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  • PowerShell Script to Enumerate SharePoint 2010 or 2013 Permissions and Active Directory Group Membership

    - by Brian T. Jackett
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/bjackett/archive/2013/07/01/powershell-script-to-enumerate-sharepoint-2010-or-2013-permissions-and.aspx   In this post I will present a script to enumerate SharePoint 2010 or 2013 permissions across the entire farm down to the site (SPWeb) level.  As a bonus this script also recursively expands the membership of any Active Directory (AD) group including nested groups which you wouldn’t be able to find through the SharePoint UI.   History     Back in 2009 (over 4 years ago now) I published one my most read blog posts about enumerating SharePoint 2007 permissions.  I finally got around to updating that script to remove deprecated APIs, supporting the SharePoint 2010 commandlets, and fixing a few bugs.  There are 2 things that script did that I had to remove due to major architectural or procedural changes in the script. Indenting the XML output Ability to search for a specific user    I plan to add back the ability to search for a specific user but wanted to get this version published first.  As for indenting the XML that could be added but would take some effort.  If there is user demand for it (let me know in the comments or email me using the contact button at top of blog) I’ll move it up in priorities.    As a side note you may also notice that I’m not using the Active Directory commandlets.  This was a conscious decision since not all environments have them available.  Instead I’m relying on the older [ADSI] type accelerator and APIs.  It does add a significant amount of code to the script but it is necessary for compatibility.  Hopefully in a few years if I need to update again I can remove that legacy code.   Solution    Below is the script to enumerate SharePoint 2010 and 2013 permissions down to site level.  You can also download it from my SkyDrive account or my posting on the TechNet Script Center Repository. SkyDrive TechNet Script Center Repository http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Enumerate-SharePoint-2010-35976bdb   001 002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010 011 012 013 014 015 016 017 018 019 020 021 022 023 024 025 026 027 028 029 030 031 032 033 034 035 036 037 038 039 040 041 042 043 044 045 046 047 048 049 050 051 052 053 054 055 056 057 058 059 060 061 062 063 064 065 066 067 068 069 070 071 072 073 074 075 076 077 078 079 080 081 082 083 084 085 086 087 088 089 090 091 092 093 094 095 096 097 098 099 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 ########################################################### #DisplaySPWebApp8.ps1 # #Author: Brian T. Jackett #Last Modified Date: 2013-07-01 # #Traverse the entire web app site by site to display # hierarchy and users with permissions to site. ########################################################### function Expand-ADGroupMembership {     Param     (         [Parameter(Mandatory=$true,                    Position=0)]         [string]         $ADGroupName,         [Parameter(Position=1)]         [string]         $RoleBinding     )     Process     {         $roleBindingText = ""         if(-not [string]::IsNullOrEmpty($RoleBinding))         {             $roleBindingText = " RoleBindings=`"$roleBindings`""         }         Write-Output "<ADGroup Name=`"$($ADGroupName)`"$roleBindingText>"         $domain = $ADGroupName.substring(0, $ADGroupName.IndexOf("\") + 1)         $groupName = $ADGroupName.Remove(0, $ADGroupName.IndexOf("\") + 1)                                     #BEGIN - CODE ADAPTED FROM SCRIPT CENTER SAMPLE CODE REPOSITORY         #http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/scripts/powershell/search/users/srch106.mspx         #GET AD GROUP FROM DIRECTORY SERVICES SEARCH         $strFilter = "(&(objectCategory=Group)(name="+($groupName)+"))"         $objDomain = New-Object System.DirectoryServices.DirectoryEntry         $objSearcher = New-Object System.DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher         $objSearcher.SearchRoot = $objDomain         $objSearcher.Filter = $strFilter         # specify properties to be returned         $colProplist = ("name","member","objectclass")         foreach ($i in $colPropList)         {             $catcher = $objSearcher.PropertiesToLoad.Add($i)         }         $colResults = $objSearcher.FindAll()         #END - CODE ADAPTED FROM SCRIPT CENTER SAMPLE CODE REPOSITORY         foreach ($objResult in $colResults)         {             if($objResult.Properties["Member"] -ne $null)             {                 foreach ($member in $objResult.Properties["Member"])                 {                     $indMember = [adsi] "LDAP://$member"                     $fullMemberName = $domain + ($indMember.Name)                                         #if($indMember["objectclass"]                         # if child AD group continue down chain                         if(($indMember | Select-Object -ExpandProperty objectclass) -contains "group")                         {                             Expand-ADGroupMembership -ADGroupName $fullMemberName                         }                         elseif(($indMember | Select-Object -ExpandProperty objectclass) -contains "user")                         {                             Write-Output "<ADUser>$fullMemberName</ADUser>"                         }                 }             }         }                 Write-Output "</ADGroup>"     } } #end Expand-ADGroupMembership # main portion of script if((Get-PSSnapin -Name microsoft.sharepoint.powershell) -eq $null) {     Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell } $farm = Get-SPFarm Write-Output "<Farm Guid=`"$($farm.Id)`">" $webApps = Get-SPWebApplication foreach($webApp in $webApps) {     Write-Output "<WebApplication URL=`"$($webApp.URL)`" Name=`"$($webApp.Name)`">"     foreach($site in $webApp.Sites)     {         Write-Output "<SiteCollection URL=`"$($site.URL)`">"                 foreach($web in $site.AllWebs)         {             Write-Output "<Site URL=`"$($web.URL)`">"             # if site inherits permissions from parent then stop processing             if($web.HasUniqueRoleAssignments -eq $false)             {                 Write-Output "<!-- Inherits role assignments from parent -->"             }             # else site has unique permissions             else             {                 foreach($assignment in $web.RoleAssignments)                 {                     if(-not [string]::IsNullOrEmpty($assignment.Member.Xml))                     {                         $roleBindings = ($assignment.RoleDefinitionBindings | Select-Object -ExpandProperty name) -join ","                         # check if assignment is SharePoint Group                         if($assignment.Member.XML.StartsWith('<Group') -eq "True")                         {                             Write-Output "<SPGroup Name=`"$($assignment.Member.Name)`" RoleBindings=`"$roleBindings`">"                             foreach($SPGroupMember in $assignment.Member.Users)                             {                                 # if SharePoint group member is an AD Group                                 if($SPGroupMember.IsDomainGroup)                                 {                                     Expand-ADGroupMembership -ADGroupName $SPGroupMember.Name                                 }                                 # else SharePoint group member is an AD User                                 else                                 {                                     # remove claim portion of user login                                     #Write-Output "<ADUser>$($SPGroupMember.UserLogin.Remove(0,$SPGroupMember.UserLogin.IndexOf("|") + 1))</ADUser>"                                     Write-Output "<ADUser>$($SPGroupMember.UserLogin)</ADUser>"                                 }                             }                             Write-Output "</SPGroup>"                         }                         # else an indivdually listed AD group or user                         else                         {                             if($assignment.Member.IsDomainGroup)                             {                                 Expand-ADGroupMembership -ADGroupName $assignment.Member.Name -RoleBinding $roleBindings                             }                             else                             {                                 # remove claim portion of user login                                 #Write-Output "<ADUser>$($assignment.Member.UserLogin.Remove(0,$assignment.Member.UserLogin.IndexOf("|") + 1))</ADUser>"                                                                 Write-Output "<ADUser RoleBindings=`"$roleBindings`">$($assignment.Member.UserLogin)</ADUser>"                             }                         }                     }                 }             }             Write-Output "</Site>"             $web.Dispose()         }         Write-Output "</SiteCollection>"         $site.Dispose()     }     Write-Output "</WebApplication>" } Write-Output "</Farm>"      The output from the script can be sent to an XML which you can then explore using the [XML] type accelerator.  This lets you explore the XML structure however you see fit.  See the screenshot below for an example.      If you do view the XML output through a text editor (Notepad++ for me) notice the format.  Below we see a SharePoint site that has a SharePoint group Demo Members with Edit permissions assigned.  Demo Members has an AD group corp\developers as a member.  corp\developers has a child AD group called corp\DevelopersSub with 1 AD user in that sub group.  As you can see the script recursively expands the AD hierarchy.   Conclusion    It took me 4 years to finally update this script but I‘m happy to get this published.  I was able to fix a number of errors and smooth out some rough edges.  I plan to develop this into a more full fledged tool over the next year with more features and flexibility (copy permissions, search for individual user or group, optional enumerate lists / items, etc.).  If you have any feedback, feature requests, or issues running it please let me know.  Enjoy the script!         -Frog Out

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, May 14, 2014

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, May 14, 2014Popular ReleasesQuickMon: Version 3.10: Adding the ability to see 'history' of Collector states (including details of errors or warnings at that time). The history size is configurable (default is switched off) and the Windows Service completely ignores keeping history (no UI or user to access it anyway). The Collector stats window now displays this history plus multiple collector stats windows can be opened at the same time. Additionally fixed a bug in the event log collector that reported an 'Error' state when an 'out of bounds' ...xFunc: xFunc 2.15.4: Fixed bug in Processor.csTFS Planning and Disaster Recovery Avoidance Guide: v1.4.BETA - TFS, DR and Azure IaaS Planning Guides: Welcome to the TFS Planning and DR Avoidance Guidance What is new? A new crisper, more compact style, which is easier to consume on multiple devices without sacrificing any content. Also included are the new TFS on Azure IaaS guide and supplementary guides. Note Capacity planning workbook and posters are included in the Everything Zip package. Quality-Bar Detail Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has been through an independent technical review ...WinAudit: WinAudit Freeware v3.0: WinAudit.exe v3.0 MD5: 88750CCF49FF7418199B2645755830FA Known Issues: 1. Report creation can be very slow when right-to-left (Hebrew) characters are present. 2. Emsisoft Anti-Malware may stop and/or quarantine WinAudit. This happens when WinAudit attempts to obtain a list if running programmes. You will need to set an exception rule in Emsisoft to allow WinAudit to run.MVCwCMS - ASP.NET MVC CMS: MVCwCMS 2.2.2: Updated CKFinder config. For the installation instructions visit the documentation page: https://mvcwcms.codeplex.com/documentationTerraMap (Terraria World Map Viewer): TerraMap 1.0.4: Added support for the new Terraria v1.2.4 update. New items, walls, and tiles Fixed Issue 35206: Hightlight/Find doesn't work for Demon Altars Fixed finding Demon Hearts/Shadow Orbs Added ability to find Enchanted Swords (in the stone) and Water Bolt books Fixed installer not uninstalling older versions The setup file will make sure .NET 4 is installed, install TerraMap, create desktop and start menu shortcuts, add a .wld file association, and launch TerraMap. If you prefer the zip ...WPF Localization Extension: v2.2.1: Issue #9277 Issue #9292 Issue #9311 Issue #9312 Issue #9313 Issue #9314CtrlAltStudio Viewer: CtrlAltStudio Viewer 1.2.1.41167 Release: This release of the CtrlAltStudio Viewer includes the following significant features: Oculus Rift support. Stereoscopic 3D display support. Variable walking / flying speed. Xbox 360 Controller support. Kinect for Windows support. Based on Firestorm viewer 4.6.5 codebase. For more details, see the release notes linked to below. Release notes: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/release-notes/1-2-1-41167-release Support info: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/support Privacy policy: http:/...ExtJS based ASP.NET Controls: FineUI v4.0.6: FineUI(???) ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET ??? FineUI??? ?? No JavaScript,No CSS,No UpdatePanel,No ViewState,No WebServices ??????? ?????? IE 8.0+、Chrome、Firefox、Opera、Safari ???? Apache License v2.0 ?:ExtJS ?? GPL v3 ?????(http://www.sencha.com/license) ???? ??:http://fineui.com/ ??:http://fineui.com/bbs/ ??:http://fineui.com/demo/ ??:http://fineui.com/doc/ ??:http://fineui.codeplex.com/ FineUI ???? ExtJS ????????,???? ExtJS ?,?????: 1. ????? FineUI ? ExtJS ? http://fineui.com/bbs/forum.ph...Office App Model Samples: Office App Model Samples v2.0: Office App Model Samples v2.0Readable Passphrase Generator: KeePass Plugin 0.13.0: Version 0.13.0 Added "mutators" which add uppercase and numbers to passphrases (to help complying with upper, lower, number complexity rules). Additional API methods which help consuming the generator from 3rd party c# projects. 13,160 words in the default dictionary (~600 more than previous release).CS-Script for Notepad++ (C# intellisense and code execution): Release v1.0.25.0: Release v1.0.25.0 MemberInfo/MethodInfo popup is now positioned properly to fit the screen In MethodInfo popup method signatures are word-wrapped Implemented Debug text value visualizer Pining sub-values from Watch PanelWrapper for the PAYMILL API: Paymill API Wrapper: Add Description in PreauthorizationHow to develop an autodialer / predictive dialer in C#: VoIP AutoDialer in C Sharp: This is the downloadable source code for this example project that is intended to help you in developing your own VoIP autodialer application in C#.R.NET: R.NET 1.5.12: R.NET 1.5.12 is a beta release towards R.NET 1.6. You are encouraged to use 1.5.12 now and give feedback. See the documentation for setup and usage instructions. Main changes for R.NET 1.5.12: The C stack limit was not disabled on Windows. For reasons possibly peculiar to R, this means that non-concurrent access to R from multiple threads was not stable. This is now fixed, with the fix validated with a unit test. Thanks to Odugen, skyguy94, and previously others (evolvedmicrobe, tomasp) fo...CTI Text Encryption: CTI Text Encryption 5.2: Change log: 5.2 - Remove Cut button. - Fixed Reset All button does not reset encrypted text column. - Switch button location between Copy and Paste. - Enable users to use local fonts to display characters of their language correctly. (A font settings file will be saved at the same folder of this program.) 5.1 - Improve encryption process. - Minor UI update. - Version 5.1 is not compatible with older version. 5.0 - Improve encryption algorithm. - Simply inner non-encryption related mec...SEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.029.006 Release 1: Fix to allow keyboard search on load dialog. (type the first few letters of your save) Fixed check for new release. Changed the way ship details are loaded to alleviate load time for worlds with very large ships (100,000+ blocks). Fixed Image importer, was incorrectly listing 'Asteroid' as import option. Minor changes to menus (text and appearance) for clarity and OS consistency. Added in reading of world palette for color dialog editor. WIP on subsystem editor. Can now multiselec...Tiny Wifi Host: Tiny Wifi Host 3.0.0.0: Tiny Wifi Hotspot Creator (Portable) v3 size: 50KB-140KB New Features: Friendly name for connected devices instead of Mac-Address (Double click selected device to enter friendly name) Saves device names to devices.xml Better error reporting+solutions Warning sound when number of connected devices exceed a certain number. (useful when only certain number of devices must be connected at a time) Many Bug Fixes. NoAudio files does not include connect, disconnect and warning audio to dec...Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.597b: Thank you for being patient, againThere are a number of fixes in place with this release. and some new features added. Most are self explanatory, so check out the options in Preferences. Couple of new Features:* Movie - Allow save Title and Sort Title in Title Case format. * Movie - Allow save fanart.jpg if movie in folder. * TV - display episode source. Get episode source from episode filename. Fixed:* Movie - Added Fill Tags from plot keywords to Batch Rescraper. * Movie - Fixed TMDB s...SimCityPak: SimCityPak 0.3.0.0: Contains several bugfixes, newly identified properties and some UI improvements. Main new features UI overhaul for the main index list: Icons for each different index, including icons for different property files Tooltips for all relevant fields Removed clutter Identified hundreds of additional properties (thanks to MaxisGuillaume) - this should make modding gameplay easierNew ProjectsAlumno-Materia-Inscripcion: NADIA DEJATE DE JODEEERAndroid_Training_Leasing: Android Training LeasingBob The Simple Text Game: Bob The Simple Text Game is a Simple Text GameConference Booking System: Web application with the purpose of easily managing meetings in an office with multiple companiesCRM Web API Lead Capture Example: Sample Visual Studio 2013 project that provides an example of how you could use Web API and Microsoft Azure to capture HTML form data.FoosballEye: Foosball ranking application - allow to create simple ranking of foosball players base on played matches.Frequency Analyzer: Tool to perform frequency analysis on any text-based cryptogram. fromen_playground: We do stuff!!!!Galaktika ERP Helper: ??????????????? ???????, ??????????????? ??? ?????????? ?????????? ????????? ??????????, ???????????? ?????? ?? ??????? «????????? ERP»gitprojtest5132014: awdfHtml Markup Minifier (Orchard Module): Orchard module designed to reduce size of output HTML to bare minimum while maintaining same functionality. Faster loading, less bandwidth use.ID3 Hunter: The ID3 Hunter is a simple application that uses the Last.FM music database to automatically detect song metadata for MP3 files.Jquery Dirty Flag: Smart Way to Manage Dirty Flag Using JqueryJsxyUIS: ??????????????????????NetDirkFramework: NetDirkFramework?????.NET/ASP.NETMVC/WebAPI/ADO.NET/EF、jQuery?jEasyUI??????、??????MIS????????????。?????,?????????????????????????????????????????????。ocbizweb: ocbizwebPower Pole Survey: This is a showcase of my knowledge in MVVM Patterns.prestamosapi: prestamosapiRedLineTest: This is a test of the online collaboration tooling from MS. We are all using Visual Studio 2010.SharePoint Database Explorer: Connect to any SharePoint 2010 or 2013 content database to view and download documents, metadata and list items.Systematize: to arrange in accord with a definite plan or scheme : order systematically <the need to systematize their work>Visualizers: This project is used for how we want visualize our Data in debug mode For Visual studio 2010,zSILENCER: reverse MKULTRA??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????????,????,???????、???????????,???????????,????,?????,???????。 ????-????【??】????????: ?????????????????????,????????????,?????、??、????,?????,??????! ?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????????????????,???、???!???????,????????????????,????????????,???! ?????-?????【??】?????????: ????????????、?????、?????、?????、?????、????,???????????,?????,??????! ????-????【??】????????: ????????【.????.????.????.????.】??【??】:、??、??、??、??、??、??、??、??、??、??、?????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????????????,????,????,????,???????,?????,?????.??????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????、?????,????????????????????,????,????,??????。 ????-????【??】????????: ????????????????,????,??.??.??.??.??.??.??.???,????,???????! ?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????????????????????????:???????,??????,????,????,????,?????! ?????-?????【??】?????????: ?????????????,????????,?????,???,???????????,???????????,?????,??????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????,??????????????????????,???????????????,?????????????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????????????,?????, ... ????????????,????,????,?????,???????。 ????-????【??】????????: ???????????????????,?????????/?,,???????????,??????????????! ?????-?????【??】?????????: ????????????????????,?????????、??、??、????,??????????,?????????????! ?????-?????【??】?????????: ????????????????、????、????、??????????,???,?????,???????????????. ????-????【??】????????: ?????????????????,?????????????,????,?????????,?????????????,?????,?????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????,?????????????? ??。????????、????、????、?????????? ???????。 ??????-??????【??】??????????: ???????????????????????:????、????、??????????????,????????。????????! ????-????【??】????????: ????????????????、?????、?????、????、?????,??????????。????????????????! ?????-?????【??】?????????: ??????????????????????????,??????????,????,????,?????????、??????,??????。 ?????-?????【??】?????????: ????????????????????????????,??????????,????,????,?????????、??????,??????。

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  • Pet Peeves with the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace

    - by Bil Simser
    Have you ever noticed how something things just gnaw at your very being. This is the case with the WP7 marketplace, the Zune software, and the things that drive me batshit crazy with a side of fries. To go. I wanted to share. XBox Live is Not the Centre of the Universe Okay, it’s fine that the Zune software has an XBox live tag for games so can see them clearly but do we really need to have it shoved down our throats. On every click? Click on Games in the marketplace: The first thing that it defaults to on the filters on the right is XBox Live: Okay. Fine. However if you change it (say to Paid) then click onto a title when you come back from that title is the filter still set to Paid? No. It’s back to XBox Live again. Really? Give us a break. If you change to any filter on any other genre then click on the selected title, it doesn’t revert back to anything. It stays on the selection you picked. Let’s be fair here. The Games genre should behave just like every other one. If I pick Paid then when I come back to the list please remember that. Double Dipping On the subject of XBox Live titles, Microsoft (and developers who have an agreement with Microsoft to produce Live titles, which generally rules out indie game developers) is double dipping with regards to exposure of their titles. Here’s the Puzzle and Trivia Game section on the Marketplace for XBox Live titles: And here’s the same category filtered on Paid titles: See the problem? Two indie titles while the rest are XBox Live ones. So while XBL has it’s filter, they also get to showcase their wares in the Paid and Free filters as well. If you’re going to have an XBox Live filter then use it and stop pushing down indie titles until they’re off the screen (on some genres this is already the case). Free and Paid titles should be just that and not include XBox Live ones. If you’re really stoked that people can’t find the Free XBox Live titles vs. the paid ones, then create a Free XBox Live filter and a Paid XBox Live filter. I don’t think we would mind much. Whose Trial is it Anyways? You might notice apps in the marketplace with titles like “My Fart App Professional Lite” or “Silicon Lamb Spleen Builder Free”. When you submit and app to the marketplace it can either be free or paid. If it’s a paid app you also have the option to submit it with Trial capabilities. It’s up to you to decide what you offer in the trial version but trial versions can be purchased from within the app so after someone trys out your app (for free) and wants to unlock the Super Secret Obama Spy Ring Level, they can just go to the marketplace from your app (if you built that functionality in) and upgrade to the paid version. However it creates a rift of sorts when it comes to visibility. Some developers go the route of the paid app with a trial version, others decide to submit *two* apps instead of one. One app is the “Free” or “Lite” verions and the other is the paid version. Why go to the hassle of submitting two apps when you can just create a trial version in the same app? Again, visibility. There’s no way to tell Paid apps with Trial versions and ones without (it’s an option, you don’t have to provide trial versions, although I think it’s a good idea). However there is a way to see the Free apps from the Paid ones so some submit the two apps and have the Free version have links to buy the paid one (again through the Marketplace tasks in the API). What we as developers need for visibility is a new filter. Trial. That’s it. It would simply filter on Paid apps that have trial capabilities and surface up those apps just like the free ones. If Microsoft added this filter to the marketplace, it would eliminate the need for people to submit their “Free” and “Lite” versions and make it easier for the developer not to have to maintain two systems. I mean, is it really that hard? Can’t be any more difficult than the XBox Live Filter that’s already there. Location is Everything The last thing on my bucket list is about location. When I launch Zune I’m running in my native location setting, Canada. What’s great is that I navigate to the Travel Tools section where I have one of my apps and behold the splendour that I see: There are my apps in the number 1 and number 4 slot for top selling in that category. I show it to my wife to make up for the sleepless nights writing this stuff and we dance around and celebrate. Then I change my location on my operation system to United States and re-launch Zune. WTF? My flight app has slipped to the 10th spot (I’m only showing 4 across here out of the 7 in Zune) and my border check app that was #1 is now in the 32nd spot! End of celebration. Not only is relevance being looked at here, I value the comments people make on may apps as do most developers. I want to respond to them and show them that I’m listening. The next version of my border app will provide multiple camera angles. However when I’m running in my native Canada location, I only see two reviews. Changing over to United States I see fourteen! While there are tools out there to provide with you a unified view, I shouldn’t have to rely on them. My own Zune desktop software should allow me to see everything. I realize that some developers will submit an app and only target it for some locations and that’s their choice. However I shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to see what apps are ahead of mine, or see people comments and ratings. Another proposal. Either unify the marketplace (i.e. when I’m looking at it show me everything combined) or let me choose a filter. I think the first option might be difficult as you’re trying to average out top selling apps across all markets and have to deal with some apps that have been omitted from some markets. Although I think you could come up with a set of use cases that would handle that, maybe that’s too much work. At the very least, let us developers view the markets in a drop down or something from within the Zune desktop. Having to shut down Zune, change our location, and re-launch Zune to see other perspectives is just too onerous. A Call to Action These are just one mans opinion. Do you agree? Disagree? Feel hungry for a bacon sandwich? Let everyone know via the comments below. Perhaps someone from Microsoft will be reading and take some of these ideas under advisement. Maybe not, but at least let’s get the word out that we really want to see some change. Egypt can do it, why not WP7 developers!

