, to enter the code that was just mailed to me. Not the previous code, a brand new one. Again I had to kick my mail server to pull the email to proceed. This was it. This 'experience' is so beyond miserable, I'm afraid I have to say goodbye for now to the 'Windows Store'. It's simply not worth my time. Now, about live accounts. You might know this: live accounts are tied to everything you do with Microsoft. So if you have an MSDN subscription, e.g. the one which costs over $5000.-, it's tied to this same live account. But the fun thing is, you can login with your live account to the MSDN subscriptions with just the account id and password. No additional code is mailed to you. While it gives you access to all Microsoft software available, including your licenses. Why the draconian security theater with this Windows Store, while all I want is to publish some desktop applications while on other Microsoft sites it's OK to simply sign in with your live account: no codes needed, no verification and no certificates? Microsoft, one thing you need with this store and that's: apps. Apps, apps, apps, apps, aaaaaaaaapps. Sorry, my bad, got carried away. I just can't stand the word 'app'. This store's shelves have to be filled to the brim with goods. But instead of being welcomed into the store with open arms, I have to fight an uphill battle with an endless list of rules and bullshit to earn the privilege to publish in this shiny store. As if I have to be thrilled to be one of the exclusive club called 'Windows Store Publishers'. As if Microsoft doesn't want it to succeed. Craig Stuntz sent me a link to an old blog post of his regarding code signing and uploading to Microsoft's old mobile store from back in the WinMo5 days: http://blogs.teamb.com/craigstuntz/2006/10/11/28357/. Good read and good background info about how little things changed over the years. I hope this helps Microsoft make things more clearer and smoother and also helps ISVs with their decision whether to go with the Windows Store scheme or ignore it. For now, I don't see the advantage of publishing there, especially not with the nonsense rules Microsoft cooked up. Perhaps it changes in the future, who knows.

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  • How to install Oracle Weblogic Server using OS-specific Package installer?(Linux/Solaris)

    - by PratikS -- Oracle
    Note: OS-specific Package installer As the name suggests the installer is platform specific. It is meant for installation with a 32bit JVM only. Both SUN and JROCKIT 32 bit JDKs come bundled with "OS-specific Package installer", so no need to install the JDK in advance. There are three different ways of installing Oracle Weblogic Server: Graphical mode Console mode Silent mode For Linux/Solaris: Steps to install OS-specific Package .bin installer(for Linux/Solaris) are almost same as windows except for the way we launch the installation.Installer: wls_<version>_<linux/solaris>32.bin (E.g. wls1036_linux32.bin/wls1036_solaris32.bin) 1) Graphical mode: Log in to the target UNIX system. Go to the directory that contains the installation program.(Make sure GUI is enabled or else it will default to console mode) Launch the installation by entering the following commands: [weblogic@pratik ~]$ pwd/home/oracle[weblogic@pratik ~]$ cd WLSInstallers/[weblogic@pratik WLSInstallers]$ ls -ltrtotal 851512-rw-rw-r-- 1 oracle oracle 871091023 Dec 22  2011 wls1036_linux32.bin[weblogic@pratik WLSInstallers]$ chmod a+x wls1036_linux32.bin[weblogic@pratik WLSInstallers]$ ls -ltrtotal 851512-rwxrwxr-x 1 oracle oracle 871091023 Dec 22  2011 wls1036_linux32.bin[weblogic@pratik WLSInstallers]$ ./wls1036_linux32.bin As soon as you run ./wls1036_linux32.bin with GUI enabled you would see the following screen: Rest of the screens and steps are similar to that of Graphical mode installation on windows, refer: How to install Oracle Weblogic Server using OS-specific Package installer?(Windows) 2) Console mode: Log in to the target UNIX system. Go to the directory that contains the installation program. Launch the installation by entering the following commands: [weblogic@pratik ~]$ pwd/home/oracle[weblogic@pratik ~]$ cd WLSInstallers/[weblogic@pratik WLSInstallers]$ ls -ltrtotal 851512-rw-rw-r-- 1 weblogic weblogic 871091023 Dec 22  2011 wls1036_linux32.bin[weblogic@pratik WLSInstallers]$ chmod a+x wls1036_linux32.bin[weblogic@pratik WLSInstallers]$ ls -ltrtotal 851512-rwxrwxr-x 1 weblogic weblogic 871091023 Dec 22  2011 wls1036_linux32.bin [weblogic@pratik WLSInstallers]$ ./wls1036_linux32.bin -mode=consoleExtracting 0%....................................................................................................100%<-------------------- Oracle Installer - WebLogic 10.3.6.0 ------------------->Welcome:--------This installer will guide you through the installation of WebLogic 10.3.6.0.Type "Next" or enter to proceed to the next prompt.  If you want to change data entered previously, type "Previous".  You may quit the installer at any time by typing "Exit".Enter [Exit][Next]> Next<-------------------- Oracle Installer - WebLogic 10.3.6.0 ------------------->Choose Middleware Home Directory:--------------------------------- ->1|* Create a new Middleware Home   2|/home/oracle/wls_12cEnter index number to select OR [Exit][Previous][Next]> Next<-------------------- Oracle Installer - WebLogic 10.3.6.0 ------------------->Choose Middleware Home Directory:---------------------------------    "Middleware Home" = [Enter new value or use default"/home/oracle/Oracle/Middleware"]Enter new Middleware Home OR [Exit][Previous][Next]> /home/oracle/WLS1036<-------------------- Oracle Installer - WebLogic 10.3.6.0 ------------------->Choose Middleware Home Directory:---------------------------------    "Middleware Home" = [/home/oracle/WLS1036]Use above value or select another option:    1 - Enter new Middleware Home    2 - Change to default [/home/oracle/Oracle/Middleware]Enter option number to select OR [Exit][Previous][Next]> Next<-------------------- Oracle Installer - WebLogic 10.3.6.0 ------------------->Register for Security Updates:------------------------------Provide your email address for security updates and  to initiate configuration manager.   1|Email:[]   2|Support Password:[]   3|Receive Security Update:[Yes]Enter index number to select OR [Exit][Previous][Next]> 3<-------------------- Oracle Installer - WebLogic 10.3.6.0 ------------------->Register for Security Updates:------------------------------Provide your email address for security updates and  to initiate configuration manager.    "Receive Security Update:" = [Enter new value or use default "Yes"]Enter [Yes][No]? No<-------------------- Oracle Installer - WebLogic 10.3.6.0 ------------------->Register for Security Updates:------------------------------Provide your email address for security updates and  to initiate configuration manager.    "Receive Security Update:" = [Enter new value or use default "Yes"]    ** Do you wish to bypass initiation of the configuration manager and    **  remain uninformed of critical security issues in your configuration?Enter [Yes][No]? Yes<-------------------- Oracle Installer - WebLogic 10.3.6.0 ------------------->Register for Security Updates:------------------------------Provide your email address for security updates and  to initiate configuration manager.   1|Email:[]   2|Support Password:[]   3|Receive Security Update:[No]Enter index number to select OR [Exit][Previous][Next]>Next<-------------------- Oracle Installer - WebLogic 10.3.6.0 ------------------->Register for Security Updates:------------------------------Provide your email address for security updates and  to initiate configuration manager.   1|Email:[]   2|Support Password:[]   3|Receive Security Update:[No]Enter index number to select OR [Exit][Previous][Next]> Next<-------------------- Oracle Installer - WebLogic 10.3.6.0 ------------------->Choose Install Type:--------------------Select the type of installation you wish to perform. ->1|Typical    |  Install the following product(s) and component(s):    | - WebLogic Server    | - Oracle Coherence   2|Custom    |  Choose software products and components to install and perform optional    |configuration.Enter index number to select OR [Exit][Previous][Next]> Next<-------------------- Oracle Installer - WebLogic 10.3.6.0 ------------------->Choose Product Installation Directories:----------------------------------------Middleware Home Directory: [/home/oracle/WLS1036]Product Installation Directories:   1|WebLogic Server: [/home/oracle/WLS1036/wlserver_10.3]   2|Oracle Coherence: [/home/oracle/WLS1036/coherence_3.7]Enter index number to select OR [Exit][Previous][Next]> Next<-------------------- Oracle Installer - WebLogic 10.3.6.0 ------------------->The following Products and JDKs will be installed:--------------------------------------------------    WebLogic Platform 10.3.6.0    |_____WebLogic Server    |    |_____Core Application Server    |    |_____Administration Console    |    |_____Configuration Wizard and Upgrade Framework    |    |_____Web 2.0 HTTP Pub-Sub Server    |    |_____WebLogic SCA    |    |_____WebLogic JDBC Drivers    |    |_____Third Party JDBC Drivers    |    |_____WebLogic Server Clients    |    |_____WebLogic Web Server Plugins    |    |_____UDDI and Xquery Support    |    |_____Evaluation Database    |_____Oracle Coherence    |    |_____Coherence Product Files    |_____JDKs         |_____SUN SDK 1.6.0_29         |_____Oracle JRockit 1.6.0_29 SDK    *Estimated size of installation: 1,276.0 MBEnter [Exit][Previous][Next]> Next<-------------------- Oracle Installer - WebLogic 10.3.6.0 ------------------->Installing files..0%          25%          50%          75%          100%[------------|------------|------------|------------][***************************************************]<-------------------- Oracle Installer - WebLogic 10.3.6.0 ------------------->Installing JDK....0%          25%          50%          75%          100%[------------|------------|------------|------------][***************************************************]Performing String Substitutions...<-------------------- Oracle Installer - WebLogic 10.3.6.0 ------------------->Configuring OCM...0%          25%          50%          75%          100%[------------|------------|------------|------------][***************************************************]Creating Domains...<-------------------- Oracle Installer - WebLogic 10.3.6.0 ------------------->Installation CompleteCongratulations! Installation is complete.Press [Enter] to continue or type [Exit]> [weblogic@pratik ~]$ Note: All the inputs are in Bold 3) Silent mode:              1) Log in to the target Unix system.             2) Create a silent.xml file that defines the configuration settings normally entered by a user during an interactive installation process, such as graphical-mode or console-mode installation. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><bea-installer>     <input-fields>        <data-value name="BEAHOME" value="/home/oracle/WLS1036" />        <data-value name="WLS_INSTALL_DIR" value="/home/oracle/WLS1036/wlserver_10.3" />        <data-value name="COMPONENT_PATHS" value="WebLogic Server|Oracle Coherence" />    </input-fields></bea-installer> <!-- Note: This sample silent.xml file is used to install all the components of WebLogic Server and Oracle Coherence. All the values in Bold are the variables. -->               3) Place the silent.xml file in the same directory as where the WebLogic Server Package installer is located.              4) Go to the directory that contains the installation program.              5) Start the installer as follows: [weblogic@pratik WLSInstallers]$ chmod a+x wls1036_linux32.bin[weblogic@pratik WLSInstallers]$ ls -ltrtotal 851516-rwxrwxr-x 1 weblogic weblogic 871091023 Dec 22  2011 wls1036_linux32.bin-rw-rw-r-- 1 weblogic weblogic       331 Jul  5 03:48 silent.xml[weblogic@pratik WLSInstallers]$ cat silent.xml<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><bea-installer>        <input-fields>                <data-value name="BEAHOME" value="/home/oracle/WLS1036" />                <data-value name="WLS_INSTALL_DIR" value="/home/oracle/WLS1036/wlserver_10.3" />                <data-value name="COMPONENT_PATHS" value="WebLogic Server|Oracle Coherence" />        </input-fields></bea-installer>[weblogic@pratik WLSInstallers]$ ./wls1036_linux32.bin -mode=silenlent.xml -log=/home/oracle/WLSInstallers/install.logExtracting 0%....................................................................................................100%[weblogic@pratik WLSInstallers]$ -log=/home/oracle/WLSInstallers/install.log creates a installation log(install.log) under "/home/oracle/WLSInstallers/", when installation completes you will see the following printed in the log file: 2012-07-05 03:59:36,788 INFO  [WizardController] com.bea.plateng.wizard.silent.tasks.LogTask - The installation was successfull! For other configurable values in silent.xml refer: Values for the Sample silent.xml File for WebLogic Server Important links to Refer: Running the Installation Program in Graphical Mode Running the Installation Program in Console Mode Running the Installation Program in Silent Mode

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  • Use Extension method to write cleaner code

    - by Fredrik N
    This blog post will show you step by step to refactoring some code to be more readable (at least what I think). Patrik Löwnedahl gave me some of the ideas when we where talking about making code much cleaner. The following is an simple application that will have a list of movies (Normal and Transfer). The task of the application is to calculate the total sum of each movie and also display the price of each movie. class Program { enum MovieType { Normal, Transfer } static void Main(string[] args) { var movies = GetMovies(); int totalPriceOfNormalMovie = 0; int totalPriceOfTransferMovie = 0; foreach (var movie in movies) { if (movie == MovieType.Normal) { totalPriceOfNormalMovie += 2; Console.WriteLine("$2"); } else if (movie == MovieType.Transfer) { totalPriceOfTransferMovie += 3; Console.WriteLine("$3"); } } } private static IEnumerable<MovieType> GetMovies() { return new List<MovieType>() { MovieType.Normal, MovieType.Transfer, MovieType.Normal }; } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } In the code above I’m using an enum, a good way to add types (isn’t it ;)). I also use one foreach loop to calculate the price, the loop has a condition statement to check what kind of movie is added to the list of movies. I want to reuse the foreach only to increase performance and let it do two things (isn’t that smart of me?! ;)). First of all I can admit, I’m not a big fan of enum. Enum often results in ugly condition statements and can be hard to maintain (if a new type is added we need to check all the code in our app to see if we use the enum somewhere else). I don’t often care about pre-optimizations when it comes to write code (of course I have performance in mind). I rather prefer to use two foreach to let them do one things instead of two. So based on what I don’t like and Martin Fowler’s Refactoring catalog, I’m going to refactoring this code to what I will call a more elegant and cleaner code. First of all I’m going to use Split Loop to make sure the foreach will do one thing not two, it will results in two foreach (Don’t care about performance here, if the results will results in bad performance, you can refactoring later, but computers are so fast to day, so iterating through a list is not often so time consuming.) Note: The foreach actually do four things, will come to is later. var movies = GetMovies(); int totalPriceOfNormalMovie = 0; int totalPriceOfTransferMovie = 0; foreach (var movie in movies) { if (movie == MovieType.Normal) { totalPriceOfNormalMovie += 2; Console.WriteLine("$2"); } } foreach (var movie in movies) { if (movie == MovieType.Transfer) { totalPriceOfTransferMovie += 3; Console.WriteLine("$3"); } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } To remove the condition statement we can use the Where extension method added to the IEnumerable<T> and is located in the System.Linq namespace: foreach (var movie in movies.Where( m => m == MovieType.Normal)) { totalPriceOfNormalMovie += 2; Console.WriteLine("$2"); } foreach (var movie in movies.Where( m => m == MovieType.Transfer)) { totalPriceOfTransferMovie += 3; Console.WriteLine("$3"); } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } The above code will still do two things, calculate the total price, and display the price of the movie. I will not take care of it at the moment, instead I will focus on the enum and try to remove them. One way to remove enum is by using the Replace Conditional with Polymorphism. So I will create two classes, one base class called Movie, and one called MovieTransfer. The Movie class will have a property called Price, the Movie will now hold the price:   public class Movie { public virtual int Price { get { return 2; } } } public class MovieTransfer : Movie { public override int Price { get { return 3; } } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } The following code has no enum and will use the new Movie classes instead: class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { var movies = GetMovies(); int totalPriceOfNormalMovie = 0; int totalPriceOfTransferMovie = 0; foreach (var movie in movies.Where( m => m is Movie)) { totalPriceOfNormalMovie += movie.Price; Console.WriteLine(movie.Price); } foreach (var movie in movies.Where( m => m is MovieTransfer)) { totalPriceOfTransferMovie += movie.Price; Console.WriteLine(movie.Price); } } private static IEnumerable<Movie> GetMovies() { return new List<Movie>() { new Movie(), new MovieTransfer(), new Movie() }; } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; }   If you take a look at the foreach now, you can see it still actually do two things, calculate the price and display the price. We can do some more refactoring here by using the Sum extension method to calculate the total price of the movies:   static void Main(string[] args) { var movies = GetMovies(); int totalPriceOfNormalMovie = movies.Where(m => m is Movie) .Sum(m => m.Price); int totalPriceOfTransferMovie = movies.Where(m => m is MovieTransfer) .Sum(m => m.Price); foreach (var movie in movies.Where( m => m is Movie)) Console.WriteLine(movie.Price); foreach (var movie in movies.Where( m => m is MovieTransfer)) Console.WriteLine(movie.Price); } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Now when the Movie object will hold the price, there is no need to use two separate foreach to display the price of the movies in the list, so we can use only one instead: foreach (var movie in movies) Console.WriteLine(movie.Price); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } If we want to increase the Maintainability index we can use the Extract Method to move the Sum of the prices into two separate methods. The name of the method will explain what we are doing: static void Main(string[] args) { var movies = GetMovies(); int totalPriceOfMovie = TotalPriceOfMovie(movies); int totalPriceOfTransferMovie = TotalPriceOfMovieTransfer(movies); foreach (var movie in movies) Console.WriteLine(movie.Price); } private static int TotalPriceOfMovieTransfer(IEnumerable<Movie> movies) { return movies.Where(m => m is MovieTransfer) .Sum(m => m.Price); } private static int TotalPriceOfMovie(IEnumerable<Movie> movies) { return movies.Where(m => m is Movie) .Sum(m => m.Price); } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Now to the last thing, I love the ForEach method of the List<T>, but the IEnumerable<T> doesn’t have it, so I created my own ForEach extension, here is the code of the ForEach extension method: public static class LoopExtensions { public static void ForEach<T>(this IEnumerable<T> values, Action<T> action) { Contract.Requires(values != null); Contract.Requires(action != null); foreach (var v in values) action(v); } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } I will now replace the foreach by using this ForEach method: static void Main(string[] args) { var movies = GetMovies(); int totalPriceOfMovie = TotalPriceOfMovie(movies); int totalPriceOfTransferMovie = TotalPriceOfMovieTransfer(movies); movies.ForEach(m => Console.WriteLine(m.Price)); } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } The ForEach on the movies will now display the price of the movie, but maybe we want to display the name of the movie etc, so we can use Extract Method by moving the lamdba expression into a method instead, and let the method explains what we are displaying: movies.ForEach(DisplayMovieInfo); private static void DisplayMovieInfo(Movie movie) { Console.WriteLine(movie.Price); } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Now the refactoring is done! Here is the complete code:   class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { var movies = GetMovies(); int totalPriceOfMovie = TotalPriceOfMovie(movies); int totalPriceOfTransferMovie = TotalPriceOfMovieTransfer(movies); movies.ForEach(DisplayMovieInfo); } private static void DisplayMovieInfo(Movie movie) { Console.WriteLine(movie.Price); } private static int TotalPriceOfMovieTransfer(IEnumerable<Movie> movies) { return movies.Where(m => m is MovieTransfer) .Sum(m => m.Price); } private static int TotalPriceOfMovie(IEnumerable<Movie> movies) { return movies.Where(m => m is Movie) .Sum(m => m.Price); } private static IEnumerable<Movie> GetMovies() { return new List<Movie>() { new Movie(), new MovieTransfer(), new Movie() }; } } public class Movie { public virtual int Price { get { return 2; } } } public class MovieTransfer : Movie { public override int Price { get { return 3; } } } pulbic static class LoopExtensions { public static void ForEach<T>(this IEnumerable<T> values, Action<T> action) { Contract.Requires(values != null); Contract.Requires(action != null); foreach (var v in values) action(v); } } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } I think the new code is much cleaner than the first one, and I love the ForEach extension on the IEnumerable<T>, I can use it for different kind of things, for example: movies.Where(m => m is Movie) .ForEach(DoSomething); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } By using the Where and ForEach extension method, some if statements can be removed and will make the code much cleaner. But the beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What would you have done different, what do you think will make the first example in the blog post look much cleaner than my results, comments are welcome! If you want to know when I will publish a new blog post, you can follow me on twitter: http://www.twitter.com/fredrikn

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  • Code Contracts: Unit testing contracted code

