second level cache - Page 511

AMD Catalyst 13.9 installation failure

- by Simon Verbeke

Earlier today I installed Windows 8.1, and when I wanted to go into Catalyst Control Center, I noticed some odd error of CCC not being able to display options. I then figured I needed a driver update, so I downloaded the latest drivers, version 13.9, and tried to install them. While it was trying to install the display drivers, I got a blue screen. Tried again and got the same. Then I used an uninstall tool from AMD to remove all traces of my old drivers and tried to install the new drivers. Again, a blue screen. This is all I could think of to try. Would anyone know some other things I can try? EDIT: thought I might want to include the log entry for the crash: - <Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event"> - <System> <Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-WER-SystemErrorReporting" Guid="{ABCE23E7-DE45-4366-8631-84FA6C525952}" EventSourceName="BugCheck" /> <EventID Qualifiers="16384">1001</EventID> <Version>0</Version> <Level>2</Level> <Task>0</Task> <Opcode>0</Opcode> <Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords> <TimeCreated SystemTime="2013-10-19T20:59:25.000000000Z" /> <EventRecordID>26587</EventRecordID> <Correlation /> <Execution ProcessID="0" ThreadID="0" /> <Channel>System</Channel> <Computer>Simon-PC</Computer> <Security /> </System> - <EventData> <Data Name="param1">0x0000007e (0xffffffffc0000005, 0xfffff80002a86dca, 0xffffd00025f250e8, 0xffffd00025f248f0)</Data> <Data Name="param2">C:\WINDOWS\MEMORY.DMP</Data> <Data Name="param3">101913-8953-01</Data> </EventData> </Event> Another edit: As it turns out, the graphics card isn't showing up any more in the device manager. But as far as I can tell, it is still working (the fans are spinning and my screen is plugged into that graphics card). This is solved. it appears that my graphics card is now running with a default windows driver. I also tried the forced method mentioned here: AMD Graphics Drivers won't install properly . But I still get a BSOD. Third edit: Slight succes! Managed to install version 13.4. Everything appears to be working fine now. I think I'm just going to skip version 13.9.

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got VPN l2l connect between a site & HQ but not traffice using ASA5505 on both ends

- by vinlata

Hi, Could anyone see what did I do wrong here? this is one configuration of site1 to HQ on ASA5505, I can get connected but seems like no traffic going (allowed) between them, could it be a NAT issue? any helps would much be appreciated Thanks interface Vlan1 nameif inside security-level 100 ip address 172.30.205.1 255.255.255.0 ! interface Vlan2 nameif outside security-level 0 ip address pppoe setroute ! interface Ethernet0/0 switchport access vlan 2 ! interface Ethernet0/1 ! interface Ethernet0/2 shutdown ! interface Ethernet0/3 shutdown ! interface Ethernet0/4 shutdown ! interface Ethernet0/5 shutdown ! interface Ethernet0/6 shutdown ! interface Ethernet0/7 shutdown ! passwd .dIuXDIYzD6RSHz7 encrypted ftp mode passive dns server-group DefaultDNS domain-name errg.net object-group network HQ network-object 172.22.0.0 255.255.0.0 network-object 172.22.0.0 255.255.128.0 network-object 172.22.0.0 255.255.255.128 network-object 172.22.1.0 255.255.255.128 network-object 172.22.1.0 255.255.255.0 access-list inside_access_in extended permit ip any any access-list outside_access_in extended permit icmp any any echo-reply access-list outside_20_cryptomap extended permit ip 172.30.205.0 255.255.255.0 o bject-group HQ access-list inside_nat0_outbound extended permit ip 172.30.205.0 255.255.255.0 o bject-group HQ access-list policy-nat extended permit ip 172.30.205.0 255.255.255.0 172.22.0.0 255.255.0.0 pager lines 24 logging asdm informational mtu inside 1500 mtu outside 1500 icmp unreachable rate-limit 1 burst-size 1 no asdm history enable arp timeout 14400 nat-control global (outside) 1 interface nat (inside) 0 access-list inside_nat0_outbound nat (inside) 1 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 static (inside,outside) 172.30.205.0 access-list policy-nat access-group inside_access_in in interface inside access-group outside_access_in in interface outside timeout xlate 3:00:00 timeout conn 1:00:00 half-closed 0:10:00 udp 0:02:00 icmp 0:00:02 timeout sunrpc 0:10:00 h323 0:05:00 h225 1:00:00 mgcp 0:05:00 mgcp-pat 0:05:00 timeout sip 0:30:00 sip_media 0:02:00 sip-invite 0:03:00 sip-disconnect 0:02:00 timeout uauth 0:05:00 absolute username errgadmin password Os98gTdF8BZ0X2Px encrypted privilege 15 http server enable http 64.42.2.224 255.255.255.240 outside http 172.22.0.0 255.255.0.0 outside no snmp-server location no snmp-server contact snmp-server enable traps snmp authentication linkup linkdown coldstart crypto ipsec transform-set ESP-3DES-SHA esp-3des esp-sha-hmac crypto map outside_map 190 match address outside_20_cryptomap crypto map outside_map 190 set pfs crypto map outside_map 190 set peer 66.7.249.109 crypto map outside_map 190 set transform-set ESP-3DES-SHA crypto map outside_map 190 set phase1-mode aggressive crypto map outside_map interface outside crypto isakmp enable outside crypto isakmp policy 30 authentication pre-share encryption 3des hash sha group 2 lifetime 86400 crypto isakmp policy 65535 authentication pre-share encryption 3des hash sha group 2 lifetime 86400 crypto isakmp nat-traversal 190 crypto isakmp ipsec-over-tcp port 10000 tunnel-group 66.7.249.109 type ipsec-l2l tunnel-group 66.7.249.109 ipsec-attributes pre-shared-key * telnet timeout 5 ssh 172.30.205.0 255.255.255.0 inside ssh 172.22.0.0 255.255.0.0 outside ssh 64.42.2.224 255.255.255.240 outside ssh 172.25.0.0 255.255.128.0 outside ssh timeout 5 console timeout 0 management-access inside vpdn group PPPoEx request dialout pppoe vpdn group PPPoEx localname [email protected] vpdn group PPPoEx ppp authentication pap vpdn username [email protected] password ********* dhcpd address 172.30.205.100-172.30.205.131 inside dhcpd dns 172.22.0.133 68.94.156.1 interface inside dhcpd wins 172.22.0.133 interface inside dhcpd domain errg.net interface inside dhcpd enable inside ! ! class-map inspection_default match default-inspection-traffic ! ! policy-map type inspect dns preset_dns_map parameters message-length maximum 512 policy-map global_policy class inspection_default inspect dns preset_dns_map inspect ftp inspect h323 h225 inspect h323 ras inspect netbios inspect rsh inspect rtsp inspect skinny inspect esmtp inspect sqlnet inspect sunrpc inspect tftp inspect sip inspect xdmcp ! end

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Mod_Rewrite w Apache mod_jrun22.so & ColdFusion 9 on cPanel

- by Eddie B

How can I utilize mod_rewrite at either the httpd.conf level or per-directory level when mod_jrun22 seems to have short-stopped the rewrite process for ColdFusion pages? I have a ColdFusion 9 based site running on Centos 5.8 w cPanel. cPanel uses EasyApache 3 to manage virtual host containers and as such the conf for mod_jrun22.so, /usr/local/apache/conf/includes/pre_main_global.conf, is loaded prior to the main httpd.conf with the domain specific rules for the container. My assertion is that .cfm pages are failing to be rewritten due to the mod_jk22.so module having priority in the directive chain. To note, I also have a WordPress blog in the site where the rewrites appear to be working fine. For example the following code to remove the index file works fine for php and fails with cfm ... .htaccess under /blog/ : This works Options -Indexes -Multiviews <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine On RewriteBase /blog/ RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L] </IfModule> .htaccess under / : This does not work as expected. Apache serves the page. ASSERT: This would redirect to domain.com/ without index.cfm Options -Indexes -Multiviews <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^index\.cfm$ - [L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule . /index.cfm [L] </IfModule> .htaccess under / : This works I'm presuming this is working because the redirect is to another .cfm page and a 404 handler in Application.cfc ... Options -Indexes -Multiviews <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^.*\.cfm$ - [L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} =404 RewriteRule . /404.cfm$ [L] </IfModule> I've attempted numerous different methods to rewrite .cfm urls ... Adding [PT], [L], [R], [NS], Moving the script to Directory blocks under httpd.conf --- all with the same results ... either the rewrite doesn't work or Apache crashes in an endless loop ... Any help would be greatly appreciated. Below is a single-visit rewrite log snippet for a request to /index.cfm ... the pass-through is taking effect before the rewrite ... cat rewrite_dump_mod | grep index.cfm [perdir /home/foo/public_html/] strip per-dir prefix: /home/foo/public_html/index.cfm -> index.cfm [perdir /home/foo/public_html/] applying pattern '^.*\.cfm$' to uri 'index.cfm' [perdir /home/foo/public_html/] pass through /home/foo/public_html/index.cfm [perdir /home/foo/public_html/] strip per-dir prefix: /home/foo/public_html/index.cfm -> index.cfm [perdir /home/foo/public_html/] applying pattern '^.*\.cfm$' to uri 'index.cfm' [perdir /home/foo/public_html/] pass through /home/foo/public_html/index.cfm * UPDATE * I've managed to figure this out ... it took a while ... Options -Indexes -Multiviews +FollowSymLinks <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^.*/index\.cfm RewriteRule ^(.*)index.cfm http://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L] </IfModule>

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Can not open port 3306 on Ubuntu using iptables

- by user94626

I am trying to open port 3306 (for remote mysql connections) on my ubuntu 12.04 server machine but for the life of me can't get the damned thing to work! Here is what I did: 1) list current firewall rules: $> sudo iptables -nL -v output: Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 225 16984 fail2ban-ssh tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 multiport dports 22 220 69605 ACCEPT all -- lo * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 0 0 REJECT all -- lo * 0.0.0.0/0 127.0.0.0/8 reject-with icmp-port-unreachable 486 54824 ACCEPT all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 state RELATED,ESTABLISHED 1 60 ACCEPT tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:80 19 988 ACCEPT tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:443 1 52 ACCEPT tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 state NEW tcp dpt:22 0 0 ACCEPT icmp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 icmptype 8 4 208 LOG all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 limit: avg 5/min burst 5 LOG flags 0 level 7 prefix "iptables denied: " 4 208 REJECT all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 reject-with icmp-port-unreachable Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 0 0 REJECT all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 reject-with icmp-port-unreachable Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 735 182K ACCEPT all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 Chain fail2ban-ssh (1 references) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 225 16984 RETURN all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 2) try to connect from remote machine: $> mysql -u root -p -h x.x.x.x output: timeout.... failed to connect 3) try to add a new rule to iptables: iptables -A INPUT -i eth0 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 3306 -j ACCEPT 4) make sure the new rule is added: $> sudo iptables -nL -v output: Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 359 25972 fail2ban-ssh tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 multiport dports 22 251 78665 ACCEPT all -- lo * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 0 0 REJECT all -- lo * 0.0.0.0/0 127.0.0.0/8 reject-with icmp-port-unreachable 628 64420 ACCEPT all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 state RELATED,ESTABLISHED 1 60 ACCEPT tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:80 19 988 ACCEPT tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:443 1 52 ACCEPT tcp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 state NEW tcp dpt:22 0 0 ACCEPT icmp -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 icmptype 8 5 260 LOG all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 limit: avg 5/min burst 5 LOG flags 0 level 7 prefix "iptables denied: " 5 260 REJECT all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 reject-with icmp-port-unreachable 0 0 ACCEPT tcp -- eth0 * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 tcp dpt:3306 Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 0 0 REJECT all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 reject-with icmp-port-unreachable Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 919 213K ACCEPT all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 Chain fail2ban-ssh (1 references) pkts bytes target prot opt in out source destination 359 25972 RETURN all -- * * 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 which appears to be the case (last line in "Chain INPUT" section). 5) try to connect again from remote machine: $> mysql -u root -p -h x.x.x.x output: timeout.... failed to connect which is failing again. 6) try to flush all rules: $> sudo iptables -F 7) this time I CAN CONNECT. 8) reboot server and try to connect, FAILURE. I suspect since the new rule is being appended at the end it will have no effect as there appears to be a "reject all" sort of rule before it. If this is the case, how to make sure the new rule is added in the right order? Otherwise, what am I missing? Please help.

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Sharepoint Error: [COMException (0x80004005): Cannot complete this action.

- by ifunky

Hi, I've created a site basic definition that uses different master and default pages. Everything works quite well except for whenever I create a new site based on the definition I receive the following error when browsing to the new site: [COMException (0x80004005): Cannot complete this action. Please try again.] Please try again.] Microsoft.SharePoint.Library.SPRequestInternalClass.GetFileAndMetaInfo(String bstrUrl, Byte bPageView, Byte bPageMode, Byte bGetBuildDependencySet, String bstrCurrentFolderUrl, Boolean& pbCanCustomizePages, Boolean& pbCanPersonalizeWebParts, Boolean& pbCanAddDeleteWebParts, Boolean& pbGhostedDocument, Boolean& pbDefaultToPersonal, String& pbstrSiteRoot, Guid& pgSiteId, UInt32& pdwVersion, String& pbstrTimeLastModified, String& pbstrContent, Byte& pVerGhostedSetupPath, UInt32& pdwPartCount, Object& pvarMetaData, Object& pvarMultipleMeetingDoclibRootFolders, String& pbstrRedirectUrl, Boolean& pbObjectIsList, Guid& pgListId, UInt32& pdwItemId, Int64& pllListFlags, Boolean& pbAccessDenied, Guid& pgDocId, Byte& piLevel, UInt64& ppermMask, Object& pvarBuildDependencySet, UInt32& pdwNumBuildDependencies, Object& pvarBuildDependencies, String& pbstrFolderUrl, String& pbstrContentTypeOrder) +0 Microsoft.SharePoint.Library.SPRequest.GetFileAndMetaInfo(String bstrUrl, Byte bPageView, Byte bPageMode, Byte bGetBuildDependencySet, String bstrCurrentFolderUrl, Boolean& pbCanCustomizePages, Boolean& pbCanPersonalizeWebParts, Boolean& pbCanAddDeleteWebParts, Boolean& pbGhostedDocument, Boolean& pbDefaultToPersonal, String& pbstrSiteRoot, Guid& pgSiteId, UInt32& pdwVersion, String& pbstrTimeLastModified, String& pbstrContent, Byte& pVerGhostedSetupPath, UInt32& pdwPartCount, Object& pvarMetaData, Object& pvarMultipleMeetingDoclibRootFolders, String& pbstrRedirectUrl, Boolean& pbObjectIsList, Guid& pgListId, UInt32& pdwItemId, Int64& pllListFlags, Boolean& pbAccessDenied, Guid& pgDocId, Byte& piLevel, UInt64& ppermMask, Object& pvarBuildDependencySet, UInt32& pdwNumBuildDependencies, Object& pvarBuildDependencies, String& pbstrFolderUrl, String& pbstrContentTypeOrder) +219 [SPException: Cannot complete this action. Please try again.] I'm able to work around this by checking out the new master page and checking it back in again and after doing so there are no further issues at all. Any ideas to what could cause this? Thanks Dan ONET.XML module section: <Modules> <Module Name="CustomMasterPage" List="116" Url="_catalogs/masterpage" RootWebOnly="FALSE"> <File Url="Shoes.master" Type="GhostableInLibrary" IgnoreIfAlreadyExists="TRUE" /> </Module> <Module Name="Default" List="116" Url=""> <File Url="default.aspx" Name="default.aspx" NavBarHome="True" IgnoreIfAlreadyExists="FALSE"> <AllUsersWebPart WebPartZoneID="Left" WebPartOrder="1"> <webParts><webPart xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v3"><metaData><type name="BCM.SharePoint.Shoes.ShoesComponents.FooterLinks, BCM.SharePoint.Shoes.ShoesComponents, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=2881713f39360b71" /><importErrorMessage>Cannot import this Web Part.</importErrorMessage></metaData><data><properties><property name="AllowClose" type="bool">True</property><property name="Width" type="string" /><property name="MyProperty" type="string">Hello SharePoint</property><property name="AllowMinimize" type="bool">True</property><property name="AllowConnect" type="bool">True</property><property name="ChromeType" type="chrometype">None</property><property name="TitleIconImageUrl" type="string">/_layouts/images/BCM_SharePoint_Shoes/wp_FooterLinks.gif</property><property name="Description" type="string">FooterLinks Description</property><property name="Hidden" type="bool">False</property><property name="TitleUrl" type="string" /><property name="AllowEdit" type="bool">True</property><property name="Height" type="string" /><property name="MissingAssembly" type="string">Cannot import this Web Part.</property><property name="HelpUrl" type="string" /><property name="Title" type="string" /><property name="CatalogIconImageUrl" type="string">/_layouts/images/BCM_SharePoint_Shoes/wp_FooterLinks.gif</property><property name="Direction" type="direction">NotSet</property><property name="ChromeState" type="chromestate">Normal</property><property name="AllowZoneChange" type="bool">True</property><property name="AllowHide" type="bool">True</property><property name="HelpMode" type="helpmode">Modeless</property><property name="ExportMode" type="exportmode">All</property></properties></data></webPart></webParts> </AllUsersWebPart> <AllUsersWebPart WebPartZoneID="Left" WebPartOrder="0"> <webParts><webPart xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v3"><metaData><type name="BCM.SharePoint.Shoes.ShoesComponents.SubFooterLinks, BCM.SharePoint.Shoes.ShoesComponents, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=2881713f39360b71" /><importErrorMessage>Cannot import this Web Part.</importErrorMessage></metaData><data><properties><property name="AllowClose" type="bool">True</property><property name="Width" type="string" /><property name="MyProperty" type="string">Hello SharePoint</property><property name="AllowMinimize" type="bool">True</property><property name="AllowConnect" type="bool">True</property><property name="ChromeType" type="chrometype">None</property><property name="TitleIconImageUrl" type="string">/_layouts/images/BCM_SharePoint_Shoes/wp_SubFooterLinks.gif</property><property name="Description" type="string">Shoes home page links (under the hero image)</property><property name="Hidden" type="bool">False</property><property name="TitleUrl" type="string" /><property name="AllowEdit" type="bool">True</property><property name="Height" type="string" /><property name="MissingAssembly" type="string">Cannot import this Web Part.</property><property name="HelpUrl" type="string" /><property name="Title" type="string" /><property name="CatalogIconImageUrl" type="string">/_layouts/images/BCM_SharePoint_Shoes/wp_SubFooterLinks.gif</property><property name="Direction" type="direction">NotSet</property><property name="ChromeState" type="chromestate">Normal</property><property name="AllowZoneChange" type="bool">True</property><property name="AllowHide" type="bool">True</property><property name="HelpMode" type="helpmode">Modeless</property><property name="ExportMode" type="exportmode">All</property></properties></data></webPart></webParts> </AllUsersWebPart> <NavBarPage Name="$Resources:core,nav_Home;" ID="1002" Position="Start" /> <NavBarPage Name="$Resources:core,nav_Home;" ID="0" Position="Start" /> </File> </Module> </Modules> LOG OUTPUT: 05/21/2010 12:22:55.11 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 72nz Medium Videntityinfo::isFreshToken reported failure. 05/21/2010 12:22:55.19 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services Fields 88yv Medium Creating default lists 05/21/2010 12:22:55.19 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 72lp Medium Creating directory Lists 05/21/2010 12:22:55.26 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services Fields 88yf Medium Creating list "Master Page Gallery" in web "http://mmm-dev-ll/sites/Shoes/test" at URL "_catalogs/masterpage", (setuppath: "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\Template\global\lists\mplib") 05/21/2010 12:22:55.28 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services Fields 88y1 Medium No document templates uploaded for list "Master Page Gallery" -- none found for list template "100". 05/21/2010 12:22:55.28 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 72kc Medium Failed to find generic XML file at "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\Template\xml\onet.xml", falling back to global site definition. 05/21/2010 12:22:56.22 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services Fields 88yz Medium Creating default modules at URL "http://mmm-dev-ll/sites/Shoes/test" 05/21/2010 12:22:56.22 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 8e27 Medium Ensuring module folder _catalogs/masterpage 05/21/2010 12:22:56.89 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 72h7 Medium Applying template "SubSite#1" to web at URL "http://mmm-dev-ll/sites/Shoes/test". 05/21/2010 12:22:57.09 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services Fields 88yy Medium Activating web-scoped features for template "SubSite#1" at URL "http://mmm-dev-ll/sites/Shoes/test" 05/21/2010 12:22:57.12 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 8l1c Medium Preparing 20 features for activation 05/21/2010 12:22:57.14 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 8l1d Medium Feature Activation: Batch Activating Features at URL http://mmm-dev-ll/sites/Shoes/test 'AnnouncementsList' (ID: '00bfea71-d1ce-42de-9c63-a44004ce0104'), 'ContactsList' (ID: '00bfea71-7e6d-4186-9ba8-c047ac750105'), 'CustomList' (ID: '00bfea71-de22-43b2-a848-c05709900100'), 'DataSourceLibrary' (ID: '00bfea71-f381-423d-b9d1-da7a54c50110'), 'DiscussionsList' (ID: '00bfea71-6a49-43fa-b535-d15c05500108'), 'DocumentLibrary' (ID: '00bfea71-e717-4e80-aa17-d0c71b360101'), 'EventsList' (ID: '00bfea71-ec85-4903-972d-ebe475780106'), 'GanttTasksList' (ID: '00bfea71-513d-4ca0-96c2-6a47775c0119'), 'GridList' (ID: '00bfea71-3a1d-41d3-a0ee-651d11570120'), 'IssuesList' (ID: '00bfea71-5932-4f9c-ad71-1557e5751100'), 'LinksList' (ID: '00bfea71-2062-426c-90bf-714c59600103'), 'NoCodeWorkflowLibrary' (ID: '00bfe... 05/21/2010 12:22:57.14* w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 8l1d Medium ...a71-f600-43f6-a895-40c0de7b0117'), 'PictureLibrary' (ID: '00bfea71-52d4-45b3-b544-b1c71b620109'), 'SurveysList' (ID: '00bfea71-eb8a-40b1-80c7-506be7590102'), 'TasksList' (ID: '00bfea71-a83e-497e-9ba0-7a5c597d0107'), 'WebPageLibrary' (ID: '00bfea71-c796-4402-9f2f-0eb9a6e71b18'), 'workflowProcessList' (ID: '00bfea71-2d77-4a75-9fca-76516689e21a'), 'WorkflowHistoryList' (ID: '00bfea71-4ea5-48d4-a4ad-305cf7030140'), 'XmlFormLibrary' (ID: '00bfea71-1e1d-4562-b56a-f05371bb0115'), 'TeamCollab' (ID: '00bfea71-4ea5-48d4-a4ad-7ea5c011abe5'), . 05/21/2010 12:22:57.15 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 8l1f Medium Feature Activation: Batch Activated Features at URL http://mmm-dev-ll/sites/Shoes/test 'AnnouncementsList' (ID: '00bfea71-d1ce-42de-9c63-a44004ce0104'), 'ContactsList' (ID: '00bfea71-7e6d-4186-9ba8-c047ac750105'), 'CustomList' (ID: '00bfea71-de22-43b2-a848-c05709900100'), 'DataSourceLibrary' (ID: '00bfea71-f381-423d-b9d1-da7a54c50110'), 'DiscussionsList' (ID: '00bfea71-6a49-43fa-b535-d15c05500108'), 'DocumentLibrary' (ID: '00bfea71-e717-4e80-aa17-d0c71b360101'), 'EventsList' (ID: '00bfea71-ec85-4903-972d-ebe475780106'), 'GanttTasksList' (ID: '00bfea71-513d-4ca0-96c2-6a47775c0119'), 'GridList' (ID: '00bfea71-3a1d-41d3-a0ee-651d11570120'), 'IssuesList' (ID: '00bfea71-5932-4f9c-ad71-1557e5751100'), 'LinksList' (ID: '00bfea71-2062-426c-90bf-714c59600103'), 'NoCodeWorkflowLibrary' (ID: '00bfea... 05/21/2010 12:22:57.15* w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 8l1f Medium ...71-f600-43f6-a895-40c0de7b0117'), 'PictureLibrary' (ID: '00bfea71-52d4-45b3-b544-b1c71b620109'), 'SurveysList' (ID: '00bfea71-eb8a-40b1-80c7-506be7590102'), 'TasksList' (ID: '00bfea71-a83e-497e-9ba0-7a5c597d0107'), 'WebPageLibrary' (ID: '00bfea71-c796-4402-9f2f-0eb9a6e71b18'), 'workflowProcessList' (ID: '00bfea71-2d77-4a75-9fca-76516689e21a'), 'WorkflowHistoryList' (ID: '00bfea71-4ea5-48d4-a4ad-305cf7030140'), 'XmlFormLibrary' (ID: '00bfea71-1e1d-4562-b56a-f05371bb0115'), 'TeamCollab' (ID: '00bfea71-4ea5-48d4-a4ad-7ea5c011abe5'), . 05/21/2010 12:22:57.15 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 88jb Medium Feature Activation: Activating Feature 'RadEditorFeatureRichText' (ID: '747755cd-d060-4663-961c-9b0cc43724e9') at URL http://mmm-dev-ll/sites/Shoes/test. 05/21/2010 12:22:57.15 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 75fb Medium Calling 'FeatureActivated' method of SPFeatureReceiver for Feature 'RadEditorFeatureRichText' (ID: '747755cd-d060-4663-961c-9b0cc43724e9'). 05/21/2010 12:22:57.20 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 75f8 Medium Feature Activation: Feature 'RadEditorFeatureRichText' (ID: '747755cd-d060-4663-961c-9b0cc43724e9') was activated at URL http://mmm-dev-ll/sites/Shoes/test. 05/21/2010 12:22:57.51 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services Fields 88yv Medium Creating default lists 05/21/2010 12:22:57.51 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 72lp Medium Creating directory Lists 05/21/2010 12:22:57.51 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services Fields 88yz Medium Creating default modules at URL "http://mmm-dev-ll/sites/Shoes/test" 05/21/2010 12:22:57.51 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 8e27 Medium Ensuring module folder _catalogs/masterpage 05/21/2010 12:22:57.56 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 72ix Medium Not enough information to determine a list for module "Default". Assuming no list for this module. 05/21/2010 12:22:57.87 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x18A4 Windows SharePoint Services General 72h8 Medium Successfully applied template "SubSite#1" to web at URL "http://mmm-dev-ll/sites/Shoes/test". 05/21/2010 12:22:59.48 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x0980 Windows SharePoint Services General 8e2s Medium Unknown SPRequest error occurred. More information: 0x80070057 05/21/2010 12:23:07.06 OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0884) 0x106C Office Server Setup and Upgrade 8u3j High Registry key value {SearchThrottled} was not found under registry hive {Software\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0}. Assuming search sku is not throttled. 05/21/2010 12:23:07.08 OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0884) 0x106C Search Server Common MS Search Administration 90gf Medium SQL: dbo.proc_MSS_PropagationGetQueryServers 05/21/2010 12:23:07.09 OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0884) 0x106C Search Server Common MS Search Administration 8wni High Resuming default catalog with reason 'GPR_PROPAGATION' for application 'SharedServices1'... 05/21/2010 12:23:07.11 OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0884) 0x106C Search Server Common MS Search Administration 8wnj High Resuming anchor text catalog with reason GPR_PROPAGATION' for application 'SharedServices1'... 05/21/2010 12:23:07.14 OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0884) 0x106C Search Server Common MS Search Administration 8dvl Medium Search application '3c6751cc-37b0-470a-bfa2-bfd0b5635fe1': Provision start addresses in default content source. 05/21/2010 12:23:07.15 OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0884) 0x106C Search Server Common MS Search Administration 7hmh High exception in SearchUpgradeProvisioner Keyword Config System.InvalidOperationException: jobServerSearchServiceInstance is null at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.SearchUpgradeProvisioner..ctor(SearchServiceInstance searchServiceInstance) at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.OSSPrimaryGathererProject.ProvisionContentSources() 05/21/2010 12:23:29.19 OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0884) 0x0FFC SharePoint Portal Server Business Data 79bv High Initiating BDC Cache Invalidation Check in AppDomain 'DefaultDomain' 05/21/2010 12:23:29.19 OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0884) 0x0FFC SharePoint Portal Server Business Data 79bx High Completed BDC Cache Invalidation Check in AppDomain 'DefaultDomain' 05/21/2010 12:23:45.84 OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0884) 0x08A8 SharePoint Portal Server SSO 8inc Medium In SSOService::Synch(), sso database conn string: 05/21/2010 12:23:50.80 OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0884) 0x0F14 Excel Services Excel Services Administration 8tqi Medium ExcelServerSharedWebApplication.Synchronize: Starting synchronize for instance of Excel Services in SSP 'SharedServices1'. 05/21/2010 12:23:50.80 OWSTIMER.EXE (0x0884) 0x0F14 Excel Services Excel Services Administration 8tqj Medium ExcelServerSharedWebApplication.Synchronize: Successfully synchronized instance of Excel Services in SSP 'SharedServices1'. 05/21/2010 12:23:52.31 w3wp.exe (0x1E40) 0x0980 SharePoint Portal Server Runtime 8gp7 Medium Topology cache updated. (AppDomain: /LM/W3SVC/1963195510/Root-1-129188762904047141)