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  • Dell Studio 1737 Overheating

    - by Sean
    I am using a Dell Studio 1737 laptop. I have been running Linux and have ran Windows recently for a very long time. I upgraded to the 10.10 distribution and since that distro, it seems that for some reason all Linuxes want to push my laptop to extremes. I have recently upgraded to Ubuntu 12.04 since I heart that it contains kernel fixes for overheating issues. 12.04 will actually eventually cool the system, but that is after the fans run to the point it sounds like a jet aircraft taking off and the laptop makes my hands sweat. In trying to combat the heat problems I have done the following: I installed the propriatery driver for my ATI Mobility HD 3600. I have tried both the one in the Additional Drivers and also tried ATI's latest greatest version. If I don't install this my laptop will overheat and shut off in minutes. Both seem to perform similarly, but the heat problem remains. I have tried limiting the CPU by installing the CPUFreq Indicator. This does help keep the machine from shutting off, but the heat is still uncomfortable to be around the machine. I usually run in power saver mode or run the cpu at 1.6 GHZ just to error on safety. I ran sensors-detect and here are the results: sean@sean-Studio-1737:~$ sudo sensors-detect # sensors-detect revision 5984 (2011-07-10 21:22:53 +0200) # System: Dell Inc. Studio 1737 (laptop) # Board: Dell Inc. 0F237N This program will help you determine which kernel modules you need to load to use lm_sensors most effectively. It is generally safe and recommended to accept the default answers to all questions, unless you know what you're doing. Some south bridges, CPUs or memory controllers contain embedded sensors. Do you want to scan for them? This is totally safe. (YES/no): y Module cpuid loaded successfully. Silicon Integrated Systems SIS5595... No VIA VT82C686 Integrated Sensors... No VIA VT8231 Integrated Sensors... No AMD K8 thermal sensors... No AMD Family 10h thermal sensors... No AMD Family 11h thermal sensors... No AMD Family 12h and 14h thermal sensors... No AMD Family 15h thermal sensors... No AMD Family 15h power sensors... No Intel digital thermal sensor... Success! (driver `coretemp') Intel AMB FB-DIMM thermal sensor... No VIA C7 thermal sensor... No VIA Nano thermal sensor... No Some Super I/O chips contain embedded sensors. We have to write to standard I/O ports to probe them. This is usually safe. Do you want to scan for Super I/O sensors? (YES/no): y Probing for Super-I/O at 0x2e/0x2f Trying family `National Semiconductor/ITE'... No Trying family `SMSC'... No Trying family `VIA/Winbond/Nuvoton/Fintek'... No Trying family `ITE'... No Probing for Super-I/O at 0x4e/0x4f Trying family `National Semiconductor/ITE'... Yes Found `ITE IT8512E/F/G Super IO' (but not activated) Some hardware monitoring chips are accessible through the ISA I/O ports. We have to write to arbitrary I/O ports to probe them. This is usually safe though. Yes, you do have ISA I/O ports even if you do not have any ISA slots! Do you want to scan the ISA I/O ports? (YES/no): y Probing for `National Semiconductor LM78' at 0x290... No Probing for `National Semiconductor LM79' at 0x290... No Probing for `Winbond W83781D' at 0x290... No Probing for `Winbond W83782D' at 0x290... No Lastly, we can probe the I2C/SMBus adapters for connected hardware monitoring devices. This is the most risky part, and while it works reasonably well on most systems, it has been reported to cause trouble on some systems. Do you want to probe the I2C/SMBus adapters now? (YES/no): y Using driver `i2c-i801' for device 0000:00:1f.3: Intel ICH9 Module i2c-i801 loaded successfully. Module i2c-dev loaded successfully. Now follows a summary of the probes I have just done. Just press ENTER to continue: Driver `coretemp': * Chip `Intel digital thermal sensor' (confidence: 9) To load everything that is needed, add this to /etc/modules: #----cut here---- # Chip drivers coretemp #----cut here---- If you have some drivers built into your kernel, the list above will contain too many modules. Skip the appropriate ones! Do you want to add these lines automatically to /etc/modules? (yes/NO)y Successful! Monitoring programs won't work until the needed modules are loaded. You may want to run 'service module-init-tools start' to load them. Unloading i2c-dev... OK Unloading i2c-i801... OK Unloading cpuid... OK sean@sean-Studio-1737:~$ sudo service module-init-tools start module-init-tools stop/waiting I also tried installing i8k but that didn't work since it didn't seem to be able to communicate with the hardware (probably for different kind of device). Also I ran acpi -V and here are the results: Battery 0: Full, 100% Battery 0: design capacity 613 mAh, last full capacity 260 mAh = 42% Adapter 0: on-line Thermal 0: ok, 49.0 degrees C Thermal 0: trip point 0 switches to mode critical at temperature 100.0 degrees C Thermal 1: ok, 48.0 degrees C Thermal 1: trip point 0 switches to mode critical at temperature 100.0 degrees C Thermal 2: ok, 51.0 degrees C Thermal 2: trip point 0 switches to mode critical at temperature 100.0 degrees C Cooling 0: LCD 0 of 15 Cooling 1: Processor 0 of 10 Cooling 2: Processor 0 of 10 I have hit a wall and don't know what to do now. Any advice is appreciated.

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  • Fraud Detection with the SQL Server Suite Part 2

    - by Dejan Sarka
    This is the second part of the fraud detection whitepaper. You can find the first part in my previous blog post about this topic. My Approach to Data Mining Projects It is impossible to evaluate the time and money needed for a complete fraud detection infrastructure in advance. Personally, I do not know the customer’s data in advance. I don’t know whether there is already an existing infrastructure, like a data warehouse, in place, or whether we would need to build one from scratch. Therefore, I always suggest to start with a proof-of-concept (POC) project. A POC takes something between 5 and 10 working days, and involves personnel from the customer’s site – either employees or outsourced consultants. The team should include a subject matter expert (SME) and at least one information technology (IT) expert. The SME must be familiar with both the domain in question as well as the meaning of data at hand, while the IT expert should be familiar with the structure of data, how to access it, and have some programming (preferably Transact-SQL) knowledge. With more than one IT expert the most time consuming work, namely data preparation and overview, can be completed sooner. I assume that the relevant data is already extracted and available at the very beginning of the POC project. If a customer wants to have their people involved in the project directly and requests the transfer of knowledge, the project begins with training. I strongly advise this approach as it offers the establishment of a common background for all people involved, the understanding of how the algorithms work and the understanding of how the results should be interpreted, a way of becoming familiar with the SQL Server suite, and more. Once the data has been extracted, the customer’s SME (i.e. the analyst), and the IT expert assigned to the project will learn how to prepare the data in an efficient manner. Together with me, knowledge and expertise allow us to focus immediately on the most interesting attributes and identify any additional, calculated, ones soon after. By employing our programming knowledge, we can, for example, prepare tens of derived variables, detect outliers, identify the relationships between pairs of input variables, and more, in only two or three days, depending on the quantity and the quality of input data. I favor the customer’s decision of assigning additional personnel to the project. For example, I actually prefer to work with two teams simultaneously. I demonstrate and explain the subject matter by applying techniques directly on the data managed by each team, and then both teams continue to work on the data overview and data preparation under our supervision. I explain to the teams what kind of results we expect, the reasons why they are needed, and how to achieve them. Afterwards we review and explain the results, and continue with new instructions, until we resolve all known problems. Simultaneously with the data preparation the data overview is performed. The logic behind this task is the same – again I show to the teams involved the expected results, how to achieve them and what they mean. This is also done in multiple cycles as is the case with data preparation, because, quite frankly, both tasks are completely interleaved. A specific objective of the data overview is of principal importance – it is represented by a simple star schema and a simple OLAP cube that will first of all simplify data discovery and interpretation of the results, and will also prove useful in the following tasks. The presence of the customer’s SME is the key to resolving possible issues with the actual meaning of the data. We can always replace the IT part of the team with another database developer; however, we cannot conduct this kind of a project without the customer’s SME. After the data preparation and when the data overview is available, we begin the scientific part of the project. I assist the team in developing a variety of models, and in interpreting the results. The results are presented graphically, in an intuitive way. While it is possible to interpret the results on the fly, a much more appropriate alternative is possible if the initial training was also performed, because it allows the customer’s personnel to interpret the results by themselves, with only some guidance from me. The models are evaluated immediately by using several different techniques. One of the techniques includes evaluation over time, where we use an OLAP cube. After evaluating the models, we select the most appropriate model to be deployed for a production test; this allows the team to understand the deployment process. There are many possibilities of deploying data mining models into production; at the POC stage, we select the one that can be completed quickly. Typically, this means that we add the mining model as an additional dimension to an existing DW or OLAP cube, or to the OLAP cube developed during the data overview phase. Finally, we spend some time presenting the results of the POC project to the stakeholders and managers. Even from a POC, the customer will receive lots of benefits, all at the sole risk of spending money and time for a single 5 to 10 day project: The customer learns the basic patterns of frauds and fraud detection The customer learns how to do the entire cycle with their own people, only relying on me for the most complex problems The customer’s analysts learn how to perform much more in-depth analyses than they ever thought possible The customer’s IT experts learn how to perform data extraction and preparation much more efficiently than they did before All of the attendees of this training learn how to use their own creativity to implement further improvements of the process and procedures, even after the solution has been deployed to production The POC output for a smaller company or for a subsidiary of a larger company can actually be considered a finished, production-ready solution It is possible to utilize the results of the POC project at subsidiary level, as a finished POC project for the entire enterprise Typically, the project results in several important “side effects” Improved data quality Improved employee job satisfaction, as they are able to proactively contribute to the central knowledge about fraud patterns in the organization Because eventually more minds get to be involved in the enterprise, the company should expect more and better fraud detection patterns After the POC project is completed as described above, the actual project would not need months of engagement from my side. This is possible due to our preference to transfer the knowledge onto the customer’s employees: typically, the customer will use the results of the POC project for some time, and only engage me again to complete the project, or to ask for additional expertise if the complexity of the problem increases significantly. I usually expect to perform the following tasks: Establish the final infrastructure to measure the efficiency of the deployed models Deploy the models in additional scenarios Through reports By including Data Mining Extensions (DMX) queries in OLTP applications to support real-time early warnings Include data mining models as dimensions in OLAP cubes, if this was not done already during the POC project Create smart ETL applications that divert suspicious data for immediate or later inspection I would also offer to investigate how the outcome could be transferred automatically to the central system; for instance, if the POC project was performed in a subsidiary whereas a central system is available as well Of course, for the actual project, I would repeat the data and model preparation as needed It is virtually impossible to tell in advance how much time the deployment would take, before we decide together with customer what exactly the deployment process should cover. Without considering the deployment part, and with the POC project conducted as suggested above (including the transfer of knowledge), the actual project should still only take additional 5 to 10 days. The approximate timeline for the POC project is, as follows: 1-2 days of training 2-3 days for data preparation and data overview 2 days for creating and evaluating the models 1 day for initial preparation of the continuous learning infrastructure 1 day for presentation of the results and discussion of further actions Quite frequently I receive the following question: are we going to find the best possible model during the POC project, or during the actual project? My answer is always quite simple: I do not know. Maybe, if we would spend just one hour more for data preparation, or create just one more model, we could get better patterns and predictions. However, we simply must stop somewhere, and the best possible way to do this, according to my experience, is to restrict the time spent on the project in advance, after an agreement with the customer. You must also never forget that, because we build the complete learning infrastructure and transfer the knowledge, the customer will be capable of doing further investigations independently and improve the models and predictions over time without the need for a constant engagement with me.

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  • Java collision detection and player movement: tips

    - by Loris
    I have read a short guide for game develompent (java, without external libraries). I'm facing with collision detection and player (and bullets) movements. Now i put the code. Most of it is taken from the guide (should i link this guide?). I'm just trying to expand and complete it. This is the class that take care of updates movements and firing mechanism (and collision detection): public class ArenaController { private Arena arena; /** selected cell for movement */ private float targetX, targetY; /** true if droid is moving */ private boolean moving = false; /** true if droid is shooting to enemy */ private boolean shooting = false; private DroidController droidController; public ArenaController(Arena arena) { this.arena = arena; this.droidController = new DroidController(arena); } public void update(float delta) { Droid droid = arena.getDroid(); //droid movements if (moving) { droidController.moveDroid(delta, targetX, targetY); //check if arrived if (droid.getX() == targetX && droid.getY() == targetY) moving = false; } //firing mechanism if(shooting) { //stop shot if there aren't bullets if(arena.getBullets().isEmpty()) { shooting = false; } for(int i = 0; i < arena.getBullets().size(); i++) { //current bullet Bullet bullet = arena.getBullets().get(i); System.out.println(bullet.getBounds()); //angle calculation double angle = Math.atan2(bullet.getEnemyY() - bullet.getY(), bullet.getEnemyX() - bullet.getX()); //increments x and y bullet.setX((float) (bullet.getX() + (Math.cos(angle) * bullet.getSpeed() * delta))); bullet.setY((float) (bullet.getY() + (Math.sin(angle) * bullet.getSpeed() * delta))); //collision with obstacles for(int j = 0; j < arena.getObstacles().size(); j++) { Obstacle obs = arena.getObstacles().get(j); if(bullet.getBounds().intersects(obs.getBounds())) { System.out.println("Collision detect!"); arena.removeBullet(bullet); } } //collisions with enemies for(int j = 0; j < arena.getEnemies().size(); j++) { Enemy ene = arena.getEnemies().get(j); if(bullet.getBounds().intersects(ene.getBounds())) { System.out.println("Collision detect!"); arena.removeBullet(bullet); } } } } } public boolean onClick(int x, int y) { //click on empty cell if(arena.getGrid()[(int)(y / Arena.TILE)][(int)(x / Arena.TILE)] == null) { //coordinates targetX = x / Arena.TILE; targetY = y / Arena.TILE; //enables movement moving = true; return true; } //click on enemy: fire if(arena.getGrid()[(int)(y / Arena.TILE)][(int)(x / Arena.TILE)] instanceof Enemy) { //coordinates float enemyX = x / Arena.TILE; float enemyY = y / Arena.TILE; //new bullet Bullet bullet = new Bullet(); //start coordinates bullet.setX(arena.getDroid().getX()); bullet.setY(arena.getDroid().getY()); //end coordinates (enemie) bullet.setEnemyX(enemyX); bullet.setEnemyY(enemyY); //adds bullet to arena arena.addBullet(bullet); //enables shooting shooting = true; return true; } return false; } As you can see for collision detection i'm trying to use Rectangle object. Droid example: import java.awt.geom.Rectangle2D; public class Droid { private float x; private float y; private float speed = 20f; private float rotation = 0f; private float damage = 2f; public static final int DIAMETER = 32; private Rectangle2D rectangle; public Droid() { rectangle = new Rectangle2D.Float(x, y, DIAMETER, DIAMETER); } public float getX() { return x; } public void setX(float x) { this.x = x; //rectangle update rectangle.setRect(x, y, DIAMETER, DIAMETER); } public float getY() { return y; } public void setY(float y) { this.y = y; //rectangle update rectangle.setRect(x, y, DIAMETER, DIAMETER); } public float getSpeed() { return speed; } public void setSpeed(float speed) { this.speed = speed; } public float getRotation() { return rotation; } public void setRotation(float rotation) { this.rotation = rotation; } public float getDamage() { return damage; } public void setDamage(float damage) { this.damage = damage; } public Rectangle2D getRectangle() { return rectangle; } } For now, if i start the application and i try to shot to an enemy, is immediately detected a collision and the bullet is removed! Can you help me with this? If the bullet hit an enemy or an obstacle in his way, it must disappear. Ps: i know that the movements of the bullets should be managed in another class. This code is temporary. update I realized what happens, but not why. With those for loops (which checks collisions) the movements of the bullets are instantaneous instead of gradual. In addition to this, if i add the collision detection to the Droid, the method intersects returns true ALWAYS while the droid is moving! public void moveDroid(float delta, float x, float y) { Droid droid = arena.getDroid(); int bearing = 1; if (droid.getX() > x) { bearing = -1; } if (droid.getX() != x) { droid.setX(droid.getX() + bearing * droid.getSpeed() * delta); //obstacles collision detection for(Obstacle obs : arena.getObstacles()) { if(obs.getRectangle().intersects(droid.getRectangle())) { System.out.println("Collision detected"); //ALWAYS HERE } } //controlla se è arrivato if ((droid.getX() < x && bearing == -1) || (droid.getX() > x && bearing == 1)) droid.setX(x); } bearing = 1; if (droid.getY() > y) { bearing = -1; } if (droid.getY() != y) { droid.setY(droid.getY() + bearing * droid.getSpeed() * delta); if ((droid.getY() < y && bearing == -1) || (droid.getY() > y && bearing == 1)) droid.setY(y); } }

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  • ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0

