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• Fake ISAPI Handler to serve static files with extention that are rewritted by url rewriter

  - by developerit

  Introduction I often map html extention to the asp.net dll in order to use url rewritter with .html extentions. Recently, in the new version of www.nouvelair.ca, we renamed all urls to end with .html. This works great, but failed when we used FCK Editor. Static html files would not get serve because we mapped the html extension to the .NET Framework. We can we do to to use .html extension with our rewritter but still want to use IIS behavior with static html files. Analysis I thought that this could be resolve with a simple HTTP handler. We would map urls of static files in our rewriter to this handler that would read the static file and serve it, just as IIS would do. Implementation This is how I coded the class. Note that this may not be bullet proof. I only tested it once and I am sure that the logic behind IIS is more complicated that this. If you find errors or think of possible improvements, let me know. Imports System.Web Imports System.Web.Services ' Author: Nicolas Brassard ' For: Solutions Nitriques inc. http://www.nitriques.com ' Date Created: April 18, 2009 ' Last Modified: April 18, 2009 ' License: CPOL (http://www.codeproject.com/info/cpol10.aspx) ' Files: ISAPIDotNetHandler.ashx ' ISAPIDotNetHandler.ashx.vb ' Class: ISAPIDotNetHandler ' Description: Fake ISAPI handler to serve static files. ' Usefull when you want to serve static file that has a rewrited extention. ' Example: It often map html extention to the asp.net dll in order to use url rewritter with .html. ' If you want to still serve static html file, add a rewritter rule to redirect html files to this handler Public Class ISAPIDotNetHandler Implements System.Web.IHttpHandler Sub ProcessRequest(ByVal context As HttpContext) Implements IHttpHandler.ProcessRequest ' Since we are doing the job IIS normally does with html files, ' we set the content type to match html. ' You may want to customize this with your own logic, if you want to serve ' txt or xml or any other text file context.Response.ContentType = "text/html" ' We begin a try here. Any error that occurs will result in a 404 Page Not Found error. ' We replicate the behavior of IIS when it doesn't find the correspoding file. Try ' Declare a local variable containing the value of the query string Dim uri As String = context.Request("fileUri") ' If the value in the query string is null, ' throw an error to generate a 404 If String.IsNullOrEmpty(uri) Then Throw New ApplicationException("No fileUri") End If ' If the value in the query string doesn't end with .html, then block the acces ' This is a HUGE security hole since it could permit full read access to .aspx, .config, etc. If Not uri.ToLower.EndsWith(".html") Then ' throw an error to generate a 404 Throw New ApplicationException("Extention not allowed") End If ' Map the file on the server. ' If the file doesn't exists on the server, it will throw an exception and generate a 404. Dim fullPath As String = context.Server.MapPath(uri) ' Read the actual file Dim stream As IO.StreamReader = FileIO.FileSystem.OpenTextFileReader(fullPath) ' Write the file into the response context.Response.Output.Write(stream.ReadToEnd) ' Close and Dipose the stream stream.Close() stream.Dispose() stream = Nothing Catch ex As Exception ' Set the Status Code of the response context.Response.StatusCode = 404 'Page not found ' For testing and bebugging only ! This may cause a security leak ' context.Response.Output.Write(ex.Message) Finally ' In all cases, flush and end the response context.Response.Flush() context.Response.End() End Try End Sub ' Automaticly generated by Visual Studio ReadOnly Property IsReusable() As Boolean Implements IHttpHandler.IsReusable Get Return False End Get End Property End Class Conclusion As you see, with our static files map to this handler using query string (ex.: /ISAPIDotNetHandler.ashx?fileUri=index.html) you will have the same behavior as if you ask for the uri /index.html. Finally, test this only in IIS with the html extension map to aspnet_isapi.dll. Url rewritting will work in Casini (Internal Web Server shipped with Visual Studio) but it’s not the same as with IIS since EVERY request is handle by .NET. Versions First release