    - by DigiMortal
    Code contracts and unit tests are not replacements for each other. They both have different purpose and different nature. It does not matter if you are using code contracts or not – you still have to write tests for your code. In this posting I will show you how to unit test code with contracts. In my previous posting about code contracts I showed how to avoid ContractExceptions that are defined in code contracts runtime and that are not accessible for us in design time. This was one step further to make my randomizer testable. In this posting I will complete the mission. Problems with current code This is my current code. public class Randomizer {     public static int GetRandomFromRangeContracted(int min, int max)     {         Contract.Requires<ArgumentOutOfRangeException>(             min < max,             "Min must be less than max"         );           Contract.Ensures(             Contract.Result<int>() >= min &&             Contract.Result<int>() <= max,             "Return value is out of range"         );           var rnd = new Random();         return rnd.Next(min, max);     } } As you can see this code has some problems: randomizer class is static and cannot be instantiated. We cannot move this class between components if we need to, GetRandomFromRangeContracted() is not fully testable because we cannot currently affect random number generator output and therefore we cannot test post-contract. Now let’s solve these problems. Making randomizer testable As a first thing I made Randomizer to be class that must be instantiated. This is simple thing to do. Now let’s solve the problem with Random class. To make Randomizer testable I define IRandomGenerator interface and RandomGenerator class. The public constructor of Randomizer accepts IRandomGenerator as argument. public interface IRandomGenerator {     int Next(int min, int max); }   public class RandomGenerator : IRandomGenerator {     private Random _random = new Random();       public int Next(int min, int max)     {         return _random.Next(min, max);     } } And here is our Randomizer after total make-over. public class Randomizer {     private IRandomGenerator _generator;       private Randomizer()     {         _generator = new RandomGenerator();     }       public Randomizer(IRandomGenerator generator)     {         _generator = generator;     }       public int GetRandomFromRangeContracted(int min, int max)     {         Contract.Requires<ArgumentOutOfRangeException>(             min < max,             "Min must be less than max"         );           Contract.Ensures(             Contract.Result<int>() >= min &&             Contract.Result<int>() <= max,             "Return value is out of range"         );           return _generator.Next(min, max);     } } It seems to be inconvenient to instantiate Randomizer now but you can always use DI/IoC containers and break compiled dependencies between the components of your system. Writing tests for randomizer IRandomGenerator solved problem with testing post-condition. Now it is time to write tests for Randomizer class. Writing tests for contracted code is not easy. The main problem is still ContractException that we are not able to access. Still it is the main exception we get as soon as contracts fail. Although pre-conditions are able to throw exceptions with type we want we cannot do much when post-conditions will fail. We have to use Contract.ContractFailed event and this event is called for every contract failure. This way we find ourselves in situation where supporting well input interface makes it impossible to support output interface well and vice versa. ContractFailed is nasty hack and it works pretty weird way. Although documentation sais that ContractFailed is good choice for testing contracts it is still pretty painful. As a last chance I got tests working almost normally when I wrapped them up. Can you remember similar solution from the times of Visual Studio 2008 unit tests? Cannot understand how Microsoft was able to mess up testing again. [TestClass] public class RandomizerTest {     private Mock<IRandomGenerator> _randomMock;     private Randomizer _randomizer;     private string _lastContractError;       public TestContext TestContext { get; set; }       public RandomizerTest()     {         Contract.ContractFailed += (sender, e) =>         {             e.SetHandled();             e.SetUnwind();               throw new Exception(e.FailureKind + ": " + e.Message);         };     }       [TestInitialize()]     public void RandomizerTestInitialize()     {         _randomMock = new Mock<IRandomGenerator>();         _randomizer = new Randomizer(_randomMock.Object);         _lastContractError = string.Empty;     }       #region InputInterfaceTests     [TestMethod]     [ExpectedException(typeof(Exception))]     public void GetRandomFromRangeContracted_should_throw_exception_when_min_is_not_less_than_max()     {         try         {             _randomizer.GetRandomFromRangeContracted(100, 10);         }         catch (Exception ex)         {             throw new Exception(string.Empty, ex);         }     }       [TestMethod]     [ExpectedException(typeof(Exception))]     public void GetRandomFromRangeContracted_should_throw_exception_when_min_is_equal_to_max()     {         try         {             _randomizer.GetRandomFromRangeContracted(10, 10);         }         catch (Exception ex)         {             throw new Exception(string.Empty, ex);         }     }       [TestMethod]     public void GetRandomFromRangeContracted_should_work_when_min_is_less_than_max()     {         int minValue = 10;         int maxValue = 100;         int returnValue = 50;           _randomMock.Setup(r => r.Next(minValue, maxValue))             .Returns(returnValue)             .Verifiable();           var result = _randomizer.GetRandomFromRangeContracted(minValue, maxValue);           _randomMock.Verify();         Assert.AreEqual<int>(returnValue, result);     }     #endregion       #region OutputInterfaceTests     [TestMethod]     [ExpectedException(typeof(Exception))]     public void GetRandomFromRangeContracted_should_throw_exception_when_return_value_is_less_than_min()     {         int minValue = 10;         int maxValue = 100;         int returnValue = 7;           _randomMock.Setup(r => r.Next(10, 100))             .Returns(returnValue)             .Verifiable();           try         {             _randomizer.GetRandomFromRangeContracted(minValue, maxValue);         }         catch (Exception ex)         {             throw new Exception(string.Empty, ex);         }           _randomMock.Verify();     }       [TestMethod]     [ExpectedException(typeof(Exception))]     public void GetRandomFromRangeContracted_should_throw_exception_when_return_value_is_more_than_max()     {         int minValue = 10;         int maxValue = 100;         int returnValue = 102;           _randomMock.Setup(r => r.Next(10, 100))             .Returns(returnValue)             .Verifiable();           try         {             _randomizer.GetRandomFromRangeContracted(minValue, maxValue);         }         catch (Exception ex)         {             throw new Exception(string.Empty, ex);         }           _randomMock.Verify();     }     #endregion        } Although these tests are pretty awful and contain hacks we are at least able now to make sure that our code works as expected. Here is the test list after running these tests. Conclusion Code contracts are very new stuff in Visual Studio world and as young technology it has some problems – like all other new bits and bytes in the world. As you saw then making our contracted code testable is easy only to the point when pre-conditions are considered. When we start dealing with post-conditions we will end up with hacked tests. I hope that future versions of code contracts will solve error handling issues the way that testing of contracted code will be easier than it is right now.

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  • WLS MBeans

    - by Jani Rautiainen
    WLS provides a set of Managed Beans (MBeans) to configure, monitor and manage WLS resources. We can use the WLS MBeans to automate some of the tasks related to the configuration and maintenance of the WLS instance. The MBeans can be accessed a number of ways; using various UIs and programmatically using Java or WLST Python scripts.For customization development we can use the features to e.g. manage the deployed customization in MDS, control logging levels, automate deployment of dependent libraries etc. This article is an introduction on how to access and use the WLS MBeans. The goal is to illustrate the various access methods in a single article; the details of the features are left to the linked documentation.This article covers Windows based environment, steps for Linux would be similar however there would be some differences e.g. on how the file paths are defined. MBeansThe WLS MBeans can be categorized to runtime and configuration MBeans.The Runtime MBeans can be used to access the runtime information about the server and its resources. The data from runtime beans is only available while the server is running. The runtime beans can be used to e.g. check the state of the server or deployment.The Configuration MBeans contain information about the configuration of servers and resources. The configuration of the domain is stored in the config.xml file and the configuration MBeans can be used to access and modify the configuration data. For more information on the WLS MBeans refer to: Understanding WebLogic Server MBeans WLS MBean reference Java Management Extensions (JMX)We can use JMX APIs to access the WLS MBeans. This allows us to create Java programs to configure, monitor, and manage WLS resources. In order to use the WLS MBeans we need to add the following library into the class-path: WL_HOME\lib\wljmxclient.jar Connecting to a WLS MBean server The WLS MBeans are contained in a Mbean server, depending on the requirement we can connect to (MBean Server / JNDI Name): Domain Runtime MBean Server weblogic.management.mbeanservers.domainruntime Runtime MBean Server weblogic.management.mbeanservers.runtime Edit MBean Server weblogic.management.mbeanservers.edit To connect to the WLS MBean server first we need to create a map containing the credentials; Hashtable<String, String> param = new Hashtable<String, String>(); param.put(Context.SECURITY_PRINCIPAL, "weblogic");        param.put(Context.SECURITY_CREDENTIALS, "weblogic1");        param.put(JMXConnectorFactory.PROTOCOL_PROVIDER_PACKAGES, "weblogic.management.remote"); These define the user, password and package containing the protocol. Next we create the connection: JMXServiceURL serviceURL =     new JMXServiceURL("t3","127.0.0.1",7101,     "/jndi/weblogic.management.mbeanservers.domainruntime"); JMXConnector connector = JMXConnectorFactory.connect(serviceURL, param); MBeanServerConnection connection = connector.getMBeanServerConnection(); With the connection we can now access the MBeans for the WLS instance. For a complete example see Appendix A of this post. For more details refer to Accessing WebLogic Server MBeans with JMX Accessing WLS MBeans The WLS MBeans are structured hierarchically; in order to access content we need to know the path to the MBean we are interested in. The MBean is accessed using “MBeanServerConnection. getAttribute” API.  WLS provides entry points to the hierarchy allowing us to navigate all the WLS MBeans in the hierarchy (MBean Server / JMX object name): Domain Runtime MBean Server com.bea:Name=DomainRuntimeService,Type=weblogic.management.mbeanservers.domainruntime.DomainRuntimeServiceMBean Runtime MBean Servers com.bea:Name=RuntimeService,Type=weblogic.management.mbeanservers.runtime.RuntimeServiceMBean Edit MBean Server com.bea:Name=EditService,Type=weblogic.management.mbeanservers.edit.EditServiceMBean For example we can access the Domain Runtime MBean using: ObjectName service = new ObjectName( "com.bea:Name=DomainRuntimeService," + "Type=weblogic.management.mbeanservers.domainruntime.DomainRuntimeServiceMBean"); Same syntax works for any “child” WLS MBeans e.g. to find out all application deployments we can: ObjectName domainConfig = (ObjectName)connection.getAttribute(service,"DomainConfiguration"); ObjectName[] appDeployments = (ObjectName[])connection.getAttribute(domainConfig,"AppDeployments"); Alternatively we could access the same MBean using the full syntax: ObjectName domainConfig = new ObjectName("com.bea:Location=DefaultDomain,Name=DefaultDomain,Type=Domain"); ObjectName[] appDeployments = (ObjectName[])connection.getAttribute(domainConfig,"AppDeployments"); For more details refer to Accessing WebLogic Server MBeans with JMX Invoking operations on WLS MBeans The WLS MBean operations can be invoked with MBeanServerConnection. invoke API; in the following example we query the state of “AppsLoggerService” application: ObjectName appRuntimeStateRuntime = new ObjectName("com.bea:Name=AppRuntimeStateRuntime,Type=AppRuntimeStateRuntime"); Object[] parameters = { "AppsLoggerService", "DefaultServer" }; String[] signature = { "java.lang.String", "java.lang.String" }; String result = (String)connection.invoke(appRuntimeStateRuntime,"getCurrentState",parameters, signature); The result returned should be "STATE_ACTIVE" assuming the "AppsLoggerService" application is up and running. WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) The WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) is a command-line scripting environment that we can access the same WLS MBeans. The tool is located under: $MW_HOME\oracle_common\common\bin\wlst.bat Do note that there are several instances of the wlst script under the $MW_HOME, each of them works, however the commands available vary, so we want to use the one under “oracle_common”. The tool is started in offline mode. In offline mode we can access and manipulate the domain configuration. In online mode we can access the runtime information. We connect to the Administration Server : connect("weblogic","weblogic1", "t3://127.0.0.1:7101") In both online and offline modes we can navigate the WLS MBean using commands like "ls" to print content and "cd" to navigate between objects, for example: All the commands available can be obtained with: help('all') For details of the tool refer to WebLogic Scripting Tool and for the commands available WLST Command and Variable Reference. Also do note that the WLST tool can be invoked from Java code in Embedded Mode. Running Scripts The WLST tool allows us to automate tasks using Python scripts in Script Mode. The script can be manually created or recorded by the WLST tool. Example commands of recording a script: startRecording("c:/temp/recording.py") <commands that we want to record> stopRecording() We can run the script from WLST: execfile("c:/temp/recording.py") We can also run the script from the command line: C:\apps\Oracle\Middleware\oracle_common\common\bin\wlst.cmd c:/temp/recording.py There are various sample scripts are provided with the WLS instance. UI to Access the WLS MBeans There are various UIs through which we can access the WLS MBeans. Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console Fusion Middleware Control MBean Browser In the integrated JDeveloper environment only the Oracle WebLogic Server Administration Console is available to us. For more information refer to the documentation, one noteworthy feature in the console is the ability to record WLST scripts based on the navigation. In addition to the UIs above the JConsole included in the JDK can be used to access the WLS MBeans. The JConsole needs to be started with specific parameter to force WLS objects to be used and jar files in the classpath: "C:\apps\Oracle\Middleware\jdk160_24\bin\jconsole" -J-Djava.class.path=C:\apps\Oracle\Middleware\jdk160_24\lib\jconsole.jar;C:\apps\Oracle\Middleware\jdk160_24\lib\tools.jar;C:\apps\Oracle\Middleware\wlserver_10.3\server\lib\wljmxclient.jar -J-Djmx.remote.protocol.provider.pkgs=weblogic.management.remote For more details refer to the Accessing Custom MBeans from JConsole. Summary In this article we have covered various ways we can access and use the WLS MBeans in context of integrated WLS in JDeveloper to be used for Fusion Application customization development. References Developing Custom Management Utilities With JMX for Oracle WebLogic Server Accessing WebLogic Server MBeans with JMX WebLogic Server MBean Reference WebLogic Scripting Tool WLST Command and Variable Reference Appendix A package oracle.apps.test; import java.io.IOException;import java.net.MalformedURLException;import java.util.Hashtable;import javax.management.MBeanServerConnection;import javax.management.MalformedObjectNameException;import javax.management.ObjectName;import javax.management.remote.JMXConnector;import javax.management.remote.JMXConnectorFactory;import javax.management.remote.JMXServiceURL;import javax.naming.Context;/** * This class contains simple examples on how to access WLS MBeans using JMX. */public class BlogExample {    /**     * Connection to the WLS MBeans     */    private MBeanServerConnection connection;    /**     * Constructor that takes in the connection information for the      * domain and obtains the resources from WLS MBeans using JMX.     * @param hostName host name to connect to for the WLS server     * @param port port to connect to for the WLS server     * @param userName user name to connect to for the WLS server     * @param password password to connect to for the WLS server     */    public BlogExample(String hostName, String port, String userName,                       String password) {        super();        try {            initConnection(hostName, port, userName, password);        } catch (Exception e) {            throw new RuntimeException("Unable to connect to the domain " +                                       hostName + ":" + port);        }    }    /**     * Default constructor.     * Tries to create connection with default values. Runtime exception will be     * thrown if the default values are not used in the local instance.     */    public BlogExample() {        this("127.0.0.1", "7101", "weblogic", "weblogic1");    }    /**     * Initializes the JMX connection to the WLS Beans     * @param hostName host name to connect to for the WLS server     * @param port port to connect to for the WLS server     * @param userName user name to connect to for the WLS server     * @param password password to connect to for the WLS server     * @throws IOException error connecting to the WLS MBeans     * @throws MalformedURLException error connecting to the WLS MBeans     * @throws MalformedObjectNameException error connecting to the WLS MBeans     */    private void initConnection(String hostName, String port, String userName,                                String password)                                 throws IOException, MalformedURLException,                                        MalformedObjectNameException {        String protocol = "t3";        String jndiroot = "/jndi/";        String mserver = "weblogic.management.mbeanservers.domainruntime";        JMXServiceURL serviceURL =            new JMXServiceURL(protocol, hostName, Integer.valueOf(port),                              jndiroot + mserver);        Hashtable<String, String> h = new Hashtable<String, String>();        h.put(Context.SECURITY_PRINCIPAL, userName);        h.put(Context.SECURITY_CREDENTIALS, password);        h.put(JMXConnectorFactory.PROTOCOL_PROVIDER_PACKAGES,              "weblogic.management.remote");        JMXConnector connector = JMXConnectorFactory.connect(serviceURL, h);        connection = connector.getMBeanServerConnection();    }    /**     * Main method used to invoke the logic for testing     * @param args arguments passed to the program     */    public static void main(String[] args) {        BlogExample blogExample = new BlogExample();        blogExample.testEntryPoint();        blogExample.testDirectAccess();        blogExample.testInvokeOperation();    }    /**     * Example of using an entry point to navigate the WLS MBean hierarchy.     */    public void testEntryPoint() {        try {            System.out.println("testEntryPoint");            ObjectName service =             new ObjectName("com.bea:Name=DomainRuntimeService,Type=" +"weblogic.management.mbeanservers.domainruntime.DomainRuntimeServiceMBean");            ObjectName domainConfig =                (ObjectName)connection.getAttribute(service,                                                    "DomainConfiguration");            ObjectName[] appDeployments =                (ObjectName[])connection.getAttribute(domainConfig,                                                      "AppDeployments");            for (ObjectName appDeployment : appDeployments) {                String resourceIdentifier =                    (String)connection.getAttribute(appDeployment,                                                    "SourcePath");                System.out.println(resourceIdentifier);            }        } catch (Exception e) {            throw new RuntimeException(e);        }    }    /**     * Example of accessing WLS MBean directly with a full reference.     * This does the same thing as testEntryPoint in slightly difference way.     */    public void testDirectAccess() {        try {            System.out.println("testDirectAccess");            ObjectName appDeployment =                new ObjectName("com.bea:Location=DefaultDomain,"+                               "Name=AppsLoggerService,Type=AppDeployment");            String resourceIdentifier =                (String)connection.getAttribute(appDeployment, "SourcePath");            System.out.println(resourceIdentifier);        } catch (Exception e) {            throw new RuntimeException(e);        }    }    /**     * Example of invoking operation on a WLS MBean.     */    public void testInvokeOperation() {        try {            System.out.println("testInvokeOperation");            ObjectName appRuntimeStateRuntime =                new ObjectName("com.bea:Name=AppRuntimeStateRuntime,"+                               "Type=AppRuntimeStateRuntime");            String identifier = "AppsLoggerService";            String serverName = "DefaultServer";            Object[] parameters = { identifier, serverName };            String[] signature = { "java.lang.String", "java.lang.String" };            String result =                (String)connection.invoke(appRuntimeStateRuntime, "getCurrentState",                                          parameters, signature);            System.out.println("State of " + identifier + " = " + result);        } catch (Exception e) {            throw new RuntimeException(e);        }    }}