    - by James Michael Hare
    I had always been a fan of ANTS products (Reflector is absolutely invaluable, and their performance profiler is great as well – very easy to use!), so I was curious to see what the ANTS Memory Profiler could show me. Background While a performance profiler will track how much time is typically spent in each unit of code, a memory profiler gives you much more detail on how and where your memory is being consumed and released in a program. As an example, I’d been working on a data access layer at work to call a market data web service.  This web service would take a list of symbols to quote and would return back the quote data.  To help consolidate the thousands of web requests per second we get and reduce load on the web services, we implemented a 5-second cache of quote data.  Not quite long enough to where customers will typically notice a quote go “stale”, but just long enough to be able to collapse multiple quote requests for the same symbol in a short period of time. A 5-second cache may not sound like much, but it actually pays off by saving us roughly 42% of our web service calls, while still providing relatively up-to-date information.  The question is whether or not the extra memory involved in maintaining the cache was worth it, so I decided to fire up the ANTS Memory Profiler and take a look at memory usage. First Impressions The main thing I’ve always loved about the ANTS tools is their ease of use.  Pretty much everything is right there in front of you in a way that makes it easy for you to find what you need with little digging required.  I’ve worked with other, older profilers before (that shall remain nameless other than to hint it was created by a very large chip maker) where it was a mind boggling experience to figure out how to do simple tasks. Not so with AMP.  The opening dialog is very straightforward.  You can choose from here whether to debug an executable, a web application (either in IIS or from VS’s web development server), windows services, etc. So I chose a .NET Executable and navigated to the build location of my test harness.  Then began profiling. At this point while the application is running, you can see a chart of the memory as it ebbs and wanes with allocations and collections.  At any given point in time, you can take snapshots (to compare states) zoom in, or choose to stop at any time.  Snapshots Taking a snapshot also gives you a breakdown of the managed memory heaps for each generation so you get an idea how many objects are staying around for extended periods of time (as an object lives and survives collections, it gets promoted into higher generations where collection becomes less frequent). Generating a snapshot brings up an analysis view with very handy graphs that show your generation sizes.  Almost all my memory is in Generation 1 in the managed memory component of the first graph, which is good news to me, because Gen 2 collections are much rarer.  I once3 made the mistake once of caching data for 30 minutes and found it didn’t get collected very quick after I released my reference because it had been promoted to Gen 2 – doh! Analysis It looks like (from the second pie chart) that the majority of the allocations were in the string class.  This also is expected for me because the majority of the memory allocated is in the web service responses, so it doesn’t seem the entities I’m adapting to (to prevent being too tightly coupled to the web service proxy classes, which can change easily out from under me) aren’t taking a significant portion of memory. I also appreciate that they have clear summary text in key places such as “No issues with large object heap fragmentation were detected”.  For novice users, this type of summary information can be critical to getting them to use a tool and develop a good working knowledge of it. There is also a handy link at the bottom for “What to look for on the summary” which loads a web page of help on key points to look for. Clicking over to the session overview, it’s easy to compare the samples at each snapshot to see how your memory is growing, shrinking, or staying relatively the same.  Looking at my snapshots, I’m pretty happy with the fact that memory allocation and heap size seems to be fairly stable and in control: Once again, you can check on the large object heap, generation one heap, and generation two heap across each snapshot to spot trends. Back on the analysis tab, we can go to the [Class List] button to get an idea what classes are making up the majority of our memory usage.  As was little surprise to me, System.String was the clear majority of my allocations, though I found it surprising that the System.Reflection.RuntimeMehtodInfo came in second.  I was curious about this, so I selected it and went into the [Instance Categorizer].  This view let me see where these instances to RuntimeMehtodInfo were coming from. So I scrolled back through the graph, and discovered that these were being held by the System.ServiceModel.ChannelFactoryRefCache and I was satisfied this was just an artifact of my WCF proxy. I also like that down at the bottom of the Instance Categorizer it gives you a series of filters and offers to guide you on which filter to use based on the problem you are trying to find.  For example, if I suspected a memory leak, I might try to filter for survivors in growing classes.  This means that for instances of a class that are growing in memory (more are being created than cleaned up), which ones are survivors (not collected) from garbage collection.  This might allow me to drill down and find places where I’m holding onto references by mistake and not freeing them! Finally, if you want to really see all your instances and who is holding onto them (preventing collection), you can go to the “Instance Retention Graph” which creates a graph showing what references are being held in memory and who is holding onto them. Visual Studio Integration Of course, VS has its own profiler built in – and for a free bundled profiler it is quite capable – but AMP gives a much cleaner and easier-to-use experience, and when you install it you also get the option of letting it integrate directly into VS. So once you go back into VS after installation, you’ll notice an ANTS menu which lets you launch the ANTS profiler directly from Visual Studio.   Clicking on one of these options fires up the project in the profiler immediately, allowing you to get right in.  It doesn’t integrate with the Visual Studio windows themselves (like the VS profiler does), but still the plethora of information it provides and the clear and concise manner in which it presents it makes it well worth it. Summary If you like the ANTS series of tools, you shouldn’t be disappointed with the ANTS Memory Profiler.  It was so easy to use that I was able to jump in with very little product knowledge and get the information I was looking it for. I’ve used other profilers before that came with 3-inch thick tomes that you had to read in order to get anywhere with the tool, and this one is not like that at all.  It’s built for your everyday developer to get in and find their problems quickly, and I like that! Tweet Technorati Tags: Influencers,ANTS,Memory,Profiler

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  • Grow Your Business with Security

    - by Darin Pendergraft
    Author: Kevin Moulton Kevin Moulton has been in the security space for more than 25 years, and with Oracle for 7 years. He manages the East EnterpriseSecurity Sales Consulting Team. He is also a Distinguished Toastmaster. Follow Kevin on Twitter at twitter.com/kevin_moulton, where he sometimes tweets about security, but might also tweet about running, beer, food, baseball, football, good books, or whatever else grabs his attention. Kevin will be a regular contributor to this blog so stay tuned for more posts from him. It happened again! There I was, reading something interesting online, and realizing that a friend might find it interesting too. I clicked on the little email link, thinking that I could easily forward this to my friend, but no! Instead, a new screen popped up where I was asked to create an account. I was expected to create a User ID and password, not to mention providing some personally identifiable information, just for the privilege of helping that website spread their word. Of course, I didn’t want to have to remember a new account and password, I didn’t want to provide the requisite information, and I didn’t want to waste my time. I gave up, closed the web page, and moved on to something else. I was left with a bad taste in my mouth, and my friend might never find her way to this interesting website. If you were this content provider, would this be the outcome you were looking for? A few days later, I had a similar experience, but this one went a little differently. I was surfing the web, when I happened upon some little chotcke that I just had to have. I added it to my cart. When I went to buy the item, I was again brought to a page to create account. Groan! But wait! On this page, I also had the option to sign in with my OpenID account, my Facebook account, my Yahoo account, or my Google Account. I have all of those! No new account to create, no new password to remember, and no personally identifiable information to be given to someone else (I’ve already given it all to those other guys, after all). In this case, the vendor was easy to deal with, and I happily completed the transaction. That pleasant experience will bring me back again. This is where security can grow your business. It’s a differentiator. You’ve got to have a presence on the web, and that presence has to take into account all the smart phones everyone’s carrying, and the tablets that took over cyber Monday this year. If you are a company that a customer can deal with securely, and do so easily, then you are a company customers will come back to again and again. I recently had a need to open a new bank account. Every bank has a web presence now, but they are certainly not all the same. I wanted one that I could deal with easily using my laptop, but I also wanted 2-factor authentication in case I had to login from a shared machine, and I wanted an app for my iPad. I found a bank with all three, and that’s who I am doing business with. Let’s say, for example, that I’m in a regular Texas Hold-em game on Friday nights, so I move a couple of hundred bucks from checking to savings on Friday afternoons. I move a similar amount each week and I do it from the same machine. The bank trusts me, and they trust my machine. Most importantly, they trust my behavior. This is adaptive authentication. There should be no reason for my bank to make this transaction difficult for me. Now let's say that I login from a Starbucks in Uzbekistan, and I transfer $2,500. What should my bank do now? Should they stop the transaction? Should they call my home number? (My former bank did exactly this once when I was taking money out of an ATM on a business trip, when I had provided my cell phone number as my primary contact. When I asked them why they called my home number rather than my cell, they told me that their “policy” is to call the home number. If I'm on the road, what exactly is the use of trying to reach me at home to verify my transaction?) But, back to Uzbekistan… Should my bank assume that I am happily at home in New Jersey, and someone is trying to hack into my account? Perhaps they think they are protecting me, but I wouldn’t be very happy if I happened to be traveling on business in Central Asia. What if my bank were to automatically analyze my behavior and calculate a risk score? Clearly, this scenario would be outside of my typical behavior, so my risk score would necessitate something more than a simple login and password. Perhaps, in this case, a one-time password to my cell phone would prove that this is not just some hacker half way around the world. But, what if you're not a bank? Do you need this level of security? If you want to be a business that is easy to deal with while also protecting your customers, then of course you do. You want your customers to trust you, but you also want them to enjoy doing business with you. Make it easy for them to do business with you, and they’ll come back, and perhaps even Tweet about it, or Like you, and then their friends will follow. How can Oracle help? Oracle has the technology and expertise to help you to grown your business with security. Oracle Adaptive Access Manager will help you to prevent fraud while making it easier for your customers to do business with you by providing the risk analysis I discussed above, step-up authentication, and much more. Oracle Mobile and Social Access Service will help you to secure mobile access to applications by expanding on your existing back-end identity management infrastructure, and allowing your customers to transact business with you using the social media accounts they already know. You also have device fingerprinting and metrics to help you to grow your business securely. Security is not just a cost anymore. It’s a way to set your business apart. With Oracle’s help, you can be the business that everyone’s tweeting about. Image courtesy of Flickr user shareski

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  • How to Tell a Hardware Problem From a Software Problem

    - by Chris Hoffman
    Your computer seems to be malfunctioning — it’s slow, programs are crashing or Windows may be blue-screening. Is your computer’s hardware failing, or does it have a software problem that you can fix on your own? This can actually be a bit tricky to figure out. Hardware problems and software problems can lead to the same symptoms — for example, frequent blue screens of death may be caused by either software or hardware problems. Computer is Slow We’ve all heard the stories — someone’s computer slows down over time because they install too much software that runs at startup or it becomes infected with malware. The person concludes that their computer is slowing down because it’s old, so they replace it. But they’re wrong. If a computer is slowing down, it has a software problem that can be fixed. Hardware problems shouldn’t cause your computer to slow down. There are some rare exceptions to this — perhaps your CPU is overheating and it’s downclocking itself, running slower to stay cooler — but most slowness is caused by software issues. Blue Screens Modern versions of Windows are much more stable than older versions of Windows. When used with reliable hardware with well-programmed drivers, a typical Windows computer shouldn’t blue-screen at all. If you are encountering frequent blue screens of death, there’s a good chance your computer’s hardware is failing. Blue screens could also be caused by badly programmed hardware drivers, however. If you just installed or upgraded hardware drivers and blue screens start, try uninstalling the drivers or using system restore — there may be something wrong with the drivers. If you haven’t done anything with your drivers recently and blue screens start, there’s a very good chance you have a hardware problem. Computer Won’t Boot If your computer won’t boot, you could have either a software problem or a hardware problem. Is Windows attempting to boot and failing part-way through the boot process, or does the computer no longer recognize its hard drive or not power on at all? Consult our guide to troubleshooting boot problems for more information. When Hardware Starts to Fail… Here are some common components that can fail and the problems their failures may cause: Hard Drive: If your hard drive starts failing, files on your hard drive may become corrupted. You may see long delays when you attempt to access files or save to the hard drive. Windows may stop booting entirely. CPU: A failing CPU may result in your computer not booting at all. If the CPU is overheating, your computer may blue-screen when it’s under load — for example, when you’re playing a demanding game or encoding video. RAM: Applications write data to your RAM and use it for short-term storage. If your RAM starts failing, an application may write data to part of the RAM, then later read it back and get an incorrect value. This can result in application crashes, blue screens, and file corruption. Graphics Card: Graphics card problems may result in graphical errors while rendering 3D content or even just while displaying your desktop. If the graphics card is overheating, it may crash your graphics driver or cause your computer to freeze while under load — for example, when playing demanding 3D games. Fans: If any of the fans fail in your computer, components may overheat and you may see the above CPU or graphics card problems. Your computer may also shut itself down abruptly so it doesn’t overheat any further and damage itself. Motherboard: Motherboard problems can be extremely tough to diagnose. You may see occasional blue screens or similar problems. Power Supply: A malfunctioning power supply is also tough to diagnose — it may deliver too much power to a component, damaging it and causing it to malfunction. If the power supply dies completely, your computer won’t power on and nothing will happen when you press the power button. Other common problems — for example, a computer slowing down — are likely to be software problems. It’s also possible that software problems can cause many of the above symptoms — malware that hooks deep into the Windows kernel can cause your computer to blue-screen, for example. The Only Way to Know For Sure We’ve tried to give you some idea of the difference between common software problems and hardware problems with the above examples. But it’s often tough to know for sure, and troubleshooting is usually a trial-and-error process. This is especially true if you have an intermittent problem, such as your computer blue-screening a few times a week. You can try scanning your computer for malware and running System Restore to restore your computer’s system software back to its previous working state, but these aren’t  guaranteed ways to fix software problems. The best way to determine whether the problem you have is a software or hardware one is to bite the bullet and restore your computer’s software back to its default state. That means reinstalling Windows or using the Refresh or reset feature on Windows 8. See whether the problem still persists after you restore its operating system to its default state. If you still see the same problem – for example, if your computer is blue-screening and continues to blue-screen after reinstalling Windows — you know you have a hardware problem and need to have your computer fixed or replaced. If the computer crashes or freezes while reinstalling Windows, you definitely have a hardware problem. Even this isn’t a completely perfect method — for example, you may reinstall Windows and install the same hardware drivers afterwards. If the hardware drivers are badly programmed, the blue-screens may continue. Blue screens of death aren’t as common on Windows these days — if you’re encountering them frequently, you likely have a hardware problem. Most blue screens you encounter will likely be caused by hardware issues. On the other hand, other common complaints like “my computer has slowed down” are easily fixable software problems. When in doubt, back up your files and reinstall Windows. Image Credit: Anders Sandberg on Flickr, comedy_nose on Flickr     

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, March 14, 2012

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, March 14, 2012Popular ReleasesAcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.9.2: ?? ●AcDown??????????、??、??????,????1M,????,????,?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。??????AcPlay?????,??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????????????????????????,???,???????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??,????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ????????????? ??:????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86),?????"?????????"??? ??????????????,??????????: ??"AcDo...C.B.R. : Comic Book Reader: CBR 0.6: 20 Issue trackers are closed and a lot of bugs too Localize view is now MVVM and delete is working. Added the unused flag (take care that it goes to true only when displaying screen elements) Backstage - new input/output format choice control for the conversion Backstage - Add display, behaviour and register file type options in the extended options dialog Explorer list view has been transformed to a custom control. New group header, colunms order and size are saved Single insta...Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 Consumer Prv: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 Consumer Preview - Preview Release v 1.2.0 Please download this for Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8 functionality on Windows 8 Consumer Preview. The core features of the toolkit include: Automated Install – Scripted install of all dependencies including Visual Studio 2010 Express and the Windows Azure SDK on Windows 8 Consumer Preview. Project Templates – Windows 8 Metro Style app project templates in Dev 11 in both XAML/C# and HTML5/JS with a suppor...CODE Framework: 4.0.20312.0: This version includes significant improvements in the WPF system (and the WPF MVVM/MVC system). This includes new styles for Metro controls and layouts. Improved color handling. It also includes an improved theme/style swapping engine down to active (open) views. There also are various other enhancements and small fixes throughout the entire framework.Visual Studio ALM Quick Reference Guidance: v3 - For Visual Studio 11: RELEASE README Welcome to the BETA release of the Quick Reference Guide preview As this is a BETA release and the quality bar for the final Release has not been achieved, we value your candid feedback and recommend that you do not use or deploy these BETA artifacts in a production environment. Quality-Bar Details Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has not been through an independent technical review Documentation ...AvalonDock: AvalonDock 2.0.0345: Welcome to early alpha release of AvalonDock 2.0 I've completely rewritten AvalonDock in order to take full advantage of the MVVM pattern. New version also boost a lot of new features: 1) Deep separation between model and layout. 2) Full WPF binding support thanks to unified logical tree between main docking manager, auto-hide windows and floating windows. 3) Support for Aero semi-maximized windows feature. 4) Support for multiple panes in the same floating windows. For a short list of new f...Google Books Downloader for Windows: Google Books Downloader-1.9.0.0.: Google Books DownloaderWindows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets: Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets 2.2.2: Changes Added Start Menu Item for Easy Startup Added Link to Getting Started Document Added Ability to Persist Subscription Data to Disk Fixed Get-Deployment to not throw on empty slot Simplified numerous default values for cmdlets Breaking Changes: -SubscriptionName is now mandatory in Set-Subscription. -DefaultStorageAccountName and -DefaultStorageAccountKey parameters were removed from Set-Subscription. Instead, when adding multiple accounts to a subscription, each one needs to be added ...IronPython: 2.7.2.1: On behalf of the IronPython team, I'm happy to announce the final release IronPython 2.7.2. This release includes everything from IronPython 54498 and 62475 as well. Like all IronPython 2.7-series releases, .NET 4 is required to install it. Installing this release will replace any existing IronPython 2.7-series installation. Unlike previous releases, the assemblies for all supported platforms are included in the installer as well as the zip package, in the "Platforms" directory. IronPython 2...Kooboo CMS: Kooboo CMS 3.2.0.0: Breaking changes: When upgrade from previous versions, MUST reset the all the content type templates, otherwise the content manager might get a compile error. New features Integrate with Windows azure. See: http://wiki.kooboo.com/?wiki=Kooboo CMS on Azure Complete solution to deploy on load balance servers. See: http://wiki.kooboo.com/?wiki=Kooboo CMS load balance Update Jquery and Jquery ui to the lastest version(Jquery 1.71, Jquery UI 1.8.16). Tree style text content editing. See:h...Home Access Plus+: v7.10: Don't forget to add your location to the list: http://www.nbdev.co.uk/projects/hap/locations.aspx Changes: Added: CompressJS controls to the Help Desk & Booking System (reduces page size) Fixed: Debug/Release mode detection in CompressJS control Added: Older Browsers will use an iframe and the old uploadh.aspx page (works better than the current implementation on older browsers) Added: Permalinks for my files, you can give out links that redirect to the correct location when you log i...SubExtractor: Release 1026: Fix: multi-colored bluray subs will no longer result in black blob for OCR Fix: dvds with no language specified will not cause exception in name creation of subtitle files Fix: Root directory Dvds will use volume label as their directory nameExtensions for Reactive Extensions (Rxx): Rxx 1.3: Please read the latest release notes for details about what's new. Related Work Items Content SummaryRxx provides the following features. See the Documentation for details. Many IObservable<T> extension methods and IEnumerable<T> extension methods. Many wrappers that convert asynchronous Framework Class Library APIs into observables. Many useful types such as ListSubject<T>, DictionarySubject<T>, CommandSubject, ViewModel, ObservableDynamicObject, Either<TLeft, TRight>, Maybe<T>, Scala...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.47: Properly output escaped characters in CSS identifiers throw an EOF error when parsing a CSS selector that doesn't end in a declaration block chased down a stack-overflow issue with really large JS sources. Needed to flatten out the AST tree for adjacent expression statements that the application merges into a single expression statement, or that already contain large, comma-separated expressions in the original source. fix issue #17569: tie together the -debug switch with the DEBUG defi...Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 Metro (Preview): Player Framework for HTML/JavaScript and XAML/C# Metro Style Applications. Additional DownloadsIIS Smooth Streaming Client SDK for Windows 8WPF Application Framework (WAF): WAF for .NET 4.5 (Experimental): Version: 2.5.0.440 (Experimental): This is an experimental release! It can be used to investigate the new .NET Framework 4.5 features. The ideas shown in this release might come in a future release (after 2.5) of the WPF Application Framework (WAF). More information can be found in this dicussion post. Requirements .NET Framework 4.5 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 11) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 11 Professional Changelog All: Upgrade all proje...SSH.NET Library: 2012.3.9: There are still few outstanding issues I wanted to include in this release but since its been a while and there are few new features already I decided to create a new release now. New Features Add SOCKS4, SOCKS5 and HTTP Proxy support when connecting to remote server. For silverlight only IP address can be used for server address when using proxy. Add dynamic port forwarding support using ForwardedPortDynamic class. Add new ShellStream class to work with SSH Shell. Add supports for mu...Test Case Import Utilities for Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Studio 11 Beta: V1.2 RTM: This release (V1.2 RTM) includes: Support for connecting to Hosted Team Foundation Server Preview. Support for connecting to Team Foundation Server 11 Beta. Fix to issue with read-only attribute being set for LinksMapping-ReportFile which may have led to problems when saving the report file. Fix to issue with “related links” not being set properly in certain conditions. Fix to ensure that tool works fine when the Excel file contained rich text data. Note: Data is still imported in pl...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.01.04: Major Highlights Fixed issue with loading the splash page skin in the login, privacy and terms of use pages Fixed issue when searching for words with special characters in them Fixed redirection issue when the user does not have permissions to access a resource Fixed issue when clearing the cache using the ClearHostCache() function Fixed issue when displaying the site structure in the link to page feature Fixed issue when inline editing the title of modules Fixed issue with ...Mayhem: Mayhem Developer Preview: This is the developer preview of Mayhem. Enjoy! If you are looking for the Phone applications, please visit this discussionNew ProjectsAD Test Tool: After trying to figure out replication and other user-based issues with a local domain system we built this simple tool to test what the directory was currently reflecting for each user who accessed the tool.BuildUp: MSBuild scripts for use with CI servers.CDRtoSQL: CDRtoSQLCloudStorage4Net: A set of C# wrapper used to access cloud storage services. Such aliyun, grandcloud, baiduyun etc. The project is created to generalize the interfaces of difference storeage platform. We expect programmers could use all these cloud storage in a uniform way. D.E.M.O.N MySQL Tweaker: D.E.M.O.N Studio MySQL Tweaker, a fast and easy-to-use Mysql tools. Add this to your project, install , start, and stop mysql service with a little coding work. Love MySQL , Love MySQL TweakerEarth2012: Earth2012 shows the possible 31 events of 2012 according to the research at www.heliwave.com. For each event, the Earth map shows the danger latitude and all danger and semi-danger cities around it. The user can adjust the starting date of the events once we see a 4-day event.fjyc documents: this is a documentation share for fjyc projectFolderDrive: FolderDrive is a small tool that turns your folders into drives. Imagine having your Dropbox folder behaving as the (almost real) harddrive. It's another handy solution in the ongoing quest for quick access to your favorite folders. The project is developed in C# using WPF - you'll need .NET framework 4 to use it.GralicNew: dHarness: Harness is Web Browser Automation Framework. implemented as COM (Common Object Library) Harness will automate the testing of Web applications by automatic operation the Internet Explorer. you can easily use from your favorite development language.IIS2SQL: Powershell script for IIS7.5 that will send IIS logs to an MSSQL database. Separate table is used to keep track of when the last update occurred so only new events are inserted. Writes to the Application log status messages.Inside Sales Api Client: InsideSales.com api client. Current valid operations are Login and AddLead only. Developed in C#, .NET Framework 4.jqGrid Helper Library: This library is intended for use with the jqGrid jQuery plugin. It provides classes for handling grid settings, building filter and order by expressions, and will build a JQGrid object and then serialize it to either JSON or XML. longSudoku: A simple sudoku game! Use WinForm development! Imitate Metro UI!MantisWare Proxy Switcher: This is a small application that runs in your task bar and gives you the capability to add a proxy list and switch between them quickly, either by selecting the appropriate proxy or using the shortcut keys. It's developed in C#.net, MSSQL Compact.Map Wisata: Map , Dotspatial , Ribbon, Visual Basic.Netmapabc?? API WP SDK: mapabc?? API WP SDKNetWinsock: Provides a simple, event-driven Windows Forms Component capable of serving as a TCP client or server. Utilizes an asynchronous/multithreaded pattern and raises data reception and error events on the UI thread for easy processing. Reminiscent of the VB6 Winsock control.Orchard Zencoder: Orchard module that enables usage of zencoder for encoding media files. http://zencoder.comPleXKeys Predictive Typing: PleXKeys is a predictive typing app for Microsoft Windows. It allows you to type faster and more accurately. With adaptive typing and instant spelling suggestions. Oh and Macros too! Automatic Word Prediction As you type, PleXKeys will predict the next word you are going to type. Then, by simply pressing the ENTER key, PleXKeys will insert the word for you, saving wasted keystrokes. After you have used PleXKeys enough for it to adapt to your typing style, typing entire sentences can b...Samples for my book "Getting Started with the Internet of Things": All examples for my book "Getting Started with the Internet of Things", the Gsiot.PachubeClient library, and the Gsiot.Server library are included in this project.SharePoint Hive - Projects & Articles: TBDSharePoint webparts for the community (Enterprise ready and free): SharePoint webparts for the community (Enterprise ready and free)SimpleCritters: An experiment with neural networks. This project is chiefly academic in nature. This project is concerned with evolving simple critter behavior using simulated neurons.Snip-A-Dillie-O Web: My venture into MVC3 / EF Code First / SQL CE. Snip-A-Dillie-O is just one piece of the bigger picture as a simple code snippet management toolTestMum: C#, Asp.net test projectVisDiskUse: Visualize how much disk space is being used by folders in your hard drive.Windows Phone App Accelerators (WPAA): Windows Phone App Accelerator aims to make creating a Windows Phone application even easier by creating a Visual Studio Template (or Templates) that do the bulk of the common work for you. This is NOT an app factory.

