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

  - by Tarun Arora

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

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• Metro Walkthrough: Creating a Task List with a ListView and IndexedDB

  - by Stephen.Walther

  The goal of this blog entry is to describe how you can work with data in a Metro style application written with JavaScript. In particular, we create a super simple Task List application which enables you to create and delete tasks. Here’s a video which demonstrates how the Task List application works: In order to build this application, I had to take advantage of several features of the WinJS library and technologies including: IndexedDB – The Task List application stores data in an IndexedDB database. HTML5 Form Validation – The Task List application uses HTML5 validation to ensure that a required field has a value. ListView Control – The Task List application displays the tasks retrieved from the IndexedDB database in a WinJS ListView control. Creating the IndexedDB Database The Task List application stores all of its data in an IndexedDB database named TasksDB. This database is opened/created with the following code: var db; var req = window.msIndexedDB.open("TasksDB", 1); req.onerror = function () { console.log("Could not open database"); }; req.onupgradeneeded = function (evt) { var newDB = evt.target.result; newDB.createObjectStore("tasks", { keyPath: "id", autoIncrement:true }); }; The msIndexedDB.open() method accepts two parameters: the name of the database to open and the version of the database to open. If a database with a matching version already exists, then calling the msIndexedDB.open() method opens a connection to the existing database. If the database does not exist then the upgradeneeded event is raised. You handle the upgradeneeded event to create a new database. In the code above, the upgradeneeded event handler creates an object store named “tasks” (An object store roughly corresponds to a database table). When you add items to the tasks object store then each item gets an id property with an auto-incremented value automatically. The code above also includes an error event handler. If the IndexedDB database cannot be opened or created, for whatever reason, then an error message is written to the Visual Studio JavaScript Console window. Displaying a List of Tasks The TaskList application retrieves its list of tasks from the tasks object store, which we created above, and displays the list of tasks in a ListView control. Here is how the ListView control is declared: <div id="tasksListView" data-win-control="WinJS.UI.ListView" data-win-options="{ itemDataSource: TaskList.tasks.dataSource, itemTemplate: select('#taskTemplate'), tapBehavior: 'toggleSelect', selectionMode: 'multi', layout: { type: WinJS.UI.ListLayout } }"> </div> The ListView control is bound to the TaskList.tasks.dataSource data source. The TaskList.tasks.dataSource is created with the following code: // Create the data source var tasks = new WinJS.Binding.List(); // Open the database var db; var req = window.msIndexedDB.open("TasksDB", 1); req.onerror = function () { console.log("Could not open database"); }; req.onupgradeneeded = function (evt) { var newDB = evt.target.result; newDB.createObjectStore("tasks", { keyPath: "id", autoIncrement:true }); }; // Load the data source with data from the database req.onsuccess = function () { db = req.result; var tran = db.transaction("tasks"); tran.objectStore("tasks").openCursor().onsuccess = function(event) { var cursor = event.target.result; if (cursor) { tasks.dataSource.insertAtEnd(null, cursor.value); cursor.continue(); }; }; }; // Expose the data source and functions WinJS.Namespace.define("TaskList", { tasks: tasks }); Notice the success event handler. This handler is called when a database is successfully opened/created. In the code above, all of the items from the tasks object store are retrieved into a cursor and added to a WinJS.Binding.List object named tasks. Because the ListView control is bound to the WinJS.Binding.List object, copying the tasks from the object store into the WinJS.Binding.List object causes the tasks to appear in the ListView: Adding a New Task You add a new task in the Task List application by entering the title of a new task into an HTML form and clicking the Add button. Here’s the markup for creating the form: <form id="addTaskForm"> <input id="newTaskTitle" title="New Task" required /> <button>Add</button> </form> Notice that the INPUT element includes a required attribute. In a Metro application, you can take advantage of HTML5 Validation to validate form fields. If you don’t enter a value for the newTaskTitle field then the following validation error message is displayed: For a brief introduction to HTML5 validation, see my previous blog entry: http://stephenwalther.com/blog/archive/2012/03/13/html5-form-validation.aspx When you click the Add button, the form is submitted and the form submit event is raised. The following code is executed in the default.js file: // Handle Add Task document.getElementById("addTaskForm").addEventListener("submit", function (evt) { evt.preventDefault(); var newTaskTitle = document.getElementById("newTaskTitle"); TaskList.addTask({ title: newTaskTitle.value }); newTaskTitle.value = ""; }); The code above retrieves the title of the new task and calls the addTask() method in the tasks.js file. Here’s the code for the addTask() method which is responsible for actually adding the new task to the IndexedDB database: // Add a new task function addTask(taskToAdd) { var transaction = db.transaction("tasks", "readwrite"); var addRequest = transaction.objectStore("tasks").add(taskToAdd); addRequest.onsuccess = function (evt) { taskToAdd.id = evt.target.result; tasks.dataSource.insertAtEnd(null, taskToAdd); } } The code above does two things. First, it adds the new task to the tasks object store in the IndexedDB database. Second, it adds the new task to the data source bound to the ListView. The dataSource.insertAtEnd() method is called to add the new task to the data source so the new task will appear in the ListView (with a nice little animation). Deleting Existing Tasks The Task List application enables you to select one or more tasks by clicking or tapping on one or more tasks in the ListView. When you click the Delete button, the selected tasks are removed from both the IndexedDB database and the ListView. For example, in the following screenshot, two tasks are selected. The selected tasks appear with a teal background and a checkmark: When you click the Delete button, the following code in the default.js file is executed: // Handle Delete Tasks document.getElementById("btnDeleteTasks").addEventListener("click", function (evt) { tasksListView.winControl.selection.getItems().then(function(items) { items.forEach(function (item) { TaskList.deleteTask(item); }); }); }); The selected tasks are retrieved with the TaskList selection.getItem() method. In the code above, the deleteTask() method is called for each of the selected tasks. Here’s the code for the deleteTask() method: // Delete an existing task function deleteTask(listViewItem) { // Database key != ListView key var dbKey = listViewItem.data.id; var listViewKey = listViewItem.key; // Remove item from db and, if success, remove item from ListView var transaction = db.transaction("tasks", “readwrite”); var deleteRequest = transaction.objectStore("tasks").delete(dbKey); deleteRequest.onsuccess = function () { tasks.dataSource.remove(listViewKey); } } This code does two things: it deletes the existing task from the database and removes the existing task from the ListView. In both cases, the right task is removed by using the key associated with the task. However, the task key is different in the case of the database and in the case of the ListView. In the case of the database, the task key is the value of the task id property. In the case of the ListView, on the other hand, the task key is auto-generated by the ListView. When the task is removed from the ListView, an animation is used to collapse the tasks which appear above and below the task which was removed. The Complete Code Above, I did a lot of jumping around between different files in the application and I left out sections of code. For the sake of completeness, I want to include the entire code here: the default.html, default.js, and tasks.js files. Here are the contents of the default.html file. This file contains the UI for the Task List application: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>Task List</title> <!-- WinJS references --> <link href="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/css/ui-dark.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/base.js"></script> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/ui.js"></script> <!-- TaskList references --> <link href="/css/default.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="/js/default.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/tasks.js"></script> <style type="text/css"> body { font-size: x-large; } form { display: inline; } #appContainer { margin: 20px; width: 600px; } .win-container { padding: 10px; } </style> </head> <body> <div> <!-- Templates --> <div id="taskTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div> <span data-win-bind="innerText:title"></span> </div> </div> <h1>Super Task List</h1> <div id="appContainer"> <form id="addTaskForm"> <input id="newTaskTitle" title="New Task" required /> <button>Add</button> </form> <button id="btnDeleteTasks">Delete</button> <div id="tasksListView" data-win-control="WinJS.UI.ListView" data-win-options="{ itemDataSource: TaskList.tasks.dataSource, itemTemplate: select('#taskTemplate'), tapBehavior: 'toggleSelect', selectionMode: 'multi', layout: { type: WinJS.UI.ListLayout } }"> </div> </div> </div> </body> </html> Here is the code for the default.js file. This code wires up the Add Task form and Delete button: (function () { "use strict"; var app = WinJS.Application; app.onactivated = function (eventObject) { if (eventObject.detail.kind === Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ActivationKind.launch) { WinJS.UI.processAll().then(function () { // Get reference to Tasks ListView var tasksListView = document.getElementById("tasksListView"); // Handle Add Task document.getElementById("addTaskForm").addEventListener("submit", function (evt) { evt.preventDefault(); var newTaskTitle = document.getElementById("newTaskTitle"); TaskList.addTask({ title: newTaskTitle.value }); newTaskTitle.value = ""; }); // Handle Delete Tasks document.getElementById("btnDeleteTasks").addEventListener("click", function (evt) { tasksListView.winControl.selection.getItems().then(function(items) { items.forEach(function (item) { TaskList.deleteTask(item); }); }); }); }); } }; app.start(); })(); Finally, here is the tasks.js file. This file contains all of the code for opening, creating, and interacting with IndexedDB: (function () { "use strict"; // Create the data source var tasks = new WinJS.Binding.List(); // Open the database var db; var req = window.msIndexedDB.open("TasksDB", 1); req.onerror = function () { console.log("Could not open database"); }; req.onupgradeneeded = function (evt) { var newDB = evt.target.result; newDB.createObjectStore("tasks", { keyPath: "id", autoIncrement:true }); }; // Load the data source with data from the database req.onsuccess = function () { db = req.result; var tran = db.transaction("tasks"); tran.objectStore("tasks").openCursor().onsuccess = function(event) { var cursor = event.target.result; if (cursor) { tasks.dataSource.insertAtEnd(null, cursor.value); cursor.continue(); }; }; }; // Add a new task function addTask(taskToAdd) { var transaction = db.transaction("tasks", "readwrite"); var addRequest = transaction.objectStore("tasks").add(taskToAdd); addRequest.onsuccess = function (evt) { taskToAdd.id = evt.target.result; tasks.dataSource.insertAtEnd(null, taskToAdd); } } // Delete an existing task function deleteTask(listViewItem) { // Database key != ListView key var dbKey = listViewItem.data.id; var listViewKey = listViewItem.key; // Remove item from db and, if success, remove item from ListView var transaction = db.transaction("tasks", "readwrite"); var deleteRequest = transaction.objectStore("tasks").delete(dbKey); deleteRequest.onsuccess = function () { tasks.dataSource.remove(listViewKey); } } // Expose the data source and functions WinJS.Namespace.define("TaskList", { tasks: tasks, addTask: addTask, deleteTask: deleteTask }); })(); Summary I wrote this blog entry because I wanted to create a walkthrough of building a simple database-driven application. In particular, I wanted to demonstrate how you can use a ListView control with an IndexedDB database to store and retrieve database data.

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• ANTS CLR and Memory Profiler In Depth Review (Part 1 of 2 &ndash; CLR Profiler)

  - by ToStringTheory

  One of the things that people might not know about me, is my obsession to make my code as efficient as possible.  Many people might not realize how much of a task or undertaking that this might be, but it is surely a task as monumental as climbing Mount Everest, except this time it is a challenge for the mind…  In trying to make code efficient, there are many different factors that play a part – size of project or solution, tiers, language used, experience and training of the programmer, technologies used, maintainability of the code – the list can go on for quite some time. I spend quite a bit of time when developing trying to determine what is the best way to implement a feature to accomplish the efficiency that I look to achieve.  One program that I have recently come to learn about – Red Gate ANTS Performance (CLR) and Memory profiler gives me tools to accomplish that job more efficiently as well.  In this review, I am going to cover some of the features of the ANTS profiler set by compiling some hideous example code to test against. Notice As a member of the Geeks With Blogs Influencers program, one of the perks is the ability to review products, in exchange for a free license to the program.  I have not let this affect my opinions of the product in any way, and Red Gate nor Geeks With Blogs has tried to influence my opinion regarding this product in any way. Introduction The ANTS Profiler pack provided by Red Gate was something that I had not heard of before receiving an email regarding an offer to review it for a license.  Since I look to make my code efficient, it was a no brainer for me to try it out!  One thing that I have to say took me by surprise is that upon downloading the program and installing it you fill out a form for your usual contact information.  Sure enough within 2 hours, I received an email from a sales representative at Red Gate asking if she could help me to achieve the most out of my trial time so it wouldn’t go to waste.  After replying to her and explaining that I was looking to review its feature set, she put me in contact with someone that setup a demo session to give me a quick rundown of its features via an online meeting.  After having dealt with a massive ordeal with one of my utility companies and their complete lack of customer service, Red Gates friendly and helpful representatives were a breath of fresh air, and something I was thankful for. ANTS CLR Profiler The ANTS CLR profiler is the thing I want to focus on the most in this post, so I am going to dive right in now. Install was simple and took no time at all.  It installed both the profiler for the CLR and Memory, but also visual studio extensions to facilitate the usage of the profilers (click any images for full size images): The Visual Studio menu options (under ANTS menu) Starting the CLR Performance Profiler from the start menu yields this window If you follow the instructions after launching the program from the start menu (Click File > New Profiling Session to start a new project), you are given a dialog with plenty of options for profiling: The New Session dialog.  Lots of options.  One thing I noticed is that the buttons in the lower right were half-covered by the panel of the application.  If I had to guess, I would imagine that this is caused by my DPI settings being set to 125%.  This is a problem I have seen in other applications as well that don’t scale well to different dpi scales. The profiler options give you the ability to profile: .NET Executable ASP.NET web application (hosted in IIS) ASP.NET web application (hosted in IIS express) ASP.NET web application (hosted in Cassini Web Development Server) SharePoint web application (hosted in IIS) Silverlight 4+ application Windows Service COM+ server XBAP (local XAML browser application) Attach to an already running .NET 4 process Choosing each option provides a varying set of other variables/options that one can set including options such as application arguments, operating path, record I/O performance performance counters to record (43 counters in all!), etc…  All in all, they give you the ability to profile many different .Net project types, and make it simple to do so.  In most cases of my using this application, I would be using the built in Visual Studio extensions, as they automatically start a new profiling project in ANTS with the options setup, and start your program, however RedGate has made it easy enough to profile outside of Visual Studio as well. On the flip side of this, as someone who lives most of their work life in Visual Studio, one thing I do wish is that instead of opening an entirely separate application/gui to perform profiling after launching, that instead they would provide a Visual Studio panel with the information, and integrate more of the profiling project information into Visual Studio.  So, now that we have an idea of what options that the profiler gives us, its time to test its abilities and features. Horrendous Example Code – Prime Number Generator One of my interests besides development, is Physics and Math – what I went to college for.  I have especially always been interested in prime numbers, as they are something of a mystery…  So, I decided that I would go ahead and to test the abilities of the profiler, I would write a small program, website, and library to generate prime numbers in the quantity that you ask for.  I am going to start off with some terrible code, and show how I would see the profiler being used as a development tool. First off, the IPrimes interface (all code is downloadable at the end of the post): interface IPrimes { IEnumerable<int> GetPrimes(int retrieve); } Simple enough, right?  Anything that implements the interface will (hopefully) provide an IEnumerable of int, with the quantity specified in the parameter argument.  Next, I am going to implement this interface in the most basic way: public class DumbPrimes : IPrimes { public IEnumerable<int> GetPrimes(int retrieve) { //store a list of primes already found var _foundPrimes = new List<int>() { 2, 3 }; //if i ask for 1 or two primes, return what asked for if (retrieve <= _foundPrimes.Count()) return _foundPrimes.Take(retrieve); //the next number to look at int _analyzing = 4; //since I already determined I don't have enough //execute at least once, and until quantity is sufficed do { //assume prime until otherwise determined bool isPrime = true; //start dividing at 2 //divide until number is reached, or determined not prime for (int i = 2; i < _analyzing && isPrime; i++) { //if (i) goes into _analyzing without a remainder, //_analyzing is NOT prime if (_analyzing % i == 0) isPrime = false; } //if it is prime, add to found list if (isPrime) _foundPrimes.Add(_analyzing); //increment number to analyze next _analyzing++; } while (_foundPrimes.Count() < retrieve); return _foundPrimes; } } This is the simplest way to get primes in my opinion.  Checking each number by the straight definition of a prime – is it divisible by anything besides 1 and itself. I have included this code in a base class library for my solution, as I am going to use it to demonstrate a couple of features of ANTS.  This class library is consumed by a simple non-MVVM WPF application, and a simple MVC4 website.  I will not post the WPF code here inline, as it is simply an ObservableCollection<int>, a label, two textbox’s, and a button. Starting a new Profiling Session So, in Visual Studio, I have just completed my first stint developing the GUI and DumbPrimes IPrimes class, so now I want to check my codes efficiency by profiling it.  All I have to do is build the solution (surprised initiating a profiling session doesn’t do this, but I suppose I can understand it), and then click the ANTS menu, followed by Profile Performance.  I am then greeted by the profiler starting up and already monitoring my program live: You are provided with a realtime graph at the top, and a pane at the bottom giving you information on how to proceed.  I am going to start by asking my program to show me the first 15000 primes: After the program finally began responding again (I did all the work on the main UI thread – how bad!), I stopped the profiler, which did kill the process of my program too.  One important thing to note, is that the profiler by default wants to give you a lot of detail about the operation – line hit counts, time per line, percent time per line, etc…  The important thing to remember is that this itself takes a lot of time.  When running my program without the profiler attached, it can generate the 15000 primes in 5.18 seconds, compared to 74.5 seconds – almost a 1500 percent increase.  While this may seem like a lot, remember that there is a trade off.  It may be WAY more inefficient, however, I am able to drill down and make improvements to specific problem areas, and then decrease execution time all around. Analyzing the Profiling Session After clicking ‘Stop Profiling’, the process running my application stopped, and the entire execution time was automatically selected by ANTS, and the results shown below: Now there are a number of interesting things going on here, I am going to cover each in a section of its own: Real Time Performance Counter Bar (top of screen) At the top of the screen, is the real time performance bar.  As your application is running, this will constantly update with the currently selected performance counters status.  A couple of cool things to note are the fact that you can drag a selection around specific time periods to drill down the detail views in the lower 2 panels to information pertaining to only that period. After selecting a time period, you can bookmark a section and name it, so that it is easy to find later, or after reloaded at a later time.  You can also zoom in, out, or fit the graph to the space provided – useful for drilling down. It may be hard to see, but at the top of the processor time graph below the time ticks, but above the red usage graph, there is a green bar. This bar shows at what times a method that is selected in the ‘Call tree’ panel is called. Very cool to be able to click on a method and see at what times it made an impact. As I said before, ANTS provides 43 different performance counters you can hook into.  Click the arrow next to the Performance tab at the top will allow you to change between different counters if you have them selected: Method Call Tree, ADO.Net Database Calls, File IO – Detail Panel Red Gate really hit the mark here I think. When you select a section of the run with the graph, the call tree populates to fill a hierarchical tree of method calls, with information regarding each of the methods.   By default, methods are hidden where the source is not provided (framework type code), however, Red Gate has integrated Reflector into ANTS, so even if you don’t have source for something, you can select a method and get the source if you want.  Methods are also hidden where the impact is seen as insignificant – methods that are only executed for 1% of the time of the overall calling methods time; in other words, working on making them better is not where your efforts should be focused. – Smart! Source Panel – Detail Panel The source panel is where you can see line level information on your code, showing the code for the currently selected method from the Method Call Tree.  If the code is not available, Reflector takes care of it and shows the code anyways! As you can notice, there does seem to be a problem with how ANTS determines what line is the actual line that a call is completed on.  I have suspicions that this may be due to some of the inline code optimizations that the CLR applies upon compilation of the assembly.  In a method with comments, the problem is much more severe: As you can see here, apparently the most offending code in my base library was a comment – *gasp*!  Removing the comments does help quite a bit, however I hope that Red Gate works on their counter algorithm soon to improve the logic on positioning for statistics: I did a small test just to demonstrate the lines are correct without comments. For me, it isn’t a deal breaker, as I can usually determine the correct placements by looking at the application code in the region and determining what makes sense, but it is something that would probably build up some irritation with time. Feature – Suggest Method for Optimization A neat feature to really help those in need of a pointer, is the menu option under tools to automatically suggest methods to optimize/improve: Nice feature – clicking it filters the call tree and stars methods that it thinks are good candidates for optimization.  I do wish that they would have made it more visible for those of use who aren’t great on sight: Process Integration I do think that this could have a place in my process.  After experimenting with the profiler, I do think it would be a great benefit to do some development, testing, and then after all the bugs are worked out, use the profiler to check on things to make sure nothing seems like it is hogging more than its fair share.  For example, with this program, I would have developed it, ran it, tested it – it works, but slowly. After looking at the profiler, and seeing the massive amount of time spent in 1 method, I might go ahead and try to re-implement IPrimes (I actually would probably rewrite the offending code, but so that I can distribute both sets of code easily, I’m just going to make another implementation of IPrimes).  Using two pieces of knowledge about prime numbers can make this method MUCH more efficient – prime numbers fall into two buckets 6k+/-1 , and a number is prime if it is not divisible by any other primes before it: public class SmartPrimes : IPrimes { public IEnumerable<int> GetPrimes(int retrieve) { //store a list of primes already found var _foundPrimes = new List<int>() { 2, 3 }; //if i ask for 1 or two primes, return what asked for if (retrieve <= _foundPrimes.Count()) return _foundPrimes.Take(retrieve); //the next number to look at int _k = 1; //since I already determined I don't have enough //execute at least once, and until quantity is sufficed do { //assume prime until otherwise determined bool isPrime = true; int potentialPrime; //analyze 6k-1 //assign the value to potential potentialPrime = 6 * _k - 1; //if there are any primes that divise this, it is NOT a prime number //using PLINQ for quick boost isPrime = !_foundPrimes.AsParallel() .Any(prime => potentialPrime % prime == 0); //if it is prime, add to found list if (isPrime) _foundPrimes.Add(potentialPrime); if (_foundPrimes.Count() == retrieve) break; //analyze 6k+1 //assign the value to potential potentialPrime = 6 * _k + 1; //if there are any primes that divise this, it is NOT a prime number //using PLINQ for quick boost isPrime = !_foundPrimes.AsParallel() .Any(prime => potentialPrime % prime == 0); //if it is prime, add to found list if (isPrime) _foundPrimes.Add(potentialPrime); //increment k to analyze next _k++; } while (_foundPrimes.Count() < retrieve); return _foundPrimes; } } Now there are definitely more things I can do to help make this more efficient, but for the scope of this example, I think this is fine (but still hideous)! Profiling this now yields a happy surprise 27 seconds to generate the 15000 primes with the profiler attached, and only 1.43 seconds without.  One important thing I wanted to call out though was the performance graph now: Notice anything odd?  The %Processor time is above 100%.  This is because there is now more than 1 core in the operation.  A better label for the chart in my mind would have been %Core time, but to each their own. Another odd thing I noticed was that the profiler seemed to be spot on this time in my DumbPrimes class with line details in source, even with comments..  Odd. Profiling Web Applications The last thing that I wanted to cover, that means a lot to me as a web developer, is the great amount of work that Red Gate put into the profiler when profiling web applications.  In my solution, I have a simple MVC4 application setup with 1 page, a single input form, that will output prime values as my WPF app did.  Launching the profiler from Visual Studio as before, nothing is really different in the profiler window, however I did receive a UAC prompt for a Red Gate helper app to integrate with the web server without notification. After requesting 500, 1000, 2000, and 5000 primes, and looking at the profiler session, things are slightly different from before: As you can see, there are 4 spikes of activity in the processor time graph, but there is also something new in the call tree: That’s right – ANTS will actually group method calls by get/post operations, so it is easier to find out what action/page is giving the largest problems…  Pretty cool in my mind! Overview Overall, I think that Red Gate ANTS CLR Profiler has a lot to offer, however I think it also has a long ways to go.  3 Biggest Pros: Ability to easily drill down from time graph, to method calls, to source code Wide variety of counters to choose from when profiling your application Excellent integration/grouping of methods being called from web applications by request – BRILLIANT! 3 Biggest Cons: Issue regarding line details in source view Nit pick – Processor time vs. Core time Nit pick – Lack of full integration with Visual Studio Ratings Ease of Use (7/10) – I marked down here because of the problems with the line level details and the extra work that that entails, and the lack of better integration with Visual Studio. Effectiveness (10/10) – I believe that the profiler does EXACTLY what it purports to do.  Especially with its large variety of performance counters, a definite plus! Features (9/10) – Besides the real time performance monitoring, and the drill downs that I’ve shown here, ANTS also has great integration with ADO.Net, with the ability to show database queries run by your application in the profiler.  This, with the line level details, the web request grouping, reflector integration, and various options to customize your profiling session I think create a great set of features! Customer Service (10/10) – My entire experience with Red Gate personnel has been nothing but good.  their people are friendly, helpful, and happy! UI / UX (8/10) – The interface is very easy to get around, and all of the options are easy to find.  With a little bit of poking around, you’ll be optimizing Hello World in no time flat! Overall (8/10) – Overall, I am happy with the Performance Profiler and its features, as well as with the service I received when working with the Red Gate personnel.  I WOULD recommend you trying the application and seeing if it would fit into your process, BUT, remember there are still some kinks in it to hopefully be worked out. My next post will definitely be shorter (hopefully), but thank you for reading up to here, or skipping ahead!  Please, if you do try the product, drop me a message and let me know what you think!  I would love to hear any opinions you may have on the product. Code Feel free to download the code I used above – download via DropBox