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, December 31, 2010

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, December 31, 2010Popular ReleasesFree Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts v3.6.6 Released: Hi, Today we are releasing final version of Visifire, v3.6.6 with the following new feature: * TextDecorations property is implemented in Title for Chart. * TitleTextDecorations property is implemented in Axis. * MinPointHeight property is now applicable for Column and Bar Charts. Also this release includes few bug fixes: * ToolTipText property of DataSeries was not getting applied from Style. * Chart threw exception if IndicatorEnabled property was set to true and Too...Windows Weibo all in one for Sina Sohu and QQ: WeiBee V0.1: WeiBee is an all in one Twitter tool, which can update Wei Bo at the same time for websites. It intends to support t.sohu.com, t.sina.com.cn and t.qq.com.cn. If you have WeiBo at SOHU, SINA and QQ, you can try this tool to help you save time to open all the webpages to update your status. For any business opportunity, such as put advertise on China Twitter market, and to build a custom WeiBo tool, please reach my email box qq1800@gmail.com My official WeiBo is http://mediaroom.t.sohu.comStyleCop Compliant Visual Studio Code Snippets: Visual Studio Code Snippets - January 2011: StyleCop Compliant Visual Studio Code Snippets Visual Studio 2010 provides C# developers with 38 code snippets, enhancing developer productivty and increasing the consistency of the code. Within this project the original code snippets have been refactored to provide StyleCop compliant versions of the original code snippets while also adding many new code snippets. Within the January 2011 release you'll find 82 code snippets to make you more productive and the code you write more consistent!...WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.2: Version: 2.0.0.2 (Milestone 2): 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 ...eCompany: eCompany v0.2.0 Build 63: Version 0.2.0 Build 63: Added Splash screen & about box Added downloading of currencies when eCompany launched for the first time (must close any bug caused by no currency rate existing) Added corp creation when eCompany launched for the first time (for now, you didn't need to edit the company.xml file manually) You just need to decompress file "eCompany v0.2.0.63.zip" into your current eCompany install directory.SQL Monitor - tracking sql server activities: SQL Monitor 3.0 alpha 8: 1. added truncate table/defrag index/check db functions 2. improved alert 3. fixed problem with alert causing config file corrupted(hopefully)Analysis Services Stored Procedure Project: 1.3.5 Release: This release includes the following fixes and new functionality: Updates to GetCubeLastProcessedDate to work with perspectives Fixes to reports that call Discover functions improving drillthrough functions against perspectives improving ExecuteDrillthroughAndFixColumns logic fixing situation where MDX query calling certain ASSP sprocs which opened external connections caused deadlock to SSAS processing small fix to Partition code when DbColumnName property doesn't exist changes...DocX: DocX v1.0.0.11: Building Examples projectTo build the Examples project, download DocX.dll and add it as a reference to the project. OverviewThis version of DocX contains many bug fixes, it is a serious step towards a stable release. Added1) Unit testing project, 2) Examples project, 3) To many bug fixes to list here, see the source code change list history.Cosmos (C# Open Source Managed Operating System): 71406: This is the second release supporting the full line of Visual Studio 2010 editions. Changes since release 71246 include: Debug info is now stored in a single .cpdb file (which is a Firebird database) Keyboard input works now (using Console.ReadLine) Console colors work (using Console.ForegroundColor and .BackgroundColor)AutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.5.0: Added the all new Masteries Browser which replaces the Quick Open combobox AutoLoL will now attemt to create file associations for mastery (*.lolm) files Each Mastery Build can now contain keywords that the Masteries Browser will use for filtering Changed the way AutoLoL detects if another instance is already running Changed the format of the mastery files to allow more information stored in* Dialogs will now focus the Ok or Cancel button which allows the user to press Return to clo...Paint.NET PSD Plugin: 1.6.0: Handling of layer masks has been greatly improved. Improved reliability. Many PSD files that previously loaded in as garbage will now load in correctly. Parallelized loading. PSD files containing layer masks will load in a bit quicker thanks to the removal of the sequential bottleneck. Hidden layers are no longer made visible on save. Many thanks to the users who helped expose the layer masks problem: Rob Horowitz, M_Lyons10. Please keep sending in those bug reports and PSD repro files!Facebook C# SDK: 4.1.1: From 4.1.1 Release: Authentication bug fix caused by facebook change (error with redirects in Safari) Authenticator fix, always returning true From 4.1.0 Release Lots of bug fixes Removed Dynamic Runtime Language dependencies from non-dynamic platforms. Samples included in release for ASP.NET, MVC, Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, WPF, WinForms, and one Visual Basic Sample Changed internal serialization to use Json.net BREAKING CHANGE: Canvas Session is no longer supported. Use Signed...Catel - WPF and Silverlight MVVM library: 1.0.0: And there it is, the final release of Catel, and it is no longer a beta version!EnhSim: EnhSim 2.2.7 ALPHA: 2.2.7 ALPHAThis 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 - Mongoose has bee...Euro for Windows XP: ChangeRegionalSettings 1..0: *Rocket Framework (.Net 4.0): Rocket Framework for Windows V 1.0.0: Architecture is reviewed and adjusted in a way so that I can introduce the Web version and WPF version of this framework next. - Rocket.Core is introduced - Controller button functions revisited and updated - DB is renewed to suite the implemented features - Create New button functionality is changed - Add Question Handling featuresFlickr Wallpaper Rotator (for Windows desktop): Wallpaper Flickr 1.1: Some minor bugfixes (mostly covering when network connection is flakey, so I discovered them all while at my parents' house for Christmas).NoSimplerAccounting: NoSimplerAccounting 6.0: -Fixed a bug in expense category report.NHibernate Mapping Generator: NHibernate Mapping Generator 2.0: Added support for Postgres (Thanks to Angelo)NewLife XCode: XCode v6.5.2010.1223 ????(????v3.5??): XCode v6.5.2010.1223 ????,??: NewLife.Core ??? NewLife.Net ??? XControl ??? XTemplate ????,??C#?????? XAgent ???? NewLife.CommonEnitty ??????(???,XCode??????) XCode?? ?????????,??????????????????,?????95% XCode v3.5.2009.0714 ??,?v3.5?v6.0???????????????,?????????。v3.5???????????,??????????????。 XCoder ??XTemplate?????????,????????XCode??? XCoder_Src ???????(????XTemplate????),??????????????????New Projects1i2m3i4s5e6r7p: 1i2m3i4s5e6r7pA3 Fashion Web: A complete e-commerce siteAfonsoft Blog - Blog de teste: Blog para teste de desenvolvimento em MySQL ou SQLServer com ASP.NET 3.5AnyGrid for ASP.NET MVC: Which grid component should you use for your ASP.NET MVC project? How about all of them? AnyGrid makes it easy to switch between grid implementations, allowing a single action to, e.g., use two different grids for desktop and mobile views. It also supports DataAnnnotations.BizTalk Map Test Framework: The Map Test Framework makes it easier for BizTalk developers to test their maps. You'll no longer have to maintain a whole bunch of XML files for your tests. The use of template files and xpath queries to perform tests will increase your productivity tremendously.BlogResult.NET: A simple Blogging starter kit using S#harp Architecture. This project was originally course material sample code for an MVC class, but we decided to open source it and make it available to the community.Caro: Code demo caro game.Ecozany Skin for DotNetNuke: This Ecozany package contains three sample skins and a collection of containers for use in your DotNetNuke web sites.Enhanced lookup field: Enhanced lookup field makes it easier for end users to create filters. You'll no longer have to use a custom field or javascript to have a parent child lookup for example. It's developed in C#. - Parent/multiple child lookups - Advanced filters options - Easy to usejobglance: This is job siteMaxLeafWeb_K3: MaxLeafWeb_K3Miage Kart: Projet java M1msystem: MVC. Net web systemNetController: Controle sem teclas de direção, usando acelerômentro e .NET micro Framework.Pencils - A Blog Site framework: Another Blog site frameworkPICTShell: PICT is an efficient way to design test cases and test configurations for software systems. PICT Shell is the GUI for PICT.Portal de Solicitação de Serviços: O Portal de Solicitação de Serviços é uma solução que atende diversas empresas prestadores de serviços. Inicialmente desenvolvido para atender empresa de informática, mas o objetivo é que com a publicação do fonte, ele seja extendido à diversos tipos de prestadoras.Runery: Runery RSPSsCut4s: sCut4sSumacê Jogava Caxangá?: sumace makes it easier for gamers to play. You'll no longer have to play. It's developed in XNA.Supply_Chain_FInance: Supply Chain Finance thrives these years all over the world. In exploring the inner working mechanism ,we can sought to have a way to embed an information system in it. We develop the system to suit the domesticated supply chain finace .TestAmir: ??? ????? ??? ???The Cosmos: School project on a SOA based system (Loan system)Time zone: A c# library for manage time changes for any time zone in the world. Based on olson database.Validate: Validate is a collection of extension methods that let you add validations to any object and display validations in a user/developer friendly format. Its an extremely light weight validation framework with a zero learning curve.Windows Phone 7 Silverlight ListBox with CheckBox Control: A Windows Phone 7 ListBox control, providing CheckBoxes for item selection when in "Choose State" and no CheckBoxes in "Normal State", like the built-in Email app, with nice transition. To switch between states, set the "IsInChooseState" property. The control inherits ListBox.XQSOFT.WF.Designer: this is workflow designerzhanghai: my test project

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  • EM12c Release 4: New Compliance features including DB STIG Standard

    - by DaveWolf
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Enterprise Manager’s compliance framework is a powerful and robust feature that provides users the ability to continuously validate their target configurations against a specified standard. Enterprise Manager’s compliance library is filled with a wide variety of standards based on Oracle’s recommendations, best practices and security guidelines. These standards can be easily associated to a target to generate a report showing its degree of conformance to that standard. ( To get an overview of  Database compliance management in Enterprise Manager see this screenwatch. ) Starting with release 12.1.0.4 of Enterprise Manager the compliance library will contain a new standard based on the US Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Security Technical Implementation Guide (STIG) for Oracle Database 11g. According to the DISA website, “The STIGs contain technical guidance to ‘lock down’ information systems/software that might otherwise be vulnerable to a malicious computer attack.” In essence, a STIG is a technical checklist an administrator can follow to secure a system or software. Many US government entities are required to follow these standards however many non-US government entities and commercial companies base their standards directly or partially on these STIGs. You can find more information about the Oracle Database and other STIGs on the DISA website. The Oracle Database 11g STIG consists of two categories of checks, installation and instance. Installation checks focus primarily on the security of the Oracle Home while the instance checks focus on the configuration of the running database instance itself. If you view the STIG compliance standard in Enterprise Manager, you will see the rules organized into folders corresponding to these categories. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 -"/ /* 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-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} The rule names contain a rule ID ( DG0020 for example ) which directly map to the check name in the STIG checklist along with a helpful brief description. The actual description field contains the text from the STIG documentation to aid in understanding the purpose of the check. All of the rules have also been documented in the Oracle Database Compliance Standards reference documentation. In order to use this standard both the OMS and agent must be at version 12.1.0.4 as it takes advantage of several features new in this release including: Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Agent-Side Compliance Rules Manual Compliance Rules Violation Suppression Additional BI Publisher Compliance Reports /* 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-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Agent-Side Compliance Rules Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Agent-side compliance rules are essentially the result of a tighter integration between Configuration Extensions and Compliance Rules. If you ever created customer compliance content in past versions of Enterprise Manager, you likely used Configuration Extensions to collect additional information into the EM repository so it could be used in a Repository compliance rule. This process although powerful, could be confusing to correctly model the SQL in the rule creation wizard. With agent-side rules, the user only needs to choose the Configuration Extension/Alias combination and that’s it. Enterprise Manager will do the rest for you. This tighter integration also means their lifecycle is managed together. When you associate an agent-side compliance standard to a target, the required Configuration Extensions will be deployed automatically for you. The opposite is also true, when you unassociated the compliance standard, the Configuration Extensions will also be undeployed. The Oracle Database STIG compliance standard is implemented as an agent-side standard which is why you simply need to associate the standard to your database targets without previously deploying the associated Configuration Extensions. You can learn more about using Agent-Side compliance rules in the screenwatch Using Agent-Side Compliance Rules on Enterprise Manager's Lifecycle Management page on OTN. /* 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-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Manual Compliance Rules Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} There are many checks in the Oracle Database STIG as well as other common standards which simply cannot be automated. This could be something as simple as “Ensure the datacenter entrance is secured.” or complex as Oracle Database STIG Rule DG0186 – “The database should not be directly accessible from public or unauthorized networks”. These checks require a human to perform and attest to its successful completion. Enterprise Manager now supports these types of checks in Manual rules. When first associated to a target, each manual rule will generate a single violation. These violations must be manually cleared by a user who is in essence attesting to its successful completion. The user is able to permanently clear the violation or give a future date on which the violation will be regenerated. Setting a future date is useful when policy dictates a periodic re-validation of conformance wherein the user will have to reperform the check. The optional reason field gives the user an opportunity to provide details of the check results. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Violation Suppression There are situations that require the need to permanently or temporarily suppress a legitimate violation or finding. These include approved exceptions and grace periods. Enterprise Manager now supports the ability to temporarily or permanently suppress a violation. Unlike when you clear a manual rule violation, suppression simply removes the violation from the compliance results UI and in turn its negative impact on the score. The violation still remains in the EM repository and can be accounted for in compliance reports. Temporarily suppressing a violation can give users a grace period in which to address an issue. If the issue is not addressed within the specified period, the violation will reappear in the results automatically. Again the user may enter a reason for the suppression which will be permanently saved with the event along with the suppressing user ID. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Additional BI Publisher compliance reports As I am sure you have learned by now, BI Publisher now ships and is integrated with Enterprise Manager 12.1.0.4. This means users can take full advantage of the powerful reporting engine by using the Oracle provided reports or building their own. There are many new compliance related reports available in 12.1.0.4 covering all aspects including the association status, library as well as summary and detailed results reports.  10 New Compliance Reports Compliance Summary Report Example showing STIG results Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* 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-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Conclusion Together with the Oracle Database 11g STIG compliance standard these features provide a complete solution for easily auditing and reporting the security posture of your Oracle Databases against this well known benchmark. You can view an overview presentation and demo in the screenwatch Using the STIG Compliance Standard on Enterprise Manager's Lifecycle Management page on OTN. Additional EM12c Compliance Management Information Compliance Management - Overview ( Presentation ) Compliance Management - Custom Compliance on Default Data (How To) Compliance Management - Custom Compliance using SQL Configuration Extension (How To) Compliance Management - Customer Compliance using Command Configuration Extension (How To)

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, May 18, 2010

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, May 18, 2010New ProjectsCafeControl: Supports Remote LOGIN,Remote logout ,Account Creation ,Account LOGOUT ,Temporary Login ,SMS Reported and many other features Requires .net 4.0 Cloud & Contacts: Cloud Contacts makes it easier for share your contacts.Cow connect: Ziel des Projektes Cow connect, ist es ein Tool zu schrieben das Verschiedene Datenbanken, unterschiedlicher Herdenmanagement Tool z.b: Helm Multik...DNN Simple Blog: A simplified blog module that adheres to the DNN API and is designed for a single blog author per module instance. The module also makes use of Web...dotSpatial: dotSpatial is an open source project focused on developing a core set of GIS and mapping libraries that live together harmoniously in the System.Sp...Dynamic Survey Forms - SharePoint Web Part: Create manage dynamic survey forms as SharePoint web part. Record survey score for logged user or for someone else. This project has been designed ...EDXL Sharp: EDXLSharp is a C# / .NET 3.5 implementation of the OASIS Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL) family of standards. This set of libraries can be...EPiServer CMS 6 Visual Studio Project Template for VB w/ Public Templates: This is a Visual Studio 2008 Project Template with will allow the creation of a EPiServer CMS 6 project set up as and with all code in Visual Basic...Functional Command Toolbar for Windows: A floating window with a text box for typing functional command and executing it. The tool supports .NET addin, functional scripting and other feat...GameFX: Silverlight Game Development LibraryLightweight Fluent Workflow: ObjectFlow is a lightweight workflow engine for creating & executing workflows. The fluent interface makes it easy to define and understand workf...LinqSpecs: A toolset for use the specification pattern in linq queries.Money Watch: Personal Finances management system written in C#, NHibernate and SQL express.Multi-screen Viewer: This viewer allows to open and view pdf file (presentation) on multiple screens. There is no need to see the file in fullscreen on each screen (mon...neo-tsql: set of stored procedures and functions for sql serverNHTrace: NHTrace is a tool for tracing sql commands executed by NHibernate with syntax highlighting.NQueue: NQueue provides an enterprise level work scheduling and execution framework and toolset that contains no single point of failure. Using a farm of s...Online Cash Manager: Online Cash Manager based on ASP .NET MVC2 VS 2010 RTM MVC 2POCO Bridge: Bridging Silverlight and full .NET apps.REngine - game engine in Silverlight: REngine makes it easier for game developers to develop games in Microsoft Silverlight. RunAs Launcher: RunAs Launcher is a C# utility that provides a GUI for running applications under different credentials. It works in situations where the built-in ...secs4net: SECS-II/GEM/HSMS implementation on .NET. This library provide easy way to communicate with SEMI standard compatible device.SharePoint Admin Dashboard: SharePoint Dashboard for admins. Allows lightening fast multiple server management. RDP doesn't scale. Manage 10 servers easier than 1 with i...Silver spring: saltSocial Map: Social map is a social network based on geograpghical informationTweetZone: TweetZone is new type of twitter client application include DATABASE in it, and it shows you STATS. This Application's cache makes it faster to acc...Yet Another Database Viewer: Yet Another Database Viewer is developed for a basic database view and editing so you don't have to install anything. It's developed in c#.New Releases3FD - Framework For Fast Development: Alpha 1: The first test release. There is still some bugs, but it is functional. The garbage collector is showing memory leaking that must be corrected in t...Ajax Toolkit for ASP.NET MVC: MvcAjaxToolkit gridext with ContextMenu and Tmpl: MvcAjaxToolkit gridext with ContextMenu and Tmpl gridext is a extension for flexigridASP.NET MVC Extensions: SP1 Preview: SP1 Preview ========= 1. Autofac support added. 2. Changed Windsor Adapter. IWindsorInstaller is used instead of IModule.Book Cataloger: BookCataloger1.0.7a: New Features: Author editor form prototype Improvements: .NET Framework 4.0 required Input checking improved Comment edit loads and saves text...Braintree Client Library: Braintree-2.2.0: Prevent race condition when pulling back collection results -- search results represent the state of the data at the time the query was run Renam...CassiniDev - Cassini 3.5/4.0 Developers Edition: CassiniDev 3.5.1 and 4.0.1 beta 2: Documentation New in CassiniDev v3.5.1.0/v4.0.1.0 Added .Net 4 / VS10 build. Simplified test fixtures. Un-Refactored the not-so-simple MVP pa...dotNetTips: dotNetTips.Utility 3.5 R3: This is a new release (version 3.5.0.4) compatible with .NET 3.5. Requires SP1 if using the Entity Framework extensions. This is a minor update fro...Dynamic Survey Forms - SharePoint Web Part: Dynamic Survey forms for SharePoint. Alpha 1.0.1: Alpha release. Before running installer create database from script attached in zip file. In your web.config make sure your first connection strin...Event Scavenger: Viewer version 3.2.1: Added quick filters on event source and event id dialog boxes. Collector and Admin tool unaffected.Expression Blend Samples: Blend 4 Sketch Mockups Library: This library provides a set of commonly needed controls, icons and cursors to use in SketchFlow applications. After running the installer, create ...Fluent Ribbon Control Suite: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 1.3: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 1.3(supports .NET 3.5 and .NET 4 RTM) Includes: Fluent.dll (with .pdb and .xml) Showcase Application Samples Found...Home Access Plus+: v4.2.2: Version 4.2.2 Change Log: Changes to how mycomputer handles NTFS permissions File Changes: ~/Bin/HAP.Web.dll ~/Bin/HAP.Web.pdbIdeaNMR: IdeaNMR Web App PreAlpha 0.1: This is the first release.IP Informer: Beta Release: V0.8.0.0 Beta.LinkedIn® for Windows Mobile: LinkedIn for Windows Mobile v0.9: Main updates for this release Fixed Status update. (updates where not correctly passed on to LinkedIn) Added landscape/GSensor support. (Currentl...LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter Beta v2.0.11: New items added since v1.1 include: Support for OAuth (via DotNetOpenAuth), secure communication via https, VB language support, serialization of ...LinqSpecs: Version 1.0 alpha: This is the alpha version of LinqSpecs.miniTodo: mini Todo version 0.2: ・デザインを透明主体に変更  -件数を表示している部分のドラッグでウィンドウ移動  -上記の部分右クリックで、「最前面に表示」、「全アイテム管理」 ・グラフを日/週/月単位の3種類に増やした ・新規作成、完了時にアニメーション追加。完了時にはサウンドも追加 ・テキスト未入力時は追加ボタンも非表示My Notepad: My Notepad (Beta): This is the Beta version of My Notepad. The software is stable enough for you to use. Enjoy the flexibility of docking and also the all new Syntax ...NHTrace: NHTrace-45713: NHTrace-45713Nito.KitchenSink: Version 8: New features (since Version 5) Fixed null reference bug in ExceptionExtensions. Added DynamicStaticTypeMembers and RefOutArg for dynamically (lat...Nito.LINQ: Beta (v0.5): Rx version The "with Rx" versions of Nito.LINQ are built against Rx 1.0.2521.102, released 2010-05-14. Breaking changes Corrected internal read-on...Object/Relational Mapper & Code Generator in Net 2.0 for Relational & XML Schema: 2.9: Work on UI templates for associative tables (2-column PK), using users/roles pages as an example. Added templates for Not-In-Group sql and cache-ba...patterns & practices - GAX Extensions Library: GEL for gax2010: This is the GEL for GAX 2010, support Visual Stuido 2010patterns & practices - Smart Client Guidance: Smart Client Software Factory 2010 Documentation: If the right-side pane of the chm file is not displayed correctly, do the following: 1) Download SCSF2010Guide.chm file. 2) Start the windows explo...patterns & practices - Windows Azure Guidance: WAAG - Part 1 - Release Candidate: "Release Candidate" for Part 1 of the Windows Azure Guide Highlights of this release are: Code samples complete. Fixed few bugs on "Dependency Ch...Rawr: Rawr 2.3.17: >Rawr3 Public Beta has been released! Click here for details.< - Lots of improvements to the default data files. There is a known issue with the s...RunAs Launcher: RunAs Launcher 1.2: This is the first version being released to CodePlex. Simply extract the file and run the executable. For those that wish to download the source c...Rx Contrib: V1.5: Bug fixsecs4net: Release 1.0: Notes: Runtime requirement: .Net framework 2.0 SP2 with System.Core(.NET 3.5), System.Threading(Rx for 3.5 SP1)SharePoint Admin Dashboard: SPDashboard v1.0: SPDashboard v1.0ShortURL Creator: ShortURL Creator 1.3.0.0: Added new provider u.nu and minimum UI changesStyleCop+: StyleCop+ 0.7: StyleCop+ is now fully compatible with StyleCop 4.4. The following entities were supported in Advanced Naming Rules: - Delegate - Event - Property...Value Injecter: an aspect oriented mapper: Value Injecter 1.2: ValueInjecter library, Sample solution that contains: web-forms sample project win-forms sample project unit tests samplesVCC: Latest build, v2.1.30517.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVCC: Latest build, v2.1.30517.1: Automatic drop of latest buildVidCoder: 0.4.1: Changes: Marks system as "working" to prevent computer from sleeping during an encode. CPU priority changed to BelowNormal during encodes. Enco...WSP Listener: WSP Listener version 2.0.0.0: This new version includes: All assemblies and required assets in one WSP Seperated code in library assembly Activate the WSP Listener with one...Yet Another Database Viewer: Beta: first release of the programYet another developer blog - Examples: Asynchronous TreeView in ASP.NET WebForms: This sample application shows how to use jQuery TreeView plugin for creating an asynchronous TreeView in ASP.NET WebForms. This application is acco...Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)patterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesPHPExcelASP.NETMost Active Projectspatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryPHPExcelRawrBlogEngine.NETMicrosoft Biology FoundationCustomer Portal Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRMWindows Azure Command-line Tools for PHP DevelopersGMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows Forms & PresentationCassiniDev - Cassini 3.5/4.0 Developers EditionDotNetZip Library

