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  • script to recursively check for and select dependencies

    - by rp.sullivan
    I have written a script that does this but it is one of my first scripts ever so i am sure there is a better way:) Let me know how you would go about doing this. I'm looking for a simple yet efficient way to do this. Here is some important background info: ( It might be a little confusing but hopefully by the end it will make sense. ) 1) This image shows the structure/location of the relevant dirs and files. 2) The packages.file located at ./config/default/config/packages is a space delimited file. field5 is the "package name" which i will call $a for explanations sake. field4 is the name of the dir containing the $a.dir i will call $b field1 shows if the package is selected or not, "X"(capital x) for selected and "O"(capital o as in orange) for not selected. Here is an example of what the packages.file might contain: ... X ---3------ 104.800 database gdbm 1.8.3 / base/library CROSS 0 O -1---5---- 105.000 base libiconv 1.13.1 / base/tool CROSS 0 X 01---5---- 105.000 base pkgconfig 0.25 / base/tool CROSS 0 X -1-3------ 105.000 base texinfo 4.13a / base/tool CROSS DIETLIBC 0 O -----5---- 105.000 develop duma 2_5_15 / base/development CROSS NOPARALLEL 0 O -----5---- 105.000 develop electricfence 2_4_13 / base/development CROSS 0 O -----5---- 105.000 develop gnupth 2.0.7 / extra/development CROSS NOPARALLEL FPIC-QUIRK 0 ... 3) For almost every package listed in the "packages.file" there is a corresponding ".cache file" The .cache file for package $a would be located at ./package/$b/$a/$a.cache The .cache files contain a list of dependencies for that particular package. Here is an example of one of the .cache files might look like. Note that the dependencies are field2 of lines containing "[DEP]" These dependencies are all names of packages in the "package.file" [TIMESTAMP] 1134178701 Sat Dec 10 02:38:21 2005 [BUILDTIME] 295 (9) [SIZE] 11.64 MB, 191 files [DEP] 00-dirtree [DEP] bash [DEP] binutils [DEP] bzip2 [DEP] cf [DEP] coreutils ... So with all that in mind... I'm looking for a shell script that: From within the "main dir" Looks at the ./config/default/config/packages file and finds the "selected" packages and reads the corresponding .cache Then compiles a list of dependencies that excludes the already selected packages Then selects the dependencies (by changing field1 to X) in the ./config/default/config/packages file and repeats until all the dependencies are met Note: The script will ultimately end up in the "scripts dir" and be called from the "main dir". If this is not clear let me know what need clarification. For those interested I'm playing around with T2 SDE. If you are into playing around with linux it might be worth taking a look.

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  • ZFS/Btrfs/LVM2-like storage with advanced features on Linux?

    - by Easter Sunshine
    I have 3 identical internal 7200 RPM SATA hard disk drives on a Linux machine. I'm looking for a storage set-up that will give me all of this: Different data sets (filesystems or subtrees) can have different RAID levels so I can choose performance, space overhead, and risk trade-offs differently for different data sets while having a few number of physical disks (very important data can be 3xRAID1, important data can be 3xRAID5, unimportant reproducible data can be 3xRAID0). If each data set has an explicit size or size limit, then the ability to grow and shrink the size limit (offline if need be) Avoid out-of-kernel modules R/W or read-only COW snapshots. If it's a block-level snapshots, the filesystem should be synced and quiesced during a snapshot. Ability to add physical disks and then grow/redistribute RAID1, RAID5, and RAID0 volumes to take advantage of the new spindle and make sure no spindle is hotter than the rest (e.g., in NetApp, growing a RAID-DP raid group by a few disks will not balance the I/O across them without an explicit redistribution) Not required but nice-to-haves: Transparent compression, per-file or subtree. Even better if, like NetApps, analyzes the data first for compressibility and only compresses compressible data Deduplication that doesn't have huge performance penalties or require obscene amounts of memory (NetApp does scheduled deduplication on weekends, which is good) Resistance to silent data corruption like ZFS (this is not required because I have never seen ZFS report any data corruption on these specific disks) Storage tiering, either automatic (based on caching rules) or user-defined rules (yes, I have all-identical disks now but this will let me add a read/write SSD cache in the future). If it's user-defined rules, these rules should have the ability to promote to SSD on a file level and not a block level. Space-efficient packing of small files I tried ZFS on Linux but the limitations were: Upgrading is additional work because the package is in an external repository and is tied to specific kernel versions; it is not integrated with the package manager Write IOPS does not scale with number of devices in a raidz vdev. Cannot add disks to raidz vdevs Cannot have select data on RAID0 to reduce overhead and improve performance without additional physical disks or giving ZFS a single partition of the disks ext4 on LVM2 looks like an option except I can't tell whether I can shrink, extend, and redistribute onto new spindles RAID-type logical volumes (of course, I can experiment with LVM on a bunch of files). As far as I can tell, it doesn't have any of the nice-to-haves so I was wondering if there is something better out there. I did look at LVM dangers and caveats but then again, no system is perfect.

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  • Encrypted off-site data storage

    - by Dan
    My business has a rather unique problem. We work in China and we want to implement a file server paradigm which does not store any files locally, but rather in a server overseas. Applications would be saved onto our local machines, but data would be loaded directly into memory from the cloud, e.g. I load a docx into word at the beginning of the day, saving periodically to the cloud as I work on it, and turn off my computer at night, with nothing saved locally. Considering recent events, we worry about being raided by the Chinese authorities, and although all our data is encrypted, it would not be hard for the authorities to force us to give up the keys. So the goal is not to have anything compromising physically in China. We have about 20 computers, and we need an authenticated, encrypted connection with this overseas file server. A system with Active-Directory-like permissions would be best, so that only management can read or write to certain files, or workers can only access files that relate to their projects, and to which all access can be cut off should the need arise. The file server itself would also need to be encrypted. And for convenience, it would be nice if this system was integrated with each computer's file explorer (like skydrive or dropbox does, but, again, without saving a copy locally), rather than through a browser. I can't find any solution online. Does anyone know of a service that does this? Otherwise I'll have to do it myself (which kinda sounds fun, but I don't really have the time), and I'm not sure where to start. Amazon maybe. But the protocols that offices would use on their intranet typically aren't encrypted; we need all traffic securely tunneled out of the country. Each computer already has a VPN to a server in California, but I'm unsure whether it would be efficient to pipe file transfers through it. Let me know if anyone has any ideas. And this is my first post; feel free say whether this question is inappropriate/needs to be posted elsewhere.

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  • Effecient organization of spare cables and hardware

    - by Jake Wharton
    As many of you also likely do, I have a growing collection of cables, hardware, and spare parts (screws, connectors, etc.). I'm looking to find a good system of organization so that everything isn't a tangled mess, mismatched, and potentially able to be damaged. Since the the three things listed above are all have varying sizes and degrees of delicacy this poises an interesting problem. Presently I have those cheap plastic storage bins you find at Wal-mart for everything. Cables that were once wrapped neatly have become tangled due to numerous "I know I have a cable for this" moments. Hardware is mixed in other bins with odds and ends with no protection from each other. NICs, CPUs, and HDDs are all interacting and likely causing damage. Finally there are stray parts sprinkled amongst these two both in plastic bags and loose. I'm looking to unify this storage into a controlled chaos. Here are my thoughts: Odds and ends are the easiest. Screws, connectors, and small electronic parts lend themselves perfectly to tackle boxes and jewelry boxes. Since these are usually dynamically compartmentalized I can adjust for the contents and label them on the outside or inside of the lid. Cables are easily wrangled with short velcro strips but that doesn't stop them from being all mixed in together. Hardware is the worst offender. Size, shape, and degree of delicacy changes with nearly every piece. I'm willing to sacrifice a bit of organization for a somewhat efficient manner. What are all your thoughts? What is the best type of tackle or jewelry box to use? Most of them are cheap and flimsy. Is there a better alternative? How can I organize cables to know exactly (within reason) where one is? What about associating cables with hardware (Wall adapter to router, etc.)? What kind of storage unit lends itself to all shapes of hardware? Do I need to separate by size or degree of delicacy for better organization?

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  • Custom built machine has much higher power consumption than expected

    - by foraidt
    I built a machine according to the specs of a computer magazine (c't, Germany). According to the magazine, the power consumption should be at around 10W. I don't want to go into the specifics of the hardware but rather ask for general advice on where to look: I updated the BIOS/UEFI version to the latest version, installed all the recommended drivers and unplugged all hardware that's not necessary to boot into Windows. All that was left is the power supply, mainboard, cpu, cpu cooler and one SSD drive. But still I measured a power consumption of 50W, which is 40W more than it should be. I tried booting Linux Mint from a USB stick, so I don't think it's some Windows-related problem.. Where else could I look? Update 1 I dind't want the question to get closed for being too localized but if more details are necessary, here they are: The system is a desktop PC. The power consumption is measured using a Brennenstuhl PM 231 device, which was tested also by c't and they found it quite accurate. The PSU is an Enermax ETL300AWT, the mainboard Intel DH87RL (Socket 1150) and the CPU Intel G3220 (Haswell). Update 2 There is no online version of the article*. The most details I found can be read on its project page (in German, though...) (*)You can pay for downloadable PDFs, however. English translation of that project page Update 3 Regarding the sceptics: It may sound ridiculous but apparently 10W idle consumption is possible with Intel's Haswell architecture. As a kind of proof, there's an additional Blog article explicitly listing the steps needed to reduce the idle consumption to 10W. Additional hardware: I measured the consumption without the HDD, and as expected the usage dropped by around 10W. I have no chassis fans and the CPU fan is a "Scythe Mugen 4" model. It runs at around 600rpm so I think it won't draw much. When stripping off all my extra components I should be at 10W. But I'm not getting anywhere near that. I would be happy to see "just" 15W in the stripped down version but currently I'm not getting below 50W no matter which component I remove. As I see it this cannot be explained by the PSU being less efficient at lower consumption. I also waited half an hour or so (also checked that no Windows updates were running in the background) and the consumption dind't drop by more than a few watts.

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  • Revolutionary brand powder packing machine price from affecting marketplace boom and put on uniform in addition to a lengthy service life

    - by user74606
    In mining in stone crushing, our machinery company's encounter becomes much more apparent. As a consequence of production capacity in between 600~800t/h of mining stone crusher, stone is mine Mobile Cone Crushing Plant Price 25~40 times, effectively solved the initially mining stone crusher operation because of low yield prices, no upkeep problems. Full chunk of mining stone crusher. Maximum particle size for crushing 1000x1200mm, an effective answer for the original side is mine stone provide, storing significant chunks of stone can not use complications in mines. Completed goods granularity is modest, only 2~15mm, an effective option for the original mine stone size, generally blocking chute production was an issue even the grinding machine. Two types of material mixed great uniformity, desulfurization of mining stone by adding weight considerably. Present quantity added is often reached 60%, effectively minimizing the cost of raw supplies. Electrical energy consumption has fallen. Dropped 1~2KWh/t tons of mining stone electrical energy consumption, annual electricity savings of one hundred,000 yuan. Efficient labor intensity of workers and also the atmosphere. Due to mine stone powder packing machine price a high degree of automation, with out human make contact with supplies, workers working circumstances enhanced significantly. Positive aspects, and along with mine for stone crushing, CS series cone Crusher has the following efficiency traits. CS series cone Crusher Chamber is divided into 3 unique designs, the user is usually chosen in accordance with the scenario on site crushing efficiency is high, uniform item size, grain shape, rolling mortar wall friction and put on uniform in addition to a extended service life of crushing cavity-. CS series cone Crusher utilizes a one of a kind dust-proof seal, sealing dependable, properly extend the service life of the lubricant replacement cycle and parts. CS series Sprial Sand washer price manufacture of important components to choose unique materials. Each and every stroke left rolling mortar wall of broken cone distances, by permitting a lot more products into the crushing cavity, as well as the formation of big discharge volume, speed of supplies by way of the crushing Chamber. This machine makes use of the principle of crushing cavity, also as unique laminated crushing, particle fragmentation, so that the completed product drastically improved the proportions of a cube, needle-shaped stones to lower particle levels extra evenly.

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  • How can I remove old log entries from a log file and archive them somewhere else in Linux?

    - by Mike B
    CentOS 4.x I apologize in advance if this is not the appropriate place to ask this question. It pertains to a linux server / IT admin task. I've got a log file on an old CentOS 4.x server and I want to remove log entries older than a certain date and place them in a new file for archive. Here's an example of the log format: 2012-06-07 22:32:01,289 ABC:0|Foo|Foo2|4.4|1234|Some Event|123|blah blah blah 2012-06-07 22:32:03,289 ABC:0|Foo|Foo2|4.4|1234|Some Event|123|blah blah blah 2012-06-07 22:32:04,289 ABC:0|Foo|Foo2|4.4|1234|Some Event|123| 2012-06-07 22:32:10,289 ABC:0|Foo|Foo2|4.4|1234|Some Event|123|blah blah blah 2012-06-07 22:32:12,289 ABC:0|Foo|Foo2|4.4|1234|Some Event|123|blah blah blah 2012-06-07 22:32:15,289 ABC:0|Foo|Foo2|4.4|1234|Some Event|123| 2012-06-07 22:32:40,289 ABC:0|Foo|Foo2|4.4|1234|Some Event|123|blah blah blah 2012-06-07 22:32:58,289 ABC:0|Foo|Foo2|4.4|1234|Some Event|123|blah blah blah 2012-06-07 22:33:01,289 ABC:0|Foo|Foo2|4.4|1234|Some Event|123| 2012-06-07 22:33:01,289 ABC:0|Foo|Foo2|4.4|1234|Some Event|123|blah blah blah 2012-06-07 22:33:02,289 ABC:0|Foo|Foo2|4.4|1234|Some Event|123| Essentially, I'm looking for a one-liner that will do the following: Find any events older than a provided YYYY-MM-DD and remove them from the primary log file. Take the deleted events from step 1 and put them in a new log file (Optional) Compress the new archive log file holding the deleted events. I'm aware that there are log rotate tools that do this but this should just be a one-time task so I'd prefer not to set that up. Additional notes: If the date part it tricky or too resource intensive, an alternative would be to just keep the last X number of lines and move the rest. I was originally thinking of something like tail -n 10000 > newfile.txt but that would mean moving the "good" logs to a new file and then doing a name swap... and then I'd still need to remove the "good" entries from the archive. This particular log file is pretty large (1 GB) so I'd prefer the task to be as resource and time efficient as possible. The extra pipes in the log concern me and I'm not sure if I'd need extra protection in the commands to avoid that from causing problems.

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  • Lots of dropped packages when tcpdumping on busy interface

    - by Frands Hansen
    My challenge I need to do tcpdumping of a lot of data - actually from 2 interfaces left in promiscuous mode that are able to see a lot of traffic. To sum it up Log all traffic in promiscuous mode from 2 interfaces Those interfaces are not assigned an IP address pcap files must be rotated per ~1G When 10 TB of files are stored, start truncating the oldest What I currently do Right now I use tcpdump like this: tcpdump -n -C 1000 -z /data/compress.sh -i any -w /data/livedump/capture.pcap $FILTER The $FILTER contains src/dst filters so that I can use -i any. The reason for this is, that I have two interfaces and I would like to run the dump in a single thread rather than two. compress.sh takes care of assigning tar to another CPU core, compress the data, give it a reasonable filename and move it to an archive location. I cannot specify two interfaces, thus I have chosen to use filters and dump from any interface. Right now, I do not do any housekeeping, but I plan on monitoring disk and when I have 100G left I will start wiping the oldest files - this should be fine. And now; my problem I see dropped packets. This is from a dump that has been running for a few hours and collected roughly 250 gigs of pcap files: 430083369 packets captured 430115470 packets received by filter 32057 packets dropped by kernel <-- This is my concern How can I avoid so many packets being dropped? These things I did already try or look at Changed the value of /proc/sys/net/core/rmem_max and /proc/sys/net/core/rmem_default which did indeed help - actually it took care of just around half of the dropped packets. I have also looked at gulp - the problem with gulp is, that it does not support multiple interfaces in one process and it gets angry if the interface does not have an IP address. Unfortunately, that is a deal breaker in my case. Next problem is, that when the traffic flows though a pipe, I cannot get the automatic rotation going. Getting one huge 10 TB file is not very efficient and I don't have a machine with 10TB+ RAM that I can run wireshark on, so that's out. Do you have any suggestions? Maybe even a better way of doing my traffic dump altogether.

