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  • Trying to get these list items to display inline

    - by Joel
    I have several unordered lists that I want to display like this: <ul> <li><img></li> <li><p></li> //inline </ul> //linebreak <ul> <li><img></li> <li><p></li> //inline </ul> ...etc I'm not able to get the li items to be inline with eachother. They are stacking vertically. I have stripped away most styling but still can't figure out what I'm doing wrong: html: <ul class="instrument"> <li class="imagebox"><img src="/images/matepe.jpg" width="247" height="228" alt="Matepe" /></li> <li class="textbox"><p>The matepe is a 24 key instrument that is played by the Kore-Kore people in North-Eastern Zimbabwe and Mozambique. It utilizes four fingers-each playing an individual melody. These melodies also interwieve to create resultant melodies that can be manipulated thru accenting different fingers. The matepe is used in Rattletree as the bridge from the physical world to the spirit world. The matepe is used in the Kore-Kore culture to summon the Mhondoro spirits which are thought to be able to communicate directly with Mwari (God) without the need of an intermediary.</p></li> </ul> <ul class="instrument"> <li class="imagebox"><img src="/images/soprano_little.jpg" border="0" width="247" height="170" alt="Soprano" /></li> <li class="textbox"><p>The highest voice of the Rattletree Marimba orchestra is the Soprano marimba. The soprano is used to whip up the energy on the dancefloor and help people reach ecstatic state with it's high and clear singing voice. The range of these sopranos goes much lower than 'typical' Zimbabwean style sopranos. The sopranos play the range of the right hand of the matepe and go two notes higher and five notes lower. Rattletree uses two sopranos.</p></li> </ul> <ul class="instrument"> <li class="imagebox"><img src="/images/bari_little.jpg" border="0" width="247" height="170" alt="Baritone" /></li> <li class="textbox"><p>The Baritone is the next lower voice in the orchestra. The bari is where the funk is. Generally bubbling over the Bass line, the baritone creates the syncopations and polyrhythms that messes with the 'minds' of the dancers and helps seperate the listener from the physical realm of thought. The range of the baritone covers the full range of the left hand side of the matepe.</p></li> </ul> <ul class="instrument"> <li class="imagebox"><img src="/images/darren_littlebass.jpg" border="0" width="247" height="195" alt="Bass"/><strong>Bass Marimba</strong></li> <li class="textbox"><p>The towering Bass Marimba is the foundation of the Rattletree Marimba sound. Putting out frequencies as low as 22hZ, the bass creates the drive that gets the dancefloor moving. It is 5.5' tall, 9' long, and 4' deep. It is played by standing on a platform and struck with mallets that have lacross-ball size heads (they are actually made with rubber dog balls). The Bass marimba's range covers the lowest five notes of the matepe and goes another five notes lower.</p></li> </ul> <ul class="instrument"> <li class="imagebox"><img src="/images/wayne_little.jpg" border="0" width="247" height="177" alt="Drums"/><strong>Drumset</strong></li> <li class="textbox"><p>All the intricate polyrhythms are held together tastefully with the drumset. The drums provides the consistancy and grounding that the dancers need to keep going all night. While the steady kick and high-hat provide that grounding function, the toms and snare and allowed to be another voice in the poylrhythmic texture-helping the dancers abandon the concept of a "one" within this cyclical music.</p></li> </ul> css: ul.instrument { text-align:left; display:inline; } ul.instrument li { list-style-type: none; } li.imagebox { } li.textbox { } li.textbox p{ width: 247px; }

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  • wcf rest service 400 error : There might be a typing error in the address

    - by Lokesh Kondapalli
    I am trying to invoke wcf rest service from url but its showing error like this Error : Most likely causes: •There might be a typing error in the address. •If you clicked on a link, it may be out of date. ** I need JSON responce Here my code : Iservice.cs using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Runtime.Serialization; using System.ServiceModel; using System.ServiceModel.Web; using System.Text; namespace SampleRestSample { interface name "IService1" in both code and config file together. [ServiceContract] public interface IService1 { [OperationContract] [WebInvoke(Method = "GET", UriTemplate = "Book/{id}", BodyStyle = WebMessageBodyStyle.Wrapped, ResponseFormat = WebMessageFormat.Json)] List<Prasad> GetBookById(string id); } [DataContract] public class Prasad { [DataMember] public string Name { get; set; } [DataMember] public string Age { get; set; } } } Service1.svc.cs using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Runtime.Serialization; using System.ServiceModel; using System.ServiceModel.Web; using System.Text; namespace LoginRestSample { // NOTE: You can use the "Rename" command on the "Refactor" menu to change the class name "Service1" in code, svc and config file together. public class Service1 : SampleRestSample { List<Prasad> list = new List<Prasad>(); public List<Prasad> GetBookById(string id) { try { Prasad cls = new Prasad(); cls.Age = "24"; cls.Name = "prasad"; list.Add(cls); //int bookId = Convert.ToInt32(id); //using (SampleDbEntities entities = new SampleDbEntities()) //{ // return entities.Books.SingleOrDefault(book => book.ID == bookId); //} } catch { throw new FaultException("Something went wrong"); } return list; } } } web.config <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <configuration> <system.web> <compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.0"> <assemblies> <add assembly="System.Data.Entity, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" /> </assemblies> </compilation> </system.web> <system.serviceModel> <services> <service name="WcfRestSample.SampleRestSample"> <endpoint address="" behaviorConfiguration="restfulBehavior" binding="webHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="" contract="WcfRestSample.ISampleRestSample" /> <host> <baseAddresses> <add baseAddress="http://localhost/SampleRestSample" /> </baseAddresses> </host> </service> </services> <behaviors> <endpointBehaviors> <behavior name="restfulBehavior"> <webHttp automaticFormatSelectionEnabled="true" /> </behavior> </endpointBehaviors> <serviceBehaviors> <behavior name=""> <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true" /> <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="false" /> </behavior> </serviceBehaviors> </behaviors> <serviceHostingEnvironment multipleSiteBindingsEnabled="true" /> </system.serviceModel> <system.webServer> <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" /> </system.webServer> </configuration> Any solutions? Thank you in advance.

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  • deadlock when using WCF Duplex Polling with Silverlight

    - by Kobi Hari
    Hi all. I have followed Tomek Janczuk's demonstration on silverlight tv to create a chat program that uses WCF Duplex Polling web service. The client subscribes to the server, and then the server initiates notifications to all connected clients to publish events. The Idea is simple, on the client, there is a button that allows the client to connect. A text box where the client can write a message and publish it, and a bigger text box that presents all the notifications received from the server. I connected 3 clients (in different browsers - IE, Firefox and Chrome) and it all works nicely. They send messages and receive them smoothly. The problem starts when I close one of the browsers. As soon as one client is out, the other clients get stuck. They stop getting notifications. I am guessing that the loop in the server that goes through all the clients and sends them the notifications is stuck on the client that is now missing. I tried catching the exception and removing it from the clients list (see code) but it still does not help. any ideas? The server code is as follows: using System; using System.Linq; using System.Runtime.Serialization; using System.ServiceModel; using System.ServiceModel.Activation; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Runtime.Remoting.Channels; namespace ChatDemo.Web { [ServiceContract] public interface IChatNotification { // this will be used as a callback method, therefore it must be one way [OperationContract(IsOneWay=true)] void Notify(string message); [OperationContract(IsOneWay = true)] void Subscribed(); } // define this as a callback contract - to allow push [ServiceContract(Namespace="", CallbackContract=typeof(IChatNotification))] [AspNetCompatibilityRequirements(RequirementsMode = AspNetCompatibilityRequirementsMode.Allowed)] [ServiceBehavior(InstanceContextMode=InstanceContextMode.Single)] public class ChatService { SynchronizedCollection<IChatNotification> clients = new SynchronizedCollection<IChatNotification>(); [OperationContract(IsOneWay=true)] public void Subscribe() { IChatNotification cli = OperationContext.Current.GetCallbackChannel<IChatNotification>(); this.clients.Add(cli); // inform the client it is now subscribed cli.Subscribed(); Publish("New Client Connected: " + cli.GetHashCode()); } [OperationContract(IsOneWay = true)] public void Publish(string message) { SynchronizedCollection<IChatNotification> toRemove = new SynchronizedCollection<IChatNotification>(); foreach (IChatNotification channel in this.clients) { try { channel.Notify(message); } catch { toRemove.Add(channel); } } // now remove all the dead channels foreach (IChatNotification chnl in toRemove) { this.clients.Remove(chnl); } } } } The client code is as follows: void client_NotifyReceived(object sender, ChatServiceProxy.NotifyReceivedEventArgs e) { this.Messages.Text += string.Format("{0}\n\n", e.Error != null ? e.Error.ToString() : e.message); } private void MyMessage_KeyDown(object sender, KeyEventArgs e) { if (e.Key == Key.Enter) { this.client.PublishAsync(this.MyMessage.Text); this.MyMessage.Text = ""; } } private void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { this.client = new ChatServiceProxy.ChatServiceClient(new PollingDuplexHttpBinding { DuplexMode = PollingDuplexMode.MultipleMessagesPerPoll }, new EndpointAddress("../ChatService.svc")); // listen for server events this.client.NotifyReceived += new EventHandler<ChatServiceProxy.NotifyReceivedEventArgs>(client_NotifyReceived); this.client.SubscribedReceived += new EventHandler<System.ComponentModel.AsyncCompletedEventArgs>(client_SubscribedReceived); // subscribe for the server events this.client.SubscribeAsync(); } void client_SubscribedReceived(object sender, System.ComponentModel.AsyncCompletedEventArgs e) { try { Messages.Text += "Connected!\n\n"; gsConnect.Color = Colors.Green; } catch { Messages.Text += "Failed to Connect!\n\n"; } } And the web config is as follows: <system.serviceModel> <extensions> <bindingExtensions> <add name="pollingDuplex" type="System.ServiceModel.Configuration.PollingDuplexHttpBindingCollectionElement, System.ServiceModel.PollingDuplex, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/> </bindingExtensions> </extensions> <behaviors> <serviceBehaviors> <behavior name=""> <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true"/> <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="false"/> </behavior> </serviceBehaviors> </behaviors> <bindings> <pollingDuplex> <binding name="myPollingDuplex" duplexMode="MultipleMessagesPerPoll"/> </pollingDuplex> </bindings> <serviceHostingEnvironment aspNetCompatibilityEnabled="true" multipleSiteBindingsEnabled="true"/> <services> <service name="ChatDemo.Web.ChatService"> <endpoint address="" binding="pollingDuplex" bindingConfiguration="myPollingDuplex" contract="ChatDemo.Web.ChatService"/> <endpoint address="mex" binding="mexHttpBinding" contract="IMetadataExchange"/> </service> </services> </system.serviceModel>

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  • Stacked up with web service configuration

    - by Allan Chua
    I'm currently stacked with the web service that im creating right now. when Testing it in local it all works fine but when I try to deploy it to the web server it throws me the following error An error occurred while trying to make a request to URI '...my web service URI here....'. This could be due to attempting to access a service in a cross-domain way without a proper cross-domain policy in place, or a policy that is unsuitable for SOAP services. You may need to contact the owner of the service to publish a cross-domain policy file and to ensure it allows SOAP-related HTTP headers to be sent. This error may also be caused by using internal types in the web service proxy without using the InternalsVisibleToAttribute attribute. Please see the inner exception for more details. here is my web config. <?xml version="1.0"?> <configuration> <configSections> </configSections> <system.webServer> <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true"> </modules> <validation validateIntegratedModeConfiguration="false" /> <security> <requestFiltering> <requestLimits maxAllowedContentLength="2000000000" /> </requestFiltering> </security> </system.webServer> <connectionStrings> <add name="........" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" /> </connectionStrings> <appSettings> <!-- Testing --> <add key="DataConnectionString" value="..........." /> </appSettings> <system.web> <compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.0"> <buildProviders> <add extension=".rdlc" type="Microsoft.Reporting.RdlBuildProvider, Microsoft.ReportViewer.WebForms, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" /> </buildProviders> </compilation> <httpRuntime executionTimeout="1200" maxRequestLength="2000000" /> </system.web> <system.serviceModel> <serviceHostingEnvironment aspNetCompatibilityEnabled="true" multipleSiteBindingsEnabled="true" /> <behaviors> <serviceBehaviors> <behavior name="Service1"> <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true" /> <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="true" /> <dataContractSerializer maxItemsInObjectGraph="2000000000" /> </behavior> <behavior name=""> <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true" /> <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="false" /> </behavior> <behavior name="nextSPOTServiceBehavior"> <serviceMetadata httpsGetEnabled="true"/> <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="true" /> <dataContractSerializer maxItemsInObjectGraph="2000000000" /> </behavior> </serviceBehaviors> </behaviors> <bindings> <basicHttpBinding> <binding name="SecureBasic" closeTimeout="00:10:00" openTimeout="00:10:00" receiveTimeout="00:10:00" sendTimeout="00:10:00" maxBufferSize="2147483647" maxReceivedMessageSize="2147483647"> <security mode="Transport" /> <readerQuotas maxArrayLength="2000000" maxStringContentLength="2000000"/> </binding> <binding name="BasicHttpBinding_IDownloadManagerService" closeTimeout="00:10:00" openTimeout="00:10:00" receiveTimeout="00:10:00" sendTimeout="00:10:00" maxBufferSize="2147483647" maxReceivedMessageSize="2147483647"> <security mode="Transport" /> </binding> </basicHttpBinding> </bindings> <services> <service behaviorConfiguration="nextSPOTServiceBehavior" name="NextSPOTDownloadManagerWebServiceTester.Web.WebServices.DownloadManagerService"> <endpoint binding="basicHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="SecureBasic" name="basicHttpSecure" contract="NextSPOTDownloadManagerWebServiceTester.Web.WebServices.IDownloadManagerService" /> <!--<endpoint binding="basicHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="" name="basicHttp" contract="NextSPOTDownloadManagerWebServiceTester.Web.WebServices.IDownloadManagerService" />--> <!--<endpoint address="" binding="basicHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="BasicHttpBinding_IDownloadManagerService" contract="NextSPOTDownloadManagerWebServiceTester.Web.WebServices.IDownloadManagerService" /> <endpoint address="mex" binding="mexHttpsBinding" contract="IMetadataExchange" />--> </service> </services > </system.serviceModel> </configuration>

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  • Toorcon14

    - by danx
    Toorcon 2012 Information Security Conference San Diego, CA, http://www.toorcon.org/ Dan Anderson, October 2012 It's almost Halloween, and we all know what that means—yes, of course, it's time for another Toorcon Conference! Toorcon is an annual conference for people interested in computer security. This includes the whole range of hackers, computer hobbyists, professionals, security consultants, press, law enforcement, prosecutors, FBI, etc. We're at Toorcon 14—see earlier blogs for some of the previous Toorcon's I've attended (back to 2003). This year's "con" was held at the Westin on Broadway in downtown San Diego, California. The following are not necessarily my views—I'm just the messenger—although I could have misquoted or misparaphrased the speakers. Also, I only reviewed some of the talks, below, which I attended and interested me. MalAndroid—the Crux of Android Infections, Aditya K. Sood Programming Weird Machines with ELF Metadata, Rebecca "bx" Shapiro Privacy at the Handset: New FCC Rules?, Valkyrie Hacking Measured Boot and UEFI, Dan Griffin You Can't Buy Security: Building the Open Source InfoSec Program, Boris Sverdlik What Journalists Want: The Investigative Reporters' Perspective on Hacking, Dave Maas & Jason Leopold Accessibility and Security, Anna Shubina Stop Patching, for Stronger PCI Compliance, Adam Brand McAfee Secure & Trustmarks — a Hacker's Best Friend, Jay James & Shane MacDougall MalAndroid—the Crux of Android Infections Aditya K. Sood, IOActive, Michigan State PhD candidate Aditya talked about Android smartphone malware. There's a lot of old Android software out there—over 50% Gingerbread (2.3.x)—and most have unpatched vulnerabilities. Of 9 Android vulnerabilities, 8 have known exploits (such as the old Gingerbread Global Object Table exploit). Android protection includes sandboxing, security scanner, app permissions, and screened Android app market. The Android permission checker has fine-grain resource control, policy enforcement. Android static analysis also includes a static analysis app checker (bouncer), and a vulnerablity checker. What security problems does Android have? User-centric security, which depends on the user to grant permission and make smart decisions. But users don't care or think about malware (the're not aware, not paranoid). All they want is functionality, extensibility, mobility Android had no "proper" encryption before Android 3.0 No built-in protection against social engineering and web tricks Alternative Android app markets are unsafe. Simply visiting some markets can infect Android Aditya classified Android Malware types as: Type A—Apps. These interact with the Android app framework. For example, a fake Netflix app. Or Android Gold Dream (game), which uploads user files stealthy manner to a remote location. Type K—Kernel. Exploits underlying Linux libraries or kernel Type H—Hybrid. These use multiple layers (app framework, libraries, kernel). These are most commonly used by Android botnets, which are popular with Chinese botnet authors What are the threats from Android malware? These incude leak info (contacts), banking fraud, corporate network attacks, malware advertising, malware "Hackivism" (the promotion of social causes. For example, promiting specific leaders of the Tunisian or Iranian revolutions. Android malware is frequently "masquerated". That is, repackaged inside a legit app with malware. To avoid detection, the hidden malware is not unwrapped until runtime. The malware payload can be hidden in, for example, PNG files. Less common are Android bootkits—there's not many around. What they do is hijack the Android init framework—alteering system programs and daemons, then deletes itself. For example, the DKF Bootkit (China). Android App Problems: no code signing! all self-signed native code execution permission sandbox — all or none alternate market places no robust Android malware detection at network level delayed patch process Programming Weird Machines with ELF Metadata Rebecca "bx" Shapiro, Dartmouth College, NH https://github.com/bx/elf-bf-tools @bxsays on twitter Definitions. "ELF" is an executable file format used in linking and loading executables (on UNIX/Linux-class machines). "Weird machine" uses undocumented computation sources (I think of them as unintended virtual machines). Some examples of "weird machines" are those that: return to weird location, does SQL injection, corrupts the heap. Bx then talked about using ELF metadata as (an uintended) "weird machine". Some ELF background: A compiler takes source code and generates a ELF object file (hello.o). A static linker makes an ELF executable from the object file. A runtime linker and loader takes ELF executable and loads and relocates it in memory. The ELF file has symbols to relocate functions and variables. ELF has two relocation tables—one at link time and another one at loading time: .rela.dyn (link time) and .dynsym (dynamic table). GOT: Global Offset Table of addresses for dynamically-linked functions. PLT: Procedure Linkage Tables—works with GOT. The memory layout of a process (not the ELF file) is, in order: program (+ heap), dynamic libraries, libc, ld.so, stack (which includes the dynamic table loaded into memory) For ELF, the "weird machine" is found and exploited in the loader. ELF can be crafted for executing viruses, by tricking runtime into executing interpreted "code" in the ELF symbol table. One can inject parasitic "code" without modifying the actual ELF code portions. Think of the ELF symbol table as an "assembly language" interpreter. It has these elements: instructions: Add, move, jump if not 0 (jnz) Think of symbol table entries as "registers" symbol table value is "contents" immediate values are constants direct values are addresses (e.g., 0xdeadbeef) move instruction: is a relocation table entry add instruction: relocation table "addend" entry jnz instruction: takes multiple relocation table entries The ELF weird machine exploits the loader by relocating relocation table entries. The loader will go on forever until told to stop. It stores state on stack at "end" and uses IFUNC table entries (containing function pointer address). The ELF weird machine, called "Brainfu*k" (BF) has: 8 instructions: pointer inc, dec, inc indirect, dec indirect, jump forward, jump backward, print. Three registers - 3 registers Bx showed example BF source code that implemented a Turing machine printing "hello, world". More interesting was the next demo, where bx modified ping. Ping runs suid as root, but quickly drops privilege. BF modified the loader to disable the library function call dropping privilege, so it remained as root. Then BF modified the ping -t argument to execute the -t filename as root. It's best to show what this modified ping does with an example: $ whoami bx $ ping localhost -t backdoor.sh # executes backdoor $ whoami root $ The modified code increased from 285948 bytes to 290209 bytes. A BF tool compiles "executable" by modifying the symbol table in an existing ELF executable. The tool modifies .dynsym and .rela.dyn table, but not code or data. Privacy at the Handset: New FCC Rules? "Valkyrie" (Christie Dudley, Santa Clara Law JD candidate) Valkyrie talked about mobile handset privacy. Some background: Senator Franken (also a comedian) became alarmed about CarrierIQ, where the carriers track their customers. Franken asked the FCC to find out what obligations carriers think they have to protect privacy. The carriers' response was that they are doing just fine with self-regulation—no worries! Carriers need to collect data, such as missed calls, to maintain network quality. But carriers also sell data for marketing. Verizon sells customer data and enables this with a narrow privacy policy (only 1 month to opt out, with difficulties). The data sold is not individually identifiable and is aggregated. But Verizon recommends, as an aggregation workaround to "recollate" data to other databases to identify customers indirectly. The FCC has regulated telephone privacy since 1934 and mobile network privacy since 2007. Also, the carriers say mobile phone privacy is a FTC responsibility (not FCC). FTC is trying to improve mobile app privacy, but FTC has no authority over carrier / customer relationships. As a side note, Apple iPhones are unique as carriers have extra control over iPhones they don't have with other smartphones. As a result iPhones may be more regulated. Who are the consumer advocates? Everyone knows EFF, but EPIC (Electrnic Privacy Info Center), although more obsecure, is more relevant. What to do? Carriers must be accountable. Opt-in and opt-out at any time. Carriers need incentive to grant users control for those who want it, by holding them liable and responsible for breeches on their clock. Location information should be added current CPNI privacy protection, and require "Pen/trap" judicial order to obtain (and would still be a lower standard than 4th Amendment). Politics are on a pro-privacy swing now, with many senators and the Whitehouse. There will probably be new regulation soon, and enforcement will be a problem, but consumers will still have some benefit. Hacking Measured Boot and UEFI Dan Griffin, JWSecure, Inc., Seattle, @JWSdan Dan talked about hacking measured UEFI boot. First some terms: UEFI is a boot technology that is replacing BIOS (has whitelisting and blacklisting). UEFI protects devices against rootkits. TPM - hardware security device to store hashs and hardware-protected keys "secure boot" can control at firmware level what boot images can boot "measured boot" OS feature that tracks hashes (from BIOS, boot loader, krnel, early drivers). "remote attestation" allows remote validation and control based on policy on a remote attestation server. Microsoft pushing TPM (Windows 8 required), but Google is not. Intel TianoCore is the only open source for UEFI. Dan has Measured Boot Tool at http://mbt.codeplex.com/ with a demo where you can also view TPM data. TPM support already on enterprise-class machines. UEFI Weaknesses. UEFI toolkits are evolving rapidly, but UEFI has weaknesses: assume user is an ally trust TPM implicitly, and attached to computer hibernate file is unprotected (disk encryption protects against this) protection migrating from hardware to firmware delays in patching and whitelist updates will UEFI really be adopted by the mainstream (smartphone hardware support, bank support, apathetic consumer support) You Can't Buy Security: Building the Open Source InfoSec Program Boris Sverdlik, ISDPodcast.com co-host Boris talked about problems typical with current security audits. "IT Security" is an oxymoron—IT exists to enable buiness, uptime, utilization, reporting, but don't care about security—IT has conflict of interest. There's no Magic Bullet ("blinky box"), no one-size-fits-all solution (e.g., Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs)). Regulations don't make you secure. The cloud is not secure (because of shared data and admin access). Defense and pen testing is not sexy. Auditors are not solution (security not a checklist)—what's needed is experience and adaptability—need soft skills. Step 1: First thing is to Google and learn the company end-to-end before you start. Get to know the management team (not IT team), meet as many people as you can. Don't use arbitrary values such as CISSP scores. Quantitive risk assessment is a myth (e.g. AV*EF-SLE). Learn different Business Units, legal/regulatory obligations, learn the business and where the money is made, verify company is protected from script kiddies (easy), learn sensitive information (IP, internal use only), and start with low-hanging fruit (customer service reps and social engineering). Step 2: Policies. Keep policies short and relevant. Generic SANS "security" boilerplate policies don't make sense and are not followed. Focus on acceptable use, data usage, communications, physical security. Step 3: Implementation: keep it simple stupid. Open source, although useful, is not free (implementation cost). Access controls with authentication & authorization for local and remote access. MS Windows has it, otherwise use OpenLDAP, OpenIAM, etc. Application security Everyone tries to reinvent the wheel—use existing static analysis tools. Review high-risk apps and major revisions. Don't run different risk level apps on same system. Assume host/client compromised and use app-level security control. Network security VLAN != segregated because there's too many workarounds. Use explicit firwall rules, active and passive network monitoring (snort is free), disallow end user access to production environment, have a proxy instead of direct Internet access. Also, SSL certificates are not good two-factor auth and SSL does not mean "safe." Operational Controls Have change, patch, asset, & vulnerability management (OSSI is free). For change management, always review code before pushing to production For logging, have centralized security logging for business-critical systems, separate security logging from administrative/IT logging, and lock down log (as it has everything). Monitor with OSSIM (open source). Use intrusion detection, but not just to fulfill a checkbox: build rules from a whitelist perspective (snort). OSSEC has 95% of what you need. Vulnerability management is a QA function when done right: OpenVas and Seccubus are free. Security awareness The reality is users will always click everything. Build real awareness, not compliance driven checkbox, and have it integrated into the culture. Pen test by crowd sourcing—test with logging COSSP http://www.cossp.org/ - Comprehensive Open Source Security Project What Journalists Want: The Investigative Reporters' Perspective on Hacking Dave Maas, San Diego CityBeat Jason Leopold, Truthout.org The difference between hackers and investigative journalists: For hackers, the motivation varies, but method is same, technological specialties. For investigative journalists, it's about one thing—The Story, and they need broad info-gathering skills. J-School in 60 Seconds: Generic formula: Person or issue of pubic interest, new info, or angle. Generic criteria: proximity, prominence, timeliness, human interest, oddity, or consequence. Media awareness of hackers and trends: journalists becoming extremely aware of hackers with congressional debates (privacy, data breaches), demand for data-mining Journalists, use of coding and web development for Journalists, and Journalists busted for hacking (Murdock). Info gathering by investigative journalists include Public records laws. Federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is good, but slow. California Public Records Act is a lot stronger. FOIA takes forever because of foot-dragging—it helps to be specific. Often need to sue (especially FBI). CPRA is faster, and requests can be vague. Dumps and leaks (a la Wikileaks) Journalists want: leads, protecting ourselves, our sources, and adapting tools for news gathering (Google hacking). Anonomity is important to whistleblowers. They want no digital footprint left behind (e.g., email, web log). They don't trust encryption, want to feel safe and secure. Whistleblower laws are very weak—there's no upside for whistleblowers—they have to be very passionate to do it. Accessibility and Security or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Halting Problem Anna Shubina, Dartmouth College Anna talked about how accessibility and security are related. Accessibility of digital content (not real world accessibility). mostly refers to blind users and screenreaders, for our purpose. Accessibility is about parsing documents, as are many security issues. "Rich" executable content causes accessibility to fail, and often causes security to fail. For example MS Word has executable format—it's not a document exchange format—more dangerous than PDF or HTML. Accessibility is often the first and maybe only sanity check with parsing. They have no choice because someone may want to read what you write. Google, for example, is very particular about web browser you use and are bad at supporting other browsers. Uses JavaScript instead of links, often requiring mouseover to display content. PDF is a security nightmare. Executible format, embedded flash, JavaScript, etc. 15 million lines of code. Google Chrome doesn't handle PDF correctly, causing several security bugs. PDF has an accessibility checker and PDF tagging, to help with accessibility. But no PDF checker checks for incorrect tags, untagged content, or validates lists or tables. None check executable content at all. The "Halting Problem" is: can one decide whether a program will ever stop? The answer, in general, is no (Rice's theorem). The same holds true for accessibility checkers. Language-theoretic Security says complicated data formats are hard to parse and cannot be solved due to the Halting Problem. W3C Web Accessibility Guidelines: "Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust" Not much help though, except for "Robust", but here's some gems: * all information should be parsable (paraphrasing) * if not parsable, cannot be converted to alternate formats * maximize compatibility in new document formats Executible webpages are bad for security and accessibility. They say it's for a better web experience. But is it necessary to stuff web pages with JavaScript for a better experience? A good example is The Drudge Report—it has hand-written HTML with no JavaScript, yet drives a lot of web traffic due to good content. A bad example is Google News—hidden scrollbars, guessing user input. Solutions: Accessibility and security problems come from same source Expose "better user experience" myth Keep your corner of Internet parsable Remember "Halting Problem"—recognize false solutions (checking and verifying tools) Stop Patching, for Stronger PCI Compliance Adam Brand, protiviti @adamrbrand, http://www.picfun.com/ Adam talked about PCI compliance for retail sales. Take an example: for PCI compliance, 50% of Brian's time (a IT guy), 960 hours/year was spent patching POSs in 850 restaurants. Often applying some patches make no sense (like fixing a browser vulnerability on a server). "Scanner worship" is overuse of vulnerability scanners—it gives a warm and fuzzy and it's simple (red or green results—fix reds). Scanners give a false sense of security. In reality, breeches from missing patches are uncommon—more common problems are: default passwords, cleartext authentication, misconfiguration (firewall ports open). Patching Myths: Myth 1: install within 30 days of patch release (but PCI §6.1 allows a "risk-based approach" instead). Myth 2: vendor decides what's critical (also PCI §6.1). But §6.2 requires user ranking of vulnerabilities instead. Myth 3: scan and rescan until it passes. But PCI §11.2.1b says this applies only to high-risk vulnerabilities. Adam says good recommendations come from NIST 800-40. Instead use sane patching and focus on what's really important. From NIST 800-40: Proactive: Use a proactive vulnerability management process: use change control, configuration management, monitor file integrity. Monitor: start with NVD and other vulnerability alerts, not scanner results. Evaluate: public-facing system? workstation? internal server? (risk rank) Decide:on action and timeline Test: pre-test patches (stability, functionality, rollback) for change control Install: notify, change control, tickets McAfee Secure & Trustmarks — a Hacker's Best Friend Jay James, Shane MacDougall, Tactical Intelligence Inc., Canada "McAfee Secure Trustmark" is a website seal marketed by McAfee. A website gets this badge if they pass their remote scanning. The problem is a removal of trustmarks act as flags that you're vulnerable. Easy to view status change by viewing McAfee list on website or on Google. "Secure TrustGuard" is similar to McAfee. Jay and Shane wrote Perl scripts to gather sites from McAfee and search engines. If their certification image changes to a 1x1 pixel image, then they are longer certified. Their scripts take deltas of scans to see what changed daily. The bottom line is change in TrustGuard status is a flag for hackers to attack your site. Entire idea of seals is silly—you're raising a flag saying if you're vulnerable.