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  • Windows 8 Launch&ndash;Why OEM and Retailers Should STFU

    - by D'Arcy Lussier
    Microsoft has gotten a lot of flack for the Surface from OEM/hardware partners who create Windows-based devices and I’m sure, to an extent, retailers who normally stock and sell Windows-based devices. I mean we all know how this is supposed to work – Microsoft makes the OS, partners make the hardware, retailers sell the hardware. Now Microsoft is breaking the rules by not only offering their own hardware but selling them via online and through their Microsoft branded stores! The thought has been that Microsoft is trying to set a standard for the other hardware companies to reach for. Maybe. I hope, at some level, Microsoft may be covertly responding to frustrations associated with trusting the OEMs and Retailers to deliver on their part of the supply chain. I know as a consumer, I’m very frustrated with the Windows 8 launch. Aside from the Surface sales, there’s nothing happening at the retail level. Let me back up and explain. Over the weekend I visited a number of stores in hopes of trying out various Windows 8 devices. Out of three retailers (Staples, Best Buy, and Future Shop), not *one* met my expectations. Let me be honest with you Staples, I never really have high expectations from your computer department. If I need paper or pens, whatever, but computers – you’re not the top of my list for price or selection. Still, considering you flaunted Win 8 devices in your flyer I expected *something* – some sign of effort that you took the Windows 8 launch seriously. As I entered the 1910 Pembina Highway location in Winnipeg, there was nothing – no signage, no banners – nothing that would suggest Windows 8 had even launched. I made my way to the laptops. I had to play with each machine to determine which ones were running Windows 8. There wasn’t anything on the placards that made it obvious which were Windows 8 machines and which ones were Windows 7. Likewise, there was no easy way to identify the touch screen laptop (the HP model) from the others without physically touching the screen to verify. Horrible experience. In the same mall as the Staples I mentioned above, there’s a Future Shop. Surely they would be more on the ball. I walked in to the 1910 Pembina Highway location and immediately realized I would not get a better experience. Except for the sign by the front door mentioning Windows 8, there was *nothing* in the computer department pointing you to the Windows 8 devices. Like in Staples, the Win 8 laptops were mixed in with the Win 7 ones and there was nothing notable calling out which ones were running Win 8. I happened to hit up the St. James Street location today, thinking since its a busier store they must have more options. To their credit, they did have two staff members decked out in Windows 8 shirts and who were helping a customer understand Windows 8. But otherwise, there was nothing highlighting the Windows 8 devices and they were again mixed in with the rest of the Win 7 machines. Finally, we have the St. James Street Best Buy location here in Winnipeg. I’m sure Best Buy will have their act together. Nope, not even close. Same story as the others: minimal signage (there was a sign as you walked in with a link to this schedule of demo days), Windows 8 hardware mixed with the rest of the PC offerings, and no visible call-outs identifying which were Win 8 based. This meant that, like Future Shop and Staples, if you wanted to know which machine had Windows 8 you had to go and scrutinize each machine. Also, there was nothing identifying which ones were touch based and which were not. Just Another Day… To these retailers, it seemed that the Windows 8 launch was just another day, with another product to add to the showroom floor. Meanwhile, Apple has their dedicated areas *in all three stores*. It was dead simple to find where the Apple products were compared to the Windows 8 products. No wonder Microsoft is starting to push their own retail stores. No wonder Microsoft is trying to funnel orders through them instead of relying on these bloated retail big box stores who obviously can’t manage a product launch. It’s Not Just The Retailers… Remember when the Acer CEO, Founder, and President of Computer Global Operations all weighed in on how Microsoft releasing the Surface would have a “huge negative impact for the ecosystem and other brands may take a negative reaction”? Also remember the CEO stating “[making hardware] is not something you are good at so please think twice”? Well the launch day has come and gone, and so far Microsoft is the only one that delivered on having hardware available on the October 26th date. Oh sure, there are laptops running Windows 8 – but all in one desktop PCs? I’ve only seen one or two! And tablets are *non existent*, with some showing an early to late November availability on Best Buy’s website! So while the retailers could be doing more to make it easier to find Windows 8 devices, the manufacturers could help by *getting devices into stores*! That’s supposedly something that these companies are good at, according to the Acer CEO. So Here’s What the Retailers and Manufacturers Need To Do… Get Product Out The pivotal timeframe will be now to the end of November. We need to start seeing all these fantastic pieces of hardware ship – including the Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro, the Acer Iconia, the Asus TAICHI 21, and the sexy Samsung Series 7 27” desktop. It’s not enough to see product announcements, we need to see actual devices. Make It Easy For Customers To Find Win8 Devices You want to make it easy to sell these things? Make it easy for people to find them! Have staff on hand that really know how these devices run and what can be done with them. Don’t just have a single demo day, have people who can demo it every day! Make It Easy to See the Features There’s touch screen desktops, touch screen laptops, tablets, non-touch laptops, etc. People need to easily find the features for each machine. If I’m looking for a touch-laptop, I shouldn’t need to sift through all the non-touch laptops to find them – at the least, I need to quickly be able to see which ones are touch. I feel silly even typing this because this should be retail 101 and I have no retail background (but I do have an extensive background as a customer). In Summary… Microsoft launching the Surface and selling them through their own channels isn’t slapping its OEM and retail partners in the face; its slapping them to wake the hell up and stop coasting through Windows launch events like they don’t matter. Unless I see some improvements from vendors and retailers in November, I may just hold onto my money for a Surface Pro even if I have to wait until early 2013. Your move OEM/Retailers. *Update – While my experience has been in Winnipeg, similar experiences have been voiced from colleagues in Calgary and Edmonton.

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  • SQL University: What and why of database refactoring

    - by Mladen Prajdic
    This is a post for a great idea called SQL University started by Jorge Segarra also famously known as SqlChicken on Twitter. It’s a collection of blog posts on different database related topics contributed by several smart people all over the world. So this week is mine and we’ll be talking about database testing and refactoring. In 3 posts we’ll cover: SQLU part 1 - What and why of database testing SQLU part 2 - What and why of database refactoring SQLU part 3 - Tools of the trade This is a second part of the series and in it we’ll take a look at what database refactoring is and why do it. Why refactor a database To know why refactor we first have to know what refactoring actually is. Code refactoring is a process where we change module internals in a way that does not change that module’s input/output behavior. For successful refactoring there is one crucial thing we absolutely must have: Tests. Automated unit tests are the only guarantee we have that we haven’t broken the input/output behavior before refactoring. If you haven’t go back ad read my post on the matter. Then start writing them. Next thing you need is a code module. Those are views, UDFs and stored procedures. By having direct table access we can kiss fast and sweet refactoring good bye. One more point to have a database abstraction layer. And no, ORM’s don’t fall into that category. But also know that refactoring is NOT adding new functionality to your code. Many have fallen into this trap. Don’t be one of them and resist the lure of the dark side. And it’s a strong lure. We developers in general love to add new stuff to our code, but hate fixing our own mistakes or changing existing code for no apparent reason. To be a good refactorer one needs discipline and focus. Now we know that refactoring is all about changing inner workings of existing code. This can be due to performance optimizations, changing internal code workflows or some other reason. This is a typical black box scenario to the outside world. If we upgrade the car engine it still has to drive on the road (preferably faster) and not fly (no matter how cool that would be). Also be aware that white box tests will break when we refactor. What to refactor in a database Refactoring databases doesn’t happen that often but when it does it can include a lot of stuff. Let us look at a few common cases. Adding or removing database schema objects Adding, removing or changing table columns in any way, adding constraints, keys, etc… All of these can be counted as internal changes not visible to the data consumer. But each of these carries a potential input/output behavior change. Dropping a column can result in views not working anymore or stored procedure logic crashing. Adding a unique constraint shows duplicated data that shouldn’t exist. Foreign keys break a truncate table command executed from an application that runs once a month. All these scenarios are very real and can happen. With the proper database abstraction layer fully covered with black box tests we can make sure something like that does not happen (hopefully at all). Changing physical structures Physical structures include heaps, indexes and partitions. We can pretty much add or remove those without changing the data returned by the database. But the performance can be affected. So here we use our performance tests. We do have them, right? Just by adding a single index we can achieve orders of magnitude performance improvement. Won’t that make users happy? But what if that index causes our write operations to crawl to a stop. again we have to test this. There are a lot of things to think about and have tests for. Without tests we can’t do successful refactoring! Fixing bad code We all have some bad code in our systems. We usually refer to that code as code smell as they violate good coding practices. Examples of such code smells are SQL injection, use of SELECT *, scalar UDFs or cursors, etc… Each of those is huge code smell and can result in major code changes. Take SELECT * from example. If we remove a column from a table the client using that SELECT * statement won’t have a clue about that until it runs. Then it will gracefully crash and burn. Not to mention the widely unknown SELECT * view refresh problem that Tomas LaRock (@SQLRockstar on Twitter) and Colin Stasiuk (@BenchmarkIT on Twitter) talk about in detail. Go read about it, it’s informative. Refactoring this includes replacing the * with column names and most likely change to application using the database. Breaking apart huge stored procedures Have you ever seen seen a stored procedure that was 2000 lines long? I have. It’s not pretty. It hurts the eyes and sucks the will to live the next 10 minutes. They are a maintenance nightmare and turn into things no one dares to touch. I’m willing to bet that 100% of time they don’t have a single test on them. Large stored procedures (and functions) are a clear sign that they contain business logic. General opinion on good database coding practices says that business logic has no business in the database. That’s the applications part. Refactoring such behemoths requires writing lots of edge case tests for the stored procedure input/output behavior and then start to refactor it. First we split the logic inside into smaller parts like new stored procedures and UDFs. Those then get called from the master stored procedure. Once we’ve successfully modularized the database code it’s best to transfer that logic into the applications consuming it. This only leaves the stored procedure with common data manipulation logic. Of course this isn’t always possible so having a plethora of performance and behavior unit tests is absolutely necessary to confirm we’ve actually improved the codebase in some way.   Refactoring is not a popular chore amongst developers or managers. The former don’t like fixing old code, the latter can’t see the financial benefit. Remember how we talked about being lousy at estimating future costs in the previous post? But there comes a time when it must be done. Hopefully I’ve given you some ideas how to get started. In the last post of the series we’ll take a look at the tools to use and an example of testing and refactoring.

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  • ASP.NET MVC 3 Hosting :: Error Handling and CustomErrors in ASP.NET MVC 3 Framework

    - by C. Miller
    So, what else is new in MVC 3? MVC 3 now has a GlobalFilterCollection that is automatically populated with a HandleErrorAttribute. This default FilterAttribute brings with it a new way of handling errors in your web applications. In short, you can now handle errors inside of the MVC pipeline. What does that mean? This gives you direct programmatic control over handling your 500 errors in the same way that ASP.NET and CustomErrors give you configurable control of handling your HTTP error codes. How does that work out? Think of it as a routing table specifically for your Exceptions, it's pretty sweet! Global Filters The new Global.asax file now has a RegisterGlobalFilters method that is used to add filters to the new GlobalFilterCollection, statically located at System.Web.Mvc.GlobalFilter.Filters. By default this method adds one filter, the HandleErrorAttribute. public class MvcApplication : System.Web.HttpApplication {     public static void RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilterCollection filters)     {         filters.Add(new HandleErrorAttribute());     } HandleErrorAttributes The HandleErrorAttribute is pretty simple in concept: MVC has already adjusted us to using Filter attributes for our AcceptVerbs and RequiresAuthorization, now we are going to use them for (as the name implies) error handling, and we are going to do so on a (also as the name implies) global scale. The HandleErrorAttribute has properties for ExceptionType, View, and Master. The ExceptionType allows you to specify what exception that attribute should handle. The View allows you to specify which error view (page) you want it to redirect to. Last but not least, the Master allows you to control which master page (or as Razor refers to them, Layout) you want to render with, even if that means overriding the default layout specified in the view itself. public class MvcApplication : System.Web.HttpApplication {     public static void RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilterCollection filters)     {         filters.Add(new HandleErrorAttribute         {             ExceptionType = typeof(DbException),             // DbError.cshtml is a view in the Shared folder.             View = "DbError",             Order = 2         });         filters.Add(new HandleErrorAttribute());     }Error Views All of your views still work like they did in the previous version of MVC (except of course that they can now use the Razor engine). However, a view that is used to render an error can not have a specified model! This is because they already have a model, and that is System.Web.Mvc.HandleErrorInfo @model System.Web.Mvc.HandleErrorInfo           @{     ViewBag.Title = "DbError"; } <h2>A Database Error Has Occurred</h2> @if (Model != null) {     <p>@Model.Exception.GetType().Name<br />     thrown in @Model.ControllerName @Model.ActionName</p> }Errors Outside of the MVC Pipeline The HandleErrorAttribute will only handle errors that happen inside of the MVC pipeline, better known as 500 errors. Errors outside of the MVC pipeline are still handled the way they have always been with ASP.NET. You turn on custom errors, specify error codes and paths to error pages, etc. It is important to remember that these will happen for anything and everything outside of what the HandleErrorAttribute handles. Also, these will happen whenever an error is not handled with the HandleErrorAttribute from inside of the pipeline. <system.web>  <customErrors mode="On" defaultRedirect="~/error">     <error statusCode="404" redirect="~/error/notfound"></error>  </customErrors>Sample Controllers public class ExampleController : Controller {     public ActionResult Exception()     {         throw new ArgumentNullException();     }     public ActionResult Db()     {         // Inherits from DbException         throw new MyDbException();     } } public class ErrorController : Controller {     public ActionResult Index()     {         return View();     }     public ActionResult NotFound()     {         return View();     } } Putting It All Together If we have all the code above included in our MVC 3 project, here is how the following scenario's will play out: 1.       A controller action throws an Exception. You will remain on the current page and the global HandleErrorAttributes will render the Error view. 2.       A controller action throws any type of DbException. You will remain on the current page and the global HandleErrorAttributes will render the DbError view. 3.       Go to a non-existent page. You will be redirect to the Error controller's NotFound action by the CustomErrors configuration for HTTP StatusCode 404. But don't take my word for it, download the sample project and try it yourself. Three Important Lessons Learned For the most part this is all pretty straight forward, but there are a few gotcha's that you should remember to watch out for: 1) Error views have models, but they must be of type HandleErrorInfo. It is confusing at first to think that you can't control the M in an MVC page, but it's for a good reason. Errors can come from any action in any controller, and no redirect is taking place, so the view engine is just going to render an error view with the only data it has: The HandleError Info model. Do not try to set the model on your error page or pass in a different object through a controller action, it will just blow up and cause a second exception after your first exception! 2) When the HandleErrorAttribute renders a page, it does not pass through a controller or an action. The standard web.config CustomErrors literally redirect a failed request to a new page. The HandleErrorAttribute is just rendering a view, so it is not going to pass through a controller action. But that's ok! Remember, a controller's job is to get the model for a view, but an error already has a model ready to give to the view, thus there is no need to pass through a controller. That being said, the normal ASP.NET custom errors still need to route through controllers. So if you want to share an error page between the HandleErrorAttribute and your web.config redirects, you will need to create a controller action and route for it. But then when you render that error view from your action, you can only use the HandlerErrorInfo model or ViewData dictionary to populate your page. 3) The HandleErrorAttribute obeys if CustomErrors are on or off, but does not use their redirects. If you turn CustomErrors off in your web.config, the HandleErrorAttributes will stop handling errors. However, that is the only configuration these two mechanisms share. The HandleErrorAttribute will not use your defaultRedirect property, or any other errors registered with customer errors. In Summary The HandleErrorAttribute is for displaying 500 errors that were caused by exceptions inside of the MVC pipeline. The custom errors are for redirecting from error pages caused by other HTTP codes.