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  • General guidelines / workflow to convert or transfer video "professionally"?

    - by cloneman
    I'm an IT "professional" who sometimes has to deal with small video conversion / video cutting projects, and I'd like to learn "the right way" to do this. Every time I search Google, there's always a disaster for weird, low-maturity trialware, or random forums threads from 3-4 years ago indicating various antiquated method to do it. The big question is the following: What are the "general" guidelines and tools to transcode video into some efficient (lossless?) intermediary, for editing purposes, for the purpose of eventually re-encoding it after? It seems to me like even the simplest of formats and tasks are a disaster of endless trial & error, or expertise only known by hardened experts who have a swiss army kife of weird conversion tools that they use, almost as if mounting an attack against the project. Here are a few cases in point: Simple VOB files extracted from DVD footage can't be imported into Adobe Premiere directly. Virtualdub is an old software people keep recommending but doesn't seem to support newer formats. I don't even know how to tell with certainty which codecs a video has, and weather the image is interlaced or not, and what resolution and codecs I'm dealing with. Problems: Choosing a wrong interlace option which diminishes quality Choosing a wrong pixel aspect ratio (stretches the image) Choosing a wrong "project type" in Premiere causing footage to require scaling Being forced to use some weird program that will have any number of negative effects What I'm looking for: Books or "Real knowledge" on format conversions, recognized tools, etc. that aren't some random forum guides on how to deal with video formats. Workflow guidelines on identifying a format going from one format to another without problems as mentioned above. Documentation on what programs like Adobe Premiere can and can't do with regards to formats, so that I don't use a wrench as a hammer. TL;DR How should you convert or "prepare" a video file to ensure it will be supported by Premiere for editing? Is premiere a suitable program to handle cropping, encoding, or should other tools be used for this, when making a video montage from a variety of source formats? What are some good books to read that specifically deal with converting videos that use any number of codecs?

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  • Cooling Server Rack with Water? Sensible? Reuse energy for small installation?

    - by TomTom
    First - this is not a shopping question, this is not so much about concrete prices but about general feasibility. Makes no sense to get looking fo ra manufacturer it the approach is bad. I am moving my company to new Offices in September, and among them we will expand and consolidate our number crunch cluster. It is so far in a data center. I have a nice room in the basement prepared now. I think about cooling. We will likely run up a power usage of around 10kw by end of the year. That is a LOT of stuff, and cooling will be expensive. I am located in south Poland, close to the German border. This is an area where water is available for relatively cheap price - "wasting water" is not a concern here. My situation is thus a lot different for example than in Spain ;) Physics tells me that to heat 1 liter of water by 1 degree I use 1 Calorie (1KCal), and a kwh power is (and we can assume 100% efficiency - water heaters are pretty efficient) 750 Calories. That means that 1 KWH is 750 liter by 1 degree. 10kw and a 20 degree heat would mean that per hour I need 375 liters. That is 6.25 liters per minute and not WHAT much ;) We talk 270 cubic meters here. Even in summer, the significant underground pipes really cool down the water a LOT more ;) Question: This such an approach feasible? Anyone done that? We talk of a 10kw installation for now. Is it feasible to reuse that heat? The alternative is a decent cooling system that WILL use around 2.5kwh for running. Dropping the water would basically (a) get me a quite cold input compared to the outside air even in summer (I.e. a lower temperature medium to drop the heat in) and (b) replace the need to actually have the outside cooling (which may b problematic - if the air is 22 degree, that is a LOT to fight off, but OTOH the water will be quite cold). I also would possibly save the investment for the outside part of the cooling circuit. Now, second question - is there a feasible way to heat a house with that? ;) After all, brutally speaking, it is a LOT of energy in that water ;) If it is a bad idea, I stop here - if it is not, I start looking for suppliers. Maybe my math is wrong?

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  • Failed to Install Xdebug

    - by burnt1ce
    've registered xdebug in php.ini (as per http://xdebug.org/docs/install) but it's not showing up when i run "php -m" or when i get a test page to run "phpinfo()". I've just installed the latest version of XAMPP. I've used both "zend_extention" and "zend_extention_ts" to specify the path of the xdebug dll. I ensured that my apache server restarted and used the latest change of my php.ini by executing "httpd -k restart". Can anyone provide any suggestions in getting xdebug to show up? Here are the contents of my php.ini file. [PHP] ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; About php.ini ; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; PHP's initialization file, generally called php.ini, is responsible for ; configuring many of the aspects of PHP's behavior. ; PHP attempts to find and load this configuration from a number of locations. ; The following is a summary of its search order: ; 1. SAPI module specific location. ; 2. The PHPRC environment variable. (As of PHP 5.2.0) ; 3. A number of predefined registry keys on Windows (As of PHP 5.2.0) ; 4. Current working directory (except CLI) ; 5. The web server's directory (for SAPI modules), or directory of PHP ; (otherwise in Windows) ; 6. The directory from the --with-config-file-path compile time option, or the ; Windows directory (C:\windows or C:\winnt) ; See the PHP docs for more specific information. ; http://php.net/configuration.file ; The syntax of the file is extremely simple. Whitespace and Lines ; beginning with a semicolon are silently ignored (as you probably guessed). ; Section headers (e.g. [Foo]) are also silently ignored, even though ; they might mean something in the future. ; Directives following the section heading [PATH=/www/mysite] only ; apply to PHP files in the /www/mysite directory. Directives ; following the section heading [HOST=www.example.com] only apply to ; PHP files served from www.example.com. Directives set in these ; special sections cannot be overridden by user-defined INI files or ; at runtime. Currently, [PATH=] and [HOST=] sections only work under ; CGI/FastCGI. ; http://php.net/ini.sections ; Directives are specified using the following syntax: ; directive = value ; Directive names are *case sensitive* - foo=bar is different from FOO=bar. ; Directives are variables used to configure PHP or PHP extensions. ; There is no name validation. If PHP can't find an expected ; directive because it is not set or is mistyped, a default value will be used. ; The value can be a string, a number, a PHP constant (e.g. E_ALL or M_PI), one ; of the INI constants (On, Off, True, False, Yes, No and None) or an expression ; (e.g. E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE), a quoted string ("bar"), or a reference to a ; previously set variable or directive (e.g. ${foo}) ; Expressions in the INI file are limited to bitwise operators and parentheses: ; | bitwise OR ; ^ bitwise XOR ; & bitwise AND ; ~ bitwise NOT ; ! boolean NOT ; Boolean flags can be turned on using the values 1, On, True or Yes. ; They can be turned off using the values 0, Off, False or No. ; An empty string can be denoted by simply not writing anything after the equal ; sign, or by using the None keyword: ; foo = ; sets foo to an empty string ; foo = None ; sets foo to an empty string ; foo = "None" ; sets foo to the string 'None' ; If you use constants in your value, and these constants belong to a ; dynamically loaded extension (either a PHP extension or a Zend extension), ; you may only use these constants *after* the line that loads the extension. ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; About this file ; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; PHP comes packaged with two INI files. One that is recommended to be used ; in production environments and one that is recommended to be used in ; development environments. ; php.ini-production contains settings which hold security, performance and ; best practices at its core. But please be aware, these settings may break ; compatibility with older or less security conscience applications. We ; recommending using the production ini in production and testing environments. ; php.ini-development is very similar to its production variant, except it's ; much more verbose when it comes to errors. We recommending using the ; development version only in development environments as errors shown to ; application users can inadvertently leak otherwise secure information. ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; Quick Reference ; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; The following are all the settings which are different in either the production ; or development versions of the INIs with respect to PHP's default behavior. ; Please see the actual settings later in the document for more details as to why ; we recommend these changes in PHP's behavior. ; allow_call_time_pass_reference ; Default Value: On ; Development Value: Off ; Production Value: Off ; display_errors ; Default Value: On ; Development Value: On ; Production Value: Off ; display_startup_errors ; Default Value: Off ; Development Value: On ; Production Value: Off ; error_reporting ; Default Value: E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE ; Development Value: E_ALL | E_STRICT ; Production Value: E_ALL & ~E_DEPRECATED ; html_errors ; Default Value: On ; Development Value: On ; Production value: Off ; log_errors ; Default Value: Off ; Development Value: On ; Production Value: On ; magic_quotes_gpc ; Default Value: On ; Development Value: Off ; Production Value: Off ; max_input_time ; Default Value: -1 (Unlimited) ; Development Value: 60 (60 seconds) ; Production Value: 60 (60 seconds) ; output_buffering ; Default Value: Off ; Development Value: 4096 ; Production Value: 4096 ; register_argc_argv ; Default Value: On ; Development Value: Off ; Production Value: Off ; register_long_arrays ; Default Value: On ; Development Value: Off ; Production Value: Off ; request_order ; Default Value: None ; Development Value: "GP" ; Production Value: "GP" ; session.bug_compat_42 ; Default Value: On ; Development Value: On ; Production Value: Off ; session.bug_compat_warn ; Default Value: On ; Development Value: On ; Production Value: Off ; session.gc_divisor ; Default Value: 100 ; Development Value: 1000 ; Production Value: 1000 ; session.hash_bits_per_character ; Default Value: 4 ; Development Value: 5 ; Production Value: 5 ; short_open_tag ; Default Value: On ; Development Value: Off ; Production Value: Off ; track_errors ; Default Value: Off ; Development Value: On ; Production Value: Off ; url_rewriter.tags ; Default Value: "a=href,area=href,frame=src,form=,fieldset=" ; Development Value: "a=href,area=href,frame=src,input=src,form=fakeentry" ; Production Value: "a=href,area=href,frame=src,input=src,form=fakeentry" ; variables_order ; Default Value: "EGPCS" ; Development Value: "GPCS" ; Production Value: "GPCS" ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; php.ini Options ; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; Name for user-defined php.ini (.htaccess) files. Default is ".user.ini" ;user_ini.filename = ".user.ini" ; To disable this feature set this option to empty value ;user_ini.filename = ; TTL for user-defined php.ini files (time-to-live) in seconds. Default is 300 seconds (5 minutes) ;user_ini.cache_ttl = 300 ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; Language Options ; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; Enable the PHP scripting language engine under Apache. ; http://php.net/engine engine = On ; This directive determines whether or not PHP will recognize code between ; <? and ?> tags as PHP source which should be processed as such. It's been ; recommended for several years that you not use the short tag "short cut" and ; instead to use the full <?php and ?> tag combination. With the wide spread use ; of XML and use of these tags by other languages, the server can become easily ; confused and end up parsing the wrong code in the wrong context. But because ; this short cut has been a feature for such a long time, it's currently still ; supported for backwards compatibility, but we recommend you don't use them. ; Default Value: On ; Development Value: Off ; Production Value: Off ; http://php.net/short-open-tag short_open_tag = Off ; Allow ASP-style <% %> tags. ; http://php.net/asp-tags asp_tags = Off ; The number of significant digits displayed in floating point numbers. ; http://php.net/precision precision = 14 ; Enforce year 2000 compliance (will cause problems with non-compliant browsers) ; http://php.net/y2k-compliance y2k_compliance = On ; Output buffering is a mechanism for controlling how much output data ; (excluding headers and cookies) PHP should keep internally before pushing that ; data to the client. If your application's output exceeds this setting, PHP ; will send that data in chunks of roughly the size you specify. ; Turning on this setting and managing its maximum buffer size can yield some ; interesting side-effects depending on your application and web server. ; You may be able to send headers and cookies after you've already sent output ; through print or echo. You also may see performance benefits if your server is ; emitting less packets due to buffered output versus PHP streaming the output ; as it gets it. On production servers, 4096 bytes is a good setting for performance ; reasons. ; Note: Output buffering can also be controlled via Output Buffering Control ; functions. ; Possible Values: ; On = Enabled and buffer is unlimited. (Use with caution) ; Off = Disabled ; Integer = Enables the buffer and sets its maximum size in bytes. ; Note: This directive is hardcoded to Off for the CLI SAPI ; Default Value: Off ; Development Value: 4096 ; Production Value: 4096 ; http://php.net/output-buffering output_buffering = Off ; You can redirect all of the output of your scripts to a function. For ; example, if you set output_handler to "mb_output_handler", character ; encoding will be transparently converted to the specified encoding. ; Setting any output handler automatically turns on output buffering. ; Note: People who wrote portable scripts should not depend on this ini ; directive. Instead, explicitly set the output handler using ob_start(). ; Using this ini directive may cause problems unless you know what script ; is doing. ; Note: You cannot use both "mb_output_handler" with "ob_iconv_handler" ; and you cannot use both "ob_gzhandler" and "zlib.output_compression". ; Note: output_handler must be empty if this is set 'On' !!!! ; Instead you must use zlib.output_handler. ; http://php.net/output-handler ;output_handler = ; Transparent output compression using the zlib library ; Valid values for this option are 'off', 'on', or a specific buffer size ; to be used for compression (default is 4KB) ; Note: Resulting chunk size may vary due to nature of compression. PHP ; outputs chunks that are few hundreds bytes each as a result of ; compression. If you prefer a larger chunk size for