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, November 23, 2011

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, November 23, 2011Popular ReleasesVisual Leak Detector for Visual C++ 2008/2010: v2.2.1: Enhancements: * strdup and _wcsdup functions support added. * Preliminary support for VS 11 added. Bugs Fixed: * Low performance after upgrading from VLD v2.1. * Memory leaks with static linking fixed (disabled calloc support). * Runtime error R6002 fixed because of wrong memory dump format. * version.h fixed in installer. * Some PVS studio warning fixed.NetSqlAzMan - .NET SQL Authorization Manager: 3.6.0.10: 3.6.0.10 22-Nov-2011 Update: Removed PreEmptive Platform integration (PreEmptive analytics) Removed all PreEmptive attributes Removed PreEmptive.dll assembly references from all projects Added first support to ADAM/AD LDS Thanks to PatBea. Work Item 9775: http://netsqlazman.codeplex.com/workitem/9775Developer Team Article System Management: DTASM v1.3: ?? ??? ???? 3 ????? ???? ???? ????? ??? : - ????? ?????? ????? ???? ?? ??? ???? ????? ?? ??? ? ?? ???? ?????? ???? ?? ???? ????? ?? . - ??? ?? ???? ????? ???? ????? ???? ???? ?? ????? , ?????? ????? ????? ?? ??? . - ??? ??????? ??? ??? ???? ?? ????? ????? ????? .SharePoint 2010 FBA Pack: SharePoint 2010 FBA Pack 1.2.0: Web parts are now fully customizable via html templates (Issue #323) FBA Pack is now completely localizable using resource files. Thank you David Chen for submitting the code as well as Chinese translations of the FBA Pack! The membership request web part now gives the option of having the user enter the password and removing the captcha (Issue # 447) The FBA Pack will now work in a zone that does not have FBA enabled (Another zone must have FBA enabled, and the zone must contain the me...SharePoint 2010 Education Demo Project: Release SharePoint SP1 for Education Solutions: This release includes updates to the Content Packs for SharePoint SP1. All Content Packs have been updated to install successfully under SharePoint SP1SQL Monitor - tracking sql server activities: SQLMon 4.1 alpha 6: 1. improved support for schema 2. added find reference when right click on object list 3. added object rename supportBugNET Issue Tracker: BugNET 0.9.126: First stable release of version 0.9. Upgrades from 0.8 are fully supported and upgrades to future releases will also be supported. This release is now compiled against the .NET 4.0 framework and is a requirement. Because of this the web.config has significantly changed. After upgrading, you will need to configure the authentication settings for user registration and anonymous access again. Please see our installation / upgrade instructions for more details: http://wiki.bugnetproject.c...Anno 2070 Assistant: v0.1.0 (STABLE): Version 0.1.0 Features Production Chains Eco Production Chains (Complete) Tycoon Production Chains (Disabled - Incomplete) Tech Production Chains (Disabled - Incomplete) Supply (Disabled - Incomplete) Calculator (Disabled - Incomplete) Building Layouts Eco Building Layouts (Complete) Tycoon Building Layouts (Disabled - Incomplete) Tech Building Layouts (Disabled - Incomplete) Credits (Complete)Free SharePoint 2010 Sites Templates: SharePoint Server 2010 Sites Templates: here is the list of sites templates to be downloadedVsTortoise - a TortoiseSVN add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio: VsTortoise Build 30 Beta: Note: This release does not work with custom VsTortoise toolbars. These get removed every time when you shutdown Visual Studio. (#7940) Build 30 (beta)New: Support for TortoiseSVN 1.7 added. (the download contains both setups, for TortoiseSVN 1.6 and 1.7) New: OpenModifiedDocumentDialog displays conflicted files now. New: OpenModifiedDocument allows to group items by changelist now. Fix: OpenModifiedDocumentDialog caused Visual Studio 2010 to freeze sometimes. Fix: The installer didn...nopCommerce. Open source shopping cart (ASP.NET MVC): nopcommerce 2.30: Highlight features & improvements: • Performance optimization. • Back in stock notifications. • Product special price support. • Catalog mode (based on customer role) To see the full list of fixes and changes please visit the release notes page (http://www.nopCommerce.com/releasenotes.aspx).WPF Converters: WPF Converters V1.2.0.0: support for enumerations, value types, and reference types in the expression converter's equality operators the expression converter now handles DependencyProperty.UnsetValue as argument values correctly (#4062) StyleCop conformance (more or less)Json.NET: Json.NET 4.0 Release 4: Change - JsonTextReader.Culture is now CultureInfo.InvariantCulture by default Change - KeyValurPairConverter no longer cares about the order of the key and value properties Change - Time zone conversions now use new TimeZoneInfo instead of TimeZone Fix - Fixed boolean values sometimes being capitalized when converting to XML Fix - Fixed error when deserializing ConcurrentDictionary Fix - Fixed serializing some Uris returning the incorrect value Fix - Fixed occasional error when...Media Companion: MC 3.423b Weekly: Ensure .NET 4.0 Full Framework is installed. (Available from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17718) Ensure the NFO ID fix is applied when transitioning from versions prior to 3.416b. (Details here) Replaced 'Rebuild' with 'Refresh' throughout entire code. Rebuild will now be known as Refresh. mc_com.exe has been fully updated TV Show Resolutions... Resolved issue #206 - having to hit save twice when updating runtime manually Shrunk cache size and lowered loading times f...Delta Engine: Delta Engine Beta Preview v0.9.1: v0.9.1 beta release with lots of refactoring, fixes, new samples and support for iOS, Android and WP7 (you need a Marketplace account however). If you want a binary release for the games (like v0.9.0), just say so in the Forum or here and we will quickly prepare one. It is just not much different from v0.9.0, so I left it out this time. See http://DeltaEngine.net/Wiki.Roadmap for details.ASP.net Awesome Samples (Web-Forms): 1.0 samples: Demos and Tutorials for ASP.net Awesome VS2008 are in .NET 3.5 VS2010 are in .NET 4.0 (demos for the ASP.net Awesome jQuery Ajax Controls)SharpMap - Geospatial Application Framework for the CLR: SharpMap-0.9-AnyCPU-Trunk-2011.11.17: This is a build of SharpMap from the 0.9 development trunk as per 2011-11-17 For most applications the AnyCPU release is the recommended, but in case you need an x86 build that is included to. For some dataproviders (GDAL/OGR, SqLite, PostGis) you need to also referense the SharpMap.Extensions assembly For SqlServer Spatial you need to reference the SharpMap.SqlServerSpatial assemblyAJAX Control Toolkit: November 2011 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - November 2011 Release Version 51116November 2011 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 - Binary – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 - Binary – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Notes: - The current version of the AJAX Control Toolkit is not compatible with ASP.NET 2.0. The latest version that is compatible with ASP.NET 2.0 can be found h...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.36: Fix for issue #16908: string literals containing ASP.NET replacement syntax fail if the ASP.NET code contains the same character as the string literal delimiter. Also, we shouldn't be changing the delimiter for those literals or combining them with other literals; the developer may have specifically chosen the delimiter used because of possible content inserted by ASP.NET code. This logic is normally off; turn it on via the -aspnet command-line flag (or the Code.Settings.AllowEmbeddedAspNetBl...MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 1.5.5: Added: Now the DateRanteAttribute accepts complex expressions containing "Now" and "Today" as static minimum and maximum. Menu, MenuFor helpers capable of handling a "currently selected element". The developer can choose between using a standard nested menu based on a standard SimpleMenuItem class or specifying an item template based on a custom class. Added also helpers to build the tree structure containing all data items the menu takes infos from. Improved the pager. Now the developer ...New ProjectsActiveWorlds World Server Admin PowerShell SnapIn: The purpose of this PowerShell SnapIn is to provide a set of tools to administer the world server from PowerShell. It leverages the ActiveWorlds SDK .NET Wrapper to provide this functionality.Aigu: Enter special characters like you would on your mobile phone. For instance, if you want to type 'é', you just hold down 'e' and a menu will appear. Selected the desired character using the arrow keys and press 'enter'. Simple but powerful.Are you workaholic?: Are you a workaholic? Did your Doctor advice you not to stare at the computer monitor for a long time? Then this app is perfectly made for you. It runs in the background, and alerts you to take periodic rests for your eyes and body. What's more, It's open source (MS-PL).ATDIS PoC: privateAuto Version Web Assets: The AVWA project is an HTTP Module written in C# that is designed to allow for versioning of various web assets such as .CSS and .JS files. This allows you to publish new versions of these files without having to force the server or the client browsers to expire cache.Bachelor Thesis Algorithm Test Bed: Algorithm Test Bed for my Bachelor ThesisBase64: Simple application helps converting strings and files from or to Base64 string. You can use any encoding to convert while a sidebar previews decoded string for all other encodings.BoracayExpress: BoracayExpressC++ Framework for Test Driven Development: A testing framework for C++ written in C++.Class2Table: Class2Table aka Entity2Table. Easy tool that allows creation of SQL tables from .Net types.Code for Demos & Experiments: This is where I will post code from demos and presentationsCodeMaker: CodeMaker?????????: 1、?????????? 2、???? 3、????? 4、??Python????????? ConsoleCommand: ConsoleCommand provides certain .Net commands for access from javascript console engines. Included are commands to set the text and background colors, as well as list and extract resources compiled in a .Net dll. Converter: Character code conversion tools ???????? CryptoInator - self contained, self-encrypting, self-decrypting image viewer: Original developed to encrypt and store NemID images in Denmark. DAiBears: Something, something, botDelicious Notify Plugin: Lets you push a blog post straight to Delicious from Live WriterDeveloperFile: Compresses Javascripts using the YUI .NET project. Loops through the root folder and subfolders for files matching the debug extension and creates new files using the release extension. (File extensions must match exactly).DotNetNuke SharePoint File Explorer: A DotNetNuke SharePoint File ExplorerDouban FM: WP7 Douban FM appGame Lib: Game Library is a open-source game library to allow focusing on the fun part of a game. It is developed in C#, but will be ported to C++ and VB.net.Google reader notes to Delicious Export tool (WPF): Google reader discontinued note in reader features. Current google reader allows to export users old notes in JSON format, This App will parse the JSON file & upload it to it delicious , delicious is a good alternative for note in readerHtml Source Transmitter Control: This web control allows getting a source of a web page, that will displayed before submit. So, developer can store a view of the html page, that was before server exception. It helps to reproduce bugs and can be used with other logging systems.Ideopuzzle: A puzzle gameImageShack-Uploader: This project demonstrates how to upload files automated to imageshack.us and other image hosters with C#.Insert Acronym Tags: Lets you insert <acronym> and <abbr> tags into your blog entry more easily.Insert Quick Link: Allows you to paste a link into the Writer window and have the a window similar to the one in Writer where you can change what text is to appear, open in new window, etc.Insert Video Plugin: Allows you to insert a video into a blog entry from a multitude of different sitesIoCWrap: Provides a wrapper to the various IoC container implementations so that it is possible to switch to a different provider without changing any application code.kaveepoj: sharepoint projectKinect Quiz Engine: Fun quiz game for the Kinect.Klaverjas: Test application for testing different new technologies in .NET (WCF, DataServices, C# stuff, Entity...etc.)Man In The Middle: A cyberpunk themed action with puzzle and strategy elements. Made with XNA as part of a game development course at the IT University of Copenhagen by Bo Bendtsen, Jonas Flensbak, Daniel Kromand, Jess Rahbek & Darryl Woodford.MediaSelektor: Simple tool to select mediasMicajah Mindtouch Deki Wiki Copier: Small C# application to move data between 2 Deki Wiki installs or, more importantly, from a wik.is account to a locally installed systemMineFlagger: MineFlagger is a mine clearing game modeled after Microsoft’s Minesweeper. In addition to standard play, MineFlagger incorporates an AI for fun and training.myXbyqwrhjadsfasfhgf: myXbyqwrhjadsfasfhgfnatoop: natoopNauplius.KeyStore: Provides secure application key storage backed by SQL 2008 and Active Directory.ObjectDB: An object database written using C# 4 and Mono.Cecil.PaceR: PaceR is an attempt to encapsulate a lot of the common code functionality I use on different projects. Instead of recreating functionality from memory or worse, copying from older projects, I'd like to have a central location to maintain this common code. Parseq: Parseq is a Parser Combinator library written in C# (version 2.0).PowerShell Network Adapter Configuration module: PowerShell Network Adapter Configuration module is a PowerShell module which provides functions for managing network adapters using WMI.public traffic tracker: This is a university project for a .net course. We develop a public traffic tracker applications for Windows Phone 7 devices, that can give information about the actual positions of the nearest vehicle on a given line. The speciality is that we use only the GPS information of the users' WP7 devices, so this is a completely software solution without any hardware investment. The disatvantage is that for the real operation we would need a lot of active WP7 user.puyo: puyoRadioTroll: Projeto web Radio TrollRead Feed Community: Read Feed CommunityReviewer: Reviewer.dk - Dansk spil og anmeldelsessite.Rollout Sharepoint Solutions - ROSS: ROSS performs the following actions: - Delete sitecollection and restart services - 'Get Latest Version' from SourceSafe - Rebuild Solution - Install all wsp solutions - Create SiteCollections - Check for build en provisioning errors - Send email to developers if errors occurredSchool Management: school managementSQL File Executer: This project is a class library written in c# which is used for executing *.sql files in remote server. Simply one dll file. You include it in your web project, add using statement at the top of your page, pass the parameters inside. Rest, it will do.Startup Manager: Startup Manager launches all startup programs at a managed rate therefore meaning that your computer doesn't crash everytime it starts up and you can use it immediately.stetic: ...Test Infrastructure Guidance: The purpose of this project is to provide guidance to testers in using TFS effectively as an ALM solution. TFS is much more than a simple code repository. Used with Visual Studio it can form a powerful testing solution and remove a lot of pain in dealing with test infrastructure overhead.Tête-à-tête: Tete-a-tete is an address book with a built-in function to send electronic mail over the Internet.Tipeysh! - Add-in that helps you creating C/C++ header files on a single click: Are you also feel miserable when you need to create a new header file in your Visual Studio C/C++ project? Repeatedly choosing "new header file", then writing the annoying (but needed) "#ifndef" section, then writing the class name with it's "private", "protected" and "public" access modifiers... too much clicks and typewriting! Well, there is a solution: Tipeysh! is a simple, easy to use, very handy and configurable Visual Studio Add-In, compatible for both the 2005 and 2008 versions. Once ...UMN Dashboard Project: academic projUsersMOSS: UsersMOSS est une petite application permettant de consulter sur un serveur MOSS les sites web (SPWeb) les users (SPUser), et les groupes (SPGroup). Cette application utilise le modèle objet de MOSS pour inspecter le contenu des objets d'un serveur MOSS. Cette application est loin d'être professionnelle, ou même terminée, mais elle me rend très souvent service. Surtout ne l'utilisez pas sur un serveur de production car le gestion du GC n'est pas faite, ce qui peut provoquer des plantages de v...UtilityLibrary.Win32: UtilityLibrary.Win32UW iLearn: The iLearn activity inference platform is a suite of desktop and mobile tools for logging, modeling, and classifying sensor data for mobile devices. It was created at the University of Washington.VsDocGen: Dynamic javascript documentation generation directly from xml comment documented source code.Windows Live Spaces Photo Album plugin: This is going to be a plugin for Windows Live Writer that will allow you to browse a Windows Live Space Photo Album.Windows Live Writer Plugin for Amazon Books using CueCat: This Windows Live Writer Plugin is for users who use WLW and wish to use their CueCat to scan books. ItemLookups are run against Amazon via its AWS and book image, title, author, and publisher is returned. This project was first created by Scott Hanselman on MSDN's Coding4Fun! X7: X7 makes it easier for win7user to clean the system. You'll no longer have to delete useless stuff in your win7. It's developed in bat.xDT - Commander: Using this application, the user can assign shortcuts (short texts) for various links/URLs. These short texts will be typed into a Textbox to then launch/go to the target (similar to the "Run" program in Windows).