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ASP.NET Podcast Show #148 - ASP.NET WebForms to build a Mobile Web Application

- by Wallym

Check the podcast site for the original url. This is the video and source code for an ASP.NET WebForms app that I wrote that is optimized for the iPhone and mobile environments. Subscribe to everything. Subscribe to WMV. Subscribe to M4V for iPhone/iPad. Subscribe to MP3. Download WMV. Download M4V for iPhone/iPad. Download MP3. Link to iWebKit. Source Code: <%@ Page Title="MapSplore" Language="C#" MasterPageFile="iPhoneMaster.master" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="AT_iPhone_Default" %> <asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="head" Runat="Server"></asp:Content><asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="Content" Runat="Server" ClientIDMode="Static"> <asp:ScriptManager ID="sm" runat="server" EnablePartialRendering="true" EnableHistory="false" EnableCdn="true" /> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://maps.google.com/maps/api/js?sensor=true"></script> <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">  </script> <asp:HiddenField ID="Latitude" runat="server" /> <asp:HiddenField ID="Longitude" runat="server" /> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js%22%3E%3C/script> <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function () { GetLocation(); setupMapDiv(); setupPlaceIveBeen(); }); function GetLocation() { if (navigator.geolocation != null) { navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(getData); } else { var mess = document.getElementById('<%=Message.ClientID %>'); mess.innerHTML = "Sorry, your browser does not support geolocation. " + "Try the latest version of Safari on the iPhone, Android browser, or the latest version of FireFox."; } } function UpdateLocation_Click() { GetLocation(); } function getData(position) { var latitude = position.coords.latitude; var longitude = position.coords.longitude; var hdLat = document.getElementById('<%=Latitude.ClientID %>'); var hdLon = document.getElementById('<%=Longitude.ClientID %>'); hdLat.value = latitude; hdLon.value = longitude; } </script> <asp:Label ID="Message" runat="server" /> <asp:UpdatePanel ID="upl" runat="server"> <ContentTemplate> <asp:Panel ID="pnlStart" runat="server" Visible="true"> <div id="topbar"> <div id="title">MapSplore</div> </div> <div id="content"> <ul class="pageitem"> <li class="menu"> <asp:LinkButton ID="lbLocalDeals" runat="server" onclick="lbLocalDeals_Click"> <asp:Image ID="imLocalDeals" runat="server" ImageUrl="~/Images/ArtFavor_Money_Bag_Icon.png" Height="30" /> <span class="name">Local Deals.</span> <span class="arrow"></span> </asp:LinkButton> </li> <li class="menu"> <asp:LinkButton ID="lbLocalPlaces" runat="server" onclick="lbLocalPlaces_Click"> <asp:Image ID="imLocalPlaces" runat="server" ImageUrl="~/Images/Andy_Houses_on_the_horizon_-_Starburst_remix.png" Height="30" /> <span class="name">Local Places.</span> <span class="arrow"></span> </asp:LinkButton> </li> <li class="menu"> <asp:LinkButton ID="lbWhereIveBeen" runat="server" onclick="lbWhereIveBeen_Click"> <asp:Image ID="imImHere" runat="server" ImageUrl="~/Images/ryanlerch_flagpole.png" Height="30" /> <span class="name">I've been here.</span> <span class="arrow"></span> </asp:LinkButton> </li> <li class="menu"> <asp:LinkButton ID="lbMyStats" runat="server"> <asp:Image ID="imMyStats" runat="server" ImageUrl="~/Images/Anonymous_Spreadsheet.png" Height="30" /> <span class="name">My Stats.</span> <span class="arrow"></span> </asp:LinkButton> </li> <li class="menu"> <asp:LinkButton ID="lbAddAPlace" runat="server" onclick="lbAddAPlace_Click"> <asp:Image ID="imAddAPlace" runat="server" ImageUrl="~/Images/jean_victor_balin_add.png" Height="30" /> <span class="name">Add a Place.</span> <span class="arrow"></span> </asp:LinkButton> </li> <li class="button"> <input type="button" value="Update Your Current Location" onclick="UpdateLocation_Click()"> </li> </ul> </div> </asp:Panel> <div> <asp:Panel ID="pnlCoupons" runat="server" Visible="false"> <div id="topbar"> <div id="title">MapSplore</div> <div id="leftbutton"> <asp:LinkButton runat="server" Text="Return" ID="ReturnFromDeals" OnClick="ReturnFromDeals_Click" /></div></div> <div class="content"> <asp:ListView ID="lvCoupons" runat="server"> <LayoutTemplate> <ul class="pageitem" runat="server"> <asp:PlaceHolder ID="itemPlaceholder" runat="server" /> </ul> </LayoutTemplate> <ItemTemplate> <li class="menu"> <asp:LinkButton ID="lbBusiness" runat="server" Text='<%#Eval("Place.Name") %>' OnClick="lbBusiness_Click"> <span class="comment"> <asp:Label ID="lblAddress" runat="server" Text='<%#Eval("Place.Address1") %>' /> <asp:Label ID="lblDis" runat="server" Text='<%# Convert.ToString(Convert.ToInt32(Eval("Place.Distance"))) + " meters" %>' CssClass="smallText" /> <asp:HiddenField ID="hdPlaceId" runat="server" Value='<%#Eval("PlaceId") %>' /> <asp:HiddenField ID="hdGeoPromotionId" runat="server" Value='<%#Eval("GeoPromotionId") %>' /> </span> <span class="arrow"></span> </asp:LinkButton></li></ItemTemplate></asp:ListView><asp:GridView ID="gvCoupons" runat="server" AutoGenerateColumns="false"> <HeaderStyle BackColor="Silver" /> <AlternatingRowStyle BackColor="Wheat" /> <Columns> <asp:TemplateField AccessibleHeaderText="Business" HeaderText="Business"> <ItemTemplate> <asp:Image ID="imPlaceType" runat="server" Text='<%#Eval("Type") %>' ImageUrl='<%#Eval("Image") %>' /> <asp:LinkButton ID="lbBusiness" runat="server" Text='<%#Eval("Name") %>' OnClick="lbBusiness_Click" /> <asp:LinkButton ID="lblAddress" runat="server" Text='<%#Eval("Address1") %>' CssClass="smallText" /> <asp:Label ID="lblDis" runat="server" Text='<%# Convert.ToString(Convert.ToInt32(Eval("Distance"))) + " meters" %>' CssClass="smallText" /> <asp:HiddenField ID="hdPlaceId" runat="server" Value='<%#Eval("PlaceId") %>' /> <asp:HiddenField ID="hdGeoPromotionId" runat="server" Value='<%#Eval("GeoPromotionId") %>' /> <asp:Label ID="lblInfo" runat="server" Visible="false" /> </ItemTemplate> </asp:TemplateField> </Columns> </asp:GridView> </div> </asp:Panel> <asp:Panel ID="pnlPlaces" runat="server" Visible="false"> <div id="topbar"> <div id="title"> MapSplore</div><div id="leftbutton"> <asp:LinkButton runat="server" Text="Return" ID="ReturnFromPlaces" OnClick="ReturnFromPlaces_Click" /></div></div> <div id="content"> <asp:ListView ID="lvPlaces" runat="server"> <LayoutTemplate> <ul id="ulPlaces" class="pageitem" runat="server"> <asp:PlaceHolder ID="itemPlaceholder" runat="server" /> <li class="menu"> <asp:LinkButton ID="lbNotListed" runat="server" CssClass="name" OnClick="lbNotListed_Click"> Place not listed <span class="arrow"></span> </asp:LinkButton> </li> </ul> </LayoutTemplate> <ItemTemplate> <li class="menu"> <asp:LinkButton ID="lbImHere" runat="server" CssClass="name" OnClick="lbImHere_Click"> <%#DisplayName(Eval("Name")) %>  <%# Convert.ToString(Convert.ToInt32(Eval("Distance"))) + " meters" %> <asp:HiddenField ID="hdPlaceId" runat="server" Value='<%#Eval("PlaceId") %>' /> <span class="arrow"></span> </asp:LinkButton></li></ItemTemplate></asp:ListView> </div> </asp:Panel> <asp:Panel ID="pnlImHereNow" runat="server" Visible="false"> <div id="topbar"> <div id="title"> MapSplore</div><div id="leftbutton"> <asp:LinkButton runat="server" Text="Places" ID="lbImHereNowReturn" OnClick="lbImHereNowReturn_Click" /></div></div> <div id="rightbutton"> <asp:LinkButton runat="server" Text="Beginning" ID="lbBackToBeginning" OnClick="lbBackToBeginning_Click" /> </div> <div id="content"> <ul class="pageitem"> <asp:HiddenField ID="hdPlaceId" runat="server" /> <asp:HiddenField ID="hdPlaceLat" runat="server" /> <asp:HiddenField ID="hdPlaceLon" runat="server" /> <asp:HiddenField ID="hdPlaceTitle" runat="server" /> <asp:Button ID="btnImHereNow" runat="server" Text="I'm here" OnClick="btnImHereNow_Click" /> <asp:Label ID="lblPlaceTitle" runat="server" /><br /> <asp:TextBox ID="txtWhatsHappening" runat="server" TextMode="MultiLine" Rows="2" style="width:300px" /><br /> <div id="divImHere" style="width:300px; height:300px"></div> </div> </ul> </asp:Panel> <asp:Panel runat="server" ID="pnlIveBeenHere" Visible="false"> <div id="topbar"> <div id="title"> Where I've been</div><div id="leftbutton"> <asp:LinkButton ID="lbIveBeenHereBack" runat="server" Text="Back" OnClick="lbIveBeenHereBack_Click" /></div></div> <div id="content"> <asp:ListView ID="lvWhereIveBeen" runat="server"> <LayoutTemplate> <ul id="ulWhereIveBeen" class="pageitem" runat="server"> <asp:PlaceHolder ID="itemPlaceholder" runat="server" /> </ul> </LayoutTemplate> <ItemTemplate> <li class="menu" runat="server"> <asp:LinkButton ID="lbPlaceIveBeen" runat="server" OnClick="lbPlaceIveBeen_Click" CssClass="name"> <asp:Label ID="lblPlace" runat="server" Text='<%#Eval("PlaceName") %>' /> at <asp:Label ID="lblTime" runat="server" Text='<%#Eval("ATTime") %>' CssClass="content" /> <asp:HiddenField ID="hdATID" runat="server" Value='<%#Eval("ATID") %>' /> <span class="arrow"></span> </asp:LinkButton> </li> </ItemTemplate> </asp:ListView> </div> </asp:Panel> <asp:Panel runat="server" ID="pnlPlaceIveBeen" Visible="false"> <div id="topbar"> <div id="title"> I've been here </div> <div id="leftbutton"> <asp:LinkButton ID="lbPlaceIveBeenBack" runat="server" Text="Back" OnClick="lbPlaceIveBeenBack_Click" /> </div> <div id="rightbutton"> <asp:LinkButton ID="lbPlaceIveBeenBeginning" runat="server" Text="Beginning" OnClick="lbPlaceIveBeenBeginning_Click" /> </div> </div> <div id="content"> <ul class="pageitem"> <li> <asp:HiddenField ID="hdPlaceIveBeenPlaceId" runat="server" /> <asp:HiddenField ID="hdPlaceIveBeenLatitude" runat="server" /> <asp:HiddenField ID="hdPlaceIveBeenLongitude" runat="server" /> <asp:Label ID="lblPlaceIveBeenName" runat="server" /><br /> <asp:Label ID="lblPlaceIveBeenAddress" runat="server" /><br /> <asp:Label ID="lblPlaceIveBeenCity" runat="server" />, <asp:Label ID="lblPlaceIveBeenState" runat="server" /> <asp:Label ID="lblPlaceIveBeenZipCode" runat="server" /><br /> <asp:Label ID="lblPlaceIveBeenCountry" runat="server" /><br /> <div id="divPlaceIveBeen" style="width:300px; height:300px"></div> </li> </ul> </div> </asp:Panel> <asp:Panel ID="pnlAddPlace" runat="server" Visible="false"> <div id="topbar"><div id="title">MapSplore</div><div id="leftbutton"><asp:LinkButton ID="lbAddPlaceReturn" runat="server" Text="Back" OnClick="lbAddPlaceReturn_Click" /></div><div id="rightnav"></div></div><div id="content"> <ul class="pageitem"> <li id="liPlaceAddMessage" runat="server" visible="false"> <asp:Label ID="PlaceAddMessage" runat="server" /> </li> <li class="bigfield"> <asp:TextBox ID="txtPlaceName" runat="server" placeholder="Name of Establishment" /> </li> <li class="bigfield"> <asp:TextBox ID="txtAddress1" runat="server" placeholder="Address 1" /> </li> <li class="bigfield"> <asp:TextBox ID="txtCity" runat="server" placeholder="City" /> </li> <li class="select"> <asp:DropDownList ID="ddlProvince" runat="server" placeholder="Select State" /> <span class="arrow"></span> </li> <li class="bigfield"> <asp:TextBox ID="txtZipCode" runat="server" placeholder="Zip Code" /> </li> <li class="select"> <asp:DropDownList ID="ddlCountry" runat="server" onselectedindexchanged="ddlCountry_SelectedIndexChanged" /> <span class="arrow"></span> </li> <li class="bigfield"> <asp:TextBox ID="txtPhoneNumber" runat="server" placeholder="Phone Number" /> </li> <li class="checkbox"> <span class="name">You Here Now:</span> <asp:CheckBox ID="cbYouHereNow" runat="server" Checked="true" /> </li> <li class="button"> <asp:Button ID="btnAdd" runat="server" Text="Add Place" onclick="btnAdd_Click" /> </li> </ul></div> </asp:Panel> <asp:Panel ID="pnlImHere" runat="server" Visible="false"> <asp:TextBox ID="txtImHere" runat="server" TextMode="MultiLine" Rows="3" Columns="40" /><br /> <asp:DropDownList ID="ddlPlace" runat="server" /><br /> <asp:Button ID="btnHere" runat="server" Text="Tell Everyone I'm Here" onclick="btnHere_Click" /><br /> </asp:Panel> </div> </ContentTemplate> </asp:UpdatePanel> </asp:Content> Code Behind .cs file: using System;using System.Collections.Generic;using System.Linq;using System.Web;using System.Web.Security;using System.Web.UI;using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;using System.Web.UI.WebControls;using LocationDataModel; public partial class AT_iPhone_Default : ViewStatePage{ private iPhoneDevice ipd; protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { LocationDataEntities lde = new LocationDataEntities(); if (!Page.IsPostBack) { var Countries = from c in lde.Countries select c; foreach (Country co in Countries) { ddlCountry.Items.Add(new ListItem(co.Name, co.CountryId.ToString())); } ddlCountry_SelectedIndexChanged(ddlCountry, null); if (AppleIPhone.IsIPad()) ipd = iPhoneDevice.iPad; if (AppleIPhone.IsIPhone()) ipd = iPhoneDevice.iPhone; if (AppleIPhone.IsIPodTouch()) ipd = iPhoneDevice.iPodTouch; } } protected void btnPlaces_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { } protected void btnAdd_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { bool blImHere = cbYouHereNow.Checked; string Place = txtPlaceName.Text, Address1 = txtAddress1.Text, City = txtCity.Text, ZipCode = txtZipCode.Text, PhoneNumber = txtPhoneNumber.Text, ProvinceId = ddlProvince.SelectedItem.Value, CountryId = ddlCountry.SelectedItem.Value; int iProvinceId, iCountryId; double dLatitude, dLongitude; DataAccess da = new DataAccess(); if ((!String.IsNullOrEmpty(ProvinceId)) && (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(CountryId))) { iProvinceId = Convert.ToInt32(ProvinceId); iCountryId = Convert.ToInt32(CountryId); if (blImHere) { dLatitude = Convert.ToDouble(Latitude.Value); dLongitude = Convert.ToDouble(Longitude.Value); da.StorePlace(Place, Address1, String.Empty, City, iProvinceId, ZipCode, iCountryId, PhoneNumber, dLatitude, dLongitude); } else { da.StorePlace(Place, Address1, String.Empty, City, iProvinceId, ZipCode, iCountryId, PhoneNumber); } liPlaceAddMessage.Visible = true; PlaceAddMessage.Text = "Awesome, your place has been added. Add Another!"; txtPlaceName.Text = String.Empty; txtAddress1.Text = String.Empty; txtCity.Text = String.Empty; ddlProvince.SelectedIndex = -1; txtZipCode.Text = String.Empty; txtPhoneNumber.Text = String.Empty; } else { liPlaceAddMessage.Visible = true; PlaceAddMessage.Text = "Please select a State and a Country."; } } protected void ddlCountry_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs e) { string CountryId = ddlCountry.SelectedItem.Value; if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(CountryId)) { int iCountryId = Convert.ToInt32(CountryId); LocationDataModel.LocationDataEntities lde = new LocationDataModel.LocationDataEntities(); var prov = from p in lde.Provinces where p.CountryId == iCountryId orderby p.ProvinceName select p; ddlProvince.Items.Add(String.Empty); foreach (Province pr in prov) { ddlProvince.Items.Add(new ListItem(pr.ProvinceName, pr.ProvinceId.ToString())); } } else { ddlProvince.Items.Clear(); } } protected void btnImHere_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { int i = 0; DataAccess da = new DataAccess(); double Lat = Convert.ToDouble(Latitude.Value), Lon = Convert.ToDouble(Longitude.Value); List<Place> lp = da.NearByLocations(Lat, Lon); foreach (Place p in lp) { ListItem li = new ListItem(p.Name, p.PlaceId.ToString()); if (i == 0) { li.Selected = true; } ddlPlace.Items.Add(li); i++; } pnlAddPlace.Visible = false; pnlImHere.Visible = true; } protected void lbImHere_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { string UserName = Membership.GetUser().UserName; ListViewItem lvi = (ListViewItem)(((LinkButton)sender).Parent); HiddenField hd = (HiddenField)lvi.FindControl("hdPlaceId"); long PlaceId = Convert.ToInt64(hd.Value); double dLatitude = Convert.ToDouble(Latitude.Value); double dLongitude = Convert.ToDouble(Longitude.Value); DataAccess da = new DataAccess(); Place pl = da.GetPlace(PlaceId); pnlImHereNow.Visible = true; pnlPlaces.Visible = false; hdPlaceId.Value = PlaceId.ToString(); hdPlaceLat.Value = pl.Latitude.ToString(); hdPlaceLon.Value = pl.Longitude.ToString(); hdPlaceTitle.Value = pl.Name; lblPlaceTitle.Text = pl.Name; } protected void btnHere_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { string UserName = Membership.GetUser().UserName; string WhatsH = txtImHere.Text; long PlaceId = Convert.ToInt64(ddlPlace.SelectedValue); double dLatitude = Convert.ToDouble(Latitude.Value); double dLongitude = Convert.ToDouble(Longitude.Value); DataAccess da = new DataAccess(); da.StoreUserAT(UserName, PlaceId, WhatsH, dLatitude, dLongitude); } protected void btnLocalCoupons_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { double dLatitude = Convert.ToDouble(Latitude.Value); double dLongitude = Convert.ToDouble(Longitude.Value); DataAccess da = new DataAccess(); } protected void lbBusiness_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { string UserName = Membership.GetUser().UserName; GridViewRow gvr = (GridViewRow)(((LinkButton)sender).Parent.Parent); HiddenField hd = (HiddenField)gvr.FindControl("hdPlaceId"); string sPlaceId = hd.Value; Int64 PlaceId; if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(sPlaceId)) { PlaceId = Convert.ToInt64(sPlaceId); } } protected void lbLocalDeals_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { double dLatitude = Convert.ToDouble(Latitude.Value); double dLongitude = Convert.ToDouble(Longitude.Value); DataAccess da = new DataAccess(); pnlCoupons.Visible = true; pnlStart.Visible = false; List<GeoPromotion> lgp = da.NearByDeals(dLatitude, dLongitude); lvCoupons.DataSource = lgp; lvCoupons.DataBind(); } protected void lbLocalPlaces_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { DataAccess da = new DataAccess(); double Lat = Convert.ToDouble(Latitude.Value); double Lon = Convert.ToDouble(Longitude.Value); List<LocationDataModel.Place> places = da.NearByLocations(Lat, Lon); lvPlaces.DataSource = places; lvPlaces.SelectedIndex = -1; lvPlaces.DataBind(); pnlPlaces.Visible = true; pnlStart.Visible = false; } protected void ReturnFromPlaces_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { pnlPlaces.Visible = false; pnlStart.Visible = true; } protected void ReturnFromDeals_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { pnlCoupons.Visible = false; pnlStart.Visible = true; } protected void btnImHereNow_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { long PlaceId = Convert.ToInt32(hdPlaceId.Value); string UserName = Membership.GetUser().UserName; string WhatsHappening = txtWhatsHappening.Text; double UserLat = Convert.ToDouble(Latitude.Value); double UserLon = Convert.ToDouble(Longitude.Value); DataAccess da = new DataAccess(); da.StoreUserAT(UserName, PlaceId, WhatsHappening, UserLat, UserLon); } protected void lbImHereNowReturn_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { pnlImHereNow.Visible = false; pnlPlaces.Visible = true; } protected void lbBackToBeginning_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { pnlStart.Visible = true; pnlImHereNow.Visible = false; } protected void lbWhereIveBeen_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { string UserName = Membership.GetUser().UserName; pnlStart.Visible = false; pnlIveBeenHere.Visible = true; DataAccess da = new DataAccess(); lvWhereIveBeen.DataSource = da.UserATs(UserName, 0, 15); lvWhereIveBeen.DataBind(); } protected void lbIveBeenHereBack_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { pnlIveBeenHere.Visible = false; pnlStart.Visible = true; } protected void lbPlaceIveBeen_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { LinkButton lb = (LinkButton)sender; ListViewItem lvi = (ListViewItem)lb.Parent.Parent; HiddenField hdATID = (HiddenField)lvi.FindControl("hdATID"); Int64 ATID = Convert.ToInt64(hdATID.Value); DataAccess da = new DataAccess(); pnlIveBeenHere.Visible = false; pnlPlaceIveBeen.Visible = true; var plac = da.GetPlaceViaATID(ATID); hdPlaceIveBeenPlaceId.Value = plac.PlaceId.ToString(); hdPlaceIveBeenLatitude.Value = plac.Latitude.ToString(); hdPlaceIveBeenLongitude.Value = plac.Longitude.ToString(); lblPlaceIveBeenName.Text = plac.Name; lblPlaceIveBeenAddress.Text = plac.Address1; lblPlaceIveBeenCity.Text = plac.City; lblPlaceIveBeenState.Text = plac.Province.ProvinceName; lblPlaceIveBeenZipCode.Text = plac.ZipCode; lblPlaceIveBeenCountry.Text = plac.Country.Name; } protected void lbNotListed_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { SetupAddPoint(); pnlPlaces.Visible = false; } protected void lbAddAPlace_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { SetupAddPoint(); } private void SetupAddPoint() { double lat = Convert.ToDouble(Latitude.Value); double lon = Convert.ToDouble(Longitude.Value); DataAccess da = new DataAccess(); var zip = da.WhereAmIAt(lat, lon); if (zip.Count > 0) { var z0 = zip[0]; txtCity.Text = z0.City; txtZipCode.Text = z0.ZipCode; ddlProvince.ClearSelection(); if (z0.ProvinceId.HasValue == true) { foreach (ListItem li in ddlProvince.Items) { if (li.Value == z0.ProvinceId.Value.ToString()) { li.Selected = true; break; } } } } pnlAddPlace.Visible = true; pnlStart.Visible = false; } protected void lbAddPlaceReturn_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { pnlAddPlace.Visible = false; pnlStart.Visible = true; liPlaceAddMessage.Visible = false; PlaceAddMessage.Text = String.Empty; } protected void lbPlaceIveBeenBack_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { pnlIveBeenHere.Visible = true; pnlPlaceIveBeen.Visible = false; } protected void lbPlaceIveBeenBeginning_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { pnlPlaceIveBeen.Visible = false; pnlStart.Visible = true; } protected string DisplayName(object val) { string strVal = Convert.ToString(val); if (AppleIPhone.IsIPad()) { ipd = iPhoneDevice.iPad; } if (AppleIPhone.IsIPhone()) { ipd = iPhoneDevice.iPhone; } if (AppleIPhone.IsIPodTouch()) { ipd = iPhoneDevice.iPodTouch; } return (iPhoneHelper.DisplayContentOnMenu(strVal, ipd)); }} iPhoneHelper.cs file: using System;using System.Collections.Generic;using System.Linq;using System.Web; public enum iPhoneDevice{ iPhone, iPodTouch, iPad}/// <summary>/// Summary description for iPhoneHelper/// </summary>/// public class iPhoneHelper{ public iPhoneHelper() { // // TODO: Add constructor logic here // } // This code is stupid in retrospect. Use css to solve this problem public static string DisplayContentOnMenu(string val, iPhoneDevice ipd) { string Return = val; string Elipsis = "..."; int iPadMaxLength = 30; int iPhoneMaxLength = 15; if (ipd == iPhoneDevice.iPad) { if (Return.Length > iPadMaxLength) { Return = Return.Substring(0, iPadMaxLength - Elipsis.Length) + Elipsis; } } else { if (Return.Length > iPhoneMaxLength) { Return = Return.Substring(0, iPhoneMaxLength - Elipsis.Length) + Elipsis; } } return (Return); }} Source code for the ViewStatePage: using System;using System.Data;using System.Data.SqlClient;using System.Configuration;using System.Web;using System.Web.Security;using System.Web.UI;using System.Web.UI.WebControls;using System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts;using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls; /// <summary>/// Summary description for BasePage/// </summary>#region Base class for a page.public class ViewStatePage : System.Web.UI.Page{ PageStatePersisterToDatabase myPageStatePersister; public ViewStatePage() : base() { myPageStatePersister = new PageStatePersisterToDatabase(this); } protected override PageStatePersister PageStatePersister { get { return myPageStatePersister; } } }#endregion #region This class will override the page persistence to store page state in a database.public class PageStatePersisterToDatabase : PageStatePersister{ private string ViewStateKeyField = "__VIEWSTATE_KEY"; private string _exNoConnectionStringFound = "No Database Configuration information is in the web.config."; public PageStatePersisterToDatabase(Page page) : base(page) { } public override void Load() { // Get the cache key from the web form data System.Int64 key = Convert.ToInt64(Page.Request.Params[ViewStateKeyField]); Pair state = this.LoadState(key); // Abort if cache object is not of type Pair if (state == null) throw new ApplicationException("Missing valid " + ViewStateKeyField); // Set view state and control state ViewState = state.First; ControlState = state.Second; } public override void Save() { // No processing needed if no states available if (ViewState == null && ControlState != null) return; System.Int64 key; IStateFormatter formatter = this.StateFormatter; Pair statePair = new Pair(ViewState, ControlState); // Serialize the statePair object to a string. string serializedState = formatter.Serialize(statePair); // Save the ViewState and get a unique identifier back. key = SaveState(serializedState); // Register hidden field to store cache key in // Page.ClientScript does not work properly with Atlas. //Page.ClientScript.RegisterHiddenField(ViewStateKeyField, key.ToString()); ScriptManager.RegisterHiddenField(this.Page, ViewStateKeyField, key.ToString()); } private System.Int64 SaveState(string PageState) { System.Int64 i64Key = 0; string strConn = String.Empty, strProvider = String.Empty; string strSql = "insert into tblPageState ( SerializedState ) values ( '" + SqlEscape(PageState) + "');select scope_identity();"; SqlConnection sqlCn; SqlCommand sqlCm; try { GetDBConnectionString(ref strConn, ref strProvider); sqlCn = new SqlConnection(strConn); sqlCm = new SqlCommand(strSql, sqlCn); sqlCn.Open(); i64Key = Convert.ToInt64(sqlCm.ExecuteScalar()); if (sqlCn.State != ConnectionState.Closed) { sqlCn.Close(); } sqlCn.Dispose(); sqlCm.Dispose(); } finally { sqlCn = null; sqlCm = null; } return i64Key; } private Pair LoadState(System.Int64 iKey) { string strConn = String.Empty, strProvider = String.Empty, SerializedState = String.Empty, strMinutesInPast = GetMinutesInPastToDelete(); Pair PageState; string strSql = "select SerializedState from tblPageState where tblPageStateID=" + iKey.ToString() + ";" + "delete from tblPageState where DateUpdated<DateAdd(mi, " + strMinutesInPast + ", getdate());"; SqlConnection sqlCn; SqlCommand sqlCm; try { GetDBConnectionString(ref strConn, ref strProvider); sqlCn = new SqlConnection(strConn); sqlCm = new SqlCommand(strSql, sqlCn); sqlCn.Open(); SerializedState = Convert.ToString(sqlCm.ExecuteScalar()); IStateFormatter formatter = this.StateFormatter; if ((null == SerializedState) || (String.Empty == SerializedState)) { throw (new ApplicationException("No ViewState records were returned.")); } // Deserilize returns the Pair object that is serialized in // the Save method. PageState = (Pair)formatter.Deserialize(SerializedState); if (sqlCn.State != ConnectionState.Closed) { sqlCn.Close(); } sqlCn.Dispose(); sqlCm.Dispose(); } finally { sqlCn = null; sqlCm = null; } return PageState; } private string SqlEscape(string Val) { string ReturnVal = String.Empty; if (null != Val) { ReturnVal = Val.Replace("'", "''"); } return (ReturnVal); } private void GetDBConnectionString(ref string ConnectionStringValue, ref string ProviderNameValue) { if (System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings.Count > 0) { ConnectionStringValue = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["ApplicationServices"].ConnectionString; ProviderNameValue = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["ApplicationServices"].ProviderName; } else { throw new ConfigurationErrorsException(_exNoConnectionStringFound); } } private string GetMinutesInPastToDelete() { string strReturn = "-60"; if (null != System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["MinutesInPastToDeletePageState"]) { strReturn = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["MinutesInPastToDeletePageState"].ToString(); } return (strReturn); }}#endregion AppleiPhone.cs file: using System;using System.Collections.Generic;using System.Linq;using System.Web; /// <summary>/// Summary description for AppleIPhone/// </summary>public class AppleIPhone{ public AppleIPhone() { // // TODO: Add constructor logic here // } static public bool IsIPhoneOS() { return (IsIPad() || IsIPhone() || IsIPodTouch()); } static public bool IsIPhone() { return IsTest("iPhone"); } static public bool IsIPodTouch() { return IsTest("iPod"); } static public bool IsIPad() { return IsTest("iPad"); } static private bool IsTest(string Agent) { bool bl = false; string ua = HttpContext.Current.Request.UserAgent.ToLower(); try { bl = ua.Contains(Agent.ToLower()); } catch { } return (bl); }} Master page .cs: using System;using System.Collections.Generic;using System.Linq;using System.Web;using System.Web.UI;using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;using System.Web.UI.WebControls; public partial class MasterPages_iPhoneMaster : System.Web.UI.MasterPage{ protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { HtmlHead head = Page.Header; HtmlMeta meta = new HtmlMeta(); if (AppleIPhone.IsIPad() == true) { meta.Content = "width=400,user-scalable=no"; head.Controls.Add(meta); } else { meta.Content = "width=device-width, user-scalable=no"; meta.Attributes.Add("name", "viewport"); } meta.Attributes.Add("name", "viewport"); head.Controls.Add(meta); HtmlLink cssLink = new HtmlLink(); HtmlGenericControl script = new HtmlGenericControl("script"); script.Attributes.Add("type", "text/javascript"); script.Attributes.Add("src", ResolveUrl("~/Scripts/iWebKit/javascript/functions.js")); head.Controls.Add(script); cssLink.Attributes.Add("rel", "stylesheet"); cssLink.Attributes.Add("href", ResolveUrl("~/Scripts/iWebKit/css/style.css") ); cssLink.Attributes.Add("type", "text/css"); head.Controls.Add(cssLink); HtmlGenericControl jsLink = new HtmlGenericControl("script"); //jsLink.Attributes.Add("type", "text/javascript"); //jsLink.Attributes.Add("src", ResolveUrl("~/Scripts/jquery-1.4.1.min.js") ); //head.Controls.Add(jsLink); HtmlLink appleIcon = new HtmlLink(); appleIcon.Attributes.Add("rel", "apple-touch-icon"); appleIcon.Attributes.Add("href", ResolveUrl("~/apple-touch-icon.png")); HtmlMeta appleMobileWebAppStatusBarStyle = new HtmlMeta(); appleMobileWebAppStatusBarStyle.Attributes.Add("name", "apple-mobile-web-app-status-bar-style"); appleMobileWebAppStatusBarStyle.Attributes.Add("content", "black"); head.Controls.Add(appleMobileWebAppStatusBarStyle); } internal string FindPath(string Location) { string Url = Server.MapPath(Location); return (Url); }}

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Conversation as User Assistance

- by ultan o'broin

Applications User Experience members (Erika Web, Laurie Pattison, and I) attended the User Assistance Europe Conference in Stockholm, Sweden. We were impressed with the thought leadership and practical application of ideas in Anne Gentle's keynote address "Social Web Strategies for Documentation". After the conference, we spoke with Anne to explore the ideas further. Anne Gentle (left) with Applications User Experience Senior Director Laurie Pattison In Anne's book called Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation, she explains how user assistance is undergoing a seismic shift. The direction is away from the old print manuals and online help concept towards a web-based, user community-driven solution using social media tools. User experience professionals now have a vast range of such tools to start and nurture this "conversation": blogs, wikis, forums, social networking sites, microblogging systems, image and video sharing sites, virtual worlds, podcasts, instant messaging, mashups, and so on. That user communities are a rich source of user assistance is not a surprise, but the extent of available assistance is. For example, we know from the Consortium for Service Innovation that there has been an 'explosion' of user-generated content on the web. User-initiated community conversations provide as much as 30 times the number of official help desk solutions for consortium members! The growing reliance on user community solutions is clearly a user experience issue. Anne says that user assistance as conversation "means getting closer to users and helping them perform well. User-centered design has been touted as one of the most important ideas developed in the last 20 years of workplace writing. Now writers can take the idea of user-centered design a step further by starting conversations with users and enabling user assistance in interactions." Some of Anne's favorite examples of this paradigm shift from the world of traditional documentation to community conversation include: Writer Bob Bringhurst's blog about Adobe InDesign and InCopy products and Adobe's community help The Microsoft Development Network Community Center ·The former Sun (now Oracle) OpenDS wiki, NetBeans Ruby and other community approaches to engage diverse audiences using screencasts, wikis, and blogs. Cisco's customer support wiki, EMC's community, as well as Symantec and Intuit's approaches The efforts of Ubuntu, Mozilla, and the FLOSS community generally Adobe Writer Bob Bringhurst's Blog Oracle is not without a user community conversation too. Besides the community discussions and blogs around documentation offerings, we have the My Oracle Support Community forums, Oracle Technology Network (OTN) communities, wiki, blogs, and so on. We have the great work done by our user groups and customer councils. Employees like David Haimes reach out, and enthusiastic non-employee gurus like Chet Justice (OracleNerd), Floyd Teter and Eddie Awad provide great "how-to" information too. But what does this paradigm shift mean for existing technical writers as users turn away from the traditional printable PDF manual deliverables? We asked Anne after the conference. The writer role becomes one of conversation initiator or enabler. The role evolves, along with the process, as the users define their concept of user assistance and terms of engagement with the product instead of having it pre-determined. It is largely a case now of "inventing the job while you're doing it, instead of being hired for it" Anne said. There is less emphasis on formal titles. Anne mentions that her own title "Content Stacker" at OpenStack; others use titles such as "Content Curator" or "Community Lead". However, the role remains one essentially about communications, "but of a new type--interacting with users, moderating, curating content, instead of sitting down to write a manual from start to finish." Clearly then, this role is open to more than professional technical writers. Product managers who write blogs, developers who moderate forums, support professionals who update wikis, rock star programmers with a penchant for YouTube are ideal. Anyone with the product knowledge, empathy for the user, and flair for relationships on the social web can join in. Some even perform these roles already but do not realize it. Anne feels the technical communicator space will move from hiring new community conversation professionals (who are already active in the space through blogging, tweets, wikis, and so on) to retraining some existing writers over time. Our own research reveals that the established proponents of community user assistance even set employee performance objectives for internal content curators about the amount of community content delivered by people outside the organization! To take advantage of the conversations on the web as user assistance, enterprises must first establish where on the spectrum their community lies. "What is the line between community willingness to contribute and the enterprise objectives?" Anne asked. "The relationship with users must be managed and also measured." Anne believes that the process can start with a "just do it" approach. Begin by reaching out to existing user groups, individual bloggers and tweeters, forum posters, early adopter program participants, conference attendees, customer advisory board members, and so on. Use analytical tools to measure the level of conversation about your products and services to show a return on investment (ROI), winning management support. Anne emphasized that success with the community model is dependent on lowering the technical and motivational barriers so that users can readily contribute to the conversation. Simple tools must be provided, and guidelines, if any, must be straightforward but not mandatory. The conversational approach is one where traditional style and branding guides do not necessarily apply. Tools and infrastructure help users to create content easily, to search and find the information online, read it, rate it, translate it, and participate further in the content's evolution. Recognizing contributors by using ratings on forums, giving out Twitter kudos, conference invitations, visits to headquarters, free products, preview releases, and so on, also encourages the adoption of the conversation model. The move to conversation as user assistance is not free, but there is a business ROI. The conversational model means that customer service is enhanced, as user experience moves from a functional to a valued, emotional level. Studies show a positive correlation between loyalty and financial performance (Consortium for Service Innovation, 2010), and as customer experience and loyalty become key differentiators, user experience professionals cannot explore the model's possibilities. The digital universe (measured at 1.2 million petabytes in 2010) is doubling every 12 to 18 months, and 70 percent of that universe consists of user-generated content (IDC, 2010). Conversation as user assistance cannot be ignored but must be embraced. It is a time to manage for abundance, not scarcity. Besides, the conversation approach certainly sounds more interesting, rewarding, and fun than the traditional model! I would like to thank Anne for her time and thoughts, and recommend that all user assistance professionals read her book. You can follow Anne on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/annegentle. Oracle's Acrolinx IQ deployment was used to author this article.

