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  • Reclaim Vertical UI Space by Adding a Toolbar to the Left or Right Side of Firefox

    - by Asian Angel
    Do you need to make the most efficient use possible of vertical UI space on your system’s screen, but have horizontal space to spare? Now you can shift the toolbar icons and their awesome functionality to a slim sidebar in Firefox using the Vertical Toolbar extension. As you can see above the sidebar even picked up on our Personas Theme to help it blend in nicely with the rest of the browser. You can access the options for the new toolbar by right clicking within the toolbar area. These are the options for the toolbar…you can choose the side of Firefox that works best for toolbar placement, adjust display, hiding, & animation settings, define how the buttons display, and add/remove additional buttons as desired. Once you open the Customize Toolbar Window make any desired additions or removals just like you would before on the top UI section and close when finished. Note: Works with Firefox 4.0b7pre – 4.0.* Vertical Toolbar [Mozilla Add-ons] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware Comix is an Awesome Comics Archive Viewer for Linux Get the MakeUseOf eBook Guide to Speeding Up Windows for Free Need Tech Support? Call the Star Wars Help Desk! [Video Classic] Reclaim Vertical UI Space by Adding a Toolbar to the Left or Right Side of Firefox Androidify Turns You into an Android-style Avatar Reader for Android Updates; Now with Feed Widgets and More

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  • How To: Filter as you type RadGridView inside RadComboBox for WPF and Silverlight

    Ive made small example on how to place RadGridView inside editable RadComboBox and filter the grid items as you type in the combo:   The easiest way to place any UI element in RadComboBox is to create single RadComboBoxItem and define desired Template: <telerikInput:RadComboBox Text="{Binding Text, Mode=TwoWay}" IsEditable="True" Height="25" Width="200"> <telerikInput:RadComboBox.Items> <telerikInput:RadComboBoxItem> <telerikInput:RadComboBoxItem.Template> <ControlTemplate> <telerikGrid:RadGridView x:Name="RadGridView1" ShowGroupPanel="False" CanUserFreezeColumns="False" RowIndicatorVisibility="Collapsed" IsReadOnly="True" IsFilteringAllowed="False" ItemsSource="{Binding Items}" Width="200" Height="150" SelectedItem="{Binding SelectedItem, Mode=TwoWay}"> </telerikGrid:RadGridView> </ControlTemplate> </telerikInput:RadComboBoxItem.Template> </telerikInput:RadComboBoxItem> </telerikInput:RadComboBox.Items> </telerikInput:RadComboBox> Now you can create small view model and bind ...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • GLSL compile error when accessing an array with compile-time constant index

    - by Benlitz
    I have this shader that works well on my computer (using an ATI HD 5700). I have a loop iterating between two constant values, which is, afaik, acceptable in a glsl shader. I write stuff in two arrays in this loop. #define NB_POINT_LIGHT 2 ... varying vec3 vVertToLight[NB_POINT_LIGHT]; varying vec3 vVertToLightWS[NB_POINT_LIGHT]; ... void main() { ... for (int i = 0; i < NB_POINT_LIGHT; ++i) { if (bPointLightUse[i]) { vVertToLight[i] = ConvertToTangentSpace(ShPointLightData[i].Position - WorldPos.xyz); vVertToLightWS[i] = ShPointLightData[i].Position - WorldPos.xyz; } } ... } I tried my program on another computer equipped with an nVidia GTX 560 Ti, and it fails to compile my shader. I get the following errors (94 and 95 are the lines of the two affectations) when calling glLinkProgram: Vertex info ----------- 0(94) : error C5025: lvalue in assignment too complex 0(95) : error C5025: lvalue in assignment too complex I think my code is valid, I don't know if this comes from a compiler bug, a conversion of my shader to another format from the compiler (nvidia looks to convert it to CG), or if I just missed something. I already tried to remove the if (bPointLightUse[i]) statement and I still have the same error. However, if I just write this: vVertToLight[0] = ConvertToTangentSpace(ShPointLightData[0].Position - WorldPos.xyz); vVertToLightWS[0] = ShPointLightData[0].Position - WorldPos.xyz; vVertToLight[1] = ConvertToTangentSpace(ShPointLightData[1].Position - WorldPos.xyz); vVertToLightWS[1] = ShPointLightData[1].Position - WorldPos.xyz; Then I don't have the error anymore, but it's really unconvenient so I would prefer to keep something loop-based. Here is the more detailled config that works: Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc. Renderer: ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series Version: 4.1.10750 Compatibility Profile Context Shading Language version: 4.10 And here is the more detailed config that doesn't work (should also be compatibility profile, although not indicated): Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation Renderer: GeForce GTX 560 Ti/PCI/SSE2 Version: 4.1.0 Shading Language version: 4.10 NVIDIA via Cg compiler

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  • Storing SCA Metadata in the Oracle Metadata Services Repository by Nicolás Fonnegra Martinez and Markus Lohn

    - by JuergenKress
    The advantages of using the Oracle Metadata Services Repository as a central storage for the metadata. SCA has been available since the release of the Oracle SOA Suite 11g. This technology combines and orchestrates several SOA components inside an SCA composite, making design, development, deployment, and maintenance easier. SCA development is metadata-driven, meaning that metadata artifacts, such as Web Services Description Language (WSDL), XML Schema Definition (XSD), XML, others, define the composite's behavior. With the increased number of composites and the dependencies among them, it became necessary to manage all the metadata in an adequate way. This article will address the advantages of using the Oracle Metadata Services (MDS) repository as a central storage for the metadata. The MDS repository is a central part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware landscape, managing the metadata for several technologies, such as Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF), Oracle WebCenter, and the Oracle SOA Suite. This article is divided into three parts. The first part provides an overview of SCA and MDS. The second part describes some MDS tasks that help in the management of the SCA metadata files inside the repository. The third part shows how to develop SCA composites in combination with an MDS repository. Read the full article here. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit  www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Technorati Tags: SCA Metadata. Metadata Services Repository,Nicolás Fonnegra Martinez,Markus Lohn,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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  • ASP.NET MVC: Using jQuery context menu with tables

    - by DigiMortal
    I needed to add context menus to some tables of my intranet application. After trying some components I found one that does everything I need and has no overhead. In this posting I will show you how to use jQuery context menu plug-in and how to attach it to tables. I found context menu plug-in by Chris Domigan and it was very easy to integrate to my application (when comparing some other plug-ins that work only on demo pages and in simple scenarios). Thanks, Chris, for great work! Now let’s use this context menu plug-in with table. Before we go on let’s see what we are trying to achieve. The following screenshot fragment shows simple context menu that we want to attach to our table. And when we click some menu option then something should happen too. :) Installing context menu plug-in Download plug-in (if download link is broken then open demo page and I think you know how to get plug-in from there). Copy jquery.contextmenu.js to your scripts folder. Include it in your masterpage or in the page where you plan to use context menus. Make sure plug-in is included correctly (use Firebug or some other tool you like). Save the page. Defining context menu Now let’s define context menu. Here is fragment on context menu definition from my code. <div class="contextMenu" id="myMenu1">     <ul>     <li id="email"><img src="/img/e-mail.png" />E-mail</li>     <li id="homepage"><img src="/img/homepage.png" />Homepage</li>     </ul> </div> div with id myMenu1 is container of context menu. Unordered list inside container defines items in context menu – simple and elegant! Adding context menu to table I have table with persons. It is simple HTML. I omitted commands column from this and the next table to keep them simple and more easily readable. <table>   <tr>     <th>Name</th>     <th>Short</th>     <th>Address</th>     <th>Mobile</th>     <th>E-mail</th>   </tr>   <% foreach(var person in Model.Results) { %>   <tr>     <td><%=person.FullName %></td>     <td><%=person.ShortName %></td>     <td><%=person.FullAddress %></td>     <td><%=person.Mobile %></td>     <td><%=person.Email %></td>   </tr>   <% } %> </table> To get context menu linked to table rows first cells we need to specify class for cells and ID. We need ID because we have to know later which ID has the row on which user selected something from context menu. <table>   <tr>     <th>Name</th>     <th>Short</th>     <th>Address</th>     <th>Mobile</th>     <th>E-mail</th>   </tr>   <% foreach(var person in Model.Results) { %>   <tr>     <td class="showContext" id="<%= person.Id %>"><%=person.FullName %></td>     <td><%=person.ShortName %></td>     <td><%=person.FullAddress %></td>     <td><%=person.Mobile %></td>     <td><%=person.Email %></td>   </tr>   <% } %> </table> Now we have only one thing to do – we have to write some code that attaches context menu to table cells. Catching context menu events Now we will make everything work. Relax, it is only couple of lines of code, thank to jQuery. <script type="text/javascript">   $(document).ready(function () {     $('td.showContext').contextMenu('myMenu1', {         bindings: {         'email': function (t) {           document.location.href = '/contact/sendmail/' + t.id;         },         'homepage': function (t) {           document.location.href = '/contact/homepage/' + t.id;         }       }     });   }); </script> I think that first lines doesn’t need any comments. Take a look at bindings. We gave ID to table cells because it is carried also to bound events. We can use also more complex ID-s if we have more than one table with context menus on our form. Now we are done. Save all files, compile solution, run it and try out how context menu works. Conclusion We saw than using jQuery with context menu component allows us easily create powerful context menus for our user interfaces. Context menu was very easy to define. We were also able to attach context menu to table and use ID of current row entity also in events of context menu. To achieve this we needed only some minor modifications in view and couple of lines of JavaScript.

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  • Need reccomendation for transferring ASP.NET MVC skills to PHP

    - by Tuck
    I am looking to translate my skills in .NET to PHP - specifically in regards to ASP.NET MVC. At work I am currently using .NET MVC 2.0 on a variety of projects and thoroughly enjoy the platform. Specifically I enjoy the very minimal configuration required to get a project up and running (just create the project, define routes, and start coding), as well as the ability for controller actions to return different items (i.e. ActionResult, JsonResult). Another piece I really like is the way the view/model interaction can be handled. For example I like being able to call return View(model) and having a view page (.aspx) load and having the full model object available to the view, regardless of the model type. I'm looking for a PHP implementation of MVC that is the most similiar to what I am already familiar with. I don't anything apart from the MVC functionality. I've looked at Zend, Symfony, CodeIgniter, etc. and, while they look like they'll be fun to play with in the future, they provide much more functionality than I need. I'd prefer to write my own DAL,form helpers, delegate handlers,authentication/ACL pieces, etc. In short, I just need something to handle the routing and view interactions and will worry about the model implementation myself. Can someone please point me to some lightweight code that accomplishes or comes close to accomplishing my objectives above. Or, can someone identify just the portions of a larger framework that do the same (again, I'm not currently interested in implementing something on a big framework, just the MVC portion and want to implement the model portion myself as much as possible). Thanks in advance...