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  • Spam Assassin on windows

    - by ebeworld
    I just installed spam assassin and run for its sample ham mail as spamassassin sample-nonspam.txt, but it ended up marking it as a spam. What configuration am i missing to change? Result of the check is: From: Keith Dawson To: [email protected] Subject: **SPAM** TBTF ping for 2001-04-20: Reviving Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 16:59:58 -0400 Message-Id: X-Spam-Flag: YES X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.2.3 (2007-08-08) on ebeworld-PC X-Spam-Level: **** X-Spam-Status: Yes, score=10.5 required=6.3 tests=DCC_CHECK,DIGEST_MULTIPLE, DNS_FROM_OPENWHOIS,RAZOR2_CF_RANGE_51_100,RAZOR2_CF_RANGE_E4_51_100, RAZOR2_CHECK shortcircuit=no autolearn=no version=3.2.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="----------=_4BF17E8E.BF8E0000" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------------=_4BF17E8E.BF8E0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit This mail is probably spam. The original message has been attached intact in RFC 822 format. Content preview: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- TBTF ping for 2001-04-20: Reviving T a s t y B i t s f r o m t h e T e c h n o l o g y F r o n t [...] Content analysis details: (10.5 points, 6.3 required) 2.4 DNS_FROM_OPENWHOIS RBL: Envelope sender listed in bl.open-whois.org. 1.5 RAZOR2_CF_RANGE_E4_51_100 Razor2 gives engine 4 confidence level above 50% [cf: 58] 2.5 RAZOR2_CHECK Listed in Razor2 (http://razor.sf.net/) 0.5 RAZOR2_CF_RANGE_51_100 Razor2 gives confidence level above 50% [cf: 58] 3.6 DCC_CHECK Listed in DCC (http://rhyolite.com/anti-spam/dcc/) 0.0 DIGEST_MULTIPLE Message hits more than one network digest check ------------=_4BF17E8E.BF8E0000 Content-Type: message/rfc822; x-spam-type=original Content-Description: original message before SpamAssassin Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Return-Path: Delivered-To: [email protected] Received: from europe.std.com (europe.std.com [199.172.62.20]) by mail.netnoteinc.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 392E1114061 for ; Fri, 20 Apr 2001 21:34:46 +0000 (Eire) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by europe.std.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id RAA09630 for tbtf-outgoing; Fri, 20 Apr 2001 17:31:18 -0400 (EDT) Received: from sgi04-e.std.com (sgi04-e.std.com [199.172.62.134]) by europe.std.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA08749 for ; Fri, 20 Apr 2001 17:24:31 -0400 (EDT) Received: from world.std.com (world-f.std.com [199.172.62.5]) by sgi04-e.std.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA8278330 for ; Fri, 20 Apr 2001 17:24:31 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from dawson@localhost) by world.std.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id RAA26781 for [email protected]; Fri, 20 Apr 2001 17:24:31 -0400 (EDT) Received: from sgi04-e.std.com (sgi04-e.std.com [199.172.62.134]) by europe.std.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA07541 for ; Fri, 20 Apr 2001 17:12:06 -0400 (EDT) Received: from world.std.com (world-f.std.com [199.172.62.5]) by sgi04-e.std.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA8416421 for ; Fri, 20 Apr 2001 17:12:06 -0400 (EDT) Received: from [208.192.102.193] (ppp0c199.std.com [208.192.102.199]) by world.std.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA14226 for ; Fri, 20 Apr 2001 17:12:04 -0400 (EDT) Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 16:59:58 -0400 To: [email protected] From: Keith Dawson Subject: TBTF ping for 2001-04-20: Reviving Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: [email protected] Precedence: list Reply-To: [email protected] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- TBTF ping for 2001-04-20: Reviving T a s t y B i t s f r o m t h e T e c h n o l o g y F r o n t Timely news of the bellwethers in computer and communications technology that will affect electronic commerce -- since 1994 Your Host: Keith Dawson ISSN: 1524-9948 This issue: < http://tbtf.com/archive/2001-04-20.html > To comment on this issue, please use this forum at Quick Topic: < http://www.quicktopic.com/tbtf/H/kQGJR2TXL6H > ________________________________________________________________________ Q u o t e O f T h e M o m e n t Even organizations that promise "privacy for their customers" rarely if ever promise "continued privacy for their former customers..." Once you cancel your account with any business, their promises of keeping the information about their customers private no longer apply... you're not a customer any longer. This is in the large category of business behaviors that individuals would consider immoral and deceptive -- and businesses know are not illegal. -- "_ankh," writing on the XNStalk mailing list ________________________________________________________________________ ..TBTF's long hiatus is drawing to a close Hail subscribers to the TBTF mailing list. Some 2,000 [1] of you have signed up since the last issue [2] was mailed on 2000-07-20. This brief note is the first of several I will send to this list to excise the dead addresses prior to resuming regular publication. While you time the contractions of the newsletter's rebirth, I in- vite you to read the TBTF Log [3] and sign up for its separate free subscription. Send "subscribe" (no quotes) with any subject to [email protected] . I mail out collected Log items on Sun- days. If you need to stay more immediately on top of breaking stories, pick up the TBTF Log's syndication file [4] or read an aggregator that does. Examples are Slashdot's Cheesy Portal [5], Userland [6], and Sitescooper [7]. If your news obsession runs even deeper and you own an SMS-capable cell phone or PDA, sign up on TBTF's WebWire- lessNow portal [8]. A free call will bring you the latest TBTF Log headline, Jargon Scout [9] find, or Siliconium [10]. Two new columnists have bloomed on TBTF since last summer: Ted By- field's roving_reporter [11] and Gary Stock's UnBlinking [12]. Late- ly Byfield has been writing in unmatched depth about ICANN, but the roving_reporter nym's roots are in commentary at the intersection of technology and culture. Stock's UnBlinking latches onto topical sub- jects and pursues them to the ends of the Net. These writers' voices are compelling and utterly distinctive. [1] http://tbtf.com/growth.html [2] http://tbtf.com/archive/2000-07-20.html [3] http://tbtf.com/blog/ [4] http://tbtf.com/tbtf.rdf [5] http://www.slashdot.org/cheesyportal.shtml [6] http://my.userland.com/ [7] http://www.sitescooper.org/ [8] http://tbtf.com/pull-wwn/ [9] http://tbtf.com/jargon-scout.html [10] http://tbtf.com/siliconia.html [11] http://tbtf.com/roving_reporter/ [12] http://tbtf.com/unblinking/ ________________________________________________________________________ S o u r c e s For a complete list of TBTF's email and Web sources, see http://tbtf.com/sources.html . ________________________________________ B e n e f a c t o r s TBTF is free. If you get value from this publication, please visit the TBTF Benefactors page < http://tbtf.com/the-benefactors.html > and consider contributing to its upkeep. ________________________________________________________________________ TBTF home and archive at http://tbtf.com/ . To unsubscribe send the message "unsubscribe" to [email protected]. TBTF is Copy- right 1994-2000 by Keith Dawson, <[email protected]>. Commercial use prohibited. For non-commercial purposes please forward, post, and link as you see fit. _______________________________________________ Keith Dawson [email protected] Layer of ash separates morning and evening milk. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPfreeware 6.5.2 for non-commercial use http://www.pgp.com iQCVAwUBOuCi3WAMawgf2iXRAQHeAQQA3YSePSQ0XzdHZUVskFDkTfpE9XS4fHQs WaT6a8qLZK9PdNcoz3zggM/Jnjdx6CJqNzxPEtxk9B2DoGll/C/60HWNPN+VujDu Xav65S0P+Px4knaQcCIeCamQJ7uGcsw+CqMpNbxWYaTYmjAfkbKH1EuLC2VRwdmD wQmwrDp70v8= =8hLB -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ------------=_4BF17E8E.BF8E0000--

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  • Microsoft Declares the Future of ASP.NET is Web API

    - by sbwalker
    Sitting on a plane on my way home from Tech Ed 2012 in Orlando, I thought it would be a good time to jot down some key takeaways from this year’s conference. Some of these items I have known since the Microsoft MVP Summit which occurred in Redmond in late February ( but due to NDA restrictions I could not share them with the developer community at large ) and some of them are a result of insightful conversations with a wide variety of industry insiders and Microsoft employees at the conference. First, let’s travel back in time 4 years to the Microsoft MVP Summit in 2008. Microsoft was facing some heat from market newcomer Ruby on Rails and responded with a new web development framework of its own, ASP.NET MVC. At the Summit they estimated that MVC would only be applicable for ~10% of all new web development projects. Based on that prediction I questioned why they were investing such considerable resources for such a relative edge case, but my guess is that they felt it was an important edge case at the time as some of the more vocal .NET evangelists as well as some very high profile start-ups ( ie. Twitter ) had publicly announced their intent to use Rails. Microsoft made a lot of noise about MVC. In fact, they focused so much of their messaging and marketing hype around MVC that it appeared that WebForms was essentially dead. Yes, it may have been true that Microsoft continued to invest in WebForms, but from an outside perspective it really appeared that MVC was the only framework getting any real attention. As a result, MVC started to gain market share. An inside source at Microsoft told me that MVC usage has grown at a rate of about 5% per year and now sits at ~30%. Essentially by focusing so much marketing effort on MVC, Microsoft actually created a larger market demand for it.  This is because in the Microsoft ecosystem there is somewhat of a bandwagon mentality amongst developers. If Microsoft spends a lot of time talking about a specific technology, developers get the perception that it must be really important. So rather than choosing the right tool for the job, they often choose the tool with the most marketing hype and then try to sell it to the customer. In 2010, I blogged about the fact that MVC did not make any business sense for the DotNetNuke platform. This was because our ecosystem relied on third party extensions which were dependent on the WebForms model. If we migrated the core to MVC it would mean that all of the third party extensions would no longer be compatible, which would be an irresponsible business decision for us to make at the expense of our users and customers. However, this did not stop the debate from continuing to occur in our ecosystem. Clearly some developers had drunk Microsoft’s Kool-Aid about MVC and were of the mindset, to paraphrase an old Scottish saying, “If its not MVC, it’s crap”. Now, this is a rather ignorant position to take as most of the benefits of MVC can be achieved in WebForms with solid architecture and responsible coding practices. Clean separation of concerns, unit testing, and direct control over page output are all possible in the WebForms model – it just requires diligence and discipline. So over the past few years some horror stories have begun to bubble to the surface of software development projects focused on ground-up rewrites of web applications for the sole purpose of migrating from WebForms to MVC. These large scale rewrites were typically initiated by engineering teams with only a single argument driving the business decision, that Microsoft was promoting MVC as “the future”. These ill-fated rewrites offered no benefit to end users or customers and in fact resulted in a less stable, less scalable and more complicated systems – basically taking one step forward and two full steps back. A case in point is the announcement earlier this week that a popular open source .NET CMS provider has decided to pull the plug on their new MVC product which has been under active development for more than 18 months and revert back to WebForms. The availability of multiple server-side development models has deeply fragmented the Microsoft developer community. Some folks like to compare it to the age-old VB vs. C# language debate. However, the VB vs. C# language debate was ultimately more of a religious war because at least the two dominant programming languages were compatible with one another and could be used interchangeably. The issue with WebForms vs. MVC is much more challenging. This is because the messaging from Microsoft has positioned the two solutions as being incompatible with one another and as a result web developers feel like they are forced to choose one path or another. Yes, it is true that it has always been technically possible to use WebForms and MVC in the same project, but the tooling support has always made this feel “dirty”. The fragmentation has also made it difficult to attract newcomers as the perceived barrier to entry for learning ASP.NET has become higher. As a result many new software developers entering the market are gravitating to environments where the development model seems more simple and intuitive ( ie. PHP or Ruby ). At the same time that the Web Platform team was busy promoting ASP.NET MVC, the Microsoft Office team has been promoting Sharepoint as a platform for building internal enterprise web applications. Sharepoint has great penetration in the enterprise and over time has been enhanced with improved extensibility capabilities for software developers. But, like many other mature enterprise ASP.NET web applications, it is built on the WebForms development model. Similar to DotNetNuke, Sharepoint leverages a rich third party ecosystem for both generic web controls and more specialized WebParts – both of which rely on WebForms. So basically this resulted in a situation where the Web Platform group had headed off in one direction and the Office team had gone in another direction, and the end customer was stuck in the middle trying to figure out what to do with their existing investments in Microsoft technology. It really emphasized the perception that the left hand was not speaking to the right hand, as strategically speaking there did not seem to be any high level plan from Microsoft to ensure consistency and continuity across the different product lines. With the introduction of ASP.NET MVC, it also made some of the third party control vendors scratch their heads, and wonder what the heck Microsoft was thinking. The original value proposition of ASP.NET over Classic ASP was the ability for web developers to emulate the highly productive desktop development model by using abstract components for creating rich, interactive web interfaces. Web control vendors like Telerik, Infragistics, DevExpress, and ComponentArt had all built sizable businesses offering powerful user interface components to WebForms developers. And even after MVC was introduced these vendors continued to improve their products, offering greater productivity and a superior user experience via AJAX to what was possible in MVC. And since many developers were comfortable and satisfied with these third party solutions, the demand remained strong and the third party web control market continued to prosper despite the availability of MVC. While all of this was going on in the Microsoft ecosystem, there has also been a fundamental shift in the general software development industry. Driven by the explosion of Internet-enabled devices, the focus has now centered on service-oriented architecture (SOA). Service-oriented architecture is all about defining a public API for your product that any client can consume; whether it’s a native application running on a smart phone or tablet, a web browser taking advantage of HTML5 and Javascript, or a rich desktop application running on a PC. REST-based services which utilize the less verbose characteristics of JSON as a transport mechanism, have become the preferred approach over older, more bloated SOAP-based techniques. SOA also has the benefit of producing a cross-platform API, as every major technology stack is able to interact with standard REST-based web services. And for web applications, more and more developers are turning to robust Javascript libraries like JQuery and Knockout for browser-based client-side development techniques for calling web services and rendering content to end users. In fact, traditional server-side page rendering has largely fallen out of favor, resulting in decreased demand for server-side frameworks like Ruby on Rails, WebForms, and (gasp) MVC. In response to these new industry trends, Microsoft did what it always does – it immediately poured some resources into developing a solution which will ensure they remain relevant and competitive in the web space. This work culminated in a new framework which was branded as Web API. It is convention-based and designed to embrace native HTTP standards without copious layers of abstraction. This framework is designed to be the ultimate replacement for both the REST aspects of WCF and ASP.NET MVC Web Services. And since it was developed out of band with a dependency only on ASP.NET 4.0, it means that it can be used immediately in a variety of production scenarios. So at Tech Ed 2012 it was made abundantly clear in numerous sessions that Microsoft views Web API as the “Future of ASP.NET”. In fact, one Microsoft PM even went as far as to say that if we look 3-4 years into the future, that all ASP.NET web applications will be developed using the Web API approach. This is a fairly bold prediction and clearly telegraphs where Microsoft plans to allocate its resources going forward. Currently Web API is being delivered as part of the MVC4 package, but this is only temporary for the sake of convenience. It also sounds like there are still internal discussions going on in terms of how to brand the various aspects of ASP.NET going forward – perhaps the moniker of “ASP.NET Web Stack” coined a couple years ago by Scott Hanselman and utilized as part of the open source release of ASP.NET bits on Codeplex a few months back will eventually stick. Web API is being positioned as the unification of ASP.NET – the glue that is able to pull this fragmented mess back together again. The  “One ASP.NET” strategy will promote the use of all frameworks - WebForms, MVC, and Web API, even within the same web project. Basically the message is utilize the appropriate aspects of each framework to solve your business problems. Instead of navigating developers to a fork in the road, the plan is to educate them that “hybrid” applications are a great strategy for delivering solutions to customers. In addition, the service-oriented approach coupled with client-side development promoted by Web API can effectively be used in both WebForms and MVC applications. So this means it is also relevant to application platforms like DotNetNuke and Sharepoint, which means that it starts to create a unified development strategy across all ASP.NET product lines once again. And so what about MVC? There have actually been rumors floated that MVC has reached a stage of maturity where, similar to WebForms, it will be treated more as a maintenance product line going forward ( MVC4 may in fact be the last significant iteration of this framework ). This may sound alarming to some folks who have recently adopted MVC but it really shouldn’t, as both WebForms and MVC will continue to play a vital role in delivering solutions to customers. They will just not be the primary area where Microsoft is spending the majority of its R&D resources. That distinction will obviously go to Web API. And when the question comes up of why not enhance MVC to make it work with Web API, you must take a step back and look at this from the higher level to see that it really makes no sense. MVC is a server-side page compositing framework; whereas, Web API promotes client-side page compositing with a heavy focus on web services. In order to make MVC work well with Web API, would require a complete rewrite of MVC and at the end of the day, there would be no upgrade path for existing MVC applications. So it really does not make much business sense. So what does this have to do with DotNetNuke? Well, around 8-12 months ago we recognized the software industry trends towards web services and client-side development. We decided to utilize a “hybrid” model which would provide compatibility for existing modules while at the same time provide a bridge for developers who wanted to utilize more modern web techniques. Customers who like the productivity and familiarity of WebForms can continue to build custom modules using the traditional approach. However, in DotNetNuke 6.2 we also introduced a new Service Framework which is actually built on top of MVC2 ( we chose to leverage MVC because it had the most intuitive, light-weight REST implementation in the .NET stack ). The Services Framework allowed us to build some rich interactive features in DotNetNuke 6.2, including the Messaging and Notification Center and Activity Feed. But based on where we know Microsoft is heading, it makes sense for the next major version of DotNetNuke ( which is expected to be released in Q4 2012 ) to migrate from MVC2 to Web API. This will likely result in some breaking changes in the Services Framework but we feel it is the best approach for ensuring the platform remains highly modern and relevant. The fact that our development strategy is perfectly aligned with the “One ASP.NET” strategy from Microsoft means that our customers and developer community can be confident in their current and future investments in the DotNetNuke platform.