better ; performance, enable output_buffering in addition. ; Note: You need to use zlib.output_handler instead of the standard ; output_handler, or otherwise the output will be corrupted. ; http://php.net/zlib.output-compression zlib.output_compression = Off ; http://php.net/zlib.output-compression-level ;zlib.output_compression_level = -1 ; You cannot specify additional output handlers if zlib.output_compression ; is activated here. This setting does the same as output_handler but in ; a different order. ; http://php.net/zlib.output-handler ;zlib.output_handler = ; Implicit flush tells PHP to tell the output layer to flush itself ; automatically after every output block. This is equivalent to calling the ; PHP function flush() after each and every call to print() or echo() and each ; and every HTML block. Turning this option on has serious performance ; implications and is generally recommended for debugging purposes only. ; http://php.net/implicit-flush ; Note: This directive is hardcoded to On for the CLI SAPI implicit_flush = Off ; The unserialize callback function will be called (with the undefined class' ; name as parameter), if the unserializer finds an undefined class ; which should be instantiated. A warning appears if the specified function is ; not defined, or if the function doesn't include/implement the missing class. ; So only set this entry, if you really want to implement such a ; callback-function. unserialize_callback_func = ; When floats & doubles are serialized store serialize_precision significant ; digits after the floating point. The default value ensures that when floats ; are decoded with unserialize, the data will remain the same. serialize_precision = 100 ; This directive allows you to enable and disable warnings which PHP will issue ; if you pass a value by reference at function call time. Passing values by ; reference at function call time is a deprecated feature which will be removed ; from PHP at some point in the near future. The acceptable method for passing a ; value by reference to a function is by declaring the reference in the functions ; definition, not at call time. This directive does not disable this feature, it ; only determines whether PHP will warn you about it or not. These warnings ; should enabled in development environments only. ; Default Value: On (Suppress warnings) ; Development Value: Off (Issue warnings) ; Production Value: Off (Issue warnings) ; http://php.net/allow-call-time-pass-reference allow_call_time_pass_reference = On ; Safe Mode ; http://php.net/safe-mode safe_mode = Off ; By default, Safe Mode does a UID compare check when ; opening files. If you want to relax this to a GID compare, ; then turn on safe_mode_gid. ; http://php.net/safe-mode-gid safe_mode_gid = Off ; When safe_mode is on, UID/GID checks are bypassed when ; including files from this directory and its subdirectories. ; (directory must also be in include_path or full path must ; be used when including) ; http://php.net/safe-mode-include-dir safe_mode_include_dir = ; When safe_mode is on, only executables located in the safe_mode_exec_dir ; will be allowed to be executed via the exec family of functions. ; http://php.net/safe-mode-exec-dir safe_mode_exec_dir = ; Setting certain environment variables may be a potential security breach. ; This directive contains a comma-delimited list of prefixes. In Safe Mode, ; the user may only alter environment variables whose names begin with the ; prefixes supplied here. By default, users will only be able to set ; environment variables that begin with PHP_ (e.g. PHP_FOO=BAR). ; Note: If this directive is empty, PHP will let the user modify ANY ; environment variable! ; http://php.net/safe-mode-allowed-env-vars safe_mode_allowed_env_vars = PHP_ ; This directive contains a comma-delimited list of environment variables that ; the end user won't be able to change using putenv(). These variables will be ; protected even if safe_mode_allowed_env_vars is set to allow to change them. ; http://php.net/safe-mode-protected-env-vars safe_mode_protected_env_vars = LD_LIBRARY_PATH ; open_basedir, if set, limits all file operations to the defined directory ; and below. This directive makes most sense if used in a per-directory ; or per-virtualhost web server configuration file. This directive is ; *NOT* affected by whether Safe Mode is turned On or Off. ; http://php.net/open-basedir ;open_basedir = ; This directive allows you to disable certain functions for security reasons. ; It receives a comma-delimited list of function names. This directive is ; *NOT* affected by whether Safe Mode is turned On or Off. ; http://php.net/disable-functions disable_functions = ; This directive allows you to disable certain classes for security reasons. ; It receives a comma-delimited list of class names. This directive is ; *NOT* affected by whether Safe Mode is turned On or Off. ; http://php.net/disable-classes disable_classes = ; Colors for Syntax Highlighting mode. Anything that's acceptable in ; <span style="color: ???????"> would work. ; http://php.net/syntax-highlighting ;highlight.string = #DD0000 ;highlight.comment = #FF9900 ;highlight.keyword = #007700 ;highlight.bg = #FFFFFF ;highlight.default = #0000BB ;highlight.html = #000000 ; If enabled, the request will be allowed to complete even if the user aborts ; the request. Consider enabling it if executing long requests, which may end up ; being interrupted by the user or a browser timing out. PHP's default behavior ; is to disable this feature. ; http://php.net/ignore-user-abort ;ignore_user_abort = On ; Determines the size of the realpath cache to be used by PHP. This value should ; be increased on systems where PHP opens many files to reflect the quantity of ; the file operations performed. ; http://php.net/realpath-cache-size ;realpath_cache_size = 16k ; Duration of time, in seconds for which to cache realpath information for a given ; file or directory. For systems with rarely changing files, consider increasing this ; value. ; http://php.net/realpath-cache-ttl ;realpath_cache_ttl = 120 ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; Miscellaneous ; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; Decides whether PHP may expose the fact that it is installed on the server ; (e.g. by adding its signature to the Web server header). It is no security ; threat in any way, but it makes it possible to determine whether you use PHP ; on your server or not. ; http://php.net/expose-php expose_php = On ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; Resource Limits ; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; Maximum execution time of each script, in seconds ; http://php.net/max-execution-time ; Note: This directive is hardcoded to 0 for the CLI SAPI max_execution_time = 60 ; Maximum amount of time each script may spend parsing request data. It's a good ; idea to limit this time on productions servers in order to eliminate unexpectedly ; long running scripts. ; Note: This directive is hardcoded to -1 for the CLI SAPI ; Default Value: -1 (Unlimited) ; Development Value: 60 (60 seconds) ; Production Value: 60 (60 seconds) ; http://php.net/max-input-time max_input_time = 60 ; Maximum input variable nesting level ; http://php.net/max-input-nesting-level ;max_input_nesting_level = 64 ; Maximum amount of memory a script may consume (128MB) ; http://php.net/memory-limit memory_limit = 128M ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; Error handling and logging ; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; This directive informs PHP of which errors, warnings and notices you would like ; it to take action for. The recommended way of setting values for this ; directive is through the use of the error level constants and bitwise ; operators. The error level constants are below here for convenience as well as ; some common settings and their meanings. ; By default, PHP is set to take action on all errors, notices and warnings EXCEPT ; those related to E_NOTICE and E_STRICT, which together cover best practices and ; recommended coding standards in PHP. For performance reasons, this is the ; recommend error reporting setting. Your production server shouldn't be wasting ; resources complaining about best practices and coding standards. That's what ; development servers and development settings are for. ; Note: The php.ini-development file has this setting as E_ALL | E_STRICT. This ; means it pretty much reports everything which is exactly what you want during ; development and early testing. ; ; Error Level Constants: ; E_ALL - All errors and warnings (includes E_STRICT as of PHP 6.0.0) ; E_ERROR - fatal run-time errors ; E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR - almost fatal run-time errors ; E_WARNING - run-time warnings (non-fatal errors) ; E_PARSE - compile-time parse errors ; E_NOTICE - run-time notices (these are warnings which often result ; from a bug in your code, but it's possible that it was ; intentional (e.g., using an uninitialized variable and ; relying on the fact it's automatically initialized to an ; empty string) ; E_STRICT - run-time notices, enable to have PHP suggest changes ; to your code which will ensure the best interoperability ; and forward compatibility of your code ; E_CORE_ERROR - fatal errors that occur during PHP's initial startup ; E_CORE_WARNING - warnings (non-fatal errors) that occur during PHP's ; initial startup ; E_COMPILE_ERROR - fatal compile-time errors ; E_COMPILE_WARNING - compile-time warnings (non-fatal errors) ; E_USER_ERROR - user-generated error message ; E_USER_WARNING - user-generated warning message ; E_USER_NOTICE - user-generated notice message ; E_DEPRECATED - warn about code that will not work in future versions ; of PHP ; E_USER_DEPRECATED - user-generated deprecation warnings ; ; Common Values: ; E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE (Show all errors, except for notices and coding standards warnings.) ; E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE | E_STRICT (Show all errors, except for notices) ; E_COMPILE_ERROR|E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR|E_ERROR|E_CORE_ERROR (Show only errors) ; E_ALL | E_STRICT (Show all errors, warnings and notices including coding standards.) ; Default Value: E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE ; Development Value: E_ALL | E_STRICT ; Production Value: E_ALL & ~E_DEPRECATED ; http://php.net/error-reporting error_reporting = E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE & ~E_DEPRECATED ; This directive controls whether or not and where PHP will output errors, ; notices and warnings too. Error output is very useful during development, but ; it could be very dangerous in production environments. Depending on the code ; which is triggering the error, sensitive information could potentially leak ; out of your application such as database usernames and passwords or worse. ; It's recommended that errors be logged on production servers rather than ; having the errors sent to STDOUT. ; Possible Values: ; Off = Do not display any errors ; stderr = Display errors to STDERR (affects only CGI/CLI binaries!) ; On or stdout = Display errors to STDOUT ; Default Value: On ; Development Value: On ; Production Value: Off ; http://php.net/display-errors display_errors = On ; The display of errors which occur during PHP's startup sequence are handled ; separately from display_errors. PHP's default behavior is to suppress those ; errors from clients. Turning the display of startup errors on can be useful in ; debugging configuration problems. But, it's strongly recommended that you ; leave this setting off on production servers. ; Default Value: Off ; Development Value: On ; Production Value: Off ; http://php.net/display-startup-errors display_startup_errors = On ; Besides displaying errors, PHP can also log errors to locations such as a ; server-specific log, STDERR, or a location specified by the error_log ; directive found below. While errors should not be displayed on productions ; servers they should still be monitored and logging is a great way to do that. ; Default Value: Off ; Development Value: On ; Production Value: On ; http://php.net/log-errors log_errors = Off ; Set maximum length of log_errors. In error_log information about the source is ; added. The default is 1024 and 0 allows to not apply any maximum length at all. ; http://php.net/log-errors-max-len log_errors_max_len = 1024 ; Do not log repeated messages. Repeated errors must occur in same file on same ; line unless ignore_repeated_source is set true. ; http://php.net/ignore-repeated-errors ignore_repeated_errors = Off ; Ignore source of message when ignoring repeated messages. When this setting ; is On you will not log errors with repeated messages from different files or ; source lines. ; http://php.net/ignore-repeated-source ignore_repeated_source = Off ; If this parameter is set to Off, then memory leaks will not be shown (on ; stdout or in the log). This has only effect in a debug compile, and if ; error reporting includes E_WARNING in the allowed list ; http://php.net/report-memleaks report_memleaks = On ; This setting is on by default. ;report_zend_debug = 0 ; Store the last error/warning message in $php_errormsg (boolean). Setting this value ; to On can assist in debugging and is appropriate for development servers. It should ; however be disabled on production servers. ; Default Value: Off ; Development Value: On ; Production Value: Off ; http://php.net/track-errors track_errors = Off ; Turn off normal error reporting and emit XML-RPC error XML ; http://php.net/xmlrpc-errors ;xmlrpc_errors = 0 ; An XML-RPC faultCode ;xmlrpc_error_number = 0 ; When PHP displays or logs an error, it has the capability of inserting html ; links to documentation related to that error. This directive controls whether ; those HTML links appear in error messages or not. For performance and security ; reasons, it's recommended you disable this on production servers. ; Note: This directive is hardcoded to Off for the CLI SAPI ; Default Value: On ; Development Value: On ; Production value: Off ; http://php.net/html-errors html_errors = On ; If html_errors is set On PHP produces clickable error messages that direct ; to a page describing the error or function causing the error in detail. ; You can download a copy of the PHP manual from http://php.net/docs ; and change docref_root to the base URL of your local copy including the ; leading '/'. You must also specify the file extension being used including ; the dot. PHP's default behavior is to leave these settings empty. ; Note: Never use this feature for production boxes. ; http://php.net/docref-root ; Examples ;docref_root = "/phpmanual/" ; http://php.net/docref-ext ;docref_ext = .html ; String to output before an error message. PHP's default behavior is to leave ; this setting blank. ; http://php.net/error-prepend-string ; Example: ;error_prepend_string = "<font color=#ff0000>" ; String to output after an error message. PHP's default behavior is to leave ; this setting blank. ; http://php.net/error-append-string ; Example: ;error_append_string = "</font>" ; Log errors to specified file. PHP's default behavior is to leave this value ; empty. ; http://php.net/error-log ; Example: ;error_log = php_errors.log ; Log errors to syslog (Event Log on NT, not valid in Windows 95). ;error_log = syslog ;error_log = "C:\xampp\apache\logs\php_error.log" ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; Data Handling ; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; Note - track_vars is ALWAYS enabled ; The separator used in PHP generated URLs to separate arguments. ; PHP's default setting is "&". ; http://php.net/arg-separator.output ; Example: arg_separator.output = "&amp;" ; List of separator(s) used by PHP to parse input URLs into variables. ; PHP's default setting is "&