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, April 26, 2010

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, April 26, 2010New Projects.Net 4.0 WPF Twitter Client: A .Net 4.0 Twitter client application built in WPF using PrismAop 权限管理 license授权: 授权管理 Aop应用asp.mvc example with ajax: asp.mvc example with ajaxBojinx: Flex 4 Framework and Management utilities IOC Container Flexible and powerful event management and handling Create your own Processors and Annotat...Browser Gallese: Il Browser Gallese serve per andare in internet quasi SICURO e GratiseaaCaletti: 2. Semester project @ ÅrhusEnki Char 2 BIN: A program that converts characters to binary and vice versaFsGame: A wrapper over xna to improve its usage from F#jouba Images Converter: Convert piles of images to all key formats at one go! Make quick adjustments - resize, rotate. Get your pictures ready to be printed or uploaded to...MVC2 RESTful Library: A RESTFul Library using ASP.NET MVC 2.0My Schedule Tool: Schedule can be used to create simple or complex schedules for executing tens. NAntDefineTasks: NAnt Define Tasks allows you to define NAnt tasks in terms of other NAnt tasks, instead of having to write any C# code. PowerShell Admin Modules: PAM supplies a number of PowerShell modules satisfying the needs of Windows administrators. By pulling together functions for adminsitering files a...Search Youtube Direct: Another project By URPROB This is a sample application that take search videos from youtube. The videos are shown with different attributes catagor...Simple Site Template: Simple Site Template 一个为了方便网站项目框架模板~Slaff's demo project: this is my demo projectSSIS Credit Card Number Validator 08 (CCNV08): Credit Card Number Validator 08 (CCNV08) is a Custom SSIS Data Flow Transformation Component for SQL Server 2008 that determines whether the given ...Su-Lekhan: Su-Lekhan is lite weight source code editor with refactoring support which is extensible to multiple languagesV-Data: V-Data es una herramienta de calidad de datos (Data Quality) que mejora considerablemente la calidad de la información disponible en cualquier sist...zy26: zy26 was here...New ReleasesActive Directory User Properties Change: Source Code v 1.0: Full Source Code + Database Creation SQL Script You need to change some values in web.config and DataAccess.vb. Hope you will get the most benefit!!Bojinx: Bojinx Core V4.5: V 4.5 Stable buildBrowser Gallese: Browser 1.0.0.9: Il Browser Gallese va su internet veloce,gratis e Sicuro dalla nascita Su questo sito ci sono i fle d'istallazione e il codice sorgente scritti con...CSS 360 Planetary Calendar: LCO: Documents for the LCO MilestoneGArphics: Backgrounds: GArphics examples converted into PNG-images with a resolution of 1680x1050.GArphics: Beta v0.8: Beta v0.8. Includes built-in examples and a lot of new settings.Helium Frog Animator: Helium Frog Flow Diagram: This file contains a flow diagram showing how the program functions. The image is in .bmp format.Highlighterr for Visual C++ 2010: Highlighterr for Visual C++ 2010 Test Release: Seems I'm updating this on a daily basis now, I keep finding things to add/fix. So stay tuned for updates! Current Version: 1.02 Now picks up chan...HTML Ruby: 6.22.2: Slightly improved performance on inserted ruby Cleaned up the code someiTuner - The iTunes Companion: iTuner 1.2.3767 Beta 3: Beta 3 is requires iTunes 9.1.0.79 or later A Librarian status panel showing active and queued Librarian scanners. This will be hidden behind the ...Jet Login Tool (JetLoginTool): Logout - 1.5.3765.28026: Changed: Will logout from Jet if the "Stop" button is hit Fixed: Bug where A notification is received that the engine has stopped, but it hasn't ...jouba Images Converter: Release: The first beta release for Images ConverterKeep Focused - an enhanced tool for Time Management using Pomodoro Technique: Release 0.3 Alpha: Release Notes (Release 0.3 Alpha) The alpha preview provides the basic functionality used by the Pomodoro Technique. Files 1. Keep Focused Exe...Mercurial to Team Foundation Server Work Item Hook: Version 0.2: Changes Include: Eliminates the need for the Suds package by hand-rolling its own soap implementation Ability to specify columns and computed col...Mews: Mews.Application V0.8: Installation InstuctionsNew Features16569 16571 Fixed Issues16668 Missing Features16567 Known Remaining IssuesLarge text-only articles require la...MiniTwitter: 1.12: MiniTwitter 1.12 更新内容 注意 このバージョンは開発中につき、正式リリースまでに複数回更新されることがあります。 また不安定かもしれませんので、新機能を試したいという方以外には 1.11 をお勧めします。 追加 List 機能に仮対応 タイムラインの振り分け条件として...Multiwfn: multiwfn1.3.1_binary: multiwfn1.3.1_binaryMultiwfn: multiwfn1.3.1_source: multiwfn1.3.1_sourceMVC2 RESTful Library: Source Code: VS2010 Source CodeMy Schedule Tool: MyScheduleTool 0.1: Initial version for MyScheduleTool. If you have any comments about the project, please let me know. My email is cmicmobile@gmail.comNestoria.NET: Nestoria.NET 0.8.1: Provides access to the Nestoria API. Documentation contains a basic getting started guide. Please visit Darren Edge's blog for ongoing developmen...OgmoXNA: OgmoXNA Binaries: Binary release libraries for OgmoXNA and OgmoXNA content pipeline extensions. Includes both Windows and Xbox360 binaries in separate directories.OgmoXNA: OgmoXNA Source: NOTE: THE ASSETS PROVIDED IN THE DEMO GAME DISTRIBUTED WITH THIS SOURCE ARE PROPERTY OF MATT THORSON, AND ARE NOT TO BE USED FOR ANY OTHER PROJECT...PokeIn Comet Ajax Library: PokeIn v07 x64: New FeaturesInstant Client Disconnected Detection Disable Server Push Technology OptionPokeIn Comet Ajax Library: PokeIn v07 x86: New FeaturesInstant Client Disconnected Detection Disable Server Push Technology OptionPowerShell Admin Modules: PAM 0.1: Version 0.1 includes share moduleRehost Image: 1.3.8: Added option to remove resolution/size text from the thumbnails of uploaded images in ImageShack. Fixed issue with FTP servers that give back jun...Site Directory for SharePoint 2010 (from Microsoft Consulting Services, UK): v1.3: Same as v1.2 with the following changes: Source Code and WSP updated to SharePoint 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 RTM releases Fields seperated into...SSIS Credit Card Number Validator 08 (CCNV08): CCNV08-1004Apr-R1: Version Released in Apr 2010SSIS Twitter Suite: v2.0: Upgraded Twitter Task to SSIS 2008sTASKedit: sTASKedit v0.7 Alpha: Features:Import of v56 (CN 1.3.6 v101) and v79 (PWI 1.4.2 v312) tasks.data files Export to v56 (Client) and v55 (Server) Clone & Delete Tasks ...StyleCop for ReSharper: StyleCop for ReSharper 5.0.14724.1: StyleCop for ReSharper 5.0.14724.1 =============== StyleCop 4.3.3.0 ReSharper 5.0.1659.36 Visual Studio 2008 / Visual Studio 2010 Fixes === G...Windows Live ID SSO Luminis Integration: Version 1.2: This new version has been updated for accomodating the new release of the Windows Live SSO Toolkit v4.2.WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 1.0.0.11: Version: 1.0.0.11 (Milestone 11): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requi...XAML Code Snippets addin for Visual Studio 2010: Release for VS 2010 RTM: Release built for Visual Studio 2010 RTMXP-More: 1.0: Release Notes Improved VM folder recognition Added About window Added input validation and exception handling If exist, vud and vpcbackupfile...Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitSilverlight ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: Databasepatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesPHPExcelMost Active Projectspatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryRawrGMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows Forms & PresentationBlogEngine.NETParticle Plot PivotNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleDotNetZip LibraryFarseer Physics EngineN2 CMSpatterns & practices: Composite WPF and Silverlight

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  • Oracle B2B 11g - Transport Layer Acknowledgement

    - by Nitesh Jain Oracle
    In Health Care Industry,Acknowledgement or Response should be sent back very fast. Once any message received, Acknowledgement should be sent back to TP. Oracle B2B provides a solution to send acknowledgement or Response from transport layer of mllp that is called as immediate acknowledgment. Immediate acknowledgment is generated and transmitted in the transport layer. It is an alternative to the functional acknowledgment, which generates after processing/validating the data in document layer. Oracle B2B provides four types of immediate acknowledgment: Default: Oracle B2B parses the incoming HL7 message and generates an acknowledgment from it. This mode uses the details from incoming payload and generate the acknowledgement based on incoming HL7 message control number, sender and application identification. By default, an Immediate ACK is a generic ACK. Trigger event can also sent back by using Map Trigger Event property. If mapping the MSH.10 of the ACK with the MSH.10 of the incoming business message is required, then enable the Map ACK Control ID property. Simple: B2B sends the predefined acknowledgment message to the sender without parsing the incoming message. Custom: Custom immediate Ack/Response mode gives a user to define their own response/acknowledgement. This is configurable using file in the Custom Immediate ACK File property. Negative: In this case, immediate ACK will be returned only in the case of exceptions.

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  • Parsing scripts that use curly braces

    - by Keikoku
    To get an idea of what I'm doing, I am writing a python parser that will parse directx .x text files. The problem I have deals with how the files are formatted. Although I'm writing it in python, I'm looking for general algorithms for dealing with this sort of parsing. .x files define data using templates. The format of a template is template_name { [some_data] } The goal I have is to parse the file line-by-line and whenever I come across a template, I will deal with it accordingly. My initial approach was to check if a line contains an opening or closing brace. If it's an open brace, then I will check what the template name is. Now the catch here is that the open brace doesn't have to occur on the same line as the template name. It could just as well be template_name { [some_data] } So if I were to use my "open brace exists" criteria, it won't work for any files that use the latter format. A lot of languages also use curly braces (though I'm not sure when people would be parsing the scripts themselves), so I was wondering if anyone knows how to accurately get the template name (or in some other languages, it could just as well be a function name, though there aren't any keywords to look for)

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  • General Overview of Design Pattern Types

    Typically most software engineering design patterns fall into one of three categories in regards to types. Three types of software design patterns include: Creational Type Patterns Structural Type Patterns Behavioral Type Patterns The Creational Pattern type is geared toward defining the preferred methods for creating new instances of objects. An example of this type is the Singleton Pattern. The Singleton Pattern can be used if an application only needs one instance of a class. In addition, this singular instance also needs to be accessible across an application. The benefit of the Singleton Pattern is that you control both instantiation and access using this pattern. The Structural Pattern type is a way to describe the hierarchy of objects and classes so that they can be consolidated into a larger structure. An example of this type is the Façade Pattern.  The Façade Pattern is used to define a base interface so that all other interfaces inherit from the parent interface. This can be used to simplify a number of similar object interactions into one single standard interface. The Behavioral Pattern Type deals with communication between objects. An example of this type is the State Design Pattern. The State Design Pattern enables objects to alter functionality and processing based on the internal state of the object at a given time.

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  • Problem loading shaders with slimdx

    - by Levi
    I'm attempting to load an FX file in slimdx, I've got this exact FX file loading and compiling fine with XNA 4.0 but I'm getting errors with slimdx, here's my code to load it. using SlimDX.Direct3D11; using SlimDX.D3DCompiler; public static Effect LoadFXShader(string path) { Effect shader; using (var bytecode = ShaderBytecode.CompileFromFile(path, null, "fx_2_0", ShaderFlags.None, EffectFlags.None)) shader = new Effect(Devices.GPU.GraphicsDevice, bytecode); return shader; } Here's the shader: #define TEXTURE_TILE_SIZE 16 struct VertexToPixel { float4 Position : POSITION; float2 TextureCoords: TEXCOORD1; }; struct PixelToFrame { float4 Color : COLOR0; }; //------- Constants -------- float4x4 xView; float4x4 xProjection; float4x4 xWorld; float4x4 preViewProjection; //float random; //------- Texture Samplers -------- Texture TextureAtlas; sampler TextureSampler = sampler_state { texture = <TextureAtlas>; magfilter = Point; minfilter = point; mipfilter=linear; AddressU = mirror; AddressV = mirror;}; //------- Technique: Textured -------- VertexToPixel TexturedVS( byte4 inPos : POSITION, float2 inTexCoords: TEXCOORD0) { inPos.w = 1; VertexToPixel Output = (VertexToPixel)0; float4x4 preViewProjection = mul (xView, xProjection); float4x4 preWorldViewProjection = mul (xWorld, preViewProjection); Output.Position = mul(inPos, preWorldViewProjection); Output.TextureCoords = inTexCoords / TEXTURE_TILE_SIZE; return Output; } PixelToFrame TexturedPS(VertexToPixel PSIn) { PixelToFrame Output = (PixelToFrame)0; Output.Color = tex2D(TextureSampler, PSIn.TextureCoords); if(Output.Color.a != 1) clip(-1); return Output; } technique Textured { pass Pass0 { VertexShader = compile vs_2_0 TexturedVS(); PixelShader = compile ps_2_0 TexturedPS(); } } Now this exact shader works fine in XNA, but in slimdx I get the error ChunkDefault.fx(28,27): error X3000: unrecognized identifier 'byte4'

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  • OpenGL: Where shoud I place shaders?