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  • UAT Testing for SOA 10G Clusters

    - by [email protected]
    A lot of customers ask how to verify their SOA clusters and make them production ready. Here is a list that I recommend using for 10G SOA Clusters. v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-CA 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} Test cases for each component - Oracle Application Server 10G General Application Server test cases This section is going to cover very General test cases to make sure that the Application Server cluster has been set up correctly and if you can start and stop all the components in the server via opmnct and AS Console. Test Case 1 Check if you can see AS instances in the console Implementation 1. Log on to the AS Console --> check to see if you can see all the nodes in your AS cluster. You should be able to see all the Oracle AS instances that are part of the cluster. This means that the OPMN clustering worked and the AS instances successfully joined the AS cluster. Result You should be able to see if all the instances in the AS cluster are listed in the EM console. If the instances are not listed here are the files to check to see if OPMN joined the cluster properly: $ORACLE_HOME\opmn\logs{*}opmn.log*$ORACLE_HOME\opmn\logs{*}opmn.dbg* If OPMN did not join the cluster properly, please check the opmn.xml file to make sure the discovery multicast address and port are correct (see this link  for opmn documentation). Restart the whole instance using opmnctl stopall followed by opmnctl startall. Log on to AS console to see if instance is listed as part of the cluster. Test Case 2 Check to see if you can start/stop each component Implementation Check each OC4J component on each AS instanceStart each and every component through the AS console to see if they will start and stop.Do that for each and every instance. Result Each component should start and stop through the AS console. You can also verify if the component started by checking opmnctl status by logging onto each box associated with the cluster Test Case 3 Add/modify a datasource entry through AS console on a remote AS instance (not on the instance where EM is physically running) Implementation Pick an OC4J instanceCreate a new data-source through the AS consoleModify an existing data-source or connection pool (optional) Result Open $ORACLE_HOME\j2ee\<oc4j_name>\config\data-sources.xml to see if the new (and or the modified) connection details and data-source exist. If they do then the AS console has successfully updated a remote file and MBeans are communicating correctly. Test Case 4 Start and stop AS instances using opmnctl @cluster command Implementation 1. Go to $ORACLE_HOME\opmn\bin and use the opmnctl @cluster to start and stop the AS instances Result Use opmnctl @cluster status to check for start and stop statuses.  HTTP server test cases This section will deal with use cases to test HTTP server failover scenarios. In these examples the HTTP server will be talking to the BPEL console (or any other web application that the client wants), so the URL will be _http://hostname:port\BPELConsole Test Case 1  Shut down one of the HTTP servers while accessing the BPEL console and see the requested routed to the second HTTP server in the cluster Implementation Access the BPELConsoleCheck $ORACLE_HOME\Apache\Apache\logs\access_log --> check for the timestamp and the URL that was accessed by the user. Timestamp and URL would look like this 1xx.2x.2xx.xxx [24/Mar/2009:16:04:38 -0500] "GET /BPELConsole=System HTTP/1.1" 200 15 After you have figured out which HTTP server this is running on, shut down this HTTP server by using opmnctl stopproc --> this is a graceful shutdown.Access the BPELConsole again (please note that you should have a LoadBalancer in front of the HTTP server and configured the Apache Virtual Host, see EDG for steps)Check $ORACLE_HOME\Apache\Apache\logs\access_log --> check for the timestamp and the URL that was accessed by the user. Timestamp and URL would look like above Result Even though you are shutting down the HTTP server the request is routed to the surviving HTTP server, which is then able to route the request to the BPEL Console and you are able to access the console. By checking the access log file you can confirm that the request is being picked up by the surviving node. Test Case 2 Repeat the same test as above but instead of calling opmnctl stopproc, pull the network cord of one of the HTTP servers, so that the LBR routes the request to the surviving HTTP node --> this is simulating a network failure. Test Case 3 In test case 1 we have simulated a graceful shutdown, in this case we will simulate an Apache crash Implementation Use opmnctl status -l to get the PID of the HTTP server that you would like forcefully bring downOn Linux use kill -9 <PID> to kill the HTTP serverAccess the BPEL console Result As you shut down the HTTP server, OPMN will restart the HTTP server. The restart may be so quick that the LBR may still route the request to the same server. One way to check if the HTTP server restared is to check the new PID and the timestamp in the access log for the BPEL console. BPEL test cases This section is going to cover scenarios dealing with BPEL clustering using jGroups, BPEL deployment and testing related to BPEL failover. Test Case 1 Verify that jGroups has initialized correctly. There is no real testing in this use case just a visual verification by looking at log files that jGroups has initialized correctly. Check the opmn log for the BPEL container for all nodes at $ORACLE_HOME/opmn/logs/<group name><container name><group name>~1.log. This logfile will contain jGroups related information during startup and steady-state operation. Soon after startup you should find log entries for UDP or TCP.Example jGroups Log Entries for UDPApr 3, 2008 6:30:37 PM org.collaxa.thirdparty.jgroups.protocols.UDP createSockets ·         INFO: sockets will use interface 144.25.142.172·          ·         Apr 3, 2008 6:30:37 PM org.collaxa.thirdparty.jgroups.protocols.UDP createSockets·          ·         INFO: socket information:·          ·         local_addr=144.25.142.172:1127, mcast_addr=228.8.15.75:45788, bind_addr=/144.25.142.172, ttl=32·         sock: bound to 144.25.142.172:1127, receive buffer size=64000, send buffer size=32000·         mcast_recv_sock: bound to 144.25.142.172:45788, send buffer size=32000, receive buffer size=64000·         mcast_send_sock: bound to 144.25.142.172:1128, send buffer size=32000, receive buffer size=64000·         Apr 3, 2008 6:30:37 PM org.collaxa.thirdparty.jgroups.protocols.TP$DiagnosticsHandler bindToInterfaces·          ·         -------------------------------------------------------·          ·         GMS: address is 144.25.142.172:1127·          ------------------------------------------------------- Example jGroups Log Entries for TCPApr 3, 2008 6:23:39 PM org.collaxa.thirdparty.jgroups.blocks.ConnectionTable start ·         INFO: server socket created on 144.25.142.172:7900·          ·         Apr 3, 2008 6:23:39 PM org.collaxa.thirdparty.jgroups.protocols.TP$DiagnosticsHandler bindToInterfaces·          ·         -------------------------------------------------------·         GMS: address is 144.25.142.172:7900------------------------------------------------------- In the log below the "socket created on" indicates that the TCP socket is established on the own node at that IP address and port the "created socket to" shows that the second node has connected to the first node, matching the logfile above with the IP address and port.Apr 3, 2008 6:25:40 PM org.collaxa.thirdparty.jgroups.blocks.ConnectionTable start ·         INFO: server socket created on 144.25.142.173:7901·          ·         Apr 3, 2008 6:25:40 PM org.collaxa.thirdparty.jgroups.protocols.TP$DiagnosticsHandler bindToInterfaces·          ·         ------------------------------------------------------·         GMS: address is 144.25.142.173:7901·         -------------------------------------------------------·         Apr 3, 2008 6:25:41 PM org.collaxa.thirdparty.jgroups.blocks.ConnectionTable getConnectionINFO: created socket to 144.25.142.172:7900  Result By reviewing the log files, you can confirm if BPEL clustering at the jGroups level is working and that the jGroup channel is communicating. Test Case 2  Test connectivity between BPEL Nodes Implementation Test connections between different cluster nodes using ping, telnet, and traceroute. The presence of firewalls and number of hops between cluster nodes can affect performance as they have a tendency to take down connections after some time or simply block them.Also reference Metalink Note 413783.1: "How to Test Whether Multicast is Enabled on the Network." Result Using the above tools you can confirm if Multicast is working  and whether BPEL nodes are commnunicating. Test Case3 Test deployment of BPEL suitcase to one BPEL node.  Implementation Deploy a HelloWorrld BPEL suitcase (or any other client specific BPEL suitcase) to only one BPEL instance using ant, or JDeveloper or via the BPEL consoleLog on to the second BPEL console to check if the BPEL suitcase has been deployed Result If jGroups has been configured and communicating correctly, BPEL clustering will allow you to deploy a suitcase to a single node, and jGroups will notify the second instance of the deployment. The second BPEL instance will go to the DB and pick up the new deployment after receiving notification. The result is that the new deployment will be "deployed" to each node, by only deploying to a single BPEL instance in the BPEL cluster. Test Case 4  Test to see if the BPEL server failsover and if all asynch processes are picked up by the secondary BPEL instance Implementation Deploy a 2 Asynch process: A ParentAsynch Process which calls a ChildAsynchProcess with a variable telling it how many times to loop or how many seconds to sleepA ChildAsynchProcess that loops or sleeps or has an onAlarmMake sure that the processes are deployed to both serversShut down one BPEL serverOn the active BPEL server call ParentAsynch a few times (use the load generation page)When you have enough ParentAsynch instances shut down this BPEL instance and start the other one. Please wait till this BPEL instance shuts down fully before starting up the second one.Log on to the BPEL console and see that the instance were picked up by the second BPEL node and completed Result The BPEL instance will failover to the secondary node and complete the flow ESB test cases This section covers the use cases involved with testing an ESB cluster. For this section please Normal 0 false false false EN-CA 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} follow Metalink Note 470267.1 which covers the basic tests to verify your ESB cluster.

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  • The Incremental Architect&acute;s Napkin &ndash; #3 &ndash; Make Evolvability inevitable

    - by Ralf Westphal
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/theArchitectsNapkin/archive/2014/06/04/the-incremental-architectacutes-napkin-ndash-3-ndash-make-evolvability-inevitable.aspxThe easier something to measure the more likely it will be produced. Deviations between what is and what should be can be readily detected. That´s what automated acceptance tests are for. That´s what sprint reviews in Scrum are for. It´s no small wonder our software looks like it looks. It has all the traits whose conformance with requirements can easily be measured. And it´s lacking traits which cannot easily be measured. Evolvability (or Changeability) is such a trait. If an operation is correct, if an operation if fast enough, that can be checked very easily. But whether Evolvability is high or low, that cannot be checked by taking a measure or two. Evolvability might correlate with certain traits, e.g. number of lines of code (LOC) per function or Cyclomatic Complexity or test coverage. But there is no threshold value signalling “evolvability too low”; also Evolvability is hardly tangible for the customer. Nevertheless Evolvability is of great importance - at least in the long run. You can get away without much of it for a short time. Eventually, though, it´s needed like any other requirement. Or even more. Because without Evolvability no other requirement can be implemented. Evolvability is the foundation on which all else is build. Such fundamental importance is in stark contrast with its immeasurability. To compensate this, Evolvability must be put at the very center of software development. It must become the hub around everything else revolves. Since we cannot measure Evolvability, though, we cannot start watching it more. Instead we need to establish practices to keep it high (enough) at all times. Chefs have known that for long. That´s why everybody in a restaurant kitchen is constantly seeing after cleanliness. Hygiene is important as is to have clean tools at standardized locations. Only then the health of the patrons can be guaranteed and production efficiency is constantly high. Still a kitchen´s level of cleanliness is easier to measure than software Evolvability. That´s why important practices like reviews, pair programming, or TDD are not enough, I guess. What we need to keep Evolvability in focus and high is… to continually evolve. Change must not be something to avoid but too embrace. To me that means the whole change cycle from requirement analysis to delivery needs to be gone through more often. Scrum´s sprints of 4, 2 even 1 week are too long. Kanban´s flow of user stories across is too unreliable; it takes as long as it takes. Instead we should fix the cycle time at 2 days max. I call that Spinning. No increment must take longer than from this morning until tomorrow evening to finish. Then it should be acceptance checked by the customer (or his/her representative, e.g. a Product Owner). For me there are several resasons for such a fixed and short cycle time for each increment: Clear expectations Absolute estimates (“This will take X days to complete.”) are near impossible in software development as explained previously. Too much unplanned research and engineering work lurk in every feature. And then pervasive interruptions of work by peers and management. However, the smaller the scope the better our absolute estimates become. That´s because we understand better what really are the requirements and what the solution should look like. But maybe more importantly the shorter the timespan the more we can control how we use our time. So much can happen over the course of a week and longer timespans. But if push comes to shove I can block out all distractions and interruptions for a day or possibly two. That´s why I believe we can give rough absolute estimates on 3 levels: Noon Tonight Tomorrow Think of a meeting with a Product Owner at 8:30 in the morning. If she asks you, how long it will take you to implement a user story or bug fix, you can say, “It´ll be fixed by noon.”, or you can say, “I can manage to implement it until tonight before I leave.”, or you can say, “You´ll get it by tomorrow night at latest.” Yes, I believe all else would be naive. If you´re not confident to get something done by tomorrow night (some 34h from now) you just cannot reliably commit to any timeframe. That means you should not promise anything, you should not even start working on the issue. So when estimating use these four categories: Noon, Tonight, Tomorrow, NoClue - with NoClue meaning the requirement needs to be broken down further so each aspect can be assigned to one of the first three categories. If you like absolute estimates, here you go. But don´t do deep estimates. Don´t estimate dozens of issues; don´t think ahead (“Issue A is a Tonight, then B will be a Tomorrow, after that it´s C as a Noon, finally D is a Tonight - that´s what I´ll do this week.”). Just estimate so Work-in-Progress (WIP) is 1 for everybody - plus a small number of buffer issues. To be blunt: Yes, this makes promises impossible as to what a team will deliver in terms of scope at a certain date in the future. But it will give a Product Owner a clear picture of what to pull for acceptance feedback tonight and tomorrow. Trust through reliability Our trade is lacking trust. Customers don´t trust software companies/departments much. Managers don´t trust developers much. I find that perfectly understandable in the light of what we´re trying to accomplish: delivering software in the face of uncertainty by means of material good production. Customers as well as managers still expect software development to be close to production of houses or cars. But that´s a fundamental misunderstanding. Software development ist development. It´s basically research. As software developers we´re constantly executing experiments to find out what really provides value to users. We don´t know what they need, we just have mediated hypothesises. That´s why we cannot reliably deliver on preposterous demands. So trust is out of the window in no time. If we switch to delivering in short cycles, though, we can regain trust. Because estimates - explicit or implicit - up to 32 hours at most can be satisfied. I´d say: reliability over scope. It´s more important to reliably deliver what was promised then to cover a lot of requirement area. So when in doubt promise less - but deliver without delay. Deliver on scope (Functionality and Quality); but also deliver on Evolvability, i.e. on inner quality according to accepted principles. Always. Trust will be the reward. Less complexity of communication will follow. More goodwill buffer will follow. So don´t wait for some Kanban board to show you, that flow can be improved by scheduling smaller stories. You don´t need to learn that the hard way. Just start with small batch sizes of three different sizes. Fast feedback What has been finished can be checked for acceptance. Why wait for a sprint of several weeks to end? Why let the mental model of the issue and its solution dissipate? If you get final feedback after one or two weeks, you hardly remember what you did and why you did it. Resoning becomes hard. But more importantly youo probably are not in the mood anymore to go back to something you deemed done a long time ago. It´s boring, it´s frustrating to open up that mental box again. Learning is harder the longer it takes from event to feedback. Effort can be wasted between event (finishing an issue) and feedback, because other work might go in the wrong direction based on false premises. Checking finished issues for acceptance is the most important task of a Product Owner. It´s even more important than planning new issues. Because as long as work started is not released (accepted) it´s potential waste. So before starting new work better make sure work already done has value. By putting the emphasis on acceptance rather than planning true pull is established. As long as planning and starting work is more important, it´s a push process. Accept a Noon issue on the same day before leaving. Accept a Tonight issue before leaving today or first thing tomorrow morning. Accept a Tomorrow issue tomorrow night before leaving or early the day after tomorrow. After acceptance the developer(s) can start working on the next issue. Flexibility As if reliability/trust and fast feedback for less waste weren´t enough economic incentive, there is flexibility. After each issue the Product Owner can change course. If on Monday morning feature slices A, B, C, D, E were important and A, B, C were scheduled for acceptance by Monday evening and Tuesday evening, the Product Owner can change her mind at any time. Maybe after A got accepted she asks for continuation with D. But maybe, just maybe, she has gotten a completely different idea by then. Maybe she wants work to continue on F. And after B it´s neither D nor E, but G. And after G it´s D. With Spinning every 32 hours at latest priorities can be changed. And nothing is lost. Because what got accepted is of value. It provides an incremental value to the customer/user. Or it provides internal value to the Product Owner as increased knowledge/decreased uncertainty. I find such reactivity over commitment economically very benefical. Why commit a team to some workload for several weeks? It´s unnecessary at beast, and inflexible and wasteful at worst. If we cannot promise delivery of a certain scope on a certain date - which is what customers/management usually want -, we can at least provide them with unpredecented flexibility in the face of high uncertainty. Where the path is not clear, cannot be clear, make small steps so you´re able to change your course at any time. Premature completion Customers/management are used to premeditating budgets. They want to know exactly how much to pay for a certain amount of requirements. That´s understandable. But it does not match with the nature of software development. We should know that by now. Maybe there´s somewhere in the world some team who can consistently deliver on scope, quality, and time, and budget. Great! Congratulations! I, however, haven´t seen such a team yet. Which does not mean it´s impossible, but I think it´s nothing I can recommend to strive for. Rather I´d say: Don´t try this at home. It might hurt you one way or the other. However, what we can do, is allow customers/management stop work on features at any moment. With spinning every 32 hours a feature can be declared as finished - even though it might not be completed according to initial definition. I think, progress over completion is an important offer software development can make. Why think in terms of completion beyond a promise for the next 32 hours? Isn´t it more important to constantly move forward? Step by step. We´re not running sprints, we´re not running marathons, not even ultra-marathons. We´re in the sport of running forever. That makes it futile to stare at the finishing line. The very concept of a burn-down chart is misleading (in most cases). Whoever can only think in terms of completed requirements shuts out the chance for saving money. The requirements for a features mostly are uncertain. So how does a Product Owner know in the first place, how much is needed. Maybe more than specified is needed - which gets uncovered step by step with each finished increment. Maybe less than specified is needed. After each 4–32 hour increment the Product Owner can do an experient (or invite users to an experiment) if a particular trait of the software system is already good enough. And if so, she can switch the attention to a different aspect. In the end, requirements A, B, C then could be finished just 70%, 80%, and 50%. What the heck? It´s good enough - for now. 33% money saved. Wouldn´t that be splendid? Isn´t that a stunning argument for any budget-sensitive customer? You can save money and still get what you need? Pull on practices So far, in addition to more trust, more flexibility, less money spent, Spinning led to “doing less” which also means less code which of course means higher Evolvability per se. Last but not least, though, I think Spinning´s short acceptance cycles have one more effect. They excert pull-power on all sorts of practices known for increasing Evolvability. If, for example, you believe high automated test coverage helps Evolvability by lowering the fear of inadverted damage to a code base, why isn´t 90% of the developer community practicing automated tests consistently? I think, the answer is simple: Because they can do without. Somehow they manage to do enough manual checks before their rare releases/acceptance checks to ensure good enough correctness - at least in the short term. The same goes for other practices like component orientation, continuous build/integration, code reviews etc. None of that is compelling, urgent, imperative. Something else always seems more important. So Evolvability principles and practices fall through the cracks most of the time - until a project hits a wall. Then everybody becomes desperate; but by then (re)gaining Evolvability has become as very, very difficult and tedious undertaking. Sometimes up to the point where the existence of a project/company is in danger. With Spinning that´s different. If you´re practicing Spinning you cannot avoid all those practices. With Spinning you very quickly realize you cannot deliver reliably even on your 32 hour promises. Spinning thus is pulling on developers to adopt principles and practices for Evolvability. They will start actively looking for ways to keep their delivery rate high. And if not, management will soon tell them to do that. Because first the Product Owner then management will notice an increasing difficulty to deliver value within 32 hours. There, finally there emerges a way to measure Evolvability: The more frequent developers tell the Product Owner there is no way to deliver anything worth of feedback until tomorrow night, the poorer Evolvability is. Don´t count the “WTF!”, count the “No way!” utterances. In closing For sustainable software development we need to put Evolvability first. Functionality and Quality must not rule software development but be implemented within a framework ensuring (enough) Evolvability. Since Evolvability cannot be measured easily, I think we need to put software development “under pressure”. Software needs to be changed more often, in smaller increments. Each increment being relevant to the customer/user in some way. That does not mean each increment is worthy of shipment. It´s sufficient to gain further insight from it. Increments primarily serve the reduction of uncertainty, not sales. Sales even needs to be decoupled from this incremental progress. No more promises to sales. No more delivery au point. Rather sales should look at a stream of accepted increments (or incremental releases) and scoup from that whatever they find valuable. Sales and marketing need to realize they should work on what´s there, not what might be possible in the future. But I digress… In my view a Spinning cycle - which is not easy to reach, which requires practice - is the core practice to compensate the immeasurability of Evolvability. From start to finish of each issue in 32 hours max - that´s the challenge we need to accept if we´re serious increasing Evolvability. Fortunately higher Evolvability is not the only outcome of Spinning. Customer/management will like the increased flexibility and “getting more bang for the buck”.