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URL Rewrite – Multiple domains under one site. Part II

- by OWScott

I believe I have it … I’ve been meaning to put together the ultimate outgoing rule for hosting multiple domains under one site. I finally sat down this week and setup a few test cases, and created one rule to rule them all. In Part I of this two part series, I covered the incoming rule necessary to host a site in a subfolder of a website, while making it appear as if it’s in the root of the site. Part II won’t work without applying Part I first, so if you haven’t read it, I encourage you to read it now. However, the incoming rule by itself doesn’t address everything. Here’s the problem … Let’s say that we host www.site2.com in a subfolder called site2, off of masterdomain.com. This is the same example I used in Part I. Using an incoming rewrite rule, we are able to make a request to www.site2.com even though the site is really in the /site2 folder. The gotcha comes with any type of path that ASP.NET generates (I’m sure other scripting technologies could do the same too). ASP.NET thinks that the path to the root of the site is /site2, but the URL is /. See the issue? If ASP.NET generates a path or a redirect for us, it will always add /site2 to the URL. That results in a path that looks something like www.site2.com/site2. In Part I, I mentioned that you should add a condition where “{PATH_INFO} ‘does not match’ /site2”. That allows www.site2.com/site2 and www.site2.com to both function the same. This allows the site to always work, but if you want to hide /site2 in the URL, you need to take it one step further. One way to address this is in your code. Ultimately this is the best bet. Ruslan Yakushev has a great article on a few considerations that you can address in code. I recommend giving that serious consideration. Additionally, if you have upgraded to ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 or greater, it takes care of some of the references automatically for you. However, what if you inherit an existing application? Or you can’t easily go through your existing site and make the code changes? If this applies to you, read on. That’s where URL Rewrite 2.0 comes in. With URL Rewrite 2.0, you can create an outgoing rule that will remove the /site2 before the page is sent back to the user. This means that you can take an existing application, host it in a subfolder of your site, and ensure that the URL never reveals that it’s in a subfolder. Performance Considerations Performance overhead is something to be mindful of. These outbound rules aren’t simply changing the server variables. The first rule I’ll cover below needs to parse the HTML body and pull out the path (i.e. /site2) on the way through. This will add overhead, possibly significant if you have large pages and a busy site. In other words, your mileage may vary and you may need to test to see the impact that these rules have. Don’t worry too much though. For many sites, the performance impact is negligible. So, how do we do it? Creating the Outgoing Rule There are really two things to keep in mind. First, ASP.NET applications frequently generate a URL that adds the /site2 back into the URL. In addition to URLs, they can be in form elements, img elements and the like. The goal is to find all of those situations and rewrite it on the way out. Let’s call this the ‘URL problem’. Second, and similarly, ASP.NET can send a LOCATION redirect that causes a redirect back to another page. Again, ASP.NET isn’t aware of the different URL and it will add the /site2 to the redirect. Form Authentication is a good example on when this occurs. Try to password protect a site running from a subfolder using forms auth and you’ll quickly find that the URL becomes www.site2.com/site2 again. Let’s term this the ‘redirect problem’. Solving the URL Problem – Outgoing Rule #1 Let’s create a rule that removes the /site2 from any URL. We want to remove it from relative URLs like /site2/something, or absolute URLs like http://www.site2.com/site2/something. Most URLs that ASP.NET creates will be relative URLs, but I figure that there may be some applications that piece together a full URL, so we might as well expect that situation. Let’s get started. First, create a new outbound rule. You can create the rule within the /site2 folder which will reduce the performance impact of the rule. Just a reminder that incoming rules for this situation won’t work in a subfolder … but outgoing rules will. Give it a name that makes sense to you, for example “Outgoing – URL paths”. Precondition. If you place the rule in the subfolder, it will only run for that site and folder, so there isn’t need for a precondition. Run it for all requests. If you place it in the root of the site, you may want to create a precondition for HTTP_HOST = ^(www\.)?site2\.com$. For the Match section, there are a few things to consider. For performance reasons, it’s best to match the least amount of elements that you need to accomplish the task. For my test cases, I just needed to rewrite the <a /> tag, but you may need to rewrite any number of HTML elements. Note that as long as you have the exclude /site2 rule in your incoming rule as I described in Part I, some elements that don’t show their URL—like your images—will work without removing the /site2 from them. That reduces the processing needed for this rule. Leave the “matching scope” at “Response” and choose the elements that you want to change. Set the pattern to “^(?:site2|(.*//[_a-zA-Z0-9-\.]*)?/site2)(.*)”. Make sure to replace ‘site2’ with your subfolder name in both places. Yes, I realize this is a pretty messy looking rule, but it handles a few situations. This rule will handle the following situations correctly: Original Rewritten using {R:1}{R:2} http://www.site2.com/site2/default.aspx http://www.site2.com/default.aspx http://www.site2.com/folder1/site2/default.aspx Won’t rewrite since it’s a sub-sub folder /site2/default.aspx /default.aspx site2/default.aspx /default.aspx /folder1/site2/default.aspx Won’t rewrite since it’s a sub-sub folder. For the conditions section, you can leave that be. Finally, for the rule, set the Action Type to “Rewrite” and set the Value to “{R:1}{R:2}”. The {R:1} and {R:2} are back references to the sections within parentheses. In other words, in http://domain.com/site2/something, {R:1} will be http://domain.com and {R:2} will be /something. If you view your rule from your web.config file (or applicationHost.config if it’s a global rule), it should look like this: <rule name="Outgoing - URL paths" enabled="true"> <match filterByTags="A" pattern="^(?:site2|(.*//[_a-zA-Z0-9-\.]*)?/site2)(.*)" /> <action type="Rewrite" value="{R:1}{R:2}" /> </rule> Solving the Redirect Problem Outgoing Rule #2 The second issue that we can run into is with a client-side redirect. This is triggered by a LOCATION response header that is sent to the client. Forms authentication is a common example. To reproduce this, password protect your subfolder and watch how it redirects and adds the subfolder path back in. Notice in my test case the extra paths: http://site2.com/site2/login.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fsite2%2fdefault.aspx I want to remove /site2 from both the URL and the ReturnUrl querystring value. For semi-readability, let’s do this in 2 separate rules, one for the URL and one for the querystring. Create a second rule. As with the previous rule, it can be created in the /site2 subfolder. In the URL Rewrite wizard, select Outbound rules –> “Blank Rule”. Fill in the following information: Name response_location URL Precondition Don’t set Match: Matching Scope Server Variable Match: Variable Name RESPONSE_LOCATION Match: Pattern ^(?:site2|(.*//[_a-zA-Z0-9-\.]*)?/site2)(.*) Conditions Don’t set Action Type Rewrite Action Properties {R:1}{R:2} It should end up like so: <rule name="response_location URL"> <match serverVariable="RESPONSE_LOCATION" pattern="^(?:site2|(.*//[_a-zA-Z0-9-\.]*)?/site2)(.*)" /> <action type="Rewrite" value="{R:1}{R:2}" /> </rule> Outgoing Rule #3 Outgoing Rule #2 only takes care of the URL path, and not the querystring path. Let’s create one final rule to take care of the path in the querystring to ensure that ReturnUrl=%2fsite2%2fdefault.aspx gets rewritten to ReturnUrl=%2fdefault.aspx. The %2f is the HTML encoding for forward slash (/). Create a rule like the previous one, but with the following settings: Name response_location querystring Precondition Don’t set Match: Matching Scope Server Variable Match: Variable Name RESPONSE_LOCATION Match: Pattern (.*)%2fsite2(.*) Conditions Don’t set Action Type Rewrite Action Properties {R:1}{R:2} The config should look like this: <rule name="response_location querystring"> <match serverVariable="RESPONSE_LOCATION" pattern="(.*)%2fsite2(.*)" /> <action type="Rewrite" value="{R:1}{R:2}" /> </rule> It’s possible to squeeze the last two rules into one, but it gets kind of confusing so I felt that it’s better to show it as two separate rules. Summary With the rules covered in these two parts, we’re able to have a site in a subfolder and make it appear as if it’s in the root of the site. Not only that, we can overcome automatic redirecting that is caused by ASP.NET, other scripting technologies, and especially existing applications. Following is an example of the incoming and outgoing rules necessary for a site called www.site2.com hosted in a subfolder called /site2. Remember that the outgoing rules can be placed in the /site2 folder instead of the in the root of the site. <rewrite> <rules> <rule name="site2.com in a subfolder" enabled="true" stopProcessing="true"> <match url=".*" /> <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false"> <add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^(www\.)?site2\.com$" /> <add input="{PATH_INFO}" pattern="^/site2($|/)" negate="true" /> </conditions> <action type="Rewrite" url="/site2/{R:0}" /> </rule> </rules> <outboundRules> <rule name="Outgoing - URL paths" enabled="true"> <match filterByTags="A" pattern="^(?:site2|(.*//[_a-zA-Z0-9-\.]*)?/site2)(.*)" /> <action type="Rewrite" value="{R:1}{R:2}" /> </rule> <rule name="response_location URL"> <match serverVariable="RESPONSE_LOCATION" pattern="^(?:site2|(.*//[_a-zA-Z0-9-\.]*)?/site2)(.*)" /> <action type="Rewrite" value="{R:1}{R:2}" /> </rule> <rule name="response_location querystring"> <match serverVariable="RESPONSE_LOCATION" pattern="(.*)%2fsite2(.*)" /> <action type="Rewrite" value="{R:1}{R:2}" /> </rule> </outboundRules> </rewrite> If you run into any situations that aren’t caught by these rules, please let me know so I can update this to be as complete as possible. Happy URL Rewriting!

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Ajax, Lizard Brain Web Design, JSF, Struts, JavaScript, Mobile Web, Flash, jQuery, GWT, Harmony at I

- by Kim Won

Great Indian Developer Summit 2010 – India's Biggest Polyglot Conference and Workshops for IT Software Professionals Bangalore, April 9, 2010: The GIDS.Web Conference and Workshops has announced the complete program of over 30 sessions on how browser and rich web technologies such as AJAX, DHTML, Mashups, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 technologies, and Rich UI technologies are making money and gaining market-share for some of the leading businesses in the world. The GIDS.Web track at Great Indian Developer Summit takes place 21 and 23 April 2010, at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. As one of the longest running independent developer conferences in India, GIDS.Web at the Great Indian Developer Summit 2010 is uniquely positioned to provide a blend of practical, pragmatic and immediately applicable knowledge and a glimpse of the future of technology. During 21 and 23 April 2010, GIDS.Web offers a multi-track conference, workshops, expo show floor, and networking opportunities. The first keynote at GIDS.Web is led by the leading Java EE and Ajax developer, speaker, and author Marty Hall. The best of India's Java and RIA programmers have learnt the subject from Marty's seminal books Core Servlets and JavaServer Pages (first and second editions), More Servlets and JavaServer Pages, and Core Web Programming (first and second editions) from Prentice Hall and Sun Microsystems Press. Marty's keynote address is a comparison of approaches to building rich Internet applications with Ajax. Marty says Ajax development is difficult, and there are several fundamentally different strategies to building Ajaxified Web applications. The keynote address will survey the three most important of these approaches: using an Ajax-enabled JavaScript library such as jQuery, Prototype, Scriptaculous, Dojo, or Ext/JS; using a Web framework such as JSF 2.0 or Struts 2 that has integrated Ajax support; using the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) to build "pure Java" Ajax applications. The talk will compare and contrast these three approaches, discussing the types of applications that fit best for each option. Over the course of the summit Marty will conduct several more sessions on "Choosing an Ajax/JavaScript Toolkit: A Comparison of the Most Popular JavaScript Libraries", "Pure Java Ajax: An Overview of GWT 2.0", "Integrated Ajax Support in JSF 2.0" and "Ajax Support in the Prototype JavaScript Library". The second keynote by the head of Adobe's Flash initiative in India, Ramesh Srinivasaraghavan, explores the state of art in web application development and identify trends that could transform the way we create and use web applications. The talk explains how the Adobe Flash Platform has fuelled this revolution with an integrated set of technologies for delivering the most compelling applications, content and video to the widest possible audience. The Director of Forum Nokia will explain how cloud computing coupled with mobile applications enable consumers to have access to powerful services and improved user experiences never before thought possible. IEEE's 2010 President-Elect Sorel Reisman's afternoon address steps to improve the IT profession in India. Featured talks at GID.Web also include: Web 2.0 Checklist - Deconstructing Modern Websites, Scott Davis Choosing an Ajax/JavaScript Toolkit: Comparison of Popular JavaScript Libraries, Marty Hall Lizard Brain Web Design, Scott Davis Effective Design Processes and Resources for Mobile Web Development, Arabella David NoSQL: The Shift to a Non-relational World, Nosh Petigara Open Source Web Debugging Tools, Matthew McCullough Building Line of Business Applications with Silverlight 4.0, Stephen Forte Hadoop - Divide and Conquer, Matthew McCullough Adobe Flash Catalyst for Agile Interaction Design, Harish Sivaramakrishnan Using jQuery and AJAX to Build Front-ends for ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC, Pandurang Nayak First Steps to IT Heaven Through the Cloud. Part II: .WEB, Simone Brunozzi Building Rich Internet Applications with SL RIA Web Services, Pandurang Nayak Enriching Cloud Applications with Adobe Flash Platform, Ramesh Srinivasaraghavan Payments for the Web.future, Khurram Khan and Praveen Alavilli Longevity of Scalable Systems, Nishad Kamat Transform yourself into a Mobile App Developer Using Web Run Time, Balagopal K S Developing Multi Screen Applications on Adobe Flash Platform, Hemanth Sharma Why Harmony and For Whom?, Himanshu Goyal IIS Hosting Solution for ASP.net and PHP Web Sites, Nahas Mohammed Building Pluggable Web applications using Django, Lakshman Prasad Workshop: The 180-min AJAX and JSON Spike Class, Scott Davis Workshop: Essence of Functional Programming, Venkat Subramaniam Workshop: Agile Development, Tools, and Teams and Scrum Certification, Stephen Forte Workshop: PHP + Adobe Flex = Killer RIA, Shyamprasad P Workshop: Cloud Computing Boot Camp on the Google App Engine, Matthew McCullough Workshop: Building Data Centric Applications using Adobe Flex and Java, Prashant Singh Workshop: Building Your First Amazon App, Simone Brunozzi Workshop: Windows Azure Deep Dive, Ramaprasanna Chellamuthu Workshop: Monetizing your Apps with PayPal X Payments Platform, Khurram Khan, Praveen Alavilli Workshop: User Expereince Evaluation Model Walkthrough, Sanna Häiväläinen Sponsors of Great Indian Developer Summit 2010 include: Platinum sponsors Microsoft, Oracle Forum Nokia and Adobe; Gold sponsors Intel and SAP; Silver sponsors Quest Software, PayPal, Telerik and AMT. About Great Indian Developer Summit Great Indian Developer Summit is the gold standard for India's software developer ecosystem for gaining exposure to and evaluating new projects, tools, services, platforms, languages, software and standards. Packed with premium knowledge, action plans and advise from been-there-done-it veterans, creators, and visionaries, the 2010 edition of Great Indian Developer Summit features focused sessions, case studies, workshops and power panels that will transform you into a force to reckon with. Featuring 3 co-located conferences: GIDS.NET, GIDS.Web, GIDS.Java and an exclusive day of in-depth tutorials - GIDS.Workshops, from 20 April to 24 April at the IISc campus in Bangalore. At GIDS you'll participate in hundreds of sessions encompassing the full range of Microsoft computing, Java, Agile, RIA, Rich Web, open source/standards, languages, frameworks and platforms, practical tutorials that deep dive into technical skill and best practices, inspirational keynote presentations, an Expo Hall featuring dozens of the latest projects and products activities, engaging networking events, and the interact with the best and brightest of speakers from around the world. For further information on GIDS 2010, please visit the summit on the web http://www.developersummit.com/ A Saltmarch Media Press Release E: [email protected] Ph: +91 80 4005 1000

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Oracle Data Mining a Star Schema: Telco Churn Case Study

- by charlie.berger

There is a complete and detailed Telco Churn case study "How to" Blog Series just posted by Ari Mozes, ODM Dev. Manager. In it, Ari provides detailed guidance in how to leverage various strengths of Oracle Data Mining including the ability to: mine Star Schemas and join tables and views together to obtain a complete 360 degree view of a customer combine transactional data e.g. call record detail (CDR) data, etc. define complex data transformation, model build and model deploy analytical methodologies inside the Database His blog is posted in a multi-part series. Below are some opening excerpts for the first 3 blog entries. This is an excellent resource for any novice to skilled data miner who wants to gain competitive advantage by mining their data inside the Oracle Database. Many thanks Ari! Mining a Star Schema: Telco Churn Case Study (1 of 3) One of the strengths of Oracle Data Mining is the ability to mine star schemas with minimal effort. Star schemas are commonly used in relational databases, and they often contain rich data with interesting patterns. While dimension tables may contain interesting demographics, fact tables will often contain user behavior, such as phone usage or purchase patterns. Both of these aspects - demographics and usage patterns - can provide insight into behavior.Churn is a critical problem in the telecommunications industry, and companies go to great lengths to reduce the churn of their customer base. One case study1 describes a telecommunications scenario involving understanding, and identification of, churn, where the underlying data is present in a star schema. That case study is a good example for demonstrating just how natural it is for Oracle Data Mining to analyze a star schema, so it will be used as the basis for this series of posts...... Mining a Star Schema: Telco Churn Case Study (2 of 3) This post will follow the transformation steps as described in the case study, but will use Oracle SQL as the means for preparing data. Please see the previous post for background material, including links to the case study and to scripts that can be used to replicate the stages in these posts.1) Handling missing values for call data recordsThe CDR_T table records the number of phone minutes used by a customer per month and per call type (tariff). For example, the table may contain one record corresponding to the number of peak (call type) minutes in January for a specific customer, and another record associated with international calls in March for the same customer. This table is likely to be fairly dense (most type-month combinations for a given customer will be present) due to the coarse level of aggregation, but there may be some missing values. Missing entries may occur for a number of reasons: the customer made no calls of a particular type in a particular month, the customer switched providers during the timeframe, or perhaps there is a data entry problem. In the first situation, the correct interpretation of a missing entry would be to assume that the number of minutes for the type-month combination is zero. In the other situations, it is not appropriate to assume zero, but rather derive some representative value to replace the missing entries. The referenced case study takes the latter approach. The data is segmented by customer and call type, and within a given customer-call type combination, an average number of minutes is computed and used as a replacement value.In SQL, we need to generate additional rows for the missing entries and populate those rows with appropriate values. To generate the missing rows, Oracle's partition outer join feature is a perfect fit. select cust_id, cdre.tariff, cdre.month, minsfrom cdr_t cdr partition by (cust_id) right outer join (select distinct tariff, month from cdr_t) cdre on (cdr.month = cdre.month and cdr.tariff = cdre.tariff); ....... Mining a Star Schema: Telco Churn Case Study (3 of 3) Now that the "difficult" work is complete - preparing the data - we can move to building a predictive model to help identify and understand churn.The case study suggests that separate models be built for different customer segments (high, medium, low, and very low value customer groups). To reduce the data to a single segment, a filter can be applied: create or replace view churn_data_high asselect * from churn_prep where value_band = 'HIGH'; It is simple to take a quick look at the predictive aspects of the data on a univariate basis. While this does not capture the more complex multi-variate effects as would occur with the full-blown data mining algorithms, it can give a quick feel as to the predictive aspects of the data as well as validate the data preparation steps. Oracle Data Mining includes a predictive analytics package which enables quick analysis. begin dbms_predictive_analytics.explain( 'churn_data_high','churn_m6','expl_churn_tab'); end; /select * from expl_churn_tab where rank <= 5 order by rank; ATTRIBUTE_NAME ATTRIBUTE_SUBNAME EXPLANATORY_VALUE RANK-------------------- ----------------- ----------------- ----------LOS_BAND .069167052 1MINS_PER_TARIFF_MON PEAK-5 .034881648 2REV_PER_MON REV-5 .034527798 3DROPPED_CALLS .028110322 4MINS_PER_TARIFF_MON PEAK-4 .024698149 5From the above results, it is clear that some predictors do contain information to help identify churn (explanatory value > 0). The strongest uni-variate predictor of churn appears to be the customer's (binned) length of service. The second strongest churn indicator appears to be the number of peak minutes used in the most recent month. The subname column contains the interior piece of the DM_NESTED_NUMERICALS column described in the previous post. By using the object relational approach, many related predictors are included within a single top-level column. ..... NOTE: These are just EXCERPTS. Click here to start reading the Oracle Data Mining a Star Schema: Telco Churn Case Study from the beginning.