    - by mivic
    I'm trying to learn OpenGL ES 2.0 and I'm wondering what is the most common practice to "manage" shaders. I'm asking this question because in the examples I've found (like the one included in the API Demo provided with the android sdk), I usually see everything inside the GLRenderer class and I'd rather separate things so I can have, for example, a GLImage object that I can reuse whenever I want to draw a textured quad (I'm focusing on 2D only at the moment), just like I had in my OpenGL ES 1.0 code. In almost every example I've found, shaders are just defined as class attributes. For example: public class Square { public final String vertexShader = "uniform mat4 uMVPMatrix;\n" + "attribute vec4 aPosition;\n" + "attribute vec4 aColor;\n" + "varying vec4 vColor;\n" + "void main() {\n" + " gl_Position = uMVPMatrix * aPosition;\n" + " vColor = aColor;\n" + "}\n"; public final String fragmentShader = "precision mediump float;\n" + "varying vec4 vColor;\n" + "void main() {\n" + " gl_FragColor = vColor;\n" + "}\n"; // ... } I apologize in advance if some of these questions are dumb, but I've never worked with shaders before. 1) Is the above code the common way to define shaders (public final class properties)? 2) Should I have a separate Shader class? 3) If shaders are defined outside the class that uses them, how would I know the names of their attributes (e.g. "aColor" in the following piece of code) so I can bind them? colorHandle = GLES20.glGetAttribLocation(program, "aColor");

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  • Serve web application error messages from Http server [closed]

    - by licorna
    I have nginx as a http server with tomcat as a backend (using proxy_pass). It works great but I want to define my own error pages (404, 500, etc.) and that they are served by nginx and not tomcat. For example I have the following resource: https://domain.com/resource which doesn't exist. If I [GET] that URL then I get a Not Found message from Tomcat and not from nginx. What I want is that every time Tomcat responds with a 404 (or any other error message) nginx sends itself a message to the user: some html file accessible by nginx. The way I have my nginx server configured is very easy, just: location / { proxy_pass http://localhost:8080/<webapp-name>/; } And I've configured port 8080, which is tomcat, as not accessible from outside this machine. I don't think that using different location directives in nginx configuration will work, because there are some resources that depend on the URL: https://domain.com/customer/<non-existent-customer-name>/[GET] Will always return 404 (or any other error message), while: https://domain.com/customer/<existent-customer>/[GET] Will return anything different from 404 (the customer exists). Is there any way of serving Tomcat (Application Server) error messages with Nginx (http Server)? To check the message sent by the proxy_pass directive and act upon it?

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  • Platform Builder: Removing the Version Information from the Desktop

    - by Bruce Eitman
    The question of how to remove the version information from the desktop has been around for a long time. It came up again today. The question is about the string displayed on the desktop that looks like one of these, depending on the OS verison: Windows Embedded CE v6.00 (Build xxxx on xxxx) Microsoft Windows CE v5.00 (Build xxxx on xxxx) Microsoft Windows CE .NET v4.20 (Build xxxx on xxxx) I have looked into this in the past, but never really had a definitive answer. I have an answer now. The short answer is that the version information is displayed if the code is built without SHIP_BUILD defined.  I have to be honest, I have given this answer in the newsgroups in the past, but I still had questions. My questions have come from different build machines giving different results.   I have noticed that some engineer’s workstations would have the version information displayed, while others did not. I always stopped short of spending time investigating further because our release build machines never resulted in the version information being displayed. But, we do not typically define SHIP_BUILD for our releases because our customers want or need the debug output. So today I dug further into the question. The answer is actually quite simple. Microsoft builds the retail shell libraries with SHIP_BUILD defined and releases the libraries with Platform Builder. Normally the source code does not need to be built during Sysgen, so the libraries that Microsoft delivered are linked to create the Explorer shell. So typically the Explorer shell displays the version information for debug builds, but does not for retail builds. The trouble comes when the source code is forced to be rebuilt for a retail build. This might happen if an engineer uses “Build and Sysgen” or builds the Public\Shell folder from the command line with the clean flag. I am not sure if Build and Sysgen will cause the problem or not – I have never used Build and Sysgen and I strongly advise against using it (see Platform Builder: Don’t use Build and Sysgen) Copyright © 2010 – Bruce Eitman All Rights Reserved

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  • Metro: Creating a Master/Detail View with a WinJS ListView Control

    - by Stephen.Walther
    The goal of this blog entry is to explain how you can create a simple master/detail view by using the WinJS ListView and Template controls. In particular, I explain how you can use a ListView control to display a list of movies and how you can use a Template control to display the details of the selected movie. Creating a master/detail view requires completing the following four steps: Create the data source – The data source contains the list of movies. Declare the ListView control – The ListView control displays the entire list of movies. It is the master part of the master/detail view. Declare the Details Template control – The Details Template control displays the details for the selected movie. It is the details part of the master/detail view. Handle the selectionchanged event – You handle the selectionchanged event to display the details for a movie when a new movie is selected. Creating the Data Source There is nothing special about our data source. We initialize a WinJS.Binding.List object to represent a list of movies: (function () { "use strict"; var movies = new WinJS.Binding.List([ { title: "Star Wars", director: "Lucas"}, { title: "Shrek", director: "Adamson" }, { title: "Star Trek", director: "Abrams" }, { title: "Spiderman", director: "Raimi" }, { title: "Memento", director: "Nolan" }, { title: "Minority Report", director: "Spielberg" } ]); // Expose the data source WinJS.Namespace.define("ListViewDemos", { movies: movies }); })(); The data source is exposed to the rest of our application with the name ListViewDemos.movies. Declaring the ListView Control The ListView control is declared with the following markup: <div id="movieList" data-win-control="WinJS.UI.ListView" data-win-options="{ itemDataSource: ListViewDemos.movies.dataSource, itemTemplate: select('#masterItemTemplate'), tapBehavior: 'directSelect', selectionMode: 'single', layout: { type: WinJS.UI.ListLayout } }"> </div> The data-win-options attribute is used to set the following properties of the ListView control: itemDataSource – The ListView is bound to the list of movies which we created in the previous section. Notice that the ListView is bound to ListViewDemos.movies.dataSource and not just ListViewDemos.movies. itemTemplate – The item template contains the template used for rendering each item in the ListView. The markup for this template is included below. tabBehavior – This enumeration determines what happens when you tap or click on an item in the ListView. The possible values are directSelect, toggleSelect, invokeOnly, none. Because we want to handle the selectionchanged event, we set tapBehavior to the value directSelect. selectionMode – This enumeration determines whether you can select multiple items or only a single item. The possible values are none, single, multi. In the code above, this property is set to the value single. layout – You can use ListLayout or GridLayout with a ListView. If you want to display a vertical ListView, then you should select ListLayout. You must associate a ListView with an item template if you want to render anything interesting. The ListView above is associated with an item template named #masterItemTemplate. Here’s the markup for the masterItemTemplate: <div id="masterItemTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div class="movie"> <span data-win-bind="innerText:title"></span> </div> </div> This template simply renders the title of each movie. Declaring the Details Template Control The details part of the master/detail view is created with the help of a Template control. Here’s the markup used to declare the Details Template control: <div id="detailsTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div> <div> Title: <span data-win-bind="innerText:title"></span> </div> <div> Director: <span data-win-bind="innerText:director"></span> </div> </div> </div> The Details Template control displays the movie title and director.   Handling the selectionchanged Event The ListView control can raise two types of events: the iteminvoked and selectionchanged events. The iteminvoked event is raised when you click on a ListView item. The selectionchanged event is raised when one or more ListView items are selected. When you set the tapBehavior property of the ListView control to the value “directSelect” then tapping or clicking a list item raised both the iteminvoked and selectionchanged event. Tapping a list item causes the item to be selected and the item appears with a checkmark. In our code, we handle the selectionchanged event to update the movie details Template when you select a new movie. Here’s the code from the default.js file used to handle the selectionchanged event: var movieList = document.getElementById("movieList"); var detailsTemplate = document.getElementById("detailsTemplate"); var movieDetails = document.getElementById("movieDetails"); // Setup selectionchanged handler movieList.winControl.addEventListener("selectionchanged", function (evt) { if (movieList.winControl.selection.count() > 0) { movieList.winControl.selection.getItems().then(function (items) { // Clear the template container movieDetails.innerHTML = ""; // Render the template detailsTemplate.winControl.render(items[0].data, movieDetails); }); } }); The code above sets up an event handler (listener) for the selectionchanged event. The event handler first verifies that an item has been selected in the ListView (selection.count() > 0). Next, the details for the movie are rendered using the movie details Template (we created this Template in the previous section). The Complete Code For the sake of completeness, I’ve included the complete code for the master/detail view below. I’ve included both the default.html, default.js, and movies.js files. Here is the final code for the default.html file: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <title>ListViewMasterDetail</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> <!-- ListViewMasterDetail references --> <link href="/css/default.css" rel="stylesheet"> <script src="/js/default.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/movies.js"></script> <style type="text/css"> body { font-size: xx-large; } .movie { padding: 5px; } #masterDetail { display: -ms-box; } #movieList { width: 300px; margin: 20px; } #movieDetails { margin: 20px; } </style> </head> <body> <!-- Templates --> <div id="masterItemTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div class="movie"> <span data-win-bind="innerText:title"></span> </div> </div> <div id="detailsTemplate" data-win-control="WinJS.Binding.Template"> <div> <div> Title: <span data-win-bind="innerText:title"></span> </div> <div> Director: <span data-win-bind="innerText:director"></span> </div> </div> </div> <!-- Master/Detail --> <div id="masterDetail"> <!-- Master --> <div id="movieList" data-win-control="WinJS.UI.ListView" data-win-options="{ itemDataSource: ListViewDemos.movies.dataSource, itemTemplate: select('#masterItemTemplate'), tapBehavior: 'directSelect', selectionMode: 'single', layout: { type: WinJS.UI.ListLayout } }"> </div> <!-- Detail --> <div id="movieDetails"></div> </div> </body> </html> Here is the default.js file: (function () { "use strict"; var app = WinJS.Application; app.onactivated = function (eventObject) { if (eventObject.detail.kind === Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ActivationKind.launch) { WinJS.UI.processAll(); var movieList = document.getElementById("movieList"); var detailsTemplate = document.getElementById("detailsTemplate"); var movieDetails = document.getElementById("movieDetails"); // Setup selectionchanged handler movieList.winControl.addEventListener("selectionchanged", function (evt) { if (movieList.winControl.selection.count() > 0) { movieList.winControl.selection.getItems().then(function (items) { // Clear the template container movieDetails.innerHTML = ""; // Render the template detailsTemplate.winControl.render(items[0].data, movieDetails); }); } }); } }; app.start(); })();   Here is the movies.js file: (function () { "use strict"; var movies = new WinJS.Binding.List([ { title: "Star Wars", director: "Lucas"}, { title: "Shrek", director: "Adamson" }, { title: "Star Trek", director: "Abrams" }, { title: "Spiderman", director: "Raimi" }, { title: "Memento", director: "Nolan" }, { title: "Minority Report", director: "Spielberg" } ]); // Expose the data source WinJS.Namespace.define("ListViewDemos", { movies: movies }); })();   Summary The purpose of this blog entry was to describe how to create a simple master/detail view by taking advantage of the WinJS ListView control. We handled the selectionchanged event of the ListView control to display movie details when you select a movie in the ListView.