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, January 13, 2011

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, January 13, 2011Popular ReleasesMVC Music Store: MVC Music Store v2.0: This is the 2.0 release of the MVC Music Store Tutorial. This tutorial is updated for ASP.NET MVC 3 and Entity Framework Code-First, and contains fixes and improvements based on feedback and common questions from previous releases. The main download, MvcMusicStore-v2.0.zip, contains everything you need to build the sample application, including A detailed tutorial document in PDF format Assets you will need to build the project, including images, a stylesheet, and a pre-populated databas...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts v3.6.7 GA Released: Hi, Today we are releasing Visifire 3.6.7 GA with the following feature: * Inlines property has been implemented in Title. Also, this release contains fix for the following bugs: * In Column and Bar chart DataPoint’s label properties were not working as expected at real-time if marker enabled was set to true. * 3D Column and Bar chart were not rendered properly if AxisMinimum property was set in x-axis. You can download Visifire v3.6.7 here. Cheers, Team VisifireFluent Validation for .NET: 2.0: Changes since 2.0 RC Fix typo in the name of FallbackAwareResourceAccessorBuilder Fix issue #7062 - allow validator selectors to work against nullable properties with overriden names. Fix error in German localization. Better support for client-side validation messages in MVC integration. All changes since 1.3 Allow custom MVC ModelValidators to be added to the FVModelValidatorProvider Support resource provider for custom property validators through the new IResourceAccessorBuilder ...EnhSim: EnhSim 2.3.2 ALPHA: 2.3.1 ALPHAThis 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 - Quick update to ...ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome, jQuery Ajax helpers (controls): 1.6: 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, Popup and Pager new stuff: paging for the lookup lookup with multiselect changes: the css classes used by the framework where renamed to be more standard the lookup controller requries an item.ascx (no more ViewData["structure"]), and LookupList action renamed to Search all the...pwTools: pwTools: Changelog v1.0 base release??????????: All-In-One Code Framework ??? 2011-01-12: 2011???????All-In-One Code Framework(??) 2011?1??????!!http://i3.codeplex.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=1code&DownloadId=128165 ?????release?,???????ASP.NET, AJAX, WinForm, Windows Shell????13?Sample Code。???,??????????sample code。 ?????:http://blog.csdn.net/sjb5201/archive/2011/01/13/6135037.aspx ??,??????MSDN????????????。 http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/zh-CN/codezhchs/threads ?????????????????,??Email ????patterns & practices – Enterprise Library: Enterprise Library 5.0 - Extensibility Labs: This is a preview release of the Hands-on Labs to help you learn and practice different ways the Enterprise Library can be extended. Learning MapCustom exception handler (estimated time to complete: 1 hr 15 mins) Custom logging trace listener (1 hr) Custom configuration source (registry-based) (30 mins) System requirementsEnterprise Library 5.0 / Unity 2.0 installed SQL Express 2008 installed Visual Studio 2010 Pro (or better) installed AuthorsChris Tavares, Microsoft Corporation ...Orchard Project: Orchard 1.0: Orchard Release Notes Build: 1.0.20 Published: 1/12/2010 How to Install OrchardTo install the Orchard tech preview using Web PI, follow these instructions: http://www.orchardproject.net/docs/Installing-Orchard.ashx Web PI will detect your hardware environment and install the application. --OR-- Alternatively, to install the release manually, download the Orchard.Web.1.0.20.zip file. The zip contents are pre-built and ready-to-run. Simply extract the contents of the Orchard folder from ...Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.6.1: The Umbraco 4.6.1 (codename JUNO) release contains many new features focusing on an improved installation experience, a number of robust developer features, and contains nearly 200 bug fixes since the 4.5.2 release. Getting Started A great place to start is with our Getting Started Guide: Getting Started Guide: http://umbraco.codeplex.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?DownloadId=197051 Make sure to check the free foundation videos on how to get started building Umbraco sites. They're ...Google URL Shortener API for .NET: Google URL Shortener API v1: According follow specification: http://code.google.com/apis/urlshortener/v1/reference.htmlStyleCop for ReSharper: StyleCop for ReSharper 5.1.14986.000: A considerable amount of work has gone into this release: Features: 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 ...SQL Monitor - tracking sql server activities: SQL Monitor 3.1 beta 1: 1. support alert message template 2. dynamic toolbar commands depending on functionality 3. fixed some bugs 4. refactored part of the code, now more stable and more clean upFacebook C# SDK: 4.2.1: - Authentication bug fixes - Updated Json.Net to version 4.0.0 - BREAKING CHANGE: Removed cookieSupport config setting, now automatic. This download is also availible on NuGet: Facebook FacebookWeb FacebookWebMvcHawkeye - The .Net Runtime Object Editor: Hawkeye 1.2.5: In the case you are running an x86 Windows and you installed Release 1.2.4, you should consider upgrading to this release (1.2.5) as it appears Hawkeye is broken on x86 OS. I apologize for the inconvenience, but it appears Hawkeye 1.2.4 (and probably previous versions) doesn't run on x86 Windows (See issue http://hawkeye.codeplex.com/workitem/7791). This maintenance release fixes this broken behavior. This release comes in two flavors: Hawkeye.125.N2 is the standard .NET 2 build, was compile...Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 2.0 (January 2011): Another release build for daily use; it contains many new features, enhanced compatibility with latest PHP opensource applications and several issue fixes. To improve the performance of your application using MySQL, please use Managed MySQL Extension for Phalanger. Changes made within this release include following: New features available only in Phalanger. Full support of Multi-Script-Assemblies was implemented; you can build your application into several DLLs now. Deploy them separately t...AutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.5.3: A message will be displayed when there's an update available Shows a list of recent mastery files in the Editor Tab (requested by quite a few people) Updater: Update information is now scrollable Added a buton to launch AutoLoL after updating is finished Updated the UI to match that of AutoLoL Fix: Detects and resolves 'Read Only' state on Version.xmlTweetSharp: TweetSharp v2.0.0.0 - Preview 7: Documentation for this release may be found at http://tweetsharp.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=UserGuide&referringTitle=Documentation. Note: This code is currently preview quality. Preview 7 ChangesFixes the regression issue in OAuth from Preview 6 Preview 6 ChangesMaintenance release with user reported fixes Preview 5 ChangesMaintenance release with user reported fixes Third Party Library VersionsHammock v1.0.6: http://hammock.codeplex.com Json.NET 3.5 Release 8: http://json.codeplex.comExtended 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...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.New Projects4chan: Project for educational purposesAE.Net.Mail - POP/IMAP Client: C# POP/IMAP client libraryAlmathy: Application communautaire pour le partage de données basée sur le protocole XMPP. Discussion instantanée, mail, échange de données, travaux partagés. Développée en C#, utilisant les Windows Forms.AMK - Associação Metropolitana de Kendo: Projeto do site versão 2011 da Associação Metropolitana de Kendo. O site contará com: - Cadastro de atletas e eventos; - Controle de cadastro junto a CBK e histórico de graduações; - Calendário de treinos; Será desenvolvido usando .NET, MVC2, Entity Framework, SQL Server, JQueryAzke: New: Azke is a portal developed with ASP.NET MVC and MySQL. Old: Azke is a portal developed with ASP.net and MySQL.BuildScreen: A standalone Windows application to displays project build statuses from TeamCity. It can be used on a large screen for the whole development team to watch their build statuses as well as on a developer machine.CardOnline: CardOnline GameLobby GameCAudioEndpointVolume: The CAudioEndpointVolume implements the IAudioEndpointVolume Interface to control the master volume in Visual Basic 6.0 for Windows Vista and later operating systems.Cloudy - Online Storage Library: The goal of Cloudy is to be an online storage library to enable access for the most common storage services : DropBox, Skydrive, Google Docs, Azure Blob Storage and Amazon S3. It'll work in .NET 3.5 and up, Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 (WP7).ContentManager: 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.CSWFKrad: private FrameworkDiego: Diegodoomhjx_javalib: this is my lib for the java project.Eve Planetary Interaction: Eve Planetary InteractionEventWall: EventWall allows you to show related blogposts and tweets on the big screen. Just configure the hashtag and blog RSS feeds and you're done.Google URL Shortener API for .NET: Google URL Shortener API for .NET is a wrapper for the Google Project below: http://code.google.com/apis/urlshortener/v1/reference.html With Google URL Shortener API, you may shorten urls and get some analytics information about this. It's developer in C# 4.0 and VS2010. HtmlDeploy: A project to compile asp's Master page into pure html files. The idea is to use jQuery templating to do all the "if" and "for" when it comes to generating html output. Inventory Management System: Inventory Management System is a Silverlight-based system. It aims to manage and control the input raw material activites, output of finished goods of a small inventory.koplamp kapot: demo project voor AzureMSAccess SVN: Access SVN adds to Microsoft Access (MS Access) support for SVN Source controlMultiConvert: console based utility primary to convert solid edge files into data exchange formats like *.stp and *.dxf. It's using the API of the original software and can't be run alone. The goal of this project is creating routines with desired pre-instructions for batch conversionsNGN Image Getter: Nationalgeographic has really stunning photos! They allow to download them via website. This program automates that process.OOD CRM: Project CRM for Object Oriented Development final examsOpen NOS Client: Open NOS Rest ClientopenEHR.NET: openEHR.NET is a C# implementation of openEHR (http://openehr.org) Reference Model (RM) and Archetype Model (AM) specifications (Release 1.0.1). It allows you to build openEHR applications by composing RM objects, validate against AM objects and serialise to/from XML.OpenGL Flow Designer: OpenGL Flow Designer allows writing pseudo-C code to build OpenGL pipeline and preview results immediately.Orchard Translation Manager: An Orchard module that aims at facilitating the creation and management of translations of the Orchard CMS and its extensions.pwTools: A set of tools for viewing/editing some perfect world client/server filesServerStatusMobile: Server availability monitoring application for windows mobile 6.5.x running on WVGA (480x800) devices. Supports autorun, vibration & notification when server became unavailable, text log files for each server. .NET Compact Framework 3.5 required for running this applicationSimple Silverlight Multiple File Uploader: The project allows you to achieve multiple file uploading in Silverlight without complex, complicated, or third-party applications. In just two core classes, it's very simple to understand, use, and extend. Snos: Projet Snos linker Snes multi SupportT-4 Templates for ASP.NET Web Form Databound Control Friendly Logical Layers: This open source project includes a set of T-4 templates to enable you to build logical layers (i.e. DAL/BLL) with just few clicks! The logical layers implemented here are based on Entity Framework 4.0, ASP.NET Web Form Data Bound control friendly and fully unit testable.The Media Store: The Media StoreUM: source control for the um projecturBook - Your Address Book Manager: urBook is and Address Book Manager that can merge all your contacts on all web services you use with your phone contacts to have one consistent Address Book for all your contacts and to update back your web services contacts with the one consistent address bookWindows Phone Certificate Installer: Helps install Trusted Root Certificates on Windows Phone 7 to enable SSL requests. Intended to allow developers to use localhost web servers during development without requiring the purchase of an SSL certificate. Especially helpful for ws-trust secured web service development.

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  • Stop Spinning Your Wheels&hellip; Sage Advice for Aspiring Developers

    - by Mark Rackley
    So… lately I’ve been tasked with helping bring some non-developers over the hump and become full-fledged, all around, SharePoint developers. Well, only time will tell if I’m successful or a complete failure. Good thing about failures though, you know what NOT to do next time! Anyway, I’ve been writing some sort of code since I was about 10 years old; so I sometimes take for granted the effort some people have to go through to learn a new technology. I guess if I had to say I was an “expert” in one thing it would be learning (and getting “stuff” done) in new technologies. Maybe that’s why I’ve embraced SharePoint and the SharePoint community. SharePoint is the first technology I haven’t been able to master or get everything done without help from other people. I KNOW I’ll never know it all and I learn something new every day.  It keeps it interesting, it keeps me motivated, and keeps me involved. So, what some people may consider a downside of SharePoint, I definitely consider a plus. Crap.. I’m rambling. Where was I? Oh yeah… me trying to be helpful. Like I said, I am able to quickly and effectively pick up new languages, technology, etc. and put it to good use. Am I just brilliant? Well, my mom thinks so.. but maybe not. Maybe I’ve just been doing it for a long time…. 25 years in some form or fashion… wow I’m old… Anyway, what I lack in depth I make up for in breadth and being the “go-to” guy wherever I work when someone needs to “get stuff done”.  Let’s see if I can take some of that experience and put it to practical use to help new people get up to speed faster, learn things more effectively, and become that go-to guy. First off…  make sure you… Know The Basics I don’t have the time to teach new developers the basics, but you gotta know them. I’ve only been “taught” two languages.. Fortran 77 and C… everything else I’ve picked up from “doing”. I HAD to know the basics though, and all new developers need to understand the very basics of development.  97.23% of all languages will have the following: Variables Functions Arrays If statements For loops / While loops If you think about it, most development is “if this, do this… or while this, do this…”.  “This” may be some unique method to your language or something you develop, but the basics are the basics. YES there are MANY other development topics you need to understand, but you shouldn’t be scratching your head trying to figure out what a ”for loop” is… (Also learn about classes and hashtables as quickly as possible). Once you have the basics down it makes it much easier to… Learn By Doing This may just apply to me and my warped brain.  I don’t learn a new technology by reading or hearing someone speak about it. I learn by doing. It does me no good to try and learn all of the intricacies of a new language or technology inside-and-out before getting my hands dirty. Just show me how to do one thing… let me get that working… then show me how to do the next thing.. let me get that working… Now, let’s see what I can figure out on my own. Okay.. now it starts to make sense. I see how the language works, I can step through the code, and before you know it.. I’m productive in a new technology. Be careful here though…. make sure you… Don’t Reinvent The Wheel People have been writing code for what… 50+ years now? So, why are you trying to tackle ANYTHING without first Googling it with Bing to see what others have done first? When I was first learning C# (I had come from a Java background) I had to call a web service.  Sure! No problem! I’d done this many times in Java. So, I proceeded to write an HTTP Handler, called the Web Service and it worked like a charm!!!  Probably about 2.3 seconds after I got it working completely someone says to me “Why didn’t you just add a Web Reference?” Really? You can do that?  oops… I just wasted a lot of time. Before undertaking the development of any sort of utility method in a new language, make sure it’s not already handled for you… Okay… you are starting to write some code and are curious about the possibilities? Well… don’t just sit there… Try It And See What Happens This is actually one of my biggest pet peeves. “So… ‘x++’ works in C#, but does it also work in JavaScript?”   Really? Did you just ask me that? In the time it spent for you to type that email, press the send button, me receive the email, get around to reading it, and replying with “yes” you could have tested it 47 times and know the answer! Just TRY it! See what happens! You aren’t doing brain surgery. You aren’t going to kill anyone, and you BETTER not be developing in production. So, you are not going to crash any production systems!! Seriously! Get off your butt and just try it yourself. The extra added benefit is that it doesn’t work, the absolute best way to learn is to… Learn From Your Failures I don’t know about you… but if I screw up and something doesn’t work, I learn A LOT more debugging my problem than if everything magically worked. It’s okay that you aren’t perfect! Not everyone can be me? In the same vein… don’t ask someone else to debug your problem until you have made a valiant attempt to do so yourself. There’s nothing quite like stepping through code line by line to see what it’s REALLY doing… and you’ll never feel more stupid sometimes than when you realize WHY it’s not working.. but you realize... you learn... and you remember. There is nothing wrong with failure as long as you learn from it. As you start writing more and more and more code make sure that you ALWAYS… Develop for Production You will soon learn that the “prototype” you wrote last week to show as a “proof of concept” is going to go directly into production no matter how much you beg and plead and try to explain it’s not ready to go into production… it’s going to go straight there.. and it’s like herpes.. it doesn’t go away and there’s no fixing it once it’s in there.  So, why not write ALL your code like it will be put in production? It MIGHT take a little longer, but in the long run it will be easier to maintain, get help on, and you won’t be embarrassed that it’s sitting on a production server for everyone to use and see. So, now that you are getting comfortable and writing code for production it is important to to remember the… KISS Principle… Learn It… Love It… Keep It Simple Stupid Seriously.. don’t try to show how smart you are by writing the most complicated code in history. Break your problem up into discrete steps and write each step. If it turns out you have some redundancy, you can always go back and tweak your code later.  How bad is it when you write code that LOOKS cocky? I’ve seen it before… some of the most abstract and complicated classes when a class wasn’t even needed! Or the most elaborate unreadable code jammed into one really long line when it could have been written in three lines, performed just as well, and been SOOO much easier to maintain. Keep it clear and simple.. baby steps people. This will help you learn the technology, debug problems, AND it will help others help you find your problems if they don’t have to decipher the Dead Sea Scrolls just to figure out what you are trying to do…. Really.. don’t be that guy… try to curb your ego and… Keep an Open Mind No matter how smart you are… how fast you type… or how much you get paid, don’t let your ego get in the way. There is probably a better way to do everything you’ve ever done. Don’t become so cocky that you can’t think someone knows more than you. There’s a lot of brilliant, helpful people out there willing to show you tricks if you just give them a chance. A very super-awesome developer once told me “So what if you’ve been writing code for 10 years or more! Does your code look basically the same? Are you not growing as a developer?” Those 10 years become pretty meaningless if you just “know” that you are right and have not picked up new tips, tricks, methods, and patterns along the way. Learn from others and find out what’s new in development land (you know you don’t have to specifically use pointers anymore??). Along those same lines… If it’s not working, first assume you are doing something wrong. You have no idea how much it annoys people who are trying to help you when you first assume that the help they are trying to give you is wrong. Just MAYBE… you… the person learning is making some small mistake? Maybe you didn’t describe your problem correctly? Maybe you are using the wrong terminology? “I did exactly what you said and it didn’t work.”  Oh really? Are you SURE about that? “Your solution doesn’t work.”  Well… I’m pretty sure it works, I’ve used it 200 times… What are you doing differently? First try some humility and appreciation.. it will go much further, especially when it turns out YOU are the one that is wrong. When all else fails…. Try Professional Training Some people just don’t have the mindset to go and figure stuff out. It’s a gift and not everyone has it. If everyone could do it I wouldn’t have a job and there wouldn’t be professional training available.  So, if you’ve tried everything else and no light bulbs are coming on, contact the experts who specialize in training. Be careful though, there is bad training out there. Want to know the names of some good places? Just shoot me a message and I’ll let you know. I’m boycotting endorsing Andrew Connell anymore until I get that free course dangit!! So… that’s it.. that’s all I got right now. Maybe you thought all of this is common sense, maybe you think I’m smoking crack. If so, don’t just sit there, there’s a comments section for a reason. Finally, what about you? What tips do you have to help this aspiring to learn the dark arts??