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• What's New in ASP.NET 4

  - by Navaneeth

  The .NET Framework version 4 includes enhancements for ASP.NET 4 in targeted areas. Visual Studio 2010 and Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express also include enhancements and new features for improved Web development. This document provides an overview of many of the new features that are included in the upcoming release. This topic contains the following sections: ASP.NET Core Services ASP.NET Web Forms ASP.NET MVC Dynamic Data ASP.NET Chart Control Visual Web Developer Enhancements Web Application Deployment with Visual Studio 2010 Enhancements to ASP.NET Multi-Targeting ASP.NET Core Services ASP.NET 4 introduces many features that improve core ASP.NET services such as output caching and session state storage. Extensible Output Caching Since the time that ASP.NET 1.0 was released, output caching has enabled developers to store the generated output of pages, controls, and HTTP responses in memory. On subsequent Web requests, ASP.NET can serve content more quickly by retrieving the generated output from memory instead of regenerating the output from scratch. However, this approach has a limitation — generated content always has to be stored in memory. On servers that experience heavy traffic, the memory requirements for output caching can compete with memory requirements for other parts of a Web application. ASP.NET 4 adds extensibility to output caching that enables you to configure one or more custom output-cache providers. Output-cache providers can use any storage mechanism to persist HTML content. These storage options can include local or remote disks, cloud storage, and distributed cache engines. Output-cache provider extensibility in ASP.NET 4 lets you design more aggressive and more intelligent output-caching strategies for Web sites. For example, you can create an output-cache provider that caches the "Top 10" pages of a site in memory, while caching pages that get lower traffic on disk. Alternatively, you can cache every vary-by combination for a rendered page, but use a distributed cache so that the memory consumption is offloaded from front-end Web servers. You create a custom output-cache provider as a class that derives from the OutputCacheProvider type. You can then configure the provider in the Web.config file by using the new providers subsection of the outputCache element For more information and for examples that show how to configure the output cache, see outputCache Element for caching (ASP.NET Settings Schema). For more information about the classes that support caching, see the documentation for the OutputCache and OutputCacheProvider classes. By default, in ASP.NET 4, all HTTP responses, rendered pages, and controls use the in-memory output cache. The defaultProvider attribute for ASP.NET is AspNetInternalProvider. You can change the default output-cache provider used for a Web application by specifying a different provider name for defaultProvider attribute. In addition, you can select different output-cache providers for individual control and for individual requests and programmatically specify which provider to use. For more information, see the HttpApplication.GetOutputCacheProviderName(HttpContext) method. The easiest way to choose a different output-cache provider for different Web user controls is to do so declaratively by using the new providerName attribute in a page or control directive, as shown in the following example: <%@ OutputCache Duration="60" VaryByParam="None" providerName="DiskCache" %> Preloading Web Applications Some Web applications must load large amounts of data or must perform expensive initialization processing before serving the first request. In earlier versions of ASP.NET, for these situations you had to devise custom approaches to "wake up" an ASP.NET application and then run initialization code during the Application_Load method in the Global.asax file. To address this scenario, a new application preload manager (autostart feature) is available when ASP.NET 4 runs on IIS 7.5 on Windows Server 2008 R2. The preload feature provides a controlled approach for starting up an application pool, initializing an ASP.NET application, and then accepting HTTP requests. It lets you perform expensive application initialization prior to processing the first HTTP request. For example, you can use the application preload manager to initialize an application and then signal a load-balancer that the application was initialized and ready to accept HTTP traffic. To use the application preload manager, an IIS administrator sets an application pool in IIS 7.5 to be automatically started by using the following configuration in the applicationHost.config file: <applicationPools> <add name="MyApplicationPool" startMode="AlwaysRunning" /> </applicationPools> Because a single application pool can contain multiple applications, you specify individual applications to be automatically started by using the following configuration in the applicationHost.config file: <sites> <site name="MySite" id="1"> <application path="/" serviceAutoStartEnabled="true" serviceAutoStartProvider="PrewarmMyCache" > <!-- Additional content --> </application> </site> </sites> <!-- Additional content --> <serviceAutoStartProviders> <add name="PrewarmMyCache" type="MyNamespace.CustomInitialization, MyLibrary" /> </serviceAutoStartProviders> When an IIS 7.5 server is cold-started or when an individual application pool is recycled, IIS 7.5 uses the information in the applicationHost.config file to determine which Web applications have to be automatically started. For each application that is marked for preload, IIS7.5 sends a request to ASP.NET 4 to start the application in a state during which the application temporarily does not accept HTTP requests. When it is in this state, ASP.NET instantiates the type defined by the serviceAutoStartProvider attribute (as shown in the previous example) and calls into its public entry point. You create a managed preload type that has the required entry point by implementing the IProcessHostPreloadClient interface, as shown in the following example: public class CustomInitialization : System.Web.Hosting.IProcessHostPreloadClient { public void Preload(string[] parameters) { // Perform initialization. } } After your initialization code runs in the Preload method and after the method returns, the ASP.NET application is ready to process requests. Permanently Redirecting a Page Content in Web applications is often moved over the lifetime of the application. This can lead to links to be out of date, such as the links that are returned by search engines. In ASP.NET, developers have traditionally handled requests to old URLs by using the Redirect method to forward a request to the new URL. However, the Redirect method issues an HTTP 302 (Found) response (which is used for a temporary redirect). This results in an extra HTTP round trip. ASP.NET 4 adds a RedirectPermanent helper method that makes it easy to issue HTTP 301 (Moved Permanently) responses, as in the following example: RedirectPermanent("/newpath/foroldcontent.aspx"); Search engines and other user agents that recognize permanent redirects will store the new URL that is associated with the content, which eliminates the unnecessary round trip made by the browser for temporary redirects. Session State Compression By default, ASP.NET provides two options for storing session state across a Web farm. The first option is a session state provider that invokes an out-of-process session state server. The second option is a session state provider that stores data in a Microsoft SQL Server database. Because both options store state information outside a Web application's worker process, session state has to be serialized before it is sent to remote storage. If a large amount of data is saved in session state, the size of the serialized data can become very large. ASP.NET 4 introduces a new compression option for both kinds of out-of-process session state providers. By using this option, applications that have spare CPU cycles on Web servers can achieve substantial reductions in the size of serialized session state data. You can set this option using the new compressionEnabled attribute of the sessionState element in the configuration file. When the compressionEnabled configuration option is set to true, ASP.NET compresses (and decompresses) serialized session state by using the .NET Framework GZipStreamclass. The following example shows how to set this attribute. <sessionState mode="SqlServer" sqlConnectionString="data source=dbserver;Initial Catalog=aspnetstate" allowCustomSqlDatabase="true" compressionEnabled="true" /> ASP.NET Web Forms Web Forms has been a core feature in ASP.NET since the release of ASP.NET 1.0. Many enhancements have been in this area for ASP.NET 4, such as the following: The ability to set meta tags. More control over view state. Support for recently introduced browsers and devices. Easier ways to work with browser capabilities. Support for using ASP.NET routing with Web Forms. More control over generated IDs. The ability to persist selected rows in data controls. More control over rendered HTML in the FormView and ListView controls. Filtering support for data source controls. Enhanced support for Web standards and accessibility Setting Meta Tags with the Page.MetaKeywords and Page.MetaDescription Properties Two properties have been added to the Page class: MetaKeywords and MetaDescription. These two properties represent corresponding meta tags in the HTML rendered for a page, as shown in the following example: <head id="Head1" runat="server"> <title>Untitled Page</title> <meta name="keywords" content="keyword1, keyword2' /> <meta name="description" content="Description of my page" /> </head> These two properties work like the Title property does, and they can be set in the @ Page directive. For more information, see Page.MetaKeywords and Page.MetaDescription. Enabling View State for Individual Controls A new property has been added to the Control class: ViewStateMode. You can use this property to disable view state for all controls on a page except those for which you explicitly enable view state. View state data is included in a page's HTML and increases the amount of time it takes to send a page to the client and post it back. Storing more view state than is necessary can cause significant decrease in performance. In earlier versions of ASP.NET, you could reduce the impact of view state on a page's performance by disabling view state for specific controls. But sometimes it is easier to enable view state for a few controls that need it instead of disabling it for many that do not need it. For more information, see Control.ViewStateMode. Support for Recently Introduced Browsers and Devices ASP.NET includes a feature that is named browser capabilities that lets you determine the capabilities of the browser that a user is using. Browser capabilities are represented by the HttpBrowserCapabilities object which is stored in the HttpRequest.Browser property. Information about a particular browser's capabilities is defined by a browser definition file. In ASP.NET 4, these browser definition files have been updated to contain information about recently introduced browsers and devices such as Google Chrome, Research in Motion BlackBerry smart phones, and Apple iPhone. Existing browser definition files have also been updated. For more information, see How to: Upgrade an ASP.NET Web Application to ASP.NET 4 and ASP.NET Web Server Controls and Browser Capabilities. The browser definition files that are included with ASP.NET 4 are shown in the following list: •blackberry.browser •chrome.browser •Default.browser •firefox.browser •gateway.browser •generic.browser •ie.browser •iemobile.browser •iphone.browser •opera.browser •safari.browser A New Way to Define Browser Capabilities ASP.NET 4 includes a new feature referred to as browser capabilities providers. As the name suggests, this lets you build a provider that in turn lets you write custom code to determine browser capabilities. In ASP.NET version 3.5 Service Pack 1, you define browser capabilities in an XML file. This file resides in a machine-level folder or an application-level folder. Most developers do not need to customize these files, but for those who do, the provider approach can be easier than dealing with complex XML syntax. The provider approach makes it possible to simplify the process by implementing a common browser definition syntax, or a database that contains up-to-date browser definitions, or even a Web service for such a database. For more information about the new browser capabilities provider, see the What's New for ASP.NET 4 White Paper. Routing in ASP.NET 4 ASP.NET 4 adds built-in support for routing with Web Forms. Routing is a feature that was introduced with ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 and lets you configure an application to use URLs that are meaningful to users and to search engines because they do not have to specify physical file names. This can make your site more user-friendly and your site content more discoverable by search engines. For example, the URL for a page that displays product categories in your application might look like the following example: http://website/products.aspx?categoryid=12 By using routing, you can use the following URL to render the same information: http://website/products/software The second URL lets the user know what to expect and can result in significantly improved rankings in search engine results. the new features include the following: The PageRouteHandler class is a simple HTTP handler that you use when you define routes. You no longer have to write a custom route handler. The HttpRequest.RequestContext and Page.RouteData properties make it easier to access information that is passed in URL parameters. The RouteUrl expression provides a simple way to create a routed URL in markup. The RouteValue expression provides a simple way to extract URL parameter values in markup. The RouteParameter class makes it easier to pass URL parameter values to a query for a data source control (similar to FormParameter). You no longer have to change the Web.config file to enable routing. For more information about routing, see the following topics: ASP.NET Routing Walkthrough: Using ASP.NET Routing in a Web Forms Application How to: Define Routes for Web Forms Applications How to: Construct URLs from Routes How to: Access URL Parameters in a Routed Page Setting Client IDs The new ClientIDMode property makes it easier to write client script that references HTML elements rendered for server controls. Increasing use of Microsoft Ajax makes the need to do this more common. For example, you may have a data control that renders a long list of products with prices and you want to use client script to make a Web service call and update individual prices in the list as they change without refreshing the entire page. Typically you get a reference to an HTML element in client script by using the document.GetElementById method. You pass to this method the value of the id attribute of the HTML element you want to reference. In the case of elements that are rendered for ASP.NET server controls earlier versions of ASP.NET could make this difficult or impossible. You were not always able to predict what id values ASP.NET would generate, or ASP.NET could generate very long id values. The problem was especially difficult for data controls that would generate multiple rows for a single instance of the control in your markup. ASP.NET 4 adds two new algorithms for generating id attributes. These algorithms can generate id attributes that are easier to work with in client script because they are more predictable and that are easier to work with because they are simpler. For more information about how to use the new algorithms, see the following topics: ASP.NET Web Server Control Identification Walkthrough: Making Data-Bound Controls Easier to Access from JavaScript Walkthrough: Making Controls Located in Web User Controls Easier to Access from JavaScript How to: Access Controls from JavaScript by ID Persisting Row Selection in Data Controls The GridView and ListView controls enable users to select a row. In previous versions of ASP.NET, row selection was based on the row index on the page. For example, if you select the third item on page 1 and then move to page 2, the third item on page 2 is selected. In most cases, is more desirable not to select any rows on page 2. ASP.NET 4 supports Persisted Selection, a new feature that was initially supported only in Dynamic Data projects in the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. When this feature is enabled, the selected item is based on the row data key. This means that if you select the third row on page 1 and move to page 2, nothing is selected on page 2. When you move back to page 1, the third row is still selected. This is a much more natural behavior than the behavior in earlier versions of ASP.NET. Persisted selection is now supported for the GridView and ListView controls in all projects. You can enable this feature in the GridView control, for example, by setting the EnablePersistedSelection property, as shown in the following example: <asp:GridView id="GridView2" runat="server" PersistedSelection="true"> </asp:GridView> FormView Control Enhancements The FormView control is enhanced to make it easier to style the content of the control with CSS. In previous versions of ASP.NET, the FormView control rendered it contents using an item template. This made styling more difficult in the markup because unexpected table row and table cell tags were rendered by the control. The FormView control supports RenderOuterTable, a property in ASP.NET 4. When this property is set to false, as show in the following example, the table tags are not rendered. This makes it easier to apply CSS style to the contents of the control. <asp:FormView ID="FormView1" runat="server" RenderTable="false"> For more information, see FormView Web Server Control Overview. ListView Control Enhancements The ListView control, which was introduced in ASP.NET 3.5, has all the functionality of the GridView control while giving you complete control over the output. This control has been made easier to use in ASP.NET 4. The earlier version of the control required that you specify a layout template that contained a server control with a known ID. The following markup shows a typical example of how to use the ListView control in ASP.NET 3.5. <asp:ListView ID="ListView1" runat="server"> <LayoutTemplate> <asp:PlaceHolder ID="ItemPlaceHolder" runat="server"></asp:PlaceHolder> </LayoutTemplate> <ItemTemplate> <% Eval("LastName")%> </ItemTemplate> </asp:ListView> In ASP.NET 4, the ListView control does not require a layout template. The markup shown in the previous example can be replaced with the following markup: <asp:ListView ID="ListView1" runat="server"> <ItemTemplate> <% Eval("LastName")%> </ItemTemplate> </asp:ListView> For more information, see ListView Web Server Control Overview. Filtering Data with the QueryExtender Control A very common task for developers who create data-driven Web pages is to filter data. This traditionally has been performed by building Where clauses in data source controls. This approach can be complicated, and in some cases the Where syntax does not let you take advantage of the full functionality of the underlying database. To make filtering easier, a new QueryExtender control has been added in ASP.NET 4. This control can be added to EntityDataSource or LinqDataSource controls in order to filter the data returned by these controls. Because the QueryExtender control relies on LINQ, but you do not to need to know how to write LINQ queries to use the query extender. The QueryExtender control supports a variety of filter options. The following lists QueryExtender filter options. Term Definition SearchExpression Searches a field or fields for string values and compares them to a specified string value. RangeExpression Searches a field or fields for values in a range specified by a pair of values. PropertyExpression Compares a specified value to a property value in a field. If the