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  • A Look at the GridView's New Sorting Styles in ASP.NET 4.0

    Like every Web control in the ASP.NET toolbox, the GridView includes a variety of style-related properties, including CssClass, Font, ForeColor, BackColor, Width, Height, and so on. The GridView also includes style properties that apply to certain classes of rows in the grid, such as RowStyle, AlternatingRowStyle, HeaderStyle, and PagerStyle. Each of these meta-style properties offer the standard style properties (CssClass, Font, etc.) as subproperties. In ASP.NET 4.0, Microsoft added four new style properties to the GridView control: SortedAscendingHeaderStyle, SortedAscendingCellStyle, SortedDescendingHeaderStyle, and SortedDescendingCellStyle. These four properties are meta-style properties like RowStyle and HeaderStyle, but apply to column of cells rather than a row. These properties only apply when the GridView is sorted - if the grid's data is sorted in ascending order then the SortedAscendingHeaderStyle and SortedAscendingCellStyle properties define the styles for the column the data is sorted by. The SortedDescendingHeaderStyle and SortedDescendingCellStyle properties apply to the sorted column when the results are sorted in descending order. These four new properties make it easier to customize the appearance of the column by which the data is sorted. Using these properties along with a touch of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) it is possible to add up and down arrows to the sorted column's header to indicate whether the data is sorted in ascending or descending order. Likewise, these properties can be used to shade the sorted column or make its text bold. This article shows how to use these four new properties to style the sorted column. Read on to learn more! Read More >

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  • Using Microsoft's Chart Controls In An ASP.NET Application: Serializing Chart Data

    In most usage scenarios, the data displayed in a Microsoft Chart control comes from some dynamic source, such as from a database query. The appearance of the chart can be modified dynamically, as well; past installments in this article series showed how to programmatically customize the axes, labels, and other appearance-related settings. However, it is possible to statically define the chart's data and appearance strictly through the control's declarative markup. One of the demos examined in the Getting Started article rendered a column chart with seven columns whose labels and values were defined statically in the <asp:Series> tag's <Points> collection. Given this functionality, it should come as no surprise that the Microsoft Chart Controls also support serialization. Serialization is the process of persisting the state of a control or an object to some other medium, such as to disk. Deserialization is the inverse process, and involves taking the persisted data and recreating the control or object. With just a few lines of code you can persist the appearance settings, the data, or both to a file on disk or to any stream. Likewise, it takes just a few lines of codes to reconstitute a chart from the persisted information. This article shows how to use the Microsoft Chart Control's serialization functionality by examining a demo application that allows users to create custom charts, specifying the data to plot and some appearance-related settings. The user can then save a "snapshot" of this chart, which persists its appearance and data to a record in a database. From another page, users can view these saved chart snapshots. Read on to learn more! Read More >

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  • PASS 13 Dispatches: Memory Optimized = On

    - by Tony Davis
    I'm at the PASS Summit in Charlotte for the Day 1 keynote by Quentin Clarke, Corporate VP of the data platform group at Microsoft. He's talking about how SQL Server 2014 is “pushing boundaries” and first up is SQL Server 2014's In-Memory OLTP technology (former codename “hekaton”) It is a feature that provokes a lot of interest and for good reason as, without any need for application rewrites or hardware updates, it can enable us to ensure that an application can find in memory most or all of the data it needs, and can lead to huge improvements in processing times. A good recent hekaton use cases article talks about applications that need a “Shock Absorber” when either spikes or just a high rate of incoming workload (including data in ETL scenarios) become a primary bottleneck. To get a really deep look at this technology, I would check out David DeWitt's summit keynote tomorrow (it will be live streamed). Other than that, to get started I'd recommend Kalen Delaney's whitepaper. She offers a lot of insight into how it works and how to start to define memory-optimized tables, and natively compiled stored procedures. These memory-optimized tables uses completely optimistic multi-version concurrency control – no waiting on locks! After that, Tom LaRock has compiled a useful set of links to drill deeper, and includes one to Microsoft's AMR tool to help you gauge the tables that might benefit most. Tony.

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  • A Closable jQuery Plug-in

    - by Rick Strahl
    In my client side development I deal a lot with content that pops over the main page. Be it data entry ‘windows’ or dialogs or simple pop up notes. In most cases this behavior goes with draggable windows, but sometimes it’s also useful to have closable behavior on static page content that the user can choose to hide or otherwise make invisible or fade out. Here’s a small jQuery plug-in that provides .closable() behavior to most elements by using either an image that is provided or – more appropriately by using a CSS class to define the picture box layout. /* * * Closable * * Makes selected DOM elements closable by making them * invisible when close icon is clicked * * Version 1.01 * @requires jQuery v1.3 or later * * Copyright (c) 2007-2010 Rick Strahl * http://www.west-wind.com/ * * Licensed under the MIT license: * http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php Support CSS: .closebox { position: absolute; right: 4px; top: 4px; background-image: url(images/close.gif); background-repeat: no-repeat; width: 14px; height: 14px; cursor: pointer; opacity: 0.60; filter: alpha(opacity="80"); } .closebox:hover { opacity: 0.95; filter: alpha(opacity="100"); } Options: * handle Element to place closebox into (like say a header). Use if main element and closebox container are two different elements. * closeHandler Function called when the close box is clicked. Return true to close the box return false to keep it visible. * cssClass The CSS class to apply to the close box DIV or IMG tag. * imageUrl Allows you to specify an explicit IMG url that displays the close icon. If used bypasses CSS image styling. * fadeOut Optional provide fadeOut speed. Default no fade out occurs */ (function ($) { $.fn.closable = function (options) { var opt = { handle: null, closeHandler: null, cssClass: "closebox", imageUrl: null, fadeOut: null }; $.extend(opt, options); return this.each(function (i) { var el = $(this); var pos = el.css("position"); if (!pos || pos == "static") el.css("position", "relative"); var h = opt.handle ? $(opt.handle).css({ position: "relative" }) : el; var div = opt.imageUrl ? $("<img>").attr("src", opt.imageUrl).css("cursor", "pointer") : $("<div>"); div.addClass(opt.cssClass) .click(function (e) { if (opt.closeHandler) if (!opt.closeHandler.call(this, e)) return; if (opt.fadeOut) $(el).fadeOut(opt.fadeOut); else $(el).hide(); }); if (opt.imageUrl) div.css("background-image", "none"); h.append(div); }); } })(jQuery); The plugin can be applied against any selector that is a container (typically a div tag). The close image or close box is provided typically by way of a CssClass - .closebox by default – which supplies the image as part of the CSS styling. The default styling for the box looks something like this: .closebox { position: absolute; right: 4px; top: 4px; background-image: url(images/close.gif); background-repeat: no-repeat; width: 14px; height: 14px; cursor: pointer; opacity: 0.60; filter: alpha(opacity="80"); } .closebox:hover { opacity: 0.95; filter: alpha(opacity="100"); } Alternately you can also supply an image URL which overrides the background image in the style sheet. I use this plug-in mostly on pop up windows that can be closed, but it’s also quite handy for remove/delete behavior in list displays like this: you can find this sample here to look to play along: http://www.west-wind.com/WestwindWebToolkit/Samples/Ajax/AmazonBooks/BooksAdmin.aspx For closable windows it’s nice to have something reusable because in my client framework there are lots of different kinds of windows that can be created: Draggables, Modal Dialogs, HoverPanels etc. and they all use the client .closable plug-in to provide the closable operation in the same way with a few options. Plug-ins are great for this sort of thing because they can also be aggregated and so different components can pick and choose the behavior they want. The window here is a draggable, that’s closable and has shadow behavior and the server control can simply generate the appropriate plug-ins to apply to the main <div> tag: $().ready(function() { $('#ctl00_MainContent_panEditBook') .closable({ handle: $('#divEditBook_Header') }) .draggable({ dragDelay: 100, handle: '#divEditBook_Header' }) .shadow({ opacity: 0.25, offset: 6 }); }) The window is using the default .closebox style and has its handle set to the header bar (Book Information). The window is just closable to go away so no event handler is applied. Actually I cheated – the actual page’s .closable is a bit more ugly in the sample as it uses an image from a resources file: .closable({ imageUrl: '/WestWindWebToolkit/Samples/WebResource.axd?d=TooLongAndNastyToPrint', handle: $('#divEditBook_Header')}) so you can see how to apply a custom image, which in this case is generated by the server control wrapping the client DragPanel. More interesting maybe is to apply the .closable behavior to list scenarios. For example, each of the individual items in the list display also are .closable using this plug-in. Rather than having to define each item with Html for an image, event handler and link, when the client template is rendered the closable behavior is attached to the list. Here I’m using client-templating and the code that this is done with looks like this: function loadBooks() { showProgress(); // Clear the content $("#divBookListWrapper").empty(); var filter = $("#" + scriptVars.lstFiltersId).val(); Proxy.GetBooks(filter, function(books) { $(books).each(function(i) { updateBook(this); showProgress(true); }); }, onPageError); } function updateBook(book,highlight) { // try to retrieve the single item in the list by tag attribute id var item = $(".bookitem[tag=" +book.Pk +"]"); // grab and evaluate the template var html = parseTemplate(template, book); var newItem = $(html) .attr("tag", book.Pk.toString()) .click(function() { var pk = $(this).attr("tag"); editBook(this, parseInt(pk)); }) .closable({ closeHandler: function(e) { removeBook(this, e); }, imageUrl: "../../images/remove.gif" }); if (item.length > 0) item.after(newItem).remove(); else newItem.appendTo($("#divBookListWrapper")); if (highlight) { newItem .addClass("pulse") .effect("bounce", { distance: 15, times: 3 }, 400); setTimeout(function() { newItem.removeClass("pulse"); }, 1200); } } Here the closable behavior is applied to each of the items along with an event handler, which is nice and easy compared to having to embed the right HTML and click handling into each item in the list individually via markup. Ideally though (and these posts make me realize this often a little late) I probably should set up a custom cssClass to handle the rendering – maybe a CSS class called .removebox that only changes the image from the default box image. This example also hooks up an event handler that is fired in response to the close. In the list I need to know when the remove button is clicked so I can fire of a service call to the server to actually remove the item from the database. The handler code can also return false; to indicate that the window should not be closed optionally. Returning true will close the window. You can find more information about the .closable class behavior and options here: .closable Documentation Plug-ins make Server Control JavaScript much easier I find this plug-in immensely useful especial as part of server control code, because it simplifies the code that has to be generated server side tremendously. This is true of plug-ins in general which make it so much easier to create simple server code that only generates plug-in options, rather than full blocks of JavaScript code.  For example, here’s the relevant code from the DragPanel server control which generates the .closable() behavior: if (this.Closable && !string.IsNullOrEmpty(DragHandleID) ) { string imageUrl = this.CloseBoxImage; if (imageUrl == "WebResource" ) imageUrl = ScriptProxy.GetWebResourceUrl(this, this.GetType(), ControlResources.CLOSE_ICON_RESOURCE); StringBuilder closableOptions = new StringBuilder("imageUrl: '" + imageUrl + "'"); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(this.DragHandleID)) closableOptions.Append(",handle: $('#" + this.DragHandleID + "')"); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(this.ClientDialogHandler)) closableOptions.Append(",handler: " + this.ClientDialogHandler); if (this.FadeOnClose) closableOptions.Append(",fadeOut: 'slow'"); startupScript.Append(@" .closable({ " + closableOptions + "})"); } The same sort of block is then used for .draggable and .shadow which simply sets options. Compared to the code I used to have in pre-jQuery versions of my JavaScript toolkit this is a walk in the park. In those days there was a bunch of JS generation which was ugly to say the least. I know a lot of folks frown on using server controls, especially the UI is client centric as the example is. However, I do feel that server controls can greatly simplify the process of getting the right behavior attached more easily and with the help of IntelliSense. Often the script markup is easier is especially if you are dealing with complex, multiple plug-in associations that often express more easily with property values on a control. Regardless of whether server controls are your thing or not this plug-in can be useful in many scenarios. Even in simple client-only scenarios using a plug-in with a few simple parameters is nicer and more consistent than creating the HTML markup over and over again. I hope some of you find this even a small bit as useful as I have. Related Links Download jquery.closable West Wind Web Toolkit jQuery Plug-ins © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in jQuery   ASP.NET  JavaScript  

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  • Scripting with the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 Appliance