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  • VS 2012 Code Review &ndash; Before Check In OR After Check In?

    - by Tarun Arora
    “Is Code Review Important and Effective?” There is a consensus across the industry that code review is an effective and practical way to collar code inconsistency and possible defects early in the software development life cycle. Among others some of the advantages of code reviews are, Bugs are found faster Forces developers to write readable code (code that can be read without explanation or introduction!) Optimization methods/tricks/productive programs spread faster Programmers as specialists "evolve" faster It's fun “Code review is systematic examination (often known as peer review) of computer source code. It is intended to find and fix mistakes overlooked in the initial development phase, improving both the overall quality of software and the developers' skills. Reviews are done in various forms such as pair programming, informal walkthroughs, and formal inspections.” Wikipedia No where does the definition mention whether its better to review code before the code has been committed to version control or after the commit has been performed. No matter which side you favour, Visual Studio 2012 allows you to request for a code review both before check in and also request for a review after check in. Let’s weigh the pros and cons of the approaches independently. Code Review Before Check In or Code Review After Check In? Approach 1 – Code Review before Check in Developer completes the code and feels the code quality is appropriate for check in to TFS. The developer raises a code review request to have a second pair of eyes validate if the code abides to the recommended best practices, will not result in any defects due to common coding mistakes and whether any optimizations can be made to improve the code quality.                                             Image 1 – code review before check in Pros Everything that gets committed to source control is reviewed. Minimizes the chances of smelly code making its way into the code base. Decreases the cost of fixing bugs, remember, the earlier you find them, the lesser the pain in fixing them. Cons Development Code Freeze – Since the changes aren’t in the source control yet. Further development can only be done off-line. The changes have not been through a CI build, hard to say whether the code abides to all build quality standards. Inconsistent! Cumbersome to track the actual code review process.  Not every change to the code base is worth reviewing, a lot of effort is invested for very little gain. Approach 2 – Code Review after Check in Developer checks in, random code reviews are performed on the checked in code.                                                      Image 2 – Code review after check in Pros The code has already passed the CI build and run through any code analysis plug ins you may have running on the build server. Instruct the developer to ensure ZERO fx cop, style cop and static code analysis before check in. Code is cleaner and smell free even before the code review. No Offline development, developers can continue to develop against the source control. Cons Bad code can easily make its way into the code base. Since the review take place much later in the cycle, the cost of fixing issues can prove to be much higher. Approach 3 – Hybrid Approach The community advocates a more hybrid approach, a blend of tooling and human accountability quotient.                                                               Image 3 – Hybrid Approach 1. Code review high impact check ins. It is not possible to review everything, by setting up code review check in policies you can end up slowing your team. More over, the code that you are reviewing before check in hasn't even been through a green CI build either. 2. Tooling. Let the tooling work for you. By running static analysis, fx cop, style cop and other plug ins on the build agent, you can identify the real issues that in my opinion can't possibly be identified using human reviews. Configure the tooling to report back top 10 issues every day. Mandate the manual code review of individuals who keep making it to this list of shame more often. 3. During Merge. I would prefer eliminating some of the other code issues during merge from Main branch to the release branch. In a scrum project this is still easier because cheery picking the merges is a possibility and the size of code being reviewed is still limited. Let the tooling work for you, if some one breaks the CI build often, put them on a gated check in build course until you see improvement. If some one appears on the top 10 list of shame generated via the build then ensure that all their code is reviewed till you see improvement. At the end of the day, the goal is to ensure that the code being delivered is top quality. By enforcing a code review before any check in, you force the developer to work offline or stay put till the review is complete. What do the experts say? So I asked a few expects what they thought of “Code Review quality gate before Checking in code?" Terje Sandstrom | Microsoft ALM MVP You mean a review quality gate BEFORE checking in code????? That would mean a lot of code staying either local or in shelvesets, and not even been through a CI build, and a green CI build being the main criteria for going further, f.e. to the review state. I would not like code laying around with no checkin’s. Having a requirement that code is checked in small pieces, 4-8 hours work max, and AT LEAST daily checkins, a manual code review comes second down the lane. I would expect review quality gates to happen before merging back to main, or before merging to release.  But that would all be on checked-in code.  Branching is absolutely one way to ease the pain.   Another way we are using is automatic quality builds, running metrics, coverage, static code analysis.  Unfortunately it takes some time, would be great to be on CI’s – but…., so it’s done scheduled every night. Based on this we get, among other stuff,  top 10 lists of suspicious code, which is then subjected to reviews.  If a person seems to be very popular on these top 10 lists, we subject every check in from that person to a review for a period. That normally helps.   None of the clients I have can afford to have every checkin reviewed, so we need to find ways around it. I don’t disagree with the nicety of having all the code reviewed, but I find it hard to find those resources in today’s enterprises. David V. Corbin | Visual Studio ALM Ranger I tend to agree with both sides. I hate having code that is not checked in, but at the same time hate having “bad” code in the repository. I have found that branching is one approach to solving this dilemma. Code is checked into the private/feature branch before the review, but is not merged over to the “official” branch until after the review. I advocate both, depending on circumstance (especially team dynamics)   - The “pre-checkin” is usually for elements that may impact the project as a whole. Think of it as another “gate” along with passing unit tests. - The “post-checkin” may very well not be at the changeset level, but correlates to a review at the “user story” level.   Again, this depends on team dynamics in play…. Robert MacLean | Microsoft ALM MVP I do not think there is no right answer for the industry as a whole. In short the question is why do you do reviews? Your question implies risk mitigation, so in low risk areas you can get away with it after check in while in high risk you need to do it before check in. An example is those new to a team or juniors need it much earlier (maybe that is before checkin, maybe that is soon after) than seniors who have shipped twenty sprints on the team. Abhimanyu Singhal | Visual Studio ALM Ranger Depends on per scenario basis. We recommend post check-in reviews when: 1. We don't want to block other checks and processes on manual code reviews. Manual reviews take time, and some pieces may not require manual reviews at all. 2. We need to trace all changes and track history. 3. We have a code promotion strategy/process in place. For risk mitigation, post checkin code can be promoted to Accepted branches. Or can be rejected. Pre Checkin Reviews are used when 1. There is a high risk factor associated 2. Reviewers are generally (most of times) have immediate availability. 3. Team does not have strict tracking needs. Simply speaking, no single process fits all scenarios. You need to select what works best for your team/project. Thomas Schissler | Visual Studio ALM Ranger This is an interesting discussion, I’m right now discussing details about executing code reviews with my teams. I see and understand the aspects you brought in, but there is another side as well, I’d like to point out. 1.) If you do reviews per check in this is not very practical as a hard rule because this will disturb the flow of the team very often or it will lead to reduce the checkin frequency of the devs which I would not accept. 2.) If you do later reviews, for example if you review PBIs, it is not easy to find out which code you should review. Either you review all changesets associate with the PBI, but then you might review code which has been changed with a later checkin and the dev maybe has already fixed the issue. Or you review the diff of the latest changeset of the PBI with the first but then you might also review changes of other PBIs. Jakob Leander | Sr. Director, Avanade In my experience, manual code review: 1. Does not get done and at the very least does not get redone after changes (regardless of intentions at start of project) 2. When a project actually do it, they often do not do it right away = errors pile up 3. Requires a lot of time discussing/defining the standard and for the team to learn it However code review is very important since e.g. even small memory leaks in a high volume web solution have big consequences In the last years I have advocated following approach for code review - Architects up front do “at least one best practice example” of each type of component and tell the team. Copy from this one. This should include error handling, logging, security etc. - Dev lead on project continuously browse code to validate that the best practices are used. Especially that patterns etc. are not broken. You can do this formally after each sprint/iteration if you want. Once this is validated it is unlikely to “go bad” even during later code changes Agree with customer to rely on static code analysis from Visual Studio as the one and only coding standard. This has HUUGE benefits - You can easily tweak to reach the level you desire together with customer - It is easy to measure for both developers/management - It is 100% consistent across code base - It gets validated all the time so you never end up getting hammered by a customer review in the end - It is easy to tell the developer that you do not want code back unless it has zero errors = minimize communication You need to track this at least during nightly builds and make sure team sees total # issues. Do not allow #issues it to grow uncontrolled. On the project I run I require code analysis to have run on code before checkin (checkin rule). This means -  You have to have clean compile (or CA wont run) so this is extra benefit = very few broken builds - You can change a few of the rules to compile as errors instead of warnings. I often do this for “missing dispose” issues which you REALLY do not want in your app Tip: Place your custom CA rules files as part of solution. That  way it works when you do branching etc. (path to CA file is relative in VS) Some may argue that CA is not as good as manual inspection. But since manual inspection in reality suffers from the 3 issues in start it is IMO a MUCH better (and much cheaper) approach from helicopter perspective Tirthankar Dutta | Director, Avanade I think code review should be run both before and after check ins. There are some code metrics that are meant to be run on the entire codebase … Also, especially on multi-site projects, one should strive to architect in a way that lets men manage the framework while boys write the repetitive code… scales very well with the need to review less by containment and imposing architectural restrictions to emphasise the design. Bruno Capuano | Microsoft ALM MVP For code reviews (means peer reviews) in distributed team I use http://www.vsanywhere.com/default.aspx  David Jobling | Global Sr. Director, Avanade Peer review is the only way to scale and its a great practice for all in the team to learn to perform and accept. In my experience you soon learn who's code to watch more than others and tune the attention. Mikkel Toudal Kristiansen | Manager, Avanade If you have several branches in your code base, you will need to merge often. This requires manual merging, when a file has been changed in both branches. It offers a good opportunity to actually review to changed code. So my advice is: Merging between branches should be done as often as possible, it should be done by a senior developer, and he/she should perform a full code review of the code being merged. As for detecting architectural smells and code smells creeping into the code base, one really good third party tools exist: Ndepend (http://www.ndepend.com/, for static code analysis of the current state of the code base). You could also consider adding StyleCop to the solution. Jesse Houwing | Visual Studio ALM Ranger I gave a presentation on this subject on the TechDays conference in NL last year. See my presentation and slides here (talk in Dutch, but English presentation): http://blog.jessehouwing.nl/2012/03/did-you-miss-my-techdaysnl-talk-on-code.html  I’d like to add a few more points: - Before/After checking is mostly a trust issue. If you have a team that does diligent peer reviews and regularly talk/sit together or peer review, there’s no need to enforce a before-checkin policy. The peer peer-programming and regular feedback during development can take care of most of the review requirements as long as the team isn’t under stress. - Under stress, enforce pre-checkin reviews, it might sound strange, if you’re already under time or budgetary constraints, but it is under such conditions most real issues start to be created or pile up. - Use tools to catch most common errors, Code Analysis/FxCop was already mentioned. HP Fortify, Resharper, Coderush etc can help you there. There are also a lot of 3rd party rules you can add to Code Analysis. I’ve written a few myself (http://fccopcontrib.codeplex.com) and various teams from Microsoft have added their own rules (MSOCAF for SharePoint, WSSF for WCF). For common errors that keep cropping up, see if you can define a rule. It’s much easier. But more importantly make sure you have a good help page explaining *WHY* it's wrong. If you have small feature or developer branches/shelvesets, you might want to review pre-merge. It’s still better to do peer reviews and peer programming, but the most important thing is that bad quality code doesn’t make it into the important branch. So my philosophy: - Use tooling as much as possible. - Make sure the team understands the tooling and the importance of the things it flags. It’s too easy to just click suppress all to ignore the warnings. - Under stress, tighten process, it’s under stress that the problems of late reviews will really surface - Most importantly if you do reviews do them as early as possible, but never later than needed. In other words, pre-checkin/post checking doesn’t really matter, as long as the review is done before the code is released. It’ll just be much more expensive to fix any review outcomes the later you find them. --- I would love to hear what you think!

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  • XNA Screen Manager problem with transitions