expression evaluates to true, the data that is being examined is returned. OrderByExpression Sorts data by a specified column and sort direction. CustomExpression Calls a function that defines custom filter in the page. For more information, see QueryExtenderQueryExtender Web Server Control Overview. Enhanced Support for Web Standards and Accessibility Earlier versions of ASP.NET controls sometimes render markup that does not conform to HTML, XHTML, or accessibility standards. ASP.NET 4 eliminates most of these exceptions. For details about how the HTML that is rendered by each control meets accessibility standards, see ASP.NET Controls and Accessibility. CSS for Controls that Can be Disabled In ASP.NET 3.5, when a control is disabled (see WebControl.Enabled), a disabled attribute is added to the rendered HTML element. For example, the following markup creates a Label control that is disabled: <asp:Label id="Label1" runat="server"   Text="Test" Enabled="false" /> In ASP.NET 3.5, the previous control settings generate the following HTML: <span id="Label1" disabled="disabled">Test</span> In HTML 4.01, the disabled attribute is not considered valid on span elements. It is valid only on input elements because it specifies that they cannot be accessed. On display-only elements such as span elements, browsers typically support rendering for a disabled appearance, but a Web page that relies on this non-standard behavior is not robust according to accessibility standards. For display-only elements, you should use CSS to indicate a disabled visual appearance. Therefore, by default ASP.NET 4 generates the following HTML for the control settings shown previously: <span id="Label1" class="aspNetDisabled">Test</span> You can change the value of the class attribute that is rendered by default when a control is disabled by setting the DisabledCssClass property. CSS for Validation Controls In ASP.NET 3.5, validation controls render a default color of red as an inline style. For example, the following markup creates a RequiredFieldValidator control: <asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="RequiredFieldValidator1" runat="server"   ErrorMessage="Required Field" ControlToValidate="RadioButtonList1" /> ASP.NET 3.5 renders the following HTML for the validator control: <span id="RequiredFieldValidator1"   style="color:Red;visibility:hidden;">RequiredFieldValidator</span> By default, ASP.NET 4 does not render an inline style to set the color to red. An inline style is used only to hide or show the validator, as shown in the following example: <span id="RequiredFieldValidator1"   style"visibility:hidden;">RequiredFieldValidator</span> Therefore, ASP.NET 4 does not automatically show error messages in red. For information about how to use CSS to specify a visual style for a validation control, see Validating User Input in ASP.NET Web Pages. CSS for the Hidden Fields Div Element ASP.NET uses hidden fields to store state information such as view state and control state. These hidden fields are contained by a div element. In ASP.NET 3.5, this div element does not have a class attribute or an id attribute. Therefore, CSS rules that affect all div elements could unintentionally cause this div to be visible. To avoid this problem, ASP.NET 4 renders the div element for hidden fields with a CSS class that you can use to differentiate the hidden fields div from others. The new classvalue is shown in the following example: <div class="aspNetHidden"> CSS for the Table, Image, and ImageButton Controls By default, in ASP.NET 3.5, some controls set the border attribute of rendered HTML to zero (0). The following example shows HTML that is generated by the Table control in ASP.NET 3.5: <table id="Table2" border="0"> The Image control and the ImageButton control also do this. Because this is not necessary and provides visual formatting information that should be provided by using CSS, the attribute is not generated in ASP.NET 4. CSS for the UpdatePanel and UpdateProgress Controls In ASP.NET 3.5, the UpdatePanel and UpdateProgress controls do not support expando attributes. This makes it impossible to set a CSS class on the HTMLelements that they render. In ASP.NET 4 these controls have been changed to accept expando attributes, as shown in the following example: <asp:UpdatePanel runat="server" class="myStyle"> </asp:UpdatePanel> The following HTML is rendered for this markup: <div id="ctl00_MainContent_UpdatePanel1" class="expandoclass"> </div> Eliminating Unnecessary Outer Tables In ASP.NET 3.5, the HTML that is rendered for the following controls is wrapped in a table element whose purpose is to apply inline styles to the entire control: FormView Login PasswordRecovery ChangePassword If you use templates to customize the appearance of these controls, you can specify CSS styles in the markup that you provide in the templates. In that case, no extra outer table is required. In ASP.NET 4, you can prevent the table from being rendered by setting the new RenderOuterTable property to false. Layout Templates for Wizard Controls In ASP.NET 3.5, the Wizard and CreateUserWizard controls generate an HTML table element that is used for visual formatting. In ASP.NET 4 you can use a LayoutTemplate element to specify the layout. If you do this, the HTML table element is not generated. In the template, you create placeholder controls to indicate where items should be dynamically inserted into the control. (This is similar to how the template model for the ListView control works.) For more information, see the Wizard.LayoutTemplate property. New HTML Formatting Options for the CheckBoxList and RadioButtonList Controls ASP.NET 3.5 uses HTML table elements to format the output for the CheckBoxList and RadioButtonList controls. To provide an alternative that does not use tables for visual formatting, ASP.NET 4 adds two new options to the RepeatLayout enumeration: UnorderedList. This option causes the HTML output to be formatted by using ul and li elements instead of a table. OrderedList. This option causes the HTML output to be formatted by using ol and li elements instead of a table. For examples of HTML that is rendered for the new options, see the RepeatLayout enumeration. Header and Footer Elements for the Table Control In ASP.NET 3.5, the Table control can be configured to render thead and tfoot elements by setting the TableSection property of the TableHeaderRow class and the TableFooterRow class. In ASP.NET 4 these properties are set to the appropriate values by default. CSS and ARIA Support for the Menu Control In ASP.NET 3.5, the Menu control uses HTML table elements for visual formatting, and in some configurations it is not keyboard-accessible. ASP.NET 4 addresses these problems and improves accessibility in the following ways: The generated HTML is structured as an unordered list (ul and li elements). CSS is used for visual formatting. The menu behaves in accordance with ARIA standards for keyboard access. You can use arrow keys to navigate menu items. (For information about ARIA, see Accessibility in Visual Studio and ASP.NET.) ARIA role and property attributes are added to the generated HTML. (Attributes are added by using JavaScript instead of included in the HTML, to avoid generating HTML that would cause markup validation errors.) Styles for the Menu control are rendered in a style block at the top of the page, instead of inline with the rendered HTML elements. If you want to use a separate CSS file so that you can modify the menu styles, you can set the Menu control's new IncludeStyleBlock property to false, in which case the style block is not generated. Valid XHTML for the HtmlForm Control In ASP.NET 3.5, the HtmlForm control (which is created implicitly by the <form runat="server"> tag) renders an HTML form element that has both name and id attributes. The name attribute is deprecated in XHTML 1.1. Therefore, this control does not render the name attribute in ASP.NET 4. Maintaining Backward Compatibility in Control Rendering An existing ASP.NET Web site might have code in it that assumes that controls are rendering HTML the way they do in ASP.NET 3.5. To avoid causing backward compatibility problems when you upgrade the site to ASP.NET 4, you can have ASP.NET continue to generate HTML the way it does in ASP.NET 3.5 after you upgrade the site. To do so, you can set the controlRenderingCompatibilityVersion attribute of the pages element to "3.5" in the Web.config file of an ASP.NET 4 Web site, as shown in the following example: <system.web>   <pages controlRenderingCompatibilityVersion="3.5"/> </system.web> If this setting is omitted, the default value is the same as the version of ASP.NET that the Web site targets. (For information about multi-targeting in ASP.NET, see .NET Framework Multi-Targeting for ASP.NET Web Projects.) ASP.NET MVC ASP.NET MVC helps Web developers build compelling standards-based Web sites that are easy to maintain because it decreases the dependency among application layers by using the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern. MVC provides complete control over the page markup. It also improves testability by inherently supporting Test Driven Development (TDD). Web sites created using ASP.NET MVC have a modular architecture. This allows members of a team to work independently on the various modules and can be used to improve collaboration. For example, developers can work on the model and controller layers (data and logic), while the designer work on the view (presentation). For tutorials, walkthroughs, conceptual content, code samples, and a complete API reference, see ASP.NET MVC 2. Dynamic Data Dynamic Data was introduced in the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 release in mid-2008. This feature provides many enhancements for creating data-driven applications, such as the following: A RAD experience for quickly building a data-driven Web site. Automatic validation that is based on constraints defined in the data model. The ability to easily change the markup that is generated for fields in the GridView and DetailsView controls by using field templates that are part of your Dynamic Data project. For ASP.NET 4, Dynamic Data has been enhanced to give developers even more power for quickly building data-driven Web sites. For more information, see ASP.NET Dynamic Data Content Map. Enabling Dynamic Data for Individual Data-Bound Controls in Existing Web Applications You can use Dynamic Data features in existing ASP.NET Web applications that do not use scaffolding by enabling Dynamic Data for individual data-bound controls. Dynamic Data provides the presentation and data layer support for rendering these controls. When you enable Dynamic Data for data-bound controls, you get the following benefits: Setting default values for data fields. Dynamic Data enables you to provide default values at run time for fields in a data control. Interacting with the database without creating and registering a data model. Automatically validating the data that is entered by the user without writing any code. For more information, see Walkthrough: Enabling Dynamic Data in ASP.NET Data-Bound Controls. New Field Templates for URLs and E-mail Addresses ASP.NET 4 introduces two new built-in field templates, EmailAddress.ascx and Url.ascx. These templates are used for fields that are marked as EmailAddress or Url using the DataTypeAttribute attribute. For EmailAddress objects, the field is displayed as a hyperlink that is created by using the mailto: protocol. When users click the link, it opens the user's e-mail client and creates a skeleton message. Objects typed as Url are displayed as ordinary hyperlinks. The following example shows how to mark fields. [DataType(DataType.EmailAddress)] public object HomeEmail { get; set; } [DataType(DataType.Url)] public object Website { get; set; } Creating Links with the DynamicHyperLink Control Dynamic Data uses the new routing feature that was added in the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 to control the URLs that users see when they access the Web site. The new DynamicHyperLink control makes it easy to build links to pages in a Dynamic Data site. For information, see How to: Create Table Action Links in Dynamic Data Support for Inheritance in the Data Model Both the ADO.NET Entity Framework and LINQ to SQL support inheritance in their data models. An example of this might be a database that has an InsurancePolicy table. It might also contain CarPolicy and HousePolicy tables that have the same fields as InsurancePolicy and then add more fields. Dynamic Data has been modified to understand inherited objects in the data model and to support scaffolding for the inherited tables. For more information, see Walkthrough: Mapping Table-per-Hierarchy Inheritance in Dynamic Data. Support for Many-to-Many Relationships (Entity Framework Only) The Entity Framework has rich support for many-to-many relationships between tables, which is implemented by exposing the relationship as a collection on an Entity object. New field templates (ManyToMany.ascx and ManyToMany_Edit.ascx) have been added to provide support for displaying and editing data that is involved in many-to-many relationships. For more information, see Working with Many-to-Many Data Relationships in Dynamic Data. New Attributes to Control Display and Support Enumerations The DisplayAttribute has been added to give you additional control over how fields are displayed. The DisplayNameAttribute attribute in earlier versions of Dynamic Data enabled you to change the name that is used as a caption for a field. The new DisplayAttribute class lets you specify more options for displaying a field, such as the order in which a field is displayed and whether a field will be used as a filter. The attribute also provides independent control of the name that is used for the labels in a GridView control, the name that is used in a DetailsView control, the help text for the field, and the watermark used for the field (if the field accepts text input). The EnumDataTypeAttribute class has been added to let you map fields to enumerations. When you apply this attribute to a field, you specify an enumeration type. Dynamic Data uses the new Enumeration.ascx field template to create UI for displaying and editing enumeration values. The template maps the values from the database to the names in the enumeration. Enhanced Support for Filters Dynamic Data 1.0 had built-in filters for Boolean columns and foreign-key columns. The filters did not let you specify the order in which they were displayed. The new DisplayAttribute attribute addresses this by giving you control over whether a column appears as a filter and in what order it will be displayed. An additional enhancement is that filtering support has been rewritten to use the new QueryExtender feature of Web Forms. This lets you create filters without requiring knowledge of the data source control that the filters will be used with. Along with these extensions, filters have also been turned into template controls, which lets you add new ones. Finally, the DisplayAttribute class mentioned earlier allows the default filter to be overridden, in the same way that UIHint allows the default field template for a column to be overridden. For more information, see Walkthrough: Filtering Rows in Tables That Have a Parent-Child Relationship and QueryableFilterRepeater. ASP.NET Chart Control The ASP.NET chart server control enables you to create ASP.NET pages applications that have simple, intuitive charts for complex statistical or financial analysis. The chart control supports the following features: Data series, chart areas, axes, legends, labels, titles, and more. Data binding. Data manipulation, such as copying, splitting, merging, alignment, grouping, sorting, searching, and filtering. Statistical formulas and financial formulas. Advanced chart appearance, such as 3-D, anti-aliasing, lighting, and perspective. Events and customizations. Interactivity and Microsoft Ajax. Support for the Ajax Content Delivery Network (CDN), which provides an optimized way for you to add Microsoft Ajax Library and jQuery scripts to your Web applications. For more information, see Chart Web Server Control Overview. Visual Web Developer Enhancements The following sections provide information about enhancements and new features in Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Web Developer Express. The Web page designer in Visual Studio 2010 has been enhanced for better CSS compatibility, includes additional support for HTML and ASP.NET markup snippets, and features a redesigned version of IntelliSense for JScript. Improved CSS Compatibility The Visual Web Developer designer in Visual Studio 2010 has been updated to improve CSS 2.1 standards compliance. The designer better preserves HTML source code and is more robust than in previous versions of Visual Studio. HTML and JScript Snippets In the HTML editor, IntelliSense auto-completes tag names. The IntelliSense Snippets feature auto-completes whole tags and more. In Visual Studio 2010, IntelliSense snippets are supported for JScript, alongside C# and Visual Basic, which were supported in earlier versions of Visual Studio. Visual Studio 2010 includes over 200 snippets that help you auto-complete common ASP.NET and HTML tags, including required attributes (such as runat="server") and common attributes specific to a tag (such as ID, DataSourceID, ControlToValidate, and Text). You can download additional snippets, or you can write your own snippets that encapsulate the blocks of markup that you or your team use for common tasks. For more information on HTML snippets, see Walkthrough: Using HTML Snippets. JScript IntelliSense Enhancements In Visual 2010, JScript IntelliSense has been redesigned to provide an even richer editing experience. IntelliSense now recognizes objects that have been dynamically generated by methods such as registerNamespace and by similar techniques used by other JavaScript frameworks. Performance has been improved to analyze large libraries of script and to display IntelliSense with little or no processing delay. Compatibility has been significantly increased to support almost all third-party libraries and to support diverse coding styles. Documentation comments are now parsed as you type and are immediately leveraged by IntelliSense. Web Application Deployment with Visual Studio 2010 For Web application projects, Visual Studio now provides tools that work with the IIS Web Deployment Tool (Web Deploy) to automate many processes that had to be done manually in earlier versions of ASP.NET. For example, the following tasks can now be automated: Creating an IIS application on the destination computer and configuring IIS settings. Copying files to the destination computer. Changing Web.config settings that must be different in the destination environment. Propagating changes to data or data structures in SQL Server databases that are used by the Web application. For more information about Web application deployment, see ASP.NET Deployment Content Map. Enhancements to ASP.NET Multi-Targeting ASP.NET 4 adds new features to the multi-targeting feature to make it easier to work with projects that target earlier versions of the .NET Framework. Multi-targeting was introduced in ASP.NET 3.5 to enable you to use the latest version of Visual Studio without having to upgrade existing Web sites or Web services to the latest version of the .NET Framework. In Visual Studio 2008, when you work with a project targeted for an earlier version of the .NET Framework, most features of the development environment adapt to the targeted version. However, IntelliSense displays language features that are available in the current version, and property windows display properties available in the current version. In Visual Studio 2010, only language features and properties available in the targeted version of the .NET Framework are shown. For more information about multi-targeting, see the following topics: .NET Framework Multi-Targeting for ASP.NET Web Projects ASP.NET Side-by-Side Execution Overview How to: Host Web Applications That Use Different Versions of the .NET Framework on the Same Server How to: Deploy Web Site Projects Targeted for Earlier Versions of the .NET Framework