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, November 22, 2011

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, November 22, 2011Popular ReleasesDeveloper Team Article System Management: DTASM v1.3: ?? ??? ???? 3 ????? ???? ???? ????? ??? : - ????? ?????? ????? ???? ?? ??? ???? ????? ?? ??? ? ?? ???? ?????? ???? ?? ???? ????? ?? . - ??? ?? ???? ????? ???? ????? ???? ???? ?? ????? , ?????? ????? ????? ?? ??? . - ??? ??????? ??? ??? ???? ?? ????? ????? ????? .VideoLan DotNet for WinForm, WPF & Silverlight 5: VideoLan DotNet for WinForm, WPF, SL5 - 2011.11.22: The new version contains Silverlight 5 library: Vlc.DotNet.Silverlight. A sample could be tested here The new version add and correct many features : Correction : Reinitialize some variables Deprecate : Logging API, since VLC 1.2 (08/20/2011) Add subitem in LocationMedia (for Youtube videos, ...) Update Wpf sample to use Youtube videos Many others correctionsSharePoint 2010 FBA Pack: SharePoint 2010 FBA Pack 1.2.0: Web parts are now fully customizable via html templates (Issue #323) FBA Pack is now completely localizable using resource files. Thank you David Chen for submitting the code as well as Chinese translations of the FBA Pack! The membership request web part now gives the option of having the user enter the password and removing the captcha (Issue # 447) The FBA Pack will now work in a zone that does not have FBA enabled (Another zone must have FBA enabled, and the zone must contain the me...SharePoint 2010 Education Demo Project: Release SharePoint SP1 for Education Solutions: This release includes updates to the Content Packs for SharePoint SP1. All Content Packs have been updated to install successfully under SharePoint SP1SQL Monitor - tracking sql server activities: SQLMon 4.1 alpha 6: 1. improved support for schema 2. added find reference when right click on object list 3. added object rename supportBugNET Issue Tracker: BugNET 0.9.126: First stable release of version 0.9. Upgrades from 0.8 are fully supported and upgrades to future releases will also be supported. This release is now compiled against the .NET 4.0 framework and is a requirement. Because of this the web.config has significantly changed. After upgrading, you will need to configure the authentication settings for user registration and anonymous access again. Please see our installation / upgrade instructions for more details: http://wiki.bugnetproject.c...Anno 2070 Assistant: v0.1.0 (STABLE): Version 0.1.0 Features Production Chains Eco Production Chains (Complete) Tycoon Production Chains (Disabled - Incomplete) Tech Production Chains (Disabled - Incomplete) Supply (Disabled - Incomplete) Calculator (Disabled - Incomplete) Building Layouts Eco Building Layouts (Complete) Tycoon Building Layouts (Disabled - Incomplete) Tech Building Layouts (Disabled - Incomplete) Credits (Complete)Free SharePoint 2010 Sites Templates: SharePoint Server 2010 Sites Templates: here is the list of sites templates to be downloadedVsTortoise - a TortoiseSVN add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio: VsTortoise Build 30 Beta: Note: This release does not work with custom VsTortoise toolbars. These get removed every time when you shutdown Visual Studio. (#7940) Build 30 (beta)New: Support for TortoiseSVN 1.7 added. (the download contains both setups, for TortoiseSVN 1.6 and 1.7) New: OpenModifiedDocumentDialog displays conflicted files now. New: OpenModifiedDocument allows to group items by changelist now. Fix: OpenModifiedDocumentDialog caused Visual Studio 2010 to freeze sometimes. Fix: The installer didn...nopCommerce. Open source shopping cart (ASP.NET MVC): nopcommerce 2.30: Highlight features & improvements: • Performance optimization. • Back in stock notifications. • Product special price support. • Catalog mode (based on customer role) To see the full list of fixes and changes please visit the release notes page (http://www.nopCommerce.com/releasenotes.aspx).WPF Converters: WPF Converters V1.2.0.0: support for enumerations, value types, and reference types in the expression converter's equality operators the expression converter now handles DependencyProperty.UnsetValue as argument values correctly (#4062) StyleCop conformance (more or less)Json.NET: Json.NET 4.0 Release 4: Change - JsonTextReader.Culture is now CultureInfo.InvariantCulture by default Change - KeyValurPairConverter no longer cares about the order of the key and value properties Change - Time zone conversions now use new TimeZoneInfo instead of TimeZone Fix - Fixed boolean values sometimes being capitalized when converting to XML Fix - Fixed error when deserializing ConcurrentDictionary Fix - Fixed serializing some Uris returning the incorrect value Fix - Fixed occasional error when...Media Companion: MC 3.423b Weekly: Ensure .NET 4.0 Full Framework is installed. (Available from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17718) Ensure the NFO ID fix is applied when transitioning from versions prior to 3.416b. (Details here) Replaced 'Rebuild' with 'Refresh' throughout entire code. Rebuild will now be known as Refresh. mc_com.exe has been fully updated TV Show Resolutions... Resolved issue #206 - having to hit save twice when updating runtime manually Shrunk cache size and lowered loading times f...Delta Engine: Delta Engine Beta Preview v0.9.1: v0.9.1 beta release with lots of refactoring, fixes, new samples and support for iOS, Android and WP7 (you need a Marketplace account however). If you want a binary release for the games (like v0.9.0), just say so in the Forum or here and we will quickly prepare one. It is just not much different from v0.9.0, so I left it out this time. See http://DeltaEngine.net/Wiki.Roadmap for details.SharpMap - Geospatial Application Framework for the CLR: SharpMap-0.9-AnyCPU-Trunk-2011.11.17: This is a build of SharpMap from the 0.9 development trunk as per 2011-11-17 For most applications the AnyCPU release is the recommended, but in case you need an x86 build that is included to. For some dataproviders (GDAL/OGR, SqLite, PostGis) you need to also referense the SharpMap.Extensions assembly For SqlServer Spatial you need to reference the SharpMap.SqlServerSpatial assemblyAJAX Control Toolkit: November 2011 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - November 2011 Release Version 51116November 2011 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 - Binary – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 - Binary – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Notes: - The current version of the AJAX Control Toolkit is not compatible with ASP.NET 2.0. The latest version that is compatible with ASP.NET 2.0 can be found h...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.36: Fix for issue #16908: string literals containing ASP.NET replacement syntax fail if the ASP.NET code contains the same character as the string literal delimiter. Also, we shouldn't be changing the delimiter for those literals or combining them with other literals; the developer may have specifically chosen the delimiter used because of possible content inserted by ASP.NET code. This logic is normally off; turn it on via the -aspnet command-line flag (or the Code.Settings.AllowEmbeddedAspNetBl...MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 1.5.5: Added: Now the DateRanteAttribute accepts complex expressions containing "Now" and "Today" as static minimum and maximum. Menu, MenuFor helpers capable of handling a "currently selected element". The developer can choose between using a standard nested menu based on a standard SimpleMenuItem class or specifying an item template based on a custom class. Added also helpers to build the tree structure containing all data items the menu takes infos from. Improved the pager. Now the developer ...SharpCompress - a fully native C# library for RAR, 7Zip, Zip, Tar, GZip, BZip2: SharpCompress 0.7: Reworked API to be more consistent. See Supported formats table. Added some more helper methods - e.g. OpenEntryStream (RarArchive/RarReader does not support this) Fixed up testsSilverlight Toolkit: Windows Phone Toolkit - Nov 2011 (7.1 SDK): This release is coming soon! What's new ListPicker once again works in a ScrollViewer LongListSelector bug fixes around OutOfRange exceptions, wrong ordering of items, grouping issues, and scrolling events. ItemTuple is now refactored to be the public type LongListSelectorItem to provide users better access to the values in selection changed handlers. PerformanceProgressBar binding fix for IsIndeterminate (item 9767 and others) There is no longer a GestureListener dependency with the C...New ProjectsAndrecorder: Andrecorder???Android???????,???????????????????,????????????????,????????!Android Tree Bulletin: Android bulletin reader in tree format.Bài t?p l?p môn HCI: Name: Ph?n m?m qu?n lý thu h?c phí tru?ng d?i h?c Công Nghi?p Hà N?i Basic Grid Collision sample in XNA: This project shows how to implement a basic grid collision in XNA. The project uses the XNA 4.0 framework and C#Club Manager: Club Manager is a web site for managing sport clubs / teams.Create email with encrypt text implement TEA encryption and Web Service: RahaTEA Mail is an application to send messages in secret. These applications implement TEA encryption and web serviceCRM 2011 Layers: Several .net layers to customize CRM 2011CTEF: China Tomorrow Education Foundation websitedns?????: ??c#???dns?????。????????,???????,??????。EAF: Extensibility Application FrameworkEnergy SBA: In order to compete with large companies for Federal contracts, small business need information. This application seeks to show standard methods of using remote APIs to integrate information into a Metro interface using services provided by the Small Business Administration (SBA)EPiOptimiser - Scan your EPiServer configuration to optimise start up times: EPiScanner scans your EPiServer configuration to optimise start ups by generating a recommended exclude list of assemblies to include in EPiServer framework config. It can be used on command line, as a custom build task or integrated into Visual Studio as an external tool.FreeIDS - Free Intrusion Detection System: Don't want someone to use your computer? Don't want to use a system password? Want to see when someone accessed your computer? Time/Date? FreeIDS is it!FtpServerAdministrator: FtpServerAdministrator makes it easier to administer some ftp server by code, although it can only be used for FileZilla server now. It's developed in C#.GreenPoint Online: Tools and components that help you customize an Office 365 / SharePoint Online Environment.HCC C# Workshop: This project contains the code for the exercises of the HCC C# WorkshopKsigDo - Real time view model syncing across user screens: KsigDo show real time view model syncing across user screens - using ASP.NET, Knockout and SignalR. Real time data syncing across user views *was* hard, especially in web applications. Most of the time, the second user needs to refresh the screen, to see the changes made by first user, or we need to implement some long polling that fetches the data and does the update manually. 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IDE: Visual Studio 2010 Pro Programming language: C# Detailed information in the article here: http://epavlov.net/blog/2011/11/13/connect-to-mysql-in-visual-studio/ nl: Nutri Leaf Devomr.event.js: Simple js event injecterPastebin4DotNet: This project is an example of how to consume an API, in this case I consummed the Pastebin API.Pomelo: Pomelo is a website example.QuickDevFrameWork: ????????,??,??,????,ioc ?????postsharp?aopReadable Passphrase Generator: Generates passphrases which are (mostly) grammatically correct but nonsensical. These are easy to remember but difficult to guess (for humans or computers). Developed in C# with a KeePass plugin, console app and public API.Rosyama.ru for Windows Phone 7: ?????????? Windows Phone 7 ??? ???????? ???????? ?? ???? rosyama.ru. ?????????? ??????? ?????????? ? ???????? ????????? ???????. SimpleBatch: As the name suggests, this is a simple batch framework allowing you to define batch jobs in XML format. 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It uses the operation context (DbContext) provided by the DataService<T> class to get access to the resquest stream.WebOS: Welcome to join us to build our os projectWp7StarterDantas: Iniciando com Wp7WpfCollaborative3D: WpfCollaborative3DXNA Content Preprocessor: The XNA Content Preprocessor allows you to compile all of your XNA assets outside of your normal XNA project. This means more time building your game or app instead of your content.

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  • Towards Database Continuous Delivery – What Next after Continuous Integration? A Checklist

    - by Ben Rees
    .dbd-banner p{ font-size:0.75em; padding:0 0 10px; margin:0 } .dbd-banner p span{ color:#675C6D; } .dbd-banner p:last-child{ padding:0; } @media ALL and (max-width:640px){ .dbd-banner{ background:#f0f0f0; padding:5px; color:#333; margin-top: 5px; } } -- Database delivery patterns & practices STAGE 4 AUTOMATED DEPLOYMENT If you’ve been fortunate enough to get to the stage where you’ve implemented some sort of continuous integration process for your database updates, then hopefully you’re seeing the benefits of that investment – constant feedback on changes your devs are making, advanced warning of data loss (prior to the production release on Saturday night!), a nice suite of automated tests to check business logic, so you know it’s going to work when it goes live, and so on. But what next? What can you do to improve your delivery process further, moving towards a full continuous delivery process for your database? In this article I describe some of the issues you might need to tackle on the next stage of this journey, and how to plan to overcome those obstacles before they appear. Our Database Delivery Learning Program consists of four stages, really three – source controlling a database, running continuous integration processes, then how to set up automated deployment (the middle stage is split in two – basic and advanced continuous integration, making four stages in total). If you’ve managed to work through the first three of these stages – source control, basic, then advanced CI, then you should have a solid change management process set up where, every time one of your team checks in a change to your database (whether schema or static reference data), this change gets fully tested automatically by your CI server. But this is only part of the story. Great, we know that our updates work, that the upgrade process works, that the upgrade isn’t going to wipe our 4Tb of production data with a single DROP TABLE. But – how do you get this (fully tested) release live? Continuous delivery means being always ready to release your software at any point in time. There’s a significant gap between your latest version being tested, and it being easily releasable. Just a quick note on terminology – there’s a nice piece here from Atlassian on the difference between continuous integration, continuous delivery and continuous deployment. This piece also gives a nice description of the benefits of continuous delivery. These benefits have been summed up by Jez Humble at Thoughtworks as: “Continuous delivery is a set of principles and practices to reduce the cost, time, and risk of delivering incremental changes to users” There’s another really useful piece here on Simple-Talk about the need for continuous delivery and how it applies to the database written by Phil Factor – specifically the extra needs and complexities of implementing a full CD solution for the database (compared to just implementing CD for, say, a web app). So, hopefully you’re convinced of moving on the the next stage! The next step after CI is to get some sort of automated deployment (or “release management”) process set up. But what should I do next? What do I need to plan and think about for getting my automated database deployment process set up? Can’t I just install one of the many release management tools available and hey presto, I’m ready! If only it were that simple. Below I list some of the areas that it’s worth spending a little time on, where a little planning and prep could go a long way. It’s also worth pointing out, that this should really be an evolving process. Depending on your starting point of course, it can be a long journey from your current setup to a full continuous delivery pipeline. If you’ve got a CI mechanism in place, you’re certainly a long way down that path. Nevertheless, we’d recommend evolving your process incrementally. Pages 157 and 129-141 of the book on Continuous Delivery (by Jez Humble and Dave Farley) have some great guidance on building up a pipeline incrementally: http://www.amazon.com/Continuous-Delivery-Deployment-Automation-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321601912 For now, in this post, we’ll look at the following areas for your checklist: You and Your Team Environments The Deployment Process Rollback and Recovery Development Practices You and Your Team It’s a cliché in the DevOps community that “It’s not all about processes and tools, really it’s all about a culture”. As stated in this DevOps report from Puppet Labs: “DevOps processes and tooling contribute to high performance, but these practices alone aren’t enough to achieve organizational success. The most common barriers to DevOps adoption are cultural: lack of manager or team buy-in, or the value of DevOps isn’t understood outside of a specific group”. Like most clichés, there’s truth in there – if you want to set up a database continuous delivery process, you need to get your boss, your department, your company (if relevant) onside. Why? Because it’s an investment with the benefits coming way down the line. But the benefits are huge – for HP, in the book A Practical Approach to Large-Scale Agile Development: How HP Transformed LaserJet FutureSmart Firmware, these are summarized as: -2008 to present: overall development costs reduced by 40% -Number of programs under development increased by 140% -Development costs per program down 78% -Firmware resources now driving innovation increased by a factor of 8 (from 5% working on new features to 40% But what does this mean? It means that, when moving to the next stage, to make that extra investment in automating your deployment process, it helps a lot if everyone is convinced that this is a good thing. That they understand the benefits of automated deployment and are willing to make the effort to transform to a new way of working. Incidentally, if you’re ever struggling to convince someone of the value I’d strongly recommend just buying them a copy of this book – a great read, and a very practical guide to how it can really work at a large org. I’ve spoken to many customers who have implemented database CI who describe their deployment process as “The point where automation breaks down. Up to that point, the CI process runs, untouched by human hand, but as soon as that’s finished we revert to manual.” This deployment process can involve, for example, a DBA manually comparing an environment (say, QA) to production, creating the upgrade scripts, reading through them, checking them against an Excel document emailed to him/her the night before, turning to page 29 in his/her notebook to double-check how replication is switched off and on for deployments, and so on and so on. Painful, error-prone and lengthy. But the point is, if this is something like your deployment process, telling your DBA “We’re changing everything you do and your toolset next week, to automate most of your role – that’s okay isn’t it?” isn’t likely to go down well. There’s some work here to bring him/her onside – to explain what you’re doing, why there will still be control of the deployment process and so on. Or of course, if you’re the DBA looking after this process, you have to do a similar job in reverse. You may have researched and worked out how you’d like to change your methodology to start automating your painful release process, but do the dev team know this? What if they have to start producing different artifacts for you? Will they be happy with this? Worth talking to them, to find out. As well as talking to your DBA/dev team, the other group to get involved before implementation is your manager. And possibly your manager’s manager too. As mentioned, unless there’s buy-in “from the top”, you’re going to hit problems when the implementation starts to get rocky (and what tool/process implementations don’t get rocky?!). You need to have support from someone senior in your organisation – someone you can turn to when you need help with a delayed implementation, lack of resources or lack of progress. Actions: Get your DBA involved (or whoever looks after live deployments) and discuss what you’re planning to do or, if you’re the DBA yourself, get the dev team up-to-speed with your plans, Get your boss involved too and make sure he/she is bought in to the investment. Environments Where are you going to deploy to? And really this question is – what environments do you want set up for your deployment pipeline? Assume everyone has “Production”, but do you have a QA environment? Dedicated development environments for each dev? Proper pre-production? I’ve seen every setup under the sun, and there is often a big difference between “What we want, to do continuous delivery properly” and “What we’re currently stuck with”. Some of these differences are: What we want What we’ve got Each developer with their own dedicated database environment A single shared “development” environment, used by everyone at once An Integration box used to test the integration of all check-ins via the CI process, along with a full suite of unit-tests running on that machine In fact if you have a CI process running, you’re likely to have some sort of integration server running (even if you don’t call it that!). Whether you have a full suite of unit tests running is a different question… Separate QA environment used explicitly for manual testing prior to release “We just test on the dev environments, or maybe pre-production” A proper pre-production (or “staging”) box that matches production as closely as possible Hopefully a pre-production box of some sort. But does it match production closely!? A production environment reproducible from source control A production box which has drifted significantly from anything in source control The big question is – how much time and effort are you going to invest in fixing these issues? In reality this just involves figuring out which new databases you’re going to create and where they’ll be hosted – VMs? Cloud-based? What about size/data issues – what data are you going to include on dev environments? Does it need to be masked to protect access to production data? And often the amount of work here really depends on whether you’re working on a new, greenfield project, or trying to update an existing, brownfield application. There’s a world if difference between starting from scratch with 4 or 5 clean environments (reproducible from source control of course!), and trying to re-purpose and tweak a set of existing databases, with all of their surrounding processes and quirks. But for a proper release management process, ideally you have: Dedicated development databases, An Integration server used for testing continuous integration and running unit tests. [NB: This is the point at which deployments are automatic, without human intervention. Each deployment after this point is a one-click (but human) action], QA – QA engineers use a one-click deployment process to automatically* deploy chosen releases to QA for testing, Pre-production. The environment you use to test the production release process, Production. * A note on the use of the word “automatic” – when carrying out automated deployments this does not mean that the deployment is happening without human intervention (i.e. that something is just deploying over and over again). It means that the process of carrying out the deployment is automatic in that it’s not a person manually running through a checklist or set of actions. The deployment still requires a single-click from a user. Actions: Get your environments set up and ready, Set access permissions appropriately, Make sure everyone understands what the environments will be used for (it’s not a “free-for-all” with all environments to be accessed, played with and changed by development). The Deployment Process As described earlier, most existing database deployment processes are pretty manual. The following is a description of a process we hear very often when we ask customers “How do your database changes get live? How does your manual process work?” Check pre-production matches production (use a schema compare tool, like SQL Compare). Sometimes done by taking a backup from production and restoring in to pre-prod, Again, use a schema compare tool to find the differences between the latest version of the database ready to go live (i.e. what the team have been developing). This generates a script, User (generally, the DBA), reviews the script. This often involves manually checking updates against a spreadsheet or similar, Run the script on pre-production, and check there are no errors (i.e. it upgrades pre-production to what you hoped), If all working, run the script on production.* * this assumes there’s no problem with production drifting away from pre-production in the interim time period (i.e. someone has hacked something in to the production box without going through the proper change management process). This difference could undermine the validity of your pre-production deployment test. Red Gate is currently working on a free tool to detect this problem – sign up here at www.sqllighthouse.com, if you’re interested in testing early versions. There are several variations on this process – some better, some much worse! How do you automate this? In particular, step 3 – surely you can’t automate a DBA checking through a script, that everything is in order!? The key point here is to plan what you want in your new deployment process. There are so many options. At one extreme, pure continuous deployment – whenever a dev checks something in to source control, the CI process runs (including extensive and thorough testing!), before the deployment process keys in and automatically deploys that change to the live box. Not for the faint hearted – and really not something we recommend. At the other extreme, you might be more comfortable with a semi-automated process – the pre-production/production matching process is automated (with an error thrown if these environments don’t match), followed by a manual intervention, allowing for script approval by the DBA. One he/she clicks “Okay, I’m happy for that to go live”, the latter stages automatically take the script through to live. And anything in between of course – and other variations. But we’d strongly recommended sitting down with a whiteboard and your team, and spending a couple of hours mapping out “What do we do now?”, “What do we actually want?”, “What will satisfy our needs for continuous delivery, but still maintaining some sort of continuous control over the process?” NB: Most of what we’re discussing here is about production deployments. It’s important to note that you will also need to map out a deployment process for earlier environments (for example QA). However, these are likely to be less onerous, and many customers opt for a much more automated process for these boxes. Actions: Sit down with your team and a whiteboard, and draw out the answers to the questions above for your production deployments – “What do we do now?”, “What do we actually want?”, “What will satisfy our needs for continuous delivery, but still maintaining some sort of continuous control over the process?” Repeat for earlier environments (QA and so on). Rollback and Recovery If only every deployment went according to plan! Unfortunately they don’t – and when things go wrong, you need a rollback or recovery plan for what you’re going to do in that situation. Once you move in to a more automated database deployment process, you’re far more likely to be deploying more frequently than before. No longer once every 6 months, maybe now once per week, or even daily. Hence the need for a quick rollback or recovery process becomes paramount, and should be planned for. NB: These are mainly scenarios for handling rollbacks after the transaction has been committed. If a failure is detected during the transaction, the whole transaction can just be rolled back, no problem. There are various options, which we’ll explore in subsequent articles, things like: Immediately restore from backup, Have a pre-tested rollback script (remembering that really this is a “roll-forward” script – there’s not really such a thing as a rollback script for a database!) Have fallback environments – for example, using a blue-green deployment pattern. Different options have pros and cons – some are easier to set up, some require more investment in infrastructure; and of course some work better than others (the key issue with using backups, is loss of the interim transaction data that has been added between the failed deployment and the restore). The best mechanism will be primarily dependent on how your application works and how much you need a cast-iron failsafe mechanism. Actions: Work out an appropriate rollback strategy based on how your application and business works, your appetite for investment and requirements for a completely failsafe process. Development Practices This is perhaps the more difficult area for people to tackle. The process by which you can deploy database updates is actually intrinsically linked with the patterns and practices used to develop that database and linked application. So you need to decide whether you want to implement some changes to the way your developers actually develop the database (particularly schema changes) to make the deployment process easier. A good example is the pattern “Branch by abstraction”. Explained nicely here, by Martin Fowler, this is a process that can be used to make significant database changes (e.g. splitting a table) in a step-wise manner so that you can always roll back, without data loss – by making incremental updates to the database backward compatible. Slides 103-108 of the following slidedeck, from Niek Bartholomeus explain the process: https://speakerdeck.com/niekbartho/orchestration-in-meatspace As these slides show, by making a significant schema change in multiple steps – where each step can be rolled back without any loss of new data – this affords the release team the opportunity to have zero-downtime deployments with considerably less stress (because if an increment goes wrong, they can roll back easily). There are plenty more great patterns that can be implemented – the book Refactoring Databases, by Scott Ambler and Pramod Sadalage is a great read, if this is a direction you want to go in: http://www.amazon.com/Refactoring-Databases-Evolutionary-paperback-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321774515 But the question is – how much of this investment are you willing to make? How often are you making significant schema changes that would require these best practices? Again, there’s a difference here between migrating old projects and starting afresh – with the latter it’s much easier to instigate best practice from the start. Actions: For your business, work out how far down the path you want to go, amending your database development patterns to “best practice”. It’s a trade-off between implementing quality processes, and the necessity to do so (depending on how often you make complex changes). Socialise these changes with your development group. No-one likes having “best practice” changes imposed on them, so good to introduce these ideas and the rationale behind them early.   Summary The next stages of implementing a continuous delivery pipeline for your database changes (once you have CI up and running) require a little pre-planning, if you want to get the most out of the work, and for the implementation to go smoothly. We’ve covered some of the checklist of areas to consider – mainly in the areas of “Getting the team ready for the changes that are coming” and “Planning our your pipeline, environments, patterns and practices for development”, though there will be more detail, depending on where you’re coming from – and where you want to get to. This article is part of our database delivery patterns & practices series on Simple Talk. Find more articles for version control, automated testing, continuous integration & deployment.

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  • Using the ASP.NET Cache to cache data in a Model or Business Object layer, without a dependency on System.Web in the layer - Part One.