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, April 07, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, April 07, 2012Popular ReleasesHarness - Internet Explorer Automation: Harness 2.0.3: support the operation fo frameset, frame and iframe Add commands SwitchFrame GetUrl GoBack GoForward Refresh SetTimeout GetTimeout Rename commands GetActiveWindow to GetActiveBrowser SetActiveWindow to SetActiveBrowser FindWindowAll to FindBrowser NewWindow to NewBrowser GetMajorVersion to GetVersionBetter Explorer: Better Explorer 2.0.0.861 Alpha: - fixed new folder button operation not work well in some situations - removed some unnecessary code like subclassing that is not needed anymore - Added option to make Better Exlorer default (at least for WIN+E operations) - Added option to enable file operation replacements (like Terracopy) to work with Better Explorer - Added some basic usability to "Share" button - Other fixesLightFarsiDictionary - ??????? ??? ?????/???????: LightFarsiDictionary - v1: LightFarsiDictionary - v1WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.5.0.3: Version: 2.5.0.3 (Milestone 3): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Changelog Legend: [B] Breaking change; [O] Marked member as obsolete [O] WAF: Mark the StringBuilderExtensions class as obsolete because the AppendInNewLine method can be replaced with string.Jo...RiP-Ripper & PG-Ripper: RiP-Ripper 2.9.30: changes NEW: Added Support for "DirectUpload.net" links NEW: Added Support for "PixRoute.com" links NEW: Added Support for "ImagePicasa.com" links FIXED: "PixHub.eu" linksCommunity TFS Build Extensions: April 2012: Release notes to follow...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.65.2: Aside from many bug fixes we now have Conditional Formatting The conditional formatting was sponsored by http://www.bewing.nl (big thanks) New on v0.65.1 Fixed issue when loading conditional formatting with default values for icon sets New on v0.65.2 Fixed issue loading conditional formatting Improved inserts performanceLiberty: v3.2.0.0 Release 4th April 2012: Change Log-Added -Halo 3 support (invincibility, ammo editing) -Halo 3: ODST support (invincibility, ammo editing) -The file transfer page now shows its progress in the Windows 7 taskbar -"About this build" settings page -Reach Change what an object is carrying -Reach Change which node a carried object is attached to -Reach Object node viewer and exporter -Reach Change which weapons you are carrying from the object editor -Reach Edit the weapon controller of vehicles and turrets -An error dia...MSBuild Extension Pack: April 2012: Release Blog Post The MSBuild Extension Pack April 2012 release provides a collection of over 435 MSBuild tasks. A high level summary of what the tasks currently cover includes the following: System Items: Active Directory, Certificates, COM+, Console, Date and Time, Drives, Environment Variables, Event Logs, Files and Folders, FTP, GAC, Network, Performance Counters, Registry, Services, Sound Code: Assemblies, AsyncExec, CAB Files, Code Signing, DynamicExecute, File Detokenisation, GUID’...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.01.05: Major Highlights Fixed issue that stopped users from creating vocabularies when the portal ID was not zero Fixed issue that caused modules configured to be displayed on all pages to be added to the wrong container in new pages Fixed page quota restriction issue in the Ribbon Bar Removed restriction that would not allow users to use a dash in page names. Now users can create pages with names like "site-map" Fixed issue that was causing the wrong container to be loaded in modules wh...51Degrees.mobi - Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 2.1.3.1: One Click Install from NuGet Changes to Version 2.1.3.11. [assembly: AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers] has been added back into the AssemblyInfo.cs file to prevent failures with other assemblies in Medium trust environments. 2. The Lite data embedded into the assembly has been updated to include devices from December 2011. The 42 new RingMark properties will return Unknown if RingMark data is not available. Changes to Version 2.1.2.11Code Changes 1. The project is now licenced under the Mozilla...MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 2.0.0: Added Support for Mvc4 beta and WebApi The SafeqQuery and HttpSafeQuery IQueryable implementations that works as wrappers aroung any IQueryable to protect it from unwished queries. "Client Side" pager specialized in paging javascript data coming either from a remote data source, or from local data. LinQ like fluent javascript api to build queries either against remote data sources, or against local javascript data, with exactly the same interface. There are 3 different query objects exp...ExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.2: ExtAspNet - ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ?????????? ExtAspNet ????? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ??????????。 ExtAspNet ??????? JavaScript，?? CSS，?? UpdatePanel，?? ViewState，?? WebServices ???????。 ??????: IE 7.0, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 3.0, Opera 10.5, Safari 3.0+ ????：Apache License 2.0 (Apache) ??：http://extasp.net/ ??：http://bbs.extasp.net/ ??：http://extaspnet.codeplex.com/ ??：http://sanshi.cnblogs.com/ ????： +2012-04-04 v3.1.2 -??IE?????????????BUG（??"about:blank"?...nopCommerce. Open source shopping cart (ASP.NET MVC): nopcommerce 2.50: Highlight features & improvements: • Significant performance optimization. • Allow store owners to create several shipments per order. Added a new shipping status: “Partially shipped”. • Pre-order support added. Enables your customers to place a Pre-Order and pay for the item in advance. Displays “Pre-order” button instead of “Buy Now” on the appropriate pages. Makes it possible for customer to buy available goods and Pre-Order items during one session. It can be managed on a product variant ...WiX Toolset: WiX v3.6 RC0: WiX v3.6 RC0 (3.6.2803.0) provides support for VS11 and a more stable Burn engine. For more information see Rob's blog post about the release: http://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2012/4/3/WiX-v3.6-Release-Candidate-Zero-availableSageFrame: SageFrame 2.0: Sageframe is an open source ASP.NET web development framework developed using ASP.NET 3.5 with service pack 1 (sp1) technology. It is designed specifically to help developers build dynamic website by providing core functionality common to most web applications.iTuner - The iTunes Companion: iTuner 1.5.4475: Fix to parse empty playlists in iTunes LibraryDocument.Editor: 2012.2: Whats New for Document.Editor 2012.2: New Save Copy support New Page Setup support Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsVidCoder: 1.3.2: Added option for the minimum title length to scan. Added support to enable or disable LibDVDNav. Added option to prompt to delete source files after clearing successful completed items. Added option to disable remembering recent files and folders. Tweaked number box to only select all on a quick click.MJP's DirectX 11 Samples: Light Indexed Deferred Rendering: Implements light indexed deferred using per-tile light lists calculated in a compute shader, as well as a traditional deferred renderer that uses a compute shader for per-tile light culling and per-pixel shading.New ProjectsAdvertising Management: Ph?n m?m qu?n lý qu?ng cáoAgile Compact Database: It is database for all. AssemblyTransformer: AssemblyTransformer is a tool for modifying .NET assemblies using Mono Cecil. It handles the entire transformation process including strong name signing and offers a simple command-line interface and a basic framework for creating and configuring specific transformations.Cafe For You: Ph?n m?m gi?i thi?u và qu?n lý quán cafeClient-side Templated Script Control: Allows a developer to add a repeater-style templated list control to a web page that will be data bound client-side, and may respond to client events. The control may be data bound by a web service call on initialization, and may also have it's data source set via client code.CRM Project - Beginner Sample: Sample to help beginners to start in C# development. Ejemplo para ayudar a quienes inician con el desarrollo en C#.Deployment Made Easy: The goal of this project is to make deployments to windows servers easy using the web deployment toolEasyCMS: EasyCMSExcel to SQL Server Database Bulk Transfer: Quick and simple WPF tool to allow users export data from an Excel spreadsheet to a SQL Server database table. Provided as is. But if you need any help let me know. HTML Client demo for WCF RIA Services: Demo application with HTML client (upshot.js + knockout.js) on WCF RIA ServicesKOI: Kinect Open Interface: Kinect Open Interface, KOI, provides a way to detect and have the user confirm 11 gestures for your UI. Please read my blog for info: http://www.kinecthelp.com/2012/04/koi-kinect-open-interface.htmlLazyWinAdmin: LazyWinAdmin is a Powershell script to manage local or remote machine ressources.LCDSmartie dll to display Audio spectrum on Windows 7: An LCDSmartie plugin that displays anything being played as an audio spectrum.LiveHelpChatApp: With Live chat help you can provide online / Offline help to your client it has facebook style chat for online and offline users Download and EnjoyMailSender: Small tool for sending mail messages contains multiple attachements with sum size bigger than allowed size. You can drag'n'drop attachments and click send - application split all attachments to parts and sent it separately. There is not address book yet. Mauricio: Mauricio Lima PageMiddleware and Enterprise services foundation: Define a model of deployment and management for Middleware and enterprise applicationsMyFirstPro: This is a test projOld Games Launcher: Old Games Launcher is a combined DosBox frontend & a Direct Draw game/application starter.Pharmakos Studio: Pharmakos Studio is an extensible IDE. It was originally written specifically as an UnrealScript editor for the UDK, however it is being written so that any language can be supported via plugins.Proyecto Eclipse-Android: Proyectos con Eclipse-AdroidProyectos II: Proyecto para Farmaciapullsource: pull source directsource filterQuizzer: Awesome program for quizzes and tests.Solution Settings for Visual Studio: Solution Settings for Visual Studio allows a file containing settings such as formatting, fonts and colors to be included with a project. When the solution is opened, these settings are automatically applied, and when it is closed, the changes are reverted.sundance: test test testWebcomic Reader: A little Idea for an on-, and offline usable, touch-friendly Windows 7 Webcomic Reader.WinRT PathTextBlock: WinRT PathTextBlock is a control that overcomes some of the limitations in the built in WinRT TextBlock, such as not being able to outline the text, and not being able to distort the text, for example to draw it along a circle. Previously, you could use a tool like Expression Design to create the text and export it as a Path, but this wouldn't work for text that needed to be specified at run time. This control allows you to specify the Text property and it will generate the proper Path obj...Yaplex open source projects: Yaplex open source projects????API SDK-VB6(oauth2): ????API SDK-VB6(oauth2)????????API SDK VB6: ??????????API SDK vb?

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• Metro: Understanding CSS Media Queries

  - by Stephen.Walther

  If you are building a Metro style application then your application needs to look great when used on a wide variety of devices. Your application needs to work on tiny little phones, slates, desktop monitors, and the super high resolution displays of the future. Your application also must support portable devices used with different orientations. If someone tilts their phone from portrait to landscape mode then your application must still be usable. Finally, your Metro style application must look great in different states. For example, your Metro application can be in a “snapped state” when it is shrunk so it can share screen real estate with another application. In this blog post, you learn how to use Cascading Style Sheet media queries to support different devices, different device orientations, and different application states. First, you are provided with an overview of the W3C Media Query recommendation and you learn how to detect standard media features. Next, you learn about the Microsoft extensions to media queries which are supported in Metro style applications. For example, you learn how to use the –ms-view-state feature to detect whether an application is in a “snapped state” or “fill state”. Finally, you learn how to programmatically detect the features of a device and the state of an application. You learn how to use the msMatchMedia() method to execute a media query with JavaScript. Using CSS Media Queries Media queries enable you to apply different styles depending on the features of a device. Media queries are not only supported by Metro style applications, most modern web browsers now support media queries including Google Chrome 4+, Mozilla Firefox 3.5+, Apple Safari 4+, and Microsoft Internet Explorer 9+. Loading Different Style Sheets with Media Queries Imagine, for example, that you want to display different content depending on the horizontal resolution of a device. In that case, you can load different style sheets optimized for different sized devices. Consider the following HTML page: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>U.S. Robotics and Mechanical Men</title> <link href="main.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> <!-- Less than 1100px --> <link href="medium.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="(max-width:1100px)" /> <!-- Less than 800px --> <link href="small.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="(max-width:800px)" /> </head> <body> <div id="header"> <h1>U.S. Robotics and Mechanical Men</h1> </div> <!-- Advertisement Column --> <div id="leftColumn"> <img src="advertisement1.gif" alt="advertisement" /> <img src="advertisement2.jpg" alt="advertisement" /> </div> <!-- Product Search Form --> <div id="mainContentColumn"> <label>Search Products</label> <input id="search" /><button>Search</button> </div> <!-- Deal of the Day Column --> <div id="rightColumn"> <h1>Deal of the Day!</h1> <p> Buy two cameras and get a third camera for free! Offer is good for today only. </p> </div> </body> </html> The HTML page above contains three columns: a leftColumn, mainContentColumn, and rightColumn. When the page is displayed on a low resolution device, such as a phone, only the mainContentColumn appears: When the page is displayed in a medium resolution device, such as a slate, both the leftColumn and the mainContentColumns are displayed: Finally, when the page is displayed in a high-resolution device, such as a computer monitor, all three columns are displayed: Different content is displayed with the help of media queries. The page above contains three style sheet links. Two of the style links include a media attribute: <link href="main.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> <!-- Less than 1100px --> <link href="medium.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="(max-width:1100px)" /> <!-- Less than 800px --> <link href="small.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="(max-width:800px)" /> The main.css style sheet contains default styles for the elements in the page. The medium.css style sheet is applied when the page width is less than 1100px. This style sheet hides the rightColumn and changes the page background color to lime: html { background-color: lime; } #rightColumn { display:none; } Finally, the small.css style sheet is loaded when the page width is less than 800px. This style sheet hides the leftColumn and changes the page background color to red: html { background-color: red; } #leftColumn { display:none; } The different style sheets are applied as you stretch and contract your browser window. You don’t need to refresh the page after changing the size of the page for a media query to be applied: Using the @media Rule You don’t need to divide your styles into separate files to take advantage of media queries. You can group styles by using the @media rule. For example, the following HTML page contains one set of styles which are applied when a device’s orientation is portrait and another set of styles when a device’s orientation is landscape: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8" /> <title>Application1</title> <style type="text/css"> html { font-family:'Segoe UI Semilight'; font-size: xx-large; } @media screen and (orientation:landscape) { html { background-color: lime; } p.content { width: 50%; margin: auto; } } @media screen and (orientation:portrait) { html { background-color: red; } p.content { width: 90%; margin: auto; } } </style> </head> <body> <p class="content"> Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna. </p> </body> </html> When a device has a landscape orientation then the background color is set to the color lime and the text only takes up 50% of the available horizontal space: When the device has a portrait orientation then the background color is red and the text takes up 90% of the available horizontal space: Using Standard CSS Media Features The official list of standard media features is contained in the W3C CSS Media Query recommendation located here: http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-mediaqueries/ Here is the official list of the 13 media features described in the standard: · width – The current width of the viewport · height – The current height of the viewport · device-width – The width of the device · device-height – The height of the device · orientation – The value portrait or landscape · aspect-ratio – The ratio of width to height · device-aspect-ratio – The ratio of device width to device height · color – The number of bits per color supported by the device · color-index – The number of colors in the color lookup table of the device · monochrome – The number of bits in the monochrome frame buffer · resolution – The density of the pixels supported by the device · scan – The values progressive or interlace (used for TVs) · grid – The values 0 or 1 which indicate whether the device supports a grid or a bitmap Many of the media features in the list above support the min- and max- prefix. For example, you can test for the min-width using a query like this: (min-width:800px) You can use the logical and operator with media queries when you need to check whether a device supports more than one feature. For example, the following query returns true only when the width of the device is between 800 and 1,200 pixels: (min-width:800px) and (max-width:1200px) Finally, you can use the different media types – all, braille, embossed, handheld, print, projection, screen, speech, tty, tv — with a media query. For example, the following media query only applies to a page when a page is being printed in color: print and (color) If you don’t specify a media type then media type all is assumed. Using Metro Style Media Features Microsoft has extended the standard list of media features which you can include in a media query with two custom media features: · -ms-high-contrast – The values any, black-white, white-black · -ms-view-state – The values full-screen, fill, snapped, device-portrait You can take advantage of the –ms-high-contrast media feature to make your web application more accessible to individuals with disabilities. In high contrast mode, you should make your application easier to use for individuals with vision disabilities. The –ms-view-state media feature enables you to detect the state of an application. For example, when an application is snapped, the application only occupies part of the available screen real estate. The snapped application appears on the left or right side of the screen and the rest of the screen real estate is dominated by the fill application (Metro style applications can only be snapped on devices with a horizontal resolution of greater than 1,366 pixels). Here is a page which contains style rules for an application in both a snap and fill application state: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8" /> <title>MyWinWebApp</title> <style type="text/css"> html { font-family:'Segoe UI Semilight'; font-size: xx-large; } @media screen and (-ms-view-state:snapped) { html { background-color: lime; } } @media screen and (-ms-view-state:fill) { html { background-color: red; } } </style> </head> <body> <p class="content"> Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna. </p> </body> </html> When the application is snapped, the application appears with a lime background color: When the application state is fill then the background color changes to red: When the application takes up the entire screen real estate – it is not in snapped or fill state – then no special style rules apply and the application appears with a white background color. Querying Media Features with JavaScript You can perform media queries using JavaScript by taking advantage of the window.msMatchMedia() method. This method returns a MSMediaQueryList which has a matches method that represents success or failure. For example, the following code checks whether the current device is in portrait mode: if (window.msMatchMedia("(orientation:portrait)").matches) { console.log("portrait"); } else { console.log("landscape"); } If the matches property returns true, then the device is in portrait mode and the message “portrait” is written to the Visual Studio JavaScript Console window. Otherwise, the message “landscape” is written to the JavaScript Console window. You can create an event listener which triggers code whenever the results of a media query changes. For example, the following code writes a message to the JavaScript Console whenever the current device is switched into or out of Portrait mode: window.msMatchMedia("(orientation:portrait)").addListener(function (mql) { if (mql.matches) { console.log("Switched to portrait"); } }); Be aware that the event listener is triggered whenever the result of the media query changes. So the event listener is triggered both when you switch from landscape to portrait and when you switch from portrait to landscape. For this reason, you need to verify that the matches property has the value true before writing the message. Summary The goal of this blog entry was to explain how CSS media queries work in the context of a Metro style application written with JavaScript. First, you were provided with an overview of the W3C CSS Media Query recommendation. You learned about the standard media features which you can query such as width and orientation. Next, we focused on the Microsoft extensions to media queries. You learned how to use –ms-view-state to detect whether a Metro style application is in “snapped” or “fill” state. You also learned how to use the msMatchMedia() method to perform a media query from JavaScript.

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• ASP.NET MVC 2 Model Binding for a Collection

  - by nmarun

  Yes, my yet another post on Model Binding (previous one is here), but this one uses features presented in MVC 2. How I got to writing this blog? Well, I’m on a project where we’re doing some MVC things for a shopping cart. Let me show you what I was working with. Below are my model classes: 1: public class Product 2: { 3: public int Id { get; set; } 4: public string Name { get; set; } 5: public int Quantity { get; set; } 6: public decimal UnitPrice { get; set; } 7: } 8:   9: public class Totals 10: { 11: public decimal SubTotal { get; set; } 12: public decimal Tax { get; set; } 13: public decimal Total { get; set; } 14: } 15:   16: public class Basket 17: { 18: public List<Product> Products { get; set; } 19: public Totals Totals { get; set;} 20: } The view looks as below:  1: <h2>Shopping Cart</h2> 2:   3: <% using(Html.BeginForm()) { %> 4: 5: <h3>Products</h3> 6: <% for (int i = 0; i < Model.Products.Count; i++) 7: { %> 8: <div style="width: 100px;float:left;">Id</div> 9: <div style="width: 100px;float:left;"> 10: <%= Html.TextBox("ID", Model.Products[i].Id) %> 11: </div> 12: <div style="clear:both;"></div> 13: <div style="width: 100px;float:left;">Name</div> 14: <div style="width: 100px;float:left;"> 15: <%= Html.TextBox("Name", Model.Products[i].Name) %> 16: </div> 17: <div style="clear:both;"></div> 18: <div style="width: 100px;float:left;">Quantity</div> 19: <div style="width: 100px;float:left;"> 20: <%= Html.TextBox("Quantity", Model.Products[i].Quantity)%> 21: </div> 22: <div style="clear:both;"></div> 23: <div style="width: 100px;float:left;">Unit Price</div> 24: <div style="width: 100px;float:left;"> 25: <%= Html.TextBox("UnitPrice", Model.Products[i].UnitPrice)%> 26: </div> 27: <div style="clear:both;"><hr /></div> 28: <% } %> 29: 30: <h3>Totals</h3> 31: <div style="width: 100px;float:left;">Sub Total</div> 32: <div style="width: 100px;float:left;"> 33: <%= Html.TextBox("SubTotal", Model.Totals.SubTotal)%> 34: </div> 35: <div style="clear:both;"></div> 36: <div style="width: 100px;float:left;">Tax</div> 37: <div style="width: 100px;float:left;"> 38: <%= Html.TextBox("Tax", Model.Totals.Tax)%> 39: </div> 40: <div style="clear:both;"></div> 41: <div style="width: 100px;float:left;">Total</div> 42: <div style="width: 100px;float:left;"> 43: <%= Html.TextBox("Total", Model.Totals.Total)%> 44: </div> 45: <div style="clear:both;"></div> 46: <p /> 47: <input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Submit" /> 48: <% } %> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Nothing fancy, just a bunch of div’s containing textboxes and a submit button. Just make note that the textboxes have the same name as the property they are going to display. Yea, yea, I know. I’m displaying unit price as a textbox instead of a label, but that’s beside the point (and trust me, this will not be how it’ll look on the production site!!). The way my controller works is that initially two dummy products are added to the basked object and the Totals are calculated based on what products were added in what quantities and their respective unit price. So when the page loads in edit mode, where the user can change the quantity and hit the submit button. In the ‘post’ version of the action method, the Totals get recalculated and the new total will be displayed on the screen. Here’s the code: 1: public ActionResult Index() 2: { 3: Product product1 = new Product 4: { 5: Id = 1, 6: Name = "Product 1", 7: Quantity = 2, 8: UnitPrice = 200m 9: }; 10:   11: Product product2 = new Product 12: { 13: Id = 2, 14: Name = "Product 2", 15: Quantity = 1, 16: UnitPrice = 150m 17: }; 18:   19: List<Product> products = new List<Product> { product1, product2 }; 20:   21: Basket basket = new Basket 22: { 23: Products = products, 24: Totals = ComputeTotals(products) 25: }; 26: return View(basket); 27: } 28:   29: [HttpPost] 30: public ActionResult Index(Basket basket) 31: { 32: basket.Totals = ComputeTotals(basket.Products); 33: return View(basket); 34: } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } That’s that. Now I run the app, I see two products with the totals section below them. I look at the view source and I see that the input controls have the right ID, the right name and the right value as well. 1: <input id="ID" name="ID" type="text" value="1" /> 2: <input id="Name" name="Name" type="text" value="Product 1" /> 3: ... 4: <input id="ID" name="ID" type="text" value="2" /> 5: <input id="Name" name="Name" type="text" value="Product 2" /> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } So just as a regular user would do, I change the quantity value of one of the products and hit the submit button. The ‘post’ version of the Index method gets called and I had put a break-point on line 32 in the above snippet. When I hovered my mouse on the ‘basked’ object, happily assuming that the object would be all bound and ready for use, I was surprised to see both basket.Products and basket.Totals were null. Huh? A little research and I found out that the reason the DefaultModelBinder could not do its job is because of a naming mismatch on the input controls. What I mean is that when you have to bind to a custom .net type, you need more than just the property name. You need to pass a qualified name to the name property of the input control. I modified my view and the emitted code looked as below: 1: <input id="Product_Name" name="Product.Name" type="text" value="Product 1" /> 2: ... 3: <input id="Product_Name" name="Product.Name" type="text" value="Product 2" /> 4: ... 5: <input id="Totals_SubTotal" name="Totals.SubTotal" type="text" value="550" /> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Now, I update the quantity and hit the submit button and I see that the Totals object is populated, but the Products list is still null. Once again I went: ‘Hmm.. time for more research’. I found out that the way to do this is to provide the name as: 1: <%= Html.TextBox(string.Format("Products[{0}].ID", i), Model.Products[i].Id) %> 2: <!-- this will be rendered as --> 3: <input id="Products_0__ID" name="Products[0].ID" type="text" value="1" /> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } It was only now that I was able to see both the products and the totals being properly bound in the ‘post’ action method. Somehow, I feel this is kinda ‘clunky’ way of doing things. Seems like people at MS felt in a similar way and offered us a much cleaner way to solve this issue. The simple solution is that instead of using a Textbox, we can either use a TextboxFor or an EditorFor helper method. This one directly spits out the name of the input property as ‘Products[0].ID and so on. Cool right? I totally fell for this and changed my UI to contain EditorFor helper method. At this point, I ran the application, changed the quantity field and pressed the submit button. Of course my basket object parameter in my action method was correctly bound after these changes. I let the app complete the rest of the lines in the action method. When the page finally rendered, I did see that the quantity was changed to what I entered before the post. But, wait a minute, the totals section did not reflect the changes and showed the old values. My status: COMPLETELY PUZZLED! Just to recap, this is what my ‘post’ Index method looked like: 1: [HttpPost] 2: public ActionResult Index(Basket basket) 3: { 4: basket.Totals = ComputeTotals(basket.Products); 5: return View(basket); 6: } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } A careful debug confirmed that the basked.Products[0].Quantity showed the updated value and the ComputeTotals() method also returns the correct totals. But still when I passed this basket object, it ended up showing the old totals values only. I began playing a bit with the code and my first guess was that the input controls got their values from the ModelState object. For those who don’t know, the ModelState is a temporary storage area that ASP.NET MVC uses to retain incoming attempted values plus binding and validation errors. Also, the fact that input controls populate the values using data taken from: Previously attempted values recorded in the ModelState["name"].Value.AttemptedValue Explicitly provided value (<%= Html.TextBox("name", "Some value") %>) ViewData, by calling ViewData.Eval("name") FYI: ViewData dictionary takes precedence over ViewData's Model properties – read more here. These two indicators led to my guess. It took me quite some time, but finally I hit this post where Brad brilliantly explains why this is the preferred behavior. My guess was right and I, accordingly modified my code to reflect the following way: 1: [HttpPost] 2: public ActionResult Index(Basket basket) 3: { 4: // read the following posts to see why the ModelState 5: // needs to be cleared before passing it the view 6: // http://forums.asp.net/t/1535846.aspx 7: // http://forums.asp.net/p/1527149/3687407.aspx 8: if (ModelState.IsValid) 9: { 10: ModelState.Clear(); 11: } 12:   13: basket.Totals = ComputeTotals(basket.Products); 14: return View(basket); 15: } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } What this does is that in the case where your ModelState IS valid, it clears the dictionary. This enables the values to be read from the model directly and not from the ModelState. So the verdict is this: If you need to pass other parameters (like html attributes and the like) to your input control, use 1: <%= Html.TextBox(string.Format("Products[{0}].ID", i), Model.Products[i].Id) %> .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Since, in EditorFor, there is no direct and simple way of passing this information to the input control. If you don’t have to pass any such ‘extra’ piece of information to the control, then go the EditorFor way. The code used in the post can be found here.

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• The Inkremental Architect&acute;s Napkin - #4 - Make increments tangible

  - by Ralf Westphal

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/theArchitectsNapkin/archive/2014/06/12/the-inkremental-architectacutes-napkin---4---make-increments-tangible.aspxThe driver of software development are increments, small increments, tiny increments. With an increment being a slice of the overall requirement scope thin enough to implement and get feedback from a product owner within 2 days max. Such an increment might concern Functionality or Quality.[1] To make such high frequency delivery of increments possible, the transition from talking to coding needs to be as easy as possible. A user story or some other documentation of what´s supposed to get implemented until tomorrow evening at latest is one side of the medal. The other is where to put the logic in all of the code base. To implement an increment, only logic statements are needed. Functionality like Quality are just about expressions and control flow statements. Think of Assembler code without the CALL/RET instructions. That´s all is needed. Forget about functions, forget about classes. To make a user happy none of that is really needed. It´s just about the right expressions and conditional executions paths plus some memory allocation. Automatic function inlining of compilers which makes it clear how unimportant functions are for delivering value to users at runtime. But why then are there functions? Because they were invented for optimization purposes. We need them for better Evolvability and Production Efficiency. Nothing more, nothing less. No software has become faster, more secure, more scalable, more functional because we gathered logic under the roof of a function or two or a thousand. Functions make logic easier to understand. Functions make us faster in producing logic. Functions make it easier to keep logic consistent. Functions help to conserve memory. That said, functions are important. They are even the pivotal element of software development. We can´t code without them - whether you write a function yourself or not. Because there´s always at least one function in play: the Entry Point of a program. In Ruby the simplest program looks like this:puts "Hello, world!" In C# more is necessary:class Program { public static void Main () { System.Console.Write("Hello, world!"); } } C# makes the Entry Point function explicit, not so Ruby. But still it´s there. So you can think of logic always running in some function. Which brings me back to increments: In order to make the transition from talking to code as easy as possible, it has to be crystal clear into which function you should put the logic. Product owners might be content once there is a sticky note a user story on the Scrum or Kanban board. But developers need an idea of what that sticky note means in term of functions. Because with a function in hand, with a signature to run tests against, they have something to focus on. All´s well once there is a function behind whose signature logic can be piled up. Then testing frameworks can be used to check if the logic is correct. Then practices like TDD can help to drive the implementation. That´s why most code katas define exactly how the API of a solution should look like. It´s a function, maybe two or three, not more. A requirement like “Write a function f which takes this as parameters and produces such and such output by doing x” makes a developer comfortable. Yes, there are all kinds of details to think about, like which algorithm or technology to use, or what kind of state and side effects to consider. Even a single function not only must deliver on Functionality, but also on Quality and Evolvability. Nevertheless, once it´s clear which function to put logic in, you have a tangible starting point. So, yes, what I´m suggesting is to find a single function to put all the logic in that´s necessary to deliver on a the requirements of an increment. Or to put it the other way around: Slice requirements in a way that each increment´s logic can be located under the roof of a single function. Entry points Of course, the logic of a software will always be spread across many, many functions. But there´s always an Entry Point. That´s the most important function for each increment, because that´s the root to put integration or even acceptance tests on. A batch program like the above hello-world application only has a single Entry Point. All logic is reached from there, regardless how deep it´s nested in classes. But a program with a user interface like this has at least two Entry Points: One is the main function called upon startup. The other is the button click event handler for “Show my score”. But maybe there are even more, like another Entry Point being a handler for the event fired when one of the choices gets selected; because then some logic could check if the button should be enabled because all questions got answered. Or another Entry Point for the logic to be executed when the program is close; because then the choices made should be persisted. You see, an Entry Point to me is a function which gets triggered by the user of a software. With batch programs that´s the main function. With GUI programs on the desktop that´s event handlers. With web programs that´s handlers for URL routes. And my basic suggestion to help you with slicing requirements for Spinning is: Slice them in a way so that each increment is related to only one Entry Point function.[2] Entry Points are the “outer functions” of a program. That´s where the environment triggers behavior. That´s where hardware meets software. Entry points always get called because something happened to hardware state, e.g. a key was pressed, a mouse button clicked, the system timer ticked, data arrived over a wire.[3] Viewed from the outside, software is just a collection of Entry Point functions made accessible via buttons to press, menu items to click, gestures, URLs to open, keys to enter. Collections of batch processors I´d thus say, we haven´t moved forward since the early days of software development. We´re still writing batch programs. Forget about “event-driven programming” with its fancy GUI applications. Software is just a collection of batch processors. Earlier it was just one per program, today it´s hundreds we bundle up into applications. Each batch processor is represented by an Entry Point as its root that works on a number of resources from which it reads data to process and to which it writes results. These resources can be the keyboard or main memory or a hard disk or a communication line or a display. Together many batch processors - large and small - form applications the user perceives as a single whole: Software development that way becomes quite simple: just implement one batch processor after another. Well, at least in principle ;-) Features Each batch processor entered through an Entry Point delivers value to the user. It´s an increment. Sometimes its logic is trivial, sometimes it´s very complex. Regardless, each Entry Point represents an increment. An Entry Point implemented thus is a step forward in terms of Agility. At the same time it´s a tangible unit for developers. Therefore, identifying the more or less numerous batch processors in a software system is a rewarding task for product owners and developers alike. That´s where user stories meet code. In this example the user story translates to the Entry Point triggered by clicking the login button on a dialog like this: The batch then retrieves what has been entered via keyboard, loads data from a user store, and finally outputs some kind of response on the screen, e.g. by displaying an error message or showing the next dialog. This is all very simple, but you see, there is not just one thing happening, but several. Get input (email address, password) Load user for email address If user not found report error Check password Hash password Compare hash to hash stored in user Show next dialog Viewed from 10,000 feet it´s all done by the Entry Point function. And of course that´s technically possible. It´s just a bunch of logic and calling a couple of API functions. However, I suggest to take these steps as distinct aspects of the overall requirement described by the user story. Such aspects of requirements I call Features. Features too are increments. Each provides some (small) value of its own to the user. Each can be checked individually by a product owner. Instead of implementing all the logic behind the Login() entry point at once you can move forward increment by increment, e.g. First implement the dialog, let the user enter any credentials, and log him/her in without any checks. Features 1 and 4. Then hard code a single user and check the email address. Features 2 and 2.1. Then check password without hashing it (or use a very simple hash like the length of the password). Features 3. and 3.2 Replace hard coded user with a persistent user directoy, but a very simple one, e.g. a CSV file. Refinement of feature 2. Calculate the real hash for the password. Feature 3.1. Switch to the final user directory technology. Each feature provides an opportunity to deliver results in a short amount of time and get feedback. If you´re in doubt whether you can implement the whole entry point function until tomorrow night, then just go for a couple of features or even just one. That´s also why I think, you should strive for wrapping feature logic into a function of its own. It´s a matter of Evolvability and Production Efficiency. A function per feature makes the code more readable, since the language of requirements analysis and design is carried over into implementation. It makes it easier to apply changes to features because it´s clear where their logic is located. And finally, of course, it lets you re-use features in different context (read: increments). Feature functions make it easier for you to think of features as Spinning increments, to implement them independently, to let the product owner check them for acceptance individually. Increments consist of features, entry point functions consist of feature functions. So you can view software as a hierarchy of requirements from broad to thin which map to a hierarchy of functions - with entry points at the top.   I like this image of software as a self-similar structure on many levels of abstraction where requirements and code match each other. That to me is true agile design: the core tenet of Agility to move forward in increments is carried over into implementation. Increments on paper are retained in code. This way developers can easily relate to product owners. Elusive and fuzzy requirements are not tangible. Software production is moving forward through requirements one increment at a time, and one function at a time. In closing Product owners and developers are different - but they need to work together towards a shared goal: working software. So their notions of software need to be made compatible, they need to be connected. The increments of the product owner - user stories and features - need to be mapped straightforwardly to something which is relevant to developers. To me that´s functions. Yes, functions, not classes nor components nor micro services. We´re talking about behavior, actions, activities, processes. Their natural representation is a function. Something has to be done. Logic has to be executed. That´s the purpose of functions. Later, classes and other containers are needed to stay on top of a growing amount of logic. But to connect developers and product owners functions are the appropriate glue. Functions which represent increments. Can there always be such a small increment be found to deliver until tomorrow evening? I boldly say yes. Yes, it´s always possible. But maybe you´ve to start thinking differently. Maybe the product owner needs to start thinking differently. Completion is not the goal anymore. Neither is checking the delivery of an increment through the user interface of a software. Product owners need to become comfortable using test beds for certain features. If it´s hard to slice requirements thin enough for Spinning the reason is too little knowledge of something. Maybe you don´t yet understand the problem domain well enough? Maybe you don´t yet feel comfortable with some tool or technology? Then it´s time to acknowledge this fact. Be honest about your not knowing. And instead of trying to deliver as a craftsman officially become a researcher. Research an check back with the product owner every day - until your understanding has grown to a level where you are able to define the next Spinning increment. ? Sometimes even thin requirement slices will cover several Entry Points, like “Add validation of email addresses to all relevant dialogs.” Validation then will it put into a dozen functons. Still, though, it´s important to determine which Entry Points exactly get affected. That´s much easier, if strive for keeping the number of Entry Points per increment to 1. ? If you like call Entry Point functions event handlers, because that´s what they are. They all handle events of some kind, whether that´s palpable in your code or note. A public void btnSave_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) {…} might look like an event handler to you, but public static void Main() {…} is one also - for then event “program started”. ?