    - by NexAddo
    I'm having issues using the game statemanagement example in the game I am developing. I have no issues with my first three screens transitioning between one another. I have a main menu screen, a splash screen and a high score screen that cycle: mainMenuScreen->splashScreen->highScoreScreen->mainMenuScreen The screens change every 15 seconds. Transition times public MainMenuScreen() { TransitionOnTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.5); TransitionOffTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.0); currentCreditAmount = Global.CurrentCredits; } public SplashScreen() { TransitionOnTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.5); TransitionOffTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.5); } public HighScoreScreen() { TransitionOnTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.5); TransitionOffTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.5); } public GamePlayScreen() { TransitionOnTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.5); TransitionOffTime = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(0.5); } When a user inserts credits they can play the game after pressing start mainMenuScreen->splashScreen->highScoreScreen->(loops forever) || || || ===========Credits In============= || Start || \/ LoadingScreen || Start || \/ GamePlayScreen During each of these transitions, between screens, the same code is used, which exits(removes) all current active screens and respects transitions, then adds the new screen to the screen manager: foreach (GameScreen screen in ScreenManager.GetScreens()) screen.ExitScreen(); //AddScreen takes a new screen to manage and the controlling player ScreenManager.AddScreen(new NameOfScreenHere(), null); Each screen is removed from the ScreenManager with ExitScreen() and using this function, each screen transition is respected. The problem I am having is with my gamePlayScreen. When the current game is finished and the transition is complete for the gamePlayScreen, it should be removed and the next screens should be added to the ScreenManager. GamePlayScreen Code Snippet private void FinishCurrentGame() { AudioManager.StopSounds(); this.UnloadContent(); if (Global.SaveDevice.IsReady) Stats.Save(); if (HighScoreScreen.IsInHighscores(timeLimit)) { foreach (GameScreen screen in ScreenManager.GetScreens()) screen.ExitScreen(); Global.TimeRemaining = timeLimit; ScreenManager.AddScreen(new BackgroundScreen(), null); ScreenManager.AddScreen(new MessageBoxScreen("Enter your Initials", true), null); } else { foreach (GameScreen screen in ScreenManager.GetScreens()) screen.ExitScreen(); ScreenManager.AddScreen(new BackgroundScreen(), null); ScreenManager.AddScreen(new MainMenuScreen(), null); } } The problem is that when isExiting is set to true by screen.ExitScreen() for the gamePlayScreen, the transition never completes the transition and removes the screen from the ScreenManager. Every other screen that I use the same technique to add and remove each screen fully transitions On/Off and is removed at the appropriate time from the ScreenManager, but noy my GamePlayScreen. Has anyone that has used the GameStateManagement example experienced this issue or can someone see the mistake I am making? EDIT This is what I tracked down. When the game is done, I call foreach (GameScreen screen in ScreenManager.GetScreens()) screen.ExitScreen(); to start the transition off process for the gameplay screen. At this point there is only 1 screen on the ScreenManager stack. The gamePlay screen gets isExiting set to true and starts to transition off. Right after the above call to ExitScreen() I add a background screen and menu screen to the screenManager: ScreenManager.AddScreen(new background(), null); ScreenManager.AddScreen(new Menu(), null); The count of the ScreenManager is now 3. What I noticed while stepping through the updates for GameScreen and ScreenManager, the gameplay screen never gets to the point where the transistion process finishes so the ScreenManager can remove it from the stack. This anomaly does not happen to any of my other screens when I switch between them. Screen Manager Code #region File Description //----------------------------------------------------------------------------- // ScreenManager.cs // // Microsoft XNA Community Game Platform // Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. //----------------------------------------------------------------------------- #endregion #define DEMO #region Using Statements using System; using System.Diagnostics; using System.Collections.Generic; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using PerformanceUtility.GameDebugTools; #endregion namespace GameStateManagement { /// <summary> /// The screen manager is a component which manages one or more GameScreen /// instances. It maintains a stack of screens, calls their Update and Draw /// methods at the appropriate times, and automatically routes input to the /// topmost active screen. /// </summary> public class ScreenManager : DrawableGameComponent { #region Fields List<GameScreen> screens = new List<GameScreen>(); List<GameScreen> screensToUpdate = new List<GameScreen>(); InputState input = new InputState(); SpriteBatch spriteBatch; SpriteFont font; Texture2D blankTexture; bool isInitialized; bool getOut; bool traceEnabled; #if DEBUG DebugSystem debugSystem; Stopwatch stopwatch = new Stopwatch(); bool debugTextEnabled; #endif #endregion #region Properties /// <summary> /// A default SpriteBatch shared by all the screens. This saves /// each screen having to bother creating their own local instance. /// </summary> public SpriteBatch SpriteBatch { get { return spriteBatch; } } /// <summary> /// A default font shared by all the screens. This saves /// each screen having to bother loading their own local copy. /// </summary> public SpriteFont Font { get { return font; } } public Rectangle ScreenRectangle { get { return new Rectangle(0, 0, GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Width, GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height); } } /// <summary> /// If true, the manager prints out a list of all the screens /// each time it is updated. This can be useful for making sure /// everything is being added and removed at the right times. /// </summary> public bool TraceEnabled { get { return traceEnabled; } set { traceEnabled = value; } } #if DEBUG public bool DebugTextEnabled { get { return debugTextEnabled; } set { debugTextEnabled = value; } } public DebugSystem DebugSystem { get { return debugSystem; } } #endif #endregion #region Initialization /// <summary> /// Constructs a new screen manager component. /// </summary> public ScreenManager(Game game) : base(game) { // we must set EnabledGestures before we can query for them, but // we don't assume the game wants to read them. //TouchPanel.EnabledGestures = GestureType.None; } /// <summary> /// Initializes the screen manager component. /// </summary> public override void Initialize() { base.Initialize(); #if DEBUG debugSystem = DebugSystem.Initialize(Game, "Fonts/MenuFont"); #endif isInitialized = true; } /// <summary> /// Load your graphics content. /// </summary> protected override void LoadContent() { // Load content belonging to the screen manager. ContentManager content = Game.Content; spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice); font = content.Load<SpriteFont>(@"Fonts\menufont"); blankTexture = content.Load<Texture2D>(@"Textures\Backgrounds\blank"); // Tell each of the screens to load their content. foreach (GameScreen screen in screens) { screen.LoadContent(); } } /// <summary> /// Unload your graphics content. /// </summary> protected override void UnloadContent() { // Tell each of the screens to unload their content. foreach (GameScreen screen in screens) { screen.UnloadContent(); } } #endregion #region Update and Draw /// <summary> /// Allows each screen to run logic. /// </summary> public override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { #if DEBUG debugSystem.TimeRuler.StartFrame(); debugSystem.TimeRuler.BeginMark("Update", Color.Blue); if (debugTextEnabled && getOut == false) { debugSystem.FpsCounter.Visible = true; debugSystem.TimeRuler.Visible = true; debugSystem.TimeRuler.ShowLog = true; getOut = true; } else if (debugTextEnabled == false) { getOut = false; debugSystem.FpsCounter.Visible = false; debugSystem.TimeRuler.Visible = false; debugSystem.TimeRuler.ShowLog = false; } #endif // Read the keyboard and gamepad. input.Update(); // Make a copy of the master screen list, to avoid confusion if // the process of updating one screen adds or removes others. screensToUpdate.Clear(); foreach (GameScreen screen in screens) screensToUpdate.Add(screen); bool otherScreenHasFocus = !Game.IsActive; bool coveredByOtherScreen = false; // Loop as long as there are screens waiting to be updated. while (screensToUpdate.Count > 0) { // Pop the topmost screen off the waiting list. GameScreen screen = screensToUpdate[screensToUpdate.Count - 1]; screensToUpdate.RemoveAt(screensToUpdate.Count - 1); // Update the screen. screen.Update(gameTime, otherScreenHasFocus, coveredByOtherScreen); if (screen.ScreenState == ScreenState.TransitionOn || screen.ScreenState == ScreenState.Active) { // If this is the first active screen we came across, // give it a chance to handle input. if (!otherScreenHasFocus) { screen.HandleInput(input); otherScreenHasFocus = true; } // If this is an active non-popup, inform any subsequent // screens that they are covered by it. if (!screen.IsPopup) coveredByOtherScreen = true; } } // Print debug trace? if (traceEnabled) TraceScreens(); #if DEBUG debugSystem.TimeRuler.EndMark("Update"); #endif } /// <summary> /// Prints a list of all the screens, for debugging. /// </summary> void TraceScreens() { List<string> screenNames = new List<string>(); foreach (GameScreen screen in screens) screenNames.Add(screen.GetType().Name); Debug.WriteLine(string.Join(", ", screenNames.ToArray())); } /// <summary> /// Tells each screen to draw itself. /// </summary> public override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { #if DEBUG debugSystem.TimeRuler.StartFrame(); debugSystem.TimeRuler.BeginMark("Draw", Color.Yellow); #endif foreach (GameScreen screen in screens) { if (screen.ScreenState == ScreenState.Hidden) continue; screen.Draw(gameTime); } #if DEBUG debugSystem.TimeRuler.EndMark("Draw"); #endif #if DEMO SpriteBatch.Begin(); SpriteBatch.DrawString(font, "DEMO - NOT FOR RESALE", new Vector2(20, 80), Color.White); SpriteBatch.End(); #endif } #endregion #region Public Methods /// <summary> /// Adds a new screen to the screen manager. /// </summary> public void AddScreen(GameScreen screen, PlayerIndex? controllingPlayer) { screen.ControllingPlayer = controllingPlayer; screen.ScreenManager = this; screen.IsExiting = false; // If we have a graphics device, tell the screen to load content. if (isInitialized) { screen.LoadContent(); } screens.Add(screen); } /// <summary> /// Removes a screen from the screen manager. You should normally /// use GameScreen.ExitScreen instead of calling this directly, so /// the screen can gradually transition off rather than just being /// instantly removed. /// </summary> public void RemoveScreen(GameScreen screen) { // If we have a graphics device, tell the screen to unload content. if (isInitialized) { screen.UnloadContent(); } screens.Remove(screen); screensToUpdate.Remove(screen); } /// <summary> /// Expose an array holding all the screens. We return a copy rather /// than the real master list, because screens should only ever be added /// or removed using the AddScreen and RemoveScreen methods. /// </summary> public GameScreen[] GetScreens() { return screens.ToArray(); } /// <summary> /// Helper draws a translucent black fullscreen sprite, used for fading /// screens in and out, and for darkening the background behind popups. /// </summary> public void FadeBackBufferToBlack(float alpha) { Viewport viewport = GraphicsDevice.Viewport; spriteBatch.Begin(); spriteBatch.Draw(blankTexture, new Rectangle(0, 0, viewport.Width, viewport.Height), Color.Black * alpha); spriteBatch.End(); } #endregion } } Game Screen Parent of GamePlayScreen #region File Description //----------------------------------------------------------------------------- // GameScreen.cs // // Microsoft XNA Community Game Platform // Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. //----------------------------------------------------------------------------- #endregion #region Using Statements using System; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input; //using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input.Touch; using System.IO; #endregion namespace GameStateManagement { /// <summary> /// Enum describes the screen transition state. /// </summary> public enum ScreenState { TransitionOn, Active, TransitionOff, Hidden, } /// <summary> /// A screen is a single layer that has update and draw logic, and which /// can be combined with other layers to build up a complex menu system. /// For instance the main menu, the options menu, the "are you sure you /// want to quit" message box, and the main game itself are all implemented /// as screens. /// </summary> public abstract class GameScreen { #region Properties /// <summary> /// Normally when one screen is brought up over the top of another, /// the first screen will transition off to make room for the new /// one. This property indicates whether the screen is only a small /// popup, in which case screens underneath it do not need to bother /// transitioning off. /// </summary> public bool IsPopup { get { return isPopup; } protected set { isPopup = value; } } bool isPopup = false; /// <summary> /// Indicates how long the screen takes to /// transition on when it is activated. /// </summary> public TimeSpan TransitionOnTime { get { return transitionOnTime; } protected set { transitionOnTime = value; } } TimeSpan transitionOnTime = TimeSpan.Zero; /// <summary> /// Indicates how long the screen takes to /// transition off when it is deactivated. /// </summary> public TimeSpan TransitionOffTime { get { return transitionOffTime; } protected set { transitionOffTime = value; } } TimeSpan transitionOffTime = TimeSpan.Zero; /// <summary> /// Gets the current position of the screen transition, ranging /// from zero (fully active, no transition) to one (transitioned /// fully off to nothing). /// </summary> public float TransitionPosition { get { return transitionPosition; } protected set { transitionPosition = value; } } float transitionPosition = 1; /// <summary> /// Gets the current alpha of the screen transition, ranging /// from 1 (fully active, no transition) to 0 (transitioned /// fully off to nothing). /// </summary> public float TransitionAlpha { get { return 1f - TransitionPosition; } } /// <summary> /// Gets the current screen transition state. /// </summary> public ScreenState ScreenState { get { return screenState; } protected set { screenState = value; } } ScreenState screenState = ScreenState.TransitionOn; /// <summary> /// There are two possible reasons why a screen might be transitioning /// off. It could be temporarily going away to make room for another /// screen that is on top of it, or it could be going away for good. /// This property indicates whether the screen is exiting for real: /// if set, the screen will automatically remove itself as soon as the /// transition finishes. /// </summary> public bool IsExiting { get { return isExiting; } protected internal set { isExiting = value; } } bool isExiting = false; /// <summary> /// Checks whether this screen is active and can respond to user input. /// </summary> public bool IsActive { get { return !otherScreenHasFocus && (screenState == ScreenState.TransitionOn || screenState == ScreenState.Active); } } bool otherScreenHasFocus; /// <summary> /// Gets the manager that this screen belongs to. /// </summary> public ScreenManager ScreenManager { get { return screenManager; } internal set { screenManager = value; } } ScreenManager screenManager; public KeyboardState KeyboardState { get {return Keyboard.GetState();} } /// <summary> /// Gets the index of the player who is currently controlling this screen, /// or null if it is accepting input from any player. This is used to lock /// the game to a specific player profile. The main menu responds to input /// from any connected gamepad, but whichever player makes a selection from /// this menu is given control over all subsequent screens, so other gamepads /// are inactive until the controlling player returns to the main menu. /// </summary> public PlayerIndex? ControllingPlayer { get { return controllingPlayer; } internal set { controllingPlayer = value; } } PlayerIndex? controllingPlayer; /// <summary> /// Gets whether or not this screen is serializable. If this is true, /// the screen will be recorded into the screen manager's state and /// its Serialize and Deserialize methods will be called as appropriate. /// If this is false, the screen will be ignored during serialization. /// By default, all screens are assumed to be serializable. /// </summary> public bool IsSerializable { get { return isSerializable; } protected set { isSerializable = value; } } bool isSerializable = true; #endregion #region Initialization /// <summary> /// Load graphics content for the screen. /// </summary> public virtual void LoadContent() { } /// <summary> /// Unload content for the screen. /// </summary> public virtual void UnloadContent() { } #endregion #region Update and Draw /// <summary> /// Allows the screen to run logic, such as updating the transition position. /// Unlike HandleInput, this method is called regardless of whether the screen /// is active, hidden, or in the middle of a transition. /// </summary> public virtual void Update(GameTime gameTime, bool otherScreenHasFocus, bool coveredByOtherScreen) { this.otherScreenHasFocus = otherScreenHasFocus; if (isExiting) { // If the screen is going away to die, it should transition off. screenState = ScreenState.TransitionOff; if (!UpdateTransition(gameTime, transitionOffTime, 1)) { // When the transition finishes, remove the screen. ScreenManager.RemoveScreen(this); } } else if (coveredByOtherScreen) { // If the screen is covered by another, it should transition off. if (UpdateTransition(gameTime, transitionOffTime, 1)) { // Still busy transitioning. screenState = ScreenState.TransitionOff; } else { // Transition finished! screenState = ScreenState.Hidden; } } else { // Otherwise the screen should transition on and become active. if (UpdateTransition(gameTime, transitionOnTime, -1)) { // Still busy transitioning. screenState = ScreenState.TransitionOn; } else { // Transition finished! screenState = ScreenState.Active; } } } /// <summary> /// Helper for updating the screen transition position. /// </summary> bool UpdateTransition(GameTime gameTime, TimeSpan time, int direction) { // How much should we move by? float transitionDelta; if (time == TimeSpan.Zero) transitionDelta = 1; else transitionDelta = (float)(gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds / time.TotalMilliseconds); // Update the transition position. transitionPosition += transitionDelta * direction; // Did we reach the end of the transition? if (((direction < 0) && (transitionPosition <= 0)) || ((direction > 0) && (transitionPosition >= 1))) { transitionPosition = MathHelper.Clamp(transitionPosition, 0, 1); return false; } // Otherwise we are still busy transitioning. return true; } /// <summary> /// Allows the screen to handle user input. Unlike Update, this method /// is only called when the screen is active, and not when some other /// screen has taken the focus. /// </summary> public virtual void HandleInput(InputState input) { } public KeyboardState currentKeyState; public KeyboardState lastKeyState; public bool IsKeyHit(Keys key) { if (currentKeyState.IsKeyDown(key) && lastKeyState.IsKeyUp(key)) return true; return false; } /// <summary> /// This is called when the screen should draw itself. /// </summary> public virtual void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { } #endregion #region Public Methods /// <summary> /// Tells the screen to serialize its state into the given stream. /// </summary> public virtual void Serialize(Stream stream) { } /// <summary> /// Tells the screen to deserialize its state from the given stream. /// </summary> public virtual void Deserialize(Stream stream) { } /// <summary> /// Tells the screen to go away. Unlike ScreenManager.RemoveScreen, which /// instantly kills the screen, this method respects the transition timings /// and will give the screen a chance to gradually transition off. /// </summary> public void ExitScreen() { if (TransitionOffTime == TimeSpan.Zero) { // If the screen has a zero transition time, remove it immediately. ScreenManager.RemoveScreen(this); } else { // Otherwise flag that it should transition off and then exit. isExiting = true; } } #endregion #region Helper Methods /// <summary> /// A helper method which loads assets using the screen manager's /// associated game content loader. /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="T">Type of asset.</typeparam> /// <param name="assetName">Asset name, relative to the loader root /// directory, and not including the .xnb extension.</param> /// <returns></returns> public T Load<T>(string assetName) { return ScreenManager.Game.Content.Load<T>(assetName); } #endregion } }

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  • MVVM in Task-It

    As I'm gearing up to write a post about dynamic XAP loading with MEF, I'd like to first talk a bit about MVVM, the Model-View-ViewModel pattern, as I will be leveraging this pattern in my future posts. Download Source Code Why MVVM? Your first question may be, "why do I need this pattern? I've been using a code-behind approach for years and it works fine." Well, you really don't have to make the switch to MVVM, but let me first explain some of the benefits I see for doing so. MVVM Benefits Testability - This is the one you'll probably hear the most about when it comes to MVVM. Moving most of the code from your code-behind to a separate view model class means you can now write unit tests against the view model without any knowledge of a view (UserControl). Multiple UIs - Let's just say that you've created a killer app, it's running in the browser, and maybe you've even made it run out-of-browser. Now what if your boss comes to you and says, "I heard about this new Windows Phone 7 device that is coming out later this year. Can you start porting the app to that device?". Well, now you have to create a new UI (UserControls, etc.) because you have a lot less screen real estate to work with. So what do you do, copy all of your existing UserControls, paste them, rename them, and then start changing the code? Hmm, that doesn't sound so good. But wait, if most of the code that makes your browser-based app tick lives in view model classes, now you can create new view (UserControls) for Windows Phone 7 that reference the same view model classes as your browser-based app. Page state - In Silverlight you're at some point going to be faced with the same issue you dealt with for years in ASP.NET, maintaining page state. Let's say a user hits your Products page, does some stuff (filters record, etc.), then leaves the page and comes back later. It would be best if the Products page was in the same state as when they left it right? Well, if you've thrown away your view (UserControl or Page) and moved off to another part of the UI, when you come back to Products you're probably going to re-instantiate your view...which will put it right back in the state it was when it started. Hmm, not good. Well, with a little help from MEF you can store the state in your view model class, MEF will keep that view model instance hanging around in memory, and then you simply rebind your view to the view model class. I made that sound easy, but it's actually a bit of work to properly store and restore the state. At least it can be done though, which will make your users a lot happier! I'll talk more about this in an upcoming blog post. No event handlers? Another nice thing about MVVM is that you can bind your UserControls to the view model, which may eliminate the need for event handlers in your code-behind. So instead of having a Click handler on a Button (or RadMenuItem), for example, you can now bind your control's Command property to a DelegateCommand in your view model (I'll talk more about Commands in an upcoming post). Instead of having a SelectionChanged event handler on your RadGridView you can now bind its SelectedItem property to a property in your view model, and each time the user clicks a row, the view model property's setter will be called. Now through the magic of binding we can eliminate the need for traditional code-behind based event handlers on our user interface controls, and the best thing is that the view model knows about everything that's going on...which means we can test things without a user interface. The brains of the operation So what we're seeing here is that the view is now just a dumb layer that binds to the view model, and that the view model is in control of just about everything, like what happens when a RadGridView row is selected, or when a RadComboBoxItem is selected, or when a RadMenuItem is clicked. It is also responsible for loading data when the page is hit, as well as kicking off data inserts, updates and deletions. Once again, all of this stuff can be tested without the need for a user interface. If the test works, then it'll work regardless of whether the user is hitting the browser-based version of your app, or the Windows Phone 7 version. Nice! The database Before running the code for this app you will need to create the database. First, create a database called MVVMProject in SQL Server, then run MVVMProject.sql in the MVVMProject/Database directory of your downloaded .zip file. This should give you a Task table with 3 records in it. When you fire up the solution you will also need to update the connection string in web.config to point to your database instead of IBM12\SQLSERVER2008. The code One note about this code is that it runs against the latest Silverlight 4 RC and WCF RIA Services code. Please see my first blog post about updating to the RC bits. Beta to RC - Part 1 At the top of this post is a link to a sample project that demonstrates a sample application with a Tasks page that uses the MVVM pattern. This is a simplified version of how I have implemented the Tasks page in the Task-It application. Youll notice that Tasks.xaml has very little code to it. Just a TextBlock that displays the page title and a ContentControl. <StackPanel>     <TextBlock Text="Tasks" Style="{StaticResource PageTitleStyle}"/>     <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource StandardSpacerStyle}"/>     <ContentControl x:Name="ContentControl1"/> </StackPanel> In List.xaml we have a RadGridView. Notice that the ItemsSource is bound to a property in the view model class call Tasks, SelectedItem is bound to a property in the view model called SelectedItem, and IsBusy is bound to a property in the view model called IsLoading. <Grid>     <telerikGridView:RadGridView ItemsSource="{Binding Tasks}" SelectedItem="{Binding SelectedItem, Mode=TwoWay}"                                  IsBusy="{Binding IsLoading}" AutoGenerateColumns="False" IsReadOnly="True" RowIndicatorVisibility="Collapsed"                IsFilteringAllowed="False" ShowGroupPanel="False">         <telerikGridView:RadGridView.Columns>             <telerikGridView:GridViewDataColumn Header="Name" DataMemberBinding="{Binding Name}" Width="3*"/>             <telerikGridView:GridViewDataColumn Header="Due" DataMemberBinding="{Binding DueDate}" DataFormatString="{}{0:d}" Width="*"/>         </telerikGridView:RadGridView.Columns>     </telerikGridView:RadGridView> </Grid> In Details.xaml we have a Save button that is bound to a property called SaveCommand in our view model. We also have a simple form (Im using a couple of controls here from Silverlight.FX for the form layout, FormPanel and Label simply because they make for a clean XAML layout). Notice that the FormPanel is also bound to the SelectedItem in the view model (the same one that the RadGridView is). The two form controls, the TextBox and RadDatePicker) are bound to the SelectedItem's Name and DueDate properties. These are properties of the Task object that WCF RIA Services creates. <StackPanel>     <Button Content="Save" Command="{Binding SaveCommand}" HorizontalAlignment="Left"/>     <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource StandardSpacerStyle}"/>     <fxui:FormPanel DataContext="{Binding SelectedItem}" Style="{StaticResource FormContainerStyle}">         <fxui:Label Text="Name:"/>         <TextBox Text="{Binding Name, Mode=TwoWay}"/>         <fxui:Label Text="Due:"/>         <telerikInput:RadDatePicker SelectedDate="{Binding DueDate, Mode=TwoWay}"/>     </fxui:FormPanel> </StackPanel> In the code-behind of the Tasks control, Tasks.xaml.cs, I created an instance of the view model class (TasksViewModel) in the constructor and set it as the DataContext for the control. The Tasks page will load one of two child UserControls depending on whether you are viewing the list of tasks (List.xaml) or the form for editing a task (Details.xaml). // Set the DataContext to an instance of the view model class var viewModel = new TasksViewModel(); DataContext = viewModel;   // Child user controls (inherit DataContext from this user control) List = new List(); // RadGridView Details = new Details(); // Form When the page first loads, the List is loaded into the ContentControl. // Show the RadGridView first ContentControl1.Content = List; In the code-behind we also listen for a couple of the view models events. The ItemSelected event will be fired when the user clicks on a record in the RadGridView in the List control. The SaveCompleted event will be fired when the user clicks Save in the Details control (the form). Here the view model is in control, and is letting the view know when something needs to change. // Listeners for the view model's events viewModel.ItemSelected += OnItemSelected; viewModel.SaveCompleted += OnSaveCompleted; The event handlers toggle the view between the RadGridView (List) and the form (Details). void OnItemSelected(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) {     // Show the form     ContentControl1.Content = Details; }   void OnSaveCompleted(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) {     // Show the RadGridView     ContentControl1.Content = List; } In TasksViewModel, we instantiate a DataContext object and a SaveCommand in the constructor. DataContext is a WCF RIA Services object that well use to retrieve the list of Tasks and to save any changes to a task. Ill talk more about this and Commands in future post, but for now think of the SaveCommand as an event handler that is called when the Save button in the form is clicked. DataContext = new DataContext(); SaveCommand = new DelegateCommand(OnSave); When the TasksViewModel constructor is called we also make a call to LoadTasks. This sets IsLoading to true (which causes the RadGridViews busy indicator to appear) and retrieves the records via WCF RIA Services.         public LoadOperation<Task> LoadTasks()         {             // Show the loading message             IsLoading = true;             // Get the data via WCF RIA Services. When the call has returned, called OnTasksLoaded.             return DataContext.Load(DataContext.GetTasksQuery(), OnTasksLoaded, false);         } When the data is returned, OnTasksLoaded is called. This sets IsLoading to false (which hides the RadGridViews busy indicator), and fires property changed notifications to the UI to let it know that the IsLoading and Tasks properties have changed. This property changed notification basically tells the UI to rebind. void OnTasksLoaded(LoadOperation<Task> lo) {     // Hide the loading message     IsLoading = false;       // Notify the UI that Tasks and IsLoading properties have changed     this.OnPropertyChanged(p => p.Tasks);     this.OnPropertyChanged(p => p.IsLoading); } Next lets look at the view models SelectedItem property. This is the one thats bound to both the RadGridView and the form. When the user clicks a record in the RadGridView its setter gets called (set a breakpoint and see what I mean). The other code in the setter lets the UI know that the SelectedItem has changed (so the form displays the correct data), and fires the event that notifies the UI that a selection has occurred (which tells the UI to switch from List to Details). public Task SelectedItem {     get { return _selectedItem; }     set     {         _selectedItem = value;           // Let the UI know that the SelectedItem has changed (forces it to re-bind)         this.OnPropertyChanged(p => p.SelectedItem);         // Notify the UI, so it can switch to the Details (form) page         NotifyItemSelected();     } } One last thing, saving the data. When the Save button in the form is clicked it fires the SaveCommand, which calls the OnSave method in the view model (once again, set a breakpoint to see it in action). public void OnSave() {     // Save the changes via WCF RIA Services. When the save is complete, call OnSaveCompleted.     DataContext.SubmitChanges(OnSaveCompleted, null); } In OnSave, we tell WCF RIA Services to submit any changes, which there will be if you changed either the Name or the Due Date in the form. When the save is completed, it calls OnSaveCompleted. This method fires a notification back to the UI that the save is completed, which causes the RadGridView (List) to show again. public virtual void OnSaveCompleted(SubmitOperation so) {     // Clear the item that is selected in the grid (in case we want to select it again)     SelectedItem = null;     // Notify the UI, so it can switch back to the List (RadGridView) page     NotifySaveCompleted(); } Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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