    - by Geoff Ongley
    The Sun ZFS Storage 7000 appliance has a user friendly and easy to understand graphical web based interface we call the "BUI" or "Browser User Interface".This interface is very useful for many tasks, but in some cases a script (or workflow) may be more appropriate, such as:Repetitive tasksTasks which work on (or obtain information about) a large number of shares or usersTasks which are triggered by an alert threshold (workflows)Tasks where you want a only very basic input, but a consistent output (workflows)The appliance scripting language is based on ECMAscript 3 (close to javascript). I'm not going to cover ECMAscript 3 in great depth (I'm far from an expert here), but I would like to show you some neat things you can do with the appliance, to get you started based on what I have found from my own playing around.I'm making the assumption you have some sort of programming background, and understand variables, arrays, functions to some extent - but of course if something is not clear, please let me know so I can fix it up or clarify it.Variable Declarations and ArraysVariablesECMAScript is a dynamically and weakly typed language. If you don't know what that means, google is your friend - but at a high level it means we can just declare variables with no specific type and on the fly.For example, I can declare a variable and use it straight away in the middle of my code, for example:projects=list();Which makes projects an array of values that are returned from the list(); function (which is usable in most contexts). With this kind of variable, I can do things like:projects.length (this property on array tells you how many objects are in it, good for for loops etc). Alternatively, I could say:projects=3;and now projects is just a simple number.Should we declare variables like this so loosely? In my opinion, the answer is no - I feel it is a better practice to declare variables you are going to use, before you use them - and given them an initial value. You can do so as follows:var myVariable=0;To demonstrate the ability to just randomly assign and change the type of variables, you can create a simple script at the cli as follows (bold for input):fishy10:> script("." to run)> run("cd /");("." to run)> run ("shares");("." to run)> var projects;("." to run)> projects=list();("." to run)> printf("Number of projects is: %d\n",projects.length);("." to run)> projects=152;("." to run)> printf("Value of the projects variable as an integer is now: %d\n",projects);("." to run)> .Number of projects is: 7Value of the projects variable as an integer is now: 152You can also confirm this behaviour by checking the typeof variable we are dealing with:fishy10:> script("." to run)> run("cd /");("." to run)> run ("shares");("." to run)> var projects;("." to run)> projects=list();("." to run)> printf("var projects is of type %s\n",typeof(projects));("." to run)> projects=152;("." to run)> printf("var projects is of type %s\n",typeof(projects));("." to run)> .var projects is of type objectvar projects is of type numberArraysSo you likely noticed that we have already touched on arrays, as the list(); (in the shares context) stored an array into the 'projects' variable.But what if you want to declare your own array? Easy! This is very similar to Java and other languages, we just instantiate a brand new "Array" object using the keyword new:var myArray = new Array();will create an array called "myArray".A quick example:fishy10:> script("." to run)> testArray = new Array();("." to run)> testArray[0]="This";("." to run)> testArray[1]="is";("." to run)> testArray[2]="just";("." to run)> testArray[3]="a";("." to run)> testArray[4]="test";("." to run)> for (i=0; i < testArray.length; i++)("." to run)> {("." to run)>    printf("Array element %d is %s\n",i,testArray[i]);("." to run)> }("." to run)> .Array element 0 is ThisArray element 1 is isArray element 2 is justArray element 3 is aArray element 4 is testWorking With LoopsFor LoopFor loops are very similar to those you will see in C, java and several other languages. One of the key differences here is, as you were made aware earlier, we can be a bit more sloppy with our variable declarations.The general way you would likely use a for loop is as follows:for (variable; test-case; modifier for variable){}For example, you may wish to declare a variable i as 0; and a MAX_ITERATIONS variable to determine how many times this loop should repeat:var i=0;var MAX_ITERATIONS=10;And then, use this variable to be tested against some case existing (has i reached MAX_ITERATIONS? - if not, increment i using i++);for (i=0; i < MAX_ITERATIONS; i++){ // some work to do}So lets run something like this on the appliance:fishy10:> script("." to run)> var i=0;("." to run)> var MAX_ITERATIONS=10;("." to run)> for (i=0; i < MAX_ITERATIONS; i++)("." to run)> {("." to run)>    printf("The number is %d\n",i);("." to run)> }("." to run)> .The number is 0The number is 1The number is 2The number is 3The number is 4The number is 5The number is 6The number is 7The number is 8The number is 9While LoopWhile loops again are very similar to other languages, we loop "while" a condition is met. For example:fishy10:> script("." to run)> var isTen=false;("." to run)> var counter=0;("." to run)> while(isTen==false)("." to run)> {("." to run)>    if (counter==10) ("." to run)>    { ("." to run)>            isTen=true;   ("." to run)>    } ("." to run)>    printf("Counter is %d\n",counter);("." to run)>    counter++;    ("." to run)> }("." to run)> printf("Loop has ended and Counter is %d\n",counter);("." to run)> .Counter is 0Counter is 1Counter is 2Counter is 3Counter is 4Counter is 5Counter is 6Counter is 7Counter is 8Counter is 9Counter is 10Loop has ended and Counter is 11So what do we notice here? Something has actually gone wrong - counter will technically be 11 once the loop completes... Why is this?Well, if we have a loop like this, where the 'while' condition that will end the loop may be set based on some other condition(s) existing (such as the counter has reached 10) - we must ensure that we  terminate this iteration of the loop when the condition is met - otherwise the rest of the code will be followed which may not be desirable. In other words, like in other languages, we will only ever check the loop condition once we are ready to perform the next iteration, so any other code after we set "isTen" to be true, will still be executed as we can see it was above.We can avoid this by adding a break into our loop once we know we have set the condition - this will stop the rest of the logic being processed in this iteration (and as such, counter will not be incremented). So lets try that again:fishy10:> script("." to run)> var isTen=false;("." to run)> var counter=0;("." to run)> while(isTen==false)("." to run)> {("." to run)>    if (counter==10) ("." to run)>    { ("." to run)>            isTen=true;   ("." to run)>            break;("." to run)>    } ("." to run)>    printf("Counter is %d\n",counter);("." to run)>    counter++;    ("." to run)> }("." to run)> printf("Loop has ended and Counter is %d\n", counter);("." to run)> .Counter is 0Counter is 1Counter is 2Counter is 3Counter is 4Counter is 5Counter is 6Counter is 7Counter is 8Counter is 9Loop has ended and Counter is 10Much better!Methods to Obtain and Manipulate DataGet MethodThe get method allows you to get simple properties from an object, for example a quota from a user. The syntax is fairly simple:var myVariable=get('property');An example of where you may wish to use this, is when you are getting a bunch of information about a user (such as quota information when in a shares context):var users=list();for(k=0; k < users.length; k++){     user=users[k];     run('select ' + user);     var username=get('name');     var usage=get('usage');     var quota=get('quota');...Which you can then use to your advantage - to print or manipulate infomation (you could change a user's information with a set method, based on the information returned from the get method). The set method is explained next.Set MethodThe set method can be used in a simple manner, similar to get. The syntax for set is:set('property','value'); // where value is a string, if it was a number, you don't need quotesFor example, we could set the quota on a share as follows (first observing the initial value):fishy10:shares default/test-geoff> script("." to run)> var currentQuota=get('quota');("." to run)> printf("Current Quota is: %s\n",currentQuota);("." to run)> set('quota','30G');("." to run)> run('commit');("." to run)> currentQuota=get('quota');("." to run)> printf("Current Quota is: %s\n",currentQuota);("." to run)> .Current Quota is: 0Current Quota is: 32212254720This shows us using both the get and set methods as can be used in scripts, of course when only setting an individual share, the above is overkill - it would be much easier to set it manually at the cli using 'set quota=3G' and then 'commit'.List MethodThe list method can be very powerful, especially in more complex scripts which iterate over large amounts of data and manipulate it if so desired. The general way you will use list is as follows:var myVar=list();Which will make "myVar" an array, containing all the objects in the relevant context (this could be a list of users, shares, projects, etc). You can then gather or manipulate data very easily.We could list all the shares and mountpoints in a given project for example:fishy10:shares another-project> script("." to run)> var shares=list();("." to run)> for (i=0; i < shares.length; i++)("." to run)> {("." to run)>    run('select ' + shares[i]);("." to run)>    var mountpoint=get('mountpoint');("." to run)>    printf("Share %s discovered, has mountpoint %s\n",shares[i],mountpoint);("." to run)>    run('done');("." to run)> }("." to run)> .Share and-another discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-project/and-anotherShare another-share discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-project/another-shareShare bob discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-projectShare more-shares-for-all discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-project/more-shares-for-allShare yep discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-project/yepWriting More Complex and Re-Usable CodeFunctionsThe best way to be able to write more complex code is to use functions to split up repeatable or reusable sections of your code. This also makes your more complex code easier to read and understand for other programmers.We write functions as follows:function functionName(variable1,variable2,...,variableN){}For example, we could have a function that takes a project name as input, and lists shares for that project (assuming we're already in the 'project' context - context is important!):function getShares(proj){        run('select ' + proj);        shares=list();        printf("Project: %s\n", proj);        for(j=0; j < shares.length; j++)        {                printf("Discovered share: %s\n",shares[i]);        }        run('done'); // exit selected project}Commenting your CodeLike any other language, a large part of making it readable and understandable is to comment it. You can use the same comment style as in C and Java amongst other languages.In other words, sngle line comments use://at the beginning of the comment.Multi line comments use:/*at the beginning, and:*/ at the end.For example, here we will use both:fishy10:> script("." to run)> // This is a test comment("." to run)> printf("doing some work...\n");("." to run)> /* This is a multi-line("." to run)> comment which I will span across("." to run)> three lines in total */("." to run)> printf("doing some more work...\n");("." to run)> .doing some work...doing some more work...Your comments do not have to be on their own, they can begin (particularly with single line comments this is handy) at the end of a statement, for examplevar projects=list(); // The variable projects is an array containing all projects on the system.Try and Catch StatementsYou may be used to using try and catch statements in other languages, and they can (and should) be utilised in your code to catch expected or unexpected error conditions, that you do NOT wish to stop your code from executing (if you do not catch these errors, your script will exit!):try{  // do some work}catch(err) // Catch any error that could occur{ // do something here under the error condition}For example, you may wish to only execute some code if a context can be reached. If you can't perform certain actions under certain circumstances, that may be perfectly acceptable.For example if you want to test a condition that only makes sense when looking at a SMB/NFS share, but does not make sense when you hit an iscsi or FC LUN, you don't want to stop all processing of other shares you may not have covered yet.For example we may wish to obtain quota information on all shares for all users on a share (but this makes no sense for a LUN):function getShareQuota(shar) // Get quota for each user of this share{        run('select ' + shar);        printf("  SHARE: %s\n", shar);        try        {                run('users');                printf("    %20s        %11s    %11s    %3s\n","Username","Usage(G)","Quota(G)","Quota(%)");                printf("    %20s        %11s    %11s    %4s\n","--------","--------","--------","----");                                users=list();                for(k=0; k < users.length; k++)                {                        user=users[k];                        getUserQuota(user);                }                run('done'); // exit user context        }        catch(err)        {                printf("    SKIPPING %s - This is NOT a NFS or CIFs share, not looking for users\n", shar);        }        run('done'); // done with this share}Running Scripts Remotely over SSHAs you have likely noticed, writing and running scripts for all but the simplest jobs directly on the appliance is not going to be a lot of fun.There's a couple of choices on what you can do here:Create scripts on a remote system and run them over sshCreate scripts, wrapping them in workflow code, so they are stored on the appliance and can be triggered under certain circumstances (like a threshold being reached)We'll cover the first one here, and then cover workflows later on (as these are for the most part just scripts with some wrapper information around them).Creating a SSH Public/Private SSH Key PairLog on to your handy Solaris box (You wouldn't be using any other OS, right? :P) and use ssh-keygen to create a pair of ssh keys. I'm storing this separate to my normal key:[geoff@lightning ~] ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 1024Generating public/private