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• Curious about IObservable? Here’s a quick example to get you started!

  - by Roman Schindlauer

  Have you heard about IObservable/IObserver support in Microsoft StreamInsight 1.1? Then you probably want to try it out. If this is your first incursion into the IObservable/IObserver pattern, this blog post is for you! StreamInsight 1.1 introduced the ability to use IEnumerable and IObservable objects as event sources and sinks. The IEnumerable case is pretty straightforward, since many data collections are already surfacing as this type. This was already covered by Colin in his blog. Creating your own IObservable event source is a little more involved but no less exciting – here is a primer: First, let’s look at a very simple Observable data source. All it does is publish an integer in regular time periods to its registered observers. (For more information on IObservable, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd990377.aspx ). sealed class RandomSubject : IObservable<int>, IDisposable {     private bool _done;     private readonly List<IObserver<int>> _observers;     private readonly Random _random;     private readonly object _sync;     private readonly Timer _timer;     private readonly int _timerPeriod;       /// <summary>     /// Random observable subject. It produces an integer in regular time periods.     /// </summary>     /// <param name="timerPeriod">Timer period (in milliseconds)</param>     public RandomSubject(int timerPeriod)     {         _done = false;         _observers = new List<IObserver<int>>();         _random = new Random();         _sync = new object();         _timer = new Timer(EmitRandomValue);         _timerPeriod = timerPeriod;         Schedule();     }       public IDisposable Subscribe(IObserver<int> observer)     {         lock (_sync)         {             _observers.Add(observer);         }         return new Subscription(this, observer);     }       public void OnNext(int value)     {         lock (_sync)         {             if (!_done)             {                 foreach (var observer in _observers)                 {                     observer.OnNext(value);                 }             }         }     }       public void OnError(Exception e)     {         lock (_sync)         {             foreach (var observer in _observers)             {                 observer.OnError(e);             }             _done = true;         }     }       public void OnCompleted()     {         lock (_sync)         {             foreach (var observer in _observers)             {                 observer.OnCompleted();             }             _done = true;         }     }       void IDisposable.Dispose()     {         _timer.Dispose();     }       private void Schedule()     {         lock (_sync)         {             if (!_done)             {                 _timer.Change(_timerPeriod, Timeout.Infinite);             }         }     }       private void EmitRandomValue(object _)     {         var value = (int)(_random.NextDouble() * 100);         Console.WriteLine("[Observable]\t" + value);         OnNext(value);         Schedule();     }       private sealed class Subscription : IDisposable     {         private readonly RandomSubject _subject;         private IObserver<int> _observer;           public Subscription(RandomSubject subject, IObserver<int> observer)         {             _subject = subject;             _observer = observer;         }           public void Dispose()         {             IObserver<int> observer = _observer;             if (null != observer)             {                 lock (_subject._sync)                 {                     _subject._observers.Remove(observer);                 }                 _observer = null;             }         }     } }   So far, so good. Now let’s write a program that consumes data emitted by the observable as a stream of point events in a Streaminsight query. First, let’s define our payload type: class Payload {     public int Value { get; set; }       public override string ToString()     {         return "[StreamInsight]\tValue: " + Value.ToString();     } }   Now, let’s write the program. First, we will instantiate the observable subject. Then we’ll use the ToPointStream() method to consume it as a stream. We can now write any query over the source - here, a simple pass-through query. class Program {     static void Main(string[] args)     {         Console.WriteLine("Starting observable source...");         using (var source = new RandomSubject(500))         {             Console.WriteLine("Started observable source.");             using (var server = Server.Create("Default"))             {                 var application = server.CreateApplication("My Application");                   var stream = source.ToPointStream(application,                     e => PointEvent.CreateInsert(DateTime.Now, new Payload { Value = e }),                     AdvanceTimeSettings.StrictlyIncreasingStartTime,                     "Observable Stream");                   var query = from e in stream                             select e;                   [...]   We’re done with consuming input and querying it! But you probably want to see the output of the query. Did you know you can turn a query into an observable subject as well? Let’s do precisely that, and exploit the Reactive Extensions for .NET (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/devlabs/ee794896.aspx) to quickly visualize the output. Notice we’re subscribing “Console.WriteLine()” to the query, a pattern you may find useful for quick debugging of your queries. Reminder: you’ll need to install the Reactive Extensions for .NET (Rx for .NET Framework 4.0), and reference System.CoreEx and System.Reactive in your project.                 [...]                   Console.ReadLine();                 Console.WriteLine("Starting query...");                 using (query.ToObservable().Subscribe(Console.WriteLine))                 {                     Console.WriteLine("Started query.");                     Console.ReadLine();                     Console.WriteLine("Stopping query...");                 }                 Console.WriteLine("Stopped query.");             }             Console.ReadLine();             Console.WriteLine("Stopping observable source...");             source.OnCompleted();         }         Console.WriteLine("Stopped observable source.");     } }   We hope this blog post gets you started. And for bonus points, you can go ahead and rewrite the observable source (the RandomSubject class) using the Reactive Extensions for .NET! The entire sample project is attached to this article. Happy querying! Regards, The StreamInsight Team

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• 2-Bay External HDD Enclosure in JBOD mode fails to detect both drives (Linux & Windows)

  - by mgc8888

  I recently purchased a couple of USB 3.0 External HDD Enclosures to use for storage and backup; the idea was to have one act as backup to the other, with 4 x 3TB drives in total. However, the second drive in each is not accessible in either Linux nor Windows, and I could not determine the reason. 1. Situation The two enclosures are slightly different (couldn't find them in stock at the same time) yet from many little details appear to be the same Chinese base design with a tweaked outer shell. The models are: Sharkoon 2-Bay RAID Box Fantec MR-35DU3 The drives are Seagate 3TB Barracuda ST33000651AS, firmware CC44, all identical. From reading manuals and online sources, I determined that JBOD would be the optimal setup for my needs -- addressing the two drives separately in each enclosure would be important, making it easy to swap drives and mix&match them if needed; all the other modes implied the controller doing a combination of the drives. The software used was Debian GNU/Linux - testing/wheezy - kernel 2.6.39-2 and Windows 7 Ultimate. 2. Description of the problem Now, here comes the problem: every time I connect either of the enclosures to a PC using the supplied cable (tried a different one as well), only the HDD in the top bay is readable, the one below is detected yet errors out in various ways. According to the manuals, it should not happen: in JBOD, the system should be able to "see" two separate drives upon connection. This happens with both enclosures and any combination of HDDs (i.e. if I swap them, the same thing happens), so the HDDs are good and I think so are the enclosures (two different companies making similar products that failed in an identical fashion would be very unlikely). The top HDD can be used fine every time, I actually tried a speed test from Linux and got about 150MiB/s reads, so all is working as it should; the one below refuses to work every time. So the failure is consistent. To make sure this was not some obscure Linux bug, I tried the same under Windows 7, and the system also only created one drive letter for a drive of 3TB size (so it was only seeing one instead of both). Placing an older, known good, 2TB drive in the top bay made that the one recognised, so we have the same issue under Windows as well. Log entries under Linux (tested here with a 3TB and a 2TB drive so I could differentiate them; either one works in the top enclosure, in the test setup the 3TB one is on top). You can see them being detected, the top one is ok, but for the bottom one only errors: Jul 19 23:28:15 media kernel: [260150.582436] usb 6-1: New USB device found, idVendor=1ca1, idProduct=18ae Jul 19 23:28:15 media kernel: [260150.582440] usb 6-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3 Jul 19 23:28:15 media kernel: [260150.582442] usb 6-1: Product: Usb Sata Bridge Jul 19 23:28:15 media kernel: [260150.582444] usb 6-1: Manufacturer: SYMWAVE Jul 19 23:28:15 media kernel: [260150.582446] usb 6-1: SerialNumber: 39584B304C4E3441 Jul 19 23:28:15 media kernel: [260150.870412] scsi11 : usb-storage 6-1:1.0 Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.882087] scsi 11:0:0:0: Direct-Access SYMWAVE ST33000651AS CC44 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4 Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.882242] scsi 11:0:0:1: Direct-Access SYMWAVE ST32000641AS CC12 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4 Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.882677] sd 11:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0 Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.882774] sd 11:0:0:0: [sdb] Very big device. Trying to use READ CAPACITY(16). Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.882857] sd 11:0:0:1: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0 Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.882893] sd 11:0:0:0: [sdb] 5860533168 512-byte logical blocks: (3.00 TB/2.72 TiB) Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.883085] xhci_hcd 0000:03:00.0: WARN: Stalled endpoint Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.883582] sd 11:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.883961] sd 11:0:0:1: [sdc] 3907029168 512-byte logical blocks: (2.00 TB/1.81 TiB) Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.884145] xhci_hcd 0000:03:00.0: WARN: Stalled endpoint Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.884570] sd 11:0:0:1: [sdc] Write Protect is off Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.884855] sd 11:0:0:0: [sdb] Very big device. Trying to use READ CAPACITY(16). Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.885286] xhci_hcd 0000:03:00.0: WARN: Stalled endpoint Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.885807] xhci_hcd 0000:03:00.0: WARN: Stalled endpoint Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.909595] xhci_hcd 0000:03:00.0: WARN: Stalled endpoint Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.910159] sd 11:0:0:1: [sdc] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.910163] sd 11:0:0:1: [sdc] Sense Key : Illegal Request [current] Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.910167] Info fld=0x0 Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.910169] sd 11:0:0:1: [sdc] Add. Sense: Invalid field in cdb Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.910172] sd 11:0:0:1: [sdc] CDB: Read(10): 28 20 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.910182] quiet_error: 2 callbacks suppressed Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.910570] xhci_hcd 0000:03:00.0: WARN: Stalled endpoint Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.911153] sd 11:0:0:1: [sdc] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.911156] sd 11:0:0:1: [sdc] Sense Key : Illegal Request [current] Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.911159] Info fld=0x0 Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.911161] sd 11:0:0:1: [sdc] Add. Sense: Invalid field in cdb Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.911164] sd 11:0:0:1: [sdc] CDB: Read(10): 28 20 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.911385] xhci_hcd 0000:03:00.0: WARN: Stalled endpoint Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.911902] sd 11:0:0:1: [sdc] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.911905] sd 11:0:0:1: [sdc] Sense Key : Illegal Request [current] Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.911908] Info fld=0x0 Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.911910] sd 11:0:0:1: [sdc] Add. Sense: Invalid field in cdb Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.911913] sd 11:0:0:1: [sdc] CDB: Read(10): 28 20 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.912128] xhci_hcd 0000:03:00.0: WARN: Stalled endpoint Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.912650] sd 11:0:0:1: [sdc] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.912653] sd 11:0:0:1: [sdc] Sense Key : Illegal Request [current] Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.912656] Info fld=0x0 Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.912657] sd 11:0:0:1: [sdc] Add. Sense: Invalid field in cdb Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.912660] sd 11:0:0:1: [sdc] CDB: Read(10): 28 20 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.912876] xhci_hcd 0000:03:00.0: WARN: Stalled endpoint Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.913439] sd 11:0:0:1: [sdc] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.913442] sd 11:0:0:1: [sdc] Sense Key : Illegal Request [current] Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.913445] Info fld=0x0 Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.913446] sd 11:0:0:1: [sdc] Add. Sense: Invalid field in cdb Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.913449] sd 11:0:0:1: [sdc] CDB: Read(10): 28 20 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.945227] xhci_hcd 0000:03:00.0: WARN: Stalled endpoint Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.945863] sd 11:0:0:1: [sdc] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.945866] sd 11:0:0:1: [sdc] Sense Key : Illegal Request [current] Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.945870] Info fld=0x0 Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.945871] sd 11:0:0:1: [sdc] Add. Sense: Invalid field in cdb Jul 19 23:28:16 media kernel: [260151.945875] sd 11:0:0:1: [sdc] CDB: Read(10): 28 20 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 (...) and so on for like 10 seconds until it gives up (...) 3. Question So, my question would be: what is causing this? Am I missing something, should I configure things differently, is this a known limitation? Searching online for more information did not yield any useful results... Thank you in advance for any help!

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• My computer freezes irregularly

  - by Manhim

  My computer started to freeze at irregular times for 3 weeks now. Please note that this question change with each things that i try. (For additional details) What happens My computer freezes, the video stops. (No graphic glitches, it just stops) Sound keeps playing up to some time (Usually 10-30 seconds) then stops playing. Sometimes, randomly, the screen on my G-15 keyboard flickers and I see caracters not at the right places. Usually happens for about 1-2 seconds and a bit before my computer freezes. I have to keep the power button pressed for 4 seconds to shut my computer down. I still hear my hard drives and fans working. Sometimes it works with no problems for a full day, some other times it just keeps freezing each time I restart my computer and I have to leave it for the rest of the day. Sometimes my mouse freezes for a fraction of a second (Like 0.01 to 0.2 seconds) quite randomly, usually before it freezes. No errors spotted by the "Action center" unlike when I had problems with my last video card on this system (Driver errors). My G-15 LCD screen also freezes. Sometimes my G-15 LCD screen flickers and caracters gets caried around temporary under heavy load. Now, most of the times, the BIOS hard disks boot order gets reversed for some reason and I have to put it to the right one and save each times I boot. (Might be unrelated, not sure, but it first started yesterday) Sometimes the BIOS doesn't detect my 750GB hard drive plugged in SATA1. What I did so far I have had similar problems in the past and I had changed my hard drive (It was faulty), so I tested my software RAID-0 array and it was faulty so I changed it. (I reinstalled Windows 7 with this part). I also tested with unplugging my secondary hard drive. My CPU was running at about 100 degree Celsius, I removed the dust between the fans and the heatsink and it's now between 45-55. I ran a CPU stress-test and it didn't freeze during the tests (using Prime95 on all cores) Ran a memory test (using memtest86+) for a single pass and there were no errors. Ran a GPU stress test with ati-tools and furmark and it didn't freeze during the tests. (No artefacts either) I had troubles with my graphic card when I got it, but I think that it got fixed with a driver update. I checked the voltages in my BIOS setup and they all seemed ok (±0.2 I think). I have ran on the computer without problems with Fedora 15 on an external hard drive (Appart that it couldn't load Gnome 3 and was reverting to Gnome 2, didn't want to install drivers since I use it on multiple computers) I used it to backup my files from the raid array to my 1TB hard drive for the reinstallation of Windows. (So the crashes only happenned on Windows) [The external hard drive is plugged directly on a SATA port] I contacted EVGA (My graphic card vendor) and pointed them on this question, I'm looking for an answer. Ran sensors on Fedora 15 and got this output: http://pastebin.com/0BHJnAvu Ran 6 short different CPU stress test on Fedora 15 (Haven't found any complete stress testers for Linux) and it didn't crash. Changed the thermal paste to some Artic Silver 5 for my CPU and stress tested the CPU, temperature was at 50 idle, then 64 highest and slowly went down to 62 during the test. Ran some stress testing with a temporary graphic card and it went ok. Ran furmark stress test with my original graphic card and it freezed again. GPU had a temp of 74C, a CPU temp of 58C and a mobo temp of 40C or 45C (Dunno which one it is from SpeedFan). Ran a furmark stress test and a CPU stress test at the same time, results: http://pastebin.com/2t6PLpdJ I have been using my computer without stressing it for about 2 hours now and no crashes yet. I also have disabled the AMD Cool'n'quiet function on the BIOS for a more regular power to the CPU. When I ran Furmark without C'n'q my computer didn't freeze but I had a "Driver Kernel Error" that have recovered (And Furmark crashed) all that while running a CPU stress test. The computer eventually frozed without me being at it, but this time my screen just went on sleep and I couldn't wake it. Using the stability tester in nTune my computer freezed again (In the same manner as before). I notived that Speedfan gives me a -12V of -16.97V and a -5V of -8.78V. I wonder if these numbers are reliable and if they are good or bad. I have swapped my G-15 with another basic USB keyboard (HP) and I have ran furmark for about 10 minutes with a CPU stability test running each 60 seconds for 30 seconds and my computer haven't crashed yet. Ran some more extended tests without my G-15 and it freezed like it usually do. Removed the nForce Hard disk controler. Disabled command queuing in the NVIDIA nForce SATA Controller for both port 0 and port 1 (Errors from the logs) Used CPUID HwMonitor, here are the voltages: http://pastebin.com/dfM7p4jV Changed some configurations in the motherboard BIOS: Disabled PEG Link Mode, Changed AI Tuning to Standard, Disabled the 1394 Controller, Disabled HD Audio, Disabled JMicron RAID controller and Disabled SATA Raid. When it happens When I play video games (Mostly) When I play flash games (Second most) When I'm looking at my desktop background (It rarely happens when I have a window open, but it does, sometimes) When my Graphic card and my CPU are stressed. Sometimes when my Graphic card is stressed. Never happenned while stressing only the CPU. Sometimes when my CPU is stressed. Specs Windows Seven x64 Home Premium Motherboard: M2N-SLI Deluxe CPU: AMD Phenom 9950 x2 @ 2.6GHz Memory: Kingston 4x2GB Dual Channel (Pretty basic memory sticks) Hard drives: Was 2x250GB (Western digital caviar) in raid-0 + 1TB (WD caviar black), I replaced the raid array with a 750GB (WD caviar black) [Yes I removed the array from the raid configurations] 750W Power supply No overcloking. Ever. There have been some power-downs like 4-5 weeks ago, but the problem didn't start immediately after. (I wasn't home, so my computer got shut-down) Event logs (Warnings, errors and critical errors) for the last 24 hours: http://pastebin.com/Bvvk31T7 My current to-try list Reinstall the drivers and software 1 by 1 and do extensive stress testing between each. Update the BIOS firmware to the most recent stable one. Change my motherboard. Status updates Keeping only the last 3 (28/06 04pm) More stress testing and still pass the tests. (28/06 03pm) Been stress testing for 10 minute straight now and 5 minutes with both CPU and GPU being stressed at the same time. (28/06 03pm) Stress-testing right now, so far no problems. A little hope Tests with Furmark and Prime95. Testing Windows bare-bone: 30 Minutes stress, no freeze. Installing an Anti-virus and some software, restarting computer. Testing with Anti-virus and some software (No drivers installed): 30 Minutes stress, no freeze. Installing audio drivers, restarting computer. Testing with the audio drivers: 30 Minutes stress, no freeze. Installing the latest graphic drivers from EVGA's website (without 3d vision since I don't use it), restarting computer. Testing with the graphic drivers: 30 Minutes stress, no freeze. Configuring Windows to my liking and installing more softwares. In this situation, how can I successfully pin-point the current hardware problem? (If it's a hardware problem) Because I don't really have the budget to just forget and replace everything. I also don't really have hardware to test-replace current hardware.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, June 28, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, June 28, 2013Popular ReleasesEsoteric language interpreters collection: WARP, FALSE, Befunge-93, BrainFuck version 1.9: WARP Add factorial source Add brainfuck interpreter source Correct flex number system parse test by using regexes Implement the { operator Implement the } operator Support standard input redirection (so that the , operator reads one line only) The following executes the WARP brainfuck interpreter with a hello world brainfuck program: echo "+++++ +++++[> +++++ ++ > +++++ +++++> +++> + <<<< - ]> ++ .> + .+++++ ++ ..+++ .> ++ .<< +++++ +++++ +++++ .> .+++ .----- -.----- --- .> +.> ."...SharePoint Calendar Helper: 1.0.0.0: The first release, enjoy!WebsiteFilter: WebsiteFilter 1.0: WebsiteFilter Need .net framework4.0ax 2012 Security Privilege generator: xpo privilige generator: While upgrading AX 2009 solutions to AX 2012. I became tired of creating all those privileges. It for every menu item every time the same case; create a view and a maintain privilege. So for all those lazy developer out there, her it is, a privilege Builder. How it works, easy select right mouse on the menu item and you get your privileges.Outlook 2013 Add-In: Configuration Form: This new version includes the following changes: - Refactored code a bit. - Removing configuration from main form to gain more space to display items. - Moved configuration to separate form. You can click the little "gear" icon to access the configuration form (still very simple). - Added option to show past day appointments from the selected day (previous in time, that is). - Added some tooltips. You will have to uninstall the previous version (add/remove programs) if you had installed it ...Stored Procedure Pager: LYB.NET.SPPager 1.10: check bugs: 1 the total page count of default stored procedure ".LYBPager" always takes error as this: page size: 10 total item count: 100 then total page count should be 10, but last version is 11. 2 update some comments with English forbidding messy code.Terminals: Version 3.0 - Release: Changes since version 2.0:Choose 100% portable or installed version Removed connection warning when running RDP 8 (Windows 8) client Fixed Active directory search Extended Active directory search by LDAP filters Fixed single instance mode when running on Windows Terminal server Merged usage of Tags and Groups Added columns sorting option in tables No UAC prompts on Windows 7 Completely new file persistence data layer New MS SQL persistence layer (Store data in SQL database)...NuGet: NuGet 2.6: Released June 26, 2013. Release notes: http://docs.nuget.org/docs/release-notes/nuget-2.6Python Tools for Visual Studio: 2.0 Beta: We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 2.0 Beta. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including CPython/IronPython, Edit/Intellisense/Debug/Profile, Cloud, HPC, IPython, and cross platform debugging support. For a quick overview of the general IDE experience, please watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuewiStN...Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 and WP8 (v1.3 beta): Preview: New MPEG DASH adaptive streaming plugin for Windows Azure Media Services Preview: New Ultraviolet CFF plugin. Preview: New WP7 version with WP8 compatibility. (source code only) Source code is now available via CodePlex Git Misc bug fixes and improvements: WP8 only: Added optional fullscreen and mute buttons to default xaml JS only: protecting currentTime from returning infinity. Some videos would cause currentTime to be infinity which could cause errors in plugins expectin...AssaultCube Reloaded: 2.5.8: SERVER OWNERS: note that the default maprot has changed once again. Linux has Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit precompiled binaries and Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, please wait while we continue to try to package for those OSes. Or better yet, try to compile it. If it fails, download a virtual machine. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compi...Compare .NET Objects: Version 1.7.2.0: If you like it, please rate it. :) Performance Improvements Fix for deleted row in a data table Added ability to ignore the collection order Fix for Ignoring by AttributesMicrosoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.95: update parser to allow for CSS3 calc( function to nest. add recognition of -pponly (Preprocess-Only) switch in AjaxMinManifestTask build task. Fix crashing bug in EXE when processing a manifest file using the -xml switch and an error message needs to be displayed (like a missing input file). Create separate Clean and Bundle build tasks for working with manifest files (AjaxMinManifestCleanTask and AjaxMinBundleTask). Removed the IsCleanOperation from AjaxMinManifestTask -- use AjaxMinMan...VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.44: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImgChili.net" links FIXED: Auto UpdaterDocument.Editor: 2013.25: What's new for Document.Editor 2013.25: Improved Spell Check support Improved User Interface Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsWPF Composites: Version 4.3.0: In this Beta release, I broke my code out into two separate projects. There is a core FasterWPF.dll with the minimal required functionality. This can run with only the Aero.dll and the Rx .dll's. Then, I have a FasterWPFExtras .dll that requires and supports the Extended WPF Toolkit™ Community Edition V 1.9.0 (including Xceed DataGrid) and the Thriple .dll. This is for developers who want more . . . Finally, you may notice the other OPTIONAL .dll's available in the download such as the Dyn...Channel9's Absolute Beginner Series: Windows Phone 8: Entire source code for the Channel 9 series, Windows Phone 8 Development for Absolute Beginners.Indent Guides for Visual Studio: Indent Guides v13: ImportantThis release does not support Visual Studio 2010. The latest stable release for VS 2010 is v12.1. Version History Changed in v13 Added page width guide lines Added guide highlighting options Fixed guides appearing over collapsed blocks Fixed guides not appearing in newly opened files Fixed some potential crashes Fixed lines going through pragma statements Various updates for VS 2012 and VS 2013 Removed VS 2010 support Changed in v12.1: Fixed crash when unable to start...Fluent Ribbon Control Suite: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.1.0 - Prerelease d: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.1.0 - Prerelease d(supports .NET 3.5, 4.0 and 4.5) Includes: Fluent.dll (with .pdb and .xml) Showcase Application Samples (not for .NET 3.5) Foundation (Tabs, Groups, Contextual Tabs, Quick Access Toolbar, Backstage) Resizing (ribbon reducing & enlarging principles) Galleries (Gallery in ContextMenu, InRibbonGallery) MVVM (shows how to use this library with Model-View-ViewModel pattern) KeyTips ScreenTips Toolbars ColorGallery *Walkthrough (do...Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.5.1001: Magick.NET compiled against ImageMagick 6.8.5.10. Breaking changes: - MagickNET.Initialize has been made obsolete because the ImageMagick files in the directory are no longer necessary. - MagickGeometry is no longer IDisposable. - Renamed dll's so they include the platform name. - Image profiles can now only be accessed and modified with ImageProfile classes. - Renamed DrawableBase to Drawable. - Removed Args part of PathArc/PathCurvetoArgs/PathQuadraticCurvetoArgs classes. The...New ProjectsAdjusting SharePoint Site Quota PowerShell: PowerShell Script that displays the current space statistics thresholds for the database, site and quota. With this script you change the quota of a site.AndroidOMS: android omsASP.NET????????????: ASP.NET???????????? GlobalProfile ?????ASP.NET???????????。 ?????????????XML??????，?????ASP.NET??IHttpModule???????????，?????HttpRuntime.Cache???????????。 ???ax 2012 Security Privilege generator: While upgrading AX 2009 solutions to AX 2012. I became tired of creating all those privileges.CometDocs.Net: The .Net binding of the CometDocs web API (https://www.cometdocs.com/developer/apiDocumentation)Compositional Signals: This project aims to develop a simple compositional signal processing pipeline for education purposesCRM 2011 Field Data Type Converter: Field data type converter for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011CRM Solution CommandLine Helper: CRM Solution Command Line helper provide command line interface to handle CRM solution deployment and automate basic tasks.cursosabado: curso sábado c#Custom Html Helper for Google Maps: This Custom HTML helper let you integrate google maps into your MVC app easiler than EVER!DemoGRAPHICS: This project was demo'ed at the Microsoft Build 2013 Conference as part of "What's new for HTML Developers in Blend for Visual Studio 2013 Preview".DotNetNuke Demo SkinObjects: A collection of skin objects for DotNetNuke designed to make demonstrations easier for people.Excel to Dynamics CRM: Excel to Dynamics CRM for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 makes it easier for the CRM users to upsert (update and/or insert) data from an Excel file.Newbie Open Source Project: math developOpen Parsing Example: here is an example to parse my own fileformatPeople Finder: This is a web proyect aimed to help people to get contact with whom are lost. Initial purpose: Help those who had their kids kidnapped in hospitals.Recovery Solutions at Your Service: Find our some of the most incredible solutions for protecting your backup and data file from corruption, errors and damages.San Francisco Transportation: San Francisco Transportation appSecurity Analysing: Just beginning.Show My Apps: This project aims to build a WPF Application that monitors resources and display them in a beautiful screen, usually seen on TV.TSAsyncModulesExampleApp: TSAsyncModulesExampleApp - ??????????-?????? ????????? ?? TypeScriptUltimate Music Tagger: Ultimate Music Tagger is a powerful, easy and extreme fast tool to reorganize your music libraryUniversal Visualnovel Engine Tools: Universal Visualnovel Engine is a cross-platform AVG Game Engine which supports Windows Phone 8.0 OS.This project hosts the documents and samples of uvengine.WCF Data Service Example: The purpose of this application is to demonstrate the usage of WCF Data Service with Repository patternWebsiteSkip: websiteskip is an open source Web page jump httpmodule component.windowsrtdev: The purpose of this project is to provide a central location for "native" (ie: Win32 - not WinRT) Windows RT development libraries / applications.