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Analytic functions – they’re not aggregates

- by Rob Farley

SQL 2012 brings us a bunch of new analytic functions, together with enhancements to the OVER clause. People who have known me over the years will remember that I’m a big fan of the OVER clause and the types of things that it brings us when applied to aggregate functions, as well as the ranking functions that it enables. The OVER clause was introduced in SQL Server 2005, and remained frustratingly unchanged until SQL Server 2012. This post is going to look at a particular aspect of the analytic functions though (not the enhancements to the OVER clause). When I give presentations about the analytic functions around Australia as part of the tour of SQL Saturdays (starting in Brisbane this Thursday), and in Chicago next month, I’ll make sure it’s sufficiently well described. But for this post – I’m going to skip that and assume you get it. The analytic functions introduced in SQL 2012 seem to come in pairs – FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE, LAG and LEAD, CUME_DIST and PERCENT_RANK, PERCENTILE_CONT and PERCENTILE_DISC. Perhaps frustratingly, they take slightly different forms as well. The ones I want to look at now are FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE, and PERCENTILE_CONT and PERCENTILE_DISC. The reason I’m pulling this ones out is that they always produce the same result within their partitions (if you’re applying them to the whole partition). Consider the following query: SELECT YEAR(OrderDate), FIRST_VALUE(TotalDue) OVER (PARTITION BY YEAR(OrderDate) ORDER BY OrderDate, SalesOrderID RANGE BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING), LAST_VALUE(TotalDue) OVER (PARTITION BY YEAR(OrderDate) ORDER BY OrderDate, SalesOrderID RANGE BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING), PERCENTILE_CONT(0.95) WITHIN GROUP (ORDER BY TotalDue) OVER (PARTITION BY YEAR(OrderDate)), PERCENTILE_DISC(0.95) WITHIN GROUP (ORDER BY TotalDue) OVER (PARTITION BY YEAR(OrderDate)) FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader ; This is designed to get the TotalDue for the first order of the year, the last order of the year, and also the 95% percentile, using both the continuous and discrete methods (‘discrete’ means it picks the closest one from the values available – ‘continuous’ means it will happily use something between, similar to what you would do for a traditional median of four values). I’m sure you can imagine the results – a different value for each field, but within each year, all the rows the same. Notice that I’m not grouping by the year. Nor am I filtering. This query gives us a result for every row in the SalesOrderHeader table – 31465 in this case (using the original AdventureWorks that dates back to the SQL 2005 days). The RANGE BETWEEN bit in FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE is needed to make sure that we’re considering all the rows available. If we don’t specify that, it assumes we only mean “RANGE BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND CURRENT ROW”, which means that LAST_VALUE ends up being the row we’re looking at. At this point you might think about other environments such as Access or Reporting Services, and remember aggregate functions like FIRST. We really should be able to do something like: SELECT YEAR(OrderDate), FIRST_VALUE(TotalDue) OVER (PARTITION BY YEAR(OrderDate) ORDER BY OrderDate, SalesOrderID RANGE BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING) FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader GROUP BY YEAR(OrderDate) ; But you can’t. You get that age-old error: Msg 8120, Level 16, State 1, Line 5 Column 'Sales.SalesOrderHeader.OrderDate' is invalid in the select list because it is not contained in either an aggregate function or the GROUP BY clause. Msg 8120, Level 16, State 1, Line 5 Column 'Sales.SalesOrderHeader.SalesOrderID' is invalid in the select list because it is not contained in either an aggregate function or the GROUP BY clause. Hmm. You see, FIRST_VALUE isn’t an aggregate function. None of these analytic functions are. There are too many things involved for SQL to realise that the values produced might be identical within the group. Furthermore, you can’t even surround it in a MAX. Then you get a different error, telling you that you can’t use windowed functions in the context of an aggregate. And so we end up grouping by doing a DISTINCT. SELECT DISTINCT YEAR(OrderDate), FIRST_VALUE(TotalDue) OVER (PARTITION BY YEAR(OrderDate) ORDER BY OrderDate, SalesOrderID RANGE BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING), LAST_VALUE(TotalDue) OVER (PARTITION BY YEAR(OrderDate) ORDER BY OrderDate, SalesOrderID RANGE BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING), PERCENTILE_CONT(0.95) WITHIN GROUP (ORDER BY TotalDue) OVER (PARTITION BY YEAR(OrderDate)), PERCENTILE_DISC(0.95) WITHIN GROUP (ORDER BY TotalDue) OVER (PARTITION BY YEAR(OrderDate)) FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader ; I’m sorry. It’s just the way it goes. Hopefully it’ll change the future, but for now, it’s what you’ll have to do. If we look in the execution plan, we see that it’s incredibly ugly, and actually works out the results of these analytic functions for all 31465 rows, finally performing the distinct operation to convert it into the four rows we get in the results. You might be able to achieve a better plan using things like TOP, or the kind of calculation that I used in http://sqlblog.com/blogs/rob_farley/archive/2011/08/23/t-sql-thoughts-about-the-95th-percentile.aspx (which is how PERCENTILE_CONT works), but it’s definitely convenient to use these functions, and in time, I’m sure we’ll see good improvements in the way that they are implemented. Oh, and this post should be good for fellow SQL Server MVP Nigel Sammy’s T-SQL Tuesday this month.

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Scheduling runtime-specified Activity in Workflow 4 RC

- by johnny g

Hi, so I have this requirement to kick off Activities provided to me at run-time. To facilitate this, I have set up a WorkflowService that receives Activities as Xaml, hydrates them, and kicks them off. Sounds simple enough ... ... this is my WorkflowService in Xaml <Activity x:Class="Workflow.Services.WorkflowService.WorkflowService" ... xmlns:local1="clr-namespace:Workflow.Activities" > <Sequence sap:VirtualizedContainerService.HintSize="277,272"> <Sequence.Variables> <Variable x:TypeArguments="local:Workflow" Name="Workflow" /> </Sequence.Variables> <sap:WorkflowViewStateService.ViewState> <scg3:Dictionary x:TypeArguments="x:String, x:Object"> <x:Boolean x:Key="IsExpanded">True</x:Boolean> </scg3:Dictionary> </sap:WorkflowViewStateService.ViewState> <p:Receive CanCreateInstance="True" DisplayName="ReceiveSubmitWorkflow" sap:VirtualizedContainerService.HintSize="255,86" OperationName="SubmitWorkflow" ServiceContractName="IWorkflowService"> <p:ReceiveParametersContent> <OutArgument x:TypeArguments="local:Workflow" x:Key="workflow">[Workflow]</OutArgument> </p:ReceiveParametersContent> </p:Receive> <local1:InvokeActivity Activity="[ActivityXamlServices.Load(New System.IO.StringReader(Workflow.Xaml))]" sap:VirtualizedContainerService.HintSize="255,22" /> </Sequence> </Activity> ... which, except for repetitive use of "Workflow" is pretty straight forward. In fact, it's just a Sequence with a Receive and [currently] a custom Activity called InvokeActivity. Get to that in a bit. Receive Activity accepts a custom type, [DataContract] public class Workflow { [DataMember] public string Xaml { get; set; } } which contains a string whose contents are to be interpreted as Xaml. You can see the VB expression that then converts this Xaml to an Activity and passes it on. Now this second bit, the custom InvokeActivity is where I have questions. First question: 1) given an arbitrary task, provided at runtime [as described above] is it possible to kick off this Activity using Activities that ship with WF4RC, out of the box? I'm fairly new, and thought I did a good job going through the API and existing documentation, but may as well ask :) Second: 2) my first attempt at implementing a custom InvokeActivity looked like this public sealed class InvokeActivity : NativeActivity { private static readonly ILog _log = LogManager.GetLogger (typeof (InvokeActivity)); public InArgument<Activity> Activity { get; set; } public InvokeActivity () { _log.DebugFormat ("Instantiated."); } protected override void Execute (NativeActivityContext context) { Activity activity = Activity.Get (context); _log.DebugFormat ("Scheduling activity [{0}]...", activity.DisplayName); // throws exception to lack of metadata! :( ActivityInstance instance = context.ScheduleActivity (activity, OnComplete, OnFault); _log.DebugFormat ( "Scheduled activity [{0}] with instance id [{1}].", activity.DisplayName, instance.Id); } protected override void CacheMetadata (NativeActivityMetadata metadata) { // how does one add InArgument<T> to metadata? not easily // is my first guess base.CacheMetadata (metadata); } // private methods private void OnComplete ( NativeActivityContext context, ActivityInstance instance) { _log.DebugFormat ( "Scheduled activity [{0}] with instance id [{1}] has [{2}].", instance.Activity.DisplayName, instance.Id, instance.State); } private void OnFault ( NativeActivityFaultContext context, Exception exception, ActivityInstance instance) { _log.ErrorFormat ( @"Scheduled activity [{0}] with instance id [{1}] has faulted in state [{2}] {3}", instance.Activity.DisplayName, instance.Id, instance.State, exception.ToStringFullStackTrace ()); } } Which attempts to schedule the specified Activity within the current context. Unfortunately, however, this fails. When I attempt to schedule said Activity, the runtime returns with the following exception The provided activity was not part of this workflow definition when its metadata was being processed. The problematic activity named 'DynamicActivity' was provided by the activity named 'InvokeActivity'. Right, so the "dynamic" Activity provided at runtime is not a member of InvokeActivitys metadata. Googled and came across this. Couldn't sort out how to specify an InArgument<Activity> to metadata cache, so my second question is, naturally, how does one address this issue? Is it ill advised to use context.ScheduleActivity (...) in this manner? Third and final, 3) I have settled on this [simpler] solution for the time being, public sealed class InvokeActivity : NativeActivity { private static readonly ILog _log = LogManager.GetLogger (typeof (InvokeActivity)); public InArgument<Activity> Activity { get; set; } public InvokeActivity () { _log.DebugFormat ("Instantiated."); } protected override void Execute (NativeActivityContext context) { Activity activity = Activity.Get (context); _log.DebugFormat ("Invoking activity [{0}] ...", activity.DisplayName); // synchronous execution ... a little less than ideal, this // seems heavy handed, and not entirely semantic-equivalent // to what i want. i really want to invoke this runtime // activity as if it were one of my own, not a separate // process - wrong mentality? WorkflowInvoker.Invoke (activity); _log.DebugFormat ("Invoked activity [{0}].", activity.DisplayName); } } Which simply invokes specified task synchronously within its own runtime instance thingy [use of WF4 vernacular is certainly questionable]. Eventually, I would like to tap into WF's tracking and possibly persistance facilities. So my third and final question is, in terms of what I would like to do [ie kick off arbitrary workflows inbound from client applications] is this the preferred method? Alright, thanks in advance for your time and consideration :)

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Replacing jQuery.live() with jQuery.on()

- by Rick Strahl

jQuery 1.9 and 1.10 have introduced a host of changes, but for the most part these changes are mostly transparent to existing application usage of jQuery. After spending some time last week with a few of my projects and going through them with a specific eye for jQuery failures I found that for the most part there wasn't a big issue. The vast majority of code continues to run just fine with either 1.9 or 1.10 (which are supposed to be in sync but with 1.10 removing support for legacy Internet Explorer pre-9.0 versions). However, one particular change in the new versions has caused me quite a bit of update trouble, is the removal of the jQuery.live() function. This is my own fault I suppose - .live() has been deprecated for a while, but with 1.9 and later it was finally removed altogether from jQuery. In the past I had quite a bit of jQuery code that used .live() and it's one of the things that's holding back my upgrade process, although I'm slowly cleaning up my code and switching to the .on() function as the replacement. jQuery.live() jQuery.live() was introduced a long time ago to simplify handling events on matched elements that exist currently on the document and those that are are added in the future and also match the selector. jQuery uses event bubbling, special event binding, plus some magic using meta data attached to a parent level element to check and see if the original target event element matches the selected selected elements (for more info see Elijah Manor's comment below). An Example Assume a list of items like the following in HTML for example and further assume that the items in this list can be appended to at a later point. In this app there's a smallish initial list that loads to start, and as the user scrolls towards the end of the initial small list more items are loaded dynamically and added to the list.<div id="PostItemContainer" class="scrollbox"> <div class="postitem" data-id="4z6qhomm"> <div class="post-icon"></div> <div class="postitemheader"><a href="show/4z6qhomm" target="Content">1999 Buick Century For Sale!</a></div> <div class="postitemprice rightalign">$ 3,500 O.B.O.</div> <div class="smalltext leftalign">Jun. 07 @ 1:06am</div> <div class="post-byline">- Vehicles - Automobiles</div> </div> <div class="postitem" data-id="2jtvuu17"> <div class="postitemheader"><a href="show/2jtvuu17" target="Content">Toyota VAN 1987</a></div> <div class="postitemprice rightalign">$950</div> <div class="smalltext leftalign">Jun. 07 @ 12:29am</div> <div class="post-byline">- Vehicles - Automobiles</div> </div> … </div> With the jQuery.live() function you could easily select elements and hook up a click handler like this:$(".postitem").live("click", function() {...}); Simple and perfectly readable. The behavior of the .live handler generally was the same as the corresponding simple event handlers like .click(), except that you have to explicitly name the event instead of using one of the methods. Re-writing with jQuery.on() With .live() removed in 1.9 and later we have to re-write .live() code above with an alternative. The jQuery documentation points you at the .on() or .delegate() functions to update your code. jQuery.on() is a more generic event handler function, and it's what jQuery uses internally to map the high level event functions like .click(),.change() etc. that jQuery exposes. Using jQuery.on() however is not a one to one replacement of the .live() function. While .on() can handle events directly and use the same syntax as .live() did, you'll find if you simply switch out .live() with .on() that events on not-yet existing elements will not fire. IOW, the key feature of .live() is not working. You can use .on() to get the desired effect however, but you have to change the syntax to explicitly handle the event you're interested in on the container and then provide a filter selector to specify which elements you are actually interested in for handling the event for. Sounds more complicated than it is and it's easier to see with an example. For the list above hooking .postitem clicks, using jQuery.on() looks like this:$("#PostItemContainer").on("click", ".postitem", function() {...}); You specify a container that can handle the .click event and then provide a filter selector to find the child elements that trigger the the actual event. So here #PostItemContainer contains many .postitems, whose click events I want to handle. Any container will do including document, but I tend to use the container closest to the elements I actually want to handle the events on to minimize the event bubbling that occurs to capture the event. With this code I get the same behavior as with .live() and now as new .postitem elements are added the click events are always available. Sweet. Here's the full event signature for the .on() function: .on( events [, selector ] [, data ], handler(eventObject) ) Note that the selector is optional - if you omit it you essentially create a simple event handler that handles the event directly on the selected object. The filter/child selector required if you want life-like - uh, .live() like behavior to happen. While it's a bit more verbose than what .live() did, .on() provides the same functionality by being more explicit on what your parent container for trapping events is. .on() is good Practice even for ordinary static Element Lists As a side note, it's a good practice to use jQuery.on() or jQuery.delegate() for events in most cases anyway, using this 'container event trapping' syntax. That's because rather than requiring lots of event handlers on each of the child elements (.postitem in the sample above), there's just one event handler on the container, and only when clicked does jQuery drill down to find the matching filter element and tries to match it to the originating element. In the early days of jQuery I used manually build handlers that did this and manually drilled from the event object into the originalTarget to determine if it's a matching element. With later versions of jQuery the various event functions in jQuery essentially provide this functionality out of the box with functions like .on() and .delegate(). All of this is nothing new, but I thought I'd write this up because I have on a few occasions forgotten what exactly was needed to replace the many .live() function calls that litter my code - especially older code. This will be a nice reminder next time I have a memory blank on this topic. And maybe along the way I've helped one or two of you as well to clean up your .live() code…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2013Posted in jQuery Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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Changing CSS on the fly in a UIWebView on iPhone

- by Shaggy Frog

Let's say I'm developing an iPhone app that is a catalogue of cars. The user will choose a car from a list, and I will present a detail view for the car, which will describe things like top speed. The detail view will essentially be a UIWebView that is loading an existing HTML file. Different users will live in different parts of the world, so they will like to see the top speed for the car in whatever units are appropriate for their locale. Let's say there are two such units: SI (km/h) and conventional (mph). Let's also say the user will be able to change the display units by hitting a button on the screen; when that happens, the detail screen should switch to show the relevant units. So far, here's what I've done to try and solve this. The HTML might look something like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en-US" lang="en-US"> <head> <title>Some Car</title> <link rel="stylesheet" media="screen" type="text/css" href="persistent.css" /> <link rel="alternate stylesheet" media="screen" type="text/css" href="si.css" title="si" /> <link rel="alternate stylesheet" media="screen" type="text/css" href="conventional.css" title="conventional" /> <script type="text/javascript" src="switch.js"></script> </head> <body> <h1>Some Car</h1> <div id="si"> <h2>Top Speed: 160 km/h</h2> </div> <div id="conventional"> <h2>Top Speed: 100 mph</h2> </div> </body> The peristent stylesheet, persistent.css: #si { display:none; } #conventional { display:none; } The first alternate stylesheet, si.css: #si { display:inline; } #conventional { display:none; } And the second alternate stylesheet, conventional.css: #si { display:none; } #conventional { display:inline; } Based on a tutorial at A List Apart, my switch.js looks something like this: function disableStyleSheet(title) { var i, a; for (i = 0; (a = document.getElementsByTagName("link")[i]); i++) { if ((a.getAttribute("rel").indexOf("alt") != -1) && (a.getAttribute("title") == title)) { a.disabled = true; } } } function enableStyleSheet(title) { var i, a; for (i = 0; (a = document.getElementsByTagName("link")[i]); i++) { if ((a.getAttribute("rel").indexOf("alt") != -1) && (a.getAttribute("title") == title)) { a.disabled = false; } } } function switchToSiStyleSheet() { disableStyleSheet("conventional"); enableStyleSheet("si"); } function switchToConventionalStyleSheet() { disableStyleSheet("si"); enableStyleSheet("conventional"); } My button action handler looks something like this: - (void)notesButtonAction:(id)sender { static BOOL isUsingSi = YES; if (isUsingSi) { NSString* command = [[NSString alloc] initWithString:@"switchToSiStyleSheet();"]; [self.webView stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptFromString:command]; [command release]; } else { NSString* command = [[NSString alloc] initWithFormat:@"switchToConventionalStyleSheet();"]; [self.webView stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptFromString:command]; [command release]; } isUsingSi = !isUsingSi; } Here's the first problem. The first time the button is hit, the UIWebView doesn't change. The second time it's hit, it looks like the conventional style sheet is loaded. The third time, it switches to the SI style sheet; the fourth time, back to the conventional, and so on. So, basically, only that first button press doesn't seem to do anything. Here's the second problem. I'm not sure how to switch to the correct style sheet upon initial load of the UIWebView. I tried this: - (void)webViewDidFinishLoad:(UIWebView *)webView { NSString* command = [[NSString alloc] initWithString:@"switchToSiStyleSheet();"]; [self.webView stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptFromString:command]; [command release]; } But, like the first button hit, it doesn't seem to do anything. Can anyone help me with these two problems?

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Start a Mapping or Process Flow from OWB Browser

- by Dong Ruirong

Basically, we start a Mapping or Process Flow from Oracle Warehouse Builder (OWB) Design Client. But actually we can also start a Mapping or Process Flow from OWB Browser. This paper will introduce the Start Report first and then introduce how to start/rerun a Mapping or Process Flow from OWB Browser. Start Report Start Report is used to start an execution of a Mapping or Process Flow. So there are two kinds of Start Report: Mapping Start Report (See Figure 1) and Process Flow Start Report (See Figure 2). Start Report shows the Mapping or Process Flow identification properties, including latest deployment and latest execution, lists all execution parameters for the Mapping or Process Flow, which were specified by the latest deployment, and assigns parameter default values from the latest deployment specification. You can do a couple of things from Start Report: Sort execution parameters on name, category. Table 1 lists all parameters of a Mapping. Table 2 lists all parameters of a Process Flow. Change values of any input parameter where permitted. For some parameters, selection lists are provided. For example, Mapping’s parameter Audit Level has a selection list. Reset all parameter settings to their default values. Apply basic validation to parameter values before starting an execution. Start the Mapping or Process Flow, which means it is executed immediately. Navigate to Deployment Report for latest deployment details of the Mapping or Process Flow. Navigate to Execution Job Report for latest execution of current Mapping or Process Flow Link to on-link help Warehouse Report Page, Deployment Report, Execution Report, Execution Schedule Report and Execution Summary Report. Figure 1 Mapping Start Report Table 1 Execution Parameters and default values for a Mapping Category Name Mode Input Value System Audit Level In Error Details System Bulk Size In 1000 System Commit Frequency In 1000 System EXECUTE_RESUME_TASK In FALSE System FORCE_RESUME_OPTION In FALSE System Max No of Errors In 50 System NUMBER_OF_TIMES_TO_RETRY In 2 System Operating Mode In Set Based Fail Over to Row Based System PARALLEL_LEVEL In 0 System Procedure Name In main System Purge Group In WB Figure 2 Process Flow Start Report Table 2 Execution Parameters and default values for a Process Flow Category Name Mode Input Value System EVAL_LOCATION In System Item Key In-Out System Item Type In PFPKG_1 Start a Mapping or Process Flow To navigate to Start Report, it’s better to login OWB Browser with Control Center option; if not, after logging in OWB Browser, go to Control Center first. Then you can follow the ways introduced in this section to navigate to Start Report. One more thing you need to pay attention to is that you are not allowed to deploy any Mappings and Process Flows from OWB Browser as it’s not supported. So it’s necessary to deploy the Mappings and Process Flows first before starting them from OWB Browser. If you have deployed a Mapping or Process Flow but have not started it, please navigate from Object Summary Report or Deployment Schedule Report to Start Report. 1. Navigating from Object Summary Report to Start Report Open the Object Summary Report to see all deployed Mappings and Process Flows. Click the Mapping Name or Process Flow Name link to see its Deployment Report. Select the Start link in the Available Reports tab for the given Mapping or Process Flow to display a Start Report for the Mapping or Process Flow. The execution parameters have the default deployment-time settings. Change any of the input parameter values as required. Click Start Execution button to execute the Mapping or Process Flow. 2. Navigating from Deployment Schedule Report to Start Report Open the Deployment Schedule Report to see deployment details of Mapping and Process Flow. Expand the project trees to find the deployed Mappings and Process Flows. Click the Mapping Name or Process Flow Name link to see its Deployment Report. Select the Start link in the Available Reports tab for the given Mapping or Process Flow to display a Start Report for the Mapping or Process Flow. The execution parameters have the default deployment-time settings. Change any of the input parameter values as required. Click Start Execution button to execute the Mapping or Process Flow. Re-run a Mapping or Process Flow If you have executed a Mapping or Process Flow, you can navigate from Object Summary Report, Deployment Schedule Report, Execution Summary Report or Execution Schedule Report to Start Report. 1. Navigating from the Execution Summary Report to Start Report Open the Execution Summary Report to see all execution jobs including Mapping jobs and Process Flow jobs. Click on the Mapping Name or Process Flow Name to see its Execution Report. Select the Start link in the Available Reports tab for the given Mapping or Process Flow to display a Start Report for the Mapping or Process Flow. The execution parameters have the default deployment-time settings. Change any of the input parameter values as required. Click Start Execution button to execute the Mapping or Process Flow. 2. Navigating from the Execution Schedule Report to Start Report Open the Execution Schedule Report to see list of all executions of Mapping and Process Flow. Click on the Mapping Name or Process Flow Name to see its Execution Report. Select the Start link in the Available Reports tab for the given Mapping or Process Flow to display a Start Report for the Mapping or Process Flow. The execution parameters have the default deployment-time settings. Change any of the input parameter values as required. Click Start Execution button to execute the Mapping or Process Flow. If the execution of a Mapping or Process Flow is successful, you will see this message from the Start Report: Start Execution request successful. (See Figure 3) Figure 3 Execution Result You can also confirm the execution of the Mapping or Process Flow by referring to Execution Report of the current Mapping or Process Flow by clicking the link in the Available Reports tab for the given Mapping or Process Flow. One new record of execution job details is added to Execution Report of the Mapping or Process Flow which shows the details of the execution such as Start Time, Elapsed Time, Status, the number of records selected, inserted, updated, deleted etc.