rsa key pair.Enter file in which to save the key (/export/home/geoff/.ssh/id_rsa): /export/home/geoff/.ssh/nas_key_rsaEnter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): Enter same passphrase again: Your identification has been saved in /export/home/geoff/.ssh/nas_key_rsa.Your public key has been saved in /export/home/geoff/.ssh/nas_key_rsa.pub.The key fingerprint is:7f:3d:53:f0:2a:5e:8b:2d:94:2a:55:77:66:5c:9b:14 geoff@lightningInstalling the Public Key on the ApplianceOn your Solaris host, observe the public key:[geoff@lightning ~] cat .ssh/nas_key_rsa.pub ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAIEAvYfK3RIaAYmMHBOvyhKM41NaSmcgUMC3igPN5gUKJQvSnYmjuWG6CBr1CkF5UcDji7v19jG3qAD5lAMFn+L0CxgRr8TNaAU+hA4/tpAGkjm+dKYSyJgEdMIURweyyfUFXoerweR8AWW5xlovGKEWZTAfvJX9Zqvh8oMQ5UJLUUc= geoff@lightningNow, copy and paste everything after "ssh-rsa" and before "user@hostname" - in this case, geoff@lightning. That is, this bit:AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAIEAvYfK3RIaAYmMHBOvyhKM41NaSmcgUMC3igPN5gUKJQvSnYmjuWG6CBr1CkF5UcDji7v19jG3qAD5lAMFn+L0CxgRr8TNaAU+hA4/tpAGkjm+dKYSyJgEdMIURweyyfUFXoerweR8AWW5xlovGKEWZTAfvJX9Zqvh8oMQ5UJLUUc=Logon to your appliance and get into the preferences -> keys area for this user (root):[geoff@lightning ~] ssh [email protected]: Last login: Mon Dec  6 17:13:28 2010 from 192.168.0.2fishy10:> configuration usersfishy10:configuration users> select rootfishy10:configuration users root> preferences fishy10:configuration users root preferences> keysOR do it all in one hit:fishy10:> configuration users select root preferences keysNow, we create a new public key that will be accepted for this user and set the type to RSA:fishy10:configuration users root preferences keys> createfishy10:configuration users root preferences key (uncommitted)> set type=RSASet the key itself using the string copied previously (between ssh-rsa and user@host), and set the key ensuring you put double quotes around it (eg. set key="<key>"):fishy10:configuration users root preferences key (uncommitted)> set key="AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAIEAvYfK3RIaAYmMHBOvyhKM41NaSmcgUMC3igPN5gUKJQvSnYmjuWG6CBr1CkF5UcDji7v19jG3qAD5lAMFn+L0CxgRr8TNaAU+hA4/tpAGkjm+dKYSyJgEdMIURweyyfUFXoerweR8AWW5xlovGKEWZTAfvJX9Zqvh8oMQ5UJLUUc="Now set the comment for this key (do not use spaces):fishy10:configuration users root preferences key (uncommitted)> set comment="LightningRSAKey" Commit the new key:fishy10:configuration users root preferences key (uncommitted)> commitVerify the key is there:fishy10:configuration users root preferences keys> lsKeys:NAME     MODIFIED              TYPE   COMMENT                                  key-000  2010-10-25 20:56:42   RSA    cycloneRSAKey                           key-001  2010-12-6 17:44:53    RSA    LightningRSAKey                         As you can see, we now have my new key, and a previous key I have created on this appliance.Running your Script over SSH from a Remote SystemHere I have created a basic test script, and saved it as test.ecma3:[geoff@lightning ~] cat test.ecma3 script// This is a test script, By Geoff Ongley 2010.printf("Testing script remotely over ssh\n");.Now, we can run this script remotely with our keyless login:[geoff@lightning ~] ssh -i .ssh/nas_key_rsa root@fishy10 < test.ecma3Pseudo-terminal will not be allocated because stdin is not a terminal.Testing script remotely over sshPutting it Together - An Example Completed Quota Gathering ScriptSo now we have a lot of the basics to creating a script, let us do something useful, like, find out how much every user is using, on every share on the system (you will recognise some of the code from my previous examples): script/************************************** Quick and Dirty Quota Check script ** Written By Geoff Ongley            ** 25 October 2010                    **************************************/function getUserQuota(usr){        run('select ' + usr);        var username=get('name');        var usage=get('usage');        var quota=get('quota');        var usage_g=usage / 1073741824; // convert bytes to gigabytes        var quota_g=quota / 1073741824; // as above        var quota_percent=0        if (quota > 0)        {                quota_percent=(usage / quota)*(100/1);        }        printf("    %20s        %8.2f           %8.2f           %d%%\n",username,usage_g,quota_g,quota_percent);        run('done'); // done with this selected user}function getShareQuota(shar){        //printf("DEBUG: selecting share %s\n", shar);        run('select ' + shar);        printf("  SHARE: %s\n", shar);        try        {                run('users');                printf("    %20s        %11s    %11s    %3s\n","Username","Usage(G)","Quota(G)","Quota(%)");                printf("    %20s        %11s    %11s    %4s\n","--------","--------","--------","--------");                                users=list();                for(k=0; k < users.length; k++)                {                        user=users[k];                        getUserQuota(user);                }                run('done'); // exit user context        }        catch(err)        {                printf("    SKIPPING %s - This is NOT a NFS or CIFs share, not looking for users\n", shar);        }        run('done'); // done with this share}function getShares(proj){        //printf("DEBUG: selecting project %s\n",proj);        run('select ' + proj);        shares=list();        printf("Project: %s\n", proj);        for(j=0; j < shares.length; j++)        {                share=shares[j];                getShareQuota(share);        }        run('done'); // exit selected project}function getProjects(){        run('cd /');        run('shares');        projects=list();                for (i=0; i < projects.length; i++)        {                var project=projects[i];                getShares(project);        }        run('done'); // exit context for all projects}getProjects();.Which can be run as follows, and will print information like this:[geoff@lightning ~/FISHWORKS_SCRIPTS] ssh -i ~/.ssh/nas_key_rsa root@fishy10 < get_quota_utilisation.ecma3Pseudo-terminal will not be allocated because stdin is not a terminal.Project: another-project  SHARE: and-another                Username           Usage(G)       Quota(G)    Quota(%)                --------           --------       --------    --------                  nobody            0.00            0.00        0%                 geoffro            0.05            0.00        0%                   Billy            0.10            0.00        0%                    root            0.00            0.00        0%            testing-user            0.05            0.00        0%  SHARE: another-share                Username           Usage(G)       Quota(G)    Quota(%)                --------           --------       --------    --------                    root            0.00            0.00        0%                  nobody            0.00            0.00        0%                 geoffro            0.05            0.49        9%            testing-user            0.05            0.02        249%                   Billy            0.10            0.29        33%  SHARE: bob                Username           Usage(G)       Quota(G)    Quota(%)                --------           --------       --------    --------                  nobody            0.00            0.00        0%                    root            0.00            0.00        0%  SHARE: more-shares-for-all                Username           Usage(G)       Quota(G)    Quota(%)                --------           --------       --------    --------                   Billy            0.10            0.00        0%            testing-user            0.05            0.00        0%                  nobody            0.00            0.00        0%                    root            0.00            0.00        0%                 geoffro            0.05            0.00        0%  SHARE: yep                Username           Usage(G)       Quota(G)    Quota(%)                --------           --------       --------    --------                    root            0.00            0.00        0%                  nobody            0.00            0.00        0%                   Billy            0.10            0.01        999%            testing-user            0.05            0.49        9%                 geoffro            0.05            0.00        0%Project: default  SHARE: Test-LUN    SKIPPING Test-LUN - This is NOT a NFS or CIFs share, not looking for users  SHARE: test-geoff                Username           Usage(G)       Quota(G)    Quota(%)                --------           --------       --------    --------                 geoffro            0.05            0.00        0%                    root            3.18           10.00        31%                    uucp            0.00            0.00        0%                  nobody            0.59            0.49        119%^CKilled by signal 2.Creating a WorkflowWorkflows are scripts that we store on the appliance, and can have the script execute either on request (even from the BUI), or on an event such as a threshold being met.Workflow BasicsA workflow allows you to create a simple process that can be executed either via the BUI interface interactively, or by an alert being raised (for some threshold being reached, for example).The basics parameters you will have to set for your "workflow object" (notice you're creating a variable, that embodies ECMAScript) are as follows (parameters is optional):name: A name for this workflowdescription: A Description for the workflowparameters: A set of input parameters (useful when you need user input to execute the workflow)execute: The code, the script itself to execute, which will be function (parameters)With parameters, you can specify things like this (slightly modified sample taken from the System Administration Guide):          ...parameters:        variableParam1:         {                             label: 'Name of Share',                             type: 'String'                  },                  variableParam2                  {                             label: 'Share Size',                             type: 'size'                  },execute: ....};  Note the commas separating the sections of name, parameters, execute, and so on. This is important!Also - there is plenty of properties you can set on the parameters for your workflow, these are described in the Sun ZFS Storage System Administration Guide.Creating a Basic Workflow from a Basic ScriptTo make a basic script into a basic workflow, you need to wrap the following around your script to create a 'workflow' object:var workflow = {name: 'Get User Quotas',description: 'Displays Quota Utilisation for each user on each share',execute: function() {// (basic script goes here, minus the "script" at the beginning, and "." at the end)}};However, it appears (at least in my experience to date) that the workflow object may only be happy with one function in the execute parameter - either that or I'm doing something wrong. As far as I can tell, after execute: you should only have a basic one function context like so:execute: function(){}To deal with this, and to give an example similar to our script earlier, I have created another simple quota check, to show the same basic functionality, but in a workflow format:var workflow = {name: 'Get User Quotas',description: 'Displays Quota Utilisation for each user on each share',execute: function () {        run('cd /');        run('shares');        projects=list();                for (i=0; i < projects.length; i++)        {                run('select ' + projects[i]);                shares=list('filesystem');                printf("Project: %s\n", projects[i]);                for(j=0; j < shares.length; j++)                {                        run('select ' +shares[j]);                        try                        {                                run('users');                                printf("  SHARE: %s\n", shares[j]);                                printf("    %20s        %11s    %11s    %3s\n","Username","Usage(G)","Quota(G)","Quota(%)");                                printf("    %20s        %11s    %11s    %4s\n","--------","--------","--------","-------");                                users=list();                                for(k=0; k < users.length; k++)                                {                                        run('select ' + users[k]);                                        username=get('name');                                        usage=get('usage');                                        quota=get('quota');                                        usage_g=usage / 1073741824; // convert bytes to gigabytes                                        quota_g=quota / 1073741824; // as above                                        quota_percent=0                                        if (quota > 0)                                        {                                                quota_percent=(usage / quota)*(100/1);                                        }                                        printf("    %20s        %8.2f   %8.2f   %d%%\n",username,usage_g,quota_g,quota_percent);                                        run('done');                                }                                run('done'); // exit user context                        }                        catch(err)                        {                        //      printf("    %s is a LUN, Not looking for users\n", shares[j]);                        }                        run('done'); // exit selected share context                }                run('done'); // exit project context        }        }};SummaryThe Sun ZFS Storage 7000 Appliance offers lots of different and interesting features to Sun/Oracle customers, including the world renowned Analytics. Hopefully the above will help you to think of new creative things you could be doing by taking advantage of one of the other neat features, the internal scripting engine!Some references are below to help you continue learning more, I'll update this post as I do the same! Enjoy...More information on ECMAScript 3A complete reference to ECMAScript 3 which will help you learn more of the details you may be interested in, can be found here:http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST-ARCH/ECMA-262,%203rd%20edition,%20December%201999.pdfMore Information on Administering the Sun ZFS Storage 7000The Sun ZFS Storage 7000 System Administration guide can be a useful reference point, and can be found here:http://wikis.sun.com/download/attachments/186238602/2010_Q3_2_ADMIN.pdf