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• Flow-Design Cheat Sheet &ndash; Part I, Notation

  - by Ralf Westphal

  You want to avoid the pitfalls of object oriented design? Then this is the right place to start. Use Flow-Oriented Analysis (FOA) and –Design (FOD or just FD for Flow-Design) to understand a problem domain and design a software solution. Flow-Orientation as described here is related to Flow-Based Programming, Event-Based Programming, Business Process Modelling, and even Event-Driven Architectures. But even though “thinking in flows” is not new, I found it helpful to deviate from those precursors for several reasons. Some aim at too big systems for the average programmer, some are concerned with only asynchronous processing, some are even not very much concerned with programming at all. What I was looking for was a design method to help in software projects of any size, be they large or tiny, involing synchronous or asynchronous processing, being local or distributed, running on the web or on the desktop or on a smartphone. That´s why I took ideas from all of the above sources and some additional and came up with Event-Based Components which later got repositioned and renamed to Flow-Design. In the meantime this has generated some discussion (in the German developer community) and several teams have started to work with Flow-Design. Also I´ve conducted quite some trainings using Flow-Orientation for design. The results are very promising. Developers find it much easier to design software using Flow-Orientation than OOAD-based object orientation. Since Flow-Orientation is moving fast and is not covered completely by a single source like a book, demand has increased for at least an overview of the current state of its notation. This page is trying to answer this demand by briefly introducing/describing every notational element as well as their translation into C# source code. Take this as a cheat sheet to put next to your whiteboard when designing software. However, please do not expect any explanation as to the reasons behind Flow-Design elements. Details on why Flow-Design at all and why in this specific way you´ll find in the literature covering the topic. Here´s a resource page on Flow-Design/Event-Based Components, if you´re able to read German. Notation Connected Functional Units The basic element of any FOD are functional units (FU): Think of FUs as some kind of software code block processing data. For the moment forget about classes, methods, “components”, assemblies or whatever. See a FU as an abstract piece of code. Software then consists of just collaborating FUs. I´m using circles/ellipses to draw FUs. But if you like, use rectangles. Whatever suites your whiteboard needs best.   The purpose of FUs is to process input and produce output. FUs are transformational. However, FUs are not called and do not call other FUs. There is no dependency between FUs. Data just flows into a FU (input) and out of it (output). From where and where to is of no concern to a FU.   This way FUs can be concatenated in arbitrary ways:   Each FU can accept input from many sources and produce output for many sinks:   Flows Connected FUs form a flow with a start and an end. Data is entering a flow at a source, and it´s leaving it through a sink. Think of sources and sinks as special FUs which conntect wires to the environment of a network of FUs.   Wiring Details Data is flowing into/out of FUs through wires. This is to allude to electrical engineering which since long has been working with composable parts. Wires are attached to FUs usings pins. They are the entry/exit points for the data flowing along the wires. Input-/output pins currently need not be drawn explicitly. This is to keep designing on a whiteboard simple and quick.   Data flowing is of some type, so wires have a type attached to them. And pins have names. If there is only one input pin and output pin on a FU, though, you don´t need to mention them. The default is Process for a single input pin, and Result for a single output pin. But you´re free to give even single pins different names.   There is a shortcut in use to address a certain pin on a destination FU:   The type of the wire is put in parantheses for two reasons. 1. This way a “no-type” wire can be easily denoted, 2. this is a natural way to describe tuples of data.   To describe how much data is flowing, a star can be put next to the wire type:   Nesting – Boards and Parts If more than 5 to 10 FUs need to be put in a flow a FD starts to become hard to understand. To keep diagrams clutter free they can be nested. You can turn any FU into a flow: This leads to Flow-Designs with different levels of abstraction. A in the above illustration is a high level functional unit, A.1 and A.2 are lower level functional units. One of the purposes of Flow-Design is to be able to describe systems on different levels of abstraction and thus make it easier to understand them. Humans use abstraction/decomposition to get a grip on complexity. Flow-Design strives to support this and make levels of abstraction first class citizens for programming. You can read the above illustration like this: Functional units A.1 and A.2 detail what A is supposed to do. The whole of A´s responsibility is decomposed into smaller responsibilities A.1 and A.2. FU A thus does not do anything itself anymore! All A is responsible for is actually accomplished by the collaboration between A.1 and A.2. Since A now is not doing anything anymore except containing A.1 and A.2 functional units are devided into two categories: boards and parts. Boards are just containing other functional units; their sole responsibility is to wire them up. A is a board. Boards thus depend on the functional units nested within them. This dependency is not of a functional nature, though. Boards are not dependent on services provided by nested functional units. They are just concerned with their interface to be able to plug them together. Parts are the workhorses of flows. They contain the real domain logic. They actually transform input into output. However, they do not depend on other functional units. Please note the usage of source and sink in boards. They correspond to input-pins and output-pins of the board.   Implicit Dependencies Nesting functional units leads to a dependency tree. Boards depend on nested functional units, they are the inner nodes of the tree. Parts are independent, they are the leafs: Even though dependencies are the bane of software development, Flow-Design does not usually draw these dependencies. They are implicitly created by visually nesting functional units. And they are harmless. Boards are so simple in their functionality, they are little affected by changes in functional units they are depending on. But functional units are implicitly dependent on more than nested functional units. They are also dependent on the data types of the wires attached to them: This is also natural and thus does not need to be made explicit. And it pertains mainly to parts being dependent. Since boards don´t do anything with regard to a problem domain, they don´t care much about data types. Their infrastructural purpose just needs types of input/output-pins to match.   Explicit Dependencies You could say, Flow-Orientation is about tackling complexity at its root cause: that´s dependencies. “Natural” dependencies are depicted naturally, i.e. implicitly. And whereever possible dependencies are not even created. Functional units don´t know their collaborators within a flow. This is core to Flow-Orientation. That makes for high composability of functional units. A part is as independent of other functional units as a motor is from the rest of the car. And a board is as dependend on nested functional units as a motor is on a spark plug or a crank shaft. With Flow-Design software development moves closer to how hardware is constructed. Implicit dependencies are not enough, though. Sometimes explicit dependencies make designs easier – as counterintuitive this might sound. So FD notation needs a ways to denote explicit dependencies: Data flows along wires. But data does not flow along dependency relations. Instead dependency relations represent service calls. Functional unit C is depending on/calling services on functional unit S. If you want to be more specific, name the services next to the dependency relation: Although you should try to stay clear of explicit dependencies, they are fundamentally ok. See them as a way to add another dimension to a flow. Usually the functionality of the independent FU (“Customer repository” above) is orthogonal to the domain of the flow it is referenced by. If you like emphasize this by using different shapes for dependent and independent FUs like above. Such dependencies can be used to link in resources like databases or shared in-memory state. FUs can not only produce output but also can have side effects. A common pattern for using such explizit dependencies is to hook a GUI into a flow as the source and/or the sink of data: Which can be shortened to: Treat FUs others depend on as boards (with a special non-FD API the dependent part is connected to), but do not embed them in a flow in the diagram they are depended upon.   Attributes of Functional Units Creation and usage of functional units can be modified with attributes. So far the following have shown to be helpful: Singleton: FUs are by default multitons. FUs in the same of different flows with the same name refer to the same functionality, but to different instances. Think of functional units as objects that get instanciated anew whereever they appear in a design. Sometimes though it´s helpful to reuse the same instance of a functional unit; this is always due to valuable state it holds. Signify this by annotating the FU with a “(S)”. Multiton: FUs on which others depend are singletons by default. This is, because they usually are introduced where shared state comes into play. If you want to change them to be a singletons mark them with a “(M)”. Configurable: Some parts need to be configured before the can do they work in a flow. Annotate them with a “(C)” to have them initialized before any data items to be processed by them arrive. Do not assume any order in which FUs are configured. How such configuration is happening is an implementation detail. Entry point: In each design there needs to be a single part where “it all starts”. That´s the entry point for all processing. It´s like Program.Main() in C# programs. Mark the entry point part with an “(E)”. Quite often this will be the GUI part. How the entry point is started is an implementation detail. Just consider it the first FU to start do its job.   Patterns / Standard Parts If more than a single wire is attached to an output-pin that´s called a split (or fork). The same data is flowing on all of the wires. Remember: Flow-Designs are synchronous by default. So a split does not mean data is processed in parallel afterwards. Processing still happens synchronously and thus one branch after another. Do not assume any specific order of the processing on the different branches after the split.   It is common to do a split and let only parts of the original data flow on through the branches. This effectively means a map is needed after a split. This map can be implicit or explicit.   Although FUs can have multiple input-pins it is preferrable in most cases to combine input data from different branches using an explicit join: The default output of a join is a tuple of its input values. The default behavior of a join is to output a value whenever a new input is received. However, to produce its first output a join needs an input for all its input-pins. Other join behaviors can be: reset all inputs after an output only produce output if data arrives on certain input-pins

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• Security Issues with Single Page Apps

  - by Stephen.Walther

  Last week, I was asked to do a code review of a Single Page App built using the ASP.NET Web API, Durandal, and Knockout (good stuff!). In particular, I was asked to investigate whether there any special security issues associated with building a Single Page App which are not present in the case of a traditional server-side ASP.NET application. In this blog entry, I discuss two areas in which you need to exercise extra caution when building a Single Page App. I discuss how Single Page Apps are extra vulnerable to both Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks and Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks. This goal of this blog post is NOT to persuade you to avoid writing Single Page Apps. I’m a big fan of Single Page Apps. Instead, the goal is to ensure that you are fully aware of some of the security issues related to Single Page Apps and ensure that you know how to guard against them. Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) Attacks According to WhiteHat Security, over 65% of public websites are open to XSS attacks. That’s bad. By taking advantage of XSS holes in a website, a hacker can steal your credit cards, passwords, or bank account information. Any website that redisplays untrusted information is open to XSS attacks. Let me give you a simple example. Imagine that you want to display the name of the current user on a page. To do this, you create the following server-side ASP.NET page located at http://MajorBank.com/SomePage.aspx: <%@Page Language="C#" %> <html> <head> <title>Some Page</title> </head> <body> Welcome <%= Request["username"] %> </body> </html> Nothing fancy here. Notice that the page displays the current username by using Request[“username”]. Using Request[“username”] displays the username regardless of whether the username is present in a cookie, a form field, or a query string variable. Unfortunately, by using Request[“username”] to redisplay untrusted information, you have now opened your website to XSS attacks. Here’s how. Imagine that an evil hacker creates the following link on another website (hackers.com): <a href="/SomePage.aspx?username=<script src=Evil.js></script>">Visit MajorBank</a> Notice that the link includes a query string variable named username and the value of the username variable is an HTML <SCRIPT> tag which points to a JavaScript file named Evil.js. When anyone clicks on the link, the <SCRIPT> tag will be injected into SomePage.aspx and the Evil.js script will be loaded and executed. What can a hacker do in the Evil.js script? Anything the hacker wants. For example, the hacker could display a popup dialog on the MajorBank.com site which asks the user to enter their password. The script could then post the password back to hackers.com and now the evil hacker has your secret password. ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC have two automatic safeguards against this type of attack: Request Validation and Automatic HTML Encoding. Protecting Coming In (Request Validation) In a server-side ASP.NET app, you are protected against the XSS attack described above by a feature named Request Validation. If you attempt to submit “potentially dangerous” content — such as a JavaScript <SCRIPT> tag — in a form field or query string variable then you get an exception. Unfortunately, Request Validation only applies to server-side apps. Request Validation does not help in the case of a Single Page App. In particular, the ASP.NET Web API does not pay attention to Request Validation. You can post any content you want – including <SCRIPT> tags – to an ASP.NET Web API action. For example, the following HTML page contains a form. When you submit the form, the form data is submitted to an ASP.NET Web API controller on the server using an Ajax request: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title></title> </head> <body> <form data-bind="submit:submit"> <div> <label> User Name: <input data-bind="value:user.userName" /> </label> </div> <div> <label> Email: <input data-bind="value:user.email" /> </label> </div> <div> <input type="submit" value="Submit" /> </div> </form> <script src="Scripts/jquery-1.7.1.js"></script> <script src="Scripts/knockout-2.1.0.js"></script> <script> var viewModel = { user: { userName: ko.observable(), email: ko.observable() }, submit: function () { $.post("/api/users", ko.toJS(this.user)); } }; ko.applyBindings(viewModel); </script> </body> </html> The form above is using Knockout to bind the form fields to a view model. When you submit the form, the view model is submitted to an ASP.NET Web API action on the server. Here’s the server-side ASP.NET Web API controller and model class: public class UsersController : ApiController { public HttpResponseMessage Post(UserViewModel user) { var userName = user.UserName; return Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK); } } public class UserViewModel { public string UserName { get; set; } public string Email { get; set; } } If you submit the HTML form, you don’t get an error. The “potentially dangerous” content is passed to the server without any exception being thrown. In the screenshot below, you can see that I was able to post a username form field with the value “<script>alert(‘boo’)</script”. So what this means is that you do not get automatic Request Validation in the case of a Single Page App. You need to be extra careful in a Single Page App about ensuring that you do not display untrusted content because you don’t have the Request Validation safety net which you have in a traditional server-side ASP.NET app. Protecting Going Out (Automatic HTML Encoding) Server-side ASP.NET also protects you from XSS attacks when you render content. By default, all content rendered by the razor view engine is HTML encoded. For example, the following razor view displays the text “<b>Hello!</b>” instead of the text “Hello!” in bold: @{ var message = "<b>Hello!</b>"; } @message   If you don’t want to render content as HTML encoded in razor then you need to take the extra step of using the @Html.Raw() helper. In a Web Form page, if you use <%: %> instead of <%= %> then you get automatic HTML Encoding: <%@ Page Language="C#" %> <% var message = "<b>Hello!</b>"; %> <%: message %> This automatic HTML Encoding will prevent many types of XSS attacks. It prevents <script> tags from being rendered and only allows &lt;script&gt; tags to be rendered which are useless for executing JavaScript. (This automatic HTML encoding does not protect you from all forms of XSS attacks. For example, you can assign the value “javascript:alert(‘evil’)” to the Hyperlink control’s NavigateUrl property and execute the JavaScript). The situation with Knockout is more complicated. If you use the Knockout TEXT binding then you get HTML encoded content. On the other hand, if you use the HTML binding then you do not: <!-- This JavaScript DOES NOT execute --> <div data-bind="text:someProp"></div> <!-- This Javacript DOES execute --> <div data-bind="html:someProp"></div> <script src="Scripts/jquery-1.7.1.js"></script> <script src="Scripts/knockout-2.1.0.js"></script> <script> var viewModel = { someProp : "<script>alert('Evil!')<" + "/script>" }; ko.applyBindings(viewModel); </script>   So, in the page above, the DIV element which uses the TEXT binding is safe from XSS attacks. According to the Knockout documentation: “Since this binding sets your text value using a text node, it’s safe to set any string value without risking HTML or script injection.” Just like server-side HTML encoding, Knockout does not protect you from all types of XSS attacks. For example, there is nothing in Knockout which prevents you from binding JavaScript to a hyperlink like this: <a data-bind="attr:{href:homePageUrl}">Go</a> <script src="Scripts/jquery-1.7.1.min.js"></script> <script src="Scripts/knockout-2.1.0.js"></script> <script> var viewModel = { homePageUrl: "javascript:alert('evil!')" }; ko.applyBindings(viewModel); </script> In the page above, the value “javascript:alert(‘evil’)” is bound to the HREF attribute using Knockout. When you click the link, the JavaScript executes. Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) Attacks Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks rely on the fact that a session cookie does not expire until you close your browser. In particular, if you visit and login to MajorBank.com and then you navigate to Hackers.com then you will still be authenticated against MajorBank.com even after you navigate to Hackers.com. Because MajorBank.com cannot tell whether a request is coming from MajorBank.com or Hackers.com, Hackers.com can submit requests to MajorBank.com pretending to be you. For example, Hackers.com can post an HTML form from Hackers.com to MajorBank.com and change your email address at MajorBank.com. Hackers.com can post a form to MajorBank.com using your authentication cookie. After your email address has been changed, by using a password reset page at MajorBank.com, a hacker can access your bank account. To prevent CSRF attacks, you need some mechanism for detecting whether a request is coming from a page loaded from your website or whether the request is coming from some other website. The recommended way of preventing Cross-Site Request Forgery attacks is to use the “Synchronizer Token Pattern” as described here: https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Cross-Site_Request_Forgery_%28CSRF%29_Prevention_Cheat_Sheet When using the Synchronizer Token Pattern, you include a hidden input field which contains a random token whenever you display an HTML form. When the user opens the form, you add a cookie to the user’s browser with the same random token. When the user posts the form, you verify that the hidden form token and the cookie token match. Preventing Cross-Site Request Forgery Attacks with ASP.NET MVC ASP.NET gives you a helper and an action filter which you can use to thwart Cross-Site Request Forgery attacks. For example, the following razor form for creating a product shows how you use the @Html.AntiForgeryToken() helper: @model MvcApplication2.Models.Product <h2>Create Product</h2> @using (Html.BeginForm()) { @Html.AntiForgeryToken(); <div> @Html.LabelFor( p => p.Name, "Product Name:") @Html.TextBoxFor( p => p.Name) </div> <div> @Html.LabelFor( p => p.Price, "Product Price:") @Html.TextBoxFor( p => p.Price) </div> <input type="submit" /> } The @Html.AntiForgeryToken() helper generates a random token and assigns a serialized version of the same random token to both a cookie and a hidden form field. (Actually, if you dive into the source code, the AntiForgeryToken() does something a little more complex because it takes advantage of a user’s identity when generating the token). Here’s what the hidden form field looks like: <input name=”__RequestVerificationToken” type=”hidden” value=”NqqZGAmlDHh6fPTNR_mti3nYGUDgpIkCiJHnEEL59S7FNToyyeSo7v4AfzF2i67Cv0qTB1TgmZcqiVtgdkW2NnXgEcBc-iBts0x6WAIShtM1″ /> And here’s what the cookie looks like using the Google Chrome developer toolbar: You use the [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] action filter on the controller action which is the recipient of the form post to validate that the token in the hidden form field matches the token in the cookie. If the tokens don’t match then validation fails and you can’t post the form: public ActionResult Create() { return View(); } [ValidateAntiForgeryToken] [HttpPost] public ActionResult Create(Product productToCreate) { if (ModelState.IsValid) { // save product to db return RedirectToAction("Index"); } return View(); } How does this all work? Let’s imagine that a hacker has copied the Create Product page from MajorBank.com to Hackers.com – the hacker grabs the HTML source and places it at Hackers.com. Now, imagine that the hacker trick you into submitting the Create Product form from Hackers.com to MajorBank.com. You’ll get the following exception: The Cross-Site Request Forgery attack is blocked because the anti-forgery token included in the Create Product form at Hackers.com won’t match the anti-forgery token stored in the cookie in your browser. The tokens were generated at different times for different users so the attack fails. Preventing Cross-Site Request Forgery Attacks with a Single Page App In a Single Page App, you can’t prevent Cross-Site Request Forgery attacks using the same method as a server-side ASP.NET MVC app. In a Single Page App, HTML forms are not generated on the server. Instead, in a Single Page App, forms are loaded dynamically in the browser. Phil Haack has a blog post on this topic where he discusses passing the anti-forgery token in an Ajax header instead of a hidden form field. He also describes how you can create a custom anti-forgery token attribute to compare the token in the Ajax header and the token in the cookie. See: http://haacked.com/archive/2011/10/10/preventing-csrf-with-ajax.aspx Also, take a look at Johan’s update to Phil Haack’s original post: http://johan.driessen.se/posts/Updated-Anti-XSRF-Validation-for-ASP.NET-MVC-4-RC (Other server frameworks such as Rails and Django do something similar. For example, Rails uses an X-CSRF-Token to prevent CSRF attacks which you generate on the server – see http://excid3.com/blog/rails-tip-2-include-csrf-token-with-every-ajax-request/#.UTFtgDDkvL8 ). For example, if you are creating a Durandal app, then you can use the following razor view for your one and only server-side page: @{ Layout = null; } <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Index</title> </head> <body> @Html.AntiForgeryToken() <div id="applicationHost"> Loading app.... </div> @Scripts.Render("~/scripts/vendor") <script type="text/javascript" src="~/App/durandal/amd/require.js" data-main="/App/main"></script> </body> </html> Notice that this page includes a call to @Html.AntiForgeryToken() to generate the anti-forgery token. Then, whenever you make an Ajax request in the Durandal app, you can retrieve the anti-forgery token from the razor view and pass the token as a header: var csrfToken = $("input[name='__RequestVerificationToken']").val(); $.ajax({ headers: { __RequestVerificationToken: csrfToken }, type: "POST", dataType: "json", contentType: 'application/json; charset=utf-8', url: "/api/products", data: JSON.stringify({ name: "Milk", price: 2.33 }), statusCode: { 200: function () { alert("Success!"); } } }); Use the following code to create an action filter which you can use to match the header and cookie tokens: using System.Linq; using System.Net.Http; using System.Web.Helpers; using System.Web.Http.Controllers; namespace MvcApplication2.Infrastructure { public class ValidateAjaxAntiForgeryToken : System.Web.Http.AuthorizeAttribute { protected override bool IsAuthorized(HttpActionContext actionContext) { var headerToken = actionContext .Request .Headers .GetValues("__RequestVerificationToken") .FirstOrDefault(); ; var cookieToken = actionContext .Request .Headers .GetCookies() .Select(c => c[AntiForgeryConfig.CookieName]) .FirstOrDefault(); // check for missing cookie or header if (cookieToken == null || headerToken == null) { return false; } // ensure that the cookie matches the header try { AntiForgery.Validate(cookieToken.Value, headerToken); } catch { return false; } return base.IsAuthorized(actionContext); } } } Notice that the action filter derives from the base AuthorizeAttribute. The ValidateAjaxAntiForgeryToken only works when the user is authenticated and it will not work for anonymous requests. Add the action filter to your ASP.NET Web API controller actions like this: [ValidateAjaxAntiForgeryToken] public HttpResponseMessage PostProduct(Product productToCreate) { // add product to db return Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK); } After you complete these steps, it won’t be possible for a hacker to pretend to be you at Hackers.com and submit a form to MajorBank.com. The header token used in the Ajax request won’t travel to Hackers.com. This approach works, but I am not entirely happy with it. The one thing that I don’t like about this approach is that it creates a hard dependency on using razor. Your single page in your Single Page App must be generated from a server-side razor view. A better solution would be to generate the anti-forgery token in JavaScript. Unfortunately, until all browsers support a way to generate cryptographically strong random numbers – for example, by supporting the window.crypto.getRandomValues() method — there is no good way to generate anti-forgery tokens in JavaScript. So, at least right now, the best solution for generating the tokens is the server-side solution with the (regrettable) dependency on razor. Conclusion The goal of this blog entry was to explore some ways in which you need to handle security differently in the case of a Single Page App than in the case of a traditional server app. In particular, I focused on how to prevent Cross-Site Scripting and Cross-Site Request Forgery attacks in the case of a Single Page App. I want to emphasize that I am not suggesting that Single Page Apps are inherently less secure than server-side apps. Whatever type of web application you build – regardless of whether it is a Single Page App, an ASP.NET MVC app, an ASP.NET Web Forms app, or a Rails app – you must constantly guard against security vulnerabilities.

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• MSCC: Global Windows Azure Bootcamp

  Mauritius participated and contributed to the Global Windows Azure Bootcamp 2014 (GWAB). Again! And this time stronger than ever, and together with 137 other locations in 56 countries world-wide. We had 62 named registrations, 7 guest additions and approximately 10 offline participants prior to the event day. Most interestingly the organisation of the GWAB through the MSCC helped to increased the number of craftsmen. The Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community has currently 138 registered members - in less than one year! Only with those numbers we can proudly say that all the preparations and hard work towards this event already paid off. Personally, I'm really grateful that we had this kind of response and the feedback from some attendees confirmed that the MSCC is on the right track here on Cyber Island Mauritius. Inspired and motivated by the success of this event, rest assured that there will be more public events like the GWAB. This time it took some time to reflect on our meetup, following my first impression right on spot: "Wow, what an experience to organise and participate in this global event. Overall, I've been very pleased with the preparations and the event itself. Surely, there have been some nicks that we have to address and to improve for future activities like this. Quite frankly, we are not professional event organisers (not yet) but we learned a lot over the past couple of days. A big Thank You to our event sponsors, namely Microsoft Indian Ocean Islands & French Pacific, Ceridian Mauritius and Emtel. Without them this event wouldn't have happened - Thank You! And to the cool team members of Microsoft Student Partners (MSPs). You geeks did a great job! Thanks!" So, how many attendees did we actually have? 61! - Awesome - 61 cloud computing instances to help on the research of diabetes. During Saturday afternoon there was even an online publication on L'Express: Les développeurs mauriciens se joignent au combat contre le diabète Reactions of other attendees Don't take my word for granted... Here are some impressions and feedback from our participants: "Awesome event, really appreciated the presentations :-)" -- Kevin on event comments "very interesting and enriching." -- Diana on event comments "#gwab #gwabmru 2014 great success. Looking forward for gwab 2015" -- Wasiim on Twitter "Was there till the end. Awesome Event. I'll surely join upcoming meetup sessions :)" -- Luchmun on event comments "#gwabmru was not that cool. left early" -- Mohammad on Twitter The overall feedback is positive but we are absolutely aware that there quite a number of problems we had to face. We are already looking into that and ideas / action plans on how we will be able to improve it for future events. The sessions We started the day with welcoming speeches by Thierry Coret, Sr. Marketing Manager of Microsoft Indian Ocean Islands & French Pacific and Vidia Mooneegan, Managing Director and Sr. Vice President of Ceridian Mauritius. The clear emphasis was on the endless possibilities of cloud computing and how it can enable any kind of sectors here in the country. Then it was about time to set up the cloud computing services in order to contribute each attendees cloud computing resources to the global research of diabetes, a step by step guide presented by Arnaud Meslier, Technical Evangelist at Microsoft. Given a rendering package and a configuration file it was very interesting to follow the single steps in Windows Azure. Also, during the day we were not sure whether the set up had been correctly, as Mauritius didn't show up on the results board - which should have been the case after approximately 20 to 30 minutes. Anyways, let the minions work... Next, Arnaud gave a brief overview of the variety of services Windows Azure has to offer. Whether you need a development environment for your websites or mobiles app, running a virtual machine with your existing applications or simply putting a SQL database online. No worries, Windows Azure has the right packages available and the online management portal is really easy t handle. After this, we got a little bit more business oriented while Wasiim Hosenbocus, employee at Ceridian, took the attendees through the inerts of a real-life application, and demoed a couple of the existing features. He did a great job by showing how the different services of Windows Azure can be created and pulled together. After the lunch break it is always tough to keep the audience awake... And it was my turn. I gave a brief overview on operating and managing a SQL database on Windows Azure. Well, there are actually two options available and depending on your individual requirements you should be aware of both. The simpler version is called SQL Database and while provisioning only takes a couple of seconds, you should take into consideration that SQL Database has a number of constraints, like limitations on the actual database size - up to 5 GB as web edition and up to 150 GB maximum as business edition -, among others. Next, it was Chervine Bhiwoo's session on Windows Azure Mobile Services. It was absolutely amazing to see that the mobiles services directly offers you various project templates, like Windows 8 Store App, Android app, iOS app, and even Xamarin cross-platform app development. So, within a couple of minutes you can have your first mobile app active and running on Windows Azure. Furthermore, Chervine showed the attendees that adding another user interface, like Web Sites running on ASP.NET MVC 4 only takes a couple of minutes, too. And last but not least, we rounded up the day with Windows Azure Websites and hosting of Virtual Machines presented by some members of the local Microsoft Students Partners programme. Surely, one of the big advantages using Windows Azure is the availability of pre-defined installation packages of known web applications, like WordPress, Joomla!, or Ghost. Compared to running your own web site with a traditional web hoster it is surely en par, and depending on your personal level of expertise, Windows Azure provides you more liberty in terms of configuration than maybe a shared hosting environment. Running a pre-defined web application is one thing but in case that you would like to have more control over your hosting environment it is highly advised to opt for a virtual machine. Provisioning of an Ubuntu 12.04 LTS system was very simple to do but it takes some more minutes than you might expect. So, please be patient and take your time while Windows Azure gets everything in place for you. Afterwards, you can use a SecureShell (ssh) client like Putty in case of a Linux-based machine, or Remote Desktop Services when operating a Windows Server system to log in into your virtual machine. At the end of the day we had a great Q&A session and we finalised the event with our raffle of goodies. Participation in the raffle was bound to submission of the session survey and most gratefully we had a give-away for everyone. What a nice coincidence to finish of the day. Note: All session slides (and demo codes) will be made available on the MSCC event page. Please, check the Files section over there. (Some) Visual impressions from the event Just to give you an idea about what has happened during the GWAB 2014 at Ebene... Speakers and Microsoft Student Partners are getting ready for the Global Windows Azure Bootcamp 2014 GWAB 2014 attendees are fully integrated into the hands-on-labs and setting up their individuals cloud computing services 60 attendees at the GWAB 2014. Despite some technical difficulties we had a great time running the event GWAB 2014: Using the lunch break for networking and exchange of ideas - Great conversations and topics amongst attendees There are more pictures on the original event page: Questions & Answers Following are a couple of questions which have been asked and didn't get an answer during the event: Q: Is it possible to upload static pages via FTP? A: Yes, you can. Have a look at the right side column on the dashboard of your website. There you'll find information about the FTP and SFTP host names. You can use any FTP client, like ie. FileZilla to log in. FTP also gives you access to your log files. Q: What are the size limitations on SQL Database? A: 5 GB on the Web Edition, and 150 GB on the business edition. A maximum 150 databases (inclusing 'master') per SQL Database server. More details here: General Guidelines and Limitations (Azure SQL Database) Q: What's the maximum size of a SQL Server running in a Virtual Machine? A: The maximum Windows Azure VM has currently 8 CPU cores, 14 or 56 GB of RAM and 16x 1 TB hard drives. More details here: Virtual Machine and Cloud Service Sizes for Azure Q: How can we register for Windows Azure? A: Mauritius is currently not listed for phone verification. Please get in touch with Arnaud Meslier at Microsoft IOI & FP Q: Can I use my own domain name for Windows Azure websites? A: Yes, you can. But this might require to upscale your account to Standard. In case that I missed a question and answer, please use the comment section at the end of the article. Thanks! Final results Every participant was instructed during the hands-on-lab session on how to set up a cloud computing service in their account. Of course, I won't keep the results from you... Global Azure Lab GWAB 2014: Our cloud computing contribution to the research of diabetes And I would say Mauritius did a good job! Upcoming Events What are the upcoming events here in Mauritius? So far, we have the following ones (incomplete list as usual) in chronological order: Launch of Microsoft SQL Server 2014 (15.4.2014) Corsair Hackers Reboot (19.4.2014) WebCup (TBA ~ June 2014) Developers Conference (TBA ~ July 2014) Linuxfest 2014 (TBA ~ November 2014) Hopefully, there will be more announcements during the next couple of weeks and months. If you know about any other event, like a bootcamp, a code challenge or hackathon here in Mauritius, please drop me a note in the comment section below this article. Thanks! Networking and job/project opportunities Despite having technical presentations on Windows Azure an event like this always offers a great bunch of possibilities and opportunities to get in touch with new people in IT, have an exchange of experience with other like-minded people. As I already wrote about Communities - The importance of exchange and discussion - I had a great conversation with representatives of the University des Mascareignes which are currently embracing cloud infrastructure and cloud computing for their various campuses in the Indian Ocean. As for the MSCC it would be a great experience to stay in touch with them, and to work on upcoming, common activities. Furthermore, I had a very good conversation with Thierry and Ludovic of Microsoft IOI & FP on the necessity of user groups and IT communities here on the island. It's great to see that the MSCC is currently on a run and that local companies are sharing our thoughts on promoting IT careers and exchange of IT knowledge in such an open way. I'm also looking forward to be able to participate and to contribute on more events in the near future. My resume of the day We learned a lot today and there is always room for improvement! It was an awesome event and quite frankly it was a pleasure to spend the day with so many enthuastic IT people in the same room. It was a great experience to organise such event locally and participate on a global scale to support the GlyQ-IQ Technology in their research on diabetes. I was so pleased to see the involvement of new MSCC members in taking the opportunity to share and learn about the power of cloud computing. The Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community is on the right way and this year's bootcamp on Windows Azure only marked the beginning of our journey. Thank you to our sponsors and my kudos to the MSPs! Update: Media coverage The event has been reported in local media, too. Following are some resources: Orange - Local - Business: Le cloud, pour des recherches approfondies sur le diabète Maurice Info.mu: Le cloud, pour des recherches approfondies sur le diabète Le Quotidien Pg 2: Global Windows Azure Bootcamp 2014 - Le cloud pour des recherches approfondies sur le diabète The Observer Pg 12: Le cloud, pour des recherches approfondies sur le diabète