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• Building applications with WPF, MVVM and Prism(aka CAG)

  - by skjagini

  In this article I am going to walk through an application using WPF and Prism (aka composite application guidance, CAG) which simulates engaging a taxi (cab).  The rules are simple, the app would have3 screens A login screen to authenticate the user An information screen. A screen to engage the cab and roam around and calculating the total fare Metered Rate of Fare The meter is required to be engaged when a cab is occupied by anyone $3.00 upon entry $0.35 for each additional unit The unit fare is: one-fifth of a mile, when the cab is traveling at 6 miles an hour or more; or 60 seconds when not in motion or traveling at less than 12 miles per hour. Night surcharge of $.50 after 8:00 PM & before 6:00 AM Peak hour Weekday Surcharge of $1.00 Monday - Friday after 4:00 PM & before 8:00 PM New York State Tax Surcharge of $.50 per ride. Example: Friday (2010-10-08) 5:30pm Start at Lexington Ave & E 57th St End at Irving Pl & E 15th St Start = $3.00 Travels 2 miles at less than 6 mph for 15 minutes = $3.50 Travels at more than 12 mph for 5 minutes = $1.75 Peak hour Weekday Surcharge = $1.00 (ride started at 5:30 pm) New York State Tax Surcharge = $0.50 Before we dive into the app, I would like to give brief description about the framework.  If you want to jump on to the source code, scroll all the way to the end of the post. MVVM MVVM pattern is in no way related to the usage of PRISM in your application and should be considered if you are using WPF irrespective of PRISM or not. Lets say you are not familiar with MVVM, your typical UI would involve adding some UI controls like text boxes, a button, double clicking on the button,  generating event handler, calling a method from business layer and updating the user interface, it works most of the time for developing small scale applications. The problem with this approach is that there is some amount of code specific to business logic wrapped in UI specific code which is hard to unit test it, mock it and MVVM helps to solve the exact problem. MVVM stands for Model(M) – View(V) – ViewModel(VM),  based on the interactions with in the three parties it should be called VVMM,  MVVM sounds more like MVC (Model-View-Controller) so the name. Why it should be called VVMM: View – View Model - Model WPF allows to create user interfaces using XAML and MVVM takes it to the next level by allowing complete separation of user interface and business logic. In WPF each view will have a property, DataContext when set to an instance of a class (which happens to be your view model) provides the data the view is interested in, i.e., view interacts with view model and at the same time view model interacts with view through DataContext. Sujith, if view and view model are interacting directly with each other how does MVVM is helping me separation of concerns? Well, the catch is DataContext is of type Object, since it is of type object view doesn’t know exact type of view model allowing views and views models to be loosely coupled. View models aggregate data from models (data access layer, services, etc) and make it available for views through properties, methods etc, i.e., View Models interact with Models. PRISM Prism is provided by Microsoft Patterns and Practices team and it can be downloaded from codeplex for source code,  samples and documentation on msdn.  The name composite implies, to compose user interface from different modules (views) without direct dependencies on each other, again allowing  loosely coupled development. Well Sujith, I can already do that with user controls, why shall I learn another framework?  That’s correct, you can decouple using user controls, but you still have to manage some amount of coupling, like how to do you communicate between the controls, how do you subscribe/unsubscribe, loading/unloading views dynamically. Prism is not a replacement for user controls, provides the following features which greatly help in designing the composite applications. Dependency Injection (DI)/ Inversion of Control (IoC) Modules Regions Event Aggregator  Commands Simply put, MVVM helps building a single view and Prism helps building an application using the views There are other open source alternatives to Prism, like MVVMLight, Cinch, take a look at them as well. Lets dig into the source code.  1. Solution The solution is made of the following projects Framework: Holds the common functionality in building applications using WPF and Prism TaxiClient: Start up project, boot strapping and app styling TaxiCommon: Helps with the business logic TaxiModules: Holds the meat of the application with views and view models TaxiTests: To test the application 2. DI / IoC Dependency Injection (DI) as the name implies refers to injecting dependencies and Inversion of Control (IoC) means the calling code has no direct control on the dependencies, opposite of normal way of programming where dependencies are passed by caller, i.e inversion; aside from some differences in terminology the concept is same in both the cases. The idea behind DI/IoC pattern is to reduce the amount of direct coupling between different components of the application, the higher the dependency the more tightly coupled the application resulting in code which is hard to modify, unit test and mock.  Initializing Dependency Injection through BootStrapper TaxiClient is the starting project of the solution and App (App.xaml)  is the starting class that gets called when you run the application. From the App’s OnStartup method we will invoke BootStrapper.   namespace TaxiClient { /// <summary> /// Interaction logic for App.xaml /// </summary> public partial class App : Application { protected override void OnStartup(StartupEventArgs e) { base.OnStartup(e);   (new BootStrapper()).Run(); } } } BootStrapper is your contact point for initializing the application including dependency injection, creating Shell and other frameworks. We are going to use Unity for DI and there are lot of open source DI frameworks like Spring.Net, StructureMap etc with different feature set  and you can choose a framework based on your preferences. Note that Prism comes with in built support for Unity, for example we are deriving from UnityBootStrapper in our case and for any other DI framework you have to extend the Prism appropriately   namespace TaxiClient { public class BootStrapper: UnityBootstrapper { protected override IModuleCatalog CreateModuleCatalog() { return new ConfigurationModuleCatalog(); } protected override DependencyObject CreateShell() { Framework.FrameworkBootStrapper.Run(Container, Application.Current.Dispatcher);   Shell shell = new Shell(); shell.ResizeMode = ResizeMode.NoResize; shell.Show();   return shell; } } } Lets take a look into  FrameworkBootStrapper to check out how to register with unity container. namespace Framework { public class FrameworkBootStrapper { public static void Run(IUnityContainer container, Dispatcher dispatcher) { UIDispatcher uiDispatcher = new UIDispatcher(dispatcher); container.RegisterInstance<IDispatcherService>(uiDispatcher);   container.RegisterType<IInjectSingleViewService, InjectSingleViewService>( new ContainerControlledLifetimeManager());   . . . } } } In the above code we are registering two components with unity container. You shall observe that we are following two different approaches, RegisterInstance and RegisterType.  With RegisterInstance we are registering an existing instance and the same instance will be returned for every request made for IDispatcherService   and with RegisterType we are requesting unity container to create an instance for us when required, i.e., when I request for an instance for IInjectSingleViewService, unity will create/return an instance of InjectSingleViewService class and with RegisterType we can configure the life time of the instance being created. With ContaienrControllerLifetimeManager, the unity container caches the instance and reuses for any subsequent requests, without recreating a new instance. Lets take a look into FareViewModel.cs and it’s constructor. The constructor takes one parameter IEventAggregator and if you try to find all references in your solution for IEventAggregator, you will not find a single location where an instance of EventAggregator is passed directly to the constructor. The compiler still finds an instance and works fine because Prism is already configured when used with Unity container to return an instance of EventAggregator when requested for IEventAggregator and in this particular case it is called constructor injection. public class FareViewModel:ObservableBase, IDataErrorInfo { ... private IEventAggregator _eventAggregator;   public FareViewModel(IEventAggregator eventAggregator) { _eventAggregator = eventAggregator; InitializePropertyNames(); InitializeModel(); PropertyChanged += OnPropertyChanged; } ... 3. Shell Shells are very similar in operation to Master Pages in asp.net or MDI in Windows Forms. And shells contain regions which display the views, you can have as many regions as you wish in a given view. You can also nest regions. i.e, one region can load a view which in itself may contain other regions. We have to create a shell at the start of the application and are doing it by overriding CreateShell method from BootStrapper From the following Shell.xaml you shall notice that we have two content controls with Region names as ‘MenuRegion’ and ‘MainRegion’.  The idea here is that you can inject any user controls into the regions dynamically, i.e., a Menu User Control for MenuRegion and based on the user action you can load appropriate view into MainRegion.    <Window x:Class="TaxiClient.Shell" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:Regions="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Practices.Prism.Regions;assembly=Microsoft.Practices.Prism" Title="Taxi" Height="370" Width="800"> <Grid Margin="2"> <ContentControl Regions:RegionManager.RegionName="MenuRegion" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" HorizontalContentAlignment="Stretch" VerticalContentAlignment="Stretch" />   <ContentControl Grid.Row="1" Regions:RegionManager.RegionName="MainRegion" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" HorizontalContentAlignment="Stretch" VerticalContentAlignment="Stretch" /> <!--<Border Grid.ColumnSpan="2" BorderThickness="2" CornerRadius="3" BorderBrush="LightBlue" />-->   </Grid> </Window> 4. Modules Prism provides the ability to build composite applications and modules play an important role in it. For example if you are building a Mortgage Loan Processor application with 3 components, i.e. customer’s credit history,  existing mortgages, new home/loan information; and consider that the customer’s credit history component involves gathering data about his/her address, background information, job details etc. The idea here using Prism modules is to separate the implementation of these 3 components into their own visual studio projects allowing to build components with no dependency on each other and independently. If we need to add another component to the application, the component can be developed by in house team or some other team in the organization by starting with a new Visual Studio project and adding to the solution at the run time with very little knowledge about the application. Prism modules are defined by implementing the IModule interface and each visual studio project to be considered as a module should implement the IModule interface.  From the BootStrapper.cs you shall observe that we are overriding the method by returning a ConfiguratingModuleCatalog which returns the modules that are registered for the application using the app.config file  and you can also add module using code. Lets take a look into configuration file.   <?xml version="1.0"?> <configuration> <configSections> <section name="modules" type="Microsoft.Practices.Prism.Modularity.ModulesConfigurationSection, Microsoft.Practices.Prism"/> </configSections> <modules> <module assemblyFile="TaxiModules.dll" moduleType="TaxiModules.ModuleInitializer, TaxiModules" moduleName="TaxiModules"/> </modules> </configuration> Here we are adding TaxiModules project to our solution and TaxiModules.ModuleInitializer implements IModule interface   5. Module Mapper With Prism modules you can dynamically add or remove modules from the regions, apart from that Prism also provides API to control adding/removing the views from a region within the same module. Taxi Information Screen: Engage the Taxi Screen: The sample application has two screens, ‘Taxi Information’ and ‘Engage the Taxi’ and they both reside in same module, TaxiModules. ‘Engage the Taxi’ is again made of two user controls, FareView on the left and TotalView on the right. We have created a Shell with two regions, MenuRegion and MainRegion with menu loaded into MenuRegion. We can create a wrapper user control called EngageTheTaxi made of FareView and TotalView and load either TaxiInfo or EngageTheTaxi into MainRegion based on the user action. Though it will work it tightly binds the user controls and for every combination of user controls, we need to create a dummy wrapper control to contain them. Instead we can apply the principles we learned so far from Shell/regions and introduce another template (LeftAndRightRegionView.xaml) made of two regions Region1 (left) and Region2 (right) and load  FareView and TotalView dynamically.  To help with loading of the views dynamically I have introduce an helper an interface, IInjectSingleViewService,  idea suggested by Mike Taulty, a must read blog for .Net developers. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.ComponentModel;   namespace Framework.PresentationUtility.Navigation {   public interface IInjectSingleViewService : INotifyPropertyChanged { IEnumerable<CommandViewDefinition> Commands { get; } IEnumerable<ModuleViewDefinition> Modules { get; }   void RegisterViewForRegion(string commandName, string viewName, string regionName, Type viewType); void ClearViewFromRegion(string viewName, string regionName); void RegisterModule(string moduleName, IList<ModuleMapper> moduleMappers); } } The Interface declares three methods to work with views: RegisterViewForRegion: Registers a view with a particular region. You can register multiple views and their regions under one command.  When this particular command is invoked all the views registered under it will be loaded into their regions. ClearViewFromRegion: To unload a specific view from a region. RegisterModule: The idea is when a command is invoked you can load the UI with set of controls in their default position and based on the user interaction, you can load different contols in to different regions on the fly.  And it is supported ModuleViewDefinition and ModuleMappers as shown below. namespace Framework.PresentationUtility.Navigation { public class ModuleViewDefinition { public string ModuleName { get; set; } public IList<ModuleMapper> ModuleMappers; public ICommand Command { get; set; } }   public class ModuleMapper { public string ViewName { get; set; } public string RegionName { get; set; } public Type ViewType { get; set; } } } 6. Event Aggregator Prism event aggregator enables messaging between components as in Observable pattern, Notifier notifies the Observer which receives notification it is interested in. When it comes to Observable pattern, Observer has to unsubscribes for notifications when it no longer interested in notifications, which allows the Notifier to remove the Observer’s reference from it’s local cache. Though .Net has managed garbage collection it cannot remove inactive the instances referenced by an active instance resulting in memory leak, keeping the Observers in memory as long as Notifier stays in memory.  Developers have to be very careful to unsubscribe when necessary and it often gets overlooked, to overcome these problems Prism Event Aggregator uses weak references to cache the reference (Observer in this case)  and releases the reference (memory) once the instance goes out of scope. Using event aggregator is very simple, declare a generic type of CompositePresenationEvent by inheriting from it. using Microsoft.Practices.Prism.Events; using TaxiCommon.BAO;   namespace TaxiCommon.CompositeEvents { public class TaxiOnMoveEvent:CompositePresentationEvent<TaxiOnMove> { } }   TaxiOnMove.cs includes the properties which we want to exchange between the parties, FareView and TotalView. using System;   namespace TaxiCommon.BAO { public class TaxiOnMove { public TimeSpan MinutesAtTweleveMPH { get; set; } public double MilesAtSixMPH { get; set; } } }   Lets take a look into FareViewodel (Notifier) and how it raises the event.  Here we are raising the event by getting the event through GetEvent<..>() and publishing it with the payload private void OnAddMinutes(object obj) { TaxiOnMove payload = new TaxiOnMove(); if(MilesAtSixMPH != null) payload.MilesAtSixMPH = MilesAtSixMPH.Value; if(MinutesAtTweleveMPH != null) payload.MinutesAtTweleveMPH = new TimeSpan(0,0,MinutesAtTweleveMPH.Value,0);   _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiOnMoveEvent>().Publish(payload); ResetMinutesAndMiles(); } And TotalViewModel(Observer) subscribes to notifications by getting the event through GetEvent<..>() namespace TaxiModules.ViewModels { public class TotalViewModel:ObservableBase { .... private IEventAggregator _eventAggregator;   public TotalViewModel(IEventAggregator eventAggregator) { _eventAggregator = eventAggregator; ... }   private void SubscribeToEvents() { _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiStartedEvent>() .Subscribe(OnTaxiStarted, ThreadOption.UIThread,false,(filter) => true); _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiOnMoveEvent>() .Subscribe(OnTaxiMove, ThreadOption.UIThread, false, (filter) => true); _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiResetEvent>() .Subscribe(OnTaxiReset, ThreadOption.UIThread, false, (filter) => true); }   ... private void OnTaxiMove(TaxiOnMove taxiOnMove) { OnMoveFare fare = new OnMoveFare(taxiOnMove); Fares.Add(fare); SetTotalFare(new []{fare}); }   .... 7. MVVM through example In this section we are going to look into MVVM implementation through example.  I have all the modules declared in a single project, TaxiModules, again it is not necessary to have them into one project. Once the user logs into the application, will be greeted with the ‘Engage the Taxi’ screen which is made of two user controls, FareView.xaml and TotalView.Xaml. As you can see from the solution explorer, each of them have their own code behind files and  ViewModel classes, FareViewMode.cs, TotalViewModel.cs Lets take a look in to the FareView and how it interacts with FareViewModel using MVVM implementation. FareView.xaml acts as a view and FareViewMode.cs is it’s view model. The FareView code behind class   namespace TaxiModules.Views { /// <summary> /// Interaction logic for FareView.xaml /// </summary> public partial class FareView : UserControl { public FareView(FareViewModel viewModel) { InitializeComponent(); this.Loaded += (s, e) => { this.DataContext = viewModel; }; } } } The FareView is bound to FareViewModel through the data context  and you shall observe that DataContext is of type Object, i.e. the FareView doesn’t really know the type of ViewModel (FareViewModel). This helps separation of View and ViewModel as View and ViewModel are independent of each other, you can bind FareView to FareViewModel2 as well and the application compiles just fine. Lets take a look into FareView xaml file  <UserControl x:Class="TaxiModules.Views.FareView" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:Toolkit="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Windows.Controls;assembly=WPFToolkit" xmlns:Commands="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Practices.Prism.Commands;assembly=Microsoft.Practices.Prism"> <Grid Margin="10" > ....   <Border Style="{DynamicResource innerBorder}" Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="0" Grid.RowSpan="11" Grid.ColumnSpan="2" Panel.ZIndex="1"/>   <Label Grid.Row="0" Content="Engage the Taxi" Style="{DynamicResource innerHeader}"/> <Label Grid.Row="1" Content="Select the State"/> <ComboBox Grid.Row="1" Grid.Column="1" ItemsSource="{Binding States}" Height="auto"> <ComboBox.ItemTemplate> <DataTemplate> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Name}"/> </DataTemplate> </ComboBox.ItemTemplate> <ComboBox.SelectedItem> <Binding Path="SelectedState" Mode="TwoWay"/> </ComboBox.SelectedItem> </ComboBox> <Label Grid.Row="2" Content="Select the Date of Entry"/> <Toolkit:DatePicker Grid.Row="2" Grid.Column="1" SelectedDate="{Binding DateOfEntry, ValidatesOnDataErrors=true}" /> <Label Grid.Row="3" Content="Enter time 24hr format"/> <TextBox Grid.Row="3" Grid.Column="1" Text="{Binding TimeOfEntry, TargetNullValue=''}"/> <Button Grid.Row="4" Grid.Column="1" Content="Start the Meter" Commands:Click.Command="{Binding StartMeterCommand}" />   <Label Grid.Row="5" Content="Run the Taxi" Style="{DynamicResource innerHeader}"/> <Label Grid.Row="6" Content="Number of Miles &lt;@6mph"/> <TextBox Grid.Row="6" Grid.Column="1" Text="{Binding MilesAtSixMPH, TargetNullValue='', ValidatesOnDataErrors=true}"/> <Label Grid.Row="7" Content="Number of Minutes @12mph"/> <TextBox Grid.Row="7" Grid.Column="1" Text="{Binding MinutesAtTweleveMPH, TargetNullValue=''}"/> <Button Grid.Row="8" Grid.Column="1" Content="Add Minutes and Miles " Commands:Click.Command="{Binding AddMinutesCommand}"/> <Label Grid.Row="9" Content="Other Operations" Style="{DynamicResource innerHeader}"/> <Button Grid.Row="10" Grid.Column="1" Content="Reset the Meter" Commands:Click.Command="{Binding ResetCommand}"/>   </Grid> </UserControl> The highlighted code from the above code shows data binding, for example ComboBox which displays list of states has it’s ItemsSource bound to States property, with DataTemplate bound to Name and SelectedItem  to SelectedState. You might be wondering what are all these properties and how it is able to bind to them.  The answer lies in data context, i.e., when you bound a control, WPF looks for data context on the root object (Grid in this case) and if it can’t find data context it will look into root’s root, i.e. FareView UserControl and it is bound to FareViewModel.  Each of those properties have be declared on the ViewModel for the View to bind correctly. To put simply, View is bound to ViewModel through data context of type object and every control that is bound on the View actually binds to the public property on the ViewModel. Lets look into the ViewModel code (the following code is not an exact copy of FareViewMode.cs, pasted relevant code for this section)   namespace TaxiModules.ViewModels { public class FareViewModel:ObservableBase, IDataErrorInfo { public List<USState> States { get { return USStates.StateList; } }   public USState SelectedState { get { return _selectedState; } set { _selectedState = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_selectedStatePropertyName); } }   public DateTime? DateOfEntry { get { return _dateOfEntry; } set { _dateOfEntry = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_dateOfEntryPropertyName); } }   public TimeSpan? TimeOfEntry { get { return _timeOfEntry; } set { _timeOfEntry = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_timeOfEntryPropertyName); } }   public double? MilesAtSixMPH { get { return _milesAtSixMPH; } set { _milesAtSixMPH = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_distanceAtSixMPHPropertyName); } }   public int? MinutesAtTweleveMPH { get { return _minutesAtTweleveMPH; } set { _minutesAtTweleveMPH = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_minutesAtTweleveMPHPropertyName); } }   public ICommand StartMeterCommand { get { if(_startMeterCommand == null) { _startMeterCommand = new DelegateCommand<object>(OnStartMeter, CanStartMeter); } return _startMeterCommand; } }   public ICommand AddMinutesCommand { get { if(_addMinutesCommand == null) { _addMinutesCommand = new DelegateCommand<object>(OnAddMinutes, CanAddMinutes); } return _addMinutesCommand; } }   public ICommand ResetCommand { get { if(_resetCommand == null) { _resetCommand = new DelegateCommand<object>(OnResetCommand); } return _resetCommand; } }   } private void OnStartMeter(object obj) { _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiStartedEvent>().Publish( new TaxiStarted() { EngagedOn = DateOfEntry.Value.Date + TimeOfEntry.Value, EngagedState = SelectedState.Value });   _isMeterStarted = true; OnPropertyChanged(this,null); } And views communicate user actions like button clicks, tree view item selections, etc using commands. When user clicks on ‘Start the Meter’ button it invokes the method StartMeterCommand, which calls the method OnStartMeter which publishes the event to TotalViewModel using event aggregator  and TaxiStartedEvent. namespace TaxiModules.ViewModels { public class TotalViewModel:ObservableBase { ... private IEventAggregator _eventAggregator;   public TotalViewModel(IEventAggregator eventAggregator) { _eventAggregator = eventAggregator;   InitializePropertyNames(); InitializeModel(); SubscribeToEvents(); }   public decimal? TotalFare { get { return _totalFare; } set { _totalFare = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_totalFarePropertyName); } } .... private void SubscribeToEvents() { _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiStartedEvent>().Subscribe(OnTaxiStarted, ThreadOption.UIThread,false,(filter) => true); _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiOnMoveEvent>().Subscribe(OnTaxiMove, ThreadOption.UIThread, false, (filter) => true); _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiResetEvent>().Subscribe(OnTaxiReset, ThreadOption.UIThread, false, (filter) => true); }   private void OnTaxiStarted(TaxiStarted taxiStarted) { Fares.Add(new EntryFare()); Fares.Add(new StateTaxFare(taxiStarted)); Fares.Add(new NightSurchargeFare(taxiStarted)); Fares.Add(new PeakHourWeekdayFare(taxiStarted));   SetTotalFare(Fares); }   private void SetTotalFare(IEnumerable<IFare> fares) { TotalFare = (_totalFare ?? 0) + TaxiFareHelper.GetTotalFare(fares); } ....   } }   TotalViewModel subscribes to events, TaxiStartedEvent and rest. When TaxiStartedEvent gets invoked it calls the OnTaxiStarted method which sets the total fare which includes entry fee, state tax, nightly surcharge, peak hour weekday fare.   Note that TotalViewModel derives from ObservableBase which implements the method RaisePropertyChanged which we are invoking in Set of TotalFare property, i.e, once we update the TotalFare property it raises an the event that  allows the TotalFare text box to fetch the new value through the data context. ViewModel is communicating with View through data context and it has no knowledge about View, helping in loose coupling of ViewModel and View.   I have attached the source code (.Net 4.0, Prism 4.0, VS 2010) , download and play with it and don’t forget to leave your comments.  