    - by Rhames
    ASP.NET applications can make use of the System.Web.Caching.Cache object to cache data and prevent repeated expensive calls to a database or other store. However, ideally an application should make use of caching at the point where data is retrieved from the database, which typically is inside a Business Objects or Model layer. One of the key features of using a UI pattern such as Model-View-Presenter (MVP) or Model-View-Controller (MVC) is that the Model and Presenter (or Controller) layers are developed without any knowledge of the UI layer. Introducing a dependency on System.Web into the Model layer would break this independence of the Model from the View. This article gives a solution to this problem, using dependency injection to inject the caching implementation into the Model layer at runtime. This allows caching to be used within the Model layer, without any knowledge of the actual caching mechanism that will be used. Create a sample application to use the caching solution Create a test SQL Server database This solution uses a SQL Server database with the same Sales data used in my previous post on calculating running totals. The advantage of using this data is that it gives nice slow queries that will exaggerate the effect of using caching! To create the data, first create a new SQL database called CacheSample. Next run the following script to create the Sale table and populate it: USE CacheSample GO   CREATE TABLE Sale(DayCount smallint, Sales money) CREATE CLUSTERED INDEX ndx_DayCount ON Sale(DayCount) go INSERT Sale VALUES (1,120) INSERT Sale VALUES (2,60) INSERT Sale VALUES (3,125) INSERT Sale VALUES (4,40)   DECLARE @DayCount smallint, @Sales money SET @DayCount = 5 SET @Sales = 10   WHILE @DayCount < 5000  BEGIN  INSERT Sale VALUES (@DayCount,@Sales)  SET @DayCount = @DayCount + 1  SET @Sales = @Sales + 15  END Next create a stored procedure to calculate the running total, and return a specified number of rows from the Sale table, using the following script: USE [CacheSample] GO   SET ANSI_NULLS ON GO   SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON GO   -- ============================================= -- Author:        Robin -- Create date: -- Description:   -- ============================================= CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[spGetRunningTotals]       -- Add the parameters for the stored procedure here       @HighestDayCount smallint = null AS BEGIN       -- SET NOCOUNT ON added to prevent extra result sets from       -- interfering with SELECT statements.       SET NOCOUNT ON;         IF @HighestDayCount IS NULL             SELECT @HighestDayCount = MAX(DayCount) FROM dbo.Sale                   DECLARE @SaleTbl TABLE (DayCount smallint, Sales money, RunningTotal money)         DECLARE @DayCount smallint,                   @Sales money,                   @RunningTotal money         SET @RunningTotal = 0       SET @DayCount = 0         DECLARE rt_cursor CURSOR       FOR       SELECT DayCount, Sales       FROM Sale       ORDER BY DayCount         OPEN rt_cursor         FETCH NEXT FROM rt_cursor INTO @DayCount,@Sales         WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0 AND @DayCount <= @HighestDayCount        BEGIN        SET @RunningTotal = @RunningTotal + @Sales        INSERT @SaleTbl VALUES (@DayCount,@Sales,@RunningTotal)        FETCH NEXT FROM rt_cursor INTO @DayCount,@Sales        END         CLOSE rt_cursor       DEALLOCATE rt_cursor         SELECT DayCount, Sales, RunningTotal       FROM @SaleTbl   END   GO   Create the Sample ASP.NET application In Visual Studio create a new solution and add a class library project called CacheSample.BusinessObjects and an ASP.NET web application called CacheSample.UI. The CacheSample.BusinessObjects project will contain a single class to represent a Sale data item, with all the code to retrieve the sales from the database included in it for simplicity (normally I would at least have a separate Repository or other object that is responsible for retrieving data, and probably a data access layer as well, but for this sample I want to keep it simple). The C# code for the Sale class is shown below: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Data; using System.Data.SqlClient;   namespace CacheSample.BusinessObjects {     public class Sale     {         public Int16 DayCount { get; set; }         public decimal Sales { get; set; }         public decimal RunningTotal { get; set; }           public static IEnumerable<Sale> GetSales(int? highestDayCount)         {             List<Sale> sales = new List<Sale>();               SqlParameter highestDayCountParameter = new SqlParameter("@HighestDayCount", SqlDbType.SmallInt);             if (highestDayCount.HasValue)                 highestDayCountParameter.Value = highestDayCount;             else                 highestDayCountParameter.Value = DBNull.Value;               string connectionStr = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager .ConnectionStrings["CacheSample"].ConnectionString;               using(SqlConnection sqlConn = new SqlConnection(connectionStr))             using (SqlCommand sqlCmd = sqlConn.CreateCommand())             {                 sqlCmd.CommandText = "spGetRunningTotals";                 sqlCmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;                 sqlCmd.Parameters.Add(highestDayCountParameter);                   sqlConn.Open();                   using (SqlDataReader dr = sqlCmd.ExecuteReader())                 {                     while (dr.Read())                     {                         Sale newSale = new Sale();                         newSale.DayCount = dr.GetInt16(0);                         newSale.Sales = dr.GetDecimal(1);                         newSale.RunningTotal = dr.GetDecimal(2);                           sales.Add(newSale);                     }                 }             }               return sales;         }     } }   The static GetSale() method makes a call to the spGetRunningTotals stored procedure and then reads each row from the returned SqlDataReader into an instance of the Sale class, it then returns a List of the Sale objects, as IEnnumerable<Sale>. A reference to System.Configuration needs to be added to the CacheSample.BusinessObjects project so that the connection string can be read from the web.config file. In the CacheSample.UI ASP.NET project, create a single web page called ShowSales.aspx, and make this the default start up page. This page will contain a single button to call the GetSales() method and a label to display the results. The html mark up and the C# code behind are shown below: ShowSales.aspx <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="ShowSales.aspx.cs" Inherits="CacheSample.UI.ShowSales" %>   <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">   <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head runat="server">     <title>Cache Sample - Show All Sales</title> </head> <body>     <form id="form1" runat="server">     <div>         <asp:Button ID="btnTest1" runat="server" onclick="btnTest1_Click"             Text="Get All Sales" />         &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;         <asp:Label ID="lblResults" runat="server"></asp:Label>         </div>     </form> </body> </html>   ShowSales.aspx.cs using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; using System.Web.UI; using System.Web.UI.WebControls;   using CacheSample.BusinessObjects;   namespace CacheSample.UI {     public partial class ShowSales : System.Web.UI.Page     {         protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)         {         }           protected void btnTest1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)         {             System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch stopWatch = new System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch();             stopWatch.Start();               var sales = Sale.GetSales(null);               var lastSales = sales.Last();               stopWatch.Stop();               lblResults.Text = string.Format( "Count of Sales: {0}, Last DayCount: {1}, Total Sales: {2}. Query took {3} ms", sales.Count(), lastSales.DayCount, lastSales.RunningTotal, stopWatch.ElapsedMilliseconds);         }       } }   Finally we need to add a connection string to the CacheSample SQL Server database, called CacheSample, to the web.config file: <?xmlversion="1.0"?>   <configuration>    <connectionStrings>     <addname="CacheSample"          connectionString="data source=.\SQLEXPRESS;Integrated Security=SSPI;Initial Catalog=CacheSample"          providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />  </connectionStrings>    <system.web>     <compilationdebug="true"targetFramework="4.0" />  </system.web>   </configuration>   Run the application and click the button a few times to see how long each call to the database takes. On my system, each query takes about 450ms. Next I shall look at a solution to use the ASP.NET caching to cache the data returned by the query, so that subsequent requests to the GetSales() method are much faster. Adding Data Caching Support I am going to create my caching support in a separate project called CacheSample.Caching, so the next step is to add a class library to the solution. We shall be using the application configuration to define the implementation of our caching system, so we need a reference to System.Configuration adding to the project. ICacheProvider<T> Interface The first step in adding caching to our application is to define an interface, called ICacheProvider, in the CacheSample.Caching project, with methods to retrieve any data from the cache or to retrieve the data from the data source if it is not present in the cache. Dependency Injection will then be used to inject an implementation of this interface at runtime, allowing the users of the interface (i.e. the CacheSample.BusinessObjects project) to be completely unaware of how the caching is actually implemented. As data of any type maybe retrieved from the data source, it makes sense to use generics in the interface, with a generic type parameter defining the data type associated with a particular instance of the cache interface implementation. The C# code for the ICacheProvider interface is shown below: using System; using System.Collections.Generic;   namespace CacheSample.Caching {     public interface ICacheProvider     {     }       public interface ICacheProvider<T> : ICacheProvider     {         T Fetch(string key, Func<T> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry);           IEnumerable<T> Fetch(string key, Func<IEnumerable<T>> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry);     } }   The empty non-generic interface will be used as a type in a Dictionary generic collection later to store instances of the ICacheProvider<T> implementation for reuse, I prefer to use a base interface when doing this, as I think the alternative of using object makes for less clear code. The ICacheProvider<T> interface defines two overloaded Fetch methods, the difference between these is that one will return a single instance of the type T and the other will return an IEnumerable<T>, providing support for easy caching of collections of data items. Both methods will take a key parameter, which will uniquely identify the cached data, a delegate of type Func<T> or Func<IEnumerable<T>> which will provide the code to retrieve the data from the store if it is not present in the cache, and absolute or relative expiry policies to define when a cached item should expire. Note that at present there is no support for cache dependencies, but I shall be showing a method of adding this in part two of this article. CacheProviderFactory Class We need a mechanism of creating instances of our ICacheProvider<T> interface, using Dependency Injection to get the implementation of the interface. To do this we shall create a CacheProviderFactory static class in the CacheSample.Caching project. This factory will provide a generic static method called GetCacheProvider<T>(), which shall return instances of ICacheProvider<T>. We can then call this factory method with the relevant data type (for example the Sale class in the CacheSample.BusinessObject project) to get a instance of ICacheProvider for that type (e.g. call CacheProviderFactory.GetCacheProvider<Sale>() to get the ICacheProvider<Sale> implementation). The C# code for the CacheProviderFactory is shown below: using System; using System.Collections.Generic;   using CacheSample.Caching.Configuration;   namespace CacheSample.Caching {     public static class CacheProviderFactory     {         private static Dictionary<Type, ICacheProvider> cacheProviders = new Dictionary<Type, ICacheProvider>();         private static object syncRoot = new object();           ///<summary>         /// Factory method to create or retrieve an implementation of the  /// ICacheProvider interface for type <typeparamref name="T"/>.         ///</summary>         ///<typeparam name="T">  /// The type that this cache provider instance will work with  ///</typeparam>         ///<returns>An instance of the implementation of ICacheProvider for type  ///<typeparamref name="T"/>, as specified by the application  /// configuration</returns>         public static ICacheProvider<T> GetCacheProvider<T>()         {             ICacheProvider<T> cacheProvider = null;             // Get the Type reference for the type parameter T             Type typeOfT = typeof(T);               // Lock the access to the cacheProviders dictionary             // so multiple threads can work with it             lock (syncRoot)             {                 // First check if an instance of the ICacheProvider implementation  // already exists in the cacheProviders dictionary for the type T                 if (cacheProviders.ContainsKey(typeOfT))                     cacheProvider = (ICacheProvider<T>)cacheProviders[typeOfT];                 else                 {                     // There is not already an instance of the ICacheProvider in       // cacheProviders for the type T                     // so we need to create one                       // Get the Type reference for the application's implementation of       // ICacheProvider from the configuration                     Type cacheProviderType = Type.GetType(CacheProviderConfigurationSection.Current. CacheProviderType);                     if (cacheProviderType != null)                     {                         // Now get a Type reference for the Cache Provider with the                         // type T generic parameter                         Type typeOfCacheProviderTypeForT = cacheProviderType.MakeGenericType(new Type[] { typeOfT });                         if (typeOfCacheProviderTypeForT != null)                         {                             // Create the instance of the Cache Provider and add it to // the cacheProviders dictionary for future use                             cacheProvider = (ICacheProvider<T>)Activator. CreateInstance(typeOfCacheProviderTypeForT);                             cacheProviders.Add(typeOfT, cacheProvider);                         }                     }                 }             }               return cacheProvider;                 }     } }   As this code uses Activator.CreateInstance() to create instances of the ICacheProvider<T> implementation, which is a slow process, the factory class maintains a Dictionary of the previously created instances so that a cache provider needs to be created only once for each type. The type of the implementation of ICacheProvider<T> is read from a custom configuration section in the application configuration file, via the CacheProviderConfigurationSection class, which is described below. CacheProviderConfigurationSection Class The implementation of ICacheProvider<T> will be specified in a custom configuration section in the application’s configuration. To handle this create a folder in the CacheSample.Caching project called Configuration, and add a class called CacheProviderConfigurationSection to this folder. This class will extend the System.Configuration.ConfigurationSection class, and will contain a single string property called CacheProviderType. The C# code for this class is shown below: using System; using System.Configuration;   namespace CacheSample.Caching.Configuration {     internal class CacheProviderConfigurationSection : ConfigurationSection     {         public static CacheProviderConfigurationSection Current         {             get             {                 return (CacheProviderConfigurationSection) ConfigurationManager.GetSection("cacheProvider");             }         }           [ConfigurationProperty("type", IsRequired=true)]         public string CacheProviderType         {             get             {                 return (string)this["type"];             }         }     } }   Adding Data Caching to the Sales Class We now have enough code in place to add caching to the GetSales() method in the CacheSample.BusinessObjects.Sale class, even though we do not yet have an implementation of the ICacheProvider<T> interface. We need to add a reference to the CacheSample.Caching project to CacheSample.BusinessObjects so that we can use the ICacheProvider<T> interface within the GetSales() method. Once the reference is added, we can first create a unique string key based on the method name and the parameter value, so that the same cache key is used for repeated calls to the method with the same parameter values. Then we get an instance of the cache provider for the Sales type, using the CacheProviderFactory, and pass the existing code to retrieve the data from the database as the retrievalMethod delegate in a call to the Cache Provider Fetch() method. The C# code for the modified GetSales() method is shown below: public static IEnumerable<Sale> GetSales(int? highestDayCount) {     string cacheKey = string.Format("CacheSample.BusinessObjects.GetSalesWithCache({0})", highestDayCount);       return CacheSample.Caching.CacheProviderFactory. GetCacheProvider<Sale>().Fetch(cacheKey,         delegate()         {             List<Sale> sales = new List<Sale>();               SqlParameter highestDayCountParameter = new SqlParameter("@HighestDayCount", SqlDbType.SmallInt);             if (highestDayCount.HasValue)                 highestDayCountParameter.Value = highestDayCount;             else                 highestDayCountParameter.Value = DBNull.Value;               string connectionStr = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager. ConnectionStrings["CacheSample"].ConnectionString;               using (SqlConnection sqlConn = new SqlConnection(connectionStr))             using (SqlCommand sqlCmd = sqlConn.CreateCommand())             {                 sqlCmd.CommandText = "spGetRunningTotals";                 sqlCmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;                 sqlCmd.Parameters.Add(highestDayCountParameter);                   sqlConn.Open();                   using (SqlDataReader dr = sqlCmd.ExecuteReader())                 {                     while (dr.Read())                     {                         Sale newSale = new Sale();                         newSale.DayCount = dr.GetInt16(0);                         newSale.Sales = dr.GetDecimal(1);                         newSale.RunningTotal = dr.GetDecimal(2);                           sales.Add(newSale);                     }                 }             }               return sales;         },         null,         new TimeSpan(0, 10, 0)); }     This example passes the code to retrieve the Sales data from the database to the Cache Provider as an anonymous method, however it could also be written as a lambda. The main advantage of using an anonymous function (method or lambda) is that the code inside the anonymous function can access the parameters passed to the GetSales() method. Finally the absolute expiry is set to null, and the relative expiry set to 10 minutes, to indicate that the cache entry should be removed 10 minutes after the last request for the data. As the ICacheProvider<T> has a Fetch() method that returns IEnumerable<T>, we can simply return the results of the Fetch() method to the caller of the GetSales() method. This should be all that is needed for the GetSales() method to now retrieve data from a cache after the first time the data has be retrieved from the database. Implementing a ASP.NET Cache Provider The final step is to actually implement the ICacheProvider<T> interface, and add the implementation details to the web.config file for the dependency injection. The cache provider implementation needs to have access to System.Web. Therefore it could be placed in the CacheSample.UI project, or in its own project that has a reference to System.Web. Implementing the Cache Provider in a separate project is my favoured approach. Create a new project inside the solution called CacheSample.CacheProvider, and add references to System.Web and CacheSample.Caching to this project. Add a class to the project called AspNetCacheProvider. Make the class a generic class by adding the generic parameter <T> and indicate that the class implements ICacheProvider<T>. The C# code for the AspNetCacheProvider class is shown below: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; using System.Web.Caching;   using CacheSample.Caching;   namespace CacheSample.CacheProvider {     public class AspNetCacheProvider<T> : ICacheProvider<T>     {         #region ICacheProvider<T> Members           public T Fetch(string key, Func<T> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry)         {             return FetchAndCache<T>(key, retrieveData, absoluteExpiry, relativeExpiry);         }           public IEnumerable<T> Fetch(string key, Func<IEnumerable<T>> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry)         {             return FetchAndCache<IEnumerable<T>>(key, retrieveData, absoluteExpiry, relativeExpiry);         }           #endregion           #region Helper Methods           private U FetchAndCache<U>(string key, Func<U> retrieveData, DateTime? absoluteExpiry, TimeSpan? relativeExpiry)         {             U value;             if (!TryGetValue<U>(key, out value))             {                 value = retrieveData();                 if (!absoluteExpiry.HasValue)                     absoluteExpiry = Cache.NoAbsoluteExpiration;                   if (!relativeExpiry.HasValue)                     relativeExpiry = Cache.NoSlidingExpiration;                   HttpContext.Current.Cache.Insert(key, value, null, absoluteExpiry.Value, relativeExpiry.Value);             }             return value;         }           private bool TryGetValue<U>(string key, out U value)         {             object cachedValue = HttpContext.Current.Cache.Get(key);             if (cachedValue == null)             {                 value = default(U);                 return false;             }             else             {                 try                 {                     value = (U)cachedValue;                     return true;                 }                 catch                 {                     value = default(U);                     return false;                 }             }         }           #endregion       } }   The two interface Fetch() methods call a private method called FetchAndCache(). This method first checks for a element in the HttpContext.Current.Cache with the specified cache key, and if so tries to cast this to the specified type (either T or IEnumerable<T>). If the cached element is found, the FetchAndCache() method simply returns it. If it is not found in the cache, the method calls the retrievalMethod delegate to get the data from the data source, and then adds this to the HttpContext.Current.Cache. The final step is to add the AspNetCacheProvider class to the relevant custom configuration section in the CacheSample.UI.Web.Config file. To do this there needs to be a <configSections> element added as the first element in <configuration>. This will match a custom section called <cacheProvider> with the CacheProviderConfigurationSection. Then we add a <cacheProvider> element, with a type property set to the fully qualified assembly name of the AspNetCacheProvider class, as shown below: <?xmlversion="1.0"?>   <configuration>  <configSections>     <sectionname="cacheProvider" type="CacheSample.Base.Configuration.CacheProviderConfigurationSection, CacheSample.Base" />  </configSections>    <connectionStrings>     <addname="CacheSample"          connectionString="data source=.\SQLEXPRESS;Integrated Security=SSPI;Initial Catalog=CacheSample"          providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />  </connectionStrings>    <cacheProvidertype="CacheSample.CacheProvider.AspNetCacheProvider`1, CacheSample.CacheProvider, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null">  </cacheProvider>    <system.web>     <compilationdebug="true"targetFramework="4.0" />  </system.web>   </configuration>   One point to note is that the fully qualified assembly name of the AspNetCacheProvider class includes the notation `1 after the class name, which indicates that it is a generic class with a single generic type parameter. The CacheSample.UI project needs to have references added to CacheSample.Caching and CacheSample.CacheProvider so that the actual application is aware of the relevant cache provider implementation. Conclusion After implementing this solution, you should have a working cache provider mechanism, that will allow the middle and data access layers to implement caching support when retrieving data, without any knowledge of the actually caching implementation. If the UI is not ASP.NET based, if for example it is Winforms or WPF, the implementation of ICacheProvider<T> would be written around whatever technology is available. It could even be a standalone caching system that takes full responsibility for adding and removing items from a global store. The next part of this article will show how this caching mechanism may be extended to provide support for cache dependencies, such as the System.Web.Caching.SqlCacheDependency. Another possible extension would be to cache the cache provider implementations instead of storing them in a static Dictionary in the CacheProviderFactory. This would prevent a build up of seldom used cache providers in the application memory, as they could be removed from the cache if not used often enough, although in reality there are probably unlikely to be vast numbers of cache provider implementation instances, as most applications do not have a massive number of business object or model types.

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  • StackOverflowException throws often when .net application built with Debug mode

    - by user1487950
    I have an application which access an external webservice often, when i are trying to debug it, means debuging in vistual studio. it often throws out StackOverflowException at the webserverice call point. when building in Release mode , the exception thrown out only occasionally. I checked the call stack, looks like there is no recursive call. can you please suggest? thank you very much. call statck attached. [In a sleep, wait, or join] mscorlib.dll!System.Threading.WaitHandle.InternalWaitOne(System.Runtime.InteropServices.SafeHandle waitableSafeHandle, long millisecondsTimeout, bool hasThreadAffinity, bool exitContext) + 0x2b bytes mscorlib.dll!System.Threading.WaitHandle.WaitOne(int millisecondsTimeout, bool exitContext) + 0x2d bytes System.dll!System.Net.NetworkAddressChangePolled.CheckAndReset() + 0x9d bytes System.dll!System.Net.NclUtilities.LocalAddresses.get() + 0x49 bytes System.dll!System.Net.WebProxyScriptHelper.myIpAddress() + 0x27 bytes [Native to Managed Transition] System.dll!System.Net.WebProxyScriptHelper.MyMethodInfo.Invoke(object target, System.Reflection.BindingFlags bindingAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, object[] args, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) + 0x6b bytes MTOqoHCT.dll!JScript 0.myIpAddress(object this, Microsoft.JScript.Vsa.VsaEngine vsa Engine, object arguments) + 0x91 bytes MTOqoHCT.dll!JScript 0.FindProxyForURL(object this, Microsoft.JScript.Vsa.VsaEngine vsa Engine, object arguments, object url, object host) + 0x3c6e bytes MTOqoHCT.dll!__WebProxyScript.__WebProxyScript.ExecuteFindProxyForURL(object url, object host) + 0x11d bytes [Native to Managed Transition] Microsoft.JScript.dll!System.Net.VsaWebProxyScript.CallMethod(object targetObject, string name, object[] args) + 0x11a bytes Microsoft.JScript.dll!System.Net.VsaWebProxyScript.Run(string url, string host) + 0x74 bytes [Native to Managed Transition] [Managed to Native Transition] mscorlib.dll!System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.StackBuilderSink.SyncProcessMessage(System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.IMessage msg, int methodPtr, bool fExecuteInContext) + 0x1ef bytes mscorlib.dll!System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.StackBuilderSink.SyncProcessMessage(System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.IMessage msg) + 0xf bytes mscorlib.dll!System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.ServerObjectTerminatorSink.SyncProcessMessage(System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.IMessage reqMsg) + 0x66 bytes mscorlib.dll!System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.ServerContextTerminatorSink.SyncProcessMessage(System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.IMessage reqMsg) + 0x8a bytes mscorlib.dll!System.Runtime.Remoting.Channels.CrossContextChannel.SyncProcessMessageCallback(object[] args) + 0x94 bytes mscorlib.dll!System.Threading.Thread.CompleteCrossContextCallback(System.Threading.InternalCrossContextDelegate ftnToCall, object[] args) + 0x8 bytes [Native to Managed Transition] [Managed to Native Transition] mscorlib.dll!System.Runtime.Remoting.Channels.CrossContextChannel.SyncProcessMessage(System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.IMessage reqMsg) + 0xa7 bytes mscorlib.dll!System.Runtime.Remoting.Channels.ChannelServices.SyncDispatchMessage(System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.IMessage msg) + 0x92 bytes mscorlib.dll!System.Runtime.Remoting.Channels.CrossAppDomainSink.DoDispatch(byte[] reqStmBuff, System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.SmuggledMethodCallMessage smuggledMcm, out System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.SmuggledMethodReturnMessage smuggledMrm) + 0xed bytes mscorlib.dll!System.Runtime.Remoting.Channels.CrossAppDomainSink.DoTransitionDispatchCallback(object[] args) + 0x8a bytes mscorlib.dll!System.Threading.Thread.CompleteCrossContextCallback(System.Threading.InternalCrossContextDelegate ftnToCall, object[] args) + 0x8 bytes [Appdomain Transition] mscorlib.dll!System.Runtime.Remoting.Channels.CrossAppDomainSink.DoTransitionDispatch(byte[] reqStmBuff, System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.SmuggledMethodCallMessage smuggledMcm, out System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.SmuggledMethodReturnMessage smuggledMrm) + 0x74 bytes mscorlib.dll!System.Runtime.Remoting.Channels.CrossAppDomainSink.SyncProcessMessage(System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.IMessage reqMsg) + 0xa3 bytes mscorlib.dll!System.Runtime.Remoting.Proxies.RemotingProxy.CallProcessMessage(System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.IMessageSink ms, System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.IMessage reqMsg, System.Runtime.Remoting.Contexts.ArrayWithSize proxySinks, System.Threading.Thread currentThread, System.Runtime.Remoting.Contexts.Context currentContext, bool bSkippingContextChain) + 0x50 bytes mscorlib.dll!System.Runtime.Remoting.Proxies.RemotingProxy.InternalInvoke(System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.IMethodCallMessage reqMcmMsg, bool useDispatchMessage, int callType) + 0x1d5 bytes mscorlib.dll!System.Runtime.Remoting.Proxies.RemotingProxy.Invoke(System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.IMessage reqMsg) + 0x66 bytes mscorlib.dll!System.Runtime.Remoting.Proxies.RealProxy.PrivateInvoke(ref System.Runtime.Remoting.Proxies.MessageData msgData, int type) + 0xee bytes System.dll!System.Net.NetWebProxyFinder.GetProxies(System.Uri destination, out System.Collections.Generic.IList<string> proxyList) + 0x83 bytes System.dll!System.Net.AutoWebProxyScriptEngine.GetProxies(System.Uri destination, out System.Collections.Generic.IList<string> proxyList, ref int syncStatus) + 0x84 bytes System.dll!System.Net.WebProxy.GetProxiesAuto(System.Uri destination, ref int syncStatus) + 0x2e bytes System.dll!System.Net.ProxyScriptChain.GetNextProxy(out System.Uri proxy) + 0x2e bytes System.dll!System.Net.ProxyChain.ProxyEnumerator.MoveNext() + 0x98 bytes System.dll!System.Net.ServicePointManager.FindServicePoint(System.Uri address, System.Net.IWebProxy proxy, out System.Net.ProxyChain chain, ref System.Net.HttpAbortDelegate abortDelegate, ref int abortState) + 0x120 bytes System.dll!System.Net.HttpWebRequest.FindServicePoint(bool forceFind) + 0xb1 bytes System.dll!System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetRequestStream(out System.Net.TransportContext context) + 0x247 bytes System.dll!System.Net.HttpWebRequest.GetRequestStream() + 0xe bytes System.Web.Services.dll!System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapHttpClientProtocol.Invoke(string methodName, object[] parameters) + 0xc0 bytes Gfinet.Config.dll!Gfinet.Config.Service.cfg_webservice.addOrUpdateProperties(string string, int intVal, Gfinet.Config.Service.PropertiesDataM[] propertiesDataMs) + 0xa3 bytes Gfinet.Config.dll!Gfinet.Config.Service.WSServiceImpl.AddOrUpdateProperties(int setId, Gfinet.Config.Service.PropertiesDataM[] properties) + 0x46 bytes [Native to Managed Transition] Gfinet.Config.dll!Gfinet.Config.Service.ServiceAspect.InvocationHandler(object target, System.Reflection.MethodBase method, object[] parameters) + 0x49e bytes Gfinet.Config.dll!Gfinet.Config.DynamicProxy.DynamicProxyImpl.Invoke(System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.IMessage message) + 0x110 bytes mscorlib.dll!System.Runtime.Remoting.Proxies.RealProxy.PrivateInvoke(ref System.Runtime.Remoting.Proxies.MessageData msgData, int type) + 0xee bytes Tici.Kraps.Services.dll!Tici.Kraps.Services.Configuration.GFINetConfiguration.StoreElement(string application, string category, string id, string elementValue, bool save) Line 303 + 0x55 bytes C# Tici.Kraps.Services.dll!Tici.Kraps.Services.Configuration.GFINetConfiguration.SaveAllInternal() Line 582 + 0x6e bytes C# Tici.Kraps.Services.dll!Tici.Kraps.Services.Configuration.GFINetConfiguration.SaveAll(bool async) Line 434 + 0x8 bytes C# Tici.Kraps.Services.dll!Tici.Kraps.Services.Configuration.GFINetConfiguration.SaveAll() Line 406 + 0xa bytes C# Tici.Kraps.Services.dll!Tici.Kraps.Services.Container.Persistor.Save() Line 59 + 0xc bytes C# Spark.exe!Tici.Kraps.RibbonShell.OnBtnSaveWorkspaceItemClick(object sender, DevExpress.XtraBars.ItemClickEventArgs e) Line 642 + 0xf bytes C# DevExpress.XtraBars.v11.2.dll!DevExpress.XtraBars.BarItem.OnClick(DevExpress.XtraBars.BarItemLink link) + 0x108 bytes DevExpress.XtraBars.v11.2.dll!DevExpress.XtraBars.BarBaseButtonItem.OnClick(DevExpress.XtraBars.BarItemLink link) + 0x47 bytes DevExpress.XtraBars.v11.2.dll!DevExpress.XtraBars.BarItemLink.OnLinkClick() + 0x245 bytes DevExpress.XtraBars.v11.2.dll!DevExpress.XtraBars.BarItemLink.OnLinkAction(DevExpress.XtraBars.BarLinkAction action, object actionArgs) + 0xb3 bytes DevExpress.XtraBars.v11.2.dll!DevExpress.XtraBars.BarButtonItemLink.OnLinkAction(DevExpress.XtraBars.BarLinkAction action, object actionArgs) + 0x47e bytes DevExpress.XtraBars.v11.2.dll!DevExpress.XtraBars.BarItemLink.OnLinkActionCore(DevExpress.XtraBars.BarLinkAction action, object actionArgs) + 0x82 bytes DevExpress.XtraBars.v11.2.dll!DevExpress.XtraBars.ViewInfo.BarSelectionInfo.ClickLink(DevExpress.XtraBars.BarItemLink link) + 0x85 bytes DevExpress.XtraBars.v11.2.dll!DevExpress.XtraBars.ViewInfo.BarSelectionInfo.UnPressLink(DevExpress.XtraBars.BarItemLink link) + 0x1e5 bytes DevExpress.XtraBars.v11.2.dll!DevExpress.XtraBars.Ribbon.Handler.BaseRibbonHandler.OnUnPressItem(DevExpress.Utils.DXMouseEventArgs e, DevExpress.XtraBars.Ribbon.ViewInfo.RibbonHitInfo hitInfo) + 0xa7 bytes DevExpress.XtraBars.v11.2.dll!DevExpress.XtraBars.Ribbon.Handler.BaseRibbonHandler.OnUnPress(DevExpress.Utils.DXMouseEventArgs e, DevExpress.XtraBars.Ribbon.ViewInfo.RibbonHitInfo hitInfo) + 0x5f bytes DevExpress.XtraBars.v11.2.dll!DevExpress.XtraBars.Ribbon.Handler.BaseRibbonHandler.OnMouseUp(DevExpress.Utils.DXMouseEventArgs e) + 0x19a bytes DevExpress.XtraBars.v11.2.dll!DevExpress.XtraBars.Ribbon.Handler.RibbonHandler.OnMouseUp(DevExpress.Utils.DXMouseEventArgs e) + 0x47 bytes DevExpress.XtraBars.v11.2.dll!DevExpress.XtraBars.Ribbon.RibbonControl.OnMouseUp(System.Windows.Forms.MouseEventArgs e) + 0x95 bytes System.Windows.Forms.dll!System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmMouseUp(ref System.Windows.Forms.Message m, System.Windows.Forms.MouseButtons button, int clicks) + 0x2d1 bytes System.Windows.Forms.dll!System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(ref System.Windows.Forms.Message m) + 0x93a bytes DevExpress.Utils.v11.2.dll!DevExpress.Utils.Controls.ControlBase.WndProc(ref System.Windows.Forms.Message m) + 0x81 bytes DevExpress.XtraBars.v11.2.dll!DevExpress.XtraBars.Ribbon.RibbonControl.WndProc(ref System.Windows.Forms.Message m) + 0x85 bytes System.Windows.Forms.dll!System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(ref System.Windows.Forms.Message m) + 0x13 bytes System.Windows.Forms.dll!System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(ref System.Windows.Forms.Message m) + 0x31 bytes System.Windows.Forms.dll!System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(System.IntPtr hWnd, int msg, System.IntPtr wparam, System.IntPtr lparam) + 0x96 bytes [Native to Managed Transition] [Managed to Native Transition] DevExpress.Utils.v11.2.dll!DevExpress.Utils.Win.Hook.ControlWndHook.WindowProc(System.IntPtr hWnd, int message, System.IntPtr wParam, System.IntPtr lParam) + 0x159 bytes [Native to Managed Transition] [Managed to Native Transition] System.Windows.Forms.dll!System.Windows.Forms.Application.ComponentManager.System.Windows.Forms.UnsafeNativeMethods.IMsoComponentManager.FPushMessageLoop(System.IntPtr dwComponentID, int reason, int pvLoopData) + 0x287 bytes System.Windows.Forms.dll!System.Windows.Forms.Application.ThreadContext.RunMessageLoopInner(int reason, System.Windows.Forms.ApplicationContext context) + 0x16c bytes System.Windows.Forms.dll!System.Windows.Forms.Application.ThreadContext.RunMessageLoop(int reason, System.Windows.Forms.ApplicationContext context) + 0x61 bytes System.Windows.Forms.dll!System.Windows.Forms.Application.Run(System.Windows.Forms.Form mainForm) + 0x31 bytes Tici.Kraps.Services.dll!Tici.Kraps.Services.Container.DefaultApplicationRunner.Run() Line 41 + 0x17 bytes C# Kraps.exe!Tici.Kraps.Program.Main() Line 105 + 0x9 bytes C# [Native to Managed Transition] [Managed to Native Transition] mscorlib.dll!System.AppDomain.ExecuteAssembly(string assemblyFile, System.Security.Policy.Evidence assemblySecurity, string[] args) + 0x6d bytes Microsoft.VisualStudio.HostingProcess.Utilities.dll!Microsoft.VisualStudio.HostingProcess.HostProc.RunUsersAssembly() + 0x2a bytes mscorlib.dll!System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart_Context(object state) + 0x63 bytes mscorlib.dll!System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(System.Threading.ExecutionContext executionContext, System.Threading.ContextCallback callback, object state, bool ignoreSyncCtx) + 0xb0 bytes mscorlib.dll!System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(System.Threading.ExecutionContext executionContext, System.Threading.ContextCallback callback, object state) + 0x2c bytes mscorlib.dll!System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart() + 0x44 bytes [Native to Managed Transition]