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• Metro Walkthrough: Creating a Task List with a ListView and IndexedDB

  - by Stephen.Walther

  The goal of this blog entry is to describe how you can work with data in a Metro style application written with JavaScript. In particular, we create a super simple Task List application which enables you to create and delete tasks. Here’s a video which demonstrates how the Task List application works: In order to build this application, I had to take advantage of several features of the WinJS library and technologies including: IndexedDB – The Task List application stores data in an IndexedDB database. HTML5 Form Validation – The Task List application uses HTML5 validation to ensure that a required field has a value. ListView Control – The Task List application displays the tasks retrieved from the IndexedDB database in a WinJS ListView control. Creating the IndexedDB Database The Task List application stores all of its data in an IndexedDB database named TasksDB. This database is opened/created with the following code: var db; var req = window.msIndexedDB.open("TasksDB", 1); req.onerror = function () { console.log("Could not open database"); }; req.onupgradeneeded = function (evt) { var newDB = evt.target.result; newDB.createObjectStore("tasks", { keyPath: "id", autoIncrement:true }); }; The msIndexedDB.open() method accepts two parameters: the name of the database to open and the version of the database to open. If a database with a matching version already exists, then calling the msIndexedDB.open() method opens a connection to the existing database. If the database does not exist then the upgradeneeded event is raised. You handle the upgradeneeded event to create a new database. In the code above, the upgradeneeded event handler creates an object store named “tasks” (An object store roughly corresponds to a database table). When you add items to the tasks object store then each item gets an id property with an auto-incremented value automatically. The code above also includes an error event handler. If the IndexedDB database cannot be opened or created, for whatever reason, then an error message is written to the Visual Studio JavaScript Console window. Displaying a List of Tasks The TaskList application retrieves its list of tasks from the tasks object store, which we created above, and displays the list of tasks in a ListView control. Here is how the ListView control is declared: <div id="tasksListView" data-win-control="WinJS.UI.ListView" data-win-options="{ itemDataSource: TaskList.tasks.dataSource, itemTemplate: select('#taskTemplate'), tapBehavior: 'toggleSelect', selectionMode: 'multi', layout: { type: WinJS.UI.ListLayout } }"> </div> The ListView control is bound to the TaskList.tasks.dataSource data source. The TaskList.tasks.dataSource is created with the following code: // Create the data source var tasks = new WinJS.Binding.List(); // Open the database var db; var req = window.msIndexedDB.open("TasksDB", 1); req.onerror = function () { console.log("Could not open database"); }; req.onupgradeneeded = function (evt) { var newDB = evt.target.result; newDB.createObjectStore("tasks", { keyPath: "id", autoIncrement:true }); }; // Load the data source with data from the database req.onsuccess = function () { db = req.result; var tran = db.transaction("tasks"); tran.objectStore("tasks").openCursor().onsuccess = function(event) { var cursor = event.target.result; tasks.dataSource.beginEdits(); if (cursor) { tasks.dataSource.insertAtEnd(null, cursor.value); cursor.continue(); } else { tasks.dataSource.endEdits(); }; }; }; // Expose the data source and functions WinJS.Namespace.define("TaskList", { tasks: tasks }); Notice the success event handler. This handler is called when a database is successfully opened/created. In the code above, all of the items from the tasks object store are retrieved into a cursor and added to a WinJS.Binding.List object named tasks. Because the ListView control is bound to the WinJS.Binding.List object, copying the tasks from the object store into the WinJS.Binding.List object causes the tasks to appear in the ListView: Adding a New Task You add a new task in the Task List application by entering the title of a new task into an HTML form and clicking the Add button. Here’s the markup for creating the form: <form id="addTaskForm"> <input id="newTaskTitle" title="New Task" required /> <button>Add</button> </form> Notice that the INPUT element includes a required attribute. In a Metro application, you can take advantage of HTML5 Validation to validate form fields. If you don’t enter a value for the newTaskTitle field then the following validation error message is displayed: For a brief introduction to HTML5 validation, see my previous blog entry: http://stephenwalther.com/blog/archive/2012/03/13/html5-form-validation.aspx When you click the Add button, the form is submitted and the form submit event is raised. The following code is executed in the default.js file: // Handle Add Task document.getElementById("addTaskForm").addEventListener("submit", function (evt) { evt.preventDefault(); var newTaskTitle = document.getElementById("newTaskTitle"); TaskList.addTask({ title: newTaskTitle.value }); newTaskTitle.value = ""; }); The code above retrieves the title of the new task and calls the addTask() method in the tasks.js file. Here’s the code for the addTask() method which is responsible for actually adding the new task to the IndexedDB database: // Add a new task function addTask(taskToAdd) { var transaction = db.transaction("tasks", IDBTransaction.READ_WRITE); var addRequest = transaction.objectStore("tasks").add(taskToAdd); addRequest.onsuccess = function (evt) { taskToAdd.id = evt.target.result; tasks.dataSource.insertAtEnd(null, taskToAdd); } } The code above does two things. First, it adds the new task to the tasks object store in the IndexedDB database. Second, it adds the new task to the data source bound to the ListView. The dataSource.insertAtEnd() method is called to add the new task to the data source so the new task will appear in the ListView (with a nice little animation). Deleting Existing Tasks The Task List application enables you to select one or more tasks by clicking or tapping on one or more tasks in the ListView. When you click the Delete button, the selected tasks are removed from both the IndexedDB database and the ListView. For example, in the following screenshot, two tasks are selected. The selected tasks appear with a teal background and a checkmark: When you click the Delete button, the following code in the default.js file is executed: // Handle Delete Tasks document.getElementById("btnDeleteTasks").addEventListener("click", function (evt) { tasksListView.winControl.selection.getItems().then(function(items) { items.forEach(function (item) { TaskList.deleteTask(item); }); }); }); The selected tasks are retrieved with the TaskList selection.getItem() method. In the code above, the deleteTask() method is called for each of the selected tasks. Here’s the code for the deleteTask() method: // Delete an existing task function deleteTask(listViewItem) { // Database key != ListView key var dbKey = listViewItem.data.id; var listViewKey = listViewItem.key; // Remove item from db and, if success, remove item from ListView var transaction = db.transaction("tasks", IDBTransaction.READ_WRITE); var deleteRequest = transaction.objectStore("tasks").delete(dbKey); deleteRequest.onsuccess = function () { tasks.dataSource.remove(listViewKey); } } This code does two things: it deletes the existing task from the database and removes the existing task from the ListView. In both cases, the right task is removed by using the key associated with the task. However, the task key is different in the case of the database and in the case of the ListView. In the case of the database, the task key is the value of the task id property. In the case of the ListView, on the other hand, the task key is auto-generated by the ListView. When the task is removed from the ListView, an animation is used to collapse the tasks which appear above and below the task which was removed. The Complete Code Above, I did a lot of jumping around between different files in the application and I left out sections of code. For the sake of completeness, I want to include the entire code here: the default.html, default.js, and tasks.js files. Here are the contents of the default.html file. This file contains the UI for the Task List application: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>Task List</title> <!-- WinJS references --> <link href="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/css/ui-dark.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/base.js"></script> <script src="//Microsoft.WinJS.0.6/js/ui.js"></script> <!-- TaskList references --> <link href="/css/default.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="/js/default.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/tasks.js"></script> <style type="text/css"> body { font-size: x-large; } form { display: inline; } #appContainer { margin: 20px; width: 600px; } .win-container { padding: 10px; } </style> </head> <body> <div> <!-- Templates --> <div id="taskTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div> <span data-win-bind="innerText:title"></span> </div> </div> <h1>Super Task List</h1> <div id="appContainer"> <form id="addTaskForm"> <input id="newTaskTitle" title="New Task" required /> <button>Add</button> </form> <button id="btnDeleteTasks">Delete</button> <div id="tasksListView" data-win-control="WinJS.UI.ListView" data-win-options="{ itemDataSource: TaskList.tasks.dataSource, itemTemplate: select('#taskTemplate'), tapBehavior: 'toggleSelect', selectionMode: 'multi', layout: { type: WinJS.UI.ListLayout } }"> </div> </div> </div> </body> </html> Here is the code for the default.js file. This code wires up the Add Task form and Delete button: (function () { "use strict"; var app = WinJS.Application; app.onactivated = function (eventObject) { if (eventObject.detail.kind === Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ActivationKind.launch) { WinJS.UI.processAll().then(function () { // Get reference to Tasks ListView var tasksListView = document.getElementById("tasksListView"); // Handle Add Task document.getElementById("addTaskForm").addEventListener("submit", function (evt) { evt.preventDefault(); var newTaskTitle = document.getElementById("newTaskTitle"); TaskList.addTask({ title: newTaskTitle.value }); newTaskTitle.value = ""; }); // Handle Delete Tasks document.getElementById("btnDeleteTasks").addEventListener("click", function (evt) { tasksListView.winControl.selection.getItems().then(function(items) { items.forEach(function (item) { TaskList.deleteTask(item); }); }); }); }); } }; app.start(); })(); Finally, here is the tasks.js file. This file contains all of the code for opening, creating, and interacting with IndexedDB: (function () { "use strict"; // Create the data source var tasks = new WinJS.Binding.List(); // Open the database var db; var req = window.msIndexedDB.open("TasksDB", 1); req.onerror = function () { console.log("Could not open database"); }; req.onupgradeneeded = function (evt) { var newDB = evt.target.result; newDB.createObjectStore("tasks", { keyPath: "id", autoIncrement:true }); }; // Load the data source with data from the database req.onsuccess = function () { db = req.result; var tran = db.transaction("tasks"); tran.objectStore("tasks").openCursor().onsuccess = function(event) { var cursor = event.target.result; tasks.dataSource.beginEdits(); if (cursor) { tasks.dataSource.insertAtEnd(null, cursor.value); cursor.continue(); } else { tasks.dataSource.endEdits(); }; }; }; // Add a new task function addTask(taskToAdd) { var transaction = db.transaction("tasks", IDBTransaction.READ_WRITE); var addRequest = transaction.objectStore("tasks").add(taskToAdd); addRequest.onsuccess = function (evt) { taskToAdd.id = evt.target.result; tasks.dataSource.insertAtEnd(null, taskToAdd); } } // Delete an existing task function deleteTask(listViewItem) { // Database key != ListView key var dbKey = listViewItem.data.id; var listViewKey = listViewItem.key; // Remove item from db and, if success, remove item from ListView var transaction = db.transaction("tasks", IDBTransaction.READ_WRITE); var deleteRequest = transaction.objectStore("tasks").delete(dbKey); deleteRequest.onsuccess = function () { tasks.dataSource.remove(listViewKey); } } // Expose the data source and functions WinJS.Namespace.define("TaskList", { tasks: tasks, addTask: addTask, deleteTask: deleteTask }); })(); Summary I wrote this blog entry because I wanted to create a walkthrough of building a simple database-driven application. In particular, I wanted to demonstrate how you can use a ListView control with an IndexedDB database to store and retrieve database data.

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• More Animation - Self Dismissing Dialogs

  - by Duncan Mills

  In my earlier articles on animation, I discussed various slide, grow and  flip transitions for items and containers.  In this article I want to discuss a fade animation and specifically the use of fades and auto-dismissal for informational dialogs.  If you use a Mac, you may be familiar with Growl as a notification system, and the nice way that messages that are informational just fade out after a few seconds. So in this blog entry I wanted to discuss how we could make an ADF popup behave in the same way. This can be an effective way of communicating information to the user without "getting in the way" with modal alerts. This of course, has been done before, but everything I've seen previously requires something like JQuery to be in the mix when we don't really need it to be.  The solution I've put together is nice and generic and will work with either <af:panelWindow> or <af:dialog> as a the child of the popup. In terms of usage it's pretty simple to use we  just need to ensure that the popup itself has clientComponent is set to true and includes the animation JavaScript (animateFadingPopup) on a popupOpened event: <af:popup id="pop1" clientComponent="true">   <af:panelWindow title="A Fading Message...">    ...  </af:panelWindow>   <af:clientListener method="animateFadingPopup" type="popupOpened"/> </af:popup>   The popup can be invoked in the normal way using showPopupBehavior or JavaScript, no special code is required there. As a further twist you can include an additional clientAttribute called preFadeDelay to define a delay before the fade itself starts (the default is 5 seconds) . To set the delay to just 2 seconds for example: <af:popup ...>   ...   <af:clientAttribute name="preFadeDelay" value="2"/>   <af:clientListener method="animateFadingPopup" type="popupOpened"/>  </af:popup> The Animation Styles  As before, we have a couple of CSS Styles which define the animation, I've put these into the skin in my case, and, as in the other articles, I've only defined the transitions for WebKit browsers (Chrome, Safari) at the moment. In this case, the fade is timed at 5 seconds in duration. .popupFadeReset {   opacity: 1; } .popupFadeAnimate {   opacity: 0;   -webkit-transition: opacity 5s ease-in-out; } As you can see here, we are achieving the fade by simply setting the CSS opacity property. The JavaScript The final part of the puzzle is, of course, the JavaScript, there are four functions, these are generic (apart from the Style names which, if you've changed above, you'll need to reflect here): The initial function invoked from the popupOpened event,  animateFadingPopup which starts a timer and provides the initial delay before we start to fade the popup. The function that applies the fade animation to the popup - initiatePopupFade. The callback function - closeFadedPopup used to reset the style class and correctly hide the popup so that it can be invoked again and again.   A utility function - findFadeContainer, which is responsible for locating the correct child component of the popup to actually apply the style to. Function - animateFadingPopup This function, as stated is the one hooked up to the popupOpened event via a clientListener. Because of when the code is called it does not actually matter how you launch the popup, or if the popup is re-used from multiple places. All usages will get the fade behavior. /**  * Client listener which will kick off the animation to fade the dialog and register  * a callback to correctly reset the popup once the animation is complete  * @param event  */ function animateFadingPopup(event) { var fadePopup = event.getSource();   var fadeCandidate = false;   //Ensure that the popup is initially Opaque   //This handles the situation where the user has dismissed   //the popup whilst it was in the process of fading   var fadeContainer = findFadeContainer(fadePopup);   if (fadeContainer != null) {     fadeCandidate = true;     fadeContainer.setStyleClass("popupFadeReset");   }   //Only continue if we can actually fade this popup   if (fadeCandidate) {   //See if a delay has been specified     var waitTimeSeconds = event.getSource().getProperty('preFadeDelay');     //Default to 5 seconds if not supplied     if (waitTimeSeconds == undefined) {     waitTimeSeconds = 5;     }     // Now call the fade after the specified time     var fadeFunction = function () {     initiatePopupFade(fadePopup);     };     var fadeDelayTimer = setTimeout(fadeFunction, (waitTimeSeconds * 1000));   } } The things to note about this function is the initial check that we have to do to ensure that the container is currently visible and reset it's style to ensure that it is.  This is to handle the situation where the popup has begun the fade, and yet the user has still explicitly dismissed the popup before it's complete and in doing so has prevented the callback function (described later) from executing. In this particular situation the initial display of the dialog will be (apparently) missing it's normal animation but at least it becomes visible to the user (and most users will probably not notice this difference in any case). You'll notice that the style that we apply to reset the  opacity - popupFadeReset, is not applied to the popup component itself but rather the dialog or panelWindow within it. More about that in the description of the next function findFadeContainer(). Finally, assuming that we have a suitable candidate for fading, a JavaScript  timer is started using the specified preFadeDelay wait time (or 5 seconds if that was not supplied). When this timer expires then the main animation styleclass will be applied using the initiatePopupFade() function Function - findFadeContainer As a component, the <af:popup> does not support styleClass attribute, so we can't apply the animation style directly.  Instead we have to look for the container within the popup which defines the window object that can have a style attached.  This is achieved by the following code: /**  * The thing we actually fade will be the only child  * of the popup assuming that this is a dialog or window  * @param popup  * @return the component, or null if this is not valid for fading  */ function findFadeContainer(popup) { var children = popup.getDescendantComponents();   var fadeContainer = children[0];   if (fadeContainer != undefined) {   var compType = fadeContainer.getComponentType();     if (compType == "oracle.adf.RichPanelWindow" || compType == "oracle.adf.RichDialog") {     return fadeContainer;     }   }   return null; }  So what we do here is to grab the first child component of the popup and check its type. Here I decided to limit the fade behaviour to only <af:dialog> and <af:panelWindow>. This was deliberate.  If  we apply the fade to say an <af:noteWindow> you would see the text inside the balloon fade, but the balloon itself would hang around until the fade animation was over and then hide.  It would of course be possible to make the code smarter to walk up the DOM tree to find the correct <div> to apply the style to in order to hide the whole balloon, however, that means that this JavaScript would then need to have knowledge of the generated DOM structure, something which may change from release to release, and certainly something to avoid. So, all in all, I think that this is an OK restriction and frankly it's windows and dialogs that I wanted to fade anyway, not balloons and menus. You could of course extend this technique and handle the other types should you really want to. One thing to note here is the selection of the first (children[0]) child of the popup. It does not matter if there are non-visible children such as clientListener before the <af:dialog> or <af:panelWindow> within the popup, they are not included in this array, so picking the first element in this way seems to be fine, no matter what the underlying ordering is within the JSF source.  If you wanted a super-robust version of the code you might want to iterate through the children array of the popup to check for the right type, again it's up to you.  Function -  initiatePopupFade  On to the actual fading. This is actually very simple and at it's heart, just the application of the popupFadeAnimate style to the correct component and then registering a callback to execute once the fade is done. /**  * Function which will kick off the animation to fade the dialog and register  * a callback to correctly reset the popup once the animation is complete  * @param popup the popup we are animating  */ function initiatePopupFade(popup) { //Only continue if the popup has not already been dismissed    if (popup.isPopupVisible()) {   //The skin styles that define the animation      var fadeoutAnimationStyle = "popupFadeAnimate";     var fadeAnimationResetStyle = "popupFadeReset";     var fadeContainer = findFadeContainer(popup);     if (fadeContainer != null) {     var fadeContainerReal = AdfAgent.AGENT.getElementById(fadeContainer.getClientId());       //Define the callback this will correctly reset the popup once it's disappeared       var fadeCallbackFunction = function (event) {       closeFadedPopup(popup, fadeContainer, fadeAnimationResetStyle);         event.target.removeEventListener("webkitTransitionEnd", fadeCallbackFunction);       };       //Initiate the fade       fadeContainer.setStyleClass(fadeoutAnimationStyle);       //Register the callback to execute once fade is done       fadeContainerReal.addEventListener("webkitTransitionEnd", fadeCallbackFunction, false);     }   } } I've added some extra checks here though. First of all we only start the whole process if the popup is still visible. It may be that the user has closed the popup before the delay timer has finished so there is no need to start animating in that case. Again we use the findFadeContainer() function to locate the correct component to apply the style to, and additionally we grab the DOM id that represents that container.  This physical ID is required for the registration of the callback function. The closeFadedPopup() call is then registered on the callback so as to correctly close the now transparent (but still there) popup. Function -  closeFadedPopup The final function just cleans things up: /**  * Callback function to correctly cancel and reset the style in the popup  * @param popup id of the popup so we can close it properly  * @param contatiner the window / dialog within the popup to actually style  * @param resetStyle the syle that sets the opacity back to solid  */ function closeFadedPopup(popup, container, resetStyle) { container.setStyleClass(resetStyle);   popup.cancel(); }  First of all we reset the style to make the popup contents opaque again and then we cancel the popup.  This will ensure that any of your user code that is waiting for a popup cancelled event will actually get the event, additionally if you have done this as a modal window / dialog it will ensure that the glasspane is dismissed and you can interact with the UI again.  What's Next? There are several ways in which this technique could be used, I've been working on a popup here, but you could apply the same approach to in-line messages. As this code (in the popup case) is generic it will make s pretty nice declarative component and maybe, if I get time, I'll look at constructing a formal Growl component using a combination of this technique, and active data push. Also, I'm sure the above code can be improved a little too.  Specifically things like registering a popup cancelled listener to handle the style reset so that we don't loose the subtle animation that takes place when the popup is opened in that situation where the user has closed the in-fade dialog.

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• Building a SOA/BPM/BAM Cluster Part I &ndash; Preparing the Environment