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  • This is the End of Business as Usual...

    - by Michael Snow
    This week, we'll be hosting our last Social Business Thought Leader Series Webcast for 2012. Our featured guest this week will be Brian Solis of Altimeter Group. As we've been going through the preparations for Brian's webcast, it became very clear that an hour's time is barely scraping the surface of the depth of Brian's insights and analysis. Accordingly, in the spirit of sharing Brian's perspective for all of our readers, we'll be featuring guest posts all this week pulled from Brian's larger collection of blog postings on his own website. If you like what you've read here this week, we highly recommend digging deeper into his tome of wisdom. Guest Post by Brian Solis, Analyst, Altimeter Group as originally featured on his site with the minor change of the video addition at the beginning of the post. This is the End of Business as Usual and the Beginning of a New Era of Relevance - Brian Solis, Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group The Times They Are A-Changin’ Come gather ’round people Wherever you roam And admit that the waters Around you have grown And accept it that soon You’ll be drenched to the bone If your time to you Is worth savin’ Then you better start swimmin’ Or you’ll sink like a stone For the times they are a-changin’. - Bob Dylan I’m sure you are wondering why I chose lyrics to open this article. If you skimmed through them, stop here for a moment. Go back through the Dylan’s words and take your time. Carefully read, and feel, what it is he’s saying and savor the moment to connect the meaning of his words to the challenges you face today. His message is as important and true today as it was when they were first written in 1964. The tide is indeed once again turning. And even though the 60s now live in the history books, right here, right now, Dylan is telling us once again that this is our time to not only sink or swim, but to do something amazing. This is your time. This is our time. But, these times are different and what comes next is difficult to grasp. How people communicate. How people learn and share. How people make decisions. Everything is different now. Think about this…you’re reading this article because it was sent to you via email. Yet more people spend their online time in social networks than they do in email. Duh. According to Nielsen, of the total time spent online 22.5% are connecting and communicating in social networks. To put that in perspective, the time spent in the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube is greater than online gaming at 9.8%, email at 7.6% and search at 4%. Imagine for a moment if you and I were connected to one another in Facebook, which just so happens to be the largest social network in the world. How big? Well, Facebook is the size today of the entire Internet in 2004. There are over 1 billion people friending, Liking, commenting, sharing, and engaging in Facebook…that’s roughly 12% of the world’s population. Twitter has over 200 million users. Ever hear of tumblr? More time is spent on this popular microblogging community than Twitter. The point is that the landscape for communication and all that’s affected by human interaction is profoundly different than how you and I learned, shared or talked to one another yesterday. This transformation is only becoming more pervasive and, it’s not going back. Survival of the Fitting But social media is just one of the channels we can use to reach people. I must be honest. I’m as much a part of tomorrow as I am of yesteryear. It’s why I spend all of my time researching the evolution of media and its impact on business and culture. Because of you, I share everything I learn in newsletters, emails, blogs, Youtube videos, and also traditional books. I’m dedicated to helping everyone not only understand, but grasp the change that’s before you. Technologies such as social, mobile, virtual, augmented, et al compel us adapt our story and value proposition and extend our reach to be part of communities we don’t realize exist. The people who will keep you in business or running tomorrow are the very people you’re not reaching today. Before you continue to read on, allow me to clarify my point of view. My inspiration for writing this is to help you augment, not necessarily replace, the programs you’re running today. We must still reach those whom matter to us in the ways they prefer to be engaged. To reach what I call the connected consumer of Geneeration-C we must too reach them in the ways they wish to be engaged. And in all of my work, how they connect, talk to one another, influence others, and make decisions are not at all like the traditional consumers of the past. Nor are they merely the kids…the Millennial. Connected consumers are representative across every age group and demographic. As you can see, use of social networks, media sharing sites, microblogs, blogs, etc. equally span across Gen Y, Gen X, and Baby Boomers. The DNA of connected customers is indiscriminant of age or any other demographic for that matter. This is more about psychographics, the linkage of people through common interests (than it is their age, gender, education, nationality or level of income. Once someone is introduced to the marvels of connectedness, the sensation becomes a contagion. It touches and affects everyone. And, that’s why this isn’t going anywhere but normalcy. Social networking isn’t just about telling people what you’re doing. Nor is it just about generic, meaningless conversation. Today’s connected consumer is incredibly influential. They’re connected to hundreds and even thousands of other like-minded people. What they experiences, what they support, it’s shared throughout these networks and as information travels, it shapes and steers impressions, decisions, and experiences of others. For example, if we revisit the Nielsen research, we get an idea of just how big this is becoming. 75% spend heavily on music. How does that translate to the arts? I’d imagine the number is equally impressive. If 53% follow their favorite brand or organization, imagine what’s possible. Just like this email list that connects us, connections in social networks are powerful. The difference is however, that people spend more time in social networks than they do in email. Everything begins with an understanding of the “5 W’s and H.E.” – Who, What, When, Where, How, and to What Extent? The data that comes back tells you which networks are important to the people you’re trying to reach, how they connect, what they share, what they value, and how to connect with them. From there, your next steps are to create a community strategy that extends your mission, vision, and value and it align it with the interests, behavior, and values of those you wish to reach and galvanize. To help, I’ve prepared an action list for you, otherwise known as the 10 Steps Toward New Relevance: 1. Answer why you should engage in social networks and why anyone would want to engage with you 2. Observe what brings them together and define how you can add value to the conversation 3. Identify the influential voices that matter to your world, recognize what’s important to them, and find a way to start a dialogue that can foster a meaningful and mutually beneficial relationship 4. Study the best practices of not just organizations like yours, but also those who are successfully reaching the type of people you’re trying to reach – it’s benching marking against competitors and benchmarking against undefined opportunities 5. Translate all you’ve learned into a convincing presentation written to demonstrate tangible opportunity to your executive board, make the case through numbers, trends, data, insights – understanding they have no idea what’s going on out there and you are both the scout and the navigator (start with a recommended pilot so everyone can learn together) 6. Listen to what they’re saying and develop a process to learn from activity and adapt to interests and steer engagement based on insights 7. Recognize how they use social media and innovate based on what you observe to captivate their attention 8. Align your objectives with their objectives. If you’re unsure of what they’re looking for…ask 9. Invest in the development of content, engagement 10. Build a community, invest in values, spark meaningful dialogue, and offer tangible value…the kind of value they can’t get anywhere else. Take advantage of the medium and the opportunity! The reality is that we live and compete in a perpetual era of Digital Darwinism, the evolution of consumer behavior when society and technology evolve faster than our ability to adapt. This is why it’s our time to alter our course. We must connect with those who are defining the future of engagement, commerce, business, and how the arts are appreciated and supported. Even though it is the end of business as usual, it is the beginning of a new age of opportunity. The consumer revolution is already underway, and the question is: How do you better understand the role you play in this production as a connected or social consumer as well as business professional? Again, this is your time to define a new era of engagement and relevance. Originally written for The National Arts Marketing Project Connect with Brian via: Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Google+ --- Note from Michael: If you really like this post above - check out Brian's TEDTalk and his thought process for preparing it in this post: 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} http://www.briansolis.com/2012/10/tedtalk-reinventing-consumer-capitalism-screw-business-as-usual/

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  • Ignoring Robots - Or Better Yet, Counting Them Separately

    - by [email protected]
    It is quite common to have web sessions that are undesirable from the point of view of analytics. For example, when there are either internal or external robots that check the site's health, index it or just extract information from it. These robotic session do not behave like humans and if their volume is high enough they can sway the statistics and models.One easy way to deal with these sessions is to define a partitioning variable for all the models that is a flag indicating whether the session is "Normal" or "Robot". Then all the reports and the predictions can use the "Normal" partition, while the counts and statistics for Robots are still available.In order for this to work, though, it is necessary to have two conditions:1. It is possible to identify the Robotic sessions.2. No learning happens before the identification of the session as a robot.The first point is obvious, but the second may require some explanation. While the default in RTD is to learn at the end of the session, it is possible to learn in any entry point. This is a setting for each model. There are various reasons to learn in a specific entry point, for example if there is a desire to capture exactly and precisely the data in the session at the time the event happened as opposed to including changes to the end of the session.In any case, if RTD has already learned on the session before the identification of a robot was done there is no way to retract this learning.Identifying the robotic sessions can be done through the use of rules and heuristics. For example we may use some of the following:Maintain a list of known robotic IPs or domainsDetect very long sessions, lasting more than a few hours or visiting more than 500 pagesDetect "robotic" behaviors like a methodic click on all the link of every pageDetect a session with 10 pages clicked at exactly 20 second intervalsDetect extensive non-linear navigationNow, an interesting experiment would be to use the flag above as an output of a model to see if there are more subtle characteristics of robots such that a model can be used to detect robots, even if they fall through the cracks of rules and heuristics.In any case, the basic and simple technique of partitioning the models by the type of session is simple to implement and provides a lot of advantages.

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  • "Oracle", "Sybase", "SQL Server" vs just "SQL/JDBC" in the CV

    - by bobah
    How would you define a testable measure of the expertise that, if you're honest with yourself, lets you write in your CV words "Oracle", "Sybase", or "SQL Server" and not just "Relational Databases, SQL, JDBC" in your software developer's CV? What every XXX-developer (XXX - a vendor name) should know? The question is similar to http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2119859/questions-every-good-database-sql-developer-should-be-able-to-answer but is vendor-specific. Below is a start of the list as an example, demonstrate what kind of answers I am hoping to get. If you are expert in X then you know that Y (X - Y below): Sybase/SQL Server - they are very similar, Sybase is much more expensive Sybase/SQL Server - for Java you can use either native Sybase/JSQLDB driver or jTDS that is using TDS protocol and can connect to SQL Server as well, TDS traffic can be dumped and analyzed with hexdump command Sybase/SQL Server - for C++ you can use FreeTDS to connect to any, for Perl - same Sybase/SQL Server - a query can return multiple result sets and return codes, all need to be processes otherwise errors can happen Sybase/SQL Server - sp_help, sp_helptext Sybase/SQL Server - your tables/views/procedures are under DBName/dbo/... Sybase - for C++ on Linux you can use Sybase client API to connect (at least until recently) SQL Server - JDBC driver has a configurable transparent failover capability Oracle - for C++ Linux one can use OTLv4 that is a very powerful yet lightweight wrapper around Oracle client API Oracle compilation (contributors: ammoQ) PLSQL Java Stored Procedures '' is null Hierarchical Query Analytic Functions Oracle Text

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  • Wrong perspective is showing in Eclipse plugin project [closed]