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• Removing the XML Formatter from ASP.NET Web API Applications

  - by Rick Strahl

  ASP.NET Web API's default output format is supposed to be JSON, but when I access my Web APIs using the browser address bar I'm always seeing an XML result instead. When working on AJAX application I like to test many of my AJAX APIs with the browser while working on them. While I can't debug all requests this way, GET requests are easy to test in the browser especially if you have JSON viewing options set up in your various browsers. If I preview a Web API request in most browsers I get an XML response like this: Why is that? Web API checks the HTTP Accept headers of a request to determine what type of output it should return by looking for content typed that it has formatters registered for. This automatic negotiation is one of the great features of Web API because it makes it easy and transparent to request different kinds of output from the server. In the case of browsers it turns out that most send Accept headers that look like this (Chrome in this case): Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8 Web API inspects the entire list of headers from left to right (plus the quality/priority flag q=) and tries to find a media type that matches its list of supported media types in the list of formatters registered. In this case it matches application/xml to the Xml formatter and so that's what gets returned and displayed. To verify that Web API indeed defaults to JSON output by default you can open the request in Fiddler and pop it into the Request Composer, remove the application/xml header and see that the output returned comes back in JSON instead. An accept header like this: Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,*/*;q=0.9 or leaving the Accept header out altogether should give you a JSON response. Interestingly enough Internet Explorer 9 also displays JSON because it doesn't include an application/xml Accept header: Accept: text/html, application/xhtml+xml, */* which for once actually seems more sensible. Removing the XML Formatter We can't easily change the browser Accept headers (actually you can by delving into the config but it's a bit of a hassle), so can we change the behavior on the server? When working on AJAX applications I tend to not be interested in XML results and I always want to see JSON results at least during development. Web API uses a collection of formatters and you can go through this list and remove the ones you don't want to use - in this case the XmlMediaTypeFormatter. To do this you can work with the HttpConfiguration object and the static GlobalConfiguration object used to configure it: protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { // Action based routing (used for RPC calls) RouteTable.Routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "StockApi", routeTemplate: "stocks/{action}/{symbol}", defaults: new { symbol = RouteParameter.Optional, controller = "StockApi" } ); // WebApi Configuration to hook up formatters and message handlers RegisterApis(GlobalConfiguration.Configuration); } public static void RegisterApis(HttpConfiguration config) { // remove default Xml handler var matches = config.Formatters .Where(f = f.SupportedMediaTypes .Where(m = m.MediaType.ToString() == "application/xml" || m.MediaType.ToString() == "text/xml") .Count() 0) .ToList() ; foreach (var match in matches) config.Formatters.Remove(match); } } That LINQ code is quite a mouthful of nested collections, but it does the trick to remove the formatter based on the content type. You can also look for the specific formatter (XmlMediatTypeFormatter) by its type name which is simpler, but it's better to search for the supported types as this will work even if there are other custom formatters added. Once removed, now the browser request results in a JSON response: It's a simple solution to a small debugging task that's made my life easier. Maybe you find it useful too…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Web Api  ASP.NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Add Your Gmail Account to Outlook 2010 Using IMAP

  - by Mysticgeek

  If you’re upgrading from Outlook 2003 to 2010, you might want to use IMAP with your Gmail account to synchronize mail across multiple machines. Using our guide, you will be able to start using it in no time. Enable IMAP in Gmail First log into your Gmail account and open the Settings panel. Click on the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab and verify IMAP is enabled and save changes. Next open Outlook 2010, click on the File tab to access the Backstage view. Click on Account Settings and Add and remove accounts or change existing connection settings. In the Account Settings window click on the New button. Enter in your name, email address, and password twice then click Next. Outlook will configure the email server settings, the amount of time it takes will vary. Provided everything goes correctly, the configuration will be successful and you can begin using your account. Manually Configure IMAP Settings If the above instructions don’t work, then we’ll need to manually configure the settings. Again, go into Auto Account Setup and select Manually configure server settings or additional server types and click Next.   Select Internet E-mail – Connect to POP or IMAP server to send and receive e-mail messages. Now we need to manually enter in our settings similar to the following. Under the Server Information section verify the following. Account Type: IMAP Incoming mail server: imap.gmail.com Outgoing mail server (SMTP): smtp.gmail.com Note: If you have a Google Apps account make sure to put the full email address ([email protected]) in the Your Name and User Name fields. Note: If you live outside of the US you might need to use imap.googlemail.com and smtp.googlemail.com Next, we need to click on the More Settings button… In the Internet E-mail Settings screen that pops up, click on the Outgoing Server tab, and check the box next to My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication. Also select the radio button next to Use same settings as my incoming mail server. In the same window click on the Advanced tab and verify the following. Incoming server: 993 Incoming server encrypted connection: SSL Outgoing server encrypted connection TLS Outgoing server: 587 Note: You will need to change the Outgoing server encrypted connection first, otherwise it will default back to port 25. Also, if TLS doesn’t work, we were able to successfully use Auto. Click OK when finished. Now we want to test the settings, before continuing on…it’s just easier that way incase something was entered incorrectly. To make sure the settings are tested, check the box Test Account Settings by clicking the Next button. If you’ve entered everything in correctly, both tasks will be completed successfully and you can close out of the window. and begin using your account via Outlook 2010. You’ll get a final congratulations message you can close out of… And begin using your account via Outlook 2010. Conclusion Using IMAP allows you to synchronize email across multiple machines and devices. The IMAP feature in Gmail is free to use, and this should get you started using it with Outlook 2010. If you’re still using 2007 or just upgraded to it, check out our guide on how to use Gmail IMAP in Outlook 2007. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Add Your Gmail To Windows Live MailForce Outlook 2007 to Download Complete IMAP ItemsUse Gmail IMAP in Microsoft Outlook 2007Prevent Outlook with Gmail IMAP from Showing Duplicate Tasks in the To-Do BarSetting up Gmail IMAP Support for Windows Vista Mail TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Cool Looking Skins for Windows Media Player 12 Move the Mouse Pointer With Your Face Movement Using eViacam Boot Windows Faster With Boot Performance Diagnostics Create Ringtones For Your Android Phone With RingDroid Enhance Your Laptop’s Battery Life With These Tips Easily Search Food Recipes With Recipe Chimp

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• Edit Text in a Webpage with Internet Explorer 8

  - by Matthew Guay

  Internet Explorer is often decried as the worst browser for web developers, but IE8 actually offers a very nice set of developer tools.  Here we’ll look at a unique way to use them to edit the text on any webpage. How to edit text in a webpage IE8’s developer tools make it easy to make changes to a webpage and view them directly.  Simply browse to the webpage of your choice, and press the F12 key on your keyboard.  Alternately, you can click the Tools button, and select Developer tools from the list. This opens the developer tools.  To do our editing, we want to select the mouse button on the toolbar “Select Element by Click” tool. Now, click on any spot of the webpage in IE8 that you want to edit.  Here, let’s edit the footer of Google.com.  Notice it places a blue box around any element you hover over to make it easy to choose exactly what you want to edit. In the developer tools window, the element you selected before is now highlighted.  Click the plus button beside that entry if the text you want to edit is not visible.   Now, click the text you wish to change, and enter what you wish in the box.  For fun, we changed the copyright to say “©2010 Microsoft”. Go back to IE to see the changes on the page! You can also change a link on a page this way: Or you can even change the text on a button: Here’s our edited Google.com: This may be fun for playing a trick on someone or simply for a funny screenshot, but it can be very useful, too.  You could test how changes in fontsize would change how a website looks, or see how a button would look with a different label.  It can also be useful when taking screenshots.  For instance, if I want to show a friend how to do something in Gmail but don’t want to reveal my email address, I could edit the text on the top right before I took the screenshot.  Here I changed my Gmail address to [email protected]. Please note that the changes will disappear when you reload the page.  You can save your changes from the developer tools window, though, and reopen the page from your computer if you wish. We have found this trick very helpful at times, and it can be very fun too!  Enjoy it, and let us know how you used it to help you! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Edit Webpage Text Areas in Your Favorite Text EditorRemove Webpage Formatting or View the HTML Code When Copying in FirefoxChange the Default Editor From Nano on Ubuntu LinuxShare Text & Images the Easy Way with JustPaste.itEditPad Lite – All Purpose Tabbed Text Editor TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Enable Check Box Selection in Windows 7 OnlineOCR – Free OCR Service Betting on the Blind Side, a Vanity Fair article 30 Minimal Logo Designs that Say More with Less LEGO Digital Designer – Free Create a Personal Website Quickly using Flavors.me

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• Edit Text in a Webpage with Internet Explorer 8

  - by Matthew Guay

  Internet Explorer is often decried as the worst browser for web developers, but IE8 actually offers a very nice set of developer tools.  Here we’ll look at a unique way to use them to edit the text on any webpage. How to edit text in a webpage IE8’s developer tools make it easy to make changes to a webpage and view them directly.  Simply browse to the webpage of your choice, and press the F12 key on your keyboard.  Alternately, you can click the Tools button, and select Developer tools from the list. This opens the developer tools.  To do our editing, we want to select the mouse button on the toolbar “Select Element by Click” tool. Now, click on any spot of the webpage in IE8 that you want to edit.  Here, let’s edit the footer of Google.com.  Notice it places a blue box around any element you hover over to make it easy to choose exactly what you want to edit. In the developer tools window, the element you selected before is now highlighted.  Click the plus button beside that entry if the text you want to edit is not visible.   Now, click the text you wish to change, and enter what you wish in the box.  For fun, we changed the copyright to say “©2010 Microsoft”. Go back to IE to see the changes on the page! You can also change a link on a page this way: Or you can even change the text on a button: Here’s our edited Google.com: This may be fun for playing a trick on someone or simply for a funny screenshot, but it can be very useful, too.  You could test how changes in fontsize would change how a website looks, or see how a button would look with a different label.  It can also be useful when taking screenshots.  For instance, if I want to show a friend how to do something in Gmail but don’t want to reveal my email address, I could edit the text on the top right before I took the screenshot.  Here I changed my Gmail address to [email protected]. Please note that the changes will disappear when you reload the page.  You can save your changes from the developer tools window, though, and reopen the page from your computer if you wish. We have found this trick very helpful at times, and it can be very fun too!  Enjoy it, and let us know how you used it to help you! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Edit Webpage Text Areas in Your Favorite Text EditorRemove Webpage Formatting or View the HTML Code When Copying in FirefoxChange the Default Editor From Nano on Ubuntu LinuxShare Text & Images the Easy Way with JustPaste.itEditPad Lite – All Purpose Tabbed Text Editor TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Enable Check Box Selection in Windows 7 OnlineOCR – Free OCR Service Betting on the Blind Side, a Vanity Fair article 30 Minimal Logo Designs that Say More with Less LEGO Digital Designer – Free Create a Personal Website Quickly using Flavors.me

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• 26 Days: Countdown to Oracle OpenWorld 2012