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  • Tracing Silex from PHP to the OS with DTrace

    - by cj
    In this blog post I show the full stack tracing of Brendan Gregg's php_syscolors.d script in the DTrace Toolkit. The Toolkit contains a dozen very useful PHP DTrace scripts and many more scripts for other languages and the OS. For this example, I'll trace the PHP micro framework Silex, which was the topic of the second of two talks by Dustin Whittle at a recent SF PHP Meetup. His slides are at Silex: From Micro to Full Stack. Installing DTrace and PHP The php_syscolors.d script uses some static PHP probes and some kernel probes. For Oracle Linux I discussed installing DTrace and PHP in DTrace PHP Using Oracle Linux 'playground' Pre-Built Packages. On other platforms with DTrace support, follow your standard procedures to enable DTrace and load the correct providers. The sdt and systrace providers are required in addition to fasttrap. On Oracle Linux, I loaded the DTrace modules like: # modprobe fasttrap # modprobe sdt # modprobe systrace # chmod 666 /dev/dtrace/helper Installing the DTrace Toolkit I download DTraceToolkit-0.99.tar.gz and extracted it: $ tar -zxf DTraceToolkit-0.99.tar.gz The PHP scripts are in the Php directory and examples in the Examples directory. Installing Silex I downloaded the "fat" Silex .tgz file from the download page and extracted it: $ tar -zxf silex_fat.tgz I changed the demonstration silex/web/index.php so I could use the PHP development web server: <?php // web/index.php $filename = __DIR__.preg_replace('#(\?.*)$#', '', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']); if (php_sapi_name() === 'cli-server' && is_file($filename)) { return false; } require_once __DIR__.'/../vendor/autoload.php'; $app = new Silex\Application(); //$app['debug'] = true; $app->get('/hello', function() { return 'Hello!'; }); $app->run(); ?> Running DTrace The php_syscolors.d script uses the -Z option to dtrace, so it can be started before PHP, i.e. when there are zero of the requested probes available to be traced. I ran DTrace like: # cd DTraceToolkit-0.99/Php # ./php_syscolors.d Next, I started the PHP developer web server in a second terminal: $ cd silex $ php -S localhost:8080 -t web web/index.php At this point, the web server is idle, waiting for requests. DTrace is idle, waiting for the probes in php_syscolors.d to be fired, at which time the action associated with each probe will run. I then loaded the demonstration page in a browser: http://localhost:8080/hello When the request was fulfilled and the simple output of "Hello" was displayed, I ^C'd php and dtrace in their terminals to stop them. DTrace output over a thousand lines long had been generated. Here is one snippet from when run() was invoked: C PID/TID DELTA(us) FILE:LINE TYPE -- NAME ... 1 4765/4765 21 Application.php:487 func -> run 1 4765/4765 29 ClassLoader.php:182 func -> loadClass 1 4765/4765 17 ClassLoader.php:198 func -> findFile 1 4765/4765 31 ":- syscall -> access 1 4765/4765 26 ":- syscall <- access 1 4765/4765 16 ClassLoader.php:198 func <- findFile 1 4765/4765 25 ":- syscall -> newlstat 1 4765/4765 15 ":- syscall <- newlstat 1 4765/4765 13 ":- syscall -> newlstat 1 4765/4765 13 ":- syscall <- newlstat 1 4765/4765 22 ":- syscall -> newlstat 1 4765/4765 14 ":- syscall <- newlstat 1 4765/4765 15 ":- syscall -> newlstat 1 4765/4765 60 ":- syscall <- newlstat 1 4765/4765 13 ":- syscall -> newlstat 1 4765/4765 13 ":- syscall <- newlstat 1 4765/4765 20 ":- syscall -> open 1 4765/4765 16 ":- syscall <- open 1 4765/4765 26 ":- syscall -> newfstat 1 4765/4765 12 ":- syscall <- newfstat 1 4765/4765 17 ":- syscall -> newfstat 1 4765/4765 12 ":- syscall <- newfstat 1 4765/4765 12 ":- syscall -> newfstat 1 4765/4765 12 ":- syscall <- newfstat 1 4765/4765 20 ":- syscall -> mmap 1 4765/4765 14 ":- syscall <- mmap 1 4765/4765 3201 ":- syscall -> mmap 1 4765/4765 27 ":- syscall <- mmap 1 4765/4765 1233 ":- syscall -> munmap 1 4765/4765 53 ":- syscall <- munmap 1 4765/4765 15 ":- syscall -> close 1 4765/4765 13 ":- syscall <- close 1 4765/4765 34 Request.php:32 func -> main 1 4765/4765 22 Request.php:32 func <- main 1 4765/4765 31 ClassLoader.php:182 func <- loadClass 1 4765/4765 33 Request.php:249 func -> createFromGlobals 1 4765/4765 29 Request.php:198 func -> __construct 1 4765/4765 24 Request.php:218 func -> initialize 1 4765/4765 26 ClassLoader.php:182 func -> loadClass 1 4765/4765 89 ClassLoader.php:198 func -> findFile 1 4765/4765 43 ":- syscall -> access ... The output shows PHP functions being called and returning (and where they are located) and which system calls the PHP functions in turn invoked. The time each line took from the previous one is displayed in the third column. The first column is the CPU number. In this example, the process was always on CPU 1 so the output is naturally ordered without requiring post-processing, or the D script requiring to be modified to display a time stamp. On a terminal, the output of php_syscolors.d is color-coded according to whether each function is a PHP or system one, hence the file name. Summary With one tool, I was able to trace the interaction of a user application with the operating system. I was able to do this to an application running "live" in a web context. The DTrace Toolkit provides a very handy repository of DTrace information. Even though the PHP scripts were created in the time frame of the original PHP DTrace PECL extension, which only had PHP function entry and return probes, the scripts provide core examples for custom investigation and resolution scripts. You can easily adapt the ideas and and create scripts using the other PHP static probes, which are listed in the PHP Manual. Because DTrace is "always on", you can take advantage of it to resolve development questions or fix production situations.

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  • From J2EE to Java EE: what has changed?

    - by Bruno.Borges
    See original @Java_EE tweet on 29 May 2014 Yeap, it has been 8 years since the term J2EE was replaced, and still some people refer to it (mostly recruiters, luckily!). But then comes the question: what has changed besides the name? Our community friend Abhishek Gupta worked on this question and provided an excellent response titled "What's in a name? Java EE? J2EE?". But let me give you a few highlights here so you don't lose yourself with YATO (yet another tab opened): J2EE used to be an infrastructure and resources provider only, requiring developers to depend on external 3rd-party frameworks to then implement application requirements or improve productivity J2EE used to require hundreds of XML lines of codes to define just a dozen of resources like EJBs, MDBs, Servlets, and so on J2EE used to support only EAR (Enterprise Archives) with a bunch of other archives like JARs and WARs just to run a simple Web application And so on, and so on! It was a great technology but still required a lot of work to get something up and running. Remember xDoclet? Remember Struts? The old days of pure Hibernate code? Or when Ajax became a trending topic and we were all implementing it with DWR Servlet? Still, we J2EE developers survived, and learned, and helped evolve the platform to a whole new level of DX (Developer Experience). A new DX for J2EE suggested a new name. One that referred to the platform as the Enterprise Edition of Java, because "Java is why we're here" quoting Bill Shannon. The release of Java EE 5 included so many features that clearly showed developers the platform was going after all those DX gaps. Radical simplification of the persistence model with the introduction of JPA Support of Annotations following the launch of Java SE 5.0 Updated XML APIs with the introduction of StAX Drastic simplification of the EJB component model (with annotations!) Convention over Configuration and Dependency Injection A few bullets you may say but that represented a whole new DX and a vision for upcoming versions. Clearly, the release of Java EE 5 helped drive the future of the platform by reducing the number of XMLs, Java Interfaces, simplified configurations, provided convention-over-configuration, etc! We then saw the release of Java EE 6 with even more great features like Managed Beans, CDI, Bean Validation, improved JSP and Servlets APIs, JASPIC, the posisbility to deploy plain WARs and so many other improvements it is difficult to list in one sentence. And we've gotta give Spring Framework some credit here: thanks to Rod Johnson and team, concepts like Dependency Injection fit perfectly into the Java EE Platform. Clearly, Spring used to be one of the most inspiring frameworks for the Java EE platform, and it is great to see things like Pivotal and Spring supporting JSR 352 Batch API standard! Cooperation to keep improving DX at maximum in the server-side Java landscape.  The master piece result of these previous releases is seen and called today as Java EE 7, which by providing a newly and improved JavaServer Faces release, with new features for Web Development like WebSockets API, improved JAX-RS, and JSON-P, but also including Batch API and so many other great improvements, has increased developer productivity and brought innovation to server-side Java developers. Java EE is not just a new name (which was introduced back in May 2006!) but a new Developer Experience for server-side Java developers. To show you why we are here and where we are going (see the Java EE 8 update), we wanted to share with you a draft of the new Java EE logos that the evangelist team created, to help you spread the word about Java EE. You can get access to these images at the Java EE Platform Facebook Album, or the Google+ Java EE Platform Album whichever is better for you, but don't forget to like and/or +1 those social network profiles :-) A message to all job recruiters: stop using J2EE and start using Java EE if you want to find great Java EE 5, Java EE 6, or Java EE 7 developers To not only save you recruiter valuable characters when tweeting that job opportunity but to also match the correct term, we invite you to replace long terms like "Java/J2EE" or even worse "#Java #J2EE #JEE" or all these awkward combinations with the only acceptable hashtag: #JavaEE. And to prove that Java EE is catching among developers and even recruiters, and that J2EE is past, let me highlight here how are the jobs trends! The image below is from Indeed.com trends page, for the following keywords: J2EE, Java/J2EE, Java/JEE, JEE. As you can see, J2EE is indeed going away, while JEE saw some increase. Perhaps because some people are just lazy to type "Java" but at the same time they are aware that J2EE (the '2') is past. We shall forgive that for a while :-) Another proof that J2EE is going away is by looking at its trending statistics at Google. People have been showing less and less interest in the term J2EE. See the chart below:  Recruiter, if you still need proof that J2EE is past, that Java EE is trending, and that other job recruiters are seeking for Java EE developers, and that the developer community is aware of the new term, perhaps these other charts can show you what term you should be using. See for example the Job Trends for Java EE at Indeed.com and notice where it started... 2006! 8 years ago :-) Last but not least, the Google Trends for Java EE term (including the still wrong but forgivable JavaEE term) shows us that the new term is catching up very well. J2EE is past. Oh, and don't worry about the curves going down. We developers like to be hipsters sometimes and today only AngularJS, NodeJS, BigData are going up. Java EE and other traditional server-side technologies such as Spring, or even from other platforms such as Ruby on Rails, PHP, Grails, are pretty much consolidated and the curves... well, they are consolidated too. So If you are a Java EE developer, drop that J2EE from your résumé, and let recruiters also know that this term is past. Embrace Java EE, and enjoy a new developer experience for server-side Java developers. Java EE on TwitterJava EE on Google+Java EE on Facebook

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  • Merge replication stopping without errors in SQL 2008 R2

    - by Rob Farley
    A non-SQL MVP friend of mine, who also happens to be a client, asked me for some help again last week. I was planning on writing this up even before Rob Volk (@sql_r) listed his T-SQL Tuesday topic for this month. Earlier in the year, I (well, LobsterPot Solutions, although I’d been the person mostly involved) had helped out with a merge replication problem. The Merge Agent on the subscriber was just stopping every time, shortly after it started. With no errors anywhere – not in the Windows Event Log, the SQL Agent logs, not anywhere. We’d managed to get the system working again, but didn’t have a good reason about what had happened, and last week, the problem occurred again. I asked him about writing up the experience in a blog post, largely because of the red herrings that we encountered. It was an interesting experience for me, also because I didn’t end up touching my computer the whole time – just tapping on my phone via Twitter and Live Msgr. You see, the thing with replication is that a useful troubleshooting option is to reinitialise the thing. We’d done that last time, and it had started to work again – eventually. I say eventually, because the link being used between the sites is relatively slow, and it took a long while for the initialisation to finish. Meanwhile, we’d been doing some investigation into what the problem could be, and were suitably pleased when the problem disappeared. So I got a message saying that a replication problem had occurred again. Reinitialising wasn’t going to be an option this time either. In this scenario, the subscriber having the problem happened to be in a different domain to the publisher. The other subscribers (within the domain) were fine, just this one in a different domain had the problem. Part of the problem seemed to be a log file that wasn’t being backed up properly. They’d been trying to back up to a backup device that had a corruption, and the log file was growing. Turned out, this wasn’t related to the problem, but of course, any time you’re troubleshooting and you see something untoward, you wonder. Having got past that problem, my next thought was that perhaps there was a problem with the account being used. But the other subscribers were using the same account, without any problems. The client pointed out that that it was almost exactly six months since the last failure (later shown to be a complete red herring). It sounded like something might’ve expired. Checking through certificates and trusts showed no sign of anything, and besides, there wasn’t a problem running a command-prompt window using the account in question, from the subscriber box. ...except that when he ran the sqlcmd –E –S servername command I recommended, it failed with a Named Pipes error. I’ve seen problems with firewalls rejecting connections via Named Pipes but letting TCP/IP through, so I got him to look into SQL Configuration Manager to see what kind of connection was being preferred... Everything seemed fine. And strangely, he could connect via Management Studio. Turned out, he had a typo in the servername of the sqlcmd command. That particular red herring must’ve been reflected in his cheeks as he told me. During the time, I also pinged a friend of mine to find out who I should ask, and Ted Kruger (@onpnt) ‘s name came up. Ted (and thanks again, Ted – really) reconfirmed some of my thoughts around the idea of an account expiring, and also suggesting bumping up the logging to level 4 (2 is Verbose, 4 is undocumented ridiculousness). I’d just told the client to push the logging up to level 2, but the log file wasn’t appearing. Checking permissions showed that the user did have permission on the folder, but still no file was appearing. Then it was noticed that the user had been switched earlier as part of the troubleshooting, and switching it back to the real user caused the log file to appear. Still no errors. A lot more information being pushed out, but still no errors. Ted suggested making sure the FQDNs were okay from both ends, in case the servers were unable to talk to each other. DNS problems can lead to hassles which can stop replication from working. No luck there either – it was all working fine. Another server started to report a problem as well. These two boxes were both SQL 2008 R2 (SP1), while the others, still working, were SQL 2005. Around this time, the client tried an idea that I’d shown him a few years ago – using a Profiler trace to see what was being called on the servers. It turned out that the last call being made on the publisher was sp_MSenumschemachange. A quick interwebs search on that showed a problem that exists in SQL Server 2008 R2, when stored procedures have more than 4000 characters. Running that stored procedure (with the same parameters) manually on SQL 2005 listed three stored procedures, the first of which did indeed have more than 4000 characters. Still no error though, and the problem as listed at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2539378 describes an error that should occur in the Event log. However, this problem is the type of thing that is fixed by a reinitialisation (because it doesn’t need to send the procedure change across as a transaction). And a look in the change history of the long stored procs (you all keep them, right?), showed that the problem from six months earlier could well have been down to this too. Applying SP2 (with sufficient paranoia about backups and how to get back out again if necessary) fixed the problem. The stored proc changes went through immediately after the service pack was applied, and it’s been running happily since. The funny thing is that I didn’t solve the problem. He had put the Profiler trace on the server, and had done the search that found a forum post pointing at this particular problem. I’d asked Ted too, and although he’d given some useful information, nothing that he’d come up with had actually been the solution either. Sometimes, asking for help is the most useful thing you can do. Often though, you don’t end up getting the help from the person you asked – the sounding board is actually what you need. @rob_farley

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  • Running OpenStack Icehouse with ZFS Storage Appliance

    - by Ronen Kofman
    Couple of months ago Oracle announced the support for OpenStack Cinder plugin with ZFS Storage Appliance (aka ZFSSA).  With our recent release of the Icehouse tech preview I thought it is a good opportunity to demonstrate the ZFSSA plugin working with Icehouse. One thing that helps a lot to get started with ZFSSA is that it has a VirtualBox simulator. This simulator allows users to try out the appliance’s features before getting to a real box. Users can test the functionality and design an environment even before they have a real appliance which makes the deployment process much more efficient. With OpenStack this is especially nice because having a simulator on the other end allows us to test the complete set of the Cinder plugin and check the entire integration on a single server or even a laptop. Let’s see how this works Installing and Configuring the Simulator To get started we first need to download the simulator, the simulator is available here, unzip it and it is ready to be imported to VirtualBox. If you do not already have VirtualBox installed you can download it from here according to your platform of choice. To import the simulator go to VirtualBox console File -> Import Appliance , navigate to the location of the simulator and import the virtual machine. When opening the virtual machine you will need to make the following changes: - Network – by default the network is “Host Only” , the user needs to change that to “Bridged” so the VM can connect to the network and be accessible. - Memory (optional) – the VM comes with a default of 2560MB which may be fine but if you have more memory that could not hurt, in my case I decided to give it 8192 - vCPU (optional) – the default the VM comes with 1 vCPU, I decided to change it to two, you are welcome to do so too. And here is how the VM looks like: Start the VM, when the boot process completes we will need to change the root password and the simulator is running and ready to go. Now that the simulator is up and running we can access simulated appliance using the URL https://<IP or DNS name>:215/, the IP is showing on the virtual machine console. At this stage we will need to configure the appliance, in my case I did not change any of the default (in other words pressed ‘commit’ several times) and the simulated appliance was configured and ready to go. We will need to enable REST access otherwise Cinder will not be able to call the appliance we do that in Configuration->Services and at the end of the page there is ‘REST’ button, enable it. If you are a more advanced user you can set additional features in the appliance but for the purpose of this demo this is sufficient. One final step will be to create a pool, go to Configuration -> Storage and add a pool as shown below the pool is named “default”: The simulator is now running, configured and ready for action. Configuring Cinder Back to OpenStack, I have a multi node deployment which we created according to the “Getting Started with Oracle VM, Oracle Linux and OpenStack” guide using Icehouse tech preview release. Now we need to install and configure the ZFSSA Cinder plugin using the README file. In short the steps are as follows: 1. Copy the file from here to the control node and place them at: /usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/cinder/volume/drivers/zfssa 2. Configure the plugin, editing /etc/cinder/cinder.conf # Driver to use for volume creation (string value) #volume_driver=cinder.volume.drivers.lvm.LVMISCSIDriver volume_driver=cinder.volume.drivers.zfssa.zfssaiscsi.ZFSSAISCSIDriver zfssa_host = <HOST IP> zfssa_auth_user = root zfssa_auth_password = <ROOT PASSWORD> zfssa_pool = default zfssa_target_portal = <HOST IP>:3260 zfssa_project = test zfssa_initiator_group = default zfssa_target_interfaces = e1000g0 3. Restart the cinder-volume service: service openstack-cinder-volume restart 4. Look into the log file, this will tell us if everything works well so far. If you see any errors fix them before continuing. 5. Install iscsi-initiator-utils package, this is important since the plugin uses iscsi commands from this package: yum install -y iscsi-initiator-utils The installation and configuration are very simple, we do not need to have a “project” in the ZFSSA but we do need to define a pool. Creating and Using Volumes in OpenStack We are now ready to work, to get started lets create a volume in OpenStack and see it showing up on the simulator: #  cinder create 2 --display-name my-volume-1 +---------------------+--------------------------------------+ |       Property      |                Value                 | +---------------------+--------------------------------------+ |     attachments     |                  []                  | |  availability_zone  |                 nova                 | |       bootable      |                false                 | |      created_at     |      2014-08-12T04:24:37.806752      | | display_description |                 None                 | |     display_name    |             my-volume-1              | |      encrypted      |                False                 | |          id         | df67c447-9a36-4887-a8ff-74178d5d06ee | |       metadata      |                  {}                  | |         size        |                  2                   | |     snapshot_id     |                 None                 | |     source_volid    |                 None                 | |        status       |               creating               | |     volume_type     |                 None                 | +---------------------+--------------------------------------+ In the simulator: Extending the volume to 5G: # cinder extend df67c447-9a36-4887-a8ff-74178d5d06ee 5 In the simulator: Creating templates using Cinder Volumes By default OpenStack supports ephemeral storage where an image is copied into the run area during instance launch and deleted when the instance is terminated. With Cinder we can create persistent storage and launch instances from a Cinder volume. Booting from volume has several advantages, one of the main advantages of booting from volumes is speed. No matter how large the volume is the launch operation is immediate there is no copying of an image to a run areas, an operation which can take a long time when using ephemeral storage (depending on image size). In this deployment we have a Glance image of Oracle Linux 6.5, I would like to make it into a volume which I can boot from. When creating a volume from an image we actually “download” the image into the volume and making the volume bootable, this process can take some time depending on the image size, during the download we will see the following status: # cinder create --image-id 487a0731-599a-499e-b0e2-5d9b20201f0f --display-name ol65 2 # cinder list +--------------------------------------+-------------+--------------+------+-------------+ |                  ID                  |    Status   | Display Name | Size | Volume Type | … +--------------------------------------+-------------+--------------+------+------------- | df67c447-9a36-4887-a8ff-74178d5d06ee |  available  | my-volume-1  |  5   |     None    | … | f61702b6-4204-4f10-8bdf-7da792f15c28 | downloading |     ol65     |  2   |     None    | … +--------------------------------------+-------------+--------------+------+-------------+ After the download is complete we will see that the volume status changed to “available” and that the bootable state is “true”. We can use this new volume to boot an instance from or we can use it as a template. Cinder can create a volume from another volume and ZFSSA can replicate volumes instantly in the back end. The result is an efficient template model where users can spawn an instance from a “template” instantly even if the template is very large in size. Let’s try replicating the bootable volume with the Oracle Linux 6.5 on it creating additional 3 bootable volumes: # cinder create 2 --source-volid f61702b6-4204-4f10-8bdf-7da792f15c28 --display-name ol65-bootable-1 # cinder create 2 --source-volid f61702b6-4204-4f10-8bdf-7da792f15c28 --display-name ol65-bootable-2 # cinder create 2 --source-volid f61702b6-4204-4f10-8bdf-7da792f15c28 --display-name ol65-bootable-3 # cinder list +--------------------------------------+-----------+-----------------+------+-------------+----------+-------------+ |                  ID                  |   Status  |   Display Name  | Size | Volume Type | Bootable | Attached to | +--------------------------------------+-----------+-----------------+------+-------------+----------+-------------+ | 9bfe0deb-b9c7-4d97-8522-1354fc533c26 | available | ol65-bootable-2 |  2   |     None    |   true   |             | | a311a855-6fb8-472d-b091-4d9703ef6b9a | available | ol65-bootable-1 |  2   |     None    |   true   |             | | df67c447-9a36-4887-a8ff-74178d5d06ee | available |   my-volume-1   |  5   |     None    |  false   |             | | e7fbd2eb-e726-452b-9a88-b5eee0736175 | available | ol65-bootable-3 |  2   |     None    |   true   |             | | f61702b6-4204-4f10-8bdf-7da792f15c28 | available |       ol65      |  2   |     None    |   true   |             | +--------------------------------------+-----------+-----------------+------+-------------+----------+-------------+ Note that the creation of those 3 volume was almost immediate, no need to download or copy, ZFSSA takes care of the volume copy for us. Start 3 instances: # nova boot --boot-volume a311a855-6fb8-472d-b091-4d9703ef6b9a --flavor m1.tiny ol65-instance-1 --nic net-id=25b19746-3aea-4236-8193-4c6284e76eca # nova boot --boot-volume 9bfe0deb-b9c7-4d97-8522-1354fc533c26 --flavor m1.tiny ol65-instance-2 --nic net-id=25b19746-3aea-4236-8193-4c6284e76eca # nova boot --boot-volume e7fbd2eb-e726-452b-9a88-b5eee0736175 --flavor m1.tiny ol65-instance-3 --nic net-id=25b19746-3aea-4236-8193-4c6284e76eca Instantly replicating volumes is a very powerful feature, especially for large templates. The ZFSSA Cinder plugin allows us to take advantage of this feature of ZFSSA. By offloading some of the operations to the array OpenStack create a highly efficient environment where persistent volume can be instantly created from a template. That’s all for now, with this environment you can continue to test ZFSSA with OpenStack and when you are ready for the real appliance the operations will look the same. @RonenKofman