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  • Windows Start Menu Not Staying on Top

    - by Jeff Rapp
    Hey everyone. I've had this problem since Windows Vista. I did a clean install with Windows 7 and hoped it would fix the problem. Also swapped out the video card just to rule out a strange driver issue. Here's what's happening. After running for some period of time (usually a few hours), the Start button/orb will loose it's "Chrome" and turn into a plain button that just says "Start." It will work fine for a while, but then the start menu will just stop showing. Additionally, when I hit Win+D to show the desktop, the entire taskbar completely disappears. I can get it back usually by moving/minimizing windows that may be overlapping where the start menu should show. Otherwise, it requires either a full reboot or I'll end up killing & restarting the explorer.exe process. I realize that this is a strange issue - I took a video of it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B3WwT0uyr4 Thanks! --Edit-- Here's my HijackThis log: Logfile of Trend Micro HijackThis v2.0.3 (BETA) Scan saved at 4:19:00 PM, on 12/16/2009 Platform: Unknown Windows (WinNT 6.01.3504) MSIE: Internet Explorer v8.00 (8.00.7600.16385) Boot mode: Normal Running processes: C:\Program Files (x86)\Pantone\hueyPRO\hueyPROTray.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat 9.0\Acrobat\acrotray.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\iTunes\iTunesHelper.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\bin\jusched.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\MagicDisc\MagicDisc.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Trillian\trillian.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn\VSShell\Common7\IDE\Ssms.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\DevServer\9.0\WebDev.WebServer.EXE C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\notepad++.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Fiddler2\Fiddler.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\mspdbsrv.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\iTunes\iTunes.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CS4\Support Files\Contents\Windows\Illustrator.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\ColorPic 4.1\ColorPic.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat 9.0\Acrobat\Acrobat.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Help 9\dexplore.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Help 9\dexplore.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\eBay\Blackthorne\bin\BT.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE C:\Program Files (x86)\CamStudio\Recorder.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\CamStudio\Playplus.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Beta 3\firefox.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\CamStudio\Playplus.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\PuTTY\putty.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\CamStudio\Playplus.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\CamStudio\Playplus.exe C:\Program Files (x86)\TrendMicro\HiJackThis\HiJackThis.exe R1 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Search Page = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=54896 R0 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Start Page = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=69157 R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Default_Page_URL = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=69157 R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Default_Search_URL = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=54896 R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Search Page = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=54896 R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Start Page = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=69157 R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Search,SearchAssistant = R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Search,CustomizeSearch = R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Local Page = C:\Windows\SysWOW64\blank.htm R0 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar,LinksFolderName = F2 - REG:system.ini: UserInit=userinit.exe O2 - BHO: ContributeBHO Class - {074C1DC5-9320-4A9A-947D-C042949C6216} - C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\/Adobe Contribute CS4/contributeieplugin.dll O2 - BHO: AcroIEHelperStub - {18DF081C-E8AD-4283-A596-FA578C2EBDC3} - C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Acrobat\ActiveX\AcroIEHelperShim.dll O2 - BHO: Groove GFS Browser Helper - {72853161-30C5-4D22-B7F9-0BBC1D38A37E} - C:\PROGRA~2\MICROS~1\Office14\GROOVEEX.DLL O2 - BHO: Windows Live Sign-in Helper - {9030D464-4C02-4ABF-8ECC-5164760863C6} - C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Windows Live\WindowsLiveLogin.dll O2 - BHO: Adobe PDF Conversion Toolbar Helper - {AE7CD045-E861-484f-8273-0445EE161910} - C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Acrobat\ActiveX\AcroIEFavClient.dll O2 - BHO: URLRedirectionBHO - {B4F3A835-0E21-4959-BA22-42B3008E02FF} - C:\PROGRA~2\MICROS~1\Office14\URLREDIR.DLL O2 - BHO: Java(tm) Plug-In 2 SSV Helper - {DBC80044-A445-435b-BC74-9C25C1C588A9} - C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\bin\jp2ssv.dll O2 - BHO: SmartSelect - {F4971EE7-DAA0-4053-9964-665D8EE6A077} - C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Acrobat\ActiveX\AcroIEFavClient.dll O3 - Toolbar: Adobe PDF - {47833539-D0C5-4125-9FA8-0819E2EAAC93} - C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Acrobat\ActiveX\AcroIEFavClient.dll O3 - Toolbar: Contribute Toolbar - {517BDDE4-E3A7-4570-B21E-2B52B6139FC7} - C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\/Adobe Contribute CS4/contributeieplugin.dll O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [AdobeCS4ServiceManager] "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\CS4ServiceManager\CS4ServiceManager.exe" -launchedbylogin O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [Adobe Acrobat Speed Launcher] "C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat 9.0\Acrobat\Acrobat_sl.exe" O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [Acrobat Assistant 8.0] "C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat 9.0\Acrobat\Acrotray.exe" O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [Adobe_ID0ENQBO] C:\PROGRA~2\COMMON~1\Adobe\ADOBEV~1\Server\bin\VERSIO~2.EXE O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [QuickTime Task] "C:\Program Files (x86)\QuickTime\QTTask.exe" -atboottime O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [iTunesHelper] "C:\Program Files (x86)\iTunes\iTunesHelper.exe" O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [SunJavaUpdateSched] "C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\bin\jusched.exe" O4 - HKUS\S-1-5-19\..\Run: [Sidebar] %ProgramFiles%\Windows Sidebar\Sidebar.exe /autoRun (User 'LOCAL SERVICE') O4 - HKUS\S-1-5-19\..\RunOnce: [mctadmin] C:\Windows\System32\mctadmin.exe (User 'LOCAL SERVICE') O4 - HKUS\S-1-5-20\..\Run: [Sidebar] %ProgramFiles%\Windows Sidebar\Sidebar.exe /autoRun (User 'NETWORK SERVICE') O4 - HKUS\S-1-5-20\..\RunOnce: [mctadmin] C:\Windows\System32\mctadmin.exe (User 'NETWORK SERVICE') O4 - Startup: ChatNowDesktop.appref-ms O4 - Startup: MagicDisc.lnk = C:\Program Files (x86)\MagicDisc\MagicDisc.exe O4 - Startup: Trillian.lnk = C:\Program Files (x86)\Trillian\trillian.exe O4 - Global Startup: Digsby.lnk = C:\Program Files (x86)\Digsby\digsby.exe O4 - Global Startup: hueyPROTray.lnk = C:\Program Files (x86)\Pantone\hueyPRO\hueyPROTray.exe O4 - Global Startup: OfficeSAS.lnk = ? O8 - Extra context menu item: Append Link Target to Existing PDF - res://C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Acrobat\ActiveX\AcroIEFavClient.dll/AcroIEAppendSelLinks.html O8 - Extra context menu item: Append to Existing PDF - res://C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Acrobat\ActiveX\AcroIEFavClient.dll/AcroIEAppend.html O8 - Extra context menu item: Convert Link Target to Adobe PDF - res://C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Acrobat\ActiveX\AcroIEFavClient.dll/AcroIECaptureSelLinks.html O8 - Extra context menu item: Convert to Adobe PDF - res://C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Acrobat\ActiveX\AcroIEFavClient.dll/AcroIECapture.html O8 - Extra context menu item: E&xport to Microsoft Excel - res://C:\PROGRA~1\MICROS~1\Office14\EXCEL.EXE/3000 O8 - Extra context menu item: S&end to OneNote - res://C:\PROGRA~1\MICROS~1\Office14\ONBttnIE.dll/105 O9 - Extra button: Send to OneNote - {2670000A-7350-4f3c-8081-5663EE0C6C49} - C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\ONBttnIE.dll O9 - Extra 'Tools' menuitem: Se&nd to OneNote - {2670000A-7350-4f3c-8081-5663EE0C6C49} - C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\ONBttnIE.dll O9 - Extra button: OneNote Lin&ked Notes - {789FE86F-6FC4-46A1-9849-EDE0DB0C95CA} - C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\ONBttnIELinkedNotes.dll O9 - Extra 'Tools' menuitem: OneNote Lin&ked Notes - {789FE86F-6FC4-46A1-9849-EDE0DB0C95CA} - C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\ONBttnIELinkedNotes.dll O9 - Extra button: Fiddler2 - {CF819DA3-9882-4944-ADF5-6EF17ECF3C6E} - "C:\Program Files (x86)\Fiddler2\Fiddler.exe" (file missing) O9 - Extra 'Tools' menuitem: Fiddler2 - {CF819DA3-9882-4944-ADF5-6EF17ECF3C6E} - "C:\Program Files (x86)\Fiddler2\Fiddler.exe" (file missing) O13 - Gopher Prefix: O16 - DPF: {5554DCB0-700B-498D-9B58-4E40E5814405} (RSClientPrint 2008 Class) - http://reportserver/Reports/Reserved.ReportViewerWebControl.axd?ReportSession=oxadkhfvfvt1hzf2eh3y1ay2&ControlID=b89e27f15e734f3faee1308eebdfab2a&Culture=1033&UICulture=9&ReportStack=1&OpType=PrintCab&Arch=X86 O16 - DPF: {82774781-8F4E-11D1-AB1C-0000F8773BF0} (DLC Class) - https://transfers.ds.microsoft.com/FTM/TransferSource/grTransferCtrl.cab O16 - DPF: {D27CDB6E-AE6D-11CF-96B8-444553540000} (Shockwave Flash Object) - http://fpdownload2.macromedia.com/get/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab O17 - HKLM\System\CCS\Services\Tcpip\Parameters: Domain = LapkoSoft.local O17 - HKLM\System\CCS\Services\Tcpip\..\{5992B87A-643B-4385-A914-249B98BF7129}: NameServer = 192.168.1.10 O17 - HKLM\System\CS1\Services\Tcpip\Parameters: Domain = LapkoSoft.local O17 - HKLM\System\CS2\Services\Tcpip\Parameters: Domain = LapkoSoft.local O18 - Filter hijack: text/xml - {807573E5-5146-11D5-A672-00B0D022E945} - C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OFFICE14\MSOXMLMF.DLL O23 - Service: Adobe Version Cue CS4 - Adobe Systems Incorporated - C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Adobe Version Cue CS4\Server\bin\VersionCueCS4.exe O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\Alg.exe,-112 (ALG) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\System32\alg.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: Apple Mobile Device - Apple Inc. - C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Apple\Mobile Device Support\bin\AppleMobileDeviceService.exe O23 - Service: ASP.NET State Service (aspnet_state) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_state.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: Bonjour Service - Apple Inc. - C:\Program Files (x86)\Bonjour\mDNSResponder.exe O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\efssvc.dll,-100 (EFS) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\System32\lsass.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%systemroot%\system32\fxsresm.dll,-118 (Fax) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\fxssvc.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: FLEXnet Licensing Service - Acresso Software Inc. - C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Macrovision Shared\FLEXnet Publisher\FNPLicensingService.exe O23 - Service: FLEXnet Licensing Service 64 - Acresso Software Inc. - C:\Program Files\Common Files\Macrovision Shared\FLEXnet Publisher\FNPLicensingService64.exe O23 - Service: @%windir%\system32\inetsrv\iisres.dll,-30007 (IISADMIN) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\inetsrv\inetinfo.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: iPod Service - Apple Inc. - C:\Program Files\iPod\bin\iPodService.exe O23 - Service: @keyiso.dll,-100 (KeyIso) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\lsass.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @comres.dll,-2797 (MSDTC) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\System32\msdtc.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\System32\netlogon.dll,-102 (Netlogon) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\lsass.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: NVIDIA Performance Driver Service - Unknown owner - C:\Program Files\NVIDIA Corporation\Performance Drivers\nvPDsvc.exe O23 - Service: NVIDIA Display Driver Service (nvsvc) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\nvvsvc.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%systemroot%\system32\psbase.dll,-300 (ProtectedStorage) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\lsass.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%systemroot%\system32\Locator.exe,-2 (RpcLocator) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\locator.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\samsrv.dll,-1 (SamSs) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\lsass.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\snmptrap.exe,-3 (SNMPTRAP) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\System32\snmptrap.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%systemroot%\system32\spoolsv.exe,-1 (Spooler) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\System32\spoolsv.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\sppsvc.exe,-101 (sppsvc) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\sppsvc.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: TeamViewer 5 (TeamViewer5) - TeamViewer GmbH - C:\Program Files (x86)\TeamViewer\Version5\TeamViewer_Service.exe O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\ui0detect.exe,-101 (UI0Detect) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\UI0Detect.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\vaultsvc.dll,-1003 (VaultSvc) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\lsass.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%SystemRoot%\system32\vds.exe,-100 (vds) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\System32\vds.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%systemroot%\system32\vssvc.exe,-102 (VSS) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\vssvc.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%systemroot%\system32\wbengine.exe,-104 (wbengine) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\wbengine.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%Systemroot%\system32\wbem\wmiapsrv.exe,-110 (wmiApSrv) - Unknown owner - C:\Windows\system32\wbem\WmiApSrv.exe (file missing) O23 - Service: @%PROGRAMFILES%\Windows Media Player\wmpnetwk.exe,-101 (WMPNetworkSvc) - Unknown owner - C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Media Player\wmpnetwk.exe (file missing)

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  • Red Gate Coder interviews: Alex Davies

    - by Michael Williamson
    Alex Davies has been a software engineer at Red Gate since graduating from university, and is currently busy working on .NET Demon. We talked about tackling parallel programming with his actors framework, a scientific approach to debugging, and how JavaScript is going to affect the programming languages we use in years to come. So, if we start at the start, how did you get started in programming? When I was seven or eight, I was given a BBC Micro for Christmas. I had asked for a Game Boy, but my dad thought it would be better to give me a proper computer. For a year or so, I only played games on it, but then I found the user guide for writing programs in it. I gradually started doing more stuff on it and found it fun. I liked creating. As I went into senior school I continued to write stuff on there, trying to write games that weren’t very good. I got a real computer when I was fourteen and found ways to write BASIC on it. Visual Basic to start with, and then something more interesting than that. How did you learn to program? Was there someone helping you out? Absolutely not! I learnt out of a book, or by experimenting. I remember the first time I found a loop, I was like “Oh my God! I don’t have to write out the same line over and over and over again any more. It’s amazing!” When did you think this might be something that you actually wanted to do as a career? For a long time, I thought it wasn’t something that you would do as a career, because it was too much fun to be a career. I thought I’d do chemistry at university and some kind of career based on chemical engineering. And then I went to a careers fair at school when I was seventeen or eighteen, and it just didn’t interest me whatsoever. I thought “I could be a programmer, and there’s loads of money there, and I’m good at it, and it’s fun”, but also that I shouldn’t spoil my hobby. Now I don’t really program in my spare time any more, which is a bit of a shame, but I program all the rest of the time, so I can live with it. Do you think you learnt much about programming at university? Yes, definitely! I went into university knowing how to make computers do anything I wanted them to do. However, I didn’t have the language to talk about algorithms, so the algorithms course in my first year was massively important. Learning other language paradigms like functional programming was really good for breadth of understanding. Functional programming influences normal programming through design rather than actually using it all the time. I draw inspiration from it to write imperative programs which I think is actually becoming really fashionable now, but I’ve been doing it for ages. I did it first! There were also some courses on really odd programming languages, a bit of Prolog, a little bit of C. Having a little bit of each of those is something that I would have never done on my own, so it was important. And then there are knowledge-based courses which are about not programming itself but things that have been programmed like TCP. Those are really important for examples for how to approach things. Did you do any internships while you were at university? Yeah, I spent both of my summers at the same company. I thought I could code well before I went there. Looking back at the crap that I produced, it was only surpassed in its crappiness by all of the other code already in that company. I’m so much better at writing nice code now than I used to be back then. Was there just not a culture of looking after your code? There was, they just didn’t hire people for their abilities in that area. They hired people for raw IQ. The first indicator of it going wrong was that they didn’t have any computer scientists, which is a bit odd in a programming company. But even beyond that they didn’t have people who learnt architecture from anyone else. Most of them had started straight out of university, so never really had experience or mentors to learn from. There wasn’t the experience to draw from to teach each other. In the second half of my second internship, I was being given tasks like looking at new technologies and teaching people stuff. Interns shouldn’t be teaching people how to do their jobs! All interns are going to have little nuggets of things that you don’t know about, but they shouldn’t consistently be the ones who know the most. It’s not a good environment to learn. I was going to ask how you found working with people who were more experienced than you… When I reached Red Gate, I found some people who were more experienced programmers than me, and that was difficult. I’ve been coding since I was tiny. At university there were people who were cleverer than me, but there weren’t very many who were more experienced programmers than me. During my internship, I didn’t find anyone who I classed as being a noticeably more experienced programmer than me. So, it was a shock to the system to have valid criticisms rather than just formatting criticisms. However, Red Gate’s not so big on the actual code review, at least it wasn’t when I started. We did an entire product release and then somebody looked over all of the UI of that product which I’d written and say what they didn’t like. By that point, it was way too late and I’d disagree with them. Do you think the lack of code reviews was a bad thing? I think if there’s going to be any oversight of new people, then it should be continuous rather than chunky. For me I don’t mind too much, I could go out and get oversight if I wanted it, and in those situations I felt comfortable without it. If I was managing the new person, then maybe I’d be keener on oversight and then the right way to do it is continuously and in very, very small chunks. Have you had any significant projects you’ve worked on outside of a job? When I was a teenager I wrote all sorts of stuff. I used to write games, I derived how to do isomorphic projections myself once. I didn’t know what the word was so I couldn’t Google for it, so I worked it out myself. It was horrifically complicated. But it sort of tailed off when I started at university, and is now basically zero. If I do side-projects now, they tend to be work-related side projects like my actors framework, NAct, which I started in a down tools week. Could you explain a little more about NAct? It is a little C# framework for writing parallel code more easily. Parallel programming is difficult when you need to write to shared data. Sometimes parallel programming is easy because you don’t need to write to shared data. When you do need to access shared data, you could just have your threads pile in and do their work, but then you would screw up the data because the threads would trample on each other’s toes. You could lock, but locks are really dangerous if you’re using more than one of them. You get interactions like deadlocks, and that’s just nasty. Actors instead allows you to say this piece of data belongs to this thread of execution, and nobody else can read it. If you want to read it, then ask that thread of execution for a piece of it by sending a message, and it will send the data back by a message. And that avoids deadlocks as long as you follow some obvious rules about not making your actors sit around waiting for other actors to do something. There are lots of ways to write actors, NAct allows you to do it as if it was method calls on other objects, which means you get all the strong type-safety that C# programmers like. Do you think that this is suitable for the majority of parallel programming, or do you think it’s only suitable for specific cases? It’s suitable for most difficult parallel programming. If you’ve just got a hundred web requests which are all independent of each other, then I wouldn’t bother because it’s easier to just spin them up in separate threads and they can proceed independently of each other. But where you’ve got difficult parallel programming, where you’ve got multiple threads accessing multiple bits of data in multiple ways at different times, then actors is at least as good as all other ways, and is, I reckon, easier to think about. When you’re using actors, you presumably still have to write your code in a different way from you would otherwise using single-threaded code. You can’t use actors with any methods that have return types, because you’re not allowed to call into another actor and wait for it. If you want to get a piece of data out of another actor, then you’ve got to use tasks so that you can use “async” and “await” to await asynchronously for it. But other than that, you can still stick things in classes so it’s not too different really. Rather than having thousands of objects with mutable state, you can use component-orientated design, where there are only a few mutable classes which each have a small number of instances. Then there can be thousands of immutable objects. If you tend to do that anyway, then actors isn’t much of a jump. If I’ve already built my system without any parallelism, how hard is it to add actors to exploit all eight cores on my desktop? Usually pretty easy. If you can identify even one boundary where things look like messages and you have components where some objects live on one side and these other objects live on the other side, then you can have a granddaddy object on one side be an actor and it will parallelise as it goes across that boundary. Not too difficult. If we do get 1000-core desktop PCs, do you think actors will scale up? It’s hard. There are always in the order of twenty to fifty actors in my whole program because I tend to write each component as actors, and I tend to have one instance of each component. So this won’t scale to a thousand cores. What you can do is write data structures out of actors. I use dictionaries all over the place, and if you need a dictionary that is going to be accessed concurrently, then you could build one of those out of actors in no time. You can use queuing to marshal requests between different slices of the dictionary which are living on different threads. So it’s like a distributed hash table but all of the chunks of it are on the same machine. That means that each of these thousand processors has cached one small piece of the dictionary. I reckon it wouldn’t be too big a leap to start doing proper parallelism. Do you think it helps if actors get baked into the language, similarly to Erlang? Erlang is excellent in that it has thread-local garbage collection. C# doesn’t, so there’s a limit to how well C# actors can possibly scale because there’s a single garbage collected heap shared between all of them. When you do a global garbage collection, you’ve got to stop all of the actors, which is seriously expensive, whereas in Erlang garbage collections happen per-actor, so they’re insanely cheap. However, Erlang deviated from all the sensible language design that people have used recently and has just come up with crazy stuff. You can definitely retrofit thread-local garbage collection to .NET, and then it’s quite well-suited to support actors, even if it’s not baked into the language. Speaking of language design, do you have a favourite programming language? I’ll choose a language which I’ve never written before. I like the idea of Scala. It sounds like C#, only with some of the niggles gone. I enjoy writing static types. It means you don’t have to writing tests so much. When you say it doesn’t have some of the niggles? C# doesn’t allow the use of a property as a method group. It doesn’t have Scala case classes, or sum types, where you can do a switch statement and the compiler checks that you’ve checked all the cases, which is really useful in functional-style programming. Pattern-matching, in other words. That’s actually the major niggle. C# is pretty good, and I’m quite happy with C#. And what about going even further with the type system to remove the need for tests to something like Haskell? Or is that a step too far? I’m quite a pragmatist, I don’t think I could deal with trying to write big systems in languages with too few other users, especially when learning how to structure things. I just don’t know anyone who can teach me, and the Internet won’t teach me. That’s the main reason I wouldn’t use it. If I turned up at a company that writes big systems in Haskell, I would have no objection to that, but I wouldn’t instigate it. What about things in C#? For instance, there’s contracts in C#, so you can try to statically verify a bit more about your code. Do you think that’s useful, or just not worthwhile? I’ve not really tried it. My hunch is that it needs to be built into the language and be quite mathematical for it to work in real life, and that doesn’t seem to have ended up true for C# contracts. I don’t think anyone who’s tried them thinks they’re any good. I might be wrong. On a slightly different note, how do you like to debug code? I think I’m quite an odd debugger. I use guesswork extremely rarely, especially if something seems quite difficult to debug. I’ve been bitten spending hours and hours on guesswork and not being scientific about debugging in the past, so now I’m scientific to a fault. What I want is to see the bug happening in the debugger, to step through the bug happening. To watch the program going from a valid state to an invalid state. When there’s a bug and I can’t work out why it’s happening, I try to find some piece of evidence which places the bug in one section of the code. From that experiment, I binary chop on the possible causes of the bug. I suppose that means binary chopping on places in the code, or binary chopping on a stage through a processing cycle. Basically, I’m very stupid about how I debug. I won’t make any guesses, I won’t use any intuition, I will only identify the experiment that’s going to binary chop most effectively and repeat rather than trying to guess anything. I suppose it’s quite top-down. Is most of the time then spent in the debugger? Absolutely, if at all possible I will never debug using print statements or logs. I don’t really hold much stock in outputting logs. If there’s any bug which can be reproduced locally, I’d rather do it in the debugger than outputting logs. And with SmartAssembly error reporting, there’s not a lot that can’t be either observed in an error report and just fixed, or reproduced locally. And in those other situations, maybe I’ll use logs. But I hate using logs. You stare at the log, trying to guess what’s going on, and that’s exactly what I don’t like doing. You have to just look at it and see does this look right or wrong. We’ve covered how you get to grip with bugs. How do you get to grips with an entire codebase? I watch it in the debugger. I find little bugs and then try to fix them, and mostly do it by watching them in the debugger and gradually getting an understanding of how the code works using my process of binary chopping. I have to do a lot of reading and watching code to choose where my slicing-in-half experiment is going to be. The last time I did it was SmartAssembly. The old code was a complete mess, but at least it did things top to bottom. There wasn’t too much of some of the big abstractions where flow of control goes all over the place, into a base class and back again. Code’s really hard to understand when that happens. So I like to choose a little bug and try to fix it, and choose a bigger bug and try to fix it. Definitely learn by doing. I want to always have an aim so that I get a little achievement after every few hours of debugging. Once I’ve learnt the codebase I might be able to fix all the bugs in an hour, but I’d rather be using them as an aim while I’m learning the codebase. If I was a maintainer of a codebase, what should I do to make it as easy as possible for you to understand? Keep distinct concepts in different places. And name your stuff so that it’s obvious which concepts live there. You shouldn’t have some variable that gets set miles up the top of somewhere, and then is read miles down to choose some later behaviour. I’m talking from a very much SmartAssembly point of view because the old SmartAssembly codebase had tons and tons of these things, where it would read some property of the code and then deal with it later. Just thousands of variables in scope. Loads of things to think about. If you can keep concepts separate, then it aids me in my process of fixing bugs one at a time, because each bug is going to more or less be understandable in the one place where it is. And what about tests? Do you think they help at all? I’ve never had the opportunity to learn a codebase which has had tests, I don’t know what it’s like! What about when you’re actually developing? How useful do you find tests in finding bugs or regressions? Finding regressions, absolutely. Running bits of code that would be quite hard to run otherwise, definitely. It doesn’t happen very often that a test finds a bug in the first place. I don’t really buy nebulous promises like tests being a good way to think about the spec of the code. My thinking goes something like “This code works at the moment, great, ship it! Ah, there’s a way that this code doesn’t work. Okay, write a test, demonstrate that it doesn’t work, fix it, use the test to demonstrate that it’s now fixed, and keep the test for future regressions.” The most valuable tests are for bugs that have actually happened at some point, because bugs that have actually happened at some point, despite the fact that you think you’ve fixed them, are way more likely to appear again than new bugs are. Does that mean that when you write your code the first time, there are no tests? Often. The chance of there being a bug in a new feature is relatively unaffected by whether I’ve written a test for that new feature because I’m not good enough at writing tests to think of bugs that I would have written into the code. So not writing regression tests for all of your code hasn’t affected you too badly? There are different kinds of features. Some of them just always work, and are just not flaky, they just continue working whatever you throw at them. Maybe because the type-checker is particularly effective around them. Writing tests for those features which just tend to always work is a waste of time. And because it’s a waste of time I’ll tend to wait until a feature has demonstrated its flakiness by having bugs in it before I start trying to test it. You can get a feel for whether it’s going to be flaky code as you’re writing it. I try to write it to make it not flaky, but there are some things that are just inherently flaky. And very occasionally, I’ll think “this is going to be flaky” as I’m writing, and then maybe do a test, but not most of the time. How do you think your programming style has changed over time? I’ve got clearer about what the right way of doing things is. I used to flip-flop a lot between different ideas. Five years ago I came up with some really good ideas and some really terrible ideas. All of them seemed great when I thought of them, but they were quite diverse ideas, whereas now I have a smaller set of reliable ideas that are actually good for structuring code. So my code is probably more similar to itself than it used to be back in the day, when I was trying stuff out. I’ve got more disciplined about encapsulation, I think. There are operational things like I use actors more now than I used to, and that forces me to use immutability more than I used to. The first code that I wrote in Red Gate was the memory profiler UI, and that was an actor, I just didn’t know the name of it at the time. I don’t really use object-orientation. By object-orientation, I mean having n objects of the same type which are mutable. I want a constant number of objects that are mutable, and they should be different types. I stick stuff in dictionaries and then have one thing that owns the dictionary and puts stuff in and out of it. That’s definitely a pattern that I’ve seen recently. I think maybe I’m doing functional programming. Possibly. It’s plausible. If you had to summarise the essence of programming in a pithy sentence, how would you do it? Programming is the form of art that, without losing any of the beauty of architecture or fine art, allows you to produce things that people love and you make money from. So you think it’s an art rather than a science? It’s a little bit of engineering, a smidgeon of maths, but it’s not science. Like architecture, programming is on that boundary between art and engineering. If you want to do it really nicely, it’s mostly art. You can get away with doing architecture and programming entirely by having a good engineering mind, but you’re not going to produce anything nice. You’re not going to have joy doing it if you’re an engineering mind. Architects who are just engineering minds are not going to enjoy their job. I suppose engineering is the foundation on which you build the art. Exactly. How do you think programming is going to change over the next ten years? There will be an unfortunate shift towards dynamically-typed languages, because of JavaScript. JavaScript has an unfair advantage. JavaScript’s unfair advantage will cause more people to be exposed to dynamically-typed languages, which means other dynamically-typed languages crop up and the best features go into dynamically-typed languages. Then people conflate the good features with the fact that it’s dynamically-typed, and more investment goes into dynamically-typed languages. They end up better, so people use them. What about the idea of compiling other languages, possibly statically-typed, to JavaScript? It’s a reasonable idea. I would like to do it, but I don’t think enough people in the world are going to do it to make it pick up. The hordes of beginners are the lifeblood of a language community. They are what makes there be good tools and what makes there be vibrant community websites. And any particular thing which is the same as JavaScript only with extra stuff added to it, although it might be technically great, is not going to have the hordes of beginners. JavaScript is always to be quickest and easiest way for a beginner to start programming in the browser. And dynamically-typed languages are great for beginners. Compilers are pretty scary and beginners don’t write big code. And having your errors come up in the same place, whether they’re statically checkable errors or not, is quite nice for a beginner. If someone asked me to teach them some programming, I’d teach them JavaScript. If dynamically-typed languages are great for beginners, when do you think the benefits of static typing start to kick in? The value of having a statically typed program is in the tools that rely on the static types to produce a smooth IDE experience rather than actually telling me my compile errors. And only once you’re experienced enough a programmer that having a really smooth IDE experience makes a blind bit of difference, does static typing make a blind bit of difference. So it’s not really about size of codebase. If I go and write up a tiny program, I’m still going to get value out of writing it in C# using ReSharper because I’m experienced with C# and ReSharper enough to be able to write code five times faster if I have that help. Any other visions of the future? Nobody’s going to use actors. Because everyone’s going to be running on single-core VMs connected over network-ready protocols like JSON over HTTP. So, parallelism within one operating system is going to die. But until then, you should use actors. More Red Gater Coder interviews