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At the Java DEMOgrounds - JavaFX

- by Janice J. Heiss

JavaFX has made rapid progress in the last year, as is evidenced by the wealth of demos on display. A few questions appear to be prominent in the minds of JavaFX enthusiasts. Here are some questions with answers provided by Oracle’s JavaFX team.When will the rest of the JavaFX code be available in open source?Oracle has started to open source JavaFX. The existing platform code will finish being committed to OpenJFX by the end of the year.Why should I use JavaFX instead of HTML5?We see JavaFX as complementary to HTML5, and most companies we talk to react positively once they understand how they can benefit from a hybrid solution. As most HTML5 developers will tell you, the biggest obstacle to deploying HTML5 applications is fragmentation. JavaFX offers a convenient way to render HTML and JavaScript within its WebView component, which provides the same level of quality and features across Windows, Mac, and Linux. Additionally, JavaScript in WebView can make calls into the Java code, and vice versa, allowing developers to tap into the best of both worlds.What is the market penetration of JavaFX? It is currently limited, as we've just made available JavaFX on Mac and Linux in August, but we expect JavaFX to be present on millions of desktop-type systems now that JavaFX is included as part of the JRE. We have also significantly lowered the level of effort required to deploy an application bundling the JRE and JavaFX runtime libraries. Finally, we are seeing a lot of interest by companies operating in the embedded market, who have found it hard to develop compelling UIs with existing technologies.Below are summaries of JavaFX Demos on display at JavaOne 2012:JavaFX EnsembleEnsemble is a collection of over 100 JavaFX samples packaged as a JavaFX application. This demo is especially useful to those new to JavaFX, or those not familiar with its latest features (e.g. canvas, color picker). Ensemble is the reference for getting familiar with JavaFX functionality. Each sample can be run from within Ensemble, and the API for each sample, as well as the source code are available alongside the sample.The samples source code can be saved as a NetBeans project for convenience purposes, or can be copied as is in any other Java IDE. The version of Ensemble shown is packaged as a native Windows application, including the JRE and JavaFX libraries. It was created with the JavaFX packager, which provides multiple packaging options, and frees developers from the cumbersome and error-prone process of packaging a Java application.FX Experience ToolsFX Experience Tools is a JavaFX application that provides different utilities to create new skins for your JavaFX applications. One of the most powerful features of JavaFX is the ability to skin applications via CSS. Since not all Java developers are familiar with CSS, these utilities are a great starting point to create custom skins. JavaFX allows developers to easily customize the look and feel of their applications through CSS. FX Experience Tools makes it easy to create new themes for JavaFX applications, even if you are not familiar with CSS. FX Experience Tools is a JavaFX application packaged as a native application including the JRE and JavaFX runtime libraries. FX Experience tools shows how this type of deployment simplifies the packaging of Java applications without requiring developers to master the intricacies of Java application packaging. The download site for FX Experience Tools is http://fxexperience.com/2012/03/announcing-fx-experience-tools/ JavaFX Scene BuilderJavaFX Scene Builder is a visual layout tool that lets users quickly design the UI of your JavaFX application, without coding. Users can drag and drop UI components, modify their properties, apply style sheets, and the FXML code they create for the layout is automatically generated in the background. The result is an FXML file that can then be combined with a Java project by binding the UI to the application’s logic. Developers can easily create user interfaces for their application, as well as separate the application’s UI from the application logic for easier maintenance. Attendees can get this app by going to javafx.com and checking the link at top of the “Overview” page.Scene Builder allows developers to easily layout JavaFX UI controls, charts, shapes, and containers, so that you can quickly prototype user interfaces. It generates FXML, an XML-based markup language that enables users to define an application’s user interface, separately from the application logic. Scene Builder can be used in combination with any Java IDE, but is more tightly integrated with NetBeans IDE. It is written as a JavaFX application, with native desktop integration on Windows and Mac OS X. It’s a perfect example of a JavaFX application packages as a native application.Scene Builder is available for your preferred development platform. Besides the GA release on Windows and Mac, a Developer Preview of Scene Builder for Linux has just been made available.Scenic ViewScenic View is a tool that can be used to understand the current state of your application UI, and to also easily manipulate properties of the scenegraph without having to keep editing your code. Creating UIs is a complex process, and it can be hard and tedious detecting these issues, editing the code, and then compiling it to test the app again. Scenic View is a great diagnostics tool that helps developers identify these issues and correct them at runtime.Attendees can get Scenic View by going to javafx.com, selecting the “Community” tab, and clicking the link under the “Third Party Tools and Utilities” section.Scenic View allows developers to easily examine the state of a JavaFX application scenegraph while the application is running. Some of the latest features added to Scenic View include event monitoring, javadoc browsing, and contextual menus. The download site for Scenic View is available here: http://fxexperience.com/scenic-view/ Conference TourConference Tour is an application that lets users discover some of the major Java conferences throughout the world. The Conference Tour application shows how simple it is to mix JavaFX and HTML5 into a single, interactive application. Attendees get Conference Tour here.JavaFX includes a Web engine based on Webkit that provides a consistent web interface to render HTML5 across operating systems, within a JavaFX application. JavaFX features a bi-directional bridge that allows Java APIs to call JavaScript within WebView, or allows JavaScript to make calls to Java APIs. This allows developers to leverage the best of both worlds.Java EE developers can take advantage of WebView and the JavaScript-Java bridge to allow their HTML clients to seamlessly bypass Web browser’s sandbox to access native system resources, providing a richer user experience.FXMediaPlayerFXMediaPlayer is an application that lets developers check different media functionality in JavaFX, such as synthesizer or support for HTTP Live Streaming (HLS). This demo shows how developers can embed video content in their Java applications. JavaFX leverages the underlying video (e.g., H.264) and audio (e.g., AAC) codecs on the user’s computer. JavaFX APIs allow developers to interact with the video content (e.g. play/pause, or programmable markers). Some of the latest media features introduced in JavaFX 2.2 include HTTP Live Streaming (HLS). Obviously there is a lot for JavaFX enthusiasts to chew on!

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Community Conversation

- by ultan o'broin

Applications User Experience members (Erika Webb, Laurie Pattison, and I) attended the User Assistance Europe Conference in Stockholm, Sweden. We were impressed with the thought leadership and practical application of ideas in Anne Gentle's keynote address "Social Web Strategies for Documentation". After the conference, we spoke with Anne to explore the ideas further. Applications User Experience Senior Director Laurie Pattison (left) with Anne Gentle at the User Assistance Europe Conference In Anne's book called Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation, she explains how user assistance is undergoing a seismic shift. The direction is away from the old print manuals and online help concept towards a web-based, user community-driven solution using social media tools. User experience professionals now have a vast range of such tools to start and nurture this "conversation": blogs, wikis, forums, social networking sites, microblogging systems, image and video sharing sites, virtual worlds, podcasts, instant messaging, mashups, and so on. That user communities are a rich source of user assistance is not a surprise, but the extent of available assistance is. For example, we know from the Consortium for Service Innovation that there has been an 'explosion' of user-generated content on the web. User-initiated community conversations provide as much as 30 times the number of official help desk solutions for consortium members! The growing reliance on user community solutions is clearly a user experience issue. Anne says that user assistance as conversation "means getting closer to users and helping them perform well. User-centered design has been touted as one of the most important ideas developed in the last 20 years of workplace writing. Now writers can take the idea of user-centered design a step further by starting conversations with users and enabling user assistance in interactions." Some of Anne's favorite examples of this paradigm shift from the world of traditional documentation to community conversation include: * Writer Bob Bringhurst's blog about Adobe InDesign and InCopy products and Adobe's community help * The Microsoft Development Network Community Center * ·The former Sun (now Oracle) OpenDS wiki, NetBeans Ruby and other community approaches to engage diverse audiences using screencasts, wikis, and blogs. * Cisco's customer support wiki, EMC's community, as well as Symantec and Intuit's approaches * The efforts of Ubuntu, Mozilla, and the FLOSS community generally Adobe Writer Bob Bringhurst's Blog Oracle is not without a user community conversation too. Besides the community discussions and blogs around documentation offerings, we have the My Oracle Support Community forums, Oracle Technology Network (OTN) communities, wiki, blogs, and so on. We have the great work done by our user groups and customer councils. Employees like David Haimes are reaching out, and enthusiastic non-employee gurus like Chet Justice (OracleNerd), Floyd Teter and Eddie Awad provide great "how-to" information too. But what does this paradigm shift mean for existing technical writers as users turn away from the traditional printable PDF manual deliverables? We asked Anne after the conference. The writer role becomes one of conversation initiator or enabler. The role evolves, along with the process, as the users define their concept of user assistance and terms of engagement with the product instead of having it pre-determined. It is largely a case now of "inventing the job while you're doing it, instead of being hired for it" Anne said. There is less emphasis on formal titles. Anne mentions that her own title "Content Stacker" at OpenStack; others use titles such as "Content Curator" or "Community Lead". However, the role remains one essentially about communications, "but of a new type--interacting with users, moderating, curating content, instead of sitting down to write a manual from start to finish." Clearly then, this role is open to more than professional technical writers. Product managers who write blogs, developers who moderate forums, support professionals who update wikis, rock star programmers with a penchant for YouTube are ideal. Anyone with the product knowledge, empathy for the user, and flair for relationships on the social web can join in. Some even perform these roles already but do not realize it. Anne feels the technical communicator space will move from hiring new community conversation professionals (who are already active in the space through blogging, tweets, wikis, and so on) to retraining some existing writers over time. Our own research reveals that the established proponents of community user assistance even set employee performance objectives for internal content curators about the amount of community content delivered by people outside the organization! To take advantage of the conversations on the web as user assistance, enterprises must first establish where on the spectrum their community lies. "What is the line between community willingness to contribute and the enterprise objectives?" Anne asked. "The relationship with users must be managed and also measured." Anne believes that the process can start with a "just do it" approach. Begin by reaching out to existing user groups, individual bloggers and tweeters, forum posters, early adopter program participants, conference attendees, customer advisory board members, and so on. Use analytical tools to measure the level of conversation about your products and services to show a return on investment (ROI), winning management support. Anne emphasized that success with the community model is dependent on lowering the technical and motivational barriers so that users can readily contribute to the conversation. Simple tools must be provided, and guidelines, if any, must be straightforward but not mandatory. The conversational approach is one where traditional style and branding guides do not necessarily apply. Tools and infrastructure help users to create content easily, to search and find the information online, read it, rate it, translate it, and participate further in the content's evolution. Recognizing contributors by using ratings on forums, giving out Twitter kudos, conference invitations, visits to headquarters, free products, preview releases, and so on, also encourages the adoption of the conversation model. The move to conversation as user assistance is not free, but there is a business ROI. The conversational model means that customer service is enhanced, as user experience moves from a functional to a valued, emotional level. Studies show a positive correlation between loyalty and financial performance (Consortium for Service Innovation, 2010), and as customer experience and loyalty become key differentiators, user experience professionals cannot explore the model's possibilities. The digital universe (measured at 1.2 million petabytes in 2010) is doubling every 12 to 18 months, and 70 percent of that universe consists of user-generated content (IDC, 2010). Conversation as user assistance cannot be ignored but must be embraced. It is a time to manage for abundance, not scarcity. Besides, the conversation approach certainly sounds more interesting, rewarding, and fun than the traditional model! I would like to thank Anne for her time and thoughts, and recommend that all user assistance professionals read her book. You can follow Anne on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/annegentle. Oracle's Acrolinx IQ deployment was used to author this article.

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Include weather information in ASP.Net site from weather.com services

- by sreejukg

In this article, I am going to demonstrate how you can use the XMLOAP services (referred as XOAP from here onwards) provided by weather.com to display the weather information in your website. The XOAP services are available to be used for free of charge, provided you are comply with requirements from weather.com. I am writing this article from a technical point of view. If you are planning to use weather.com XOAP services in your application, please refer to the terms and conditions from weather.com website. In order to start using the XOAP services, you need to sign up the XOAP datafeed. The signing process is simple, you simply browse the url http://www.weather.com/services/xmloap.html. The URL looks similar to the following. Click on the sign up button, you will reach the registration page. Here you need to specify the site name you need to use this feed for. The form looks similar to the following. Once you fill all the mandatory information, click on save and continue button. That’s it. The registration is over. You will receive an email that contains your partner id, license key and SDK. The SDK available in a zipped format, contains the terms of use and documentation about the services available. Other than this the SDK includes the logos and icons required to display the weather information. As per the SDK, currently there are 2 types of information available through XOAP. These services are Current Conditions for over 30,000 U.S. and over 7,900 international Location IDs Updated at least Hourly Five-Day Forecast (today + 4 additional forecast days in consecutive order beginning with tomorrow) for over 30,000 U.S. and over 7,900 international Location IDs Updated at least Three Times Daily The SDK provides detailed information about the fields included in response of each service. Additionally there is a refresh rate that you need to comply with. As per the SDK, the refresh rate means the following “Refresh Rate” shall mean the maximum frequency with which you may call the XML Feed for a given LocID requesting a data set for that LocID. During the time period in between refresh periods the data must be cached by you either in the memory on your servers or in Your Desktop Application. About the Services Weather.com will provide you with access to the XML Feed over the Internet through the hostname xoap.weather.com. The weather data from the XML feed must be requested for a specific location. So you need a location ID (LOC ID). The XML feed work with 2 types of location IDs. First one is with City Identifiers and second one is using 5 Digit US postal codes. If you do not know your location ID, don’t worry, there is a location id search service available for you to retrieve the location id from city name. Since I am a resident in the Kingdom of Bahrain, I am going to retrieve the weather information for Manama(the capital of Bahrain) . In order to get the location ID for Manama, type the following URL in your address bar. http://xoap.weather.com/search/search?where=manama I got the following XML output. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!-- This document is intended only for use by authorized licensees of The –> <!-- Weather Channel. Unauthorized use is prohibited. Copyright 1995-2011, –> <!-- The Weather Channel Interactive, Inc. All Rights Reserved. –> <search ver="3.0"> <loc id="BAXX0001" type="1">Al Manama, Bahrain</loc> </search> You can try this with any city name, if the city is available, it will return the location id, and otherwise, it will return nothing. In order to get the weather information, from XOAP, you need to pass certain parameters to the XOAP service. A brief about the parameters are as follows. Please refer SDK for more details. Parameter name Possible Value cc Optional, if you include this, the current condition will be returned. Value can be anything, as it will be ignored e.g. cc=* dayf If you want the forecast for 5 days, specify dayf=5 This is optional iink Value should be XOAP par Your partner id. You can find this in your registration email from weather.com prod Value should be XOAP key The license key assigned to you. This will be available in the registration email unit s or m (standard or matric or you can think of Celsius/Fahrenheit) this is optional field, if not specified the unit will be standard(s) The URL host for the XOAP service is http://xoap.weather.com. So for my purpose, I need the following request to be made to access the XOAP services. http://xoap.weather.com/weather/local/BAXX0001?cc=*&link=xoap&prod=xoap&par=*********&key=************** (The ***** to be replaced with the corresponding alternatives) The response XML have a root element “weather”. Under the root element, it has the following sections <head> - the meta data information about the weather results returned. <loc> - the location data block that provides, the information about the location for which the wheather data is retrieved. <lnks> - the 4 promotional links you need to place along with the weather display. Additional to these 4 links, there should be another link with weather channel logo to the home page of weather.com. <cc> - the current condition data. This element will be there only if you specify the cc element in the request. <dayf> - the forcast data as you specified. This element will be there only if you specify the dayf in the request. In this walkthrough, I am going to capture the weather information for Manama (Location ID: BAXX0001). You need 2 applications to display weather information in your website. A Console application that retrieves data from the XMLOAP and store in the SQL Server database (or any data store as you prefer).This application will be scheduled to execute in every 25 minutes using windows task scheduler, so that we can comply with the refresh rate. A web application that display data from the SQL Server database Retrieve the Weather from XOAP I have created a console application named, Weather Service. I created a SQL server database, with the following columns. I named the table as tblweather. You are free to choose any name. Column name Description lastUpdated Datetime, this is the last time when the weather data is updated. This is the time of the service running TemparatureDateTime The date and time returned by XML feed Temparature The temperature returned by the XML feed. TemparatureUnit The unit of the temperature returned by the XML feed iconId The id of the icon to be used. Currently 48 icons from 0 to 47 are available. WeatherDescription The Weather Description Phrase returned by the feed. Link1url The url to the first promo link Link1Text The text for the first promo link Link2url The url to the second promo link Link2Text The text for the second promo link Link3url The url to the third promo link Link3Text The text for the third promo link Link4url The url to the fourth promo link Link4Text The text for the fourth promo link Every time when the service runs, the application will update the database columns from the XOAP data feed. When the application starts, It is going to get the data as XML from the url. This demonstration uses LINQ to extract the necessary data from the fetched XML. The following are the code segment for extracting data from the weather XML using LINQ. // first, create an instance of the XDocument class with the XOAP URL. replace **** with the corresponding values. XDocument weather = XDocument.Load("http://xoap.weather.com/weather/local/BAXX0001?cc=*&link=xoap&prod=xoap&par=***********&key=c*********"); // construct a query using LINQ var feedResult = from item in weather.Descendants() select new { unit = item.Element("head").Element("ut").Value, temp = item.Element("cc").Element("tmp").Value, tempDate = item.Element("cc").Element("lsup").Value, iconId = item.Element("cc").Element("icon").Value, description = item.Element("cc").Element("t").Value, links = from link in item.Elements("lnks").Elements("link") select new { url = link.Element("l").Value, text = link.Element("t").Value } }; // Load the root node to a variable, you may use foreach construct instead. var item1 = feedResult.First(); *If you want to learn more about LINQ and XML, read this nice blog from Scott GU. http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/08/07/using-linq-to-xml-and-how-to-build-a-custom-rss-feed-reader-with-it.aspx Now you have all the required values in item1. For e.g. if you want to get the temperature, use item1.temp; Now I just need to execute an SQL query against the database. See the connection part. using (SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(@"Data Source=sreeju\sqlexpress;Initial Catalog=Sample;Integrated Security=True")) { string strSql = @"update tblweather set lastupdated=getdate(), temparatureDateTime = @temparatureDateTime, temparature=@temparature, temparatureUnit=@temparatureUnit, iconId = @iconId, description=@description, link1url=@link1url, link1text=@link1text, link2url=@link2url, link2text=@link2text,link3url=@link3url, link3text=@link3text,link4url=@link4url, link4text=@link4text"; SqlCommand comm = new SqlCommand(strSql, conn); comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("temparatureDateTime", item1.tempDate); comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("temparature", item1.temp); comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("temparatureUnit", item1.unit); comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("description", item1.description); comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("iconId", item1.iconId); var lstLinks = item1.links; comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("link1url", lstLinks.ElementAt(0).url); comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("link1text", lstLinks.ElementAt(0).text); comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("link2url", lstLinks.ElementAt(1).url); comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("link2text", lstLinks.ElementAt(1).text); comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("link3url", lstLinks.ElementAt(2).url); comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("link3text", lstLinks.ElementAt(2).text); comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("link4url", lstLinks.ElementAt(3).url); comm.Parameters.AddWithValue("link4text", lstLinks.ElementAt(3).text); conn.Open(); comm.ExecuteNonQuery(); conn.Close(); Console.WriteLine("database updated"); } Now click ctrl + f5 to run the service. I got the following output Check your database and make sure, the data is updated with the latest information from the service. (Make sure you inserted one row in the database by entering some values before executing the service. Otherwise you need to modify your application code to count the rows and conditionally perform insert/update query) Display the Weather information in ASP.Net page Now you got all the data in the database. You just need to create a web application and display the data from the database. I created a new ASP.Net web application with a default.aspx page. In order to comply with the terms of weather.com, You need to use Weather.com logo along with the weather display. You can find the necessary logos to use under the folder “logos” in the SDK. Additionally copy any of the icon set from the folder “icons” to your web application. I used the 93x93 icon set. You are free to use any other sizes available. The design view of the page in VS2010 looks similar to the following. The page contains a heading, an image control (for displaying the weather icon), 2 label controls (for displaying temperature and weather description), 4 hyperlinks (for displaying the 4 promo links returned by the XOAP service) and weather.com logo with hyperlink to the weather.com home page. I am going to write code that will update the values of these controls from the values stored in the database by the service application as mentioned in the previous step. Go to the code behind file for the webpage, enter the following code under Page_Load event handler. using (SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(@"Data Source=sreeju\sqlexpress;Initial Catalog=Sample;Integrated Security=True")) { SqlCommand comm = new SqlCommand("select top 1 * from tblweather", conn); conn.Open(); SqlDataReader reader = comm.ExecuteReader(); if (reader.Read()) { lblTemparature.Text = reader["temparature"].ToString() + "°" + reader["temparatureUnit"].ToString(); lblWeatherDescription.Text = reader["description"].ToString(); imgWeather.ImageUrl = "icons/" + reader["iconId"].ToString() + ".png"; lnk1.Text = reader["link1text"].ToString(); lnk1.NavigateUrl = reader["link1url"].ToString(); lnk2.Text = reader["link2text"].ToString(); lnk2.NavigateUrl = reader["link2url"].ToString(); lnk3.Text = reader["link3text"].ToString(); lnk3.NavigateUrl = reader["link3url"].ToString(); lnk4.Text = reader["link4text"].ToString(); lnk4.NavigateUrl = reader["link4url"].ToString(); } conn.Close(); } Press ctrl + f5 to run the page. You will see the following output. That’s it. You need to configure the console application to run every 25 minutes so that the database is updated. Also you can fetch the forecast information and store those in the database, and then retrieve it later in your web page. Since the data resides in your database, you have the full control over your display. You need to make sure your website comply with weather.com license requirements. If you want to get the source code of this walkthrough through the application, post your email address below. Hope you enjoy the reading.