  - by antony.reynolds

  An increasing number of customers are using SOA Suite in a cluster configuration, I might hazard to say that the majority of production deployments are now using SOA clusters.  So I thought it may be useful to detail the steps in building an 11g cluster and explain a little about why things are done the way they are. In this series of posts I will explain how to build a SOA/BPM cluster using the Enterprise Deployment Guide. This post will explain the setting required to prepare the cluster for installation and configuration. Software Required The following software is required for an 11.1.1.3 SOA/BPM install. Software Version Notes Oracle Database Certified databases are listed here SOA & BPM Suites require a working database installation. Repository Creation Utility (RCU) 11.1.1.3 If upgrading an 11.1.1.2 repository then a separate script is available. Web Tier Utilities 11.1.1.3 Provides Web Server, 11.1.1.3 is an upgrade to 11.1.1.2, so 11.1.1.2 must be installed first. Web Tier Utilities 11.1.1.3 Web Server, 11.1.1.3 Patch.  You can use the 11.1.1.2 version without problems. Oracle WebLogic Server 11gR1 10.3.3 This is the host platform for 11.1.1.3 SOA/BPM Suites. SOA Suite 11.1.1.2 SOA Suite 11.1.1.3 is an upgrade to 11.1.1.2, so 11.1.1.2 must be installed first. SOA Suite 11.1.1.3 SOA Suite 11.1.1.3 patch, requires 11.1.12 to have been installed. My installation was performed on Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.4 64-bit. Database I will not cover setting up the database in this series other than to identify the database requirements.  If setting up a SOA cluster then ideally we would also be using a RAC database.  I assume that this is running on separate machines to the SOA cluster.  Section 2.1, “Database”, of the EDG covers the database configuration in detail. Settings The database should have processes set to at least 400 if running SOA/BPM and BAM. alter system set processes=400 scope=spfile Run RCU The Repository Creation Utility creates the necessary database tables for the SOA Suite.  The RCU can be run from any machine that can access the target database.  In 11g the RCU creates a number of pre-defined users and schema with a user defiend prefix.  This allows you to have multiple 11g installations in the same database. After running the RCU you need to grant some additional privileges to the soainfra user.  The soainfra user should have privileges on the transaction tables. grant select on sys.dba_pending_transactions to prefix_soainfra Grant force any transaction to prefix_soainfra Machines The cluster will be built on the following machines. EDG Name is the name used for this machine in the EDG. Notes are a description of the purpose of the machine. EDG Name Notes LB External load balancer to distribute load across and failover between web servers. WEBHOST1 Hosts a web server. WEBHOST2 Hosts a web server. SOAHOST1 Hosts SOA components. SOAHOST2 Hosts SOA components. BAMHOST1 Hosts BAM components. BAMHOST2 Hosts BAM components. Note that it is possible to collapse the BAM servers so that they run on the same machines as the SOA servers. In this case BAMHOST1 and SOAHOST1 would be the same, as would BAMHOST2 and SOAHOST2. The cluster may include more than 2 servers and in this case we add SOAHOST3, SOAHOST4 etc as needed. My cluster has WEBHOST1, SOAHOST1 and BAMHOST1 all running on a single machine. Software Components The cluster will use the following software components. EDG Name is the name used for this machine in the EDG. Type is the type of component, generally a WebLogic component. Notes are a description of the purpose of the component. EDG Name Type Notes AdminServer Admin Server Domain Admin Server WLS_WSM1 Managed Server Web Services Manager Policy Manager Server WLS_WSM2 Managed Server Web Services Manager Policy Manager Server WLS_SOA1 Managed Server SOA/BPM Managed Server WLS_SOA2 Managed Server SOA/BPM Managed Server WLS_BAM1 Managed Server BAM Managed Server running Active Data Cache WLS_BAM2 Managed Server BAM Manager Server without Active Data Cache   Node Manager Will run on all hosts with WLS servers OHS1 Web Server Oracle HTTP Server OHS2 Web Server Oracle HTTP Server LB Load Balancer Load Balancer, not part of SOA Suite The above assumes a 2 node cluster. Network Configuration The SOA cluster requires an extensive amount of network configuration.  I would recommend assigning a private sub-net (internal IP addresses such as 10.x.x.x, 192.168.x.x or 172.168.x.x) to the cluster for use by addresses that only need to be accessible to the Load Balancer or other cluster members.  Section 2.2, "Network", of the EDG covers the network configuration in detail. EDG Name is the hostname used in the EDG. IP Name is the IP address name used in the EDG. Type is the type of IP address: Fixed is fixed to a single machine. Floating is assigned to one of several machines to allow for server migration. Virtual is assigned to a load balancer and used to distribute load across several machines. Host is the host where this IP address is active.  Note for floating IP addresses a range of hosts is given. Bound By identifies which software component will use this IP address. Scope shows where this IP address needs to be resolved. Cluster scope addresses only have to be resolvable by machines in the cluster, i.e. the machines listed in the previous section.  These addresses are only used for inter-cluster communication or for access by the load balancer. Internal scope addresses Notes are comments on why that type of IP is used. EDG Name IP Name Type Host Bound By Scope Notes ADMINVHN VIP1 Floating SOAHOST1-SOAHOSTn AdminServer Cluster Admin server, must be able to migrate between SOA server machines. SOAHOST1 IP1 Fixed SOAHOST1 NodeManager, WLS_WSM1 Cluster WSM Server 1 does not require server migration. SOAHOST2 IP2 Fixed SOAHOST1 NodeManager, WLS_WSM2 Cluster WSM Server 2 does not require server migration SOAHOST1VHN VIP2 Floating SOAHOST1-SOAHOSTn WLS_SOA1 Cluster SOA server 1, must be able to migrate between SOA server machines SOAHOST2VHN VIP3 Floating SOAHOST1-SOAHOSTn WLS_SOA2 Cluster SOA server 2, must be able to migrate between SOA server machines BAMHOST1 IP4 Fixed BAMHOST1 NodeManager Cluster   BAMHOST1VHN VIP4 Floating BAMHOST1-BAMHOSTn WLS_BAM1 Cluster BAM server 1, must be able to migrate between BAM server machines BAMHOST2 IP3 Fixed BAMHOST2 NodeManager, WLS_BAM2 Cluster BAM server 2 does not require server migration WEBHOST1 IP5 Fixed WEBHOST1 OHS1 Cluster   WEBHOST2 IP6 Fixed WEBHOST2 OHS2 Cluster   soa.mycompany.com VIP5 Virtual LB LB Public External access point to SOA cluster. admin.mycompany.com VIP6 Virtual LB LB Internal Internal access to WLS console and EM soainternal.mycompany.com VIP7 Virtual LB LB Internal Internal access point to SOA cluster Floating IP addresses are IP addresses that may be re-assigned between machines in the cluster.  For example in the event of failure of SOAHOST1 then WLS_SOA1 will need to be migrated to another server.  In this case VIP2 (SOAHOST1VHN) will need to be activated on the new target machine.  Once set up the node manager will manage registration and removal of the floating IP addresses with the exception of the AdminServer floating IP address. Note that if the BAMHOSTs and SOAHOSTs are the same machine then you can obviously share the hostname and fixed IP addresses, but you still need separate floating IP addresses for the different managed servers.  The hostnames don’t have to be the ones given in the EDG, but they must be distinct in the same way as the ETC names are distinct.  If the type is a fixed IP then if the addresses are the same you can use the same hostname, for example if you collapse the soahost1, bamhost1 and webhost1 onto a single machine then you could refer to them all as HOST1 and give them the same IP address, however SOAHOST1VHN can never be the same as BAMHOST1VHN because these are floating IP addresses. Notes on DNS IP addresses that are of scope “Cluster” just need to be in the hosts file (/etc/hosts on Linux, C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts on Windows) of all the machines in the cluster and the load balancer.  IP addresses that are of scope “Internal” need to be available on the internal DNS servers, whilst IP addresses of scope “Public” need to be available on external and internal DNS servers. Shared File System At a minimum the cluster needs shared storage for the domain configuration, XA transaction logs and JMS file stores.  It is also possible to place the software itself on a shared server.  I strongly recommend that all machines have the same file structure for their SOA installation otherwise you will experience pain!  Section 2.3, "Shared Storage and Recommended Directory Structure", of the EDG covers the shared storage recommendations in detail. The following shorthand is used for locations: ORACLE_BASE is the root of the file system used for software and configuration files. MW_HOME is the location used by the installed SOA/BPM Suite installation.  This is also used by the web server installation.  In my installation it is set to <ORACLE_BASE>/SOA11gPS2. ORACLE_HOME is the location of the Oracle SOA components or the Oracle Web components.  This directory is installed under the the MW_HOME but the name is decided by the user at installation, default values are Oracle_SOA1 and Oracle_Web1.  In my installation they are set to <MW_HOME>/Oracle_SOA and <MW_HOME>/Oracle _WEB. ORACLE_COMMON_HOME is the location of the common components and is located under the MW_HOME directory.  This is always <MW_HOME>/oracle_common. ORACLE_INSTANCE is used by the Oracle HTTP Server and/or Oracle Web Cache.  It is recommended to create it under <ORACLE_BASE>/admin.  In my installation they are set to <ORACLE_BASE>/admin/Web1, <ORACLE_BASE>/admin/Web2 and <ORACLE_BASE>/admin/WC1. WL_HOME is the WebLogic server home and is always found at <MW_HOME>/wlserver_10.3. Key file locations are shown below. Directory Notes <ORACLE_BASE>/admin/domain_name/aserver/domain_name Shared location for domain.  Used to allow admin server to manually fail over between machines.  When creating domain_name provide the aserver directory as the location for the domain. In my install this is <ORACLE_BASE>/admin/aserver/soa_domain as I only have one domain on the box. <ORACLE_BASE>/admin/domain_name/aserver/applications Shared location for deployed applications.  Needs to be provided when creating the domain. In my install this is <ORACLE_BASE>/admin/aserver/applications as I only have one domain on the box. <ORACLE_BASE>/admin/domain_name/mserver/domain_name Either unique location for each machine or can be shared between machines to simplify task of packing and unpacking domain.  This acts as the managed server configuration location.  Keeping it separate from Admin server helps to avoid problems with the managed servers messing up the Admin Server. In my install this is <ORACLE_BASE>/admin/mserver/soa_domain as I only have one domain on the box. <ORACLE_BASE>/admin/domain_name/mserver/applications Either unique location for each machine or can be shared between machines.  Holds deployed applications. In my install this is <ORACLE_BASE>/admin/mserver/applications as I only have one domain on the box. <ORACLE_BASE>/admin/domain_name/soa_cluster_name Shared directory to hold the following   dd – deployment descriptors   jms – shared JMS file stores   fadapter – shared file adapter co-ordination files   tlogs – shared transaction log files In my install this is <ORACLE_BASE>/admin/soa_cluster. <ORACLE_BASE>/admin/instance_name Local folder for web server (OHS) instance. In my install this is <ORACLE_BASE>/admin/web1 and <ORACLE_BASE>/admin/web2. I also have <ORACLE_BASE>/admin/wc1 for the Web Cache I use as a load balancer. <ORACLE_BASE>/product/fmw This can be a shared or local folder for the SOA/BPM Suite software.  I used a shared location so I only ran the installer once. In my install this is <ORACLE_BASE>/SOA11gPS2 All the shared files need to be put onto a shared storage media.  I am using NFS, but recommendation for production would be a SAN, with mirrored disks for resilience. Collapsing Environments To reduce the hardware requirements it is possible to collapse the BAMHOST, SOAHOST and WEBHOST machines onto a single physical machine.  This will require more memory but memory is a lot cheaper than additional machines.  For environments that require higher security then stay with a separate WEBHOST tier as per the EDG.  Similarly for high volume environments then keep a separate set of machines for BAM and/or Web tier as per the EDG. Notes on Dev Environments In a dev environment it is acceptable to use a a single node (non-RAC) database, but be aware that the config of the data sources is different (no need to use multi-data source in WLS).  Typically in a dev environment we will collapse the BAMHOST, SOAHOST and WEBHOST onto a single machine and use a software load balancer.  To test a cluster properly we will need at least 2 machines. For my test environment I used Oracle Web Cache as a load balancer.  I ran it on one of the SOA Suite machines and it load balanced across the Web Servers on both machines.  This was easy for me to set up and I could administer it from a web based console.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 29, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 29, 2012Popular ReleasesWouter's SharePoint Demo Land: Custom Views and Forms: Samples showing how to provision custom lists. Custom view rendering with code, XSLT, XSLT + code. Custom forms with database lookups.YouTube API Class & Server Control for ASP.NET 4.0: Binary dll Files with Demo: . You can find binary dll files under :- Demo\bin\ folder Demo url :- http://demo.svinn.com/YouTube/Default.aspx 1 GB Hosting + Free Domain => http://ghosting.in/ .callisto: callisto 2.0.23: Patched Script static class and peak user count bug fix.Circuit Diagram: Circuit Diagram 2.0 Alpha 3: New in this release: Added components: Microcontroller Demultiplexer Flip & rotate components Open XML files from older versions of Circuit Diagram Text formatting for components New CDDX syntax Other fixesUmbraco CMS: Umbraco 5.1 CMS (Beta): Beta build for testing - please report issues at issues.umbraco.org (Latest uploaded: 5.1.0.123) What's new in 5.1? The full list of changes is on our http://progress.umbraco.org task tracking page. It shows items complete for 5.1, and 5.1 includes items for 5.0.1 and 5.0.2 listed there too. Here's two headline acts: Members5.1 adds support for backoffice editing of Members. We support the pairing up of our content type system in Hive with regular ASP.NET Membership providers (we ship a def...51Degrees.mobi - Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 2.1.2.11: One Click Install from NuGet Changes to Version 2.1.2.11Code Changes 1. The project is now licenced under the Mozilla Public Licence 2. 2. User interface control and associated data access layer classes have been added to aid developers integrating 51Degrees.mobi into wider projects such as content management systems or web hosting management solutions. Use the following in a web form or user control to access these new UI components. <%@ Register Assembly="FiftyOne.Foundation" Namespace="...JSON Toolkit: JSON Toolkit 3.1: slight performance improvement (5% - 10%) new JsonException classPicturethrill: Version 2.3.28.0: Straightforward image selection. New clean UI look. Super stable. Simplified user experience.Indent Guides for Visual Studio: Indent Guides v12 (beta 2): Note This beta is likely to be less stable than the previous one. If you have severe troubles using this version, please report them with as much detail as possible (especially other extensions/addins that you may have) and downgrade to the last stable release. Version History Changed since v12 (beta 1): new options dialog with Quick Set selections for behavior restructured settings storage (should be more reliable) asynchronous background document analysis glow effect now appears in p...SQL Monitor - managing sql server performance: SQL Monitor 4.2 alpha 16: 1. finally fixed problem with logic fault checking for temporary table name... I really mean finally ...ScintillaNET: ScintillaNET 2.5: A slew of bug-fixes with a few new features sprinkled in. This release also upgrades the SciLexer and SciLexer64 DLLs to version 3.0.4. The official stuff: Issue # Title 32402 32402 27137 27137 31548 31548 30179 30179 24932 24932 29701 29701 31238 31238 26875 26875 30052 30052 Mugen MVVM Toolkit: Mugen MVVM Toolkit ver 1.1: Added Design mode support.Multiwfn: Multiwfn 2.3.2: Multiwfn 2.3.2Harness: Harness 2.0.2: change to .NET Framework Client Profile bug fix the download dialog auto answer. bug fix setFocus command. add "SendKeys" command. remove "closeAll" command. minor bugs fixed.BugNET Issue Tracker: BugNET 0.9.161: Below is a list of fixes in this release. Bug BGN-2092 - Link in Email "visit your profile" not functional BGN-2083 - Manager of bugnet can not edit project when it is not public BGN-2080 - clicking on a link in the project summary causes error (0.9.152.0) BGN-2070 - Missing Functionality On Feed.aspx BGN-2069 - Calendar View does not work BGN-2068 - Time tracking totals not ok BGN-2067 - Issues List Page Size Bug: Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the si...YAF.NET (aka Yet Another Forum.NET): v1.9.6.1 RTW: v1.9.6.1 FINAL is .NET v4.0 ONLY v1.9.6.1 has: Performance Improvements .NET v4.0 improvements Improved FaceBook Integration KNOWN ISSUES WITH THIS RELEASE: ON INSTALL PLEASE DON'T CHECK "Upgrade BBCode Extensions...". More complete change list and discussion here: http://forum.yetanotherforum.net/yaf_postst14201_v1-9-6-1-RTW-Dated--3-26-2012.aspxmenu4web: menu4web 0.0.3: menu4web 0.0.3ArcGIS Editor for OpenStreetMap: ArcGIS Editor for OSM 2.0 Final: This release installs both the ArcGIS Editor for OSM Server Component and/or ArcGIS Editor for OSM Desktop components. The Desktop tools allow you to download data from the OpenStreetMap servers and store it locally in a geodatabase. You can then use the familiar editing environment of ArcGIS Desktop to create, modify, or delete data. Once you are done editing, you can post back the edit changes to OSM to make them available to all OSM users. The Server Component allows you to quickly create...Craig's Utility Library: Craig's Utility Library 3.1: This update adds about 60 new extension methods, a couple of new classes, and a number of fixes including: Additions Added DateSpan class Added GenericDelimited class Random additions Added static thread friendly version of Random.Next called ThreadSafeNext. AOP Manager additions Added Destroy function to AOPManager (clears out all data so system can be recreated. Really only useful for testing...) ORM additions Added PagedCommand and PageCount functions to ObjectBaseClass (same as M...DotSpatial: DotSpatial 1.1: This is a Minor Release. See the changes in the issue tracker. Minimal -- includes DotSpatial core and essential extensions Extended -- includes debugging symbols and additional extensions Just want to run the software? End user (non-programmer) version available branded as MapWindow Want to add your own feature? Develop a plugin, using the template and contribute to the extension feed (you can also write extensions that you distribute in other ways). Components are available as NuGet pa...New ProjectsAeroFichierAchats: Program that reworks excel files into PDFArepa: A lightweight non-invasive tool that helps you to implement Behavior Driven Development (BDD) on .NET projects. Arepa produces guidelines of using BDD on your current tests, and customisable and portable test reports integrating XML Documentation Comments. It's developed in C# using Scrum and BDD.Azure User Management Console - AUMC: Azure User Management Console - AUMC is a User Graphic Interface (GUI) that manages the users and logins of an Azure SQL database. The tool is simply converting your action into T-SQL commands and execute them on the Azure SQL Database. BaseProject: BaseProjectCraftBukkit Updater: I don't activly monitor the status of CraftBukkit's updates, but I want to stay on top of the updated versions. This will track the last version in cache then check for updates. Upon update there should be an option to download automaticly to location XYZ or to send an email/sms.Dan Dot Com: Dan's SandboxEjemplos Windows 8 Javascript: Este proyecto pretende recoger todos los ejemplos de aplicaciones metro para Windows 8 en JavaScript que vaya desarrollando para fines didácticos. Todas las colaboraciones son bienvenidas.EntityFramework Generic Patterns: EntityFramework Generic PatternsEpFamvir: EpFamvir is a Visual C++ software framework that supports data-intensive distributed applications under a GPL3.0 license. It enables applications to work with thousands of nodes and petabytes of data. Famvir was inspired by Apache Hadoop, Google's MapReduce, and Google FS.etdc/etp: ???????????????? ???????? ??????? etest.ru. IndieCiv: IndieCiv - An independent look at how a new game could be made using fan-made graphics from Civ3. You can visit the discussion at www.civfanatics.com http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=421582Libro SQL Server 2012: Databases and examples for my Italian book on "SQL Server 2012"Linq2Rest: Parses OData system query parameters to create a LINQ query that can be used to filter a model set. Also exposes a LINQ provider for web services supporting the OData query parameters. Use extension method Filter (in Linq2Rest namespace) on any IEnumerable source.LittleUmph: It's a little library to help you to alleviate some of the mundane stuff during your development. It has some nifty stuff like a neat database wrapper, conversion utilities, string functions and vast of other mini helpers to improve the efficiency and consistency of your code.LonghornRPG: LonghornRPGMemberManager: Keep track of membersMSU Student Teaching DataBase: A C# application to manage student placements for MSU.MvcContrib4: This is the MvcContrib project to support MVC 4MYFIRSTDEMOPROJECT: Introduction to CSharpOrchard Page Title Override: This Orchard CMS module allows a user to manage the Page Title. You can now have the Site Name show up last in the Page Title or hide the Site Name completely from the Page Title. The module also contains a Content Part allowing a Page Title to be separate from content title.phoenixtree: .net linux sql php python html javascript c exampleProject Explorer for Notepad++: This project mainly aims at providing a functional rich project explorer experience on notepad++. Features include Folder based file browsing, searching, filtering and more.Projeto Exemplo FPU: Projeto Exemplo FPUPureCalendar: simple web calendarrails study: rails studySafe IM: a safe IM software use AES,SHA,RSA.Contain a server and a clientScoreboard: Scoreboard is a simple sports and/or activities scoreboard which can be used for a variety of purposes It was developed for use with a 1024x768 projector and features home and away scores, countdown clock, even a buzzer. It's developed in VB.net.SharePoint System dates and editor fields updater: The SPChangeDate is a utility used to modify some of the system fields in a SharePoint 2010 document library using a datagridview (Excel Like). It allows the modification of the following SharePoint fields: 1. Created 2. Modified 3. Modified By 4. 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• LWJGL Voxel game, glDrawArrays

  - by user22015

  I've been learning about 3D for a couple days now. I managed to create a chunk (8x8x8). Add optimization so it only renders the active and visible blocks. Then I added so it only draws the faces which don't have a neighbor. Next what I found from online research was that it is better to use glDrawArrays to increase performance. So I restarted my little project. Render an entire chunck, add optimization so it only renders active and visible blocks. But now I want to add so it only draws the visible faces while using glDrawArrays. This is giving me some trouble with calling glDrawArrays because I'm passing a wrong count parameter. > # A fatal error has been detected by the Java Runtime Environment: > # > # EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION (0xc0000005) at pc=0x0000000006e31a03, pid=1032, tid=3184 > # Stack: [0x00000000023a0000,0x00000000024a0000], sp=0x000000000249ef70, free space=1019k Native frames: (J=compiled Java code, j=interpreted, Vv=VM code, C=native code) C [ig4icd64.dll+0xa1a03] Java frames: (J=compiled Java code, j=interpreted, Vv=VM code) j org.lwjgl.opengl.GL11.nglDrawArrays(IIIJ)V+0 j org.lwjgl.opengl.GL11.glDrawArrays(III)V+20 j com.vox.block.Chunk.render()V+410 j com.vox.ChunkManager.render()V+30 j com.vox.Game.render()V+11 j com.vox.GameHandler.render()V+12 j com.vox.GameHandler.gameLoop()V+15 j com.vox.Main.main([Ljava/lang/StringV+13 v ~StubRoutines::call_stub public class Chunk { public final static int[] DIM = { 8, 8, 8}; public final static int CHUNK_SIZE = (DIM[0] * DIM[1] * DIM[2]); Block[][][] blocks; private int index; private int vBOVertexHandle; private int vBOColorHandle; public Chunk(int index) { this.index = index; vBOColorHandle = GL15.glGenBuffers(); vBOVertexHandle = GL15.glGenBuffers(); blocks = new Block[DIM[0]][DIM[1]][DIM[2]]; for(int x = 0; x < DIM[0]; x++){ for(int y = 0; y < DIM[1]; y++){ for(int z = 0; z < DIM[2]; z++){ blocks[x][y][z] = new Block(); } } } } public void render(){ Block curr; FloatBuffer vertexPositionData2 = BufferUtils.createFloatBuffer(CHUNK_SIZE * 6 * 12); FloatBuffer vertexColorData2 = BufferUtils.createFloatBuffer(CHUNK_SIZE * 6 * 12); int counter = 0; for(int x = 0; x < DIM[0]; x++){ for(int y = 0; y < DIM[1]; y++){ for(int z = 0; z < DIM[2]; z++){ curr = blocks[x][y][z]; boolean[] neightbours = validateNeightbours(x, y, z); if(curr.isActive() && !neightbours[6]) { float[] arr = curr.createCube((index*DIM[0]*Block.BLOCK_SIZE*2) + x*2, y*2, z*2, neightbours); counter += arr.length; vertexPositionData2.put(arr); vertexColorData2.put(createCubeVertexCol(curr.getCubeColor())); } } } } vertexPositionData2.flip(); vertexPositionData2.flip(); FloatBuffer vertexPositionData = BufferUtils.createFloatBuffer(vertexColorData2.position()); FloatBuffer vertexColorData = BufferUtils.createFloatBuffer(vertexColorData2.position()); for(int i = 0; i < vertexPositionData2.position(); i++) vertexPositionData.put(vertexPositionData2.get(i)); for(int i = 0; i < vertexColorData2.position(); i++) vertexColorData.put(vertexColorData2.get(i)); vertexColorData.flip(); vertexPositionData.flip(); GL15.glBindBuffer(GL15.GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, vBOVertexHandle); GL15.glBufferData(GL15.GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, vertexPositionData, GL15.GL_STATIC_DRAW); GL15.glBindBuffer(GL15.GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, 0); GL15.glBindBuffer(GL15.GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, vBOColorHandle); GL15.glBufferData(GL15.GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, vertexColorData, GL15.GL_STATIC_DRAW); GL15.glBindBuffer(GL15.GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, 0); GL11.glPushMatrix(); GL15.glBindBuffer(GL15.GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, vBOVertexHandle); GL11.glVertexPointer(3, GL11.GL_FLOAT, 0, 0L); GL15.glBindBuffer(GL15.GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, vBOColorHandle); GL11.glColorPointer(3, GL11.GL_FLOAT, 0, 0L); System.out.println("Counter " + counter); GL11.glDrawArrays(GL11.GL_LINE_LOOP, 0, counter); GL11.glPopMatrix(); //blocks[r.nextInt(DIM[0])][2][r.nextInt(DIM[2])].setActive(false); } //Random r = new Random(); private float[] createCubeVertexCol(float[] CubeColorArray) { float[] cubeColors = new float[CubeColorArray.length * 4 * 6]; for (int i = 0; i < cubeColors.length; i++) { cubeColors[i] = CubeColorArray[i % CubeColorArray.length]; } return cubeColors; } private boolean[] validateNeightbours(int x, int y, int z) { boolean[] bools = new boolean[7]; bools[6] = true; bools[6] = bools[6] && (bools[0] = y > 0 && y < DIM[1]-1 && blocks[x][y+1][z].isActive());//top bools[6] = bools[6] && (bools[1] = y > 0 && y < DIM[1]-1 && blocks[x][y-1][z].isActive());//bottom bools[6] = bools[6] && (bools[2] = z > 0 && z < DIM[2]-1 && blocks[x][y][z+1].isActive());//front bools[6] = bools[6] && (bools[3] = z > 0 && z < DIM[2]-1 && blocks[x][y][z-1].isActive());//back bools[6] = bools[6] && (bools[4] = x > 0 && x < DIM[0]-1 && blocks[x+1][y][z].isActive());//left bools[6] = bools[6] && (bools[5] = x > 0 && x < DIM[0]-1 && blocks[x-1][y][z].isActive());//right return bools; } } public class Block { public static final float BLOCK_SIZE = 1f; public enum BlockType { Default(0), Grass(1), Dirt(2), Water(3), Stone(4), Wood(5), Sand(6), LAVA(7); int BlockID; BlockType(int i) { BlockID=i; } } private boolean active; private BlockType type; public Block() { this(BlockType.Default); } public Block(BlockType type){ active = true; this.type = type; } public float[] getCubeColor() { switch (type.BlockID) { case 1: return new float[] { 1, 1, 0 }; case 2: return new float[] { 1, 0.5f, 0 }; case 3: return new float[] { 0, 0f, 1f }; default: return new float[] {0.5f, 0.5f, 1f}; } } public float[] createCube(float x, float y, float z, boolean[] neightbours){ int counter = 0; for(boolean b : neightbours) if(!b) counter++; float[] array = new float[counter*12]; int offset = 0; if(!neightbours[0]){//top array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; } if(!neightbours[1]){//bottom array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; } if(!neightbours[2]){//front array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; } if(!neightbours[3]){//back array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; } if(!neightbours[4]){//left array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; } if(!neightbours[5]){//right array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = x*BLOCK_SIZE + BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = y*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; array[offset++] = z*BLOCK_SIZE - BLOCK_SIZE; } return Arrays.copyOf(array, offset); } public boolean isActive() { return active; } public void setActive(boolean active) { this.active = active; } public BlockType getType() { return type; } public void setType(BlockType type) { this.type = type; } } I highlighted the code I'm concerned about in this following screenshot: - http://imageshack.us/a/img820/7606/18626782.png - (Not allowed to upload images yet) I know the code is a mess but I'm just testing stuff so I wasn't really thinking about it.

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• Does anyone really understand how HFSC scheduling in Linux/BSD works?

  - by Mecki

  I read the original SIGCOMM '97 PostScript paper about HFSC, it is very technically, but I understand the basic concept. Instead of giving a linear service curve (as with pretty much every other scheduling algorithm), you can specify a convex or concave service curve and thus it is possible to decouple bandwidth and delay. However, even though this paper mentions to kind of scheduling algorithms being used (real-time and link-share), it always only mentions ONE curve per scheduling class (the decoupling is done by specifying this curve, only one curve is needed for that). Now HFSC has been implemented for BSD (OpenBSD, FreeBSD, etc.) using the ALTQ scheduling framework and it has been implemented Linux using the TC scheduling framework (part of iproute2). Both implementations added two additional service curves, that were NOT in the original paper! A real-time service curve and an upper-limit service curve. Again, please note that the original paper mentions two scheduling algorithms (real-time and link-share), but in that paper both work with one single service curve. There never have been two independent service curves for either one as you currently find in BSD and Linux. Even worse, some version of ALTQ seems to add an additional queue priority to HSFC (there is no such thing as priority in the original paper either). I found several BSD HowTo's mentioning this priority setting (even though the man page of the latest ALTQ release knows no such parameter for HSFC, so officially it does not even exist). This all makes the HFSC scheduling even more complex than the algorithm described in the original paper and there are tons of tutorials on the Internet that often contradict each other, one claiming the opposite of the other one. This is probably the main reason why nobody really seems to understand how HFSC scheduling really works. Before I can ask my questions, we need a sample setup of some kind. I'll use a very simple one as seen in the image below: Here are some questions I cannot answer because the tutorials contradict each other: What for do I need a real-time curve at all? Assuming A1, A2, B1, B2 are all 128 kbit/s link-share (no real-time curve for either one), then each of those will get 128 kbit/s if the root has 512 kbit/s to distribute (and A and B are both 256 kbit/s of course), right? Why would I additionally give A1 and B1 a real-time curve with 128 kbit/s? What would this be good for? To give those two a higher priority? According to original paper I can give them a higher priority by using a curve, that's what HFSC is all about after all. By giving both classes a curve of [256kbit/s 20ms 128kbit/s] both have twice the priority than A2 and B2 automatically (still only getting 128 kbit/s on average) Does the real-time bandwidth count towards the link-share bandwidth? E.g. if A1 and B1 both only have 64kbit/s real-time and 64kbit/s link-share bandwidth, does that mean once they are served 64kbit/s via real-time, their link-share requirement is satisfied as well (they might get excess bandwidth, but lets ignore that for a second) or does that mean they get another 64 kbit/s via link-share? So does each class has a bandwidth "requirement" of real-time plus link-share? Or does a class only have a higher requirement than the real-time curve if the link-share curve is higher than the real-time curve (current link-share requirement equals specified link-share requirement minus real-time bandwidth already provided to this class)? Is upper limit curve applied to real-time as well, only to link-share, or maybe to both? Some tutorials say one way, some say the other way. Some even claim upper-limit is the maximum for real-time bandwidth + link-share bandwidth? What is the truth? Assuming A2 and B2 are both 128 kbit/s, does it make any difference if A1 and B1 are 128 kbit/s link-share only, or 64 kbit/s real-time and 128 kbit/s link-share, and if so, what difference? If I use the seperate real-time curve to increase priorities of classes, why would I need "curves" at all? Why is not real-time a flat value and link-share also a flat value? Why are both curves? The need for curves is clear in the original paper, because there is only one attribute of that kind per class. But now, having three attributes (real-time, link-share, and upper-limit) what for do I still need curves on each one? Why would I want the curves shape (not average bandwidth, but their slopes) to be different for real-time and link-share traffic? According to the little documentation available, real-time curve values are totally ignored for inner classes (class A and B), they are only applied to leaf classes (A1, A2, B1, B2). If that is true, why does the ALTQ HFSC sample configuration (search for 3.3 Sample configuration) set real-time curves on inner classes and claims that those set the guaranteed rate of those inner classes? Isn't that completely pointless? (note: pshare sets the link-share curve in ALTQ and grate the real-time curve; you can see this in the paragraph above the sample configuration). Some tutorials say the sum of all real-time curves may not be higher than 80% of the line speed, others say it must not be higher than 70% of the line speed. Which one is right or are they maybe both wrong? One tutorial said you shall forget all the theory. No matter how things really work (schedulers and bandwidth distribution), imagine the three curves according to the following "simplified mind model": real-time is the guaranteed bandwidth that this class will always get. link-share is the bandwidth that this class wants to become fully satisfied, but satisfaction cannot be guaranteed. In case there is excess bandwidth, the class might even get offered more bandwidth than necessary to become satisfied, but it may never use more than upper-limit says. For all this to work, the sum of all real-time bandwidths may not be above xx% of the line speed (see question above, the percentage varies). Question: Is this more or less accurate or a total misunderstanding of HSFC? And if assumption above is really accurate, where is prioritization in that model? E.g. every class might have a real-time bandwidth (guaranteed), a link-share bandwidth (not guaranteed) and an maybe an upper-limit, but still some classes have higher priority needs than other classes. In that case I must still prioritize somehow, even among real-time traffic of those classes. Would I prioritize by the slope of the curves? And if so, which curve? The real-time curve? The link-share curve? The upper-limit curve? All of them? Would I give all of them the same slope or each a different one and how to find out the right slope? I still haven't lost hope that there exists at least a hand full of people in this world that really understood HFSC and are able to answer all these questions accurately. And doing so without contradicting each other in the answers would be really nice ;-)