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  • Upload File to Windows Azure Blob in Chunks through ASP.NET MVC, JavaScript and HTML5

    - by Shaun
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/shaunxu/archive/2013/07/01/upload-file-to-windows-azure-blob-in-chunks-through-asp.net.aspxMany people are using Windows Azure Blob Storage to store their data in the cloud. Blob storage provides 99.9% availability with easy-to-use API through .NET SDK and HTTP REST. For example, we can store JavaScript files, images, documents in blob storage when we are building an ASP.NET web application on a Web Role in Windows Azure. Or we can store our VHD files in blob and mount it as a hard drive in our cloud service. If you are familiar with Windows Azure, you should know that there are two kinds of blob: page blob and block blob. The page blob is optimized for random read and write, which is very useful when you need to store VHD files. The block blob is optimized for sequential/chunk read and write, which has more common usage. Since we can upload block blob in blocks through BlockBlob.PutBlock, and them commit them as a whole blob with invoking the BlockBlob.PutBlockList, it is very powerful to upload large files, as we can upload blocks in parallel, and provide pause-resume feature. There are many documents, articles and blog posts described on how to upload a block blob. Most of them are focus on the server side, which means when you had received a big file, stream or binaries, how to upload them into blob storage in blocks through .NET SDK.  But the problem is, how can we upload these large files from client side, for example, a browser. This questioned to me when I was working with a Chinese customer to help them build a network disk production on top of azure. The end users upload their files from the web portal, and then the files will be stored in blob storage from the Web Role. My goal is to find the best way to transform the file from client (end user’s machine) to the server (Web Role) through browser. In this post I will demonstrate and describe what I had done, to upload large file in chunks with high speed, and save them as blocks into Windows Azure Blob Storage.   Traditional Upload, Works with Limitation The simplest way to implement this requirement is to create a web page with a form that contains a file input element and a submit button. 1: @using (Html.BeginForm("About", "Index", FormMethod.Post, new { enctype = "multipart/form-data" })) 2: { 3: <input type="file" name="file" /> 4: <input type="submit" value="upload" /> 5: } And then in the backend controller, we retrieve the whole content of this file and upload it in to the blob storage through .NET SDK. We can split the file in blocks and upload them in parallel and commit. The code had been well blogged in the community. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public ActionResult About(HttpPostedFileBase file) 3: { 4: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 5: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 6: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(file.FileName); 7: var blockDataList = new Dictionary<string, byte[]>(); 8: using (var stream = file.InputStream) 9: { 10: var blockSizeInKB = 1024; 11: var offset = 0; 12: var index = 0; 13: while (offset < stream.Length) 14: { 15: var readLength = Math.Min(1024 * blockSizeInKB, (int)stream.Length - offset); 16: var blockData = new byte[readLength]; 17: offset += stream.Read(blockData, 0, readLength); 18: blockDataList.Add(Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)), blockData); 19:  20: index++; 21: } 22: } 23:  24: Parallel.ForEach(blockDataList, (bi) => 25: { 26: blob.PutBlock(bi.Key, new MemoryStream(bi.Value), null); 27: }); 28: blob.PutBlockList(blockDataList.Select(b => b.Key).ToArray()); 29:  30: return RedirectToAction("About"); 31: } This works perfect if we selected an image, a music or a small video to upload. But if I selected a large file, let’s say a 6GB HD-movie, after upload for about few minutes the page will be shown as below and the upload will be terminated. In ASP.NET there is a limitation of request length and the maximized request length is defined in the web.config file. It’s a number which less than about 4GB. So if we want to upload a really big file, we cannot simply implement in this way. Also, in Windows Azure, a cloud service network load balancer will terminate the connection if exceed the timeout period. From my test the timeout looks like 2 - 3 minutes. Hence, when we need to upload a large file we cannot just use the basic HTML elements. Besides the limitation mentioned above, the simple HTML file upload cannot provide rich upload experience such as chunk upload, pause and pause-resume. So we need to find a better way to upload large file from the client to the server.   Upload in Chunks through HTML5 and JavaScript In order to break those limitation mentioned above we will try to upload the large file in chunks. This takes some benefit to us such as - No request size limitation: Since we upload in chunks, we can define the request size for each chunks regardless how big the entire file is. - No timeout problem: The size of chunks are controlled by us, which means we should be able to make sure request for each chunk upload will not exceed the timeout period of both ASP.NET and Windows Azure load balancer. It was a big challenge to upload big file in chunks until we have HTML5. There are some new features and improvements introduced in HTML5 and we will use them to implement our solution.   In HTML5, the File interface had been improved with a new method called “slice”. It can be used to read part of the file by specifying the start byte index and the end byte index. For example if the entire file was 1024 bytes, file.slice(512, 768) will read the part of this file from the 512nd byte to 768th byte, and return a new object of interface called "Blob”, which you can treat as an array of bytes. In fact,  a Blob object represents a file-like object of immutable, raw data. The File interface is based on Blob, inheriting blob functionality and expanding it to support files on the user's system. For more information about the Blob please refer here. File and Blob is very useful to implement the chunk upload. We will use File interface to represent the file the user selected from the browser and then use File.slice to read the file in chunks in the size we wanted. For example, if we wanted to upload a 10MB file with 512KB chunks, then we can read it in 512KB blobs by using File.slice in a loop.   Assuming we have a web page as below. User can select a file, an input box to specify the block size in KB and a button to start upload. 1: <div> 2: <input type="file" id="upload_files" name="files[]" /><br /> 3: Block Size: <input type="number" id="block_size" value="512" name="block_size" />KB<br /> 4: <input type="button" id="upload_button_blob" name="upload" value="upload (blob)" /> 5: </div> Then we can have the JavaScript function to upload the file in chunks when user clicked the button. 1: <script type="text/javascript"> 1: 2: $(function () { 3: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 4: }); 5: });</script> Firstly we need to ensure the client browser supports the interfaces we are going to use. Just try to invoke the File, Blob and FormData from the “window” object. If any of them is “undefined” the condition result will be “false” which means your browser doesn’t support these premium feature and it’s time for you to get your browser updated. FormData is another new feature we are going to use in the future. It could generate a temporary form for us. We will use this interface to create a form with chunk and associated metadata when invoked the service through ajax. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: if (window.File && window.Blob && window.FormData) { 4: alert("Your brwoser is awesome, let's rock!"); 5: } 6: else { 7: alert("Oh man plz update to a modern browser before try is cool stuff out."); 8: return; 9: } 10: }); Each browser supports these interfaces by their own implementation and currently the Blob, File and File.slice are supported by Chrome 21, FireFox 13, IE 10, Opera 12 and Safari 5.1 or higher. After that we worked on the files the user selected one by one since in HTML5, user can select multiple files in one file input box. 1: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 2: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 3: var file = files[i]; 4: var fileSize = file.size; 5: var fileName = file.name; 6: } Next, we calculated the start index and end index for each chunks based on the size the user specified from the browser. We put them into an array with the file name and the index, which will be used when we upload chunks into Windows Azure Blob Storage as blocks since we need to specify the target blob name and the block index. At the same time we will store the list of all indexes into another variant which will be used to commit blocks into blob in Azure Storage once all chunks had been uploaded successfully. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10:  11: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 12: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 13: var blockSizeInKB = $("#block_size").val(); 14: var blockSize = blockSizeInKB * 1024; 15: var blocks = []; 16: var offset = 0; 17: var index = 0; 18: var list = ""; 19: while (offset < fileSize) { 20: var start = offset; 21: var end = Math.min(offset + blockSize, fileSize); 22:  23: blocks.push({ 24: name: fileName, 25: index: index, 26: start: start, 27: end: end 28: }); 29: list += index + ","; 30:  31: offset = end; 32: index++; 33: } 34: } 35: }); Now we have all chunks’ information ready. The next step should be upload them one by one to the server side, and at the server side when received a chunk it will upload as a block into Blob Storage, and finally commit them with the index list through BlockBlobClient.PutBlockList. But since all these invokes are ajax calling, which means not synchronized call. So we need to introduce a new JavaScript library to help us coordinate the asynchronize operation, which named “async.js”. You can download this JavaScript library here, and you can find the document here. I will not explain this library too much in this post. We will put all procedures we want to execute as a function array, and pass into the proper function defined in async.js to let it help us to control the execution sequence, in series or in parallel. Hence we will define an array and put the function for chunk upload into this array. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4:  5: // start to upload each files in chunks 6: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 7: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 8: var file = files[i]; 9: var fileSize = file.size; 10: var fileName = file.name; 11: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 12: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 13: ... ... 14:  15: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 16: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 17: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 18: }); 19: }); 20: } 21: }); 22: }); As you can see, I used File.slice method to read each chunks based on the start and end byte index we calculated previously, and constructed a temporary HTML form with the file name, chunk index and chunk data through another new feature in HTML5 named FormData. Then post this form to the backend server through jQuery.ajax. This is the key part of our solution. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 15: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 16: // load blob based on the start and end index for each chunks 17: var blob = file.slice(block.start, block.end); 18: // put the file name, index and blob into a temporary from 19: var fd = new FormData(); 20: fd.append("name", block.name); 21: fd.append("index", block.index); 22: fd.append("file", blob); 23: // post the form to backend service (asp.net mvc controller action) 24: $.ajax({ 25: url: "/Home/UploadInFormData", 26: data: fd, 27: processData: false, 28: contentType: "multipart/form-data", 29: type: "POST", 30: success: function (result) { 31: if (!result.success) { 32: alert(result.error); 33: } 34: callback(null, block.index); 35: } 36: }); 37: }); 38: }); 39: } 40: }); Then we will invoke these functions one by one by using the async.js. And once all functions had been executed successfully I invoked another ajax call to the backend service to commit all these chunks (blocks) as the blob in Windows Azure Storage. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.series(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: }); That’s all in the client side. The outline of our logic would be - Calculate the start and end byte index for each chunks based on the block size. - Defined the functions of reading the chunk form file and upload the content to the backend service through ajax. - Execute the functions defined in previous step with “async.js”. - Commit the chunks by invoking the backend service in Windows Azure Storage finally.   Save Chunks as Blocks into Blob Storage In above we finished the client size JavaScript code. It uploaded the file in chunks to the backend service which we are going to implement in this step. We will use ASP.NET MVC as our backend service, and it will receive the chunks, upload into Windows Azure Bob Storage in blocks, then finally commit as one blob. As in the client side we uploaded chunks by invoking the ajax call to the URL "/Home/UploadInFormData", I created a new action under the Index controller and it only accepts HTTP POST request. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: } 8: catch (Exception e) 9: { 10: error = e.ToString(); 11: } 12:  13: return new JsonResult() 14: { 15: Data = new 16: { 17: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 18: error = error 19: } 20: }; 21: } Then I retrieved the file name, index and the chunk content from the Request.Form object, which was passed from our client side. And then, used the Windows Azure SDK to create a blob container (in this case we will use the container named “test”.) and create a blob reference with the blob name (same as the file name). Then uploaded the chunk as a block of this blob with the index, since in Blob Storage each block must have an index (ID) associated with so that finally we can put all blocks as one blob by specifying their block ID list. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 8: var index = int.Parse(Request.Form["index"]); 9: var file = Request.Files[0]; 10: var id = Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)); 11:  12: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 13: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 14: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 15: blob.PutBlock(id, file.InputStream, null); 16: } 17: catch (Exception e) 18: { 19: error = e.ToString(); 20: } 21:  22: return new JsonResult() 23: { 24: Data = new 25: { 26: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 27: error = error 28: } 29: }; 30: } Next, I created another action to commit the blocks into blob once all chunks had been uploaded. Similarly, I retrieved the blob name from the Request.Form. I also retrieved the chunks ID list, which is the block ID list from the Request.Form in a string format, split them as a list, then invoked the BlockBlob.PutBlockList method. After that our blob will be shown in the container and ready to be download. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult Commit() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 8: var list = Request.Form["list"]; 9: var ids = list 10: .Split(',') 11: .Where(id => !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(id)) 12: .Select(id => Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(int.Parse(id)))) 13: .ToArray(); 14:  15: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 16: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 17: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 18: blob.PutBlockList(ids); 19: } 20: catch (Exception e) 21: { 22: error = e.ToString(); 23: } 24:  25: return new JsonResult() 26: { 27: Data = new 28: { 29: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 30: error = error 31: } 32: }; 33: } Now we finished all code we need. The whole process of uploading would be like this below. Below is the full client side JavaScript code. 1: <script type="text/javascript" src="~/Scripts/async.js"></script> 2: <script type="text/javascript"> 3: $(function () { 4: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 5: // assert the browser support html5 6: if (window.File && window.Blob && window.FormData) { 7: alert("Your brwoser is awesome, let's rock!"); 8: } 9: else { 10: alert("Oh man plz update to a modern browser before try is cool stuff out."); 11: return; 12: } 13:  14: // start to upload each files in chunks 15: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 16: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 17: var file = files[i]; 18: var fileSize = file.size; 19: var fileName = file.name; 20:  21: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 22: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 23: var blockSizeInKB = $("#block_size").val(); 24: var blockSize = blockSizeInKB * 1024; 25: var blocks = []; 26: var offset = 0; 27: var index = 0; 28: var list = ""; 29: while (offset < fileSize) { 30: var start = offset; 31: var end = Math.min(offset + blockSize, fileSize); 32:  33: blocks.push({ 34: name: fileName, 35: index: index, 36: start: start, 37: end: end 38: }); 39: list += index + ","; 40:  41: offset = end; 42: index++; 43: } 44:  45: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 46: var putBlocks = []; 47: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 48: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 49: // load blob based on the start and end index for each chunks 50: var blob = file.slice(block.start, block.end); 51: // put the file name, index and blob into a temporary from 52: var fd = new FormData(); 53: fd.append("name", block.name); 54: fd.append("index", block.index); 55: fd.append("file", blob); 56: // post the form to backend service (asp.net mvc controller action) 57: $.ajax({ 58: url: "/Home/UploadInFormData", 59: data: fd, 60: processData: false, 61: contentType: "multipart/form-data", 62: type: "POST", 63: success: function (result) { 64: if (!result.success) { 65: alert(result.error); 66: } 67: callback(null, block.index); 68: } 69: }); 70: }); 71: }); 72:  73: // invoke the functions one by one 74: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 75: async.series(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 76: var data = { 77: name: fileName, 78: list: list 79: }; 80: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 81: if (!result.success) { 82: alert(result.error); 83: } 84: else { 85: alert("done!"); 86: } 87: }); 88: }); 89: } 90: }); 91: }); 92: </script> And below is the full ASP.NET MVC controller code. 1: public class HomeController : Controller 2: { 3: private CloudStorageAccount _account; 4: private CloudBlobClient _client; 5:  6: public HomeController() 7: : base() 8: { 9: _account = CloudStorageAccount.Parse(CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting("DataConnectionString")); 10: _client = _account.CreateCloudBlobClient(); 11: } 12:  13: public ActionResult Index() 14: { 15: ViewBag.Message = "Modify this template to jump-start your ASP.NET MVC application."; 16:  17: return View(); 18: } 19:  20: [HttpPost] 21: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 22: { 23: var error = string.Empty; 24: try 25: { 26: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 27: var index = int.Parse(Request.Form["index"]); 28: var file = Request.Files[0]; 29: var id = Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)); 30:  31: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 32: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 33: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 34: blob.PutBlock(id, file.InputStream, null); 35: } 36: catch (Exception e) 37: { 38: error = e.ToString(); 39: } 40:  41: return new JsonResult() 42: { 43: Data = new 44: { 45: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 46: error = error 47: } 48: }; 49: } 50:  51: [HttpPost] 52: public JsonResult Commit() 53: { 54: var error = string.Empty; 55: try 56: { 57: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 58: var list = Request.Form["list"]; 59: var ids = list 60: .Split(',') 61: .Where(id => !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(id)) 62: .Select(id => Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(int.Parse(id)))) 63: .ToArray(); 64:  65: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 66: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 67: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 68: blob.PutBlockList(ids); 69: } 70: catch (Exception e) 71: { 72: error = e.ToString(); 73: } 74:  75: return new JsonResult() 76: { 77: Data = new 78: { 79: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 80: error = error 81: } 82: }; 83: } 84: } And if we selected a file from the browser we will see our application will upload chunks in the size we specified to the server through ajax call in background, and then commit all chunks in one blob. Then we can find the blob in our Windows Azure Blob Storage.   Optimized by Parallel Upload In previous example we just uploaded our file in chunks. This solved the problem that ASP.NET MVC request content size limitation as well as the Windows Azure load balancer timeout. But it might introduce the performance problem since we uploaded chunks in sequence. In order to improve the upload performance we could modify our client side code a bit to make the upload operation invoked in parallel. The good news is that, “async.js” library provides the parallel execution function. If you remembered the code we invoke the service to upload chunks, it utilized “async.series” which means all functions will be executed in sequence. Now we will change this code to “async.parallel”. This will invoke all functions in parallel. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.parallel(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: }); In this way all chunks will be uploaded to the server side at the same time to maximize the bandwidth usage. This should work if the file was not very large and the chunk size was not very small. But for large file this might introduce another problem that too many ajax calls are sent to the server at the same time. So the best solution should be, upload the chunks in parallel with maximum concurrency limitation. The code below specified the concurrency limitation to 4, which means at the most only 4 ajax calls could be invoked at the same time. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.parallelLimit(putBlocks, 4, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: });   Summary In this post we discussed how to upload files in chunks to the backend service and then upload them into Windows Azure Blob Storage in blocks. We focused on the frontend side and leverage three new feature introduced in HTML 5 which are - File.slice: Read part of the file by specifying the start and end byte index. - Blob: File-like interface which contains the part of the file content. - FormData: Temporary form element that we can pass the chunk alone with some metadata to the backend service. Then we discussed the performance consideration of chunk uploading. Sequence upload cannot provide maximized upload speed, but the unlimited parallel upload might crash the browser and server if too many chunks. So we finally came up with the solution to upload chunks in parallel with the concurrency limitation. We also demonstrated how to utilize “async.js” JavaScript library to help us control the asynchronize call and the parallel limitation.   Regarding the chunk size and the parallel limitation value there is no “best” value. You need to test vary composition and find out the best one for your particular scenario. It depends on the local bandwidth, client machine cores and the server side (Windows Azure Cloud Service Virtual Machine) cores, memory and bandwidth. Below is one of my performance test result. The client machine was Windows 8 IE 10 with 4 cores. I was using Microsoft Cooperation Network. The web site was hosted on Windows Azure China North data center (in Beijing) with one small web role (1.7GB 1 core CPU, 1.75GB memory with 100Mbps bandwidth). The test cases were - Chunk size: 512KB, 1MB, 2MB, 4MB. - Upload Mode: Sequence, parallel (unlimited), parallel with limit (4 threads, 8 threads). - Chunk Format: base64 string, binaries. - Target file: 100MB. - Each case was tested 3 times. Below is the test result chart. Some thoughts, but not guidance or best practice: - Parallel gets better performance than series. - No significant performance improvement between parallel 4 threads and 8 threads. - Transform with binaries provides better performance than base64. - In all cases, chunk size in 1MB - 2MB gets better performance.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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  • New features of C# 4.0