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  • How to configure TATA Photon+ EC1261 HUAWEI

    - by user3215
    I'm running ubuntu 10.04. I have a newly purchased TATA Photon+ Internet connection which supports Windows and Mac. On the Internet I found a article saying that it could be configured on Linux. I followed the steps to install it on Ubuntu from this link. I am still not able to get online, and need some help. Also, it is very slow, but I was told that I would see speeds up to 3.1MB. I dont have wvdial installed and cannot install it from apt as I'm not connected to internet Booting from windows I dowloaded "wvdial" .deb package and tried to install on ubuntu but it's ended with dependency problem. Automatically, don't know how, I got connected to internet only for once. Immediately I installed wvdial package after this I followed the tutorials(I could not browse and upload the files here) . From then it's showing that the device is connected in the network connections but no internet connection. Once I disable the device, it won't show as connected again and I'll have to restart my system. Sometimes the device itself not detected(wondering if there is any command to re-read the all devices). output of wvdialconf /etc/wvdial.cof: #wvdialconf /etc/wvdial.conf Editing `/etc/wvdial.conf'. Scanning your serial ports for a modem. ttyS0<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- failed with 2400 baud, next try: 9600 baud ttyS0<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- failed with 9600 baud, next try: 115200 baud ttyS0<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- and failed too at 115200, giving up. Modem Port Scan<*1>: S1 S2 S3 WvModem<*1>: Cannot get information for serial port. ttyUSB0<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- failed with 2400 baud, next try: 9600 baud ttyUSB0<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- failed with 9600 baud, next try: 9600 baud ttyUSB0<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- and failed too at 115200, giving up. WvModem<*1>: Cannot get information for serial port. ttyUSB1<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- failed with 2400 baud, next try: 9600 baud ttyUSB1<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- failed with 9600 baud, next try: 9600 baud ttyUSB1<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- and failed too at 115200, giving up. WvModem<*1>: Cannot get information for serial port. ttyUSB2<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 -- OK ttyUSB2<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 Z -- OK ttyUSB2<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 -- OK ttyUSB2<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 -- OK ttyUSB2<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 -- OK ttyUSB2<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0 -- OK ttyUSB2<*1>: Modem Identifier: ATI -- Manufacturer: +GMI: HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES CO., LTD ttyUSB2<*1>: Speed 9600: AT -- OK ttyUSB2<*1>: Max speed is 9600; that should be safe. ttyUSB2<*1>: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0 -- OK Found a modem on /dev/ttyUSB2. Modem configuration written to /etc/wvdial.conf. ttyUSB2<Info>: Speed 9600; init "ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0" output of wvdial: #wvdial --> WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.60 --> Cannot get information for serial port. --> Initializing modem. --> Sending: ATZ ATZ OK --> Sending: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0 ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0 OK --> Sending: AT+CRM=1 AT+CRM=1 OK --> Modem initialized. --> Sending: ATDT#777 --> Waiting for carrier. ATDT#777 CONNECT --> Carrier detected. Starting PPP immediately. --> Starting pppd at Sat Oct 16 15:30:47 2010 --> Pid of pppd: 5681 --> Using interface ppp0 --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] --> local IP address 14.96.147.104 --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] --> remote IP address 172.29.161.223 --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] --> primary DNS address 121.40.152.90 --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] --> secondary DNS address 121.40.152.100 --> pppd: (u;[08]@s;[08]`{;[08] Output of log message /var/log/messages: Oct 16 15:29:44 avyakta-desktop pppd[5119]: secondary DNS address 121.242.190.180 Oct 16 15:29:58 desktop pppd[5119]: Terminating on signal 15 Oct 16 15:29:58 desktop pppd[5119]: Connect time 0.3 minutes. Oct 16 15:29:58 desktop pppd[5119]: Sent 0 bytes, received 177 bytes. Oct 16 15:29:58 desktop pppd[5119]: Connection terminated. Oct 16 15:30:47 desktop pppd[5681]: pppd 2.4.5 started by root, uid 0 Oct 16 15:30:47 desktop pppd[5681]: Using interface ppp0 Oct 16 15:30:47 desktop pppd[5681]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/ttyUSB2 Oct 16 15:30:47 desktop pppd[5681]: CHAP authentication succeeded Oct 16 15:30:47 desktop pppd[5681]: CHAP authentication succeeded Oct 16 15:30:48 desktop pppd[5681]: local IP address 14.96.147.104 Oct 16 15:30:48 desktop pppd[5681]: remote IP address 172.29.161.223 Oct 16 15:30:48 desktop pppd[5681]: primary DNS address 121.40.152.90 Oct 16 15:30:48 desktop pppd[5681]: secondary DNS address 121.40.152.100 EDIT 1 : I tried the following sudo stop network-manager sudo killall modem-manager sudo /usr/sbin/modem-manager --debug > ~/mm.log 2>&1 & sudo /usr/sbin/NetworkManager --no-daemon > ~/nm.log 2>&1 & Output of mm.log: #vim ~/mm.log: ** Message: Loaded plugin Option High-Speed ** Message: Loaded plugin Option ** Message: Loaded plugin Huawei ** Message: Loaded plugin Longcheer ** Message: Loaded plugin AnyData ** Message: Loaded plugin ZTE ** Message: Loaded plugin Ericsson MBM ** Message: Loaded plugin Sierra ** Message: Loaded plugin Generic ** Message: Loaded plugin Gobi ** Message: Loaded plugin Novatel ** Message: Loaded plugin Nokia ** Message: Loaded plugin MotoC Output of nm.log: #vim ~/nm.log: NetworkManager: <info> starting... NetworkManager: <info> modem-manager is now available NetworkManager: SCPlugin-Ifupdown: init! NetworkManager: SCPlugin-Ifupdown: update_system_hostname NetworkManager: SCPluginIfupdown: guessed connection type (eth0) = 802-3-ethernet NetworkManager: SCPlugin-Ifupdown: update_connection_setting_from_if_block: name:eth0, type:802-3-ethernet, id:Ifupdown (eth0), uuid: 681b428f-beaf-8932-dce4-678ed5bae28e NetworkManager: SCPlugin-Ifupdown: addresses count: 1 NetworkManager: SCPlugin-Ifupdown: No dns-nameserver configured in /etc/network/interfaces NetworkManager: nm-ifupdown-connection.c.119 - invalid connection read from /etc/network/interfaces: (1) addresses NetworkManager: SCPluginIfupdown: management mode: unmanaged NetworkManager: SCPlugin-Ifupdown: devices added (path: /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.4/0000:02:02.0/net/eth1, iface: eth1) NetworkManager: SCPlugin-Ifupdown: device added (path: /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.4/0000:02:02.0/net/eth1, iface: eth1): no ifupdown configuration found. NetworkManager: SCPlugin-Ifupdown: devices added (path: /sys/devices/virtual/net/lo, iface: lo) @

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, June 27, 2013

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, June 27, 2013Popular ReleasesV8.NET: V8.NET Beta Release v1.2.23.5: 1. Fixed some minor bugs. 2. Added the ability to reuse existing V8NativeObject types. Simply set the "Handle" property of the objects to a new native object handle (just write to it directly). Example: "myV8NativeObject.Handle = {V8Engine}.GlobalObject.Handle;" 3. Supports .NET 4.0! (forgot to compile against .NET 4.0 instead of 4.5, which is now fixed)Stored Procedure Pager: LYB.NET.SPPager 1.10: check bugs: 1 the total page count of default stored procedure ".LYBPager" always takes error as this: page size: 10 total item count: 100 then total page count should be 10, but last version is 11. 2 update some comments with English forbidding messy code.StyleMVVM: 3.0.3: This is a minor feature and bug fix release Features: SingletonAttribute - Shared(Permanently=true) has been obsoleted in favor of SingletonAttribute StyleMVVMServiceLocator - releasing new nuget package that implements the ServiceLocator pattern Bug Fixes: Fixed problem with ModuleManager when used in not XAML application Fixed problem with nuget packages in MVC & WCF project templatesWinRT by Example Sample Applications: Chapters 1 - 10: Source code for chapters 1 - 9 with tech edits for chapters 1 - 5.Terminals: Version 3.0 - Release: Changes since version 2.0:Choose 100% portable or installed version Removed connection warning when running RDP 8 (Windows 8) client Fixed Active directory search Extended Active directory search by LDAP filters Fixed single instance mode when running on Windows Terminal server Merged usage of Tags and Groups Added columns sorting option in tables No UAC prompts on Windows 7 Completely new file persistence data layer New MS SQL persistence layer (Store data in SQL database)...NuGet: NuGet 2.6: Released June 26, 2013. Release notes: http://docs.nuget.org/docs/release-notes/nuget-2.6Python Tools for Visual Studio: 2.0 Beta: We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 2.0 Beta. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including CPython/IronPython, Edit/Intellisense/Debug/Profile, Cloud, HPC, IPython, and cross platform debugging support. For a quick overview of the general IDE experience, please watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuewiStN...xFunc: xFunc 2.3: Improved the Simplify method; Rewrote the Differentiate method in the Derivative class; Changed API; Added project for .Net 2.0/3.0/3.5/4.5/Portable;Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 and WP8 (v1.3 beta): Preview: New MPEG DASH adaptive streaming plugin for WAMS. Preview: New Ultraviolet CFF plugin. Preview: New WP7 version with WP8 compatibility. (source code only) Source code is now available via CodePlex Git Misc bug fixes and improvements: WP8 only: Added optional fullscreen and mute buttons to default xaml JS only: protecting currentTime from returning infinity. Some videos would cause currentTime to be infinity which could cause errors in plugins expecting only finite values. (...AssaultCube Reloaded: 2.5.8: SERVER OWNERS: note that the default maprot has changed once again. Linux has Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit precompiled binaries and Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, please wait while we continue to try to package for those OSes. Or better yet, try to compile it. If it fails, download a virtual machine. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compi...Compare .NET Objects: Version 1.7.2.0: If you like it, please rate it. :) Performance Improvements Fix for deleted row in a data table Added ability to ignore the collection order Fix for Ignoring by AttributesMicrosoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.95: update parser to allow for CSS3 calc( function to nest. add recognition of -pponly (Preprocess-Only) switch in AjaxMinManifestTask build task. Fix crashing bug in EXE when processing a manifest file using the -xml switch and an error message needs to be displayed (like a missing input file). Create separate Clean and Bundle build tasks for working with manifest files (AjaxMinManifestCleanTask and AjaxMinBundleTask). Removed the IsCleanOperation from AjaxMinManifestTask -- use AjaxMinMan...VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.44: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImgChili.net" links FIXED: Auto UpdaterDocument.Editor: 2013.25: What's new for Document.Editor 2013.25: Improved Spell Check support Improved User Interface Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsWPF Composites: Version 4.3.0: In this Beta release, I broke my code out into two separate projects. There is a core FasterWPF.dll with the minimal required functionality. This can run with only the Aero.dll and the Rx .dll's. Then, I have a FasterWPFExtras .dll that requires and supports the Extended WPF Toolkit™ Community Edition V 1.9.0 (including Xceed DataGrid) and the Thriple .dll. This is for developers who want more . . . Finally, you may notice the other OPTIONAL .dll's available in the download such as the Dyn...Channel9's Absolute Beginner Series: Windows Phone 8: Entire source code for the Channel 9 series, Windows Phone 8 Development for Absolute Beginners.Indent Guides for Visual Studio: Indent Guides v13: ImportantThis release does not support Visual Studio 2010. The latest stable release for VS 2010 is v12.1. Version History Changed in v13 Added page width guide lines Added guide highlighting options Fixed guides appearing over collapsed blocks Fixed guides not appearing in newly opened files Fixed some potential crashes Fixed lines going through pragma statements Various updates for VS 2012 and VS 2013 Removed VS 2010 support Changed in v12.1: Fixed crash when unable to start...Fluent Ribbon Control Suite: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.1.0 - Prerelease d: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.1.0 - Prerelease d(supports .NET 3.5, 4.0 and 4.5) Includes: Fluent.dll (with .pdb and .xml) Showcase Application Samples (not for .NET 3.5) Foundation (Tabs, Groups, Contextual Tabs, Quick Access Toolbar, Backstage) Resizing (ribbon reducing & enlarging principles) Galleries (Gallery in ContextMenu, InRibbonGallery) MVVM (shows how to use this library with Model-View-ViewModel pattern) KeyTips ScreenTips Toolbars ColorGallery *Walkthrough (do...Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.5.1001: Magick.NET compiled against ImageMagick 6.8.5.10. Breaking changes: - MagickNET.Initialize has been made obsolete because the ImageMagick files in the directory are no longer necessary. - MagickGeometry is no longer IDisposable. - Renamed dll's so they include the platform name. - Image profiles can now only be accessed and modified with ImageProfile classes. - Renamed DrawableBase to Drawable. - Removed Args part of PathArc/PathCurvetoArgs/PathQuadraticCurvetoArgs classes. The...Three-Dimensional Maneuver Gear for Minecraft: TDMG 1.1.0.0 for 1.5.2: CodePlex???(????????) ?????????(???1/4) ??????????? ?????????? ???????????(??????????) ??????????????????????? ↑????、?????????????????????(???????) ???、??????????、?????????????????????、????????1.5?????????? Shift+W(????)??????????????????10°、?10°(?????????)???New ProjectsAriana - .NET Userkit: Ariana Userkit is a library which will allow a file to persist after being executed. It can allow manipulating processes, registry keys, directories etc.Baidu Map: Baidu MapBTC Trader: BTC Trader is a tool for the automated and manual trading on BTC exchanges.Cafe Software Management: This is software for SokulChangix.Sql: Very, very simple ORM framework =)Composite WPF Extensions: Extensions to Composite Client Application Library for WPFCross Site Collection Search Configurator: A solution for SharePoint to allow you to share your site collection based search configuration between site collections in the same web application.CSS Extractor: Attempts to extract inline css styles from a HTML file and put them into a separate CSS fileCSS600Summer2013: This is a project for students enrolled in CSS 600 at University of Washington, Bothell campus.Easy Backup Application: Easy Backup Application - application for easy scheduled backup local or network folders.Easy Backup Windows Service: Easy Backup Windows Service - application for easy scheduled backup local or network folders.fangxue: huijiaGamelight: Gamelight is a 2D game library for Silverlight. It features 2D graphics manipulation to make the creation of games that don't adhere to traditional UI (such as sprite-based games) much easier. It also streamlines sound and input management. General Method: General MethodICE - Interface Communications Engine: ICE is an engine which makes it easy to create .NET plugins for running on servers for the purpose of communication between systems.LogWriterReader using Named pipe: LogWriterReader using Named pipeLu 6.2 Viewer: Tool for analysing LU62 strings. Visualisation of node lists in tree structure, it offers the possability to compare two lu62 strings in seperate windows and visualise the differences between the two segments selected. Fw 2.0 developed by Riccardo di Nuzzo (http://www.dinuzzo.it)Math.Net PowerShell: PowerShell environment for Math.Net Numerics library, defines a few cmdlets that allow to create and manipulate matrices using a straightforward syntax.mycode: my codeNFC#: NFCSharp is a project aimed at building a native C# support for NFC tag manipulation.NJquery: jquery???????????????Page Pro Image Viewer and Twain: Low level image viewer Proyecto Ferreteria "CristoRey": FirstRobótica e Automação: Sistema desenvolvido por Alessandro José Segura de Oliveira - MERodolpho Brock Projects: A MVC 'like' start application for MSVS2010 - Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 UIL - User Interface Layer : <UIB - User Interface Base> - GUI: Graphic User Interface - WEB: ASP.NET MVC BLL - Business Logic Layer : <BLB - Business Logic Base> - Only one core!!! DAL - Data Access Layer : <DAB - Data Access Base> - SQL Server - PostgreSQL ORM - Object-Relational Mapping <Object-Relational Base> - ADO.NET Entity FrameworkSilverlight Layouts: Silverlight Layouts is a project for controls that behave as content placeholders with pre-defined GUI layout for some of common scenarios: - frozen headers, - frozen columns, - cyrcle layouts etc.Simple Logging Façade for C++: Port for Simple Logging Façade for C++, with a Java equivalent known as slf4j. SQL Server Data Compare: * Compare the *data* in two databases record by record. * Generate *html compare results* with interactive interface. * Generate *T-SQL synchronization scripts*UserVisitLogsHelp: UserVisitLogsHelp is Open-source the log access records HttpModule extension Components .The component is developed with C#,it's a custom HttpModule component.V5Soft: webcome v5softvcseVBA - version controlled software engineering in VBA: Simplify distributed application development for Visual Basic for Applications with this Excel AddinVersionizer: Versionizer is a configuration management command-line tool developed using C# .NET for editing AssemblyInfo files of Microsoft .NET projects.WebsiteFilter: WebsiteFilter is an open source asp.net web site to access IP address filtering httpmodule components. Wordion: Wordion is a tool for foreign language learners to memorize words.????????: ????????-?????????,??@???? ????。1、????????????,2、??????????????(????,???????,“?? ??”),3、?????>??>>????5???,4、??"@?/?"?Excel??????@??,5、??“??@",???????@ 。????QQ:6763745

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  • Azure Diagnostics: The Bad, The Ugly, and a Better Way

    - by jasont
    If you’re a .Net web developer today, no doubt you’ve enjoyed watching Windows Azure grow up over the past couple of years. The platform has scaled, stabilized (mostly), and added on a slew of great (and sometimes overdue) features. What was once just an endpoint to host a solution, developers today have tremendous flexibility and options in the platform. Organizations are building new solutions and offerings on the platform, and others have, or are in the process of, migrating existing applications out of their own data centers into the Azure cloud. Whether new application development or migrating legacy, every development shop and IT organization needs to monitor their applications in the cloud, the same as they do on premises. Azure Diagnostics has some capabilities, but what I constantly hear from users is that it’s either (a) not enough, or (b) too cumbersome to set up. Today, Stackify is happy to announce that we fully support Azure deployments, just the same as your on-premises deployments. Let’s take a look below and compare and contrast the options. Azure Diagnostics Let’s crack open the Windows Azure documentation on Azure Diagnostics and see just how easy it is to use. The high level steps are:   Step 1: Import the Diagnostics Oh, I’ve already deployed my app without the diagnostics module. Guess I can’t do anything until I do this and re-deploy. Step 2: Configure the Diagnostics (and multiple sub-steps) Do I want it all? Or just pieces of it? Whoops, forgot to include a specific performance counter, I guess I’ll have to deploy again. Wait a minute… I have to specifically code these performance counters into my role’s OnStart() method, compile and deploy again? And query and consume it myself? Step 3: (Optional) Permanently store diagnostic data Lucky for me, Azure storage has gotten pretty cheap. But how often should I move the data into storage? I want to see real-time data, so I guess that’s out now as well. Step 4: (Optional) View stored diagnostic data Optional? Of course I want to see it. Conveniently, Microsoft recommends 3 tools to do this with. Un-conveniently, none of these are web based and they all just give you access to raw data, and very little charting or real-time intelligence. Just….. data. Nevermind that one product seems to have gotten stale since a recent acquisition, and doesn’t even have screenshots!   So, let’s summarize: lots of diagnostics data is available, but think realistically. Think Dev Ops. What happens when you are in the middle of a major production performance issue and you don’t have the diagnostics you need? You are redeploying an application (and thankfully you have a great branching strategy, so you feel perfectly safe just willy-nilly launching code into prod, don’t you?) to get data, then shipping it to storage, and then digging through that data to find a needle in a haystack. Would you like to be able to troubleshoot a performance issue in the middle of the night, or on a weekend, from your iPad or home computer’s web browser? Forget it: the best you get is this spark line in the Azure portal. If it’s real pointy, you probably have an issue; but since there is no alert based on a threshold your customers have likely already let you know. And high CPU, Memory, I/O, or Network doesn’t tell you anything about where the problem is. The Better Way – Stackify Stackify supports application and server monitoring in real time, all through a great web interface. All of the things that Azure Diagnostics provides, Stackify provides for your on-premises deployments, and you don’t need to know ahead of time that you’ll need it. It’s always there, it’s always on. Azure deployments are essentially no different than on-premises. It’s a Windows Server (or Linux) in the cloud. It’s behind a different firewall than your corporate servers. That’s it. Stackify can provide the same powerful tools to your Azure deployments in two simple steps. Step 1 Add a startup task to your web or worker role and deploy. If you can’t deploy and need it right now, no worries! Remote Desktop to the Azure instance and you can execute a Powershell script to download / install Stackify.   Step 2 Log in to your account at www.stackify.com and begin monitoring as much as you want, as often as you want and see the results instantly. WMI? It’s there Event Viewer? You’ve got it. File System Access? Yes, please! Would love to make sure my web.config is correct.   IIS / App Pool Info? Yep. You can even restart it. Running Services? All of them. Start and Stop them to your heart’s content. SQL Database access? You bet’cha. Alerts and Notification? Of course! You should know before your customers let you know. … and so much more.   Conclusion Microsoft has shown, consistently, that they love developers, developers, developers. What every developer needs to realize from this is that they’ve given you a canvas, which is exactly what Azure is. It’s great infrastructure that is readily available, easy to manage, and fairly cost effective. However, the tooling is your responsibility. What you get, at best, is bare bones. App and server diagnostics should be available when you need them. While we, as developers, try to plan for and think of everything ahead of time, there will come times where we need to get data that just isn’t available. And having to go through a lot of cumbersome steps to get that data, and then have to find a friendlier way to consume it…. well, that just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I’d rather spend my time writing and developing features and completing bug fixes for my applications, than to be writing code to monitor and diagnose.