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• ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0 Review

  - by Michael B. McLaughlin

  (This is my first review as a part of the GeeksWithBlogs.net Influencers program. It’s a program in which I (and the others who have been selected for it) get the opportunity to check out new products and services and write reviews about them. We don’t get paid for this, but we do generally get to keep a copy of the software or retain an account for some period of time on the service that we review. In this case I received a copy of Red Gate Software’s ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0, which was released in January. I don’t have any upgrade rights nor is my review guided, restrained, influenced, or otherwise controlled by Red Gate or anyone else. But I do get to keep the software license. I will always be clear about what I received whenever I do a review – I leave it up to you to decide whether you believe I can be objective. I believe I can be. If I used something and really didn’t like it, keeping a copy of it wouldn’t be worth anything to me. In that case though, I would simply uninstall/deactivate/whatever the software or service and tell the company what I didn’t like about it so they could (hopefully) make it better in the future. I don’t think it’d be polite to write up a terrible review, nor do I think it would be a particularly good use of my time. There are people who get paid for a living to review things, so I leave it to them to tell you what they think is bad and why. I’ll only spend my time telling you about things I think are good.) Overview of Common .NET Memory Problems When coming to land of managed memory from the wilds of unmanaged code, it’s easy to say to one’s self, “Wow! Now I never have to worry about memory problems again!” But this simply isn’t true. Managed code environments, such as .NET, make many, many things easier. You will never have to worry about memory corruption due to a bad pointer, for example (unless you’re working with unsafe code, of course). But managed code has its own set of memory concerns. For example, failing to unsubscribe from events when you are done with them leaves the publisher of an event with a reference to the subscriber. If you eliminate all your own references to the subscriber, then that memory is effectively lost since the GC won’t delete it because of the publishing object’s reference. When the publishing object itself becomes subject to garbage collection then you’ll get that memory back finally, but that could take a very long time depending of the life of the publisher. Another common source of resource leaks is failing to properly release unmanaged resources. When writing a class that contains members that hold unmanaged resources (e.g. any of the Stream-derived classes, IsolatedStorageFile, most classes ending in “Reader” or “Writer”), you should always implement IDisposable, making sure to use a properly written Dispose method. And when you are using an instance of a class that implements IDisposable, you should always make sure to use a 'using' statement in order to ensure that the object’s unmanaged resources are disposed of properly. (A ‘using’ statement is a nicer, cleaner looking, and easier to use version of a try-finally block. The compiler actually translates it as though it were a try-finally block. Note that Code Analysis warning 2202 (CA2202) will often be triggered by nested using blocks. A properly written dispose method ensures that it only runs once such that calling dispose multiple times should not be a problem. Nonetheless, CA2202 exists and if you want to avoid triggering it then you should write your code such that only the innermost IDisposable object uses a ‘using’ statement, with any outer code making use of appropriate try-finally blocks instead). Then, of course, there are situations where you are operating in a memory-constrained environment or else you want to limit or even eliminate allocations within a certain part of your program (e.g. within the main game loop of an XNA game) in order to avoid having the GC run. On the Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7, for example, for every 1 MB of heap allocations you make, the GC runs; the added time of a GC collection can cause a game to drop frames or run slowly thereby making it look bad. Eliminating allocations (or else minimizing them and calling an explicit Collect at an appropriate time) is a common way of avoiding this (the other way is to simplify your heap so that the GC’s latency is low enough not to cause performance issues). ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0 When the opportunity to review Red Gate’s recently released ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0 arose, I jumped at it. In order to review it, I was given a free copy (which does not include upgrade rights for future versions) which I am allowed to keep. For those of you who are familiar with ANTS Memory Profiler, you can find a list of new features and enhancements here. If you are an experienced .NET developer who is familiar with .NET memory management issues, ANTS Memory Profiler is great. More importantly still, if you are new to .NET development or you have no experience or limited experience with memory profiling, ANTS Memory Profiler is awesome. From the very beginning, it guides you through the process of memory profiling. If you’re experienced and just want dive in however, it doesn’t get in your way. The help items GAHSFLASHDAJLDJA are well designed and located right next to the UI controls so that they are easy to find without being intrusive. When you first launch it, it presents you with a “Getting Started” screen that contains links to “Memory profiling video tutorials”, “Strategies for memory profiling”, and the “ANTS Memory Profiler forum”. I’m normally the kind of person who looks at a screen like that only to find the “Don’t show this again” checkbox. Since I was doing a review, though, I decided I should examine them. I was pleasantly surprised. The overview video clocks in at three minutes and fifty seconds. It begins by showing you how to get started profiling an application. It explains that profiling is done by taking memory snapshots periodically while your program is running and then comparing them. ANTS Memory Profiler (I’m just going to call it “ANTS MP” from here) analyzes these snapshots in the background while your application is running. It briefly mentions a new feature in Version 7, a new API that give you the ability to trigger snapshots from within your application’s source code (more about this below). You can also, and this is the more common way you would do it, take a memory snapshot at any time from within the ANTS MP window by clicking the “Take Memory Snapshot” button in the upper right corner. The overview video goes on to demonstrate a basic profiling session on an application that pulls information from a database and displays it. It shows how to switch which snapshots you are comparing, explains the different sections of the Summary view and what they are showing, and proceeds to show you how to investigate memory problems using the “Instance Categorizer” to track the path from an object (or set of objects) to the GC’s root in order to find what things along the path are holding a reference to it/them. For a set of objects, you can then click on it and get the “Instance List” view. This displays all of the individual objects (including their individual sizes, values, etc.) of that type which share the same path to the GC root. You can then click on one of the objects to generate an “Instance Retention Graph” view. This lets you track directly up to see the reference chain for that individual object. In the overview video, it turned out that there was an event handler which was holding on to a reference, thereby keeping a large number of strings that should have been freed in memory. Lastly the video shows the “Class List” view, which lets you dig in deeply to find problems that might not have been clear when following the previous workflow. Once you have at least one memory snapshot you can begin analyzing. The main interface is in the “Analysis” tab. You can also switch to the “Session Overview” tab, which gives you several bar charts highlighting basic memory data about the snapshots you’ve taken. If you hover over the individual bars (and the individual colors in bars that have more than one), you will see a detailed text description of what the bar is representing visually. The Session Overview is good for a quick summary of memory usage and information about the different heaps. You are going to spend most of your time in the Analysis tab, but it’s good to remember that the Session Overview is there to give you some quick feedback on basic memory usage stats. As described above in the summary of the overview video, there is a certain natural workflow to the Analysis tab. You’ll spin up your application and take some snapshots at various times such as before and after clicking a button to open a window or before and after closing a window. Taking these snapshots lets you examine what is happening with memory. You would normally expect that a lot of memory would be freed up when closing a window or exiting a document. By taking snapshots before and after performing an action like that you can see whether or not the memory is really being freed. If you already know an area that’s giving you trouble, you can run your application just like normal until just before getting to that part and then you can take a few strategic snapshots that should help you pin down the problem. Something the overview didn’t go into is how to use the “Filters” section at the bottom of ANTS MP together with the Class List view in order to narrow things down. The video tutorials page has a nice 3 minute intro video called “How to use the filters”. It’s a nice introduction and covers some of the basics. I’m going to cover a bit more because I think they’re a really neat, really helpful feature. Large programs can bring up thousands of classes. Even simple programs can instantiate far more classes than you might realize. In a basic .NET 4 WPF application for example (and when I say basic, I mean just MainWindow.xaml with a button added to it), the unfiltered Class List view will have in excess of 1000 classes (my simple test app had anywhere from 1066 to 1148 classes depending on which snapshot I was using as the “Current” snapshot). This is amazing in some ways as it shows you how in stark detail just how immensely powerful the WPF framework is. But hunting through 1100 classes isn’t productive, no matter how cool it is that there are that many classes instantiated and doing all sorts of awesome things. Let’s say you wanted to examine just the classes your application contains source code for (in my simple example, that would be the MainWindow and App). Under “Basic Filters”, click on “Classes with source” under “Show only…”. Voilà. Down from 1070 classes in the snapshot I was using as “Current” to 2 classes. If you then click on a class’s name, it will show you (to the right of the class name) two little icon buttons. Hover over them and you will see that you can click one to view the Instance Categorizer for the class and another to view the Instance List for the class. You can also show classes based on which heap they live on. If you chose both a Baseline snapshot and a Current snapshot then you can use the “Comparing snapshots” filters to show only: “New objects”; “Surviving objects”; “Survivors in growing classes”; or “Zombie objects” (if you aren’t sure what one of these means, you can click the helpful “?” in a green circle icon to bring up a popup that explains them and provides context). Remember that your selection(s) under the “Show only…” heading will still apply, so you should update those selections to make sure you are seeing the view you want. There are also links under the “What is my memory problem?” heading that can help you diagnose the problems you are seeing including one for “I don’t know which kind I have” for situations where you know generally that your application has some problems but aren’t sure what the behavior you have been seeing (OutOfMemoryExceptions, continually growing memory usage, larger memory use than expected at certain points in the program). The Basic Filters are not the only filters there are. “Filter by Object Type” gives you the ability to filter by: “Objects that are disposable”; “Objects that are/are not disposed”; “Objects that are/are not GC roots” (GC roots are things like static variables); and “Objects that implement _______”. “Objects that implement” is particularly neat. Once you check the box, you can then add one or more classes and interfaces that an object must implement in order to survive the filtering. Lastly there is “Filter by Reference”, which gives you the option to pare down the list based on whether an object is “Kept in memory exclusively by” a particular item, a class/interface, or a namespace; whether an object is “Referenced by” one or more of those choices; and whether an object is “Never referenced by” one or more of those choices. Remember that filtering is cumulative, so anything you had set in one of the filter sections still remains in effect unless and until you go back and change it. There’s quite a bit more to ANTS MP – it’s a very full featured product – but I think I touched on all of the most significant pieces. You can use it to debug: a .NET executable; an ASP.NET web application (running on IIS); an ASP.NET web application (running on Visual Studio’s built-in web development server); a Silverlight 4 browser application; a Windows service; a COM+ server; and even something called an XBAP (local XAML browser application). You can also attach to a .NET 4 process to profile an application that’s already running. The startup screen also has a large number of “Charting Options” that let you adjust which statistics ANTS MP should collect. The default selection is a good, minimal set. It’s worth your time to browse through the charting options to examine other statistics that may also help you diagnose a particular problem. The more statistics ANTS MP collects, the longer it will take to collect statistics. So just turning everything on is probably a bad idea. But the option to selectively add in additional performance counters from the extensive list could be a very helpful thing for your memory profiling as it lets you see additional data that might provide clues about a particular problem that has been bothering you. ANTS MP integrates very nicely with all versions of Visual Studio that support plugins (i.e. all of the non-Express versions). Just note that if you choose “Profile Memory” from the “ANTS” menu that it will launch profiling for whichever project you have set as the Startup project. One quick tip from my experience so far using ANTS MP: if you want to properly understand your memory usage in an application you’ve written, first create an “empty” version of the type of project you are going to profile (a WPF application, an XNA game, etc.) and do a quick profiling session on that so that you know the baseline memory usage of the framework itself. By “empty” I mean just create a new project of that type in Visual Studio then compile it and run it with profiling – don’t do anything special or add in anything (except perhaps for any external libraries you’re planning to use). The first thing I tried ANTS MP out on was a demo XNA project of an editor that I’ve been working on for quite some time that involves a custom extension to XNA’s content pipeline. The first time I ran it and saw the unmanaged memory usage I was convinced I had some horrible bug that was creating extra copies of texture data (the demo project didn’t have a lot of texture data so when I saw a lot of unmanaged memory I instantly figured I was doing something wrong). Then I thought to run an empty project through and when I saw that the amount of unmanaged memory was virtually identical, it dawned on me that the CLR itself sits in unmanaged memory and that (thankfully) there was nothing wrong with my code! Quite a relief. Earlier, when discussing the overview video, I mentioned the API that lets you take snapshots from within your application. I gave it a quick trial and it’s very easy to integrate and make use of and is a really nice addition (especially for projects where you want to know what, if any, allocations there are in a specific, complicated section of code). The only concern I had was that if I hadn’t watched the overview video I might never have known it existed. Even then it took me five minutes of hunting around Red Gate’s website before I found the “Taking snapshots from your code" article that explains what DLL you need to add as a reference and what method of what class you should call in order to take an automatic snapshot (including the helpful warning to wrap it in a try-catch block since, under certain circumstances, it can raise an exception, such as trying to call it more than 5 times in 30 seconds. The difficulty in discovering and then finding information about the automatic snapshots API was one thing I thought could use improvement. Another thing I think would make it even better would be local copies of the webpages it links to. Although I’m generally always connected to the internet, I imagine there are more than a few developers who aren’t or who are behind very restrictive firewalls. For them (and for me, too, if my internet connection happens to be down), it would be nice to have those documents installed locally or to have the option to download an additional “documentation” package that would add local copies. Another thing that I wish could be easier to manage is the Filters area. Finding and setting individual filters is very easy as is understanding what those filter do. And breaking it up into three sections (basic, by object, and by reference) makes sense. But I could easily see myself running a long profiling session and forgetting that I had set some filter a long while earlier in a different filter section and then spending quite a bit of time trying to figure out why some problem that was clearly visible in the data wasn’t showing up in, e.g. the instance list before remembering to check all the filters for that one setting that was only culling a few things from view. Some sort of indicator icon next to the filter section names that appears you have at least one filter set in that area would be a nice visual clue to remind me that “oh yeah, I told it to only show objects on the Gen 2 heap! That’s why I’m not seeing those instances of the SuperMagic class!” Something that would be nice (but that Red Gate cannot really do anything about) would be if this could be used in Windows Phone 7 development. If Microsoft and Red Gate could work together to make this happen (even if just on the WP7 emulator), that would be amazing. Especially given the memory constraints that apps and games running on mobile devices need to work within, a good memory profiler would be a phenomenally helpful tool. If anyone at Microsoft reads this, it’d be really great if you could make something like that happen. Perhaps even a (subsidized) custom version just for WP7 development. (For XNA games, of course, you can create a Windows version of the game and use ANTS MP on the Windows version in order to get a better picture of your memory situation. For Silverlight on WP7, though, there’s quite a bit of educated guess work and WeakReference creation followed by forced collections in order to find the source of a memory problem.) The only other thing I found myself wanting was a “Back” button. Between my Windows Phone 7, Zune, and other things, I’ve grown very used to having a “back stack” that lets me just navigate back to where I came from. The ANTS MP interface is surprisingly easy to use given how much it lets you do, and once you start using it for any amount of time, you learn all of the different areas such that you know where to go. And it does remember the state of the areas you were previously in, of course. So if you go to, e.g., the Instance Retention Graph from the Class List and then return back to the Class List, it will remember which class you had selected and all that other state information. Still, a “Back” button would be a welcome addition to a future release. Bottom Line ANTS Memory Profiler is not an inexpensive tool. But my time is valuable. I can easily see ANTS MP saving me enough time tracking down memory problems to justify it on a cost basis. More importantly to me, knowing what is happening memory-wise in my programs and having the confidence that my code doesn’t have any hidden time bombs in it that will cause it to OOM if I leave it running for longer than I do when I spin it up real quickly for debugging or just to see how a new feature looks and feels is a good feeling. It’s a feeling that I like having and want to continue to have. I got the current version for free in order to review it. Having done so, I’ve now added it to my must-have tools and will gladly lay out the money for the next version when it comes out. It has a 14 day free trial, so if you aren’t sure if it’s right for you or if you think it seems interesting but aren’t really sure if it’s worth shelling out the money for it, give it a try.

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• The case of the phantom ADF developer (and other yarns)

  - by Chris Muir

  A few years of ADF experience means I see common mistakes made by different developers, some I regularly make myself.  This post is designed to assist beginners to Oracle JDeveloper Application Development Framework (ADF) avoid a common ADF pitfall, the case of the phantom ADF developer [add Scooby-Doo music here]. ADF Business Components - triggers, default table values and instead of views. Oracle's JDeveloper tutorials help with the A-B-Cs of ADF development, typically built on the nice 'n safe demo schema provided by with the Oracle database such as the HR demo schema. However it's not too long until ADF beginners, having built up some confidence from learning with the tutorials and vanilla demo schemas, start building ADF Business Components based upon their own existing database schema objects.  This is where unexpected problems can sneak in. The crime Developers may encounter a surprising error at runtime when editing a record they just created or updated and committed to the database, based on their own existing tables, namely the error: JBO-25014: Another user has changed the row with primary key oracle.jbo.Key[x] ...where X is the primary key value of the row at hand.  In a production environment with multiple users this error may be legit, one of the other users has updated the row since you queried it.  Yet in a development environment this error is just plain confusing.  If developers are isolated in their own database, creating and editing records they know other users can't possibly be working with, or all the other developers have gone home for the day, how is this error possible? There are no other users?  It must be the phantom ADF developer! [insert dramatic music here] The following picture is what you'll see in the Business Component Browser, and you'll receive a similar error message via an ADF Faces page: A false conclusion What can possibly cause this issue if it isn't our phantom ADF developer?  Doesn't ADF BC implement record locking, locking database records when the row is modified in the ADF middle-tier by a user?  How can our phantom ADF developer even take out a lock if this is the case?  Maybe ADF has a bug, maybe ADF isn't implementing record locking at all?  Shouldn't we see the error "JBO-26030: Failed to lock the record, another user holds the lock" as we attempt to modify the record, why do we see JBO-25014? : Let's verify that ADF is in fact issuing the correct SQL LOCK-FOR-UPDATE statement to the database. First we need to verify ADF's locking strategy.  It is determined by the Application Module's jbo.locking.mode property.  The default (as of JDev 11.1.1.4.0 if memory serves me correct) and recommended value is optimistic, and the other valid value is pessimistic. Next we need a mechanism to check that ADF is issuing the LOCK statements to the database.  We could ask DBAs to monitor locks with OEM, but optimally we'd rather not involve overworked DBAs in this process, so instead we can use the ADF runtime setting –Djbo.debugoutput=console.  At runtime this options turns on instrumentation within the ADF BC layer, which among a lot of extra detail displayed in the log window, will show the actual SQL statement issued to the database, including the LOCK statement we're looking to confirm. Setting our locking mode to pessimistic, opening the Business Components Browser of a JSF page allowing us to edit a record, say the CHARGEABLE field within a BOOKINGS record where BOOKING_NO = 1206, upon editing the record see among others the following log entries: [421] Built select: 'SELECT BOOKING_NO, EVENT_NO, RESOURCE_CODE, CHARGEABLE, MADE_BY, QUANTITY, COST, STATUS, COMMENTS FROM BOOKINGS Bookings'[422] Executing LOCK...SELECT BOOKING_NO, EVENT_NO, RESOURCE_CODE, CHARGEABLE, MADE_BY, QUANTITY, COST, STATUS, COMMENTS FROM BOOKINGS Bookings WHERE BOOKING_NO=:1 FOR UPDATE NOWAIT[423] Where binding param 1: 1206  As can be seen on line 422, in fact a LOCK-FOR-UPDATE is indeed issued to the database.  Later when we commit the record we see: [441] OracleSQLBuilder: SAVEPOINT 'BO_SP'[442] OracleSQLBuilder Executing, Lock 1 DML on: BOOKINGS (Update)[443] UPDATE buf Bookings>#u SQLStmtBufLen: 210, actual=62[444] UPDATE BOOKINGS Bookings SET CHARGEABLE=:1 WHERE BOOKING_NO=:2[445] Update binding param 1: N[446] Where binding param 2: 1206[447] BookingsView1 notify COMMIT ... [448] _LOCAL_VIEW_USAGE_model_Bookings_ResourceTypesView1 notify COMMIT ... [449] EntityCache close prepared statement ....and as a result the changes are saved to the database, and the lock is released. Let's see what happens when we use the optimistic locking mode, this time to change the same BOOKINGS record CHARGEABLE column again.  As soon as we edit the record we see little activity in the logs, nothing to indicate any SQL statement, let alone a LOCK has been taken out on the row. However when we save our records by issuing a commit, the following is recorded in the logs: [509] OracleSQLBuilder: SAVEPOINT 'BO_SP'[510] OracleSQLBuilder Executing doEntitySelect on: BOOKINGS (true)[511] Built select: 'SELECT BOOKING_NO, EVENT_NO, RESOURCE_CODE, CHARGEABLE, MADE_BY, QUANTITY, COST, STATUS, COMMENTS FROM BOOKINGS Bookings'[512] Executing LOCK...SELECT BOOKING_NO, EVENT_NO, RESOURCE_CODE, CHARGEABLE, MADE_BY, QUANTITY, COST, STATUS, COMMENTS FROM BOOKINGS Bookings WHERE BOOKING_NO=:1 FOR UPDATE NOWAIT[513] Where binding param 1: 1205[514] OracleSQLBuilder Executing, Lock 2 DML on: BOOKINGS (Update)[515] UPDATE buf Bookings>#u SQLStmtBufLen: 210, actual=62[516] UPDATE BOOKINGS Bookings SET CHARGEABLE=:1 WHERE BOOKING_NO=:2[517] Update binding param 1: Y[518] Where binding param 2: 1205[519] BookingsView1 notify COMMIT ... [520] _LOCAL_VIEW_USAGE_model_Bookings_ResourceTypesView1 notify COMMIT ... [521] EntityCache close prepared statement Again even though we're seeing the midtier delay the LOCK statement until commit time, it is in fact occurring on line 412, and released as part of the commit issued on line 419.  Therefore with either optimistic or pessimistic locking a lock is indeed issued. Our conclusion at this point must be, unless there's the unlikely cause the LOCK statement is never really hitting the database, or the even less likely cause the database has a bug, then ADF does in fact take out a lock on the record before allowing the current user to update it.  So there's no way our phantom ADF developer could even modify the record if he tried without at least someone receiving a lock error. Hmm, we can only conclude the locking mode is a red herring and not the true cause of our problem.  Who is the phantom? At this point we'll need to conclude that the error message "JBO-25014: Another user has changed" is somehow legit, even though we don't understand yet what's causing it. This leads onto two further questions, how does ADF know another user has changed the row, and what's been changed anyway? To answer the first question, how does ADF know another user has changed the row, the Fusion Guide's section 4.10.11 How to Protect Against Losing Simultaneous Updated Data , that details the Entity Object Change-Indicator property, gives us the answer: At runtime the framework provides automatic "lost update" detection for entity objects to ensure that a user cannot unknowingly modify data that another user has updated and committed in the meantime. Typically, this check is performed by comparing the original values of each persistent entity attribute against the corresponding current column values in the database at the time the underlying row is locked. Before updating a row, the entity object verifies that the row to be updated is still consistent with the current state of the database.  The guide further suggests to make this solution more efficient: You can make the lost update detection more efficient by identifying any attributes of your entity whose values you know will be updated whenever the entity is modified. Typical candidates include a version number column or an updated date column in the row.....To detect whether the row has been modified since the user queried it in the most efficient way, select the Change Indicator option to compare only the change-indicator attribute values. We now know that ADF BC doesn't use the locking mechanism at all to protect the current user against updates, but rather it keeps a copy of the original record fetched, separate to the user changed version of the record, and it compares the original record against the one in the database when the lock is taken out.  If values don't match, be it the default compare-all-columns behaviour, or the more efficient Change Indicator mechanism, ADF BC will throw the JBO-25014 error. This leaves one last question.  Now we know the mechanism under which ADF identifies a changed row, what we don't know is what's changed and who changed it? The real culprit What's changed?  We know the record in the mid-tier has been changed by the user, however ADF doesn't use the changed record in the mid-tier to compare to the database record, but rather a copy of the original record before it was changed.  This leaves us to conclude the database record has changed, but how and by who? There are three potential causes: Database triggers The database trigger among other uses, can be configured to fire PLSQL code on a database table insert, update or delete.  In particular in an insert or update the trigger can override the value assigned to a particular column.  The trigger execution is actioned by the database on behalf of the user initiating the insert or update action. Why this causes the issue specific to our ADF use, is when we insert or update a record in the database via ADF, ADF keeps a copy of the record written to the database.  However the cached record is instantly out of date as the database triggers have modified the record that was actually written to the database.  Thus when we update the record we just inserted or updated for a second time to the database, ADF compares its original copy of the record to that in the database, and it detects the record has been changed – giving us JBO-25014. This is probably the most common cause of this problem. Default values A second reason this issue can occur is another database feature, default column values.  When creating a database table the schema designer can define default values for specific columns.  For example a CREATED_BY column could be set to SYSDATE, or a flag column to Y or N.  Default values are only used by the database when a user inserts a new record and the specific column is assigned NULL.  The database in this case will overwrite the column with the default value. As per the database trigger section, it then becomes apparent why ADF chokes on this feature, though it can only specifically occur in an insert-commit-update-commit scenario, not the update-commit-update-commit scenario. Instead of trigger views I must admit I haven't double checked this scenario but it seems plausible, that of the Oracle database's instead of trigger view (sometimes referred to as instead of views).  A view in the database is based on a query, and dependent on the queries complexity, may support insert, update and delete functionality to a limited degree.  In order to support fully insertable, updateable and deletable views, Oracle introduced the instead of view, that gives the view designer the ability to not only define the view query, but a set of programmatic PLSQL triggers where the developer can define their own logic for inserts, updates and deletes. While this provides the database programmer a very powerful feature, it can cause issues for our ADF application.  On inserting or updating a record in the instead of view, the record and it's data that goes in is not necessarily the data that comes out when ADF compares the records, as the view developer has the option to practically do anything with the incoming data, including throwing it away or pushing it to tables which aren't used by the view underlying query for fetching the data. Readers are at this point reminded that this article is specifically about how the JBO-25014 error occurs in the context of 1 developer on an isolated database.  The article is not considering how the error occurs in a production environment where there are multiple users who can cause this error in a legitimate fashion.  Assuming none of the above features are the cause of the problem, and optimistic locking is turned on (this error is not possible if pessimistic locking is the default mode *and* none of the previous causes are possible), JBO-25014 is quite feasible in a production ADF application if 2 users modify the same record. At this point under project timelines pressure, the obvious fix for developers is to drop both database triggers and default values from the underlying tables.  However we must be careful that these legacy constructs aren't used and assumed to be in place by other legacy systems.  Dropping the database triggers or default value that the existing Oracle Forms  applications assumes and requires to be in place could cause unexpected behaviour and bugs in the Forms application.  Proficient software engineers would recognize such a change may require a partial or full regression test of the existing legacy system, a potentially costly and timely exercise, not ideal. Solving the mystery once and for all Luckily ADF has built in functionality to deal with this issue, though it's not a surprise, as Oracle as the author of ADF also built the database, and are fully aware of the Oracle database's feature set.  At the Entity Object attribute level, the Refresh After Insert and Refresh After Update properties.  Simply selecting these instructs ADF BC after inserting or updating a record to the database, to expect the database to modify the said attributes, and read a copy of the changed attributes back into its cached mid-tier record.  Thus next time the developer modifies the current record, the comparison between the mid-tier record and the database record match, and JBO-25014: Another user has changed" is no longer an issue. [Post edit - as per the comment from Oracle's Steven Davelaar below, as he correctly points out the above solution will not work for instead-of-triggers views as it relies on SQL RETURNING clause which is incompatible with this type of view] Alternatively you can set the Change Indicator on one of the attributes.  This will work as long as the relating column for the attribute in the database itself isn't inadvertently updated.  In turn you're possibly just masking the issue rather than solving it, because if another developer turns the Change Indicator back on the original issue will return.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, March 04, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, March 04, 2012Popular ReleasesWDTVHubGen - Adds Metadata, thumbnails and subtitles to WDTV Live Hubs: v2.1.2 (Maintenance Release): This release was added to add a quick feature to allow renaming the processed video file back to its original name as a "just in case" when you process all and it screws up the directory. This is a "right click" option in the menu over the file that is screwed up. I wouldn't download this unless you need this fix, or you just want the latest latest latest version. I am in the process of adding a lot of fixes and changes to the existing system and releasing it with an alternate interface, s...People's Note: People's Note 0.38: Version 0.38 allows you to choose "All Notebooks" to browse, search, and sync all your notebooks together. To install: copy the appropriate CAB file onto your WM device and run it.ASP.NET MVC Framework - Abstracting Data Annotations, HTML5, Knockout JS techs: Version 1.0: Please download the source code. I am not associating any dll for release.ExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.0: ExtAspNet - ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ?????????? ExtAspNet ????? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ??????????。 ExtAspNet ??????? JavaScript，?? CSS，?? UpdatePanel，?? ViewState，?? WebServices ???????。 ??????: IE 7.0, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 3.0, Opera 10.5, Safari 3.0+ ????：Apache License 2.0 (Apache) ??：http://extasp.net/ ??：http://bbs.extasp.net/ ??：http://extaspnet.codeplex.com/ ??：http://sanshi.cnblogs.com/ ????： +2012-03-04 v3.1.0 -??Hidden???????（〓?〓）。 -?PageManager??...AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.9.1: ?? ●AcDown??????????、??、??????，????1M，????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????????????????????????，???，???????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? ??????????????，??????????： ??"AcDo...Windows Phone Commands for VS2010: Version 1.0: Initial Release Version 1.0 Connect from device or emulator (Monitors the connection) Show Device information (Plataform, build , version, avaliable memory, total memory, architeture Manager installed applications (Launch, uninstall and explorer isolate storage files) Manager core applications (Launch blocked applications from emulator (Office, Calculator, alarm, calendar , etc) Manager blocked settings from emulator (Airplane Mode, Celullar Network, Wifi, etc) Deploy and update ap...DNN Metro7 style Skin package: Metro7 style Skin for DotNetNuke 06.01.00: Changes on Version 06.01.00 Fixed issue on GraySmallTitle container, that breaks the layout Fixed issue on Blue Metro7 Skin where the Search, Login, Register, Date is missing Fixed issue with the Version numbers on the target file Fixed issue where the jQuery and jQuery-UI files not deleted on upgrade from Version 01.00.00 Added a internal page where the Image Slider would be replaces with a BannerPaneMedia Companion: MC 3.433b Release: General More GUI tweaks (mostly imperceptible!) Updates for mc_com.exe TV The 'Watched' button has been re-instigated Added TV Menu sub-option to search ALL for new Episodes (includes locked shows) Movies Added 'Source' field (eg DVD, Bluray, HDTV), customisable in Advanced Preferences (try it out, let us know how it works!) Added HTML <<format>> tag with optional parameters for video container, source, and resolution (updated HTML tags to be added to Documentation shortly) Known Issu...Picturethrill: Version 2.3.2.0: Release includes Self-Update feature for Picturethrill. What that means for users is that they are always guaranteed to have a fresh copy of Picturethrill on their computers with all latest fixes. When Picturethrill adds a new website to get pictures from, you will get it too!Simple MVVM Toolkit for Silverlight, WPF and Windows Phone: Simple MVVM Toolkit v3.0.0.0: Added support for Silverlight 5.0 and Windows Phone 7.1. Upgraded project templates and samples. Upgraded installer. There are some new prerequisites required for this version, namely Silverlight 5 Tools, Expression Blend Preview for Silverlight 5 (until the SDK is released), Windows Phone 7.1 SDK. Because it is in the experimental band, I have also removed the dependency on the Silverlight Testing Framework. You can use it if you wish, but the Ria Services project template no longer uses ...CODE Framework: 4.0.20301: The latest version adds a number of new features to the WPF system (such as stylable and testable messagebox support) as well as various new features throughout the system (especially in the Utilities namespace).MyRouter (Virtual WiFi Router): MyRouter 1.0.1 (Beta): A friendlier User Interface. A logger file to catch exceptions so you may send it to use to improve and fix any bugs that may occur. A feedback form because we always love hearing what you guy's think of MyRouter. Check for update menu item for you to stay up to date will the latest changes. Facebook fan page so you may spread the word and share MyRouter with friends and family And Many other exciting features were sure your going to love!WPF Sound Visualization Library: WPF SVL 0.3 (Source, Binaries, Examples, Help): Version 0.3 of WPFSVL. This includes three new controls: an equalizer, a digital clock, and a time editor.Orchard Project: Orchard 1.4: Please read our release notes for Orchard 1.4: http://docs.orchardproject.net/Documentation/Orchard-1-4-Release-NotesFluentData -Micro ORM with a fluent API that makes it simple to query a database: FluentData version 1.2: New features: - QueryValues method - Added support for automapping to enumerations (both int and string are supported). Fixed 2 reported issues.NetSqlAzMan - .NET SQL Authorization Manager: 3.6.0.15: 3.6.0.15 28-Feb-2012 • Fix: The communication object, System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel, cannot be used for communication because it is in the Faulted state. Work Item 10435: http://netsqlazman.codeplex.com/workitem/10435 • Fix: Made StorageCache thread safe. Thanks to tangrl. • Fix: Members property of SqlAzManApplicationGroup is not functioning. Thanks to tangrl. Work Item 10267: http://netsqlazman.codeplex.com/workitem/10267 • Fix: Indexer are making database calls. Thanks to t...SCCM Client Actions Tool: Client Actions Tool v1.1: SCCM Client Actions Tool v1.1 is the latest version. It comes with following changes since last version: Added stop button to stop the ongoing process. Added action "Query update status". Added option "saveOnlineComputers" in config.ini to enable saving list of online computers from last session. Default value for "LatestClientVersion" set to SP2 R3 (4.00.6487.2157). Wuauserv service manual startup mode is considered healthy on Windows 7. Errors are now suppressed in checkReleases...SharpCompress - a fully native C# library for RAR, 7Zip, Zip, Tar, GZip, BZip2: SharpCompress 0.8: API Updates: SOLID Extract Method for Archives (7Zip and RAR). ExtractAllEntries method on Archive classes will extract archives as a streaming file. This can offer better 7Zip extraction performance if any of the entries are solid. The IsSolid method on 7Zip archives will return true if any are solid. Removed IExtractionListener was removed in favor of events. Unit tests show example. Bug fixes: PPMd passes tests plus other fixes (Thanks Pavel) Zip used to always write a Post Descri...SQL Live Monitor: SQL Live Monitor 1.31: A quick fix to make it this version work with SQL 2012. Version 2 already has 2012 working, but am still developing the UI in version 2, so this is just an interim fix to allow user to monitor SQL 2012.DotNet.Highcharts: DotNet.Highcharts 1.1 with Examples: Fixed small bug in JsonSerializer about the numbers represented as string. Fixed Issue 310: decimal values don't work Fixed Issue 345: Disable Animation Refactored Highcharts class. Implemented Issue 341: More charts on one page. Added new class Container which can combine and display multiple charts. Usage: new Container(new[] { chart1, chart2, chart3, chart4 }) Implemented Feature 302: Inside an UpdatePanel - Added method (InFunction) which create the Highchart inside JavaScript f...New ProjectsAddress Manager: Projet pour ma mémoireAkumuLogger: AkumuLogger is a configurable C++ logger for windows. Developed for educational purposes in association with the GoDevMental blog.ASP.NET MVC Framework - Abstracting Data Annotations, HTML5, Knockout JS techs: ASP.NET MVC Framework that abstracts Data Annotations, HTML5, Knockout JS technologies and gives super power to front end developer.BabySmash! Html5: HTML5 port of http://babysmash.codeplex.com/ using canvas, svg and audio.Business Solutions On SharePoint: A series of seed solutions for business solutions based on SharePoint 2010. First solution is an HR On-boarding solution.C# Psp Emulator: A C# Psp EmulatorClear Mine: The classic minesweeper game that implemented by WPF, trying to demonstrate a few practices in WPF programming to make application localized decoupled, extensible and support skin. DancingSite: It's time to dance.DynamicMVVM: Dynamic MVVM enables you to quickly build a functional MVVM application, based on WPF without ICommand and XAML and viewmodel Validation.flickerwin8: flicker client sample for windows 8Form and List Plus: Form and List plus 5.1.3 with more data typesHappyFunTimes :): wtf nigga ?Kavand WPF Kit: Kavand.WpfKit makes it easier for WPF developers to develop MVVM-based applications. It also contains some useful controls. It's developed in C#.NET 4Library Management System: ??????—??????MPTrackWP7: First attempt at Converting the ModPlug application written by Olivier Lapicue for Windows Phone 7 in C#My Note Pal: MyNotePal is a personal financial management tool on your Phone.Nhom: demolam nhomPrabor jQuery Plugins: Little but helpful jQuery plugins from Prabor teamReSharper GammaXaml Plugin: A plugin for JetBrains ReSharper 6.1 that enhances XAML editing and working with WPF and Silverlight in general.Road Trip 2012: Just my code for appharborSharePoint Optimizer: Tool to optimize SharePointYALV! - Yet Another Log4Net Viewer: YALV! is a log viewer for Log4Net that allow to compare multiple logs file simultaneously; include features like merging, filtering, open most recently used files, items sorting. It is a WPF Application based on .NET Framework 4.0 and written with C# language.