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  • Why should you choose Oracle WebLogic 12c instead of JBoss EAP 6?

    - by Ricardo Ferreira
    In this post, I will cover some technical differences between Oracle WebLogic 12c and JBoss EAP 6, which was released a couple days ago from Red Hat. This article claims to help you in the evaluation of key points that you should consider when choosing for an Java EE application server. In the following sections, I will present to you some important aspects that most customers ask us when they are seriously evaluating for an middleware infrastructure, specially if you are considering JBoss for some reason. I would suggest that you keep the following question in mind while you are reading the points: "Why should I choose JBoss instead of WebLogic?" 1) Multi Datacenter Deployment and Clustering - D/R ("Disaster & Recovery") architecture support is embedded on the WebLogic Server 12c product. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no direct D/R support included, Red Hat relies on third-part tools with higher prices. When you consider a middleware solution to host your business critical application, you should worry with every architectural aspect that are related with the solution. Fail-over support is one little aspect of a truly reliable solution. If you do not worry about D/R, your solution will not be reliable. Having said that, with Red Hat and JBoss EAP 6, you have this extra cost that will increase considerably the total cost of ownership of the solution. As we commonly hear from analysts, open-source are not so cheaper when you start seeing the big picture. - WebLogic Server 12c supports advanced LAN clustering, detection of death servers and have a common alert framework. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has limited LAN clustering support with no server death detection. They do not generate any alerts when servers goes down (only if you buy JBoss ON which is a separated technology, but until now does not support JBoss EAP 6) and manual intervention are required when servers goes down. In most cases, admin people must rely on "kill -9", "tail -f someFile.log" and "ps ax | grep java" commands to manage failures and clustering anomalies. - WebLogic Server 12c supports the concept of Node Manager, which is a separated process that runs on the physical | virtual servers that allows extend the administration of the cluster to WebLogic managed servers that are often distributed across multiple machines and geographic locations. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no equivalent technology. Whole server instances must be managed individually. - WebLogic Server 12c Node Manager supports Coherence to boost performance when managing servers. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no similar technology. There is no way to coordinate JBoss and infiniband instances provided by JBoss using high throughput and low latency protocols like InfiniBand. The Node Manager feature also allows another very important feature that JBoss EAP lacks: secure the administration. When using WebLogic Node Manager, all the administration tasks are sent to the managed servers in a secure tunel protected by a certificate, which means that the transport layer that separates the WebLogic administration console from the managed servers are secured by SSL. - WebLogic Server 12c are now integrated with OTD ("Oracle Traffic Director") which is a web server technology derived from the former Sun iPlanet Web Server. This software complements the web server support offered by OHS ("Oracle HTTP Server"). Using OTD, WebLogic instances are load-balanced by a high powerful software that knows how to handle SDP ("Socket Direct Protocol") over InfiniBand, which boost performance when used with engineered systems technologies like Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand only offers support to Apache Web Server with custom modules created to deal with JBoss clusters, but only across standard TCP/IP networks.  2) Application and Runtime Diagnostics - WebLogic Server 12c have diagnostics capabilities embedded on the server called WLDF ("WebLogic Diagnostic Framework") so there is no need to rely on third-part tools. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no diagnostics capabilities. Their only diagnostics tool is the log generated by the application server. Admin people are encouraged to analyse thousands of log lines to find out what is going on. - WebLogic Server 12c complement WLDF with JRockit MC ("Mission Control"), which provides to administrators and developers a complete insight about the JVM performance, behavior and possible bottlenecks. WebLogic Server 12c also have an classloader analysis tool embedded, and even a log analyzer tool that enables administrators and developers to view logs of multiple servers at the same time. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand relies on third-part tools to do something similar. Again, only log searching are offered to find out whats going on. - WebLogic Server 12c offers end-to-end traceability and monitoring available through Oracle EM ("Enterprise Manager"), including monitoring of business transactions that flows through web servers, ESBs, application servers and database servers, all of this with high deep JVM analysis and diagnostics. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand, even using JBoss ON ("Operations Network"), which is a separated technology, does not support those features. Red Hat relies on third-part tools to provide direct Oracle database traceability across JVMs. One of those tools are Oracle EM for non-Oracle middleware that manage JBoss, Tomcat, Websphere and IIS transparently. - WebLogic Server 12c with their JRockit support offers a tool called JRockit Flight Recorder, which can give developers a complete visibility of a certain period of application production monitoring with zero extra overhead. This automatic recording allows you to deep analyse threads latency, memory leaks, thread contention, resource utilization, stack overflow damages and GC ("Garbage Collection") cycles, to observe in real time stop-the-world phenomenons, generational, reference count and parallel collects and mutator threads analysis. JBoss EAP 6 don't even dream to support something similar, even because they don't have their own JVM. 3) Application Server Administration - WebLogic Server 12c offers a complete administration console complemented with scripting and macro-like recording capabilities. A single WebLogic console can managed up to hundreds of WebLogic servers belonging to the same domain. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has a limited console and provides a XML centric administration. JBoss, after ten years, started the development of a rudimentary centralized administration that still leave a lot of administration tasks aside, so admin people and developers must touch scripts and XML configuration files for most advanced and even simple administration tasks. This lead applications to error prone and risky deployments. Even using JBoss ON, JBoss EAP are not able to offer decent administration features for admin people which must be high skilled in JBoss internal architecture and its managing capabilities. - Oracle EM is available to manage multiple domains, databases, application servers, operating systems and virtualization, with a complete end-to-end visibility. JBoss ON does not provide management capabilities across the complete architecture, only basic monitoring. Even deployment must be done aside JBoss ON which does no integrate well with others softwares than JBoss. Until now, JBoss ON does not supports JBoss EAP 6, so even their minimal support for JBoss are not available for JBoss EAP 6 leaving customers uncovered and subject to high skilled JBoss admin people. - WebLogic Server 12c has the same administration model whatever is the topology selected by the customer. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand differentiates between two operational models: standalone-mode and domain-mode, that are not consistent with each other. Depending on the mode used, the administration skill is different. - WebLogic Server 12c has no point-of-failures processes, and it does not need to define any specialized server. Domain model in WebLogic is available for years (at least ten years or more) and is production proven. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand needs special processes to garantee JBoss integrity, the PC ("Process-Controller") and the HC ("Host-Controller"). Different from WebLogic, the domain model in JBoss is quite new (one year at tops) of maturity, and need to mature considerably until start doing things like WebLogic domain model does. - WebLogic Server 12c supports parallel deployment model which enables some artifacts being deployed at the same time. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand does not have any similar feature. Every deployment are done atomically in the containers. This means that if you have a huge EAR (an EAR of 120 MB of size for instance) and deploy onto JBoss EAP 6, this EAR will take some minutes in order to starting accept thread requests. The same EAR deployed onto WebLogic Server 12c will reduce the deployment time at least in 2X compared to JBoss. 4) Support and Upgrades - WebLogic Server 12c has patch management available. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no patch management available, each JBoss EAP instance should be patched manually. To achieve such feature, you need to buy a separated technology called JBoss ON ("Operations Network") that manage this type of stuff. But until now, JBoss ON does not support JBoss EAP 6 so, in practice, JBoss EAP 6 does not have this feature. - WebLogic Server 12c supports previuous WebLogic domains without any reconfiguration since its kernel is robust and mature since its creation in 1995. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has a proven lack of supportability between JBoss AS 4, 5, 6 and 7. Different kernels and messaging engines were implemented in JBoss stack in the last five years reveling their incapacity to create a well architected and proven middleware technology. - WebLogic Server 12c has patch prescription based on customer configuration. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no such capability. People need to create ticket supports and have their installations revised by Red Hat support guys to gain some patch prescription from them. - Oracle WebLogic Server independent of the version has 8 years of support of new patches and has lifetime release of existing patches beyond that. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand provides patches for a specific application server version up to 5 years after the release date. JBoss EAP 4 and previous versions had only 4 years. A good question that Red Hat will argue to answer is: "what happens when you find issues after year 5"?  5) RAC ("Real Application Clusters") Support - WebLogic Server 12c ships with a specific JDBC driver to leverage Oracle RAC clustering capabilities (Fast-Application-Notification, Transaction Affinity, Fast-Connection-Failover, etc). Oracle JDBC thin driver are also available. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand ships only the standard Oracle JDBC thin driver. Load balancing with Oracle RAC are not supported. Manual intervention in case of planned or unplanned RAC downtime are necessary. In JBoss EAP 6, situation does not reestablish automatically after downtime. - WebLogic Server 12c has a feature called Active GridLink for Oracle RAC which provides up to 3X performance on OLTP applications. This seamless integration between WebLogic and Oracle database enable more value added to critical business applications leveraging their investments in Oracle database technology and Oracle middleware. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no performance gains at all, even when admin people implement some kind of connection-pooling tuning. - WebLogic Server 12c also supports transaction and web session affinity to the Oracle RAC, which provides aditional gains of performance. This is particularly interesting if you are creating a reliable solution that are distributed not only in an LAN cluster, but into a different data center. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no such support. 6) Standards and Technology Support - WebLogic Server 12c is fully Java EE 6 compatible and production ready since december of 2011. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand became fully compatible with Java EE 6 only in the community version after three months, and production ready only in a few days considering that this article was written in June of 2012. Red Hat says that they are the masters of innovation and technology proliferation, but compared with Oracle and even other proprietary vendors like IBM, they historically speaking are lazy to deliver the most newest technologies and standards adherence. - Oracle is the steward of Java, driving innovation into the platform from commercial and open-source vendors. Red Hat on the other hand does not have its own JVM and relies on third-part JVMs to complete their application server offer. 95% of Red Hat customers are using Oracle HotSpot as JVM, which means that without Oracle involvement, their support are limited exclusively to the application server layer and we all know that most problems are happens in the JVM layer. - WebLogic Server 12c supports natively JDK 7, which empower developers to explore the maximum of the Java platform productivity when writing code. This feature differentiate WebLogic from others application servers (except GlassFish that are also managed by Oracle) because the usage of JDK 7 introduce such remarkable productivity features like the "try-with-resources" enhancement, catching multiple exceptions with one try block, Strings in the switch statements, JVM improvements in terms of JDBC, I/O, networking, security, concurrency and of course, the most important feature of Java 7: native support for multiple non-Java languages. More features regarding JDK 7 can be found here. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand does not support JDK 7 officially, they comment in their community version that "Java SE 7 can be used with JBoss 7" which does not gives you any guarantees of enterprise support for JDK 7. - Oracle WebLogic Server 12c supports integration with Spring framework allowing Spring applications to use WebLogic special transaction manager, exposing bean interfaces to WebLogic MBeans to take advantage of all WebLogic monitoring and administration advantages. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no special integration with Spring. In fact, Red Hat offers a suspicious package called "JBoss Web Platform" that in theory supports Spring, but in practice this package does not offers any special integration. It is just a facility for Red Hat customers to have support from both JBoss and Spring technology using the same customer support. 7) Lightweight Development - Oracle WebLogic Server 12c and Oracle GlassFish are completely integrated and can share applications without any modifications. Starting with the 12c version, WebLogic now understands natively GlassFish deployment descriptors and specific configurations in order to offer you a truly and reliable migration path from a community Java EE application server to a enterprise middleware product like WebLogic. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no support to natively reuse an existing (or still in development) application from JBoss AS community server. Users of JBoss suffer of critical issues during deployment time that includes: changing the libraries and dependencies of the application, patching the DTD or XSD deployment descriptors, refactoring of the application layers due classloading issues and anomalies, rebuilding of persistence, business and web layers due issues with "usage of the certified version of an certain dependency" or "frameworks that Red Hat potentially does not recommend" etc. If you have the culture or enterprise IT directive of developing Java EE applications using community middleware to in a certain future, transition to enterprise (supported by a vendor) middleware, Oracle WebLogic plus Oracle GlassFish offers you a more sustainable solution. - WebLogic Server 12c has a very light ZIP distribution (less than 165 MB). JBoss EAP 6 ZIP size is around 130 MB, together with JBoss ON you have more 100 MB resulting in a higher download footprint. This is particularly interesting if you plan to use automated setup of application server instances (for example, to rapidly setup a development or staging environment) using Maven or Hudson. - WebLogic Server 12c has a complete integration with Maven allowing developers to setup WebLogic domains with few commands. Tasks like downloading WebLogic, installation, domain creation, data sources deployment are completely integrated. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has a limited offer integration with those tools.  - WebLogic Server 12c has a startup mode called WLX that turns-off EJB, JMS and JCA containers leaving enabled only the web container with Java EE 6 web profile. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no such feature, you need to disable manually the containers that you do not want to use. - WebLogic Server 12c supports fastswap, which enables you to change classes without redeployment. This is particularly interesting if you are developing patches for the application that is already deployed and you do not want to redeploy the entire application. This is the same behavior that most application servers offers to JSP pages, but with WebLogic Server 12c, you have the same feature for Java classes in general. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no such support. Even JBoss EAP 5 does not support this until now. 8) JMS and Messaging - WebLogic Server 12c has a proven and high scalable JMS implementation since its initial release in 1995. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has a still immature technology called HornetQ, which was introduced in JBoss EAP 5 replacing everything that was implemented in the previous versions. Red Hat loves to introduce new technologies across JBoss versions, playing around with customers and their investments. And when they are asked about why they have changed the implementation and caused such a mess, their answer is always: "the previous implementation was inadequate and not aligned with the community strategy so we are creating a new a improved one". This Red Hat practice leads to uncomfortable investments that in a near future (sometimes less than a year) will be affected in someway. - WebLogic Server 12c has troubleshooting and monitoring features included on the WebLogic console and WLDF. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no direct monitoring on the console, activity is reflected only on the logs, no debug logs available in case of JMS issues. - WebLogic Server 12c has extremely good performance and scalability. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has a JMS storage mechanism relying on Oracle database or MySQL. This means that if an issue in production happens and Red Hat affirms that an performance issue is happening due to database problems, they will not support you on the performance issue. They will orient you to call Oracle instead. - WebLogic Server 12c supports messaging enterprise features like SAF ("Store and Forward"), Distributed Queues/Topics and Foreign JMS providers support that leverage JMS implementations without compromise developer code making things completely transparent. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand do not even dream to support such features. 9) Caching and Grid - Coherence, which is the leading and most mature data grid technology from Oracle, is available since early 2000 and was integrated with WebLogic in 2009. Coherence and WebLogic clusters can be both managed from WebLogic administrative console. Even Node Manager supports Coherence. JBoss on the other hand discontinued JBoss Cache, which was their caching implementation just like they did with the messaging implementation (JBossMQ) which was a issue for long term customers. JBoss EAP 6 ships InfiniSpan version 1.0 which is immature and lack a proven record of successful cases and reliability. - WebLogic Server 12c has a feature called ActiveCache which uses Coherence to, without any code changes, replicate HTTP sessions from both WebLogic and other application servers like JBoss, Tomcat, Websphere, GlassFish and even Microsoft IIS. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand does have such support and even when they do in the future, they probably will support only their own application server. - Coherence can be used to manage both L1 and L2 cache levels, providing support to Oracle TopLink and others JPA compliant implementations, even Hibernate. JBoss EAP 6 and Infinispan on the other hand supports only Hibernate. And most important of all: Infinispan does not have any successful case of L1 or L2 caching level support using Hibernate, which lead us to reflect about its viability. 10) Performance - WebLogic Server 12c is certified with Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud and can run unchanged applications at this engineered system. This approach can benefit customers from Exalogic optimization's of both kernel and JVM layers to boost performance in terms of 10X for web, OLTP, JMS and grid applications. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no investment on engineered systems: customers do not have the choice to deploy on a Java ultra fast system if their project becomes relevant and performance issues are detected. - WebLogic Server 12c maintains a performance gain across each new release: starting on WebLogic 5.1, the overall performance gain has been close to 4X, which close to a 20% gain release by release. JBoss on the other hand does not provide SPECJAppServer or SPECJEnterprise performance benchmarks. Their so called "performance gains" remains hidden in their customer environments, which lead us to think if it is true or not since we will never get access to those environments. - WebLogic Server 12c has industry performance benchmarks with submissions across platforms and configurations leading SPECJ. Oracle WebLogic leads SPECJAppServer performance in multiple categories, fitting all customer topologies like: dual-node, single-node, multi-node and multi-node with RAC. JBoss... again, does not provide any SPECJAppServer performance benchmarks. - WebLogic Server 12c has a feature called work manager which allows your application to embrace new performance levels based on critical resource utilization of the CPUs usage. Work managers prioritizes work and allocates threads based on an execution model that takes into account administrator-defined parameters and actual run-time performance and throughput. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand has no compared feature and probably they never will. Not supporting such feature like work managers, JBoss EAP 6 forces admin people and specially developers to uncover performance gains in a intrusive way, rewriting the code and doing performance refactorings. 11) Professional Services Support - WebLogic Server 12c and any other technology sold by Oracle give customers the possibility of hire OCS ("Oracle Consulting Services") to manage critical scenarios, deployment assistance of new applications, high skilled consultancy of architecture, best practices and people allocation together with customer teams. All OCS services are available without any restrictions, having the customer bought software from Oracle or just starting their implementation before any acquisition. JBoss EAP 6 or Red Hat to be more specifically, only offers professional services if you buy subscriptions from them. If you are developing a new critical application for your business and need the help of Red Hat for a serious issue or architecture decision, they will probably say: "OK... I can help you but after you buy subscriptions from me". Red Hat also does not allows their professional services consultants to manage environments that uses community based software. They will probably force you to first buy a subscription, download their "enterprise" version and them, optionally hire their consultants. - Oracle provides you our university to educate your team into our technologies, including of course specialized trainings of WebLogic application server. At any time and location, you can hire Oracle to train your team so you get trustful knowledge according to your specific needs. Certifications for the products are also available if your technical people desire to differentiate themselves as professionals. Red Hat on the other hand have a limited pool of resources to train your team in their technologies. Basically they are selling training and certification for RHEL ("Red Hat Enterprise Linux") but if you demand more specialized training in JBoss middleware, they will probably connect you to some "certified" partner localized training since they are apparently discontinuing their education center, at least here in Brazil. They were not able to reproduce their success with RHEL education to their middleware division since they need first sell the subscriptions to after gives you specialized training. And again, they only offer you specialized training based on their enterprise version (EAP in the case of JBoss) which means that the courses will be a quite outdated. There are reports of developers that took official training's from Red Hat at this year (2012) and in a certain JBoss advanced course, Red Hat supposedly covered JBossMQ as the messaging subsystem, and even the printed material provided was based on JBossMQ since the training was created for JBoss EAP 4.3. 12) Encouraging Transparency without Ulterior Motives - WebLogic Server 12c like any other software from Oracle can be downloaded any time from anywhere, you should only possess an OTN ("Oracle Technology Network") credential and you can download any enterprise software how many times you want. And is not some kind of "trial" version. It is the official binaries that will be running for ever in your data center. Oracle does not encourages the usage of "specific versions" of our software. The binaries you buy from Oracle are the same binaries anyone in the world could download and use for testing and personal education. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand are not available for download unless you buy a subscription and get access to the Red Hat enterprise repositories. If you need to test, learn or just start creating your application using Red Hat's middleware software, you should download it from the community website. You are not allowed to download the enterprise version that, according to Red Hat are more secure, reliable and robust. But no one of us want to start the development of a software with an unsecured, unreliable and not scalable middleware right? So what you do? You are "invited" by Red Hat to buy subscriptions from them to get access to the "cool" version of the software. - WebLogic Server 12c prices are publicly available in the Oracle website. If you want to know right now how much WebLogic will cost to your organization, just click here and get access to our price list. In the case of WebLogic, check out the "US Oracle Technology Commercial Price List". Oracle also encourages you to get in touch with a sales representative to discuss discounts that would make possible the investment into our technology. But you are not required to do this, only if you are interested in buying our technology or maybe you want to discuss some discount scenarios. JBoss EAP 6 on the other hand does not have its cost publicly available in Red Hat's website or in any other media, at least is not so easy to get such information. The only link you will possibly find in their website is a "Contact a Sales Representative" link. This is not a very good relationship between an customer and an vendor. This is not an example of transparency, mainly when the software are sold as open. In this situations, customers expects to see the software prices publicly available, so they can have the chance to decide, based on the existing features of the software, if the cost is fair or not. Conclusion Oracle WebLogic is the most mature, secure, reliable and scalable Java EE application server of the market, and have a proven record of success around the globe to prove it's majority. Don't lose the chance to discover today how WebLogic could fit your needs and sustain your global IT middleware strategy, no matter if your strategy are completely based on the Cloud or not.