    This article covers New features of C# 4.0. Article has been divided into below sections. Introduction. Dynamic Lookup. Named and Optional Arguments. Features for COM interop. Variance. Relationship with Visual Basic. Resources. Other interested readings… 22 New Features of Visual Studio 2008 for .NET Professionals 50 New Features of SQL Server 2008 IIS 7.0 New features Introduction It is now close to a year since Microsoft Visual C# 3.0 shipped as part of Visual Studio 2008. In the VS Managed Languages team we are hard at work on creating the next version of the language (with the unsurprising working title of C# 4.0), and this document is a first public description of the planned language features as we currently see them. Please be advised that all this is in early stages of production and is subject to change. Part of the reason for sharing our plans in public so early is precisely to get the kind of feedback that will cause us to improve the final product before it rolls out. Simultaneously with the publication of this whitepaper, a first public CTP (community technology preview) of Visual Studio 2010 is going out as a Virtual PC image for everyone to try. Please use it to play and experiment with the features, and let us know of any thoughts you have. We ask for your understanding and patience working with very early bits, where especially new or newly implemented features do not have the quality or stability of a final product. The aim of the CTP is not to give you a productive work environment but to give you the best possible impression of what we are working on for the next release. The CTP contains a number of walkthroughs, some of which highlight the new language features of C# 4.0. Those are excellent for getting a hands-on guided tour through the details of some common scenarios for the features. You may consider this whitepaper a companion document to these walkthroughs, complementing them with a focus on the overall language features and how they work, as opposed to the specifics of the concrete scenarios. C# 4.0 The major theme for C# 4.0 is dynamic programming. Increasingly, objects are “dynamic” in the sense that their structure and behavior is not captured by a static type, or at least not one that the compiler knows about when compiling your program. Some examples include a. objects from dynamic programming languages, such as Python or Ruby b. COM objects accessed through IDispatch c. ordinary .NET types accessed through reflection d. objects with changing structure, such as HTML DOM objects While C# remains a statically typed language, we aim to vastly improve the interaction with such objects. A secondary theme is co-evolution with Visual Basic. Going forward we will aim to maintain the individual character of each language, but at the same time important new features should be introduced in both languages at the same time. They should be differentiated more by style and feel than by feature set. The new features in C# 4.0 fall into four groups: Dynamic lookup Dynamic lookup allows you to write method, operator and indexer calls, property and field accesses, and even object invocations which bypass the C# static type checking and instead gets resolved at runtime. Named and optional parameters Parameters in C# can now be specified as optional by providing a default value for them in a member declaration. When the member is invoked, optional arguments can be omitted. Furthermore, any argument can be passed by parameter name instead of position. COM specific interop features Dynamic lookup as well as named and optional parameters both help making programming against COM less painful than today. On top of that, however, we are adding a number of other small features that further improve the interop experience. Variance It used to be that an IEnumerable<string> wasn’t an IEnumerable<object>. Now it is – C# embraces type safe “co-and contravariance” and common BCL types are updated to take advantage of that. Dynamic Lookup Dynamic lookup allows you a unified approach to invoking things dynamically. With dynamic lookup, when you have an object in your hand you do not need to worry about whether it comes from COM, IronPython, the HTML DOM or reflection; you just apply operations to it and leave it to the runtime to figure out what exactly those operations mean for that particular object. This affords you enormous flexibility, and can greatly simplify your code, but it does come with a significant drawback: Static typing is not maintained for these operations. A dynamic object is assumed at compile time to support any operation, and only at runtime will you get an error if it wasn’t so. Oftentimes this will be no loss, because the object wouldn’t have a static type anyway, in other cases it is a tradeoff between brevity and safety. In order to facilitate this tradeoff, it is a design goal of C# to allow you to opt in or opt out of dynamic behavior on every single call. The dynamic type C# 4.0 introduces a new static type called dynamic. When you have an object of type dynamic you can “do things to it” that are resolved only at runtime: dynamic d = GetDynamicObject(…); d.M(7); The C# compiler allows you to call a method with any name and any arguments on d because it is of type dynamic. At runtime the actual object that d refers to will be examined to determine what it means to “call M with an int” on it. The type dynamic can be thought of as a special version of the type object, which signals that the object can be used dynamically. It is easy to opt in or out of dynamic behavior: any object can be implicitly converted to dynamic, “suspending belief” until runtime. Conversely, there is an “assignment conversion” from dynamic to any other type, which allows implicit conversion in assignment-like constructs: dynamic d = 7; // implicit conversion int i = d; // assignment conversion Dynamic operations Not only method calls, but also field and property accesses, indexer and operator calls and even delegate invocations can be dispatched dynamically: dynamic d = GetDynamicObject(…); d.M(7); // calling methods d.f = d.P; // getting and settings fields and properties d[“one”] = d[“two”]; // getting and setting thorugh indexers int i = d + 3; // calling operators string s = d(5,7); // invoking as a delegate The role of the C# compiler here is simply to package up the necessary information about “what is being done to d”, so that the runtime can pick it up and determine what the exact meaning of it is given an actual object d. Think of it as deferring part of the compiler’s job to runtime. The result of any dynamic operation is itself of type dynamic. Runtime lookup At runtime a dynamic operation is dispatched according to the nature of its target object d: COM objects If d is a COM object, the operation is dispatched dynamically through COM IDispatch. This allows calling to COM types that don’t have a Primary Interop Assembly (PIA), and relying on COM features that don’t have a counterpart in C#, such as indexed properties and default properties. Dynamic objects If d implements the interface IDynamicObject d itself is asked to perform the operation. Thus by implementing IDynamicObject a type can completely redefine the meaning of dynamic operations. This is used intensively by dynamic languages such as IronPython and IronRuby to implement their own dynamic object models. It will also be used by APIs, e.g. by the HTML DOM to allow direct access to the object’s properties using property syntax. Plain objects Otherwise d is a standard .NET object, and the operation will be dispatched using reflection on its type and a C# “runtime binder” which implements C#’s lookup and overload resolution semantics at runtime. This is essentially a part of the C# compiler running as a runtime component to “finish the work” on dynamic operations that was deferred by the static compiler. Example Assume the following code: dynamic d1 = new Foo(); dynamic d2 = new Bar(); string s; d1.M(s, d2, 3, null); Because the receiver of the call to M is dynamic, the C# compiler does not try to resolve the meaning of the call. Instead it stashes away information for the runtime about the call. This information (often referred to as the “payload”) is essentially equivalent to: “Perform an instance method call of M with the following arguments: 1. a string 2. a dynamic 3. a literal int 3 4. a literal object null” At runtime, assume that the actual type Foo of d1 is not a COM type and does not implement IDynamicObject. In this case the C# runtime binder picks up to finish the overload resolution job based on runtime type information, proceeding as follows: 1. Reflection is used to obtain the actual runtime types of the two objects, d1 and d2, that did not have a static type (or rather had the static type dynamic). The result is Foo for d1 and Bar for d2. 2. Method lookup and overload resolution is performed on the type Foo with the call M(string,Bar,3,null) using ordinary C# semantics. 3. If the method is found it is invoked; otherwise a runtime exception is thrown. Overload resolution with dynamic arguments Even if the receiver of a method call is of a static type, overload resolution can still happen at runtime. This can happen if one or more of the arguments have the type dynamic: Foo foo = new Foo(); dynamic d = new Bar(); var result = foo.M(d); The C# runtime binder will choose between the statically known overloads of M on Foo, based on the runtime type of d, namely Bar. The result is again of type dynamic. The Dynamic Language Runtime An important component in the underlying implementation of dynamic lookup is the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR), which is a new API in .NET 4.0. The DLR provides most of the infrastructure behind not only C# dynamic lookup but also the implementation of several dynamic programming languages on .NET, such as IronPython and IronRuby. Through this common infrastructure a high degree of interoperability is ensured, but just as importantly the DLR provides excellent caching mechanisms which serve to greatly enhance the efficiency of runtime dispatch. To the user of dynamic lookup in C#, the DLR is invisible except for the improved efficiency. However, if you want to implement your own dynamically dispatched objects, the IDynamicObject interface allows you to interoperate with the DLR and plug in your own behavior. This is a rather advanced task, which requires you to understand a good deal more about the inner workings of the DLR. For API writers, however, it can definitely be worth the trouble in order to vastly improve the usability of e.g. a library representing an inherently dynamic domain. Open issues There are a few limitations and things that might work differently than you would expect. · The DLR allows objects to be created from objects that represent classes. However, the current implementation of C# doesn’t have syntax to support this. · Dynamic lookup will not be able to find extension methods. Whether extension methods apply or not depends on the static context of the call (i.e. which using clauses occur), and this context information is not currently kept as part of the payload. · Anonymous functions (i.e. lambda expressions) cannot appear as arguments to a dynamic method call. The compiler cannot bind (i.e. “understand”) an anonymous function without knowing what type it is converted to. One consequence of these limitations is that you cannot easily use LINQ queries over dynamic objects: dynamic collection = …; var result = collection.Select(e => e + 5); If the Select method is an extension method, dynamic lookup will not find it. Even if it is an instance method, the above does not compile, because a lambda expression cannot be passed as an argument to a dynamic operation. There are no plans to address these limitations in C# 4.0. Named and Optional Arguments Named and optional parameters are really two distinct features, but are often useful together. Optional parameters allow you to omit arguments to member invocations, whereas named arguments is a way to provide an argument using the name of the corresponding parameter instead of relying on its position in the parameter list. Some APIs, most notably COM interfaces such as the Office automation APIs, are written specifically with named and optional parameters in mind. Up until now it has been very painful to call into these APIs from C#, with sometimes as many as thirty arguments having to be explicitly passed, most of which have reasonable default values and could be omitted. Even in APIs for .NET however you sometimes find yourself compelled to write many overloads of a method with different combinations of parameters, in order to provide maximum usability to the callers. Optional parameters are a useful alternative for these situations. Optional parameters A parameter is declared optional simply by providing a default value for it: public void M(int x, int y = 5, int z = 7); Here y and z are optional parameters and can be omitted in calls: M(1, 2, 3); // ordinary call of M M(1, 2); // omitting z – equivalent to M(1, 2, 7) M(1); // omitting both y and z – equivalent to M(1, 5, 7) Named and optional arguments C# 4.0 does not permit you to omit arguments between commas as in M(1,,3). This could lead to highly unreadable comma-counting code. Instead any argument can be passed by name. Thus if you want to omit only y from a call of M you can write: M(1, z: 3); // passing z by name or M(x: 1, z: 3); // passing both x and z by name or even M(z: 3, x: 1); // reversing the order of arguments All forms are equivalent, except that arguments are always evaluated in the order they appear, so in the last example the 3 is evaluated before the 1. Optional and named arguments can be used not only with methods but also with indexers and constructors. Overload resolution Named and optional arguments affect overload resolution, but the changes are relatively simple: A signature is applicable if all its parameters are either optional or have exactly one corresponding argument (by name or position) in the call which is convertible to the parameter type. Betterness rules on conversions are only applied for arguments that are explicitly given – omitted optional arguments are ignored for betterness purposes. If two signatures are equally good, one that does not omit optional parameters is preferred. M(string s, int i = 1); M(object o); M(int i, string s = “Hello”); M(int i); M(5); Given these overloads, we can see the working of the rules above. M(string,int) is not applicable because 5 doesn’t convert to string. M(int,string) is applicable because its second parameter is optional, and so, obviously are M(object) and M(int). M(int,string) and M(int) are both better than M(object) because the conversion from 5 to int is better than the conversion from 5 to object. Finally M(int) is better than M(int,string) because no optional arguments are omitted. Thus the method that gets called is M(int). Features for COM interop Dynamic lookup as well as named and optional parameters greatly improve the experience of interoperating with COM APIs such as the Office Automation APIs. In order to remove even more of the speed bumps, a couple of small COM-specific features are also added to C# 4.0. Dynamic import Many COM methods accept and return variant types, which are represented in the PIAs as object. In the vast majority of cases, a programmer calling these methods already knows the static type of a returned object from context, but explicitly has to perform a cast on the returned value to make use of that knowledge. These casts are so common that they constitute a major nuisance. In order to facilitate a smoother experience, you can now choose to import these COM APIs in such a way that variants are instead represented using the type dynamic. In other words, from your point of view, COM signatures now have occurrences of dynamic instead of object in them. This means that you can easily access members directly off a returned object, or you can assign it to a strongly typed local variable without having to cast. To illustrate, you can now say excel.Cells[1, 1].Value = "Hello"; instead of ((Excel.Range)excel.Cells[1, 1]).Value2 = "Hello"; and Excel.Range range = excel.Cells[1, 1]; instead of Excel.Range range = (Excel.Range)excel.Cells[1, 1]; Compiling without PIAs Primary Interop Assemblies are large .NET assemblies generated from COM interfaces to facilitate strongly typed interoperability. They provide great support at design time, where your experience of the interop is as good as if the types where really defined in .NET. However, at runtime these large assemblies can easily bloat your program, and also cause versioning issues because they are distributed independently of your application. The no-PIA feature allows you to continue to use PIAs at design time without having them around at runtime. Instead, the C# compiler will bake the small part of the PIA that a program actually uses directly into its assembly. At runtime the PIA does not have to be loaded. Omitting ref Because of a different programming model, many COM APIs contain a lot of reference parameters. Contrary to refs in C#, these are typically not meant to mutate a passed-in argument for the subsequent benefit of the caller, but are simply another way of passing value parameters. It therefore seems unreasonable that a C# programmer should have to create temporary variables for all such ref parameters and pass these by reference. Instead, specifically for COM methods, the C# compiler will allow you to pass arguments by value to such a method, and will automatically generate temporary variables to hold the passed-in values, subsequently discarding these when the call returns. In this way the caller sees value semantics, and will not experience any side effects, but the called method still gets a reference. Open issues A few COM interface features still are not surfaced in C#. Most notably these include indexed properties and default properties. As mentioned above these will be respected if you access COM dynamically, but statically typed C# code will still not recognize them. There are currently no plans to address these remaining speed bumps in C# 4.0. Variance An aspect of generics that often comes across as surprising is that the following is illegal: IList<string> strings = new List<string>(); IList<object> objects = strings; The second assignment is disallowed because strings does not have the same element type as objects. There is a perfectly good reason for this. If it were allowed you could write: objects[0] = 5; string s = strings[0]; Allowing an int to be inserted into a list of strings and subsequently extracted as a string. This would be a breach of type safety. However, there are certain interfaces where the above cannot occur, notably where there is no way to insert an object into the collection. Such an interface is IEnumerable<T>. If instead you say: IEnumerable<object> objects = strings; There is no way we can put the wrong kind of thing into strings through objects, because objects doesn’t have a method that takes an element in. Variance is about allowing assignments such as this in cases where it is safe. The result is that a lot of situations that were previously surprising now just work. Covariance In .NET 4.0 the IEnumerable<T> interface will be declared in the following way: public interface IEnumerable<out T> : IEnumerable { IEnumerator<T> GetEnumerator(); } public interface IEnumerator<out T> : IEnumerator { bool MoveNext(); T Current { get; } } The “out” in these declarations signifies that the T can only occur in output position in the interface – the compiler will complain otherwise. In return for this restriction, the interface becomes “covariant” in T, which means that an IEnumerable<A> is considered an IEnumerable<B> if A has a reference conversion to B. As a result, any sequence of strings is also e.g. a sequence of objects. This is useful e.g. in many LINQ methods. Using the declarations above: var result = strings.Union(objects); // succeeds with an IEnumerable<object> This would previously have been disallowed, and you would have had to to some cumbersome wrapping to get the two sequences to have the same element type. Contravariance Type parameters can also have an “in” modifier, restricting them to occur only in input positions. An example is IComparer<T>: public interface IComparer<in T> { public int Compare(T left, T right); } The somewhat baffling result is that an IComparer<object> can in fact be considered an IComparer<string>! It makes sense when you think about it: If a comparer can compare any two objects, it can certainly also compare two strings. This property is referred to as contravariance. A generic type can have both in and out modifiers on its type parameters, as is the case with the Func<…> delegate types: public delegate TResult Func<in TArg, out TResult>(TArg arg); Obviously the argument only ever comes in, and the result only ever comes out. Therefore a Func<object,string> can in fact be used as a Func<string,object>. Limitations Variant type parameters can only be declared on interfaces and delegate types, due to a restriction in the CLR. Variance only applies when there is a reference conversion between the type arguments. For instance, an IEnumerable<int> is not an IEnumerable<object> because the conversion from int to object is a boxing conversion, not a reference conversion. Also please note that the CTP does not contain the new versions of the .NET types mentioned above. In order to experiment with variance you have to declare your own variant interfaces and delegate types. COM Example Here is a larger Office automation example that shows many of the new C# features in action. using System; using System.Diagnostics; using System.Linq; using Excel = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel; using Word = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word; class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { var excel = new Excel.Application(); excel.Visible = true; excel.Workbooks.Add(); // optional arguments omitted excel.Cells[1, 1].Value = "Process Name"; // no casts; Value dynamically excel.Cells[1, 2].Value = "Memory Usage"; // accessed var processes = Process.GetProcesses() .OrderByDescending(p =&gt; p.WorkingSet) .Take(10); int i = 2; foreach (var p in processes) { excel.Cells[i, 1].Value = p.ProcessName; // no casts excel.Cells[i, 2].Value = p.WorkingSet; // no casts i++; } Excel.Range range = excel.Cells[1, 1]; // no casts Excel.Chart chart = excel.ActiveWorkbook.Charts. Add(After: excel.ActiveSheet); // named and optional arguments chart.ChartWizard( Source: range.CurrentRegion, Title: "Memory Usage in " + Environment.MachineName); //named+optional chart.ChartStyle = 45; chart.CopyPicture(Excel.XlPictureAppearance.xlScreen, Excel.XlCopyPictureFormat.xlBitmap, Excel.XlPictureAppearance.xlScreen); var word = new Word.Application(); word.Visible = true; word.Documents.Add(); // optional arguments word.Selection.Paste(); } } The code is much more terse and readable than the C# 3.0 counterpart. Note especially how the Value property is accessed dynamically. This is actually an indexed property, i.e. a property that takes an argument; something which C# does not understand. However the argument is optional. Since the access is dynamic, it goes through the runtime COM binder which knows to substitute the default value and call the indexed property. Thus, dynamic COM allows you to avoid accesses to the puzzling Value2 property of Excel ranges. Relationship with Visual Basic A number of the features introduced to C# 4.0 already exist or will be introduced in some form or other in Visual Basic: · Late binding in VB is similar in many ways to dynamic lookup in C#, and can be expected to make more use of the DLR in the future, leading to further parity with C#. · Named and optional arguments have been part of Visual Basic for a long time, and the C# version of the feature is explicitly engineered with maximal VB interoperability in mind. · NoPIA and variance are both being introduced to VB and C# at the same time. VB in turn is adding a number of features that have hitherto been a mainstay of C#. As a result future versions of C# and VB will have much better feature parity, for the benefit of everyone. Resources All available resources concerning C# 4.0 can be accessed through the C# Dev Center. Specifically, this white paper and other resources can be found at the Code Gallery site. Enjoy! span.fullpost {display:none;}