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• Another Marketing Conference, part one – the best morning sessions.

  - by Roger Hart

  Yesterday I went to Another Marketing Conference. I honestly can’t tell if the title is just tipping over into smug, but in the balance of things that doesn’t matter, because it was a good conference. There was an enjoyable blend of theoretical and practical, and enough inter-disciplinary spread to keep my inner dilettante grinning from ear to ear. Sure, there was a bumpy bit in the middle, with two back-to-back sales pitches and a rather thin overview of the state of the web. But the signal:noise ratio at AMC2012 was impressively high. Here’s the first part of my write-up of the sessions. It’s a bit of a mammoth. It’s also a bit of a mash-up of what was said and what I thought about it. I’ll add links to the videos and slides from the sessions as they become available. Although it was in the morning session, I’ve not included Vanessa Northam’s session on the power of internal comms to build brand ambassadors. It’ll be in the next roundup, as this is already pushing 2.5k words. First, the important stuff. I was keeping a tally, and nobody said “synergy” or “leverage”. I did, however, hear the term “marketeers” six times. Shame on you – you know who you are. 1 – Branding in a post-digital world, Graham Hales This initially looked like being a sales presentation for Interbrand, but Graham pulled it out of the bag a few minutes in. He introduced a model for brand management that was essentially Plan >> Do >> Check >> Act, with Do and Check rolled up together, and went on to stress that this looks like on overall business management model for a reason. Brand has to be part of your overall business strategy and metrics if you’re going to care about it at all. This was the first iteration of what proved to be one of the event’s emergent themes: do it throughout the stack or don’t bother. Graham went on to remind us that brands, in so far as they are owned at all, are owned by and co-created with our customers. Advertising can offer a message to customers, but they provide the expression of a brand. This was a preface to talking about an increasingly chaotic marketplace, with increasingly hard-to-manage purchase processes. Services like Amazon reviews and TripAdvisor (four presenters would make this point) saturate customers with information, and give them a kind of vigilante power to comment on and define brands. Consequentially, they experience a number of “moments of deflection” in our sales funnels. Our control is lessened, and failure to engage can negatively-impact buying decisions increasingly poorly. The clearest example given was the failure of NatWest’s “caring bank” campaign, where staff in branches, customer support, and online presences didn’t align. A discontinuity of experience basically made the campaign worthless, and disgruntled customers talked about it loudly on social media. This in turn presented an opportunity to engage and show caring, but that wasn’t taken. What I took away was that brand (co)creation is ongoing and needs monitoring and metrics. But reciprocally, given you get what you measure, strategy and metrics must include brand if any kind of branding is to work at all. Campaigns and messages must permeate product and service design. What that doesn’t mean (and Graham didn’t say it did) is putting Marketing at the top of the pyramid, and having them bawl demands at Product Management, Support, and Development like an entitled toddler. It’s going to have to be collaborative, and session 6 on internal comms handled this really well. The main thing missing here was substantiating data, and the main question I found myself chewing on was: if we’re building brands collaboratively and in the open, what about the cultural politics of trolling? 2 – Challenging our core beliefs about human behaviour, Mark Earls This was definitely the best show of the day. It was also some of the best content. Mark talked us through nudging, behavioural economics, and some key misconceptions around decision making. Basically, people aren’t rational, they’re petty, reactive, emotional sacks of meat, and they’ll go where they’re led. Comforting stuff. Examples given were the spread of the London Riots and the “discovery” of the mountains of Kong, and the popularity of Susan Boyle, which, in turn made me think about Per Mollerup’s concept of “social wayshowing”. Mark boiled his thoughts down into four key points which I completely failed to write down word for word: People do, then think – Changing minds to change behaviour doesn’t work. Post-rationalization rules the day. See also: mere exposure effects. Spock < Kirk - Emotional/intuitive comes first, then we rationalize impulses. The non-thinking, emotive, reactive processes run much faster than the deliberative ones. People are not really rational decision makers, so  intervening with information may not be appropriate. Maximisers or satisficers? – Related to the last point. People do not consistently, rationally, maximise. When faced with an abundance of choice, they prefer to satisfice than evaluate, and will often follow social leads rather than think. Things tend to converge – Behaviour trends to a consensus normal. When faced with choices people overwhelmingly just do what they see others doing. Humans are extraordinarily good at mirroring behaviours and receiving influence. People “outsource the cognitive load” of choices to the crowd. Mark’s headline quote was probably “the real influence happens at the table next to you”. Reference examples, word of mouth, and social influence are tremendously important, and so talking about product experiences may be more important than talking about products. This reminded me of Kathy Sierra’s “creating bad-ass users” concept of designing to make people more awesome rather than products they like. If we can expose user-awesome, and make sharing easy, we can normalise the behaviours we want. If we normalize the behaviours we want, people should make and post-rationalize the buying decisions we want.  Where we need to be: “A bigger boy made me do it” Where we are: “a wizard did it and ran away” However, it’s worth bearing in mind that some purchasing decisions are personal and informed rather than social and reactive. There’s a quadrant diagram, in fact. What was really interesting, though, towards the end of the talk, was some advice for working out how social your products might be. The standard technology adoption lifecycle graph is essentially about social product diffusion. So this idea isn’t really new. Geoffrey Moore’s “chasm” idea may not strictly apply. However, his concepts of beachheads and reference segments are exactly what is required to normalize and thus enable purchase decisions (behaviour change). The final thing is that in only very few categories does a better product actually affect purchase decision. Where the choice is personal and informed, this is true. But where it’s personal and impulsive, or in any way social, “better” is trumped by popularity, endorsement, or “point of sale salience”. UX, UCD, and e-commerce know this to be true. A better (and easier) experience will always beat “more features”. Easy to use, and easy to observe being used will beat “what the user says they want”. This made me think about the astounding stickiness of rational fallacies, “common sense” and the pathological willful simplifications of the media. Rational fallacies seem like they’re basically the heuristics we use for post-rationalization. If I were profoundly grimy and cynical, I’d suggest deploying a boat-load in our messaging, to see if they’re really as sticky and appealing as they look. 4 – Changing behaviour through communication, Stephen Donajgrodzki This was a fantastic follow up to Mark’s session. Stephen basically talked us through some tactics used in public information/health comms that implement the kind of behavioural theory Mark introduced. The session was largely about how to get people to do (good) things they’re predisposed not to do, and how communication can (and can’t) make positive interventions. A couple of things stood out, in particular “implementation intentions” and how they can be linked to goals. For example, in order to get people to check and test their smoke alarms (a goal intention, rarely actualized  an information campaign will attempt to link this activity to the clocks going back or forward (a strong implementation intention, well-actualized). The talk reinforced the idea that making behaviour changes easy and visible normalizes them and makes them more likely to succeed. To do this, they have to be embodied throughout a product and service cycle. Experiential disconnects undermine the normalization. So campaigns, products, and customer interactions must be aligned. This is underscored by the second section of the presentation, which talked about interventions and pre-conditions for change. Taking the examples of drug addiction and stopping smoking, Stephen showed us a framework for attempting (and succeeding or failing in) behaviour change. He noted that when the change is something people fundamentally want to do, and that is easy, this gets a to simpler. Coordinated, easily-observed environmental pressures create preconditions for change and build motivation. (price, pub smoking ban, ad campaigns, friend quitting, declining social acceptability) A triggering even leads to a change attempt. (getting a cold and panicking about how bad the cough is) Interventions can be made to enable an attempt (NHS services, public information, nicotine patches) If it succeeds – yay. If it fails, there’s strong negative enforcement. Triggering events seem largely personal, but messaging can intervene in the creation of preconditions and in supporting decisions. Stephen talked more about systems of thinking and “bounded rationality”. The idea being that to enable change you need to break through “automatic” thinking into “reflective” thinking. Disruption and emotion are great tools for this, but that is only the start of the process. It occurs to me that a great deal of market research is focused on determining triggers rather than analysing necessary preconditions. Although they are presumably related. The final section talked about setting goals. Marketing goals are often seen as deriving directly from business goals. However, marketing may be unable to deliver on these directly where decision and behaviour-change processes are involved. In those cases, marketing and communication goals should be to create preconditions. They should also consider priming and norms. Content marketing and brand awareness are good first steps here, as brands can be heuristics in decision making for choice-saturated consumers, or those seeking education. 5 – The power of engaged communities and how to build them, Harriet Minter (the Guardian) The meat of this was that you need to let communities define and establish themselves, and be quick to react to their needs. Harriet had been in charge of building the Guardian’s community sites, and learned a lot about how they come together, stabilize  grow, and react. Crucially, they can’t be about sales or push messaging. A community is not just an audience. It’s essential to start with what this particular segment or tribe are interested in, then what they want to hear. Eventually you can consider – in light of this – what they might want to buy, but you can’t start with the product. A community won’t cohere around one you’re pushing. Her tips for community building were (again, sorry, not verbatim): Set goals Have some targets. Community building sounds vague and fluffy, but you can have (and adjust) concrete goals. Think like a start-up This is the “lean” stuff. Try things, fail quickly, respond. Don’t restrict platforms Let the audience choose them, and be aware of their differences. For example, LinkedIn is very different to Twitter. Track your stats Related to the first point. Keeping an eye on the numbers lets you respond. They should be qualified, however. If you want a community of enterprise decision makers, headcount alone may be a bad metric – have you got CIOs, or just people who want to get jobs by mingling with CIOs? Build brand advocates Do things to involve people and make them awesome, and they’ll cheer-lead for you. The last part really got my attention. Little bits of drive-by kindness go a long way. But more than that, genuinely helping people turns them into powerful advocates. Harriet gave an example of the Guardian engaging with an aspiring journalist on its Q&A forums. Through a series of serendipitous encounters he became a BBC producer, and now enthusiastically speaks up for the Guardian community sites. Cultivating many small, authentic, influential voices may have a better pay-off than schmoozing the big guys. This could be particularly important in the context of Mark and Stephen’s models of social, endorsement-led, and example-led decision making. There’s a lot here I haven’t covered, and it may be worth some follow-up on community building. Thoughts I was quite sceptical of nudge theory and behavioural economics. First off it sounds too good to be true, and second it sounds too sinister to permit. But I haven’t done the background reading. So I’m going to, and if it seems to hold real water, and if it’s possible to do it ethically (Stephen’s presentations suggests it may be) then it’s probably worth exploring. The message seemed to be: change what people do, and they’ll work out why afterwards. Moreover, the people around them will do it too. Make the things you want them to do extraordinarily easy and very, very visible. Normalize and support the decisions you want them to make, and they’ll make them. In practice this means not talking about the thing, but showing the user-awesome. Glib? Perhaps. But it feels worth considering. Also, if I ever run a marketing conference, I’m going to ban speakers from using examples from Apple. Quite apart from not being consistently generalizable, it’s becoming an irritating cliché.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, January 05, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, January 05, 2011Popular ReleasesBloodSim: BloodSim - 1.3.2.0: - Simulation Log is now automatically disabled and hidden when running 10 or more iterations - Hit and Expertise are now entered by Rating, and include option for a Racial Expertise bonus - Added option for boss to use a periodic magic ability (Dragon Breath) - Added option for boss to periodically Enrage, gaining a Damage/Attack Speed buffTemporary Data Storage Folder: Temporary Data Storage Folder 0.3 Stable: With lots of features and bug fixes we are releasing stable 0.3 version. Just download it and check it out. Added Features: 1. Rename TDS Folder with a name of your choice 2. Control what to do on program termination 3. Move TDS Folder to a new locationASP.NET MVC CMS ( Using CommonLibrary.NET ): CommonLibrary.NET CMS 0.9.5 Alpha: CommonLibrary CMSA simple yet powerful CMS system in ASP.NET MVC 2 using C# 4.0. ActiveRecord based components for Blogs, Widgets, Pages, Parts, Events, Feedback, BlogRolls, Links Includes several widgets ( tag cloud, archives, recent, user cloud, links twitter, blog roll and more ) Built using the http://commonlibrarynet.codeplex.com framework. ( Uses TDD, DDD, Models/Entities, Code Generation ) Can run w/ In-Memory Repositories or Sql Server Database See Documentation tab for Ins...AllNewsManager.NET: AllNewsManager.NET 1.2.1: AllNewsManager.NET 1.2.1 It is a minor update from version 1.2Mini Memory Dump Diagnosis using Asp.Net: MiniDump HealthMonitor: Enable developers to generate mini memory dumps in case of unhandled exceptions or for specific exception scenarios without using any external tools , only using Asp.Net 2.0 and above. Many times in production , QA Servers the issues require post-mortem or low-level system debugging efforts. This Memory dump generator will help in those scenarios.EnhSim: EnhSim 2.2.9 BETA: 2.2.9 BETAThis release supports WoW patch 4.03a at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Added in the Gobl...xUnit.net - Unit Testing for .NET: xUnit.net 1.7 Beta: xUnit.net release 1.7 betaBuild #1533 Important notes for Resharper users: Resharper support has been moved to the xUnit.net Contrib project. Important note for TestDriven.net users: If you are having issues running xUnit.net tests in TestDriven.net, especially on 64-bit Windows, we strongly recommend you upgrade to TD.NET version 3.0 or later. This release adds the following new features: Added support for ASP.NET MVC 3 Added Assert.Equal(double expected, double actual, int precision)...Json.NET: Json.NET 4.0 Release 1: New feature - Added Windows Phone 7 project New feature - Added dynamic support to LINQ to JSON New feature - Added dynamic support to serializer New feature - Added INotifyCollectionChanged to JContainer in .NET 4 build New feature - Added ReadAsDateTimeOffset to JsonReader New feature - Added ReadAsDecimal to JsonReader New feature - Added covariance to IJEnumerable type parameter New feature - Added XmlSerializer style Specified property support New feature - Added ...StyleCop for ReSharper: StyleCop for ReSharper 5.1.14977.000: Prerequisites: ============== o Visual Studio 2008 / Visual Studio 2010 o ReSharper 5.1.1753.4 o StyleCop 4.4.1.2 Preview This release adds no new features, has bug fixes around performance and unhandled errors reported on YouTrack.DbDocument: DbDoc Initial Version: DbDoc Initial versionASP .NET MVC CMS (Content Management System): Atomic CMS 2.1.2: Atomic CMS 2.1.2 release notes Atomic CMS installation guide Kind Of Magic MSBuild Task: Beta 4: Update to keep up with latest bug fixes. To those who don't like Magic/NoMagic attributes, you may change these names in KindOfMagic.targets file: Change this line: <MagicTask Assembly="@(IntermediateAssembly)" References="@(ReferencePath)"/> to something like this: <MagicTask Assembly="@(IntermediateAssembly)" References="@(ReferencePath)" MagicAttribute="MyMagicAttribute" NoMagicAttribute="MyNoMagicAttribute"/>N2 CMS: 2.1: N2 is a lightweight CMS framework for ASP.NET. It helps you build great web sites that anyone can update. Major Changes Support for auto-implemented properties ({get;set;}, based on contribution by And Poulsen) All-round improvements and bugfixes File manager improvements (multiple file upload, resize images to fit) New image gallery Infinite scroll paging on news Content templates First time with N2? Try the demo site Download one of the template packs (above) and open the proj...Wii Backup Fusion: Wii Backup Fusion 1.0: - Norwegian translation - French translation - German translation - WBFS dump for analysis - Scalable full HQ cover - Support for log file - Load game images improved - Support for image splitting - Diff for images after transfer - Support for scrubbing modes - Search functionality for log - Recurse depth for Files/Load - Show progress while downloading game cover - Supports more databases for cover download - Game cover loading routines improvedAutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.5.1: Fix: Fixed a bug where pressing Save As would not select the Mastery Directory by default Unexpected errors are now always reported to the user before closing AutoLoL down.* Extracted champion data to Data directory** Added disclaimer to notify users this application has nothing to do with Riot Games Inc. Updated Codeplex image * An error report will be shown to the user which can help the developers to find out what caused the error, this should improve support ** We are working on ...TortoiseHg: TortoiseHg 1.1.8: TortoiseHg 1.1.8 is a minor bug fix release, with minor improvementsBlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.0: Get DotNetBlogEngine for 3 Months Free! Click Here for More Info 3 Months FREE – BlogEngine.NET Hosting – Click Here! If you want to set up and start using BlogEngine.NET right away, you should download the Web project. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. If you are upgrading from a previous version of BlogEngine.NET, please take a look at the Upgrading to BlogEngine.NET 2.0 instructions. To get started, be sure to check out our installatio...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts v3.6.6 Released: Hi, Today we are releasing final version of Visifire, v3.6.6 with the following new feature: * TextDecorations property is implemented in Title for Chart. * TitleTextDecorations property is implemented in Axis. * MinPointHeight property is now applicable for Column and Bar Charts. Also this release includes few bug fixes: * ToolTipText property of DataSeries was not getting applied from Style. * Chart threw exception if IndicatorEnabled property was set to true and Too...StyleCop Compliant Visual Studio Code Snippets: Visual Studio Code Snippets - January 2011: StyleCop Compliant Visual Studio Code Snippets Visual Studio 2010 provides C# developers with 38 code snippets, enhancing developer productivty and increasing the consistency of the code. Within this project the original code snippets have been refactored to provide StyleCop compliant versions of the original code snippets while also adding many new code snippets. Within the January 2011 release you'll find 82 code snippets to make you more productive and the code you write more consistent!...WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.2: Version: 2.0.0.2 (Milestone 2): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Remark The sample applications are using Microsoft’s IoC container MEF. However, the WPF Application Framework (WAF) doesn’t force you to use the same IoC container in your application. You can use ...New Projectsbsp4airplay: BSP files support for Airplay SDK. This project target is to support: - Quake 1 - Quake 2 - Quake 3 - HL 1 - HL 2 ClassyBlog - Personal Blogging Engine in ASP.NET MVC: A modern blogging engine for classy people.Cybernux Linux® Bulid Script: Cybernux Linux® Build Script is a set of bash scripts designed for usage within the Cybernux Linux® Project. Doing things like settup a repository, building and rebuilding packages for Cybernux Linux®, which uses Debian and portions of Debian repos combined with the Cybernux onesCybernux Linux® Multimedia Bulid Script: Cybernux Linux® Multia Build Script is a set of bash scripts designed for usage within the Cybernux Linux® Project. Doing things like settup a repository, building and rebuilding Multimedia packages for Cybernux Linux® Multimedia ExceptionMessageBox: ExceptionMessageBox is development of messagebox to show exception detail in your app like .NET unhandled exception dialog. More and better features and view, similar to Microsoft.ExceptionMessageBox from SQL Server, shall be added by contributors. This is developed in C# WPF.FractalZoom: FractalZoom is a fun little application that allows people to explore the fractal landscape of Julia sets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_set FSharpJump: Visual Studio 2010 Extension for F# source files. Pops up a window in the F# editor which outlines the namespaces, 'modules, types and "let bindings" in the current document. Pressing enter key on the selected list item will jump the caret to that line. GoJan: A web application that introduce deep infomations about travelling to japan, using DNN framework.List2Code: List2Code is very Simple Application that take a comma delimited list and runs it trough a template to create code that can be copied and pasted in your application. Its Developed in CSharp using WPF for the GUI.MicroNET Framework UAV: El proyecto UAV se realiza para controlar una avion de radio control a traves de .NET MicroFramework y permitir un vuelo autonomo. Mini Memory Dump Diagnosis using Asp.Net: Enable developers to generate mini memory dumps in case of unhandled exceptions or for specific exception scenarios without using any external tools , only using Asp.Net 2.0 and above. Many times in production , QA Servers the issues require detailed system debugging dumps.MultiConvert: console based utility primary to convert solid edge files into data exchange formats like *.stp and *.dxf. It's using the API of the original software and can't be run alone. The goal of this project is creating routines with desired pre-instructions for batch conversionsPDI 2009: Ferramenta para processamento digital de imagens.RoC: RoC is a mvc 3 razor based cms system. Also RoC use Composition, Policy Injection, EF 4 Model First, Windows Identity Foundation technologies. Now RoC is draft project and it'll be more strong in the futureShot In The Dark: Shot In The Dark is a multiplayer top-down 2D shooter framework developed in Flash/AS3.0, and uses the Nonoba Multiplayer API.SilveR - Online Statistics Application: SilveR is a Silverlight based online statistical analysis application written in c# with a WCF backend exposing an R serviceSimple Scheduler: Simple task scheduling application for windows built on top of Quartz.NETSj's Personal Arena: This project project hosting space is for all my personal projects I have been working on and will be working on. For any further details you can contact me at mukhs18[at]gmail[dot]comskymet: JAlquerqueThe Electric Clam: A web console for PowerShell. Features include: - near real-time web based console - multiple consoles and multiple users - shared or exclusive consoles - latest technology (jQuery, WCF Web Sockets, ASP.Net MVC 3 with Razor) - more...UCI Protocol Sniffer [UCIPlug]: UCIPlug allows dumping the UCI messages exchanged between a UCI compliant GUI (for ex., Chessbase) and an UCI engine (for ex., Rybka 2.2). UCIPlug is written in C# and is targeted at .NET 3.5 (though, can be recompiled for .NET 2.0). Umbraco for Windows Phone: Umbraco for Windows PhoneYetAnotherErp: This is a 2 years of work building yet another erp system that integrates CRM, SCM, complex inventory management, EDI. This software is powered using XAF Application Framework from Developer Express and Expand Framework. YetAnotherErp is a fully integrated solution.Your Store: “Your Store” is beta e-commerce webapplication created using ASP.NET MVC 2

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