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SQL SERVER – Step by Step Guide to Beginning Data Quality Services in SQL Server 2012 – Introduction to DQS

- by pinaldave

Data Quality Services is a very important concept of SQL Server. I have recently started to explore the same and I am really learning some good concepts. Here are two very important blog posts which one should go over before continuing this blog post. Installing Data Quality Services (DQS) on SQL Server 2012 Connecting Error to Data Quality Services (DQS) on SQL Server 2012 This article is introduction to Data Quality Services for beginners. We will be using an Excel file Click on the image to enlarge the it. In the first article we learned to install DQS. In this article we will see how we can learn about building Knowledge Base and using it to help us identify the quality of the data as well help correct the bad quality of the data. Here are the two very important steps we will be learning in this tutorial. Building a New Knowledge Base Creating a New Data Quality Project Let us start the building the Knowledge Base. Click on New Knowledge Base. In our project we will be using the Excel as a knowledge base. Here is the Excel which we will be using. There are two columns. One is Colors and another is Shade. They are independent columns and not related to each other. The point which I am trying to show is that in Column A there are unique data and in Column B there are duplicate records. Clicking on New Knowledge Base will bring up the following screen. Enter the name of the new knowledge base. Clicking NEXT will bring up following screen where it will allow to select the EXCE file and it will also let users select the source column. I have selected Colors and Shade both as a source column. Creating a domain is very important. Here you can create a unique domain or domain which is compositely build from Colors and Shade. As this is the first example, I will create unique domain – for Colors I will create domain Colors and for Shade I will create domain Shade. Here is the screen which will demonstrate how the screen will look after creating domains. Clicking NEXT it will bring you to following screen where you can do the data discovery. Clicking on the START will start the processing of the source data provided. Pre-processed data will show various information related to the source data. In our case it shows that Colors column have unique data whereas Shade have non-unique data and unique data rows are only two. In the next screen you can actually add more rows as well see the frequency of the data as the values are listed unique. Clicking next will publish the knowledge base which is just created. Now the knowledge base is created. We will try to take any random data and attempt to do DQS implementation over it. I am using another excel sheet here for simplicity purpose. In reality you can easily use SQL Server table for the same. Click on New Data Quality Project to see start DQS Project. In the next screen it will ask which knowledge base to use. We will be using our Colors knowledge base which we have recently created. In the Colors knowledge base we had two columns – 1) Colors and 2) Shade. In our case we will be using both of the mappings here. User can select one or multiple column mapping over here. Now the most important phase of the complete project. Click on Start and it will make the cleaning process and shows various results. In our case there were two columns to be processed and it completed the task with necessary information. It demonstrated that in Colors columns it has not corrected any value by itself but in Shade value there is a suggestion it has. We can train the DQS to correct values but let us keep that subject for future blog posts. Now click next and keep the domain Colors selected left side. It will demonstrate that there are two incorrect columns which it needs to be corrected. Here is the place where once corrected value will be auto-corrected in future. I manually corrected the value here and clicked on Approve radio buttons. As soon as I click on Approve buttons the rows will be disappeared from this tab and will move to Corrected Tab. If I had rejected tab it would have moved the rows to Invalid tab as well. In this screen you can see how the corrected 2 rows are demonstrated. You can click on Correct tab and see previously validated 6 rows which passed the DQS process. Now let us click on the Shade domain on the left side of the screen. This domain shows very interesting details as there DQS system guessed the correct answer as Dark with the confidence level of 77%. It is quite a high confidence level and manual observation also demonstrate that Dark is the correct answer. I clicked on Approve and the row moved to corrected tab. On the next screen DQS shows the summary of all the activities. It also demonstrates how the correction of the quality of the data was performed. The user can explore their data to a SQL Server Table, CSV file or Excel. The user also has an option to either explore data and all the associated cleansing info or data only. I will select Data only for demonstration purpose. Clicking explore will generate the files. Let us open the generated file. It will look as following and it looks pretty complete and corrected. Well, we have successfully completed DQS Process. The process is indeed very easy. I suggest you try this out yourself and you will find it very easy to learn. In future we will go over advanced concepts. Are you using this feature on your production server? If yes, would you please leave a comment with your environment and business need. It will be indeed interesting to see where it is implemented. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Data Quality Services, DQS

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How to Organize a Programming Language Club

- by Ben Griswold

I previously noted that we started a language club at work. You know, I searched around but I couldn’t find a copy of the How to Organize a Programming Language Club Handbook. Maybe it’s sold out? Yes, Stack Overflow has quite a bit of information on how to learn and teach new languages and there’s also a good number of online tutorials which provide language introductions but I was interested in group learning. After two months of meetings, I present to you the Unofficial How to Organize a Programming Language Club Handbook. 1. Gauge interest. Start by surveying prospects. “Excuse me, smart-developer-whom-I-work-with-and-I-think-might-be-interested-in-learning-a-new-coding-language-with-me. Are you interested in learning a new language with me?” If you’re lucky, you work with a bunch of really smart folks who aren’t shy about teaching/learning in a group setting and you’ll have a collective interest in no time. Simply suggesting the idea is the only effort required. If you don’t work in this type of environment, maybe you should consider a new place of employment. 2. Make it official. Send out a “Welcome to the Club” email: There’s been talk of folks itching to learn new languages – Python, Scala, F# and Haskell to name a few. Rather than taking on new languages alone, let’s learn in the open. That’s right. Let’s start a languages club. We’ll have everything a real club needs – secret handshake, goofy motto and a high-and-mighty sense that we’re better than everybody else. T-shirts? Hell YES! Anyway, I’ve thrown this idea around the office and no one has laughed at me yet so please consider this your very official invitation to be in THE club. [Insert your ideas about how the club might be run, solicit feedback and suggestions, ask what other folks would like to get out the club, comment about club hazing practices and talk up the T-shirts even more. Finally, call out the languages you are interested in learning and ask the group for their list.] 3. Send out invitations to the first meeting. Don’t skimp! Hallmark greeting cards for everyone. Personalized. Hearts over the I’s and everything. Oh, and be sure to include the list of suggested languages with vote count. Here the list of languages we are interested in: Python 5 Ruby 4 Objective-C 3 F# 2 Haskell 2 Scala 2 Ada 1 Boo 1 C# 1 Clojure 1 Erlang 1 Go 1 Pi 1 Prolog 1 Qt 1 4. At the first meeting, there must be cake. Lots of cake. And you should tackle some very important questions: Which language should we start with? You can immediately go with the top vote getter or you could do as we did and designate each person to provide a high-level review of each of the proposed languages over the next two weeks. After all presentations are completed, vote on the language. Our high-level review consisted of answers to a series of questions. Decide how often and where the group will meet. We, for example, meet for a brown bag lunch every Wednesday. Decide how you’re going to learn. We determined that the best way to learn is to just dive in and write code. After choosing our first language (Python), we talked about building an application, or performing coding katas, but we ultimately choose to complete a series of Project Euler problems. We kept it simple – each member works out the same two problems each week in preparation of a code review the following Wednesday. 5. Code, Review, Learn. Prior to the weekly meeting, everyone uploads their solutions to our internal wiki. Each Project Euler problem has a dedicated page. In the meeting, we use a really fancy HD projector to show off each member’s solution. It is very important to use an HD projector. Again, don’t skimp! Each code author speaks to their solution, everyone else comments, applauds, points fingers and laughs, etc. As much as I’ve learned from solving the problems on my own, I’ve learned at least twice as much at the group code review. 6. Rinse. Lather. Repeat. We’ve hosted the language club for 7 weeks now. The first meeting just set the stage. The next two meetings provided a review of the languages followed by a first language selection. The remaining meetings focused on Python and Project Euler problems. Today we took a vote as to whether or not we’re ready to switch to another language and/or another problem set. Pretty much everyone wants to stay the course for a few more weeks at least. Until then, we’ll continue to code the next two solutions, review and learn. Again, we’ve been having a good time with the programming language club. I’m glad it got off the ground. What do you think? Would you be interested in a language club? Any suggestions on what we might do better?

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Dynamic XAP loading in Task-It - Part 1

Download Source Code NOTE 1: The source code provided is running against the RC versions of Silverlight 4 and VisualStudio 2010, so you will need to update to those bits to run it. NOTE 2: After downloading the source, be sure to set the .Web project as the StartUp Project, and Default.aspx as the Start Page In my MEF into post, MEF to the rescue in Task-It, I outlined a couple of issues I was facing and explained why I chose MEF (the Managed Extensibility Framework) to solve these issues. Other posts to check out There are a few other resources out there around dynamic XAP loading that you may want to review (by the way, Glenn Block is the main dude when it comes to MEF): Glenn Blocks 3-part series on a dynamically loaded dashboard Glenn and John Papas Silverlight TV video on dynamic xap loading These provide some great info, but didnt exactly cover the scenario I wanted to achieve in Task-Itand that is dynamically loading each of the apps pages the first time the user enters a page. The code In the code I provided for download above, I created a simple solution that shows the technique I used for dynamic XAP loading in Task-It, but without all of the other code that surrounds it. Taking all that other stuff away should make it easier to grasp. Having said that, there is still a fair amount of code involved. I am always looking for ways to make things simpler, and to achieve the desired result with as little code as possible, so if I find a better/simpler way I will blog about it, but for now this technique works for me. When I created this solution I started by creating a new Silverlight Navigation Application called DynamicXAP Loading. I then added the following line to my UriMappings in MainPage.xaml: <uriMapper:UriMapping Uri="/{assemblyName};component/{path}" MappedUri="/{assemblyName};component/{path}"/> In the section of MainPage.xaml that produces the page links in the upper right, I kept the Home link, but added a couple of new ones (page1 and page 2). These are the pages that will be dynamically (lazy) loaded: <StackPanel x:Name="LinksStackPanel" Style="{StaticResource LinksStackPanelStyle}"> <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" NavigateUri="/Home" TargetName="ContentFrame" Content="home"/> <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource DividerStyle}"/> <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" Content="page 1" Command="{Binding NavigateCommand}" CommandParameter="{Binding ModulePage1}"/> <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource DividerStyle}"/> <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" Content="page 2" Command="{Binding NavigateCommand}" CommandParameter="{Binding ModulePage2}"/> </StackPanel> In App.xaml.cs I added a bit of MEF code. In Application_Startup I call a method called InitializeContainer, which creates a PackageCatalog (a MEF thing), then I create a CompositionContainer and pass it to the CompositionHost.Initialize method. This is boiler-plate MEF stuff that allows you to do 'composition' and import 'packages'. You're welcome to do a bit more MEF research on what is happening here if you'd like, but for the purpose of this example you can just trust that it works. :-) private void Application_Startup(object sender, StartupEventArgs e) { InitializeContainer(); this.RootVisual = new MainPage(); } private static void InitializeContainer() { var catalog = new PackageCatalog(); catalog.AddPackage(Package.Current); var container = new CompositionContainer(catalog); container.ComposeExportedValue(catalog); CompositionHost.Initialize(container); } Infrastructure In the sample code you'll notice that there is a project in the solution called DynamicXAPLoading.Infrastructure. This is simply a Silverlight Class Library project that I created just to move stuff I considered application 'infrastructure' code into a separate place, rather than cluttering the main Silverlight project (DynamicXapLoading). I did this same thing in Task-It, as the amount of this type of code was starting to clutter up the Silverlight project, and it just seemed to make sense to move things like Enums, Constants and the like off to a separate place. In the DynamicXapLoading.Infrastructure project you'll see 3 classes: Enums - There is only one enum in here called ModuleEnum. We'll use these later. PageMetadata - We will use this class later to add metadata to a new dynamically loaded project. ViewModelBase - This is simply a base class for view models that we will use in this, as well as future samples. As mentioned in my MVVM post, I will be using the MVVM pattern throughout my code for reasons detailed in the post. By the way, the ViewModelExtension class in there allows me to do strongly-typed property changed notification, so rather than OnPropertyChanged("MyProperty"), I can do this.OnPropertyChanged(p => p.MyProperty). It's just a less error-prown approach, because if you don't spell "MyProperty" correctly using the first method, nothing will break, it just won't work. Adding a new page We currently have a couple of pages that are being dynamically (lazy) loaded, but now let's add a third page. 1. First, create a new Silverlight Application project: In this example I call it Page3. In the future you may prefer to use a different name, like DynamicXAPLoading.Page3, or even DynamicXAPLoading.Modules.Page3. It can be whatever you want. In my Task-It application I used the latter approach (with 'Modules' in the name). I do think of these application as 'modules', but Prism uses the same term, so some folks may not like that. Use whichever naming convention you feel is appropriate, but for now Page3 will do. When you change the name to Page3 and click OK, you will be presented with the Add New Project dialog: It is important that you leave the 'Host the Silverlight application in a new or existing Web site in the solution' checked, and the .Web project will be selected in the dropdown below. This will create the .xap file for this project under ClientBin in the .Web project, which is where we want it. 2. Uncheck the 'Add a test page that references the application' checkbox, and leave everything else as is. 3. Once the project is created, you can delete App.xaml and MainPage.xaml. 4. You will need to add references your new project to the following: DynamicXAPLoading.Infrastructure.dll (this is a Project reference) DynamicNavigation.dll (this is in the Libs directory under the DynamicXAPLoading project) System.ComponentModel.Composition.dll System.ComponentModel.Composition.Initialization.dll System.Windows.Controls.Navigation.dll If you have installed the latest RC bits you will find the last 3 dll's under the .NET tab in the Add Referenced dialog. They live in the following location, or if you are on a 64-bit machine like me, it will be Program Files (x86). C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v4.0\Libraries\Client Now let's create some UI for our new project. 5. First, create a new Silverlight User Control called Page3.dyn.xaml 6. Paste the following code into the xaml: <dyn:DynamicPageShim xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:dyn="clr-namespace:DynamicNavigation;assembly=DynamicNavigation" xmlns:my="clr-namespace:Page3;assembly=Page3"> <my:Page3Host /> </dyn:DynamicPageShim> This is just a 'shim', part of David Poll's technique for dynamic loading. 7. Expand the icon next to Page3.dyn.xaml and delete the code-behind file (Page3.dyn.xaml.cs). 8. Next we will create a control that will 'host' our page. Create another Silverlight User Control called Page3Host.xaml and paste in the following XAML: <dyn:DynamicPage x:Class="Page3.Page3Host" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" xmlns:dyn="clr-namespace:DynamicNavigation;assembly=DynamicNavigation" xmlns:Views="clr-namespace:Page3.Views" mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="400" Title="Page 3"> <Views:Page3/> </dyn:DynamicPage> 9. Now paste the following code into the code-behind for this control: using DynamicXAPLoading.Infrastructure; namespace Page3 { [PageMetadata(NavigateUri = "/Page3;component/Page3.dyn.xaml", Module = Enums.Page3)] public partial class Page3Host { public Page3Host() { InitializeComponent(); } } } Notice that we are now using that PageMetadata custom attribute class that we created in the Infrastructure project, and setting its two properties. NavigateUri - This tells it that the assembly is called Page3 (with a slash beforehand), and the page we want to load is Page3.dyn.xaml...our 'shim'. That line we added to the UriMapper in MainPage.xaml will use this information to load the page. Module - This goes back to that ModuleEnum class in our Infrastructure project. However, setting the Module to ModuleEnum.Page3 will cause a compilation error, so... 10. Go back to that Enums.cs under the Infrastructure project and add a 3rd entry for Page3: public enum ModuleEnum { Page1, Page2, Page3 } 11. Now right-click on the Page3 project and add a folder called Views. 12. Right-click on the Views folder and create a new Silverlight User Control called Page3.xaml. We won't bother creating a view model for this User Control as I did in the Page 1 and Page 2 projects, just for the sake of simplicity. Feel free to add one if you'd like though, and copy the code from one of those other projects. Right now those view models aren't really doing anything anyway...though they will in my next post. :-) 13. Now let's replace the xaml for Page3.xaml with the following: <dyn:DynamicPage x:Class="Page3.Views.Page3" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" xmlns:dyn="clr-namespace:DynamicNavigation;assembly=DynamicNavigation" mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="400" Style="{StaticResource PageStyle}"> <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot"> <ScrollViewer x:Name="PageScrollViewer" Style="{StaticResource PageScrollViewerStyle}"> <StackPanel x:Name="ContentStackPanel"> <TextBlock x:Name="HeaderText" Style="{StaticResource HeaderTextStyle}" Text="Page 3"/> <TextBlock x:Name="ContentText" Style="{StaticResource ContentTextStyle}" Text="Page 3 content"/> </StackPanel> </ScrollViewer> </Grid> </dyn:DynamicPage> 14. And in the code-behind remove the inheritance from UserControl, so it should look like this: namespace Page3.Views { public partial class Page3 { public Page3() { InitializeComponent(); } } } One thing you may have noticed is that the base class for the last two User Controls we created is DynamicPage. Once again, we are using the infrastructure that David Poll created. 15. OK, a few last things. We need a link on our main page so that we can access our new page. In MainPage.xaml let's update our links to look like this: <StackPanel x:Name="LinksStackPanel" Style="{StaticResource LinksStackPanelStyle}"> <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" NavigateUri="/Home" TargetName="ContentFrame" Content="home"/> <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource DividerStyle}"/> <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" Content="page 1" Command="{Binding NavigateCommand}" CommandParameter="{Binding ModulePage1}"/> <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource DividerStyle}"/> <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" Content="page 2" Command="{Binding NavigateCommand}" CommandParameter="{Binding ModulePage2}"/> <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource DividerStyle}"/> <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" Content="page 3" Command="{Binding NavigateCommand}" CommandParameter="{Binding ModulePage3}"/> </StackPanel> 16. Next, we need to add the following at the bottom of MainPageViewModel in the ViewModels directory of our DynamicXAPLoading project: public ModuleEnum ModulePage3 { get { return ModuleEnum.Page3; } } 17. And at last, we need to add a case for our new page to the switch statement in MainPageViewModel: switch (module) { case ModuleEnum.Page1: DownloadPackage("Page1.xap"); break; case ModuleEnum.Page2: DownloadPackage("Page2.xap"); break; case ModuleEnum.Page3: DownloadPackage("Page3.xap"); break; default: break; } Now fire up the application and click the page 1, page 2 and page 3 links. What you'll notice is that there is a 2-second delay the first time you hit each page. That is because I added the following line to the Navigate method in MainPageViewModel: Thread.Sleep(2000); // Simulate a 2 second initial loading delay The reason I put this in there is that I wanted to simulate a delay the first time the page loads (as the .xap is being downloaded from the server). You'll notice that after the first hit to the page though that there is no delay...that's because the .xap has already been downloaded. Feel free to comment out this 2-second delay, or remove it if you'd like. I just wanted to show how subsequent hits to the page would be quicker than the initial one. By the way, you may want to display some sort of BusyIndicator while the .xap is loading. I have that in my Task-It appplication, but for the sake of simplicity I did not include it here. In the future I'll blog about how I show and hide the BusyIndicator using events (I'm currently using the eventing framework in Prism for that, but may move to the one in the MVVM Light Toolkit some time soon). Whew, that felt like a lot of steps, but it does work quite nicely. As I mentioned earlier, I'll try to find ways to simplify the code (I'd like to get away from having things like hard-coded .xap file names) and will blog about it in the future if I find a better way. In my next post, I'll talk more about what is actually happening with the code that makes this all work.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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SQL Monitor’s data repository

- by Chris Lambrou

As one of the developers of SQL Monitor, I often get requests passed on by our support people from customers who are looking to dip into SQL Monitor’s own data repository, in order to pull out bits of information that they’re interested in. Since there’s clearly interest out there in playing around directly with the data repository, I thought I’d write some blog posts to start to describe how it all works. The hardest part for me is knowing where to begin, since the schema of the data repository is pretty big. Hmmm… I guess it’s tricky for anyone to write anything but the most trivial of queries against the data repository without understanding the hierarchy of monitored objects, so perhaps my first post should start there. I always imagine that whenever a customer fires up SSMS and starts to explore their SQL Monitor data repository database, they become immediately bewildered by the schema – that was certainly my experience when I did so for the first time. The following query shows the number of different object types in the data repository schema: SELECT type_desc, COUNT(*) AS [count] FROM sys.objects GROUP BY type_desc ORDER BY type_desc; type_desccount 1DEFAULT_CONSTRAINT63 2FOREIGN_KEY_CONSTRAINT181 3INTERNAL_TABLE3 4PRIMARY_KEY_CONSTRAINT190 5SERVICE_QUEUE3 6SQL_INLINE_TABLE_VALUED_FUNCTION381 7SQL_SCALAR_FUNCTION2 8SQL_STORED_PROCEDURE100 9SYSTEM_TABLE41 10UNIQUE_CONSTRAINT54 11USER_TABLE193 12VIEW124 With 193 tables, 124 views, 100 stored procedures and 381 table valued functions, that’s quite a hefty schema, and when you browse through it using SSMS, it can be a bit daunting at first. So, where to begin? Well, let’s narrow things down a bit and only look at the tables belonging to the data schema. That’s where all of the collected monitoring data is stored by SQL Monitor. The following query gives us the names of those tables: SELECT sch.name + '.' + obj.name AS [name] FROM sys.objects obj JOIN sys.schemas sch ON sch.schema_id = obj.schema_id WHERE obj.type_desc = 'USER_TABLE' AND sch.name = 'data' ORDER BY sch.name, obj.name; This query still returns 110 tables. I won’t show them all here, but let’s have a look at the first few of them: name 1data.Cluster_Keys 2data.Cluster_Machine_ClockSkew_UnstableSamples 3data.Cluster_Machine_Cluster_StableSamples 4data.Cluster_Machine_Keys 5data.Cluster_Machine_LogicalDisk_Capacity_StableSamples 6data.Cluster_Machine_LogicalDisk_Keys 7data.Cluster_Machine_LogicalDisk_Sightings 8data.Cluster_Machine_LogicalDisk_UnstableSamples 9data.Cluster_Machine_LogicalDisk_Volume_StableSamples 10data.Cluster_Machine_Memory_Capacity_StableSamples 11data.Cluster_Machine_Memory_UnstableSamples 12data.Cluster_Machine_Network_Capacity_StableSamples 13data.Cluster_Machine_Network_Keys 14data.Cluster_Machine_Network_Sightings 15data.Cluster_Machine_Network_UnstableSamples 16data.Cluster_Machine_OperatingSystem_StableSamples 17data.Cluster_Machine_Ping_UnstableSamples 18data.Cluster_Machine_Process_Instances 19data.Cluster_Machine_Process_Keys 20data.Cluster_Machine_Process_Owner_Instances 21data.Cluster_Machine_Process_Sightings 22data.Cluster_Machine_Process_UnstableSamples 23… There are two things I want to draw your attention to: The table names describe a hierarchy of the different types of object that are monitored by SQL Monitor (e.g. clusters, machines and disks). For each object type in the hierarchy, there are multiple tables, ending in the suffixes _Keys, _Sightings, _StableSamples and _UnstableSamples. Not every object type has a table for every suffix, but the _Keys suffix is especially important and a _Keys table does indeed exist for every object type. In fact, if we limit the query to return only those tables ending in _Keys, we reveal the full object hierarchy: SELECT sch.name + '.' + obj.name AS [name] FROM sys.objects obj JOIN sys.schemas sch ON sch.schema_id = obj.schema_id WHERE obj.type_desc = 'USER_TABLE' AND sch.name = 'data' AND obj.name LIKE '%_Keys' ORDER BY sch.name, obj.name; name 1data.Cluster_Keys 2data.Cluster_Machine_Keys 3data.Cluster_Machine_LogicalDisk_Keys 4data.Cluster_Machine_Network_Keys 5data.Cluster_Machine_Process_Keys 6data.Cluster_Machine_Services_Keys 7data.Cluster_ResourceGroup_Keys 8data.Cluster_ResourceGroup_Resource_Keys 9data.Cluster_SqlServer_Agent_Job_History_Keys 10data.Cluster_SqlServer_Agent_Job_Keys 11data.Cluster_SqlServer_Database_BackupType_Backup_Keys 12data.Cluster_SqlServer_Database_BackupType_Keys 13data.Cluster_SqlServer_Database_CustomMetric_Keys 14data.Cluster_SqlServer_Database_File_Keys 15data.Cluster_SqlServer_Database_Keys 16data.Cluster_SqlServer_Database_Table_Index_Keys 17data.Cluster_SqlServer_Database_Table_Keys 18data.Cluster_SqlServer_Error_Keys 19data.Cluster_SqlServer_Keys 20data.Cluster_SqlServer_Services_Keys 21data.Cluster_SqlServer_SqlProcess_Keys 22data.Cluster_SqlServer_TopQueries_Keys 23data.Cluster_SqlServer_Trace_Keys 24data.Group_Keys The full object type hierarchy looks like this: Cluster Machine LogicalDisk Network Process Services ResourceGroup Resource SqlServer Agent Job History Database BackupType Backup CustomMetric File Table Index Error Services SqlProcess TopQueries Trace Group Okay, but what about the individual objects themselves represented at each level in this hierarchy? Well that’s what the _Keys tables are for. This is probably best illustrated by way of a simple example – how can I query my own data repository to find the databases on my own PC for which monitoring data has been collected? Like this: SELECT clstr._Name AS cluster_name, srvr._Name AS instance_name, db._Name AS database_name FROM data.Cluster_SqlServer_Database_Keys db JOIN data.Cluster_SqlServer_Keys srvr ON db.ParentId = srvr.Id -- Note here how the parent of a Database is a Server JOIN data.Cluster_Keys clstr ON srvr.ParentId = clstr.Id -- Note here how the parent of a Server is a Cluster WHERE clstr._Name = 'dev-chrisl2' -- This is the hostname of my own PC ORDER BY clstr._Name, srvr._Name, db._Name; cluster_nameinstance_namedatabase_name 1dev-chrisl2SqlMonitorData 2dev-chrisl2master 3dev-chrisl2model 4dev-chrisl2msdb 5dev-chrisl2mssqlsystemresource 6dev-chrisl2tempdb 7dev-chrisl2sql2005SqlMonitorData 8dev-chrisl2sql2005TestDatabase 9dev-chrisl2sql2005master 10dev-chrisl2sql2005model 11dev-chrisl2sql2005msdb 12dev-chrisl2sql2005mssqlsystemresource 13dev-chrisl2sql2005tempdb 14dev-chrisl2sql2008SqlMonitorData 15dev-chrisl2sql2008master 16dev-chrisl2sql2008model 17dev-chrisl2sql2008msdb 18dev-chrisl2sql2008mssqlsystemresource 19dev-chrisl2sql2008tempdb These results show that I have three SQL Server instances on my machine (a default instance, one named sql2005 and one named sql2008), and each instance has the usual set of system databases, along with a database named SqlMonitorData. Basically, this is where I test SQL Monitor on different versions of SQL Server, when I’m developing. There are a few important things we can learn from this query: Each _Keys table has a column named Id. This is the primary key. Each _Keys table has a column named ParentId. A foreign key relationship is defined between each _Keys table and its parent _Keys table in the hierarchy. There are two exceptions to this, Cluster_Keys and Group_Keys, because clusters and groups live at the root level of the object hierarchy. Each _Keys table has a column named _Name. This is used to uniquely identify objects in the table within the scope of the same shared parent object. Actually, that last item isn’t always true. In some cases, the _Name column is actually called something else. For example, the data.Cluster_Machine_Services_Keys table has a column named _ServiceName instead of _Name (sorry for the inconsistency). In other cases, a name isn’t sufficient to uniquely identify an object. For example, right now my PC has multiple processes running, all sharing the same name, Chrome (one for each tab open in my web-browser). In such cases, multiple columns are used to uniquely identify an object within the scope of the same shared parent object. Well, that’s it for now. I’ve given you enough information for you to explore the _Keys tables to see how objects are stored in your own data repositories. In a future post, I’ll try to explain how monitoring data is stored for each object, using the _StableSamples and _UnstableSamples tables. If you have any questions about this post, or suggestions for future posts, just submit them in the comments section below.