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  • Developer Training – A Conclusive Summary- Part 5

    - by pinaldave
    Developer Training - Importance and Significance - Part 1 Developer Training – Employee Morals and Ethics – Part 2 Developer Training – Difficult Questions and Alternative Perspective - Part 3 Developer Training – Various Options for Developer Training – Part 4 Developer Training – A Conclusive Summary- Part 5 We have now reached the end of our series about developer training.  I hope you have come away thinking that training is the best way to advance in your company and that you are looking for training opportunities right now.  If you’re still not convinced here are a few things to keep in mind:  Training benefits the employer and the employee. A well trained employee is a happy employee, and a happy employee is more efficient and productive. Training an employee might be expensive, but it is less expensive than hiring a new person. Whether you are looking at him from the employee’s or the company’s point of view, there are always advantages to training. A Broader View This series is definitely written for Developer Training but it is not limited to developers only. There are IT Pro, System Admins, DBAs as well many other technology professionals; this article series is for all professionals in the world. The concepts and take away will remain common across all the platform and regardless of technology affiliation. Pass the Knowledge If I have to pick one advise which is extremely important related to training, I will pick – pass the knowledge. Once you have decided in favor of training, there is more to it than simply showing up and staying awake.  It is always a good idea to take notes – at the very least it will help you stay awake, but they will often serve as a good way to remember your training when you go back to work.  You can also use them to pass your new knowledge on to fellow employees, which can be very fun and rewarding. Right Place, Right Time and Right Training There are so many ways to get developer training.  In-person and on the job training is easy to come by and is the most usual type of training, but don’t overlook my favorite type of training: On Demand.  Being able to learn at your own pace, own place and on your own time will make training a realistic goal for almost every employee. I can think of nothing more important in life than furthering your education.  Especially when you work in a field that is constantly changing – like technology.  Whether you like it or not, training is incredibly important.  That is why I feel it is so important to receive training.  And because there are so many different training formats – live, online, through books, through people – I am certain that we all can find a way to be trained that best suits our goals and personalities. The Teacher Within If you think of anyone who is a master of the technology field or an incredibly successful developer (the obvious examples that spring to mind are Steve Jobs or Bill Gates), you will also find a teacher.  Both these individuals spent their lives developing better technology, but also educating other developers and the public about how to use these technologies and how it can change your life for the better.  I think that we all should strive to be like these wonderful teachers.  We might not be able to change the world, but we can certainly change a few lives around us. Even if we never turn into trainers ourselves , being trained as a student can be a good exercise.  We learn a lot and become better employees – and it would not be a stretch to say that this makes us better individuals, as well. Final Say I think learning and growing in your chosen field is not only a good idea, career-wise, but can be fun, too!  I for one never feel more alive than when I am learning about something I am really passionate about.  I think my job title – technology evangelist – explains how enthusiastic I am about this subject.  But please don’t think that I am thinking of this as someone who wants to train and educate others (although this is also one of my passions).  I am also a passionate student.  I enjoy learning new things and am always on the lookout for new ways to learn and new people to learn from. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Developer Training, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • Form, function and complexity in rule processing

    - by Charles Young
    Tim Bass posted on ‘Orwellian Event Processing’. I was involved in a heated exchange in the comments, and he has more recently published a post entitled ‘Disadvantages of Rule-Based Systems (Part 1)’. Whatever the rights and wrongs of our exchange, it clearly failed to generate any agreement or understanding of our different positions. I don't particularly want to promote further argument of that kind, but I do want to take the opportunity of offering a different perspective on rule-processing and an explanation of my comments. For me, the ‘red rag’ lay in Tim’s claim that “...rules alone are highly inefficient for most classes of (not simple) problems” and a later paragraph that appears to equate the simplicity of form (‘IF-THEN-ELSE’) with simplicity of function.   It is not the first time Tim has expressed these views and not the first time I have responded to his assertions.   Indeed, Tim has a long history of commenting on the subject of complex event processing (CEP) and, less often, rule processing in ‘robust’ terms, often asserting that very many other people’s opinions on this subject are mistaken.   In turn, I am of the opinion that, certainly in terms of rule processing, which is an area in which I have a specific interest and knowledge, he is often mistaken. There is no simple answer to the fundamental question ‘what is a rule?’ We use the word in a very fluid fashion in English. Likewise, the term ‘rule processing’, as used widely in IT, is equally difficult to define simplistically. The best way to envisage the term is as a ‘centre of gravity’ within a wider domain. That domain contains many other ‘centres of gravity’, including CEP, statistical analytics, neural networks, natural language processing and so much more. Whole communities tend to gravitate towards and build themselves around some of these centres. The term 'rule processing' is associated with many different technology types, various software products, different architectural patterns, the functional capability of many applications and services, etc. There is considerable variation amongst these different technologies, techniques and products. Very broadly, a common theme is their ability to manage certain types of processing and problem solving through declarative, or semi-declarative, statements of propositional logic bound to action-based consequences. It is generally important to be able to decouple these statements from other parts of an overall system or architecture so that they can be managed and deployed independently.  As a centre of gravity, ‘rule processing’ is no island. It exists in the context of a domain of discourse that is, itself, highly interconnected and continuous.   Rule processing does not, for example, exist in splendid isolation to natural language processing.   On the contrary, an on-going theme of rule processing is to find better ways to express rules in natural language and map these to executable forms.   Rule processing does not exist in splendid isolation to CEP.   On the contrary, an event processing agent can reasonably be considered as a rule engine (a theme in ‘Power of Events’ by David Luckham).   Rule processing does not live in splendid isolation to statistical approaches such as Bayesian analytics. On the contrary, rule processing and statistical analytics are highly synergistic.   Rule processing does not even live in splendid isolation to neural networks. For example, significant research has centred on finding ways to translate trained nets into explicit rule sets in order to support forms of validation and facilitate insight into the knowledge stored in those nets. What about simplicity of form?   Many rule processing technologies do indeed use a very simple form (‘If...Then’, ‘When...Do’, etc.)   However, it is a fundamental mistake to equate simplicity of form with simplicity of function.   It is absolutely mistaken to suggest that simplicity of form is a barrier to the efficient handling of complexity.   There are countless real-world examples which serve to disprove that notion.   Indeed, simplicity of form is often the key to handling complexity. Does rule processing offer a ‘one size fits all’. No, of course not.   No serious commentator suggests it does.   Does the design and management of large knowledge bases, expressed as rules, become difficult?   Yes, it can do, but that is true of any large knowledge base, regardless of the form in which knowledge is expressed.   The measure of complexity is not a function of rule set size or rule form.  It tends to be correlated more strongly with the size of the ‘problem space’ (‘search space’) which is something quite different.   Analysis of the problem space and the algorithms we use to search through that space are, of course, the very things we use to derive objective measures of the complexity of a given problem. This is basic computer science and common practice. Sailing a Dreadnaught through the sea of information technology and lobbing shells at some of the islands we encounter along the way does no one any good.   Building bridges and causeways between islands so that the inhabitants can collaborate in open discourse offers hope of real progress.

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  • What’s New for Oracle Commerce? Executive QA with John Andrews, VP Product Management, Oracle Commerce

    - by Katrina Gosek
    Oracle Commerce was for the fifth time positioned as a leader by Gartner in the Magic Quadrant for E-Commerce. This inspired me to sit down with Oracle Commerce VP of Product Management, John Andrews to get his perspective on what continues to make Oracle a leader in the industry and what’s new for Oracle Commerce in 2013. Q: Why do you believe Oracle Commerce continues to be a leader in the industry? John: Oracle has a great acquisition strategy – it brings best-of-breed technologies into the product fold and then continues to grow and innovate them. This is particularly true with products unified into the Oracle Commerce brand. Oracle acquired ATG in late 2010 – and then Endeca in late 2011. This means that under the hood of Oracle Commerce you have market-leading technologies for cross-channel commerce and customer experience, both designed and developed in direct response to the unique challenges online businesses face. And we continue to innovate on capabilities core to what our customers need to be successful – contextual and personalized experience delivery, merchant-inspired tools, and architecture for performance and scalability. Q: It’s not a slow moving industry. What are you doing to keep the pace of innovation at Oracle Commerce? John: Oracle owes our customers the most innovative commerce capabilities. By unifying the core components of ATG and Endeca we are delivering on this promise. Oracle Commerce is continuing to innovate and redefine how commerce is done and in a way that drive business results and keeps customers coming back for experiences tailored just for them. Our January and May 2013 releases not only marked the seventh significant releases for the solution since the acquisitions of ATG and Endeca, we also continue to demonstrate rapid and significant progress on the unification of commerce and customer experience capabilities of the two commerce technologies. Q: Can you tell us what was notable about these latest releases under the Oracle Commerce umbrella? John: Specifically, our latest product innovations give businesses selling online the ability to get to market faster with more personalized commerce experiences in the following ways: Mobile: the latest Commerce Reference Application in this release offers a wider range of examples for online businesses to leverage for iOS development and specifically new iPad reference capabilities. This release marks the first release of the iOS Universal application that serves both the iPhone and iPad devices from a single download or binary. Business users can now drive page content management and layout of search results and category pages, as well as create additional storefront elements such as categories, facets / dimensions, and breadcrumbs through Experience Manager tools. Cross-Channel Commerce: key commerce platform capabilities have been added to support cross-channel commerce, including an expanded inventory model to maintain inventory for stores, pickup in stores and Web-based returns. Online businesses with in-store operations can now offer advanced shipping options on the web and make returns and exchange logic easily available on the web. Multi-Site Capabilities: significant enhancements to the Commerce Platform multi-site architecture that allows business users to quickly launch and manage multiple sites on the same cluster and share data, carts, and other components. First introduced in 2010, with this latest release business users can now partition or share customer profiles, control users’ site-based access, and manage personalization assets using site groups. Internationalization: continued language support and enhancements for business user tools as well and search and navigation. Guided Search now supports 35 total languages with 11 new languages (including Danish, Arabic, Norwegian, Serbian Cyrillic) added in this release. Commerce Platform tools now include localized support for 17 locales with 4 new languages (Danish, Portuguese (European), Finnish, and Thai). No development or customization is required in order for business users to use the applications in any of these supported languages. Business Tool Experience: valuable new Commerce Merchandising features include a new workflow for making emergency changes quickly and increased visibility into promotions rules and qualifications in preview mode. Oracle Commerce business tools continue to become more and more feature rich to provide intuitive, easy- to-use (yet powerful) capabilities to allow business users to manage content and the shopping experience. Commerce & Experience Unification: demonstrable unification of commerce and customer experience capabilities include – productized cartridges that provide supported integration between the Commerce Platform and Experience Management tools, cross-channel returns, Oracle Service Cloud integration, and integrated iPad application. The mission guiding our product development is to deliver differentiated, personalized user experiences across any device in a contextual manner – and to give the business the best tools to tune and optimize those user experiences to meet their business objectives. We also need to do this in a way that makes it operationally efficient for the business, keeping the overall total cost of ownership low – yet also allows the business to expand, whether it be to new business models, geographies or brands. To learn more about the latest Oracle Commerce releases and mission, visit the links below: • Hear more from John about the Oracle Commerce mission • Hear from Oracle Commerce customers • Documentation on the new releases • Listen to the Oracle ATG Commerce 10.2 Webcast • Listen to the Oracle Endeca Commerce 3.1.2 Webcast

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  • Seven Worlds will collide…. High Availability BI is not such a Distant Sun.

    - by Testas
    Over the last 5 years I have observed Microsoft persevere with the notion of Self Service BI over a series of conferences as far back as SQLBits V in Newport. The release of SQL Server 2012, improvements in Excel and the integration with SharePoint 2010 is making this a reality. Business users are now empowered to create their own BI reports through a number of different technologies such as PowerPivot, PowerView and Report Builder. This opens up a whole new way of working; improving staff productivity, promoting efficient decision making and delivering timely business reports. There is, however; a serious question to answer. What happens should any of these applications become unavailable? More to the point, how would the business react should key business users be unable to fulfil reporting requests for key management meetings when they require it?  While the introduction of self-service BI will provide instant access to the creation of management information reports, it will also cause instant support calls should the access to the data become unavailable. These are questions that are often overlooked when a business evaluates the need for self-service BI. But as I have written in other blog posts, the thirst for information is unquenchable once the business users have access to the data. When they are unable to access the information, you will be the first to know about it and will be expected to have a resolution to the downtime as soon as possible. The world of self-service BI is pushing reporting and analytical databases to the tier 1 application level for some of Coeo’s customers. A level that is traditionally associated with mission critical OLTP environments. There is recognition that by making BI readily available to the business user, provisions also need to be made to ensure that the solution is highly available so that there is minimal disruption to the business. This is where High Availability BI infrastructures provide a solution. As there is a convergence of technologies to support a self-service BI culture, there is also a convergence of technologies that need to be understood in order to provide the high availability architecture required to support the self-service BI infrastructure. While you may not be the individual that implements these components, understanding the concepts behind these components will empower you to have meaningful discussions with the right people should you put this infrastructure in place. There are 7 worlds that you will have to understand to successfully implement a highly available BI infrastructure   1.       Server/Virtualised server hardware/software 2.       DNS 3.       Network Load Balancing 4.       Active Directory 5.       Kerberos 6.       SharePoint 7.       SQL Server I have found myself over the last 6 months reaching out to knowledge that I learnt years ago when I studied for the Windows 2000 and 2003 (MCSE) Microsoft Certified System Engineer. (To the point that I am resuming my studies for the Windows Server 2008 equivalent to be up to date with newer technologies) This knowledge has proved very useful in the numerous engagements I have undertaken since being at Coeo, particularly when dealing with High Availability Infrastructures. As a result of running my session at SQLBits X and SQL Saturday in Dublin, the feedback I have received has been that many individuals desire to understand more of the concepts behind the first 6 “worlds” in the list above. Over the coming weeks, a series of blog posts will be put on this site to help understand the key concepts of each area as it pertains to a High Availability BI Infrastructure. Each post will not provide exhaustive coverage of the topic. For example DNS can be a book in its own right when you consider that there are so many different configuration options with Forward Lookup, Reverse Lookups, AD Integrated Zones and DNA forwarders to name some examples. What I want to do is share the pertinent points as it pertains to the BI infrastructure that you build so that you are equipped with the knowledge to have the right discussion when planning this infrastructure. Next, we will focus on the server infrastructure that will be required to support the High Availability BI Infrastructure, from both a physical box and virtualised perspective. Thanks   Chris

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  • Record and Play your WebLogic Console Tasks Like a DVR