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  • Instructions on how to configure a WebLogic Cluster and use it with Oracle Http Server

    - by Laurent Goldsztejn
    On October 17th I delivered a webcast on WebLogic Clustering that included a demo with Apache as the proxy server.  I realized that many steps are needed to set up the configuration I used during the demo.  The purpose of this article is to go through these steps to show how quickly and easily one can define a new cluster and then proxy requests via an Oracle Http Server (OHS). The domain configuration wizard offers the option to create a cluster.  The administration console or WLST, the Weblogic scripting tool can also be used to define a new cluster.  It can be created at any time but the servers that will participate in it cannot be in a running state. Cluster Creation using the configuration wizard Network and architecture requirements need to be considered while choosing between unicast and multicast. Multicast Vs. Unicast with WebLogic Clustering is of great help to make the best decision between the two messaging modes.  In addition, Configure Cluster offers details on each single field displayed above. After this initial configuration page, individual servers could be assigned to this newly created cluster although servers can be added later to the cluster.  What is not recommended is for the Admin server to participate in a cluster as the main purpose of the Admin server is to perform the bulk of the processing for the domain.  Servers need to stop before being assigned to a cluster.  There is also no minimum number of servers that have to participate in the cluster. At this point the configuration should be done and the cluster created successfully.  This can easily be verified from the console. Each clustered managed server can be launched to join the cluster.   At startup the following messages should be logged for each clustered managed server: <Notice> <WeblogicServer> <BEA-000365> <Server state changed to STARTING> <Notice> <Cluster> <BEA-000197> <Listening for announcements from cluster using messaging_mode cluster messaging> <Notice> <Cluster> <BEA-000133> <Waiting to synchronize with other running members of cluster_name>  It's time to try sending requests to the cluster and we will do this with the help of Oracle Http Server to play the role of a proxy server to demonstrate load balancing.  Proxy Server configuration  The first step is to download Weblogic Server Web Server Plugin that will enhance the web server by handling requests aimed at being sent to the Weblogic cluster.  For our test Oracle Http Server (OHS) will be used.  However plug-ins are also available for Apache Http server, Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS), Oracle iPlanet Webserver or even WebLogic Server with the HttpClusterServlet. Once OHS is installed on the system, the configuration file, mod_wl_ohs.conf, will need to be altered to include Weblogic proxy specifics. First of all, add the following directive to instruct Apache to load the Weblogic shared object module extracted from the plugins file just downloaded. LoadModule weblogic_module modules/mod_wl_ohs.so and then create an IfModule directive to encapsulate the following location block so that proxy will be enabled by path (each request including /wls will be directed directly to the WebLogic Cluster).  You could also proxy requests by MIME type using MatchExpression in the Location block. <IfModule weblogic_module> <Location /wls>    SetHandler weblogic-handler    PathTrim /wls    WebLogicCluster MS1_URL:port,MS2_URL:port    Debug ON    WLLogFile        c:/tmp/global_proxy.log     WLTempDir        "c:/myTemp"    DebugConfigInfo  On </Location> </IfModule> SetHandler specifies the handler for the plug-in module  PathTrim will instruct the plug-in to trim /w ls from the URL before forwarding the request to the cluster. The list of WebLogic Servers defined in WeblogicCluster could contain a mixed set of clustered and single servers.  However, the dynamic list returned for this parameter will only contain valid clustered servers and may contain more servers if not all clustered servers are listed in WeblogicCluster. Testing proxy and load balancing It's time to start OHS web server which should at this point be configured correctly to proxy requests to the clustered servers.  By default round-robin is the load balancing strategy set by WebLogic. Testing the load balancing can be easily done by disabling cookies on your browser given that a request containing a cookie attempts to connect to the primary server. If that attempt fails, the plug-in attempts to make a connection to the next available server in the list in a round-robin fashion.  With cookies enabled, you could use two different browsers to test the load balancing with a JSP page that contains the following: <%@ page contentType="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" language="java"  %>  <%  String path = request.getContextPath();   String getProtocol=request.getScheme();   String getDomain=request.getServerName();   String getPort=Integer.toString(request.getLocalPort());   String getPath = getProtocol+"://"+getDomain+":"+getPort+path+"/"; %> <html> <body> Receiving Server <%=getPath%> </body> </html>  Assuming that you name the JSP page Test.jsp and the webapp that contains it TestApp, your browsers should open the following URL: http://localhost/wls/TestApp/Test.jsp  Each browser should connect to a different clustered server and this simple JSP should confirm that.  The webapp that contains the JSP needs to be deployed to the cluster. You can also verify that the load is correctly balanced by looking at the proxy log file.  Each request generates a set of log entries that starts with : timestamp ================New Request: Each request is associated with a primary server and a secondary server if one is available.  For our test request, the following entries should appear in the log as well:Using Uri /wls/TestApp/Test.jsp After trimming path: '/TestApp/Test.jsp' The final request string is '/TestApp/Test.jsp' If an exception occurs, it should also be logged in the proxy log file with the prefix:timestamp *******Exception type   WeblogicBridgeConfig DebugConfigInfo enables runtime statistics and the production of configuration information.  For security purposes, this parameter should be turned off in production. http://webserver_host:port/path/xyz.jsp?__WebLogicBridgeConfig will display a proxy bridge page detailing the plugin configuration followed by runtime statistics which could help in diagnosing issues along with the analyzing of the proxy log file.  In our example the url would be: http://localhost/wls/TestApp/Test.jsp?__WebLogicBridgeConfig  Here is how the top section of the screen can look like: The bottom part of the page contains runtime statistics, here is a snippet of it (unrelated with the previous JSP example).   This entire plugin configuration should be very similar with other web servers, what varies is the name of the proxy server configuration file. So, as you can see, it only takes a few minutes to configure a Weblogic cluster and get servers to join it. 

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, May 12, 2014

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, May 12, 2014Popular ReleasesMySqlBackup.NET - MySQL Backup Solution for C#, VB.NET, ASP.NET: MySqlBackup.NET 2.0.4: - Remove "SET GLOBALmax_allowed_packet". It will take effect on new connection, not on current. - Clean up. Remove old and inappropriate IntelliSense. - Minor update.SSIS SFTP Task Control Flow Component: SSIS SFTP v2 for SQL Server 2012: Please report you to the Documentation page for installation instructions.ExtJS based ASP.NET Controls: FineUI v4.0.6: FineUI(???) ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET ??? FineUI??? ?? No JavaScript,No CSS,No UpdatePanel,No ViewState,No WebServices ??????? ?????? IE 8.0+、Chrome、Firefox、Opera、Safari ???? Apache License v2.0 ?:ExtJS ?? GPL v3 ?????(http://www.sencha.com/license) ???? ??:http://fineui.com/ ??:http://fineui.com/bbs/ ??:http://fineui.com/demo/ ??:http://fineui.com/doc/ ??:http://fineui.codeplex.com/ FineUI ???? ExtJS ????????,???? ExtJS ?,?????: 1. ????? FineUI ? ExtJS ? http://fineui.com/bbs/forum.ph...TerraMap (Terraria World Map Viewer): TerraMap 1.0.3.33908: Added support for the new Terraria v1.2.4 update. New items, walls, and tiles Fixed Issue 35206: Hightlight/Find doesn't work for Demon Altars The setup file will make sure .NET 4 is installed, install TerraMap, create desktop and start menu shortcuts, add a .wld file association, and launch TerraMap. If you prefer the zip file, make sure you have .NET Framework v4.5 installed, then just download and extract the ZIP file, and run TerraMap.exe.Office App Model Samples: Office App Model Samples v2.0: Office App Model Samples v2.0Readable Passphrase Generator: KeePass Plugin 0.13.0: Version 0.13.0 Added "mutators" which add uppercase and numbers to passphrases (to help complying with upper, lower, number complexity rules). Additional API methods which help consuming the generator from 3rd party c# projects. 13,160 words in the default dictionary (~600 more than previous release).CS-Script for Notepad++ (C# intellisense and code execution): Release v1.0.25.0: Release v1.0.25.0 MemberInfo/MethodInfo popup is now positioned properly to fit the screen In MethodInfo popup method signatures are word-wrapped Implemented Debug text value visualizer Pining sub-values from Watch PanelxFunc: xFunc 2.15.3: Added #53R.NET: R.NET 1.5.12: R.NET 1.5.12 is a beta release towards R.NET 1.6. You are encouraged to use 1.5.12 now and give feedback. See the documentation for setup and usage instructions. Main changes for R.NET 1.5.12: The C stack limit was not disabled on Windows. For reasons possibly peculiar to R, this means that non-concurrent access to R from multiple threads was not stable. This is now fixed, with the fix validated with a unit test. Thanks to Odugen, skyguy94, and previously others (evolvedmicrobe, tomasp) fo...CTI Text Encryption: CTI Text Encryption 5.2: Change log: 5.2 - Remove Cut button. - Fixed Reset All button does not reset encrypted text column. - Switch button location between Copy and Paste. - Enable users to use local fonts to display characters of their language correctly. (A font settings file will be saved at the same folder of this program.) 5.1 - Improve encryption process. - Minor UI update. - Version 5.1 is not compatible with older version. 5.0 - Improve encryption algorithm. - Simply inner non-encryption related mec...SEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.029.006 Release 1: Fix to allow keyboard search on load dialog. (type the first few letters of your save) Fixed check for new release. Changed the way ship details are loaded to alleviate load time for worlds with very large ships (100,000+ blocks). Fixed Image importer, was incorrectly listing 'Asteroid' as import option. Minor changes to menus (text and appearance) for clarity and OS consistency. Added in reading of world palette for color dialog editor. WIP on subsystem editor. Can now multiselec...Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.597b: Thank you for being patient, againThere are a number of fixes in place with this release. and some new features added. Most are self explanatory, so check out the options in Preferences. Couple of new Features:* Movie - Allow save Title and Sort Title in Title Case format. * Movie - Allow save fanart.jpg if movie in folder. * TV - display episode source. Get episode source from episode filename. Fixed:* Movie - Added Fill Tags from plot keywords to Batch Rescraper. * Movie - Fixed TMDB s...SimCityPak: SimCityPak 0.3.0.0: Contains several bugfixes, newly identified properties and some UI improvements. Main new features UI overhaul for the main index list: Icons for each different index, including icons for different property files Tooltips for all relevant fields Removed clutter Identified hundreds of additional properties (thanks to MaxisGuillaume) - this should make modding gameplay easierSeal Report: Seal Report 1.4: New Features: Report Designer: New option to convert a Report Source into a Repository Source. Report Designer: New contextual helper menus to select, remove, copy, prompt elements in a model. Web Server: New option to expand sub-folders displayed in the tree view. Web Server: Web Folder Description File can be a .cshtml file to display a MVC View. Views: additional CSS parameters for some DIVs. NVD3 Chart: Some default configuration values have been changed. Issues Addressed:16 ...Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.9.002: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.9.0.VidCoder: 1.5.22 Beta: Added ability to burn SRT subtitles. Updated to HandBrake SVN 6169. Added checks to prevent VidCoder from running with a database version newer than it expects. Tooltips in the Advanced Video panel now trigger on the field labels as well as the fields themselves. Fixed updating preset/profile/tune/level settings on changing video encoder. This should resolve some problems with QSV encoding. Fixed tunes and profiles getting set to blank when switching between x264 and x265. Fixed co...NuGet: NuGet 2.8.2: We will be releasing a 2.8.2 version of our own NuGet packages and the NuGet.exe command-line tool. The 2.8.2 release will not include updated VS or WebMatrix extensions. NuGet.Server.Extensions.dll needs to be used alongside NuGet-Signed.exe to provide the NuGet.exe mirror functionality.MVC - Filtered TextBox: SourceCode: The complete source code archived as a zip file.SmartStore.NET - Free ASP.NET MVC Ecommerce Shopping Cart Solution: SmartStore.NET 2.0.2: SmartStore.NET 2.0.2 is primarily a maintenance release for version 2.0.0, which has been released on April 04 2014. It contains several improvements & important fixes. BugfixesIMPORTANT FIX: Memory leak leads to OutOfMemoryException in application after a while Installation fix: some varchar(MAX) columns get created as varchar(4000). Added a migration to fix the column specs. Installation fix: Setup fails with exception Value cannot be null. Parameter name: stream Bugfix for stock iss...Channel9's Absolute Beginner Series: Windows Phone 8.1: Entire source code for Windows Phone 8.1 Absolute Beginner Series.New Projects2112110080: VÕ TU?N ANH_L?P TRÌNH HU?NG Ð?I TU?NG(OOP)Arquitectura de Proyecto: Este proyecto es una referencia pensada y creada para la comunidad de desarrolladores, basado en capas (Layer) e Inspirado en SOLID.EControl: Projeto integrador 4º Semestre de BSI - SENACFactory Pattern: A sample codes that implements Factory Patterns.FM??????: ????????. ?????. Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 R2 - OpenXml Samples: Samples for extending the OpenXml funcitonality used in Microsoft Dynamics NAV 20013 R2 Excel Buffer.OCBiz: ocbizOffice 365 Drive Mapping for Enterprise Desktops: Office 365 Drive Mapping for use with Enterprise Desktops. Allows users to utilize the technology known as SharePoint Online for folder redirection.Repo Pattern: This project will help you understand the Repository Pattern.. :)Roll20 Custom Power Card Macro Generator: Create HoneyBadger's Custom Power Cards for the Roll20 Virtual Tabletop easier with this GUI tool!SharpLog: A simple high-peformance portable logging framework for .NET, which follows simple convention over configuration, and works with PCL.Star Trek Online Fan Page: school project Subtitle RT: This is a Windows Runtime App that loads and display subtitles to accompany a video playback on next to it.TomLibraries: Ce projet regroupe tous mes Helpers en C# et en XAML que je me sers dans mes projets.TP Cuatrimestral Laboratorio V: Proyecto universitario para la materia laboratorio v para tssi de la utn frgpUnfolnt Copyright: ???????? ?? ?????? ????, ?????????? ????? ?????????????? ????? ??????? ????? ?? ?????? ?? ?????? ? ??????? Unfolnt.Viser Informacioni sistem: Informator visoke škole elektrotehnike i racunarstva namenjen studentima, posetiocima i nastavnom osoblju.Visual Studio Online App for Zendesk: The Visual Studio Online App for Zendesk allows users to integrate Visual Studio Online with Zendesk.Visual Studio Screensaver: A nice screensaver with the Visual Studio logo in the middle and a color changing background.Z SqlBulkCopy Extensions: SqlBulkCopy Extensions provide MUST-HAVE methods with outstanding performance missing from the SqlBulkCopy class like Delete, Update, Merge, Upsert.??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????,????????,??????????????,?????????,????,????,??????。 ?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????????????,????(??)????????,??????,????,???,????,???????! ?????-?????【??】?????????: ????????????????????,????????,????????,????,????,??????,???????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????,??????????????,???????????,??????,????,??????,??????。 ?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????????????????,?????????。????????????,??????,????,????,?????????! ?????-?????【??】?????????: ????????????????,?????????????。?????????,???????,???????,?????????????。 ???????-???????【??】???????????: ?????????????????,????????,????:???????,??????,????,????,?????,?????,??????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????????、??????、??????、??????、??????、?????、??????、????、????、????????! ??????-??????【??】??????????: ??????????????????,?????,???,???、???、?????,???,?????,???????????????. ??????-??????【??】??????????: ????????????:???????,????,????,????,??????????,????,????,????。??????... ????-????【??】????????: ?????????????????????,?????、???、????,????,???、???、???、???、???,????,?????!?????-?????【??】?????????: ?????????????300??,????????、???????、????、????????、?????,??????:????,????,???????! ?????-?????【??】?????????: ???????????????,??????????????????,????????,??????????????、????。

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  • How to simulate inner join on very large files in java (without running out of memory)