    - by Arun Kumar Choudhary
    I am working in Eclipse Modeling Framework (Eclipse plugin development) in my project the tool(project i am working) provides three perspectives. 1.Accelerator Analyst perspective 2.Contract Validation and 3.Underwriter rules Editor... By default it starts with Contract validation perspective (As we define it within the plugin_customization.ini). However after switching to other perspective does not change the perspective shown... As all perspective (Class, Id and Name) is define only inside Plugin.XML as it is the task of org.eclipse.ui.perspective that that perspective name should be come forefront. Out of 10 7 times it is working fine but I am not getting why this is not working in that 3 cases. I am pasting my plugin.XML file <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <?eclipse version="3.0"?> <plugin> <extension id="RuleEditor.application" name="Accelerator Tooling" point="org.eclipse.core.runtime.applications"> <application> <run class="com.csc.fs.underwriting.product.UnderWritingApplication"> </run> </application> </extension> <extension point="org.eclipse.ui.perspectives"> <perspective class="com.csc.fs.underwriting.product.ContractValidationPerspective" icon="icons/javadevhov_obj.gif" id="com.csc.fs.underwriting.product.ContractValidationPerspective" name="Contract Validation"> </perspective> </extension> <extension point="org.eclipse.ui.perspectives"> <perspective class="com.csc.fs.underwriting.product.UnderwritingPerspective" icon="icons/javadevhov_obj.gif" id="com.csc.fs.underwriting.product.UnderwritingPerspective" name="Underwriting"> </perspective> </extension> <extension id="product" point="org.eclipse.core.runtime.products"> <product application="com.csc.fs.nba.underwriting.application.RuleEditor.application" name="Rule Configurator Workbench" description="%AppName"> <property name="introTitle" value="Welcome to Accelerator Tooling"/> <property name="introVer" value="%version"/> <property name="introBrandingImage" value="product:csclogo.png"/> <property name="introBrandingImageText" value="CSC FSG"/> <property name="preferenceCustomization" value="plugin_customization.ini"/> <property name="appName" value="Rule Configurator Workbench"> </property> </product> </extension> <extension point="org.eclipse.ui.intro"> <intro class="org.eclipse.ui.intro.config.CustomizableIntroPart" icon="icons/Welcome.gif" id="com.csc.fs.nba.underwriting.intro"/> <introProductBinding introId="com.csc.fs.nba.underwriting.intro" productId="com.csc.fs.nba.underwriting.application.product"/> <intro class="org.eclipse.ui.intro.config.CustomizableIntroPart" id="com.csc.fs.nba.underwriting.application.intro"> </intro> <introProductBinding introId="com.csc.fs.nba.underwriting.application.intro" productId="com.csc.fs.nba.underwriting.application.product"> </introProductBinding> </extension> <extension name="Accelerator Tooling" point="org.eclipse.ui.intro.config"> <config content="$nl$/intro/introContent.xml" id="org.eclipse.platform.introConfig.mytest" introId="com.csc.fs.nba.underwriting.intro"> <presentation home-page-id="news"> <implementation kind="html" os="win32,linux,macosx" style="$nl$/intro/css/shared.css"/> </presentation> </config> <config content="introContent.xml" id="com.csc.fs.nba.underwriting.application.introConfigId" introId="com.csc.fs.nba.underwriting.application.intro"> <presentation home-page-id="root"> <implementation kind="html" os="win32,linux,macosx" style="content/shared.css"> </implementation> </presentation> </config> </extension> <extension point="org.eclipse.ui.intro.configExtension"> <theme default="true" id="org.eclipse.ui.intro.universal.circles" name="%theme.name.circles" path="$nl$/themes/circles" previewImage="themes/circles/preview.png"> <property name="introTitle" value="Accelerator Tooling"/> <property name="introVer" value="%version"/> </theme> </extension> <extension point="org.eclipse.ui.ide.resourceFilters"> <filter pattern="*.dependency" selected="true"/> <filter pattern="*.producteditor" selected="true"/> <filter pattern="*.av" selected="true"/> <filter pattern=".*" selected="true"/> </extension> <extension point="org.eclipse.ui.splashHandlers"> <splashHandler class="com.csc.fs.nba.underwriting.application.splashHandlers.InteractiveSplashHandler" id="com.csc.fs.nba.underwriting.application.splashHandlers.interactive"> </splashHandler> <splashHandler class="com.csc.fs.underwriting.application.splashHandlers.InteractiveSplashHandler" id="com.csc.fs.underwriting.application.splashHandlers.interactive"> </splashHandler> <splashHandlerProductBinding productId="com.csc.fs.nba.underwriting.application" splashId="com.csc.fs.underwriting.application.splashHandlers.interactive"> </splashHandlerProductBinding> </extension> <extension id="com.csc.fs.pa.security" point="com.csc.fs.pa.security.implementation.secure"> <securityImplementation class="com.csc.fs.pa.security.PASecurityImpl"> </securityImplementation> </extension> <extension id="productApplication.security.pep" name="com.csc.fs.pa.producteditor.application.security.pep" point="com.csc.fs.pa.security.implementation.authorize"> <authorizationManager class="com.csc.fs.pa.security.authorization.PAAuthorizationManager"> </authorizationManager> </extension> <extension point="org.eclipse.ui.editors"> <editor class="com.csc.fs.underwriting.product.editors.PDFViewer" extensions="pdf" icon="icons/pdficon_small.gif" id="com.csc.fs.pa.producteditor.application.editors.PDFViewer" name="PDF Viewer"> </editor> </extension> <extension point="org.eclipse.ui.views"> <category id="com.csc.fs.pa.application.viewCategory" name="%category"> </category> </extension> <extension point="org.eclipse.ui.newWizards"> <category id="com.csc.fs.pa.application.newWizardCategory" name="%category"> </category> <category id="com.csc.fs.pa.application.newWizardInitialize" name="%initialize" parentCategory="com.csc.fs.pa.application.newWizardCategory"> </category> </extension> <extension point="com.csc.fs.pa.common.usability.addNewCategory"> <addNewCategoryId id="com.csc.fs.pa.application.newWizardCategory"> </addNewCategoryId> </extension> <!--extension point="org.eclipse.ui.activities"> <activity description="View Code Generation Option" id="com.csc.fs.pa.producteditor.application.viewCodeGen" name="ViewCodeGen"> </activity> <activityPatternBinding activityId="com.csc.fs.pa.producteditor.application.viewCodeGen" pattern="com.csc.fs.pa.bpd.vpms.codegen/com.csc.fs.pa.bpd.vpms.codegen.bpdCodeGenActionId"> </activityPatternBinding> Add New Product Definition Extension </extension--> </plugin> class="com.csc.fs.underwriting.product.editors.PDFViewer" extensions="pdf" icon="icons/pdficon_small.gif" id="com.csc.fs.pa.producteditor.application.editors.PDFViewer" name="PDF Viewer"> </editor> </extension> <extension point="org.eclipse.ui.views"> <category id="com.csc.fs.pa.application.viewCategory" name="%category"> </category> </extension> <extension point="org.eclipse.ui.newWizards"> <category id="com.csc.fs.pa.application.newWizardCategory" name="%category"> </category> <category id="com.csc.fs.pa.application.newWizardInitialize" name="%initialize" parentCategory="com.csc.fs.pa.application.newWizardCategory"> </category> </extension> <extension point="com.csc.fs.pa.common.usability.addNewCategory"> <addNewCategoryId id="com.csc.fs.pa.application.newWizardCategory"> </addNewCategoryId> </extension> <!--extension point="org.eclipse.ui.activities"> <activity description="View Code Generation Option" id="com.csc.fs.pa.producteditor.application.viewCodeGen" name="ViewCodeGen"> </activity> <activityPatternBinding activityId="com.csc.fs.pa.producteditor.application.viewCodeGen" pattern="com.csc.fs.pa.bpd.vpms.codegen/com.csc.fs.pa.bpd.vpms.codegen.bpdCodeGenActionId"> </activityPatternBinding> Add New Product Definition Extension </extension--> </plugin> Inside each class(the qualified classes in above xml) i did only hide and show the view according to perspective and that is working very fine.. Please provide any method that Eclipse provide so that I can override it in each classed so that it can work accordingly.

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  • My View on ASP.NET Web Forms versus MVC

    - by Ricardo Peres
    Introduction A lot has been said on Web Forms and MVC, but since I was recently asked about my opinion on the subject, here it is. First, I have to say that I really like both technologies and I don’t think any is going away – just remember SharePoint, which is built on top of Web Forms. I see them as complementary, targeting different needs and leveraging different skills. Let’s go through some of their differences. Rapid Application Development Rapid Application Development (RAD) is the development process by which you have an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), a visual design surface and a toolbox, and you drag components from the toolbox to the design surface and set their properties through a property inspector. It was introduced with some of the earliest Windows graphical IDEs such as Visual Basic and Delphi. With Web Forms you have RAD out of the box. Visual Studio offers a generally good (and extensible) designer for the layout of pages and web user controls. Designing a page may simply be about dragging controls from the toolbox, setting their properties and wiring up some events to event handlers, which are implemented in code behind .NET classes. Most people will be familiar with this kind of development and enjoy it. You can see what you are doing from the beginning. MVC also has designable pages – called views in MVC terminology – the problem is that they can be built using different technologies, some of which, at the moment (MVC 4) do not support RAD – Razor, for example. I believe it is just a matter of time for that to be implemented in Visual Studio, but it will mostly consist on HTML editing, and until that day comes, you have to live with source editing. Development Model Web Forms features the same development model that you are used to from Windows Forms and other similar technologies: events fired by controls and automatic persistence of their properties between postbacks. For that, it uses concepts such as view state, which some may love and others may hate, because it may be misused quite easily, but otherwise does its job well. Another fundamental concept is data binding, by which a collection of data can be fed to a control and have it render that data somehow – just thing of the GridView control. The focus is on the page, that’s where it all starts, and you can place everything in the same code behind class: data access, business logic, layout, etc. The controls take care of generating a great part of the HTML and JavaScript for you. With MVC there is no free lunch when it comes to data persistence between requests, you have to implement it yourself. As for event handling, that is at the core of MVC, in the form of controllers and action methods, you just don’t think of them as event handlers. In MVC you need to think more in HTTP terms, so action methods such as POST and GET are relevant to you, and may write actions to handle one or the other. Also of crucial importance is model binding: the way by which MVC converts your posted data into a .NET class. This is something that ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms has introduced as well, but it is a cornerstone in MVC. MVC also has built-in validation of these .NET classes, which out of the box uses the Data Annotations API. You have full control of the generated HTML - except for that coming from the helper methods, usually small fragments - which requires a greater familiarity with the specifications. You normally rely much more on JavaScript APIs, they are even included in the Visual Studio template, that is because much less is done for you. Reuse It is difficult to accept a professional company/project that does not employ reuse. It can save a lot of time thus cutting costs significantly. Code reused in several projects matures as time goes by and helps developers learn from past experiences. ASP.NET Web Forms was built with reuse in mind, in the form of controls. Controls encapsulate functionality and are generally portable from project to project (with the notable exception of web user controls, those with an associated .ASCX markup file). ASP.NET has dozens of controls and it is very easy to develop new ones, so I believe this is a great advantage. A control can inject JavaScript code and external references as well as generate HTML an CSS. MVC on the other hand does not use controls – it is possible to use them, with some view engines like ASPX, but it is just not advisable because it breaks the flow – where do Init, Load, PreRender, etc, fit? The most similar to controls is extension methods, or helpers. They serve the same purpose – generating HTML, CSS or JavaScript – and can be reused between different projects. What differentiates them from controls is that there is no inheritance and no context – an extension method is just a static method which doesn’t know where it is being called. You also have partial views, which you can reuse in the same project, but there is no inheritance as well. This, in my view, is a weakness of MVC. Architecture Both technologies are highly extensible. I have writtenstarted writing a series of posts on ASP.NET Web Forms extensibility and will probably write another series on MVC extensibility as well. A number of scenarios are covered in any of these models, and some extensibility points apply to both, because, of course both stand upon ASP.NET. With Web Forms, if you’re like me, you start by defining you master pages, pages and controls, with some helper classes to glue everything. You may as well throw in some JavaScript, but probably you’re main work will be with plain old .NET code. The controls you define have the chance to inject JavaScript code and references, through either the ScriptManager or the page’s ClientScript object, as well as generating HTML and CSS code. The master page and page model with code behind classes offer a number of “hooks” by which you can change the normal way of things, for example, in a page you can access any control on the master page, add script or stylesheet references to its head and even change the page’s title. Also, with Web Forms, you typically have URLs in the form “/SomePath/SomePage.aspx?SomeParameter=SomeValue”, which isn’t really SEO friendly, no to mention the HTML that some controls produce, far from standards, optimization and best practices. In MVC, you also normally start by defining the master page (or layout) and views, which are the visible parts, and then define controllers on separate files. These controllers do not know anything about the views, except the names and types of the parameters that will be passed to and from them. The controller will be responsible for the data access and business logic, eventually relying on additional classes for this purpose. On a controller you only receive parameters and return a result, which may be a request for the rendering of a view, a redirection to another URL or a JSON object, to name just a few. The controller class does not know anything about the web, so you can effectively reuse it in a non-web project. This separation and the lack of programmatic access to the UI elements, makes it very difficult to implement, for example, something like SharePoint with MVC. OK, I know about Orchard, but it isn’t really a general purpose development framework, but instead, a CMS that happens to use MVC. Not having controls render HTML for you gives you in turn much more control over it – it is your responsibility to create it, which you can either consider a blessing or a curse, in the later case, you probably shouldn’t be using MVC at all. Also MVC URLs tend to be much more SEO-oriented, if you design your controllers and actions properly. Testing In a well defined architecture, you should separate business logic, data access logic and presentation logic, because these are all different things and it might even be the need to switch one implementation for another: for example, you might design a system which includes a data access layer, a business logic layer and two presentation layers, one on top of ASP.NET and the other with WPF; and the data access layer might be implemented first using NHibernate and later on switched for Entity Framework Code First. These changes are not that rare, so care should be taken in designing the system to make them possible. Web Forms are difficult to test, because it relies on event handlers which are only fired in web contexts, when a form is submitted or a page is requested. You can call them with reflection, but you have to set up a number of mocking objects first, HttpContext.Current first coming to my mind. MVC, on the other hand, makes testing controllers a breeze, so much that it even includes a template option for generating boilerplate unit test classes up from start. A well designed – from the unit test point of view - controller will receive everything it needs to work as parameters to its action methods, so you can pass whatever values you need very easily. That doesn’t mean, of course, that everything can be tested: views, for instance, are difficult to test without actually accessing the site, but MVC offers the possibility to compile views at build time, so that, at least, you know you don’t have syntax errors beforehand. Myths Some popular but unfounded myths around MVC include: You cannot use controls in MVC: not true, actually, you can, at least with the Web Forms (ASPX) view engine; the declaration and usage is exactly the same as with Web Forms; You cannot specify a base class for a view: with the ASPX view engine you can use the Inherits Page directive, with this and all the others you can use the pageBaseType and userControlBaseType attributes of the <page> element; MVC shields you from doing “bad things” on your views: well, you can place any code on a code block, at least with the ASPX view engine (you may be starting to see a pattern here), even data access code; The model is the entity model, tied to an O/RM: the model is actually any class that you use to pass values to a view, including (but generally not recommended) an entity model; Unit tests come with no cost: unit tests generally don’t cover the UI, although there are frameworks just for that (see WatiN, for example); also, for some tests, you will have to mock or replace either the HttpContext.Current property or the HttpContextBase class yourself; Everything is testable: views aren’t, without accessing the site; MVC relies on HTML5/some_cool_new_javascript_framework: there is no relation whatsoever, MVC renders whatever you want it to render and does not require any framework to be present. The thing is, the subsequent releases of MVC happened in a time when Microsoft has become much more involved in standards, so the files and technologies included in the Visual Studio templates reflect this, and it just happens to work well with jQuery, for example. Conclusion Well, this is how I see it. Some folks may think that I am being too rude on MVC, probably because I don’t like it, but that’s not true: like I said, I do like MVC and I am starting my new projects with it. I just don’t want to go along with that those that say that MVC is much superior to Web Forms, in fact, some things you can do much more easily with Web Forms than with MVC. I will be more than happy to hear what you think on this!

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