    - by james.bayer
    Automation using WebLogic Scripting Tool Today on the Oracle internal mailing list for WebLogic Server questions someone asked how to automate the configuration of the thread model for WebLogic Server and they were having trouble with the jython scripting syntax.  I’ve previously written about this feature called Work Managers and the associated constraints.  However, I did not show how to automate the process of configuring this without the console using WebLogic Scripting Tool – the jython scripting automation environment abbreviated as WLST.  I’ve written some very basic introductions to WLST before and there is also an Oracle By Example on the subject, but this is a bit more advanced.  Fear not because there is a really easy-to-use feature of the WLS console that lets you “Record” user actions just like a DVR.  Using these recordings of the web-based console, you can easily create a script even if you are unfamiliar with the WLST syntax and API.  I’m a big fan of both DVR’s and automation as can be evidenced with this old Halloween picture taken during simpler times.  Obviously the Cast Away and The Big Labowski references show some age.  I was a big Tivo fan-boy back in the day and I still think it’s the best DVR. I strongly believe that WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) is an absolutely essential tool for automating administration tasks in anything beyond a development environment.  Even in development environments you can make a case that it makes sense to start the automation for environments downstream.  I promise you that once you start using it for any tasks that you do even semi-regularly, you won’t go back to clicking through the console.  It’s simply so much more efficient and less error-prone to run a script. Let’s say you need to create a Work Manager and MaxThreadsConstraint – the easy way to do it is configure it in the WLS console first while capturing the commands with a recording.  See the images for the simple steps – click to enlarge. Record Console Configurations to a File Review the Recordings and Make Slight Modifications In order to make the recorded .py file directly callable as a stand-alone script I added calls to the connect() and edit() functions at the beginning and calls to disconnect() and exit() at the end – otherwise the main section of the script was provided by the console recording.  Below is the resulting file I saved as d:/temp/wm.py connect('weblogic','welcome1', 't3://localhost:7001') edit() startEdit()   cd('/SelfTuning/wl_server') cmo.createMaxThreadsConstraint('MaxThreadsConstraint-0')   cd('/SelfTuning/wl_server/MaxThreadsConstraints/MaxThreadsConstraint-0') set('Targets',jarray.array([ObjectName('com.bea:Name=examplesServer,Type=Server')], ObjectName)) cmo.setCount(5) cmo.unSet('ConnectionPoolName')   cd('/SelfTuning/wl_server') cmo.createWorkManager('WorkManager-0') cd('/SelfTuning/wl_server/WorkManagers/WorkManager-0') set('Targets',jarray.array([ObjectName('com.bea:Name=examplesServer,Type=Server')], ObjectName))   cmo.setMaxThreadsConstraint(getMBean('/SelfTuning/wl_server/MaxThreadsConstraints/MaxThreadsConstraint-0')) cmo.setIgnoreStuckThreads(false)   activate() disconnect() exit() Run the Script If you want to test it be sure to delete the Work Manager and MaxThreadConstraint that you had previously created in the console.  Do something like the following - set up the environment and tell WLST to execute the script which happens in the first 2 lines, the rest doesn’t require any user input: D:\Oracle\wls11g\wlserver_10.3\samples\domains\wl_server\bin>setDomainEnv.cmd D:\Oracle\wls11g\wlserver_10.3\samples\domains\wl_server>java weblogic.WLST d:\temp\wm.py   Initializing WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) ...   Welcome to WebLogic Server Administration Scripting Shell   Type help() for help on available commands   Connecting to t3://localhost:7001 with userid weblogic ... Successfully connected to Admin Server 'examplesServer' that belongs to domain 'wl_server'.   Warning: An insecure protocol was used to connect to the server. To ensure on-the-wire security, the SSL port or Admin port should be used instead.   Location changed to edit tree. This is a writable tree with DomainMBean as the root. To make changes you will need to start an edit session via startEdit().   For more help, use help(edit)   Starting an edit session ... Started edit session, please be sure to save and activate your changes once you are done. Activating all your changes, this may take a while ... The edit lock associated with this edit session is released once the activation is completed. Activation completed Disconnected from weblogic server: examplesServer     Exiting WebLogic Scripting Tool.   Now if you go back and look in the console the changes have been made and we now have a compete script.  Of course there is a full MBean reference and you can learn the nuances of jython and WLST, but why not the WLS console do most of the work for you!  Happy scripting.

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  • Big Data – Role of Cloud Computing in Big Data – Day 11 of 21

    - by Pinal Dave
    In yesterday’s blog post we learned the importance of the NewSQL. In this article we will understand the role of Cloud in Big Data Story What is Cloud? Cloud is the biggest buzzword around from last few years. Everyone knows about the Cloud and it is extremely well defined online. In this article we will discuss cloud in the context of the Big Data. Cloud computing is a method of providing a shared computing resources to the application which requires dynamic resources. These resources include applications, computing, storage, networking, development and various deployment platforms. The fundamentals of the cloud computing are that it shares pretty much share all the resources and deliver to end users as a service.  Examples of the Cloud Computing and Big Data are Google and Amazon.com. Both have fantastic Big Data offering with the help of the cloud. We will discuss this later in this blog post. There are two different Cloud Deployment Models: 1) The Public Cloud and 2) The Private Cloud Public Cloud Public Cloud is the cloud infrastructure build by commercial providers (Amazon, Rackspace etc.) creates a highly scalable data center that hides the complex infrastructure from the consumer and provides various services. Private Cloud Private Cloud is the cloud infrastructure build by a single organization where they are managing highly scalable data center internally. Here is the quick comparison between Public Cloud and Private Cloud from Wikipedia:   Public Cloud Private Cloud Initial cost Typically zero Typically high Running cost Unpredictable Unpredictable Customization Impossible Possible Privacy No (Host has access to the data Yes Single sign-on Impossible Possible Scaling up Easy while within defined limits Laborious but no limits Hybrid Cloud Hybrid Cloud is the cloud infrastructure build with the composition of two or more clouds like public and private cloud. Hybrid cloud gives best of the both the world as it combines multiple cloud deployment models together. Cloud and Big Data – Common Characteristics There are many characteristics of the Cloud Architecture and Cloud Computing which are also essentially important for Big Data as well. They highly overlap and at many places it just makes sense to use the power of both the architecture and build a highly scalable framework. Here is the list of all the characteristics of cloud computing important in Big Data Scalability Elasticity Ad-hoc Resource Pooling Low Cost to Setup Infastructure Pay on Use or Pay as you Go Highly Available Leading Big Data Cloud Providers There are many players in Big Data Cloud but we will list a few of the known players in this list. Amazon Amazon is arguably the most popular Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider. The history of how Amazon started in this business is very interesting. They started out with a massive infrastructure to support their own business. Gradually they figured out that their own resources are underutilized most of the time. They decided to get the maximum out of the resources they have and hence  they launched their Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) service in 2006. Their products have evolved a lot recently and now it is one of their primary business besides their retail selling. Amazon also offers Big Data services understand Amazon Web Services. Here is the list of the included services: Amazon Elastic MapReduce – It processes very high volumes of data Amazon DynammoDB – It is fully managed NoSQL (Not Only SQL) database service Amazon Simple Storage Services (S3) – A web-scale service designed to store and accommodate any amount of data Amazon High Performance Computing – It provides low-tenancy tuned high performance computing cluster Amazon RedShift – It is petabyte scale data warehousing service Google Though Google is known for Search Engine, we all know that it is much more than that. Google Compute Engine – It offers secure, flexible computing from energy efficient data centers Google Big Query – It allows SQL-like queries to run against large datasets Google Prediction API – It is a cloud based machine learning tool Other Players Besides Amazon and Google we also have other players in the Big Data market as well. Microsoft is also attempting Big Data with the Cloud with Microsoft Azure. Additionally Rackspace and NASA together have initiated OpenStack. The goal of Openstack is to provide a massively scaled, multitenant cloud that can run on any hardware. Thing to Watch The cloud based solutions provides a great integration with the Big Data’s story as well it is very economical to implement as well. However, there are few things one should be very careful when deploying Big Data on cloud solutions. Here is a list of a few things to watch: Data Integrity Initial Cost Recurring Cost Performance Data Access Security Location Compliance Every company have different approaches to Big Data and have different rules and regulations. Based on various factors, one can implement their own custom Big Data solution on a cloud. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about various Operational Databases supporting Big Data. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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  • MySQL Connector/Net 6.4.6 Maintenance Release has been released

    - by fernando
    MySQL Connector/Net 6.4.6, a new version of the all-managed .NET driver for MySQL has been released.  This is a maintenance release and is recommended for use in production environments. It is appropriate for use with MySQL server versions 5.0-5.6. This is intended to be the final release for Connector/NET 6.4. It is now available in source and binary form from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/#downloads and mirror sites (note that not all mirror sites may be up to date at this point-if you can't find this version on some mirror, please try again later or choose another download site.) The 6.4.6 version of MySQL Connector/Net brings the following fixes: - Fix for List.Contains generates a bunch of ORs instead of more efficient IN clause in   LINQ to Entities (Oracle bug #14016344, MySql bug #64934). - Fix for error when trying to change the name of an Index on the Indexes/Keys editor; along with this fix now users can change the Index type of a new Index which could not be done   in previous versions, and when changing the Index name the change is reflected on the list view at the left side of the Index/Keys editor (Oracle bug #13613801). - Fix for stored procedure call using only its name with EF code first (MySql bug #64999, Oracle bug #14008699). - Fix for performance issue in generated EF query: .NET StartsWith/Contains/EndsWith produces MySql's locate instead of Like (MySql bug #64935, Oracle bug #14009363). - Fix for script generated for code first contains wrong alter table and wrong declaration for byte[] (MySql bug #64216, Oracle bug #13900091). - Fix for Exception thrown when using cascade delete in an EDM Model-First in Entity Framework (Oracle bug #14008752, MySql bug #64779). - Fix for Session locking issue with MySqlSessionStateStore (MySql bug #63997, Oracble bug #13733054). - Fixed deleting a user profile using Profile provider (MySQL bug #64409, Oracle bug #13790123). - Fix for bug Cannot Create an Entity with a Key of Type String (MySQL bug #65289, Oracle bug #14540202). This fix checks if the type has a FixedLength facet set in order to create a char otherwise should create varchar, mediumtext or longtext types when using a String CLR type in Code First or Model First also tested in Database First. Unit tests added for Code First and ProviderManifest. - Fix for bug "CacheServerProperties can cause 'Packet too large' error" (MySQL Bug #66578 Orabug #14593547). - Fix for handling unnamed parameter in MySQLCommand. This fix allows the mysqlcommand to handle parameters without requiring naming (e.g. INSERT INTO Test (id,name) VALUES (?, ?) ) (MySQL Bug #66060, Oracle bug #14499549). - Fixed inheritance on Entity Framework Code First scenarios. Discriminator column is created using its correct type as varchar(128) (MySql bug #63920 and Oracle bug #13582335). - Fixed "Trying to customize column precision in Code First does not work" (MySql bug #65001, Oracle bug #14469048). - Fixed bug ASP.NET Membership database fails on MySql database UTF32 (MySQL bug #65144, Oracle bug #14495292). - Fix for MySqlCommand.LastInsertedId holding only 32 bit values (MySql bug #65452, Oracle bug #14171960) by changing   several internal declaration of lastinsertid from int to long. - Fixed "Decimal type should have digits at right of decimal point", now default is 2, but user's changes in   EDM designer are recognized (MySql bug #65127, Oracle bug #14474342). - Fix for NullReferenceException when saving an uninitialized row in Entity Framework (MySql bug #66066, Oracle bug #14479715). - Fix for error when calling RoleProvider.RemoveUserFromRole(): causes an exception due to a wrong table being used (MySql bug #65805, Oracle bug #14405338). - Fix for "Memory Leak on MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlCommand", too many MemoryStream's instances created (MySql bug #65696, Oracle bug #14468204). - Small improvement on MySqlPoolManager CleanIdleConnections for better mysqlpoolmanager idlecleanuptimer at startup (MySql bug #66472 and Oracle bug #14652624). - Fix for bug TIMESTAMP values are mistakenly represented as DateTime with Kind = Local (Mysql bug #66964, Oracle bug #14740705). - Fix for bug Keyword not supported. Parameter name: AttachDbFilename (Mysql bug #66880, Oracle bug #14733472). - Added support to MySql script file to retrieve data when using "SHOW" statements. - Fix for Package Load Failure in Visual Studio 2005 (MySql bug #63073, Oracle bug #13491674). - Fix for bug "Unable to connect using IPv6 connections" (MySQL bug #67253, Oracle bug #14835718). - Added auto-generated values for Guid identity columns (MySql bug #67450, Oracle bug #15834176). - Fix for method FirstOrDefault not supported in some LINQ to Entities queries (MySql bug #67377, Oracle bug #15856964). The release is available to download at http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/6.4.html Documentation ------------------------------------- You can view current Connector/Net documentation at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/connector-net.html You can find our team blog at http://blogs.oracle.com/MySQLOnWindows. You can also post questions on our forums at http://forums.mysql.com/. Enjoy and thanks for the support!

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  • HTG Explains: Why is Printer Ink So Expensive?

    - by Chris Hoffman
    Printer ink is expensive, more expensive per drop than fine champagne or even human blood. If you haven’t gone paperless, you’ll notice that you’re paying a lot for new ink cartridges — more than seems reasonable. Purchasing the cheapest inkjet printer and buying official ink cartridge replacements is the most expensive thing you can do. There are ways to save money on ink if you must continue to print documents. Cheap Printers, Expensive Ink Ink jet printers are often very cheap. That’s because they’re sold at cost, or even at a loss — the manufacturer either makes no profit from the printer itself or loses money. The manufacturer will make most of its money from the printer cartridges you buy later. Even if the company does make a bit of money from each printer sold, it makes a much larger profit margin on ink. Rather than selling you a printer that may be rather expensive, they want to sell you a cheap printer and make money on an ongoing basis by providing expensive printer ink. It’s been compared to the razor model — sell a razor cheaply and mark up the razor blades. Rather than making a one-time profit on the razor, you’ll make continuing profit as the customer keeps buying razor blade replacements — or ink, in this case. Many printer manufacturers go out of their way to make it difficult for you to use unofficial ink cartridges, building microchips into their official ink cartridges. If you use an unofficial cartridge or refill an official cartridge, the printer may refuse to use it. Lexmark once argued in court that unofficial microchips that enable third-party ink cartridges would violate their copyright and Lexmark has argued that creating an unofficial microchip to bypass this restriction on third-party ink would violate Lexmark’s copyright and be illegal under the US DMCA. Luckily, they lost this argument. What Printer Companies Say Printer companies have put forth their own arguments in the past, attempting to justify the high cost of official ink cartridges and microchips that block any competition. In a Computer World story from 2010, HP argued that they spend a billion dollars each year on “ink research and development.” They point out that printer ink “must be formulated to withstand heating to 300 degrees, vaporization, and being squirted at 30 miles per hour, at a rate of 36,000 drops per second, through a nozzle one third the size of a human hair. After all that it must dry almost instantly on the paper.” They also argue that printers have become more efficient and use less ink to print, while third-party cartridges are less reliable. Companies that use microchips in their ink cartridges argue that only the microchip has the ability to enforce an expiration date, preventing consumers from using old ink cartridges. There’s something to all these arguments, sure — but they don’t seem to justify the sky-high cost of printer ink or the restriction on using third-party or refilled cartridges. Saving Money on Printing Ultimately, the price of something is what people are willing to pay and printer companies have found that most consumers are willing to pay this much for ink cartridge replacements. Try not to fall for it: Don’t buy the cheapest inkjet printer. Consider your needs when buying a printer and do some research. You’ll save more money in the long run. Consider these basic tips to save money on printing: Buy Refilled Cartridges: Refilled cartridges from third parties are generally much cheaper. Printer companies warn us away from these, but they often work very well. Refill Your Own Cartridges: You can get do-it-yourself kits for refilling your own printer ink cartridges, but this can be messy. Your printer may refuse to accept a refilled cartridge if the cartridge contains a microchip. Switch to a Laser Printer: Laser printers use toner, not ink cartridges. If you print a lot of black and white documents, a laser printer can be cheaper. Buy XL Cartridges: If you are buying official printer ink cartridges, spend more money each time. The cheapest ink cartridges won’t contain much ink at all, while larger “XL” ink cartridges will contain much more ink for only a bit more money. It’s often cheaper to buy in bulk. Avoid Printers With Tri-Color Ink Cartridges: If you’re printing color documents, you’ll want to get a printer that uses separate ink cartridges for all its colors. For example, let’s say your printer has a “Color” cartridge that contains blue, green, and red ink. If you print a lot of blue documents and use up all your blue ink, the Color cartridge will refuse to function — now all you can do is throw away your cartridge and buy a new one, even if the green and red ink chambers are full. If you had a printer with separate color cartridges, you’d just have to replace the blue cartridge. If you’ll be buying official ink cartridges, be sure to compare the cost of cartridges when buying a printer. The cheapest printer may be more expensive in the long run. Of course, you’ll save the most money if you stop printing entirely and go paperless, keeping digital copies of your documents instead of paper ones. Image Credit: Cliva Darra on Flickr     

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  • Building InstallShield based Installers using Team Build 2010