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  • Cisco Unifed Communication integration for Microsoft Lync crashes on Remote Desktop services 2008 R2!

    - by user66267
    Hi everybody i have deployed office communication server 2007 R2 and communicator 2007 R2 and i made integration with Cisco Unified Communication Manager 7.1 in my network, i also uses Remote Desktop Servers 2008 R2 for Thin Client Computers, now that i installed Cisco UC integration client for communicator 2007 R2 (Ver. 8.0.3) or Cisco UC integration client for Microsoft Lync that works fine on PCs but Not on Remote Desktop Servers. i have Three Remote Desktop Servers in a Farm with loadbalancing enabled. all other applications on these RDP servers works fine for 120 active users. some times when i start Cisco UC client on Remote Desktop servers i get the following error "The Port Reguired for callbacks from Cisco unified client framework could not be read, please retry" i also found the folowing log so i think that may be the cause: 2011-01-05 08:24:21,489 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.SingleInstanceManager] [SingleInstanceManager.acquireMutex(0)] - Acquiring Mutex... 2011-01-05 08:24:21,512 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.IPC.PipeServer] [PipeServer.start(0)] - Starting Pipe Server 2011-01-05 08:24:21,516 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.SingleInstanceManager] [SingleInstanceManager.acquireMutex(0)] - Mutex Acquired... 2011-01-05 08:24:25,437 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.process.ProcessUtil] [ProcessUtil.isOtherPRTProcessRunning(0)] - No other instance(s) of ProblemReportingTool.exe found 2011-01-05 08:24:25,438 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.Controller] [Controller.Main(0)] - ******************************* 2011-01-05 08:24:25,439 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.Controller] [Controller.Main(0)] - **Launching CUCSF Problem Reporting Tool v0.8.3.2** 2011-01-05 08:24:25,440 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.Controller] [Controller.Main(0)] - ******************************* 2011-01-05 08:24:25,441 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.Controller] [Controller.Main(0)] - Raw input: -reason=Launched by the user from CUCIMOC ver 8.5.105.17095 -file=C:\Users\MA899~1.SAD\AppData\Local\Temp\36\CUCIMOCInstaller.txt 2011-01-05 08:24:25,445 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.Controller] [Controller.Main(0)] - Current culture: English (United States) 2011-01-05 08:24:25,448 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.init(0)] - Loading string resources from file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,455 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.context.CLIUtil] [CLIUtil.parse(0)] - Argument -reason Launched by the user from CUCIMOC ver 8.5.105.17095 received 2011-01-05 08:24:25,456 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.context.CLIUtil] [CLIUtil.parse(0)] - Argument -file C:\Users\MA899~1.SAD\AppData\Local\Temp\36\CUCIMOCInstaller.txt received 2011-01-05 08:24:25,457 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.Controller] [Controller.startup(0)] - Launching GUI... 2011-01-05 08:24:25,536 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PROG.PleaseWaitText from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,545 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.OKButtonText from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,548 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.CancelButtonText from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,549 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.ErrorMsgText1 from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,549 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.Title from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,552 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.WindowTitle from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,553 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.AgreeText from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,553 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.PrivacyText from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,554 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.PrivacyTitle from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,555 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.PrivacyLinkText from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,555 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.DescriptionTitle from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,629 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.SysInfoManager] [SysInfoManager..ctor(0)] - Starting SysInfoManager... 2011-01-05 08:24:25,634 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.WindowsUtilsInfo] [WindowsUtilsInfo.startWindowsUtilsThreads(0)] - Launching worker thread: systeminfo.exe 2011-01-05 08:24:25,669 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.WindowsUtilsInfo] [WindowsUtilsInfo.startWindowsUtilsThreads(0)] - Launching worker thread: tasklist.exe 2011-01-05 08:24:25,672 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.WindowsUtilsInfo] [WindowsUtilsInfo.startWindowsUtilsThreads(0)] - Launching worker thread: ipconfig.exe 2011-01-05 08:24:25,676 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.WindowsUtilsInfo] [WindowsUtilsInfo.startWindowsUtilsThreads(0)] - Launching worker thread: netstat.exe 2011-01-05 08:24:25,684 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.WindowsUtilsInfo] [WindowsUtilsInfo.startWindowsUtilsThreads(0)] - Launching worker thread: net.exe 2011-01-05 08:24:25,926 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.SysInfoManager] [SysInfoManager.launchHardwareInfoThread(0)] - Launching worker thread: HardwareInfo 2011-01-05 08:24:25,928 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.CSFDirectoryInfo] [HardwareInfo.getHardWareInfo(0)] - Gathering CPU data 2011-01-05 08:24:26,149 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.SysInfoManager] [SysInfoManager.launchCSFDirectoryInfoThread(0)] - Gathering CSF Directory Listing 2011-01-05 08:24:26,153 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.CSFDirectoryInfo] [CSFDirectoryInfo.getCSFInstallPath(0)] - Retrieving CSF Install Directory 2011-01-05 08:24:26,159 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.CSFDirectoryInfo] [CSFDirectoryInfo.getCSFInstallPath(0)] - CSF Install Path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Cisco Systems\Client Services Framework 2011-01-05 08:24:26,162 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.SysInfoManager] [SysInfoManager.launchWMIInfoThread(0)] - Launching worker thread: WMIInfo 2011-01-05 08:24:26,164 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.CSFDirectoryInfo] [HardwareInfo.getWMIInfo(0)] - Gathering Audio info... 2011-01-05 08:24:26,168 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.SysInfoManager] [SysInfoManager.launchRegistryAndEnvironmentalVarInfoThread(0)] - Launching worker thread: Registry & Environment Variables 2011-01-05 08:24:26,173 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.generateRegString(0)] - Gathering Registry data under: Software\Cisco Systems, Inc.\Client Services Framework\AdminData\ 2011-01-05 08:24:26,180 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.generateRegString(0)] - Gathering Registry data under: Software\Policies\Cisco Systems, Inc.\Client Services Framework\AdminData\ 2011-01-05 08:24:26,182 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.generateRegString(0)] - Gathering Registry data under: Software\Cisco Systems, Inc.\Unified Communications\CUCSF 2011-01-05 08:24:26,183 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.generateRegString(0)] - Gathering Registry data under: Software\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment 2011-01-05 08:24:26,184 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.generateRegString(0)] - Gathering Registry data under: Software\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment\1.6 2011-01-05 08:24:26,186 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.generateRegString(0)] - Gathering Registry data under: Software\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment\1.6.0_17 2011-01-05 08:24:26,188 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.generateRegString(0)] - Gathering Registry data under: Software\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment\1.6.0_17\MSI 2011-01-05 08:24:26,190 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.gatherRegistryAndEnvInfo(0)] - Gathering Environment Variables data 2011-01-05 08:24:26,283 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.CSFDirectoryInfo] [HardwareInfo.getWMIInfo(0)] - Gathering Video driver info... 2011-01-05 08:24:26,750 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.SysInfoManager] [SysInfoManager.writeFile(0)] - Creating file: DirectoryInfo.txt 2011-01-05 08:24:26,759 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.CSFDirectoryInfo] [HardwareInfo.getWMIInfo(0)] - Gathering Monitor info... 2011-01-05 08:24:34,483 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.gatherFiles(0)] - Config Dir C:\Users\m.sadeghi\AppData\Roaming\Cisco\Unified Communications\ 2011-01-05 08:24:34,530 [WARN ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.addFile(0)] - C:\Users\MA899~1.SAD\AppData\Local\Temp\36\CUCIMOCInstaller.txt not found 2011-01-05 08:24:34,561 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.addSystemInfo(0)] - Waiting for worker threads... 2011-01-05 08:24:38,180 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.CSFDirectoryInfo] [HardwareInfo.getHardWareInfo(0)] - Gathering Resolution data 2011-01-05 08:24:55,565 [ERROR] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.addSystemInfo(0)] - One or more worker threads have not returned in a timely manner. Forcing quit. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,568 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.SysInfoManager] [SysInfoManager.writeFile(0)] - Creating file: SystemInfo.txt 2011-01-05 08:24:55,577 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Checking for files to be excluded 2011-01-05 08:24:55,578 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Excluding: d11bfd8f-9745-41db-a35b-200389e65583.dat 2011-01-05 08:24:55,579 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Excluding: cacerts 2011-01-05 08:24:55,580 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Excluding: Voicemail.2639.20110103081119+0330.wav 2011-01-05 08:24:55,581 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Excluding: Voicemail.farhad.20101224165510+0330.wav 2011-01-05 08:24:55,581 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Excluding: Voicemail.postmaster.20101224165906+0330.wav 2011-01-05 08:24:55,582 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Excluding: VoicemailBeep.wav 2011-01-05 08:24:55,583 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Excluding: secModeNone 2011-01-05 08:24:55,586 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Preparing to create zip file... 2011-01-05 08:24:55,588 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - 60 files found 2011-01-05 08:24:55,589 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying .CSFExit.loc to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,595 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CSF.loc to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,597 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CsfAddress.dat to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,600 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CSFLogSetting.dat to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,634 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CSFSecurityKey.dat to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,637 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CommunicationHistory.xml to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,641 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying MehdiSadeghi.cnf.xml to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,751 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying jtapi.jar to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,812 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi.index to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,820 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi01.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,887 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi02.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,968 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi03.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,972 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi04.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,008 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi05.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,038 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi06.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,079 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi07.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,100 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi08.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,140 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi09.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,215 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoJtapi10.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,296 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying Core.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,319 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying Core.log.1 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,498 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying Core.log.2 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,708 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying Core.log.3 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:56,912 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying Core.log.4 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,105 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying Core.log.5 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,292 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying Core.log.6 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,505 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying tracker.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,523 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying VideoEngineEncryptedTrace.txt to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,542 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying VoiceEngineDebugTrace.txt to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,545 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying VoiceEngineTrace.txt to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,548 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying operationreport.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,551 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying voicemailbox.dat to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,554 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying voicemailfolder.dat to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,558 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying UIPrefs.xml to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,562 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,569 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.1 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:57,752 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.10 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:58,099 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.2 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:58,302 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.3 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:58,517 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.4 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:58,697 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.5 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:58,899 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.6 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,100 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.7 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,303 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.8 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,500 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying uc-client.log.9 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,895 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying Cisco.ClickToCall.Common.Core.dll.config to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,915 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying ClickToCall.pref to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,918 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoClickToCall.dll.config to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,928 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoClickToCallContacts.dll.config to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,948 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoPersonName.dll.config to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,980 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying userData.properties to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,988 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying userData.properties.backup to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,990 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying cisco-uc-client.log4net.config to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,994 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying cisco-uc-tab.log4net.config to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:25:00,011 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying LocalSettings.xml to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:25:00,025 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying Description.txt to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:25:00,028 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying LaunchInfo.txt to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:25:00,031 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying DirectoryInfo.txt to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:25:00,034 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying SystemInfo.txt to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:25:00,036 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying csf-prt.log to temp folder.

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  • Cisco Unified Communication integration for Microsoft Lync crashes on Remote Desktop services 2008 R2!

    - by user66267
    Hi everybody i have deployed office communication server 2007 R2 and communicator 2007 R2 and i made integration with Cisco Unified Communication Manager 7.1 in my network, i also use Remote Desktop Servers 2008 R2 for Thin Client Computers, now that i installed Cisco UC integration client for communicator 2007 R2 (Ver. 8.0.3) or Cisco UC integration client for Microsoft Lync that works fine on PCs but Not on Remote Desktop Servers. i have Three Remote Desktop Servers in a Farm with loadbalancing enabled. all other applications on these RDP servers works fine for 120 active users. some times when i start Cisco UC client on Remote Desktop servers i get the following error: "The Port Reguired for callbacks from Cisco unified client framework could not be read, please retry" i also found the folowing log so i think that may be the cause: 2011-01-05 08:24:21,489 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.SingleInstanceManager] [SingleInstanceManager.acquireMutex(0)] - Acquiring Mutex... 2011-01-05 08:24:21,512 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.IPC.PipeServer] [PipeServer.start(0)] - Starting Pipe Server 2011-01-05 08:24:21,516 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.SingleInstanceManager] [SingleInstanceManager.acquireMutex(0)] - Mutex Acquired... 2011-01-05 08:24:25,437 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.process.ProcessUtil] [ProcessUtil.isOtherPRTProcessRunning(0)] - No other instance(s) of ProblemReportingTool.exe found 2011-01-05 08:24:25,438 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.Controller] [Controller.Main(0)] - ******************************* 2011-01-05 08:24:25,439 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.Controller] [Controller.Main(0)] - **Launching CUCSF Problem Reporting Tool v0.8.3.2** 2011-01-05 08:24:25,440 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.Controller] [Controller.Main(0)] - ******************************* 2011-01-05 08:24:25,441 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.Controller] [Controller.Main(0)] - Raw input: -reason=Launched by the user from CUCIMOC ver 8.5.105.17095 -file=C:\Users\MA899~1.SAD\AppData\Local\Temp\36\CUCIMOCInstaller.txt 2011-01-05 08:24:25,445 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.Controller] [Controller.Main(0)] - Current culture: English (United States) 2011-01-05 08:24:25,448 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.init(0)] - Loading string resources from file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,455 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.context.CLIUtil] [CLIUtil.parse(0)] - Argument -reason Launched by the user from CUCIMOC ver 8.5.105.17095 received 2011-01-05 08:24:25,456 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.context.CLIUtil] [CLIUtil.parse(0)] - Argument -file C:\Users\MA899~1.SAD\AppData\Local\Temp\36\CUCIMOCInstaller.txt received 2011-01-05 08:24:25,457 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.Controller] [Controller.startup(0)] - Launching GUI... 2011-01-05 08:24:25,536 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PROG.PleaseWaitText from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,545 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.OKButtonText from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,548 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.CancelButtonText from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,549 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.ErrorMsgText1 from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,549 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.Title from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,552 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.WindowTitle from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,553 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.AgreeText from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,553 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.PrivacyText from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,554 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.PrivacyTitle from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,555 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.PrivacyLinkText from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,555 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.controller.ResourceUtil] [ResourceUtil.getResourceFileString(0)] - Retrieving Key: com.cisco.uc.csf.prt.PF.DescriptionTitle from resource file 2011-01-05 08:24:25,629 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.SysInfoManager] [SysInfoManager..ctor(0)] - Starting SysInfoManager... 2011-01-05 08:24:25,634 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.WindowsUtilsInfo] [WindowsUtilsInfo.startWindowsUtilsThreads(0)] - Launching worker thread: systeminfo.exe 2011-01-05 08:24:25,669 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.WindowsUtilsInfo] [WindowsUtilsInfo.startWindowsUtilsThreads(0)] - Launching worker thread: tasklist.exe 2011-01-05 08:24:25,672 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.WindowsUtilsInfo] [WindowsUtilsInfo.startWindowsUtilsThreads(0)] - Launching worker thread: ipconfig.exe 2011-01-05 08:24:25,676 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.WindowsUtilsInfo] [WindowsUtilsInfo.startWindowsUtilsThreads(0)] - Launching worker thread: netstat.exe 2011-01-05 08:24:25,684 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.WindowsUtilsInfo] [WindowsUtilsInfo.startWindowsUtilsThreads(0)] - Launching worker thread: net.exe 2011-01-05 08:24:25,926 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.SysInfoManager] [SysInfoManager.launchHardwareInfoThread(0)] - Launching worker thread: HardwareInfo 2011-01-05 08:24:25,928 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.CSFDirectoryInfo] [HardwareInfo.getHardWareInfo(0)] - Gathering CPU data 2011-01-05 08:24:26,149 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.SysInfoManager] [SysInfoManager.launchCSFDirectoryInfoThread(0)] - Gathering CSF Directory Listing 2011-01-05 08:24:26,153 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.CSFDirectoryInfo] [CSFDirectoryInfo.getCSFInstallPath(0)] - Retrieving CSF Install Directory 2011-01-05 08:24:26,159 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.CSFDirectoryInfo] [CSFDirectoryInfo.getCSFInstallPath(0)] - CSF Install Path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Cisco Systems\Client Services Framework 2011-01-05 08:24:26,162 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.SysInfoManager] [SysInfoManager.launchWMIInfoThread(0)] - Launching worker thread: WMIInfo 2011-01-05 08:24:26,164 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.CSFDirectoryInfo] [HardwareInfo.getWMIInfo(0)] - Gathering Audio info... 2011-01-05 08:24:26,168 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.SysInfoManager] [SysInfoManager.launchRegistryAndEnvironmentalVarInfoThread(0)] - Launching worker thread: Registry & Environment Variables 2011-01-05 08:24:26,173 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.generateRegString(0)] - Gathering Registry data under: Software\Cisco Systems, Inc.\Client Services Framework\AdminData\ 2011-01-05 08:24:26,180 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.generateRegString(0)] - Gathering Registry data under: Software\Policies\Cisco Systems, Inc.\Client Services Framework\AdminData\ 2011-01-05 08:24:26,182 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.generateRegString(0)] - Gathering Registry data under: Software\Cisco Systems, Inc.\Unified Communications\CUCSF 2011-01-05 08:24:26,183 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.generateRegString(0)] - Gathering Registry data under: Software\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment 2011-01-05 08:24:26,184 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.generateRegString(0)] - Gathering Registry data under: Software\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment\1.6 2011-01-05 08:24:26,186 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.generateRegString(0)] - Gathering Registry data under: Software\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment\1.6.0_17 2011-01-05 08:24:26,188 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.generateRegString(0)] - Gathering Registry data under: Software\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment\1.6.0_17\MSI 2011-01-05 08:24:26,190 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.RegistryEnvironmentInfo] [RegistryEnvironmentInfo.gatherRegistryAndEnvInfo(0)] - Gathering Environment Variables data 2011-01-05 08:24:26,283 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.CSFDirectoryInfo] [HardwareInfo.getWMIInfo(0)] - Gathering Video driver info... 2011-01-05 08:24:26,750 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.SysInfoManager] [SysInfoManager.writeFile(0)] - Creating file: DirectoryInfo.txt 2011-01-05 08:24:26,759 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.CSFDirectoryInfo] [HardwareInfo.getWMIInfo(0)] - Gathering Monitor info... 2011-01-05 08:24:34,483 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.gatherFiles(0)] - Config Dir C:\Users\m.sadeghi\AppData\Roaming\Cisco\Unified Communications\ 2011-01-05 08:24:34,530 [WARN ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.addFile(0)] - C:\Users\MA899~1.SAD\AppData\Local\Temp\36\CUCIMOCInstaller.txt not found 2011-01-05 08:24:34,561 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.addSystemInfo(0)] - Waiting for worker threads... 2011-01-05 08:24:38,180 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.CSFDirectoryInfo] [HardwareInfo.getHardWareInfo(0)] - Gathering Resolution data 2011-01-05 08:24:55,565 [ERROR] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.addSystemInfo(0)] - One or more worker threads have not returned in a timely manner. Forcing quit. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,568 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.sysinfo.SysInfoManager] [SysInfoManager.writeFile(0)] - Creating file: SystemInfo.txt 2011-01-05 08:24:55,577 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Checking for files to be excluded 2011-01-05 08:24:55,578 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Excluding: d11bfd8f-9745-41db-a35b-200389e65583.dat 2011-01-05 08:24:55,579 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Excluding: cacerts 2011-01-05 08:24:55,580 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Excluding: Voicemail.2639.20110103081119+0330.wav 2011-01-05 08:24:55,581 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Excluding: Voicemail.farhad.20101224165510+0330.wav 2011-01-05 08:24:55,581 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Excluding: Voicemail.postmaster.20101224165906+0330.wav 2011-01-05 08:24:55,582 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Excluding: VoicemailBeep.wav 2011-01-05 08:24:55,583 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.FileUtil] [FileUtil.removePrivateFiles(0)] - Excluding: secModeNone 2011-01-05 08:24:55,586 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Preparing to create zip file... 2011-01-05 08:24:55,588 [INFO ] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - 60 files found 2011-01-05 08:24:55,589 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying .CSFExit.loc to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,595 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CSF.loc to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:55,597 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - 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Copying uc-client.log.9 to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,895 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying Cisco.ClickToCall.Common.Core.dll.config to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,915 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying ClickToCall.pref to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,918 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoClickToCall.dll.config to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,928 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoClickToCallContacts.dll.config to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,948 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying CiscoPersonName.dll.config to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,980 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying userData.properties to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,988 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying userData.properties.backup to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,990 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying cisco-uc-client.log4net.config to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:24:59,994 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying cisco-uc-tab.log4net.config to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:25:00,011 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying LocalSettings.xml to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:25:00,025 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying Description.txt to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:25:00,028 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying LaunchInfo.txt to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:25:00,031 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying DirectoryInfo.txt to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:25:00,034 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying SystemInfo.txt to temp folder. 2011-01-05 08:25:00,036 [DEBUG] [com.cisco.uc.ucsf.ProblemReportingTool.file.Zip] [Zip.zipMultipleFiles(0)] - Copying csf-prt.log to temp folder.

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  • Is there a Telecommunications Reference Architecture?