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RequestValidation Changes in ASP.NET 4.0

- by Rick Strahl

There’s been a change in the way the ValidateRequest attribute on WebForms works in ASP.NET 4.0. I noticed this today while updating a post on my WebLog all of which contain raw HTML and so all pretty much trigger request validation. I recently upgraded this app from ASP.NET 2.0 to 4.0 and it’s now failing to update posts. At first this was difficult to track down because of custom error handling in my app – the custom error handler traps the exception and logs it with only basic error information so the full detail of the error was initially hidden. After some more experimentation in development mode the error that occurs is the typical ASP.NET validate request error (‘A potentially dangerous Request.Form value was detetected…’) which looks like this in ASP.NET 4.0: At first when I got this I was real perplexed as I didn’t read the entire error message and because my page does have: <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="NewEntry.aspx.cs" Inherits="Westwind.WebLog.NewEntry" MasterPageFile="~/App_Templates/Standard/AdminMaster.master" ValidateRequest="false" EnableEventValidation="false" EnableViewState="false" %> WTF? ValidateRequest would seem like it should be enough, but alas in ASP.NET 4.0 apparently that setting alone is no longer enough. Reading the fine print in the error explains that you need to explicitly set the requestValidationMode for the application back to V2.0 in web.config: <httpRuntime executionTimeout="300" requestValidationMode="2.0" /> Kudos for the ASP.NET team for putting up a nice error message that tells me how to fix this problem, but excuse me why the heck would you change this behavior to require an explicit override to an optional and by default disabled page level switch? You’ve just made a relatively simple fix to a solution a nasty morass of hard to discover configuration settings??? The original way this worked was perfectly discoverable via attributes in the page. Now you can set this setting in the page and get completely unexpected behavior and you are required to set what effectively amounts to a backwards compatibility flag in the configuration file. It turns out the real reason for the .config flag is that the request validation behavior has moved from WebForms pipeline down into the entire ASP.NET/IIS request pipeline and is now applied against all requests. Here’s what the breaking changes page from Microsoft says about it: The request validation feature in ASP.NET provides a certain level of default protection against cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. In previous versions of ASP.NET, request validation was enabled by default. However, it applied only to ASP.NET pages (.aspx files and their class files) and only when those pages were executing. In ASP.NET 4, by default, request validation is enabled for all requests, because it is enabled before the BeginRequest phase of an HTTP request. As a result, request validation applies to requests for all ASP.NET resources, not just .aspx page requests. This includes requests such as Web service calls and custom HTTP handlers. Request validation is also active when custom HTTP modules are reading the contents of an HTTP request. As a result, request validation errors might now occur for requests that previously did not trigger errors. To revert to the behavior of the ASP.NET 2.0 request validation feature, add the following setting in the Web.config file: <httpRuntime requestValidationMode="2.0" /> However, we recommend that you analyze any request validation errors to determine whether existing handlers, modules, or other custom code accesses potentially unsafe HTTP inputs that could be XSS attack vectors. Ok, so ValidateRequest of the form still works as it always has but it’s actually the ASP.NET Event Pipeline, not WebForms that’s throwing the above exception as request validation is applied to every request that hits the pipeline. Creating the runtime override removes the HttpRuntime checking and restores the WebForms only behavior. That fixes my immediate problem but still leaves me wondering especially given the vague wording of the above explanation. One thing that’s missing in the description is above is one important detail: The request validation is applied only to application/x-www-form-urlencoded POST content not to all inbound POST data. When I first read this this freaked me out because it sounds like literally ANY request hitting the pipeline is affected. To make sure this is not really so I created a quick handler: public class Handler1 : IHttpHandler { public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) { context.Response.ContentType = "text/plain"; context.Response.Write("Hello World <hr>" + context.Request.Form.ToString()); } public bool IsReusable { get { return false; } } } and called it with Fiddler by posting some XML to the handler using a default form-urlencoded POST content type: and sure enough – hitting the handler also causes the request validation error and 500 server response. Changing the content type to text/xml effectively fixes the problem however, bypassing the request validation filter so Web Services/AJAX handlers and custom modules/handlers that implement custom protocols aren’t affected as long as they work with special input content types. It also looks that multipart encoding does not trigger event validation of the runtime either so this request also works fine: POST http://rasnote/weblog/handler1.ashx HTTP/1.1 Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=------7cf2a327f01ae User-Agent: West Wind Internet Protocols 5.53 Host: rasnote Content-Length: 40 Pragma: no-cache <xml>asdasd</xml>--------7cf2a327f01ae *That* probably should trigger event validation – since it is a potential HTML form submission, but it doesn’t. New Runtime Feature, Global Scope Only? Ok, so request validation is now a runtime feature but sadly it’s a feature that’s scoped to the ASP.NET Runtime – effective scope to the entire running application/app domain. You can still manually force validation using Request.ValidateInput() which gives you the option to do this in code, but that realistically will only work with the requestValidationMode set to V2.0 as well since the 4.0 mode auto-fires before code ever gets a chance to intercept the call. Given all that, the new setting in ASP.NET 4.0 seems to limit options and makes things more difficult and less flexible. Of course Microsoft gets to say ASP.NET is more secure by default because of it but what good is that if you have to turn off this flag the very first time you need to allow one single request that bypasses request validation??? This is really shortsighted design… <sigh>© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET

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LLBLGen Pro feature highlights: grouping model elements

- by FransBouma

(This post is part of a series of posts about features of the LLBLGen Pro system) When working with an entity model which has more than a few entities, it's often convenient to be able to group entities together if they belong to a semantic sub-model. For example, if your entity model has several entities which are about 'security', it would be practical to group them together under the 'security' moniker. This way, you could easily find them back, yet they can be left inside the complete entity model altogether so their relationships with entities outside the group are kept. In other situations your domain consists of semi-separate entity models which all target tables/views which are located in the same database. It then might be convenient to have a single project to manage the complete target database, yet have the entity models separate of each other and have them result in separate code bases. LLBLGen Pro can do both for you. This blog post will illustrate both situations. The feature is called group usage and is controllable through the project settings. This setting is supported on all supported O/R mapper frameworks. Situation one: grouping entities in a single model. This situation is common for entity models which are dense, so many relationships exist between all sub-models: you can't split them up easily into separate models (nor do you likely want to), however it's convenient to have them grouped together into groups inside the entity model at the project level. A typical example for this is the AdventureWorks example database for SQL Server. This database, which is a single catalog, has for each sub-group a schema, however most of these schemas are tightly connected with each other: adding all schemas together will give a model with entities which indirectly are related to all other entities. LLBLGen Pro's default setting for group usage is AsVisualGroupingMechanism which is what this situation is all about: we group the elements for visual purposes, it has no real meaning for the model nor the code generated. Let's reverse engineer AdventureWorks to an entity model. By default, LLBLGen Pro uses the target schema an element is in which is being reverse engineered, as the group it will be in. This is convenient if you already have categorized tables/views in schemas, like which is the case in AdventureWorks. Of course this can be switched off, or corrected on the fly. When reverse engineering, we'll walk through a wizard which will guide us with the selection of the elements which relational model data should be retrieved, which we can later on use to reverse engineer to an entity model. The first step after specifying which database server connect to is to select these elements. below we can see the AdventureWorks catalog as well as the different schemas it contains. We'll include all of them. After the wizard completes, we have all relational model data nicely in our catalog data, with schemas. So let's reverse engineer entities from the tables in these schemas. We select in the catalog explorer the schemas 'HumanResources', 'Person', 'Production', 'Purchasing' and 'Sales', then right-click one of them and from the context menu, we select Reverse engineer Tables to Entity Definitions.... This will bring up the dialog below. We check all checkboxes in one go by checking the checkbox at the top to mark them all to be added to the project. As you can see LLBLGen Pro has already filled in the group name based on the schema name, as this is the default and we didn't change the setting. If you want, you can select multiple rows at once and set the group name to something else using the controls on the dialog. We're fine with the group names chosen so we'll simply click Add to Project. This gives the following result: (I collapsed the other groups to keep the picture small ;)). As you can see, the entities are now grouped. Just to see how dense this model is, I've expanded the relationships of Employee: As you can see, it has relationships with entities from three other groups than HumanResources. It's not doable to cut up this project into sub-models without duplicating the Employee entity in all those groups, so this model is better suited to be used as a single model resulting in a single code base, however it benefits greatly from having its entities grouped into separate groups at the project level, to make work done on the model easier. Now let's look at another situation, namely where we work with a single database while we want to have multiple models and for each model a separate code base. Situation two: grouping entities in separate models within the same project. To get rid of the entities to see the second situation in action, simply undo the reverse engineering action in the project. We still have the AdventureWorks relational model data in the catalog. To switch LLBLGen Pro to see each group in the project as a separate project, open the Project Settings, navigate to General and set Group usage to AsSeparateProjects. In the catalog explorer, select Person and Production, right-click them and select again Reverse engineer Tables to Entities.... Again check the checkbox at the top to mark all entities to be added and click Add to Project. We get two groups, as expected, however this time the groups are seen as separate projects. This means that the validation logic inside LLBLGen Pro will see it as an error if there's e.g. a relationship or an inheritance edge linking two groups together, as that would lead to a cyclic reference in the code bases. To see this variant of the grouping feature, seeing the groups as separate projects, in action, we'll generate code from the project with the two groups we just created: select from the main menu: Project -> Generate Source-code... (or press F7 ;)). In the dialog popping up, select the target .NET framework you want to use, the template preset, fill in a destination folder and click Start Generator (normal). This will start the code generator process. As expected the code generator has simply generated two code bases, one for Person and one for Production: The group name is used inside the namespace for the different elements. This allows you to add both code bases to a single solution and use them together in a different project without problems. Below is a snippet from the code file of a generated entity class. //... using System.Xml.Serialization; using AdventureWorks.Person; using AdventureWorks.Person.HelperClasses; using AdventureWorks.Person.FactoryClasses; using AdventureWorks.Person.RelationClasses; using SD.LLBLGen.Pro.ORMSupportClasses; namespace AdventureWorks.Person.EntityClasses { //... /// <summary>Entity class which represents the entity 'Address'.<br/><br/></summary> [Serializable] public partial class AddressEntity : CommonEntityBase //... The advantage of this is that you can have two code bases and work with them separately, yet have a single target database and maintain everything in a single location. If you decide to move to a single code base, you can do so with a change of one setting. It's also useful if you want to keep the groups as separate models (and code bases) yet want to add relationships to elements from another group using a copy of the entity: you can simply reverse engineer the target table to a new entity into a different group, effectively making a copy of the entity. As there's a single target database, changes made to that database are reflected in both models which makes maintenance easier than when you'd have a separate project for each group, with its own relational model data. Conclusion LLBLGen Pro offers a flexible way to work with entities in sub-models and control how the sub-models end up in the generated code.

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Computer crashes on resume from standby almost every time

- by Los Frijoles

I am running Ubuntu 12.04 on a Core i5 2500K and ASRock Z68 Pro3-M motherboard (no graphics card, hd is a WD Green 1TB, and cd drive is some cheap lite-on drive). Since installing 12.04, my computer has been freezing after resume, but not every time. When I start to resume, it starts going normally with a blinking cursor on the screen and then sometimes it will continue on to the gnome 3 unlock screen. Most of the time, however, it will blink for a little bit and then the monitor will flip modes and shut off due to no signal. Pressing keys on the keyboard gets no response (num lock light doesn't respond, Ctrl-Alt-F1 fails to drop it into a terminal, Ctrl-Alt-Backspace doesn't work) and so I assume the computer is crashed. The worst part is, the logs look entirely normal. Here is my system log during one of these crashes and my subsequent hard poweroff and restart: Jun 6 21:54:43 kcuzner-desktop udevd[10448]: inotify_add_watch(6, /dev/dm-2, 10) failed: No such file or directory Jun 6 21:54:43 kcuzner-desktop udevd[10448]: inotify_add_watch(6, /dev/dm-2, 10) failed: No such file or directory Jun 6 21:54:43 kcuzner-desktop udevd[10448]: inotify_add_watch(6, /dev/dm-1, 10) failed: No such file or directory Jun 6 21:54:43 kcuzner-desktop udevd[12419]: inotify_add_watch(6, /dev/dm-0, 10) failed: No such file or directory Jun 6 21:54:43 kcuzner-desktop udevd[10448]: inotify_add_watch(6, /dev/dm-0, 10) failed: No such file or directory Jun 6 22:09:01 kcuzner-desktop CRON[9061]: (root) CMD ( [ -x /usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime ] && [ -d /var/lib/php5 ] && find /var/lib/php5/ -depth -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type f -cmin +$(/usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime) ! -execdir fuser -s {} 2>/dev/null \; -delete) Jun 6 22:17:01 kcuzner-desktop CRON[22142]: (root) CMD ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly) Jun 6 22:39:01 kcuzner-desktop CRON[26909]: (root) CMD ( [ -x /usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime ] && [ -d /var/lib/php5 ] && find /var/lib/php5/ -depth -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type f -cmin +$(/usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime) ! -execdir fuser -s {} 2>/dev/null \; -delete) Jun 6 22:54:21 kcuzner-desktop kernel: [57905.560822] show_signal_msg: 36 callbacks suppressed Jun 6 22:54:21 kcuzner-desktop kernel: [57905.560828] chromium-browse[9139]: segfault at 0 ip 00007f3a78efade0 sp 00007fff7e2d2c18 error 4 in chromium-browser[7f3a76604000+412b000] Jun 6 23:05:43 kcuzner-desktop kernel: [58586.415158] chromium-browse[21025]: segfault at 0 ip 00007f3a78efade0 sp 00007fff7e2d2c18 error 4 in chromium-browser[7f3a76604000+412b000] Jun 6 23:09:01 kcuzner-desktop CRON[13542]: (root) CMD ( [ -x /usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime ] && [ -d /var/lib/php5 ] && find /var/lib/php5/ -depth -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type f -cmin +$(/usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime) ! -execdir fuser -s {} 2>/dev/null \; -delete) Jun 6 23:12:43 kcuzner-desktop kernel: [59006.317590] usb 2-1.7: USB disconnect, device number 8 Jun 6 23:12:43 kcuzner-desktop kernel: [59006.319672] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdg] Synchronizing SCSI cache Jun 6 23:12:43 kcuzner-desktop kernel: [59006.319737] sd 7:0:0:0: [sdg] Result: hostbyte=DID_NO_CONNECT driverbyte=DRIVER_OK Jun 6 23:17:01 kcuzner-desktop CRON[26580]: (root) CMD ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly) Jun 6 23:19:04 kcuzner-desktop acpid: client connected from 29925[0:0] Jun 6 23:19:04 kcuzner-desktop acpid: 1 client rule loaded Jun 6 23:19:07 kcuzner-desktop rtkit-daemon[1835]: Successfully made thread 30131 of process 30131 (n/a) owned by '104' high priority at nice level -11. Jun 6 23:19:07 kcuzner-desktop rtkit-daemon[1835]: Supervising 1 threads of 1 processes of 1 users. Jun 6 23:19:07 kcuzner-desktop rtkit-daemon[1835]: Successfully made thread 30162 of process 30131 (n/a) owned by '104' RT at priority 5. Jun 6 23:19:07 kcuzner-desktop rtkit-daemon[1835]: Supervising 2 threads of 1 processes of 1 users. Jun 6 23:19:07 kcuzner-desktop rtkit-daemon[1835]: Successfully made thread 30163 of process 30131 (n/a) owned by '104' RT at priority 5. Jun 6 23:19:07 kcuzner-desktop rtkit-daemon[1835]: Supervising 3 threads of 1 processes of 1 users. Jun 6 23:19:07 kcuzner-desktop bluetoothd[1140]: Endpoint registered: sender=:1.239 path=/MediaEndpoint/HFPAG Jun 6 23:19:07 kcuzner-desktop bluetoothd[1140]: Endpoint registered: sender=:1.239 path=/MediaEndpoint/A2DPSource Jun 6 23:19:07 kcuzner-desktop bluetoothd[1140]: Endpoint registered: sender=:1.239 path=/MediaEndpoint/A2DPSink Jun 6 23:19:07 kcuzner-desktop rtkit-daemon[1835]: Successfully made thread 30166 of process 30166 (n/a) owned by '104' high priority at nice level -11. Jun 6 23:19:07 kcuzner-desktop rtkit-daemon[1835]: Supervising 4 threads of 2 processes of 1 users. Jun 6 23:19:07 kcuzner-desktop pulseaudio[30166]: [pulseaudio] pid.c: Daemon already running. Jun 6 23:19:10 kcuzner-desktop acpid: client 2942[0:0] has disconnected Jun 6 23:19:10 kcuzner-desktop acpid: client 29925[0:0] has disconnected Jun 6 23:19:10 kcuzner-desktop acpid: client connected from 1286[0:0] Jun 6 23:19:10 kcuzner-desktop acpid: 1 client rule loaded Jun 6 23:19:31 kcuzner-desktop bluetoothd[1140]: Endpoint unregistered: sender=:1.239 path=/MediaEndpoint/HFPAG Jun 6 23:19:31 kcuzner-desktop bluetoothd[1140]: Endpoint unregistered: sender=:1.239 path=/MediaEndpoint/A2DPSource Jun 6 23:19:31 kcuzner-desktop bluetoothd[1140]: Endpoint unregistered: sender=:1.239 path=/MediaEndpoint/A2DPSink Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop kernel: imklog 5.8.6, log source = /proc/kmsg started. Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop rsyslogd: [origin software="rsyslogd" swVersion="5.8.6" x-pid="1053" x-info="http://www.rsyslog.com"] start Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop rsyslogd: rsyslogd's groupid changed to 103 Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop rsyslogd: rsyslogd's userid changed to 101 Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop rsyslogd-2039: Could not open output pipe '/dev/xconsole' [try http://www.rsyslog.com/e/2039 ] Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop modem-manager[1070]: <info> Loaded plugin Ericsson MBM Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop modem-manager[1070]: <info> Loaded plugin Sierra Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop modem-manager[1070]: <info> Loaded plugin Generic Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop modem-manager[1070]: <info> Loaded plugin Huawei Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop modem-manager[1070]: <info> Loaded plugin Linktop Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop bluetoothd[1072]: Failed to init gatt_example plugin Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop bluetoothd[1072]: Listening for HCI events on hci0 Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop NetworkManager[1080]: <info> NetworkManager (version 0.9.4.0) is starting... Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop NetworkManager[1080]: <info> Read config file /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop NetworkManager[1080]: <info> VPN: loaded org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.pptp Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop NetworkManager[1080]: <info> DNS: loaded plugin dnsmasq Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop kernel: [ 0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpuset Jun 6 23:28:12 kcuzner-desktop kernel: [ 0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpu Sorry it's so huge; the restart happens at 23:28:12 I believe and all I see is that chromium segfaulted a few times. I wouldn't think a segfault from an individual program on the computer would crash it, but could that be the issue?

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