    - by jehan
    Last few weeks, I have been working on Application Packaging stuff using all the widely used tools like InstallShield, WISE, WiX and Visual Studio Installer. So, I thought it would be good to post about how to Build the Installers developed using these tools with Team Build 2010. This post will focus on how to build the InstallShield generated packages using Team Build 2010. For the release of VS2010, Microsoft has partnered with Flexera who are the makers of InstallShield to create InstallShield Limited Edition, especially for the customers of Visual Studio. First Microsoft planned to release WiX (Windows Installer Xml) with VS2010, but later Microsoft dropped  WiX from VS2010 due to reasons which are best known to them and partnered with InstallShield for Limited Edition. It disappointed lot of people because InstallShield Limited Edition provides only few features of InstallShield and it may not feasable to build complex installer packages using this and it also requires License, where as WiX is an open source with no license costs and it has proved efficient in building most complex packages. Only the last three features are available in InstallShield Limited Edition from the total features offered by InstallShield as shown in below list.                                                                                            Feature Limited Edition for Visual Studio 2010 Standalone Build System Maintain a clean build machine by using only the part of InstallShield that compiles the installations. InstallShield Best Practices Validation Suite Avoid common installation issues. Try and Die Functionality RCreate a fully functional trial version of your product. InstallShield Repackager Create Windows Installer setups from any legacy installation. Multilingual Support Present installation text in up to 35 languages. Microsoft App-V™ Support Deploy your applications as App-V virtual packages that run without conflict. Industry-Standard InstallScript Achieve maximum flexibility in your installations. Dialog Editor Modify the layout of existing end-user dialogs, create new custom dialogs, and more. Patch Creation Build updates and patches for your products. Setup Prerequisite Editor Easily control prerequisite restart behavior and source locations. String Editor View Control the localizable text strings displayed at run time with this spreadsheet-like table. Text File Changes View Configure search-and-replace actions for content in text files to be modified at run time. Virtual Machine Detection Block your installations from running on virtual machines. Unicode Support Improve multi-language installation development. Support for 64-Bit COM Extraction Extract COM data from a 64-bit COM server. Windows Installer Installation Chaining Add MSI packages to your main installation and chain them together. XML Support Save time by quickly testing XML configuration changes to installation projects. Billboard Support for Custom Branding Display Adobe Flash billboards and other graphic files during the install process. SaaS Support (IIS 7 and SSL Technologies) Easily deploy Windows-based Web applications. Project Assistant Jumpstart a project by using a simplified set of views. Support for Digital Signatures Save time by digitally signing all your files at build time. Easily Run Custom Actions Schedule a custom action to run at precisely the right moment in your installation. Installation Prerequisites Check for and install prerequisites before your installation is executed. To create a InstallShield project in Visual Studio and Build it using Team Build 2010, first you have to add the InstallShield Project template  to your Solution file. If you want to use InstallShield Limited edition you can add it from FileàNewà project àother Project Types àSetup and Deploymentà InstallShield LE and if you are using other versions of InstallShield, then you have to add it from  from FileàNewà project àInstallShield Projects. Here, I’m using  InstallShield 2011 Premier edition as I already have it Installed. I have created a simple package for TailSpin Application which has a Feature called Web, few components and a IIS Web Site for  TailSpin application.   Before started working on this, I thought I may need to build the package by calling invoke process activity in build process template or have to create a new custom activity. But, it got build without any changes to build process template. But, it was failing with below error message. C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\InstallShield\2011\InstallShield.targets (68): The "InstallShield.Tasks.InstallShield" task could not be loaded from the assembly C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\InstallShield\2010Limited\InstallShield.Tasks.dll. Could not load file or assembly 'file:///C:\Program Files(x86)\MSBuild\InstallShield\2011\InstallShield.Tasks.dll' or one of its dependencies. An attempt was made to load a program with an incorrect format. Confirm that the <UsingTask> declaration is correct, that the assembly and all its dependencies are available, and that the task contains a public class that implements Microsoft.Build.Framework.ITask. This error is due to 64-bit build machine which I’m using. This issue will be replicable if you are queuing a build on a 64-bit build machine. To avoid this you have to ensure that you configured the build definition for your InstallShield project to load the InstallShield.Tasks.dll file (which is a 32-bit file); otherwise, you will encounter this build error informing you that the InstallShield.Tasks.dll file could not be loaded. To select the 32-bit version of MSBuild, click the Process tab of your build definition in Team Explorer. Then, under the Advanced node, find the MSBuild Platform setting, and select x86. Note that if you are using a 32-bit build machine, you can select either Auto or x86 for the MSBuild Platform setting.  Once I did above changes, the build got successful.

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  • Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Award Winners 2012: ADF & Fusion Development

    - by Dana Singleterry
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards honor customers for their cutting-edge solutions using Oracle Fusion Middleware. Winners are selected based on the uniqueness of their business case, business benefits, level of impact relative to the size of the organization, complexity and magnitude of implementation, and the originality of architecture. The awards were presented during Oracle OpenWorld 2012 and following winners are for the category of ADF & Fusion Development. Micros – an OPN Platinum partner – has been working closely with Oracle product management teams in applying industry best practices in the development of their solutions. Their current application suite for the hospitality industry was built on Oracle Forms and the Oracle database running on MS Windows. The next generation of this suite is being developed and released in modules that are now based on Oracle FMW (including ADF) 11g technologies and Oracle Database 11g all running on Oracle Linux. The primary driver was that of modernization and hence the reason Oracle ADF was selected to provide a rich UI for business processes that could be served up through traditional methods or through mobile devices globally. SOA Suite & ADF allowed for loosely-coupled services that could evolve with the needs of the business. Micros's application innovations includes the use of business application portlets that have been published from ADF Faces Task Flows generated using WebCenter portlet libraries  & Oracle Metadata Services (MDS) with multi-layered customizations using Oracle WebCenter Composer. PCS (Marfin Egnatia Bank of Greece) – PCS Wealth Management is a WM Software Solution, which captures and automates the WM business processes allowing Service Providers to allocate enough time and effort into Customer Service and Investment Strategies, under Advisory or Execution-Only Services. The Product is built upon the latest Web Technologies and ensures Best Practices covering all functional expectations, meeting local regulatory requirements and discovering successful opportunities for the WM Customers' Portfolios. The new unified Wealth Management system offers an unparalleled User Interface taking full advantage of the user friendly ADF Faces Components to a great extent, all serving Private Banking purposes. The application offers a true Account Officer Cockpit with shallow navigation, one-click access to informed decisions and a perfect customer service. ADF Grids and Pivots, the Data Visualization Components, as well as the Calendar and Map Components are cleverly used to help the user eliminate the usage of Excel, Outlook and other systems. PCS's application is unique in the way it leverages the ADF Faces data visualization components to create a truly attractive and insightful dashboard for their application. PCS Wealth Management Demo Qualcomm – Qualcomm, a $17B per year company, designs and sells semiconductor products for wireless telecommunications, mobile and computing markets. In addition, Qualcomm companies provide various hardware and software products to facilitate the design, development and deployment of phones and the applications that run on them. Qualcomm’s challenge has been to not only develop and deploy new business system functions to keep pace with customer demand, but also to provide a customer collaboration capability that is sufficiently robust, easy to use, and flexible to meet emerging and future needs. Qualcomm has taken successful steps in building and deploying the customer engagement platform Ieveraging various Oracle technologies including Fusion Middleware (ADF, SOA, OBIEE) and their proven ERP foundation of EBS and 11g databases. The new platform delivers a more unified and “seamless” business solution with a consistent, modern “look and feel” all based on standard business processes which facilitate efficient collaboration with Qualcomm and its customers. The look and feel leverages ADF in innovative ways and includes hover over navigation, custom pagination components, and skinning. Qualcomm has exposed a services layer that provides significant functionality including order-to-ship, quote-to-order, customer on-boarding and contract validation. Qualcomm's creative designs leverage Oracle's SOA Suite to integrate with Oracle EBS and desperate applications to provide a rich user interface through the use use of Oracle ADF Faces Rich Client Components providing a self-service solution to their customers.

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  • MDX using EXISTING, AGGREGATE, CROSSJOIN and WHERE

    - by James Rogers
    It is a well-published approach to using the EXISTING function to decode AGGREGATE members and nested sub-query filters.  Mosha wrote a good blog on it here and a more recent one here.  The use of EXISTING in these scenarios is very useful and sometimes the only option when dealing with multi-select filters.  However, there are some limitations I have run across when using the EXISTING function against an AGGREGATE member:   The AGGREGATE member must be assigned to the Dimension.Hierarchy being detected by the EXISTING function in the calculated measure. The AGGREGATE member cannot contain a crossjoin from any other dimension or hierarchy or EXISTING will not be able to detect the members in the AGGREGATE member.   Take the following query (from Adventure Works DW 2008):   With   member [Week Count] as 'count(existing([Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].members))'    member [Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[CM] as 'AGGREGATE({[Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].&[47]&[2004],[Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].&[48]&[2004],[Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].&[49]&[2004],[Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].&[50]&[2004]})'   select   {[Week Count]} on columns from   [Adventure Works]     where   [Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[CM]   Here we are attempting to count the existing fiscal weeks in slicer.  This is useful to get a per-week average for another member. Many applications generate queries in this manner (such as Oracle OBIEE).  This query returns the correct result of (4) weeks. Now let's put a twist in it.  What if the querying application submits the query in the following manner:   With   member [Week Count] as 'count(existing([Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].members))'    member [Customer].[Customer Geography].[CM] as 'AGGREGATE({[Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].&[47]&[2004],[Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].&[48]&[2004],[Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].&[49]&[2004],[Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].&[50]&[2004]})'   select   {[Week Count]} on columns from   [Adventure Works]     where   [Customer].[Customer Geography].[CM]   Here we are attempting to count the existing fiscal weeks in slicer.  However, the AGGREGATE member is built on a different dimension (in name) than the one EXISTING is trying to detect.  In this case the query returns (174) which is the total number of [Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].members defined in the dimension.   Now another twist, the AGGREGATE member will be named appropriately and contain the hierarchy we are trying to detect with EXISTING but it will be cross-joined with another hierarchy:   With   member [Week Count] as 'count(existing([Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].members))'    member [Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[CM] as 'AGGREGATE({[Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].&[47]&[2004],[Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].&[48]&[2004],[Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].&[49]&[2004],[Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].&[50]&[2004]}*    {[Customer].[Customer Geography].[Country].&[Australia],[Customer].[Customer Geography].[Country].&[United States]})'  select   {[Week Count]} on columns from   [Adventure Works]    where   [Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[CM]   Once again, we are attempting to count the existing fiscal weeks in slicer.  Again, in this case the query returns (174) which is the total number of [Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].members defined in the dimension. However, in 2008 R2 this query returns the correct result of 4 and additionally , the following will return the count of existing countries as well (2):   With   member [Week Count] as 'count(existing([Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].members))'   member [Country Count] as 'count(existing([Customer].[Customer Geography].[Country].members))'  member [Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[CM] as 'AGGREGATE({[Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].&[47]&[2004],[Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].&[48]&[2004],[Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].&[49]&[2004],[Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].&[50]&[2004]}*    {[Customer].[Customer Geography].[Country].&[Australia],[Customer].[Customer Geography].[Country].&[United States]})'  select   {[Week Count]} on columns from   [Adventure Works]    where   [Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[CM]   2008 R2 seems to work as long as the AGGREGATE member is on at least one of the hierarchies attempting to be detected (i.e. [Date].[Fiscal Weeks] or [Customer].[Customer Geography]). If not, it seems that the engine cannot find a "point of entry" into the aggregate member and ignores it for calculated members.   One way around this would be to put the sets from the AGGREGATE member explicitly in the WHERE clause (slicer).  I realize this is only supported in SSAS 2005 and 2008.  However, after talking with Chris Webb (his blog is here and I highly recommend following his efforts and musings) it is a far more efficient way to filter/slice a query:   With   member [Week Count] as 'count(existing([Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].members))'    select   {[Week Count]} on columns from   [Adventure Works]    where   ({[Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].&[47]&[2004],[Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].&[48]&[2004],[Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].&[49]&[2004],[Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].&[50]&[2004]}   ,{[Customer].[Customer Geography].[Country].&[Australia],[Customer].[Customer Geography].[Country].&[United States]})   This query returns the correct result of (4) weeks.  Additionally, we can count the cross-join members of the two hierarchies in the slicer:   With   member [Week Count] as 'count(existing([Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].members)*existing([Customer].[Customer Geography].[Country].members))'    select   {[Week Count]} on columns from   [Adventure Works]    where   ({[Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].&[47]&[2004],[Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].&[48]&[2004],[Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].&[49]&[2004],[Date].[Fiscal Weeks].[Fiscal Week].&[50]&[2004]}   ,{[Customer].[Customer Geography].[Country].&[Australia],[Customer].[Customer Geography].[Country].&[United States]})   We get the correct number of (8) here.

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  • SQL SERVER – An Efficiency Tool to Compare and Synchronize SQL Server Databases

    - by Pinal Dave
    There is no need to reinvent the wheel if it is already invented and if the wheel is already available at ease, there is no need to wait to grab it. Here is the similar situation. I came across a very interesting situation and I had to look for an efficient tool which can make my life easier and solve my business problem. Here is the scenario. One of the developers had deleted few rows from the very important mapping table of our development server (thankfully, it was not the production server). Though it was a development server, the entire development team had to stop working as the application started to crash on every page. Think about the lost of manpower and efficiency which we started to loose.  Pretty much every department had to stop working as our internal development application stopped working. Thankfully, we even take a backup of our development server and we had access to full backup of the entire database at 6 AM morning. We do not take as a frequent backup of development server as production server (naturally!). Even though we had a full backup, the solution was not to restore the database. Think about it, there were plenty of the other operations since the last good full backup and if we restore a full backup, we will pretty much overwrite on the top of the work done by developers since morning. Now, as restoring the full backup was not an option we decided to restore the same database on another server. Once we had restored our database to another server, the challenge was to compare the table from where the database was deleted. The mapping table from where the data were deleted contained over 5000 rows and it was humanly impossible to compare both the tables manually. Finally we decided to use efficiency tool dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server from DevArt. dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server is a powerful, fast and easy to use SQL compare tool, capable of using native SQL Server backups as metadata source. (FYI we Downloaded dbForge Data Compare) Once we discovered the product, we immediately downloaded the product and installed on our development server. After we installed the product, we were greeted with the following screen. We clicked on the New Data Comparision to start our new comparison project. It brought up following screen. Here is the best part of the product, we just had to enter our database connection username and password along with source and destination details and we are done. The entire process is very simple and self intuiting. The best part was that for the source, we can either select database or even backup. This was indeed fantastic feature. Think about this, if you have a very big database, it will take long time to restore on the server. Once it is restored, you will be able to work with it. However, when you are working with dbForge Data Compare it will accept database backup as your source or destination. Once I click on the execute it brought up following screen where it displayed an excellent summary of the data compare. It has dedicated tabs for the what is changing in what table as well had details of the changed data. The best part is that, once we had reviewed the change. We click on the Synchronize button in the menu bar and it brought up following screen. You can see that the screen has very simple straight forward but very powerful features. You can generate a script to synchronize from target to source or even from source to target. Additionally, the database is a very complicated world and there are extensive options to configure various database options on the next screen. We also have the option to either generate script or directly execute the script to target server. I like to play on the safe side and I generated the script for my synchronization and later on after review I deployed the scripts on the server. Well, my team and we were able to get going from our disaster in less than 10 minutes. There were few people in our team were indeed disappointed as they were thinking of going home early that day but in less than 10 minutes they had to get back to work. There are so many other features in  dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server, I am already planning to make this product company wide recommended product for Data Compare tool. Hats off to the team who have build this product. Here are few of the features salient features of the dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server Perform SQL Server database comparison to detect changes Compare SQL Server backups with live databases Analyze data differences between two databases Synchronize two databases that went out of sync Restore data of a particular table from the backup Generate data comparison reports in Excel and HTML formats Copy look-up data from development database to production Automate routine data synchronization tasks with command-line interface Go Ahead and Download the dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server right away. It is always a good idea to get familiar with the important tools before hand instead of learning it under pressure of disaster. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, T SQL, Technology

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