    - by raul.goycoolea
    @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Abstract   Reference architecture provides needed architectural information that can be provided in advance to an enterprise to enable consistent architectural best practices. Enterprise Reference Architecture helps business owners to actualize their strategies, vision, objectives, and principles. It evaluates the IT systems, based on Reference Architecture goals, principles, and standards. It helps to reduce IT costs by increasing functionality, availability, scalability, etc. Telecom Reference Architecture provides customers with the flexibility to view bundled service bills online with the provision of multiple services. It provides real-time, flexible billing and charging systems, to handle complex promotions, discounts, and settlements with multiple parties. This paper attempts to describe the Reference Architecture for the Telecom Enterprises. It lays the foundation for a Telecom Reference Architecture by articulating the requirements, drivers, and pitfalls for telecom service providers. It describes generic reference architecture for telecom enterprises and moves on to explain how to achieve Enterprise Reference Architecture by using SOA.   Introduction   A Reference Architecture provides a methodology, set of practices, template, and standards based on a set of successful solutions implemented earlier. These solutions have been generalized and structured for the depiction of both a logical and a physical architecture, based on the harvesting of a set of patterns that describe observations in a number of successful implementations. It helps as a reference for the various architectures that an enterprise can implement to solve various problems. It can be used as the starting point or the point of comparisons for various departments/business entities of a company, or for the various companies for an enterprise. It provides multiple views for multiple stakeholders.   Major artifacts of the Enterprise Reference Architecture are methodologies, standards, metadata, documents, design patterns, etc.   Purpose of Reference Architecture   In most cases, architects spend a lot of time researching, investigating, defining, and re-arguing architectural decisions. It is like reinventing the wheel as their peers in other organizations or even the same organization have already spent a lot of time and effort defining their own architectural practices. This prevents an organization from learning from its own experiences and applying that knowledge for increased effectiveness.   Reference architecture provides missing architectural information that can be provided in advance to project team members to enable consistent architectural best practices.   Enterprise Reference Architecture helps an enterprise to achieve the following at the abstract level:   ·       Reference architecture is more of a communication channel to an enterprise ·       Helps the business owners to accommodate to their strategies, vision, objectives, and principles. ·       Evaluates the IT systems based on Reference Architecture Principles ·       Reduces IT spending through increasing functionality, availability, scalability, etc ·       A Real-time Integration Model helps to reduce the latency of the data updates Is used to define a single source of Information ·       Provides a clear view on how to manage information and security ·       Defines the policy around the data ownership, product boundaries, etc. ·       Helps with cost optimization across project and solution portfolios by eliminating unused or duplicate investments and assets ·       Has a shorter implementation time and cost   Once the reference architecture is in place, the set of architectural principles, standards, reference models, and best practices ensure that the aligned investments have the greatest possible likelihood of success in both the near term and the long term (TCO).     Common pitfalls for Telecom Service Providers   Telecom Reference Architecture serves as the first step towards maturity for a telecom service provider. During the course of our assignments/experiences with telecom players, we have come across the following observations – Some of these indicate a lack of maturity of the telecom service provider:   ·       In markets that are growing and not so mature, it has been observed that telcos have a significant amount of in-house or home-grown applications. In some of these markets, the growth has been so rapid that IT has been unable to cope with business demands. Telcos have shown a tendency to come up with workarounds in their IT applications so as to meet business needs. ·       Even for core functions like provisioning or mediation, some telcos have tried to manage with home-grown applications. ·       Most of the applications do not have the required scalability or maintainability to sustain growth in volumes or functionality. ·       Applications face interoperability issues with other applications in the operator's landscape. Integrating a new application or network element requires considerable effort on the part of the other applications. ·       Application boundaries are not clear, and functionality that is not in the initial scope of that application gets pushed onto it. This results in the development of the multiple, small applications without proper boundaries. ·       Usage of Legacy OSS/BSS systems, poor Integration across Multiple COTS Products and Internal Systems. Most of the Integrations are developed on ad-hoc basis and Point-to-Point Integration. ·       Redundancy of the business functions in different applications • Fragmented data across the different applications and no integrated view of the strategic data • Lot of performance Issues due to the usage of the complex integration across OSS and BSS systems   However, this is where the maturity of the telecom industry as a whole can be of help. The collaborative efforts of telcos to overcome some of these problems have resulted in bodies like the TM Forum. They have come up with frameworks for business processes, data, applications, and technology for telecom service providers. These could be a good starting point for telcos to clean up their enterprise landscape.   Industry Trends in Telecom Reference Architecture   Telecom reference architectures are evolving rapidly because telcos are facing business and IT challenges.   “The reality is that there probably is no killer application, no silver bullet that the telcos can latch onto to carry them into a 21st Century.... Instead, there are probably hundreds – perhaps thousands – of niche applications.... And the only way to find which of these works for you is to try out lots of them, ramp up the ones that work, and discontinue the ones that fail.” – Martin Creaner President & CTO TM Forum.   The following trends have been observed in telecom reference architecture:   ·       Transformation of business structures to align with customer requirements ·       Adoption of more Internet-like technical architectures. The Web 2.0 concept is increasingly being used. ·       Virtualization of the traditional operations support system (OSS) ·       Adoption of SOA to support development of IP-based services ·       Adoption of frameworks like Service Delivery Platforms (SDPs) and IP Multimedia Subsystem ·       (IMS) to enable seamless deployment of various services over fixed and mobile networks ·       Replacement of in-house, customized, and stove-piped OSS/BSS with standards-based COTS products ·       Compliance with industry standards and frameworks like eTOM, SID, and TAM to enable seamless integration with other standards-based products   Drivers of Reference Architecture   The drivers of the Reference Architecture are Reference Architecture Goals, Principles, and Enterprise Vision and Telecom Transformation. The details are depicted below diagram. @font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } Figure 1. Drivers for Reference Architecture @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Today’s telecom reference architectures should seamlessly integrate traditional legacy-based applications and transition to next-generation network technologies (e.g., IP multimedia subsystems). This has resulted in new requirements for flexible, real-time billing and OSS/BSS systems and implications on the service provider’s organizational requirements and structure.   Telecom reference architectures are today expected to:   ·       Integrate voice, messaging, email and other VAS over fixed and mobile networks, back end systems ·       Be able to provision multiple services and service bundles • Deliver converged voice, video and data services ·       Leverage the existing Network Infrastructure ·       Provide real-time, flexible billing and charging systems to handle complex promotions, discounts, and settlements with multiple parties. ·       Support charging of advanced data services such as VoIP, On-Demand, Services (e.g.  Video), IMS/SIP Services, Mobile Money, Content Services and IPTV. ·       Help in faster deployment of new services • Serve as an effective platform for collaboration between network IT and business organizations ·       Harness the potential of converging technology, networks, devices and content to develop multimedia services and solutions of ever-increasing sophistication on a single Internet Protocol (IP) ·       Ensure better service delivery and zero revenue leakage through real-time balance and credit management ·       Lower operating costs to drive profitability   Enterprise Reference Architecture   The Enterprise Reference Architecture (RA) fills the gap between the concepts and vocabulary defined by the reference model and the implementation. Reference architecture provides detailed architectural information in a common format such that solutions can be repeatedly designed and deployed in a consistent, high-quality, supportable fashion. This paper attempts to describe the Reference Architecture for the Telecom Application Usage and how to achieve the Enterprise Level Reference Architecture using SOA.   • Telecom Reference Architecture • Enterprise SOA based Reference Architecture   Telecom Reference Architecture   Tele Management Forum’s New Generation Operations Systems and Software (NGOSS) is an architectural framework for organizing, integrating, and implementing telecom systems. NGOSS is a component-based framework consisting of the following elements:   ·       The enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM) is a business process framework. ·       The Shared Information Data (SID) model provides a comprehensive information framework that may be specialized for the needs of a particular organization. ·       The Telecom Application Map (TAM) is an application framework to depict the functional footprint of applications, relative to the horizontal processes within eTOM. ·       The Technology Neutral Architecture (TNA) is an integrated framework. TNA is an architecture that is sustainable through technology changes.   NGOSS Architecture Standards are:   ·       Centralized data ·       Loosely coupled distributed systems ·       Application components/re-use  ·       A technology-neutral system framework with technology specific implementations ·       Interoperability to service provider data/processes ·       Allows more re-use of business components across multiple business scenarios ·       Workflow automation   The traditional operator systems architecture consists of four layers,   ·       Business Support System (BSS) layer, with focus toward customers and business partners. Manages order, subscriber, pricing, rating, and billing information. ·       Operations Support System (OSS) layer, built around product, service, and resource inventories. ·       Networks layer – consists of Network elements and 3rd Party Systems. ·       Integration Layer – to maximize application communication and overall solution flexibility.   Reference architecture for telecom enterprises is depicted below. @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Figure 2. Telecom Reference Architecture   The major building blocks of any Telecom Service Provider architecture are as follows:   1. Customer Relationship Management   CRM encompasses the end-to-end lifecycle of the customer: customer initiation/acquisition, sales, ordering, and service activation, customer care and support, proactive campaigns, cross sell/up sell, and retention/loyalty.   CRM also includes the collection of customer information and its application to personalize, customize, and integrate delivery of service to a customer, as well as to identify opportunities for increasing the value of the customer to the enterprise.   The key functionalities related to Customer Relationship Management are   ·       Manage the end-to-end lifecycle of a customer request for products. ·       Create and manage customer profiles. ·       Manage all interactions with customers – inquiries, requests, and responses. ·       Provide updates to Billing and other south bound systems on customer/account related updates such as customer/ account creation, deletion, modification, request bills, final bill, duplicate bills, credit limits through Middleware. ·       Work with Order Management System, Product, and Service Management components within CRM. ·       Manage customer preferences – Involve all the touch points and channels to the customer, including contact center, retail stores, dealers, self service, and field service, as well as via any media (phone, face to face, web, mobile device, chat, email, SMS, mail, the customer's bill, etc.). ·       Support single interface for customer contact details, preferences, account details, offers, customer premise equipment, bill details, bill cycle details, and customer interactions.   CRM applications interact with customers through customer touch points like portals, point-of-sale terminals, interactive voice response systems, etc. The requests by customers are sent via fulfillment/provisioning to billing system for ordering processing.   2. Billing and Revenue Management   Billing and Revenue Management handles the collection of appropriate usage records and production of timely and accurate bills – for providing pre-bill usage information and billing to customers; for processing their payments; and for performing payment collections. In addition, it handles customer inquiries about bills, provides billing inquiry status, and is responsible for resolving billing problems to the customer's satisfaction in a timely manner. This process grouping also supports prepayment for services.   The key functionalities provided by these applications are   ·       To ensure that enterprise revenue is billed and invoices delivered appropriately to customers. ·       To manage customers’ billing accounts, process their payments, perform payment collections, and monitor the status of the account balance. ·       To ensure the timely and effective fulfillment of all customer bill inquiries and complaints. ·       Collect the usage records from mediation and ensure appropriate rating and discounting of all usage and pricing. ·       Support revenue sharing; split charging where usage is guided to an account different from the service consumer. ·       Support prepaid and post-paid rating. ·       Send notification on approach / exceeding the usage thresholds as enforced by the subscribed offer, and / or as setup by the customer. ·       Support prepaid, post paid, and hybrid (where some services are prepaid and the rest of the services post paid) customers and conversion from post paid to prepaid, and vice versa. ·       Support different billing function requirements like charge prorating, promotion, discount, adjustment, waiver, write-off, account receivable, GL Interface, late payment fee, credit control, dunning, account or service suspension, re-activation, expiry, termination, contract violation penalty, etc. ·       Initiate direct debit to collect payment against an invoice outstanding. ·       Send notification to Middleware on different events; for example, payment receipt, pre-suspension, threshold exceed, etc.   Billing systems typically get usage data from mediation systems for rating and billing. They get provisioning requests from order management systems and inquiries from CRM systems. Convergent and real-time billing systems can directly get usage details from network elements.   3. Mediation   Mediation systems transform/translate the Raw or Native Usage Data Records into a general format that is acceptable to billing for their rating purposes.   The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Mediation system in the end-to-end solution.   ·       Collect Usage Data Records from different data sources – like network elements, routers, servers – via different protocol and interfaces. ·       Process Usage Data Records – Mediation will process Usage Data Records as per the source format. ·       Validate Usage Data Records from each source. ·       Segregates Usage Data Records coming from each source to multiple, based on the segregation requirement of end Application. ·       Aggregates Usage Data Records based on the aggregation rule if any from different sources. ·       Consolidates multiple Usage Data Records from each source. ·       Delivers formatted Usage Data Records to different end application like Billing, Interconnect, Fraud Management, etc. ·       Generates audit trail for incoming Usage Data Records and keeps track of all the Usage Data Records at various stages of mediation process. ·       Checks duplicate Usage Data Records across files for a given time window.   4. Fulfillment   This area is responsible for providing customers with their requested products in a timely and correct manner. It translates the customer's business or personal need into a solution that can be delivered using the specific products in the enterprise's portfolio. This process informs the customers of the status of their purchase order, and ensures completion on time, as well as ensuring a delighted customer. These processes are responsible for accepting and issuing orders. They deal with pre-order feasibility determination, credit authorization, order issuance, order status and tracking, customer update on customer order activities, and customer notification on order completion. Order management and provisioning applications fall into this category.   The key functionalities provided by these applications are   ·       Issuing new customer orders, modifying open customer orders, or canceling open customer orders; ·       Verifying whether specific non-standard offerings sought by customers are feasible and supportable; ·       Checking the credit worthiness of customers as part of the customer order process; ·       Testing the completed offering to ensure it is working correctly; ·       Updating of the Customer Inventory Database to reflect that the specific product offering has been allocated, modified, or cancelled; ·       Assigning and tracking customer provisioning activities; ·       Managing customer provisioning jeopardy conditions; and ·       Reporting progress on customer orders and other processes to customer.   These applications typically get orders from CRM systems. They interact with network elements and billing systems for fulfillment of orders.   5. Enterprise Management   This process area includes those processes that manage enterprise-wide activities and needs, or have application within the enterprise as a whole. They encompass all business management processes that   ·       Are necessary to support the whole of the enterprise, including processes for financial management, legal management, regulatory management, process, cost, and quality management, etc.;   ·       Are responsible for setting corporate policies, strategies, and directions, and for providing guidelines and targets for the whole of the business, including strategy development and planning for areas, such as Enterprise Architecture, that are integral to the direction and development of the business;   ·       Occur throughout the enterprise, including processes for project management, performance assessments, cost assessments, etc.     (i) Enterprise Risk Management:   Enterprise Risk Management focuses on assuring that risks and threats to the enterprise value and/or reputation are identified, and appropriate controls are in place to minimize or eliminate the identified risks. The identified risks may be physical or logical/virtual. Successful risk management ensures that the enterprise can support its mission critical operations, processes, applications, and communications in the face of serious incidents such as security threats/violations and fraud attempts. Two key areas covered in Risk Management by telecom operators are:   ·       Revenue Assurance: Revenue assurance system will be responsible for identifying revenue loss scenarios across components/systems, and will help in rectifying the problems. The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Revenue Assurance system in the end-to-end solution. o   Identify all usage information dropped when networks are being upgraded. o   Interconnect bill verification. o   Identify where services are routinely provisioned but never billed. o   Identify poor sales policies that are intensifying collections problems. o   Find leakage where usage is sent to error bucket and never billed for. o   Find leakage where field service, CRM, and network build-out are not optimized.   ·       Fraud Management: Involves collecting data from different systems to identify abnormalities in traffic patterns, usage patterns, and subscription patterns to report suspicious activity that might suggest fraudulent usage of resources, resulting in revenue losses to the operator.   The key roles and responsibilities of the system component are as follows:   o   Fraud management system will capture and monitor high usage (over a certain threshold) in terms of duration, value, and number of calls for each subscriber. The threshold for each subscriber is decided by the system and fixed automatically. o   Fraud management will be able to detect the unauthorized access to services for certain subscribers. These subscribers may have been provided unauthorized services by employees. The component will raise the alert to the operator the very first time of such illegal calls or calls which are not billed. o   The solution will be to have an alarm management system that will deliver alarms to the operator/provider whenever it detects a fraud, thus minimizing fraud by catching it the first time it occurs. o   The Fraud Management system will be capable of interfacing with switches, mediation systems, and billing systems   (ii) Knowledge Management   This process focuses on knowledge management, technology research within the enterprise, and the evaluation of potential technology acquisitions.   Key responsibilities of knowledge base management are to   ·       Maintain knowledge base – Creation and updating of knowledge base on ongoing basis. ·       Search knowledge base – Search of knowledge base on keywords or category browse ·       Maintain metadata – Management of metadata on knowledge base to ensure effective management and search. ·       Run report generator. ·       Provide content – Add content to the knowledge base, e.g., user guides, operational manual, etc.   (iii) Document Management   It focuses on maintaining a repository of all electronic documents or images of paper documents relevant to the enterprise using a system.   (iv) Data Management   It manages data as a valuable resource for any enterprise. For telecom enterprises, the typical areas covered are Master Data Management, Data Warehousing, and Business Intelligence. It is also responsible for data governance, security, quality, and database management.   Key responsibilities of Data Management are   ·       Using ETL, extract the data from CRM, Billing, web content, ERP, campaign management, financial, network operations, asset management info, customer contact data, customer measures, benchmarks, process data, e.g., process inputs, outputs, and measures, into Enterprise Data Warehouse. ·       Management of data traceability with source, data related business rules/decisions, data quality, data cleansing data reconciliation, competitors data – storage for all the enterprise data (customer profiles, products, offers, revenues, etc.) ·       Get online update through night time replication or physical backup process at regular frequency. ·       Provide the data access to business intelligence and other systems for their analysis, report generation, and use.   (v) Business Intelligence   It uses the Enterprise Data to provide the various analysis and reports that contain prospects and analytics for customer retention, acquisition of new customers due to the offers, and SLAs. It will generate right and optimized plans – bolt-ons for the customers.   The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Business Intelligence system at the Enterprise Level:   ·       It will do Pattern analysis and reports problem. ·       It will do Data Analysis – Statistical analysis, data profiling, affinity analysis of data, customer segment wise usage patterns on offers, products, service and revenue generation against services and customer segments. ·       It will do Performance (business, system, and forecast) analysis, churn propensity, response time, and SLAs analysis. ·       It will support for online and offline analysis, and report drill down capability. ·       It will collect, store, and report various SLA data. ·       It will provide the necessary intelligence for marketing and working on campaigns, etc., with cost benefit analysis and predictions.   It will advise on customer promotions with additional services based on loyalty and credit history of customer   ·       It will Interface with Enterprise Data Management system for data to run reports and analysis tasks. It will interface with the campaign schedules, based on historical success evidence.   (vi) Stakeholder and External Relations Management   It manages the enterprise's relationship with stakeholders and outside entities. Stakeholders include shareholders, employee organizations, etc. Outside entities include regulators, local community, and unions. Some of the processes within this grouping are Shareholder Relations, External Affairs, Labor Relations, and Public Relations.   (vii) Enterprise Resource Planning   It is used to manage internal and external resources, including tangible assets, financial resources, materials, and human resources. Its purpose is to facilitate the flow of information between all business functions inside the boundaries of the enterprise and manage the connections to outside stakeholders. ERP systems consolidate all business operations into a uniform and enterprise wide system environment.   The key roles and responsibilities for Enterprise System are given below:   ·        It will handle responsibilities such as core accounting, financial, and management reporting. ·       It will interface with CRM for capturing customer account and details. ·       It will interface with billing to capture the billing revenue and other financial data. ·       It will be responsible for executing the dunning process. Billing will send the required feed to ERP for execution of dunning. ·       It will interface with the CRM and Billing through batch interfaces. Enterprise management systems are like horizontals in the enterprise and typically interact with all major telecom systems. E.g., an ERP system interacts with CRM, Fulfillment, and Billing systems for different kinds of data exchanges.   6. External Interfaces/Touch Points   The typical external parties are customers, suppliers/partners, employees, shareholders, and other stakeholders. External interactions from/to a Service Provider to other parties can be achieved by a variety of mechanisms, including:   ·       Exchange of emails or faxes ·       Call Centers ·       Web Portals ·       Business-to-Business (B2B) automated transactions   These applications provide an Internet technology driven interface to external parties to undertake a variety of business functions directly for themselves. These can provide fully or partially automated service to external parties through various touch points.   Typical characteristics of these touch points are   ·       Pre-integrated self-service system, including stand-alone web framework or integration front end with a portal engine ·       Self services layer exposing atomic web services/APIs for reuse by multiple systems across the architectural environment ·       Portlets driven connectivity exposing data and services interoperability through a portal engine or web application   These touch points mostly interact with the CRM systems for requests, inquiries, and responses.   7. Middleware   The component will be primarily responsible for integrating the different systems components under a common platform. It should provide a Standards-Based Platform for building Service Oriented Architecture and Composite Applications. The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Middleware component in the end-to-end solution.   ·       As an integration framework, covering to and fro interfaces ·       Provide a web service framework with service registry. ·       Support SOA framework with SOA service registry. ·       Each of the interfaces from / to Middleware to other components would handle data transformation, translation, and mapping of data points. ·       Receive data from the caller / activate and/or forward the data to the recipient system in XML format. ·       Use standard XML for data exchange. ·       Provide the response back to the service/call initiator. ·       Provide a tracking until the response completion. ·       Keep a store transitional data against each call/transaction. ·       Interface through Middleware to get any information that is possible and allowed from the existing systems to enterprise systems; e.g., customer profile and customer history, etc. ·       Provide the data in a common unified format to the SOA calls across systems, and follow the Enterprise Architecture directive. ·       Provide an audit trail for all transactions being handled by the component.   8. Network Elements   The term Network Element means a facility or equipment used in the provision of a telecommunications service. Such terms also includes features, functions, and capabilities that are provided by means of such facility or equipment, including subscriber numbers, databases, signaling systems, and information sufficient for billing and collection or used in the transmission, routing, or other provision of a telecommunications service.   Typical network elements in a GSM network are Home Location Register (HLR), Intelligent Network (IN), Mobile Switching Center (MSC), SMS Center (SMSC), and network elements for other value added services like Push-to-talk (PTT), Ring Back Tone (RBT), etc.   Network elements are invoked when subscribers use their telecom devices for any kind of usage. These elements generate usage data and pass it on to downstream systems like mediation and billing system for rating and billing. They also integrate with provisioning systems for order/service fulfillment.   9. 3rd Party Applications   3rd Party systems are applications like content providers, payment gateways, point of sale terminals, and databases/applications maintained by the Government.   Depending on applicability and the type of functionality provided by 3rd party applications, the integration with different telecom systems like CRM, provisioning, and billing will be done.   10. Service Delivery Platform   A service delivery platform (SDP) provides the architecture for the rapid deployment, provisioning, execution, management, and billing of value added telecom services. SDPs are based on the concept of SOA and layered architecture. They support the delivery of voice, data services, and content in network and device-independent fashion. They allow application developers to aggregate network capabilities, services, and sources of content. SDPs typically contain layers for web services exposure, service application development, and network abstraction.   SOA Reference Architecture   SOA concept is based on the principle of developing reusable business service and building applications by composing those services, instead of building monolithic applications in silos. It’s about bridging the gap between business and IT through a set of business-aligned IT services, using a set of design principles, patterns, and techniques.   In an SOA, resources are made available to participants in a value net, enterprise, line of business (typically spanning multiple applications within an enterprise or across multiple enterprises). It consists of a set of business-aligned IT services that collectively fulfill an organization’s business processes and goals. We can choreograph these services into composite applications and invoke them through standard protocols. SOA, apart from agility and reusability, enables:   ·       The business to specify processes as orchestrations of reusable services ·       Technology agnostic business design, with technology hidden behind service interface ·       A contractual-like interaction between business and IT, based on service SLAs ·       Accountability and governance, better aligned to business services ·       Applications interconnections untangling by allowing access only through service interfaces, reducing the daunting side effects of change ·       Reduced pressure to replace legacy and extended lifetime for legacy applications, through encapsulation in services   ·       A Cloud Computing paradigm, using web services technologies, that makes possible service outsourcing on an on-demand, utility-like, pay-per-usage basis   The following section represents the Reference Architecture of logical view for the Telecom Solution. The new custom built application needs to align with this logical architecture in the long run to achieve EA benefits.   Packaged implementation applications, such as ERP billing applications, need to expose their functions as service providers (as other applications consume) and interact with other applications as service consumers.   COT applications need to expose services through wrappers such as adapters to utilize existing resources and at the same time achieve Enterprise Architecture goal and objectives.   The following are the various layers for Enterprise level deployment of SOA. This diagram captures the abstract view of Enterprise SOA layers and important components of each layer. Layered architecture means decomposition of services such that most interactions occur between adjacent layers. However, there is no strict rule that top layers should not directly communicate with bottom layers.   The diagram below represents the important logical pieces that would result from overall SOA transformation. @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Figure 3. Enterprise SOA Reference Architecture 1.          Operational System Layer: This layer consists of all packaged applications like CRM, ERP, custom built applications, COTS based applications like Billing, Revenue Management, Fulfilment, and the Enterprise databases that are essential and contribute directly or indirectly to the Enterprise OSS/BSS Transformation.   ERP holds the data of Asset Lifecycle Management, Supply Chain, and Advanced Procurement and Human Capital Management, etc.   CRM holds the data related to Order, Sales, and Marketing, Customer Care, Partner Relationship Management, Loyalty, etc.   Content Management handles Enterprise Search and Query. Billing application consists of the following components:   ·       Collections Management, Customer Billing Management, Invoices, Real-Time Rating, Discounting, and Applying of Charges ·       Enterprise databases will hold both the application and service data, whether structured or unstructured.   MDM - Master data majorly consists of Customer, Order, Product, and Service Data.     2.          Enterprise Component Layer:   This layer consists of the Application Services and Common Services that are responsible for realizing the functionality and maintaining the QoS of the exposed services. This layer uses container-based technologies such as application servers to implement the components, workload management, high availability, and load balancing.   Application Services: This Service Layer enables application, technology, and database abstraction so that the complex accessing logic is hidden from the other service layers. This is a basic service layer, which exposes application functionalities and data as reusable services. The three types of the Application access services are:   ·       Application Access Service: This Service Layer exposes application level functionalities as a reusable service between BSS to BSS and BSS to OSS integration. This layer is enabled using disparate technology such as Web Service, Integration Servers, and Adaptors, etc.   ·       Data Access Service: This Service Layer exposes application data services as a reusable reference data service. This is done via direct interaction with application data. and provides the federated query.   ·       Network Access Service: This Service Layer exposes provisioning layer as a reusable service from OSS to OSS integration. This integration service emphasizes the need for high performance, stateless process flows, and distributed design.   Common Services encompasses management of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data such as information services, portal services, interaction services, infrastructure services, and security services, etc.   3.          Integration Layer:   This consists of service infrastructure components like service bus, service gateway for partner integration, service registry, service repository, and BPEL processor. Service bus will carry the service invocation payloads/messages between consumers and providers. The other important functions expected from it are itinerary based routing, distributed caching of routing information, transformations, and all qualities of service for messaging-like reliability, scalability, and availability, etc. Service registry will hold all contracts (wsdl) of services, and it helps developers to locate or discover service during design time or runtime.   • BPEL processor would be useful in orchestrating the services to compose a complex business scenario or process. • Workflow and business rules management are also required to support manual triggering of certain activities within business process. based on the rules setup and also the state machine information. Application, data, and service mediation layer typically forms the overall composite application development framework or SOA Framework.   4.          Business Process Layer: These are typically the intermediate services layer and represent Shared Business Process Services. At Enterprise Level, these services are from Customer Management, Order Management, Billing, Finance, and Asset Management application domains.   5.          Access Layer: This layer consists of portals for Enterprise and provides a single view of Enterprise information management and dashboard services.   6.          Channel Layer: This consists of various devices; applications that form part of extended enterprise; browsers through which users access the applications.   7.          Client Layer: This designates the different types of users accessing the enterprise applications. The type of user typically would be an important factor in determining the level of access to applications.   8.          Vertical pieces like management, monitoring, security, and development cut across all horizontal layers Management and monitoring involves all aspects of SOA-like services, SLAs, and other QoS lifecycle processes for both applications and services surrounding SOA governance.     9.          EA Governance, Reference Architecture, Roadmap, Principles, and Best Practices:   EA Governance is important in terms of providing the overall direction to SOA implementation within the enterprise. This involves board-level involvement, in addition to business and IT executives. At a high level, this involves managing the SOA projects implementation, managing SOA infrastructure, and controlling the entire effort through all fine-tuned IT processes in accordance with COBIT (Control Objectives for Information Technology).   Devising tools and techniques to promote reuse culture, and the SOA way of doing things needs competency centers to be established in addition to training the workforce to take up new roles that are suited to SOA journey.   Conclusions   Reference Architectures can serve as the basis for disparate architecture efforts throughout the organization, even if they use different tools and technologies. Reference architectures provide best practices and approaches in the independent way a vendor deals with technology and standards. Reference Architectures model the abstract architectural elements for an enterprise independent of the technologies, protocols, and products that are used to implement an SOA. Telecom enterprises today are facing significant business and technology challenges due to growing competition, a multitude of services, and convergence. Adopting architectural best practices could go a long way in meeting these challenges. The use of SOA-based architecture for communication to each of the external systems like Billing, CRM, etc., in OSS/BSS system has made the architecture very loosely coupled, with greater flexibility. Any change in the external systems would be absorbed at the Integration Layer without affecting the rest of the ecosystem. The use of a Business Process Management (BPM) tool makes the management and maintenance of the business processes easy, with better performance in terms of lead time, quality, and cost. Since the Architecture is based on standards, it will lower the cost of deploying and managing OSS/BSS applications over their lifecycles.

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