    - by Constantin
    I am trying to simulate SQL joins using java and very large text files (INNER, RIGHT OUTER and LEFT OUTER). The files have already been sorted using an external sort routine. The issue I have is I am trying to find the most efficient way to deal with the INNER join part of the algorithm. Right now I am using two Lists to store the lines that have the same key and iterate through the set of lines in the right file once for every line in the left file (provided the keys still match). In other words, the join key is not unique in each file so would need to account for the Cartesian product situations ... left_01, 1 left_02, 1 right_01, 1 right_02, 1 right_03, 1 left_01 joins to right_01 using key 1 left_01 joins to right_02 using key 1 left_01 joins to right_03 using key 1 left_02 joins to right_01 using key 1 left_02 joins to right_02 using key 1 left_02 joins to right_03 using key 1 My concern is one of memory. I will run out of memory if i use the approach below but still want the inner join part to work fairly quickly. What is the best approach to deal with the INNER join part keeping in mind that these files may potentially be huge public class Joiner { private void join(BufferedReader left, BufferedReader right, BufferedWriter output) throws Throwable { BufferedReader _left = left; BufferedReader _right = right; BufferedWriter _output = output; Record _leftRecord; Record _rightRecord; _leftRecord = read(_left); _rightRecord = read(_right); while( _leftRecord != null && _rightRecord != null ) { if( _leftRecord.getKey() < _rightRecord.getKey() ) { write(_output, _leftRecord, null); _leftRecord = read(_left); } else if( _leftRecord.getKey() > _rightRecord.getKey() ) { write(_output, null, _rightRecord); _rightRecord = read(_right); } else { List<Record> leftList = new ArrayList<Record>(); List<Record> rightList = new ArrayList<Record>(); _leftRecord = readRecords(leftList, _leftRecord, _left); _rightRecord = readRecords(rightList, _rightRecord, _right); for( Record equalKeyLeftRecord : leftList ){ for( Record equalKeyRightRecord : rightList ){ write(_output, equalKeyLeftRecord, equalKeyRightRecord); } } } } if( _leftRecord != null ) { write(_output, _leftRecord, null); _leftRecord = read(_left); while(_leftRecord != null) { write(_output, _leftRecord, null); _leftRecord = read(_left); } } else { if( _rightRecord != null ) { write(_output, null, _rightRecord); _rightRecord = read(_right); while(_rightRecord != null) { write(_output, null, _rightRecord); _rightRecord = read(_right); } } } _left.close(); _right.close(); _output.flush(); _output.close(); } private Record read(BufferedReader reader) throws Throwable { Record record = null; String data = reader.readLine(); if( data != null ) { record = new Record(data.split("\t")); } return record; } private Record readRecords(List<Record> list, Record record, BufferedReader reader) throws Throwable { int key = record.getKey(); list.add(record); record = read(reader); while( record != null && record.getKey() == key) { list.add(record); record = read(reader); } return record; } private void write(BufferedWriter writer, Record left, Record right) throws Throwable { String leftKey = (left == null ? "null" : Integer.toString(left.getKey())); String leftData = (left == null ? "null" : left.getData()); String rightKey = (right == null ? "null" : Integer.toString(right.getKey())); String rightData = (right == null ? "null" : right.getData()); writer.write("[" + leftKey + "][" + leftData + "][" + rightKey + "][" + rightData + "]\n"); } public static void main(String[] args) { try { BufferedReader leftReader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("LEFT.DAT")); BufferedReader rightReader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("RIGHT.DAT")); BufferedWriter output = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter("OUTPUT.DAT")); Joiner joiner = new Joiner(); joiner.join(leftReader, rightReader, output); } catch (Throwable e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } } After applying the ideas from the proposed answer, I changed the loop to this private void join(RandomAccessFile left, RandomAccessFile right, BufferedWriter output) throws Throwable { long _pointer = 0; RandomAccessFile _left = left; RandomAccessFile _right = right; BufferedWriter _output = output; Record _leftRecord; Record _rightRecord; _leftRecord = read(_left); _rightRecord = read(_right); while( _leftRecord != null && _rightRecord != null ) { if( _leftRecord.getKey() < _rightRecord.getKey() ) { write(_output, _leftRecord, null); _leftRecord = read(_left); } else if( _leftRecord.getKey() > _rightRecord.getKey() ) { write(_output, null, _rightRecord); _pointer = _right.getFilePointer(); _rightRecord = read(_right); } else { long _tempPointer = 0; int key = _leftRecord.getKey(); while( _leftRecord != null && _leftRecord.getKey() == key ) { _right.seek(_pointer); _rightRecord = read(_right); while( _rightRecord != null && _rightRecord.getKey() == key ) { write(_output, _leftRecord, _rightRecord ); _tempPointer = _right.getFilePointer(); _rightRecord = read(_right); } _leftRecord = read(_left); } _pointer = _tempPointer; } } if( _leftRecord != null ) { write(_output, _leftRecord, null); _leftRecord = read(_left); while(_leftRecord != null) { write(_output, _leftRecord, null); _leftRecord = read(_left); } } else { if( _rightRecord != null ) { write(_output, null, _rightRecord); _rightRecord = read(_right); while(_rightRecord != null) { write(_output, null, _rightRecord); _rightRecord = read(_right); } } } _left.close(); _right.close(); _output.flush(); _output.close(); } UPDATE While this approach worked, it was terribly slow and so I have modified this to create files as buffers and this works very well. Here is the update ... private long getMaxBufferedLines(File file) throws Throwable { long freeBytes = Runtime.getRuntime().freeMemory() / 2; return (freeBytes / (file.length() / getLineCount(file))); } private void join(File left, File right, File output, JoinType joinType) throws Throwable { BufferedReader leftFile = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(left)); BufferedReader rightFile = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(right)); BufferedWriter outputFile = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(output)); long maxBufferedLines = getMaxBufferedLines(right); Record leftRecord; Record rightRecord; leftRecord = read(leftFile); rightRecord = read(rightFile); while( leftRecord != null && rightRecord != null ) { if( leftRecord.getKey().compareTo(rightRecord.getKey()) < 0) { if( joinType == JoinType.LeftOuterJoin || joinType == JoinType.LeftExclusiveJoin || joinType == JoinType.FullExclusiveJoin || joinType == JoinType.FullOuterJoin ) { write(outputFile, leftRecord, null); } leftRecord = read(leftFile); } else if( leftRecord.getKey().compareTo(rightRecord.getKey()) > 0 ) { if( joinType == JoinType.RightOuterJoin || joinType == JoinType.RightExclusiveJoin || joinType == JoinType.FullExclusiveJoin || joinType == JoinType.FullOuterJoin ) { write(outputFile, null, rightRecord); } rightRecord = read(rightFile); } else if( leftRecord.getKey().compareTo(rightRecord.getKey()) == 0 ) { String key = leftRecord.getKey(); List<File> rightRecordFileList = new ArrayList<File>(); List<Record> rightRecordList = new ArrayList<Record>(); rightRecordList.add(rightRecord); rightRecord = consume(key, rightFile, rightRecordList, rightRecordFileList, maxBufferedLines); while( leftRecord != null && leftRecord.getKey().compareTo(key) == 0 ) { processRightRecords(outputFile, leftRecord, rightRecordFileList, rightRecordList, joinType); leftRecord = read(leftFile); } // need a dispose for deleting files in list } else { throw new Exception("DATA IS NOT SORTED"); } } if( leftRecord != null ) { if( joinType == JoinType.LeftOuterJoin || joinType == JoinType.LeftExclusiveJoin || joinType == JoinType.FullExclusiveJoin || joinType == JoinType.FullOuterJoin ) { write(outputFile, leftRecord, null); } leftRecord = read(leftFile); while(leftRecord != null) { if( joinType == JoinType.LeftOuterJoin || joinType == JoinType.LeftExclusiveJoin || joinType == JoinType.FullExclusiveJoin || joinType == JoinType.FullOuterJoin ) { write(outputFile, leftRecord, null); } leftRecord = read(leftFile); } } else { if( rightRecord != null ) { if( joinType == JoinType.RightOuterJoin || joinType == JoinType.RightExclusiveJoin || joinType == JoinType.FullExclusiveJoin || joinType == JoinType.FullOuterJoin ) { write(outputFile, null, rightRecord); } rightRecord = read(rightFile); while(rightRecord != null) { if( joinType == JoinType.RightOuterJoin || joinType == JoinType.RightExclusiveJoin || joinType == JoinType.FullExclusiveJoin || joinType == JoinType.FullOuterJoin ) { write(outputFile, null, rightRecord); } rightRecord = read(rightFile); } } } leftFile.close(); rightFile.close(); outputFile.flush(); outputFile.close(); } public void processRightRecords(BufferedWriter outputFile, Record leftRecord, List<File> rightFiles, List<Record> rightRecords, JoinType joinType) throws Throwable { for(File rightFile : rightFiles) { BufferedReader rightReader = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(rightFile)); Record rightRecord = read(rightReader); while(rightRecord != null){ if( joinType == JoinType.LeftOuterJoin || joinType == JoinType.RightOuterJoin || joinType == JoinType.FullOuterJoin || joinType == JoinType.InnerJoin ) { write(outputFile, leftRecord, rightRecord); } rightRecord = read(rightReader); } rightReader.close(); } for(Record rightRecord : rightRecords) { if( joinType == JoinType.LeftOuterJoin || joinType == JoinType.RightOuterJoin || joinType == JoinType.FullOuterJoin || joinType == JoinType.InnerJoin ) { write(outputFile, leftRecord, rightRecord); } } } /** * consume all records having key (either to a single list or multiple files) each file will * store a buffer full of data. The right record returned represents the outside flow (key is * already positioned to next one or null) so we can't use this record in below while loop or * within this block in general when comparing current key. The trick is to keep consuming * from a List. When it becomes empty, re-fill it from the next file until all files have * been consumed (and the last node in the list is read). The next outside iteration will be * ready to be processed (either it will be null or it points to the next biggest key * @throws Throwable * */ private Record consume(String key, BufferedReader reader, List<Record> records, List<File> files, long bufferMaxRecordLines ) throws Throwable { boolean processComplete = false; Record record = records.get(records.size() - 1); while(!processComplete){ long recordCount = records.size(); if( record.getKey().compareTo(key) == 0 ){ record = read(reader); while( record != null && record.getKey().compareTo(key) == 0 && recordCount < bufferMaxRecordLines ) { records.add(record); recordCount++; record = read(reader); } } processComplete = true; // if record is null, we are done if( record != null ) { // if the key has changed, we are done if( record.getKey().compareTo(key) == 0 ) { // Same key means we have exhausted the buffer. // Dump entire buffer into a file. The list of file // pointers will keep track of the files ... processComplete = false; dumpBufferToFile(records, files); records.clear(); records.add(record); } } } return record; } /** * Dump all records in List of Record objects to a file. Then, add that * file to List of File objects * * NEED TO PLACE A LIMIT ON NUMBER OF FILE POINTERS (check size of file list) * * @param records * @param files * @throws Throwable */ private void dumpBufferToFile(List<Record> records, List<File> files) throws Throwable { String prefix = "joiner_" + files.size() + 1; String suffix = ".dat"; File file = File.createTempFile(prefix, suffix, new File("cache")); BufferedWriter writer = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(file)); for( Record record : records ) { writer.write( record.dump() ); } files.add(file); writer.flush(); writer.close(); }

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  • Down Tools Week Cometh: Kissing Goodbye to CVs/Resumes and Cover Letters

    - by Bart Read
    I haven't blogged about what I'm doing in my (not so new) temporary role as Red Gate's technical recruiter, mostly because it's been routine, business as usual stuff, and because I've been trying to understand the role by doing it. I think now though the time has come to get a little more radical, so I'm going to tell you why I want to largely eliminate CVs/resumes and cover letters from the application process for some of our technical roles, and why I think that might be a good thing for candidates (and for us). I have a terrible confession to make, or at least it's a terrible confession for a recruiter: I don't really like CV sifting, or reading cover letters, and, unless I've misread the mood around here, neither does anybody else. It's dull, it's time-consuming, and it's somewhat soul destroying because, when all is said and done, you're being paid to be incredibly judgemental about people based on relatively little information. I feel like I've dirtied myself by saying that - I mean, after all, it's a core part of my job - but it sucks, it really does. (And, of course, the truth is I'm still a software engineer at heart, and I'm always looking for ways to do things better.) On the flip side, I've never met anyone who likes writing their CV. It takes hours and hours of faffing around and massaging it into shape, and the whole process is beset by a gnawing anxiety, frustration, and insecurity. All you really want is a chance to demonstrate your skills - not just talk about them - and how do you do that in a CV or cover letter? Often the best candidates will include samples of their work (a portfolio, screenshots, links to websites, product downloads, etc.), but sometimes this isn't possible, or may not be appropriate, or you just don't think you're allowed because of what your school/university careers service has told you (more commonly an issue with grads, obviously). And what are we actually trying to find out about people with all of this? I think the common criteria are actually pretty basic: Smart Gets things done (thanks for these two Joel) Not an a55hole* (sorry, have to get around Simple Talk's swear filter - and thanks to Professor Robert I. Sutton for this one) *Of course, everyone has off days, and I don't honestly think we're too worried about somebody being a bit grumpy every now and again. We can do a bit better than this in the context of the roles I'm talking about: we can be more specific about what "gets things done" means, at least in part. For software engineers and interns, the non-exhaustive meaning of "gets things done" is: Excellent coder For test engineers, the non-exhaustive meaning of "gets things done" is: Good at finding problems in software Competent coder Team player, etc., to me, are covered by "not an a55hole". I don't expect people to be the life and soul of the party, or a wild extrovert - that's not what team player means, and it's not what "not an a55hole" means. Some of our best technical staff are quiet, introverted types, but they're still pleasant to work with. My problem is that I don't think the initial sift really helps us find out whether people are smart and get things done with any great efficacy. It's better than nothing, for sure, but it's not as good as it could be. It's also contentious, and potentially unfair/inequitable - if you want to get an idea of what I mean by this, check out the background information section at the bottom. Before I go any further, let's look at the Red Gate recruitment process for technical staff* as it stands now: (LOTS of) People apply for jobs. All these applications go through a brutal process of manual sifting, which eliminates between 75 and 90% of them, depending upon the role, and the time of year**. Depending upon the role, those who pass the sift will be sent an assessment or telescreened. For the purposes of this blog post I'm only interested in those that are sent some sort of programming assessment, or bug hunt. This means software engineers, test engineers, and software interns, which are the roles for which I receive the most applications. The telescreen tends to be reserved for project or product managers. Those that pass the assessment are invited in for first interview. This interview is mostly about assessing their technical skills***, although we're obviously on the look out for cultural fit red flags as well. If the first interview goes well we'll invite candidates back for a second interview. This is where team/cultural fit is really scoped out. We also use this interview to dive more deeply into certain areas of their skillset, and explore any concerns that may have come out of the first interview (these obviously won't have been serious or obvious enough to cause a rejection at that point, but are things we do need to look into before we'd consider making an offer). We might subsequently invite them in for lunch before we make them an offer. This tends to happen when we're recruiting somebody for a specific team and we'd like them to meet all the people they'll be working with directly. It's not an interview per se, but can prove pivotal if they don't gel with the team. Anyone who's made it this far will receive an offer from us. *We have a slightly quirky definition of "technical staff" as it relates to the technical recruiter role here. It includes software engineers, test engineers, software interns, user experience specialists, technical authors, project managers, product managers, and development managers, but does not include product support or information systems roles. **For example, the quality of graduate applicants overall noticeably drops as the academic year wears on, which is not to say that by now there aren't still stars in there, just that they're fewer and further between. ***Some organisations prefer to assess for team fit first, but I think assessing technical skills is a more effective initial filter - if they're the nicest person in the world, but can't cut a line of code they're not going to work out. Now, as I suggested in the title, Red Gate's Down Tools Week is upon us once again - next week in fact - and I had proposed as a project that we refactor and automate the first stage of marking our programming assessments. Marking assessments, and in fact organising the marking of them, is a somewhat time-consuming process, and we receive many assessment solutions that just don't make the cut, for whatever reason. Whilst I don't think it's possible to fully automate marking, I do think it ought to be possible to run a suite of automated tests over each candidate's solution to see whether or not it behaves correctly and, if it does, move on to a manual stage where we examine the code for structure, decomposition, style, readability, maintainability, etc. Obviously it's possible to use tools to generate potentially helpful metrics for some of these indices as well. This would obviously reduce the marking workload, and would provide candidates with quicker feedback about whether they've been successful - though I do wonder if waiting a tactful interval before sending a (nicely written) rejection might be wise. I duly scrawled out a picture of my ideal process, which looked like this: The problem is, as soon as I'd roughed it out, I realised that fundamentally it wasn't an ideal process at all, which explained the gnawing feeling of cognitive dissonance I'd been wrestling with all week, whilst I'd been trying to find time to do this. Here's what I mean. Automated assessment marking, and the associated infrastructure around that, makes it much easier for us to deal with large numbers of assessments. This means we can be much more permissive about who we send assessments out to or, in other words, we can give more candidates the opportunity to really demonstrate their skills to us. And this leads to a question: why not give everyone the opportunity to demonstrate their skills, to show that they're smart and can get things done? (Two or three of us even discussed this in the down tools week hustings earlier this week.) And isn't this a lot simpler than the alternative we'd been considering? (FYI, this was automated CV/cover letter sifting by some form of textual analysis to ideally eliminate the worst 50% or so of applications based on an analysis of the 20,000 or so historical applications we've received since 2007 - definitely not the basic keyword analysis beloved of recruitment agencies, since this would eliminate hardly anyone who was awful, but definitely would eliminate stellar Oxbridge candidates - #fail - or some nightmarishly complex Google-like system where we profile all our currently employees, only to realise that we're never going to get representative results because we don't have a statistically significant sample size in any given role - also #fail.) No, I think the new way is better. We let people self-select. We make them the masters (or mistresses) of their own destiny. We give applicants the power - we put their fate in their hands - by giving them the chance to demonstrate their skills, which is what they really want anyway, instead of requiring that they spend hours and hours creating a CV and cover letter that I'm going to evaluate for suitability, and make a value judgement about, in approximately 1 minute (give or take). It doesn't matter what university you attended, it doesn't matter if you had a bad year when you took your A-levels - here's your chance to shine, so take it and run with it. (As a side benefit, we cut the number of applications we have to sift by something like two thirds.) WIN! OK, yeah, sounds good, but will it actually work? That's an excellent question. My gut feeling is yes, and I'll justify why below (and hopefully have gone some way towards doing that above as well), but what I'm proposing here is really that we run an experiment for a period of time - probably a couple of months or so - and measure the outcomes we see: How many people apply? (Wouldn't be surprised or alarmed to see this cut by a factor of ten.) How many of them submit a good assessment? (More/less than at present?) How much overhead is there for us in dealing with these assessments compared to now? What are the success and failure rates at each interview stage compared to now? How many people are we hiring at the end of it compared to now? I think it'll work because I hypothesize that, amongst other things: It self-selects for people who really want to work at Red Gate which, at the moment, is something I have to try and assess based on their CV and cover letter - but if you're not that bothered about working here, why would you complete the assessment? Candidates who would submit a shoddy application probably won't feel motivated to do the assessment. Candidates who would demonstrate good attention to detail in their CV/cover letter will demonstrate good attention to detail in the assessment. In general, only the better candidates will complete and submit the assessment. Marking assessments is much less work so we'll be able to deal with any increase that we see (hopefully we will see). There are obviously other questions as well: Is plagiarism going to be a problem? Is there any way we can detect/discourage potential plagiarism? How do we assess candidates' education and experience? What about their ability to communicate in writing? Do we still want them to submit a CV afterwards if they pass assessment? Do we want to offer them the opportunity to tell us a bit about why they'd like the job when they submit their assessment? How does this affect our relationship with recruitment agencies we might use to hire for these roles? So, what's the objective for next week's Down Tools Week? Pretty simple really - we want to implement this process for the Graduate Software Engineer and Software Engineer positions that you can find on our website. I will be joined by a crack team of our best developers (Kevin Boyle, and new Red-Gater, Sam Blackburn), and recruiting hostess with the mostest Laura McQuillen, and hopefully a couple of others as well - if I can successfully twist more arms before Monday.* Hopefully by next Friday our experiment will be up and running, and we may have changed the way Red Gate recruits software engineers for good! Stay tuned and we'll let you know how it goes! *I'm going to play dirty by offering them beer and chocolate during meetings. Some background information: how agonising over the initial CV/cover letter sift helped lead us to bin it off entirely The other day I was agonising about the new university/good degree grade versus poor A-level results issue, and decided to canvas for other opinions to see if there was something I could do that was fairer than my current approach, which is almost always to reject. This generated quite an involved discussion on our Yammer site: I'm sure you can glean a pretty good impression of my own educational prejudices from that discussion as well, although I'm very open to changing my opinion - hopefully you've already figured that out from reading the rest of this post. Hopefully you can also trace a logical path from agonising about sifting to, "Uh, hang on, why on earth are we doing this anyway?!?" Technorati Tags: recruitment,hr,developers,testers,red gate,cv,resume,cover letter,assessment,sea change

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  • It was a figure of speech!

    - by Ratman21
    Yesterday I posted the following as attention getter / advertisement (as well as my feelings). In the groups, (I am in) on the social networking site, LinkedIn and boy did I get responses.    I am fighting mad about (a figure of speech, really) not having a job! Look just because I am over 55 and have gray hair. It does not mean, my brain is dead or I can no longer trouble shoot a router or circuit or LAN issue. Or that I can do “IT” work at all. And I could prove this if; some one would give me at job. Come on try me for 90 days at min. wage. I know you will end up keeping me (hope fully at normal pay) around. Is any one hearing me…come on take up the challenge!     This was the responses I got.   I hear you. We just need to retrain and get our skills up to speed is all. That is what I am doing. I have not given up. Just got to stay on top of the game. Experience is on our side if we have the credentials and we are reasonable about our salaries this should not be an issue.   Already on it, going back to school and have got three certifications (CompTIA A+, Security+ and Network+. I am now studying for my CISCO CCNA certification. As to my salary, I am willing to work at very reasonable rate.   You need to re-brand yourself like a product, market and sell yourself. You need to smarten up, look and feel a million dollars, re-energize yourself, regain your confidents. Either start your own business, or re-write your CV so it stands out from the rest, get the template off the internet. Contact every recruitment agent in your town, state, country and overseas, and on the web. Apply to every job you think you could do, you may not get it but you will make a contact for your network, which may lead to a job at the end of the tunnel. Get in touch with everyone you know from past jobs. Do charity work. I maintain the IT Network, stage electrical and the Telecom equipment in my church,   Again already on it. I have email the world is seems with my resume and cover letters. So far, I have rewritten or had it rewrote, my resume and cover letters; over seven times so far. Re-energize? I never lost my energy level or my self-confidents in my work (now if could get some HR personal to see the same). I also volunteer at my church, I created and maintain the church web sit.   I share your frustration. Sucks being over 50 and looking for work. Please don't sell yourself short at min wage because the employer will think that’s your worth. Keep trying!!   I never stop trying and min wage is only for 90 days. If some one takes up the challenge. Some post asked if I am keeping up technology.   Do you keep up with the latest technology and can speak the language fluidly?   Yep to that and as to speaking it also a yep! I am a geek you know. I heard from others over the 50 year mark and younger too.   I'm with you! I keep getting told that I don't have enough experience because I just recently completed a Masters level course in Microsoft SQL Server, which gave me a project-intensive equivalent of between 2 and 3 years of experience. On top of that training, I have 19 years as an applications programmer and database administrator. I can normalize rings around experienced DBAs and churn out effective code with the best of them. But my 19 years is worthless as far as most recruiters and HR people are concerned because it is not the specific experience for which they're looking. HR AND RECRUITERS TAKE NOTE: Experience, whatever the language, translates across platforms and technology! By the way, I'm also over 55 and still have "got it"!   I never lost it and I also can work rings round younger techs.   I'm 52 and female and seem to be having the same issues. I have over 10 years experience in tech support (with a BS in CIS) and can't get hired either.   Ow, I only have an AS in computer science along with my certifications.   Keep the faith, I have been unemployed since August of 2008. I agree with you...I am willing to return to the beginning of my retail career and work myself back through the ranks, if someone will look past the grey and realize the knowledge I would bring to the table.   I also would like some one to look past the gray.   Interesting approach, volunteering to work for minimum wage for 90 days. I'm in the same situation as you, being 55 & balding w/white hair, so I know where you're coming from. I've been out of work now for a year. I'm in Michigan, where the unemployment rate is estimated to be 15% (the worst in the nation) & even though I've got 30+ years of IT experience ranging from mainframe to PC desktop support, it's difficult to even get a face-to-face interview. I had one prospective employer tell me flat out that I "didn't have the energy required for this position". Mostly I never get any feedback. All I can say is good luck & try to remain optimistic.   He said WHAT! Yes remaining optimistic is key. Along with faith in God. Then there was this (for lack of better word) jerk.   Give it up already. You were too old to work in high tech 10 years ago. Scratch that, 20 years ago! Try selling hot dogs in front of Fry's Electronics. At least you would get a chance to eat lunch with your previous colleagues....   You know funny thing on this person is that I checked out his profile. He is older than I am.

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