  - by Michael Snow

  Welcome to our countdown to Oracle OpenWorld! Oracle OpenWorld 2012 is just around the corner. In less than 26 days, San Francisco will be invaded by an expected 50,000 people from all over the world. Here on the Oracle WebCenter team, we’ve all been working to help make the experience a great one for all our WebCenter customers. For a sneak peak  – we’ll be spending this week giving you a teaser of what to look forward to if you are joining us in San Francisco from September 30th through October 4th. We have Oracle WebCenter sessions covering all topics imaginable. Take a look and use the tools we provide to build out your schedule in advance and reserve your seats in your favorite sessions.  That gives you plenty of time to plan for your week with us in San Francisco. If unfortunately, your boss denied your request to attend - there are still some ways that you can join in the experience virtually On-Demand. This year - we are expanding even more up North of Market Street and will be taking over Union Square as well. Check out this map of San Francisco to get a sense of how much of a footprint Oracle OpenWorld has grown to this year. With so much to see and so many sessions to learn from - its no wonder that people get excited. Add to that a good mix of fun and all of the possible WebCenter sessions you could attend - you won't want to sleep at all to take full advantage of such an opportunity. We'll also have our annual WebCenter Customer Appreciation reception - stay tuned this week for some more info on registration to make sure you'll be able to join us. If you've been following the America's Cup at all and believe in EXTREME PERFORMANCE you'll definitely want to take a look at this video from last year's OpenWorld Keynote. 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Important OpenWorld Links:  Attendee / Presenters Toolkit Oracle Schedule Builder WebCenter Sessions (listed in the catalog under Fusion Middleware as "Portals, Sites, Content, and Collaboration" ) Oracle Music Festival - AMAZING Line up!!  Oracle Customer Appreciation Night -LOOK HERE!! Oracle OpenWorld LIVE On-Demand Here are all the WebCenter sessions broken down by day for your viewing pleasure. Monday, October 1st CON8885 - Simplify CRM Engagement with Contextual Collaboration Are your sales teams disconnected and disengaged? Do you want a tool for easily connecting expertise across your organization and providing visibility into the complete sales process? Do you want a way to enhance and retain organization knowledge? Oracle Social Network is the answer. Attend this session to learn how to make CRM easy, effective, and efficient for use across virtual sales teams. Also learn how Oracle Social Network can drive sales force collaboration with natural conversations throughout the sales cycle, promote sales team productivity through purposeful social networking without the noise, and build cross-team knowledge by integrating conversations with CRM and other business applications. CON8268 - Oracle WebCenter Strategy: Engaging Your Customers. Empowering Your Business Oracle WebCenter is a user engagement platform for social business, connecting people and information. Attend this session to learn about the Oracle WebCenter strategy, and understand where Oracle is taking the platform to help companies engage customers, empower employees, and enable partners. Business success starts with ensuring that everyone is engaged with the right people and the right information and can access what they need through the channel of their choice—Web, mobile, or social. Are you giving customers, employees, and partners the best-possible experience? Come learn how you can! ¶ HOL10208 - Add Social Capabilities to Your Enterprise Applications Oracle Social Network enables you to add real-time collaboration capabilities into your enterprise applications, so that conversations can happen directly within your business systems. In this hands-on lab, you will try out the Oracle Social Network product to collaborate with other attendees, using real-time conversations with document sharing capabilities. Next you will embed social capabilities into a sample Web-based enterprise application, using embedded UI components. Experts will also write simple REST-based integrations, using the Oracle Social Network API to programmatically create social interactions. ¶ CON8893 - Improve Employee Productivity with Intuitive and Social Work Environments Social technologies have already transformed the ways customers, employees, partners, and suppliers communicate and stay informed. Forward-thinking organizations today need technologies and infrastructures to help them advance to the next level and integrate social activities with business applications to deliver a user experience that simplifies business processes and enterprise application engagement. Attend this session to hear from an innovative Oracle Social Network customer and learn how you can improve productivity with intuitive and social work environments and empower your employees with innovative social tools to enable contextual access to content and dynamic personalization of solutions. ¶ CON8270 - Oracle WebCenter Content Strategy and Vision Oracle WebCenter provides a strategic content infrastructure for managing documents, images, e-mails, and rich media files. With a single repository, organizations can address any content use case, such as accounts payable, HR onboarding, document management, compliance, records management, digital asset management, or Website management. In this session, learn about future plans for how Oracle WebCenter will address new use cases as well as new integrations with Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Applications, leveraging your investments by making your users more productive and error-free. ¶ CON8269 - Oracle WebCenter Sites Strategy and Vision Oracle’s Web experience management solution, Oracle WebCenter Sites, enables organizations to use the online channel to drive customer acquisition and brand loyalty. It helps marketers and business users easily create and manage contextually relevant, social, interactive online experiences across multiple channels on a global scale. In this session, learn about future plans for how Oracle WebCenter Sites will provide you with the tools, capabilities, and integrations you need in order to continue to address your customers’ evolving requirements for engaging online experiences and keep moving your business forward. ¶ CON8896 - Living with SharePoint SharePoint is a popular platform, but it’s not always the best fit for Oracle customers. In this session, you’ll discover the technical and nontechnical limitations and pitfalls of SharePoint and learn about Oracle alternatives for collaboration, portals, enterprise and Web content management, social computing, and application integration. The presentation shows you how to integrate with SharePoint when business or IT requirements dictate and covers cloud-based (Office 365) and on-premises versions of SharePoint. Presented by a former Microsoft director of SharePoint product management and backed by independent customer research, this session will prepare you to answer the question “Why don’t we just use SharePoint for that?’ the next time it comes up in your organization. ¶ CON7843 - Content-Enabling Enterprise Processes with Oracle WebCenter Organizations today continually strive to automate business processes, reduce costs, and improve efficiency. Many business processes are content-intensive and unstructured, requiring ad hoc collaboration, and distributed in nature, requiring many approvals and generating huge volumes of paper. In this session, learn how Oracle and SYSTIME have partnered to help a customer content-enable its enterprise with Oracle WebCenter Content and Oracle WebCenter Imaging 11g and integrate them with Oracle Applications. ¶ CON6114 - Tape Robotics’ Newest Superhero: Now Fueled by Oracle Software For small, midsize, and rapidly growing businesses that want the most energy-efficient, scalable storage infrastructure to meet their rapidly growing data demands, Oracle’s most recent addition to its award-winning tape portfolio leverages several pieces of Oracle software. With Oracle Linux, Oracle WebLogic, and Oracle Fusion Middleware tools, the library achieves a higher level of usability than previous products while offering customers a familiar interface for management, plus ease of use. This session examines the competitive advantages of the tape library and how Oracle software raises customer satisfaction. Learn how the combination of Oracle engineered systems, Oracle Secure Backup, and Oracle’s StorageTek tape libraries provide end-to-end coverage of your data. ¶ CON9437 - Mobile Access Management With more than five billion mobile devices on the planet and an increasing number of users using their own devices to access corporate data and applications, securely extending identity management to mobile devices has become a hot topic. This session focuses on how to extend your existing identity management infrastructure and policies to securely and seamlessly enable mobile user access. CON7815 - Customer Experience Online in Cloud: Oracle WebCenter Sites, Oracle ATG Apps, Oracle Exalogic Oracle WebCenter Sites and Oracle’s ATG product line together can provide a compelling marketing and e-commerce experience. When you couple them with the extreme performance of Oracle Exalogic, you’ll see unmatched scalability that provides you with a true cloud-based solution. In this session, you’ll learn how running Oracle WebCenter Sites and ATG applications on Oracle Exalogic delivers both a private and a public cloud experience. Find out what it takes to get these systems working together and delivering engaging Web experiences. Even if you aren’t considering Oracle Exalogic today, the rich Web experience of Oracle WebCenter, paired with the depth of the ATG product line, can provide your business full support, from merchandising through sale completion. ¶ CON8271 - Oracle WebCenter Portal Strategy and Vision To innovate and keep a competitive edge, organizations need to leverage the power of agile and responsive Web applications. Oracle WebCenter Portal enables you to do just that, by delivering intuitive user experiences for enterprise applications to drive innovation with composite applications and mashups. Attend this session to learn firsthand from customers how Oracle WebCenter Portal extends the value of existing enterprise applications, business processes, and content; delivers a superior business user experience; and maximizes limited IT resources. ¶ CON8880 - The Connected Customer Experience Begins with the Online Channel There’s a lot of talk these days about how to connect the customer journey across various touchpoints—from Websites and e-commerce to call centers and in-store—to provide experiences that are more relevant and engaging and ultimately gain competitive edge. Doing it all at once isn’t a realistic objective, so where do you start? Come to this session, and hear about three steps you can take that can help you begin your journey toward delivering the connected customer experience. You’ll hear how Oracle now has an integrated digital marketing platform for your corporate Website, your e-commerce site, your self-service portal, and your marketing and loyalty campaigns, and you’ll learn what you can do today to begin executing on your customer experience initiatives. ¶ GEN11451 - General Session: Building Mobile Applications with Oracle Cloud With the prevalence of smart mobile devices, companies are facing an increased demand to provide access to data and applications from new channels. However, developing applications for mobile devices poses some unique challenges. Come to this session to learn how Oracle addresses these challenges, offering a simpler way to develop and deploy cross-device mobile applications. See how Oracle Cloud enables you to access applications, data, and services from mobile channels in an easier way.  CON8272 - Oracle Social Network Strategy and Vision One key way of increasing employee productivity is by bringing people, processes, and information together—providing new social capabilities to enable business users to quickly correspond and collaborate on business activities. Oracle WebCenter provides a user engagement platform with social and collaborative technologies to empower business users to focus on their key business processes, applications, and content in the context of their role and process. Attend this session to hear how the latest social capabilities in Oracle Social Network are enabling organizations to transform themselves into social businesses.  --- Tuesday, October 2nd HOL10194 - Enterprise Content Management Simplified: Oracle WebCenter Content’s Next-Generation UI Regardless of the nature of your business, unstructured content underpins many of its daily functions. Whether you are working with traditional presentations, spreadsheets, or text documents—or even with digital assets such as images and multimedia files—your content needs to be accessible and manageable in convenient and intuitive ways to make working with the content easier. Additionally, you need the ability to easily share documents with coworkers to facilitate a collaborative working environment. Come to this session to see how Oracle WebCenter Content’s next-generation user interface helps modern knowledge workers easily manage personal and enterprise documents in a collaborative environment.¶ CON8877 - Develop a Mobile Strategy with Oracle WebCenter: Engage Customers, Employees, and Partners Mobile technology has gone from nice-to-have to a cornerstone of user engagement. Mobile access enables users to have information available at their fingertips, enabling them to take action the moment they make a decision, interact in the moment of convenience, and take advantage of new service offerings in their preferred channels. All your employees have your mobile applications in their pocket; now what are you going to do? It is a critical step for companies to think through what their employees, customers, and partners really need on their devices. Attend this session to see how Oracle WebCenter enables you to better engage your customers, employees, and partners by providing a unified experience across multiple channels. ¶ CON9447 - Enabling Access for Hundreds of Millions of Users How do you grow your business by identifying, authenticating, authorizing, and federating users on the Web, leveraging social identity and the open source OAuth protocol? How do you scale your access management solution to support hundreds of millions of users? With social identity support out of the box, Oracle’s access management solution is also benchmarked for 250-million-user deployment according to real-world customer scenarios. In this session, you will learn about the social identity capability and the 250-million-user benchmark testing of Oracle Access Manager and Oracle Adaptive Access Manager running on Oracle Exalogic and Oracle Exadata. ¶ HOL10207 - Build an Intranet Portal with Oracle WebCenter In this hands-on lab, you’ll work with Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle WebCenter Content to build out an enterprise portal that maximizes the productivity of teams and individual contributors. Using browser-based tools, you’ll manage site resources such as page styles, templates, and navigation. You’ll edit content stored in Oracle WebCenter Content directly from your portal. You’ll also experience the latest features that promote collaboration, social networking, and personal productivity. ¶ CON2906 - Get Proactive: Best Practices for Maintaining Oracle Fusion Middleware You chose Oracle Fusion Middleware products to help your organization deliver superior business results. Now learn how to take full advantage of your software with all the great tools, resources, and product updates you’re entitled to through Oracle Support. In this session, Oracle product experts provide proven best practices to help you work more efficiently, plan and prepare for upgrades and patching more effectively, and manage risk. Topics include configuration management tools, remote diagnostics, My Oracle Support Community, and My Oracle Support Lifecycle Advisors. New users and Oracle Fusion Middleware experts alike are guaranteed to leave with fresh ideas and practical, easy-to-implement next steps. ¶ CON8878 - Oracle WebCenter’s Cloud Strategy: From Social and Platform Services to Mashups Cloud computing represents a paradigm shift in how we build applications, automate processes, collaborate, and share and in how we secure our enterprise. Additionally, as you adopt cloud-based services in your organization, it’s likely that you will still have many critical on-premises applications running. With these mixed environments, multiple user interfaces, different security, and multiple datasources and content sources, how do you start evolving your strategy to account for these challenges? Oracle WebCenter offers a complete array of technologies enabling you to solve these challenges and prepare you for the cloud. Attend this session to learn how you can use Oracle WebCenter in the cloud as well as create on-premises and cloud application mash-ups. ¶ CON8901 - Optimize Enterprise Business Processes with Oracle WebCenter and Oracle BPM Do you have business processes that span multiple applications? Are you grappling with how to have visibility across these business processes; how to manage content that is associated with these processes; and, most importantly, how to model and optimize these business processes? Attend this session to hear how Oracle WebCenter and Oracle Business Process Management provide a unique set of integrated solutions to provide a composite application dashboard across these business processes and offer a solution for content-centric business processes. ¶ CON8883 - Deliver Engaging Interfaces to Oracle Applications with Oracle WebCenter Critical business processes live within enterprise applications, and application users need to manage and execute these processes as effectively as possible. Oracle provides a comprehensive user engagement platform to increase user productivity and optimize overall processes within Oracle Applications—Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle’s Siebel, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards product families—and third-party applications. Attend this session to learn how you can integrate these applications with Oracle WebCenter to deliver composite application dashboards to your end users—whether they are your customers, partners, or employees—for enhanced usability and Web 2.0–enabled enterprise portals.¶ Wednesday, October 3rd CON8895 - Future-Ready Intranets: How Aramark Re-engineered the Application Landscape There are essential techniques and technologies you can use to deliver employee portals that garner higher productivity, improve business efficiency, and increase user engagement. Attend this session to learn how you can leverage Oracle WebCenter Portal as a user engagement platform for bringing together business process management, enterprise content management, and business intelligence into a highly relevant and integrated experience. Hear how Aramark has leveraged Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle WebCenter Content to deliver a unified workspace providing simpler navigation and processing, consolidation of tools, easy access to information, integrated search, and single sign-on. ¶ CON8886 - Content Consolidation: Save Money, Increase Efficiency, and Eliminate Silos Organizations are looking for ways to save money and be more efficient. With content in many different places, it’s difficult to know where to look for a document and whether the document is the most current version. With Oracle WebCenter, content can be consolidated into one best-of-breed repository that is secure, scalable, and integrated with your business processes and applications. Users can find the content they need, where they need it, and ensure that it is the right content. This session covers content challenges that affect your business; content consolidation that can lead to savings in storage and administration costs and can lower risks; and how companies are realizing savings. ¶ CON8911 - Improve Online Experiences for Customers and Partners with Self-Service Portals Are you able to provide your customers and partners an easy-to-use online self-service experience? Are you processing high-volume transactions and struggling with call center bottlenecks or back-end systems that won’t integrate, causing order delays and customer frustration? Are you looking to target content such as product and service offerings to your end users? This session shares approaches to providing targeted delivery as well as strategies and best practices for transforming your business by providing an intuitive user experience for your customers and partners. ¶ CON6156 - Top 10 Ways to Integrate Oracle WebCenter Content This session covers 10 common ways to integrate Oracle WebCenter Content with other enterprise applications and middleware. It discusses out-of-the-box modules that provide expanded features in Oracle WebCenter Content—such as enterprise search, SOA, and BPEL—as well as developer tools you can use to create custom integrations. The presentation also gives guidance on which integration option may work best in your environment. ¶ HOL10207 - Build an Intranet Portal with Oracle WebCenter In this hands-on lab, you’ll work with Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle WebCenter Content to build out an enterprise portal that maximizes the productivity of teams and individual contributors. Using browser-based tools, you’ll manage site resources such as page styles, templates, and navigation. You’ll edit content stored in Oracle WebCenter Content directly from your portal. You’ll also experience the latest features that promote collaboration, social networking, and personal productivity. ¶ CON7817 - Migration to Oracle WebCenter Imaging 11g Customers today continually strive to automate business processes, reduce costs, and improve efficiency. The accounts payable process—which is often distributed in nature, requires many approvals, and generates huge volumes of paper invoices—is automated by many customers. In this session, learn how Oracle and SYSTIME have partnered to help a customer migrate its existing Oracle Imaging and Process Management Release 7.6 to the latest Oracle WebCenter Imaging 11g and integrate it with Oracle’s JD Edwards family of products. ¶ CON8910 - How to Engage Customers Across Web, Mobile, and Social Channels Whether on desktops at the office, on tablets at home, or on mobile phones when on the go, today’s customers are always connected. To engage today’s customers, you need to make the online customer experience connected and consistent across a host of devices and multiple channels, including Web, mobile, and social networks. Managing this multichannel environment can result in lots of headaches without the right tools. Attend this session to learn how Oracle WebCenter Sites solves the challenge of multichannel customer engagement. ¶ HOL10206 - Oracle WebCenter Sites 11g: Transforming the Content Contributor Experience Oracle WebCenter Sites 11g makes it easy for marketers and business users to contribute to and manage Websites with the new visual, contextual, and intuitive Web authoring interface. In this hands-on lab, you will create and manage content for a sports-themed Website, using many of the new and enhanced features of the 11g release. ¶ CON8900 - Building Next-Generation Portals: An Interactive Customer Panel Discussion Social and collaborative technologies have changed how people interact, learn, and collaborate, and providing a modern, social Web presence is imperative to remain competitive in today’s market. Can your business benefit from a more collaborative and interactive portal environment for employees, customers, and partners? Attend this session to hear from Oracle WebCenter Portal customers as they share their strategies and best practices for providing users with a modern experience that adapts to their needs and includes personalized access to content in context. The panel also addresses how customers have benefited from creating next-generation portals by migrating from older portal technologies to Oracle WebCenter Portal. ¶ CON9625 - Taking Control of Oracle WebCenter Security Organizations are increasingly looking to extend their Oracle WebCenter portal for social business, to serve external users and provide seamless access to the right information. In particular, many organizations are extending Oracle WebCenter in a business-to-business scenario requiring secure identification and authorization of business partners and their users. This session focuses on how customers are leveraging, securing, and providing access control to Oracle WebCenter portal and mobile solutions. You will learn best practices and hear real-world examples of how to provide flexible and granular access control for Oracle WebCenter deployments, using Oracle Platform Security Services and Oracle Access Management Suite product offerings. ¶ CON8891 - Extending Social into Enterprise Applications and Business Processes Oracle Social Network is an extensible social platform that enables contextual collaboration within enterprise applications and business processes, providing relevant data from across various enterprise systems in one place. Attend this session to see how an Oracle Social Network customer is integrating multiple applications—such as CRM, HCM, and business processes—into Oracle Social Network and Oracle WebCenter to enable individuals and teams to solve complex cross-organizational business problems more effectively by utilizing the social enterprise. ¶ Thursday, October 4th CON8899 - Becoming a Social Business: Stories from the Front Lines of Change What does it really mean to be a social business? How can you change our organization to embrace social approaches? What pitfalls do you need to avoid? In this lively panel discussion, customer and industry thought leaders in social business explore these topics and more as they share their stories of the good, the bad, and the ugly that can happen when embracing social methods and technologies to improve business success. Using moderated questions and open Q&A from the audience, the panel discusses vital topics such as the critical factors for success, the major issues to avoid, how to gain senior executive support for social efforts, how to handle undesired behavior, and how to measure business impact. It takes a thought-provoking look at becoming a social business from the inside. ¶ CON6851 - Oracle WebCenter and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition to Create Vendor Portals Large manufacturers of grocery items routinely find themselves depending on the inventory management expertise of their wholesalers and distributors. Inventory costs can be managed more efficiently by the manufacturers if they have better insight into the inventory levels of items carried by their distributors. This creates a unique opportunity for distributors and wholesalers to leverage this knowledge into a revenue-generating subscription service. Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition and Oracle WebCenter Portal play a key part in enabling creation of business-managed business intelligence portals for vendors. This session discusses one customer that implemented this by leveraging Oracle WebCenter and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. ¶ CON8879 - Provide a Personalized and Consistent Customer Experience in Your Websites and Portals Your customers engage with your company online in different ways throughout their journey—from prospecting by acquiring information on your corporate Website to transacting through self-service applications on your customer portal—and then the cycle begins again when they look for new products and services. Ensuring that the customer experience is consistent and personalized across online properties—from branding and content to interactions and transactions—can be a daunting task. Oracle WebCenter enables you to speak and interact with your customers with one voice across your Websites and portals by providing an integrated platform for delivery of self-service and engagement that unifies and personalizes the online experience. Learn more in this session. ¶ CON8898 - Land Mines, Potholes, and Dirt Roads: Navigating the Way to ECM Nirvana Ten years ago, people were predicting that by this time in history, we’d be some kind of utopian paperless society. As we all know, we’re not there yet, but are we getting closer? What is keeping companies from driving down the road to enterprise content management bliss? Most people understand that using ECM as a central platform enables organizations to expedite document-centric processes, but most business processes in organizations are still heavily paper-based. Many of these processes could be automated and improved with an ECM platform infrastructure. In this panel discussion, you’ll hear from Oracle WebCenter customers that have already solved some of these challenges as they share their strategies for success and roads to avoid along your journey. ¶ CON8908 - Oracle WebCenter Portal: Creating and Using Content Presenter Templates Oracle WebCenter Portal applications use task flows to display and integrate content stored in the Oracle WebCenter Content server. Among the most flexible task flows is Content Presenter, which renders various types of content on an Oracle WebCenter Portal page. Although Oracle WebCenter Portal comes with a set of predefined Content Presenter templates, developers can create their own templates for specific rendering needs. This session shows the lifecycle of developing Content Presenter task flows, including how to create, package, import, modify at runtime, and use such templates. In addition to simple examples with Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) UI elements to render the content, it shows how to use other UI technologies, CSS files, and JavaScript libraries. ¶ CON8897 - Using Web Experience Management to Drive Online Marketing Success Every year, the online channel becomes more imperative for driving organizational top-line revenue, but for many companies, mastering how to best market their products and services in a fast-evolving online world with high customer expectations for personalized experiences can be a complex proposition. Come to this panel discussion, and hear directly from online marketers how they are succeeding today by using Web experience management to drive marketing success, using capabilities such as targeting and optimization, user-generated content, mobile site publishing, and site visitor personalization to deliver engaging online experiences. ¶ CON8892 - Oracle’s Journey to Social Business Social business is a revolution, one that is causing rapidly accelerating change in how companies and customers engage with one another and how employees work together. Oracle’s goal in becoming a social business is to create a socially connected organization in which working collaboratively across geographical locations, lines of business, and management chains is second nature, enabling innovative solutions to business challenges. We can achieve this by connecting the right people, finding the right content, communicating with the right people, collaborating at the right time, and building the right communities in the right context—all ready in the CLOUD. Attend this session to see how Oracle is transforming itself into a social business. ¶  ------------ If you've read all the way to the end here - we are REALLY looking forward to seeing you in San Francisco.

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• Write, Read and Update Oracle CLOBs with PL/SQL

  - by robertphyatt

  Fun with CLOBS! If you are using Oracle, if you have to deal with text that is over 4000 bytes, you will probably find yourself dealing with CLOBs, which can go up to 4GB. They are pretty tricky, and it took me a long time to figure out these lessons learned. I hope they will help some down-trodden developer out there somehow. Here is my original code, which worked great on my Oracle Express Edition: (for all examples, the first one writes a new CLOB, the next one Updates an existing CLOB and the final one reads a CLOB back) CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE PRC_WR_CLOB (        p_document      IN VARCHAR2,        p_id            OUT NUMBER) IS      lob_loc CLOB; BEGIN    INSERT INTO TBL_CLOBHOLDERDDOC (CLOBHOLDERDDOC)        VALUES (empty_CLOB())        RETURNING CLOBHOLDERDDOC, CLOBHOLDERDDOCID INTO lob_loc, p_id;    DBMS_LOB.WRITE(lob_loc, LENGTH(UTL_RAW.CAST_TO_RAW(p_document)), 1, UTL_RAW.CAST_TO_RAW(p_document)); END; / CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE PRC_UD_CLOB (        p_document      IN VARCHAR2,        p_id            IN NUMBER) IS      lob_loc CLOB; BEGIN        SELECT CLOBHOLDERDDOC INTO lob_loc FROM TBL_CLOBHOLDERDDOC        WHERE CLOBHOLDERDDOCID = p_id FOR UPDATE;    DBMS_LOB.WRITE(lob_loc, LENGTH(UTL_RAW.CAST_TO_RAW(p_document)), 1, UTL_RAW.CAST_TO_RAW(p_document)); END; / CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE PRC_RD_CLOB (    p_id IN NUMBER,    p_clob OUT VARCHAR2) IS    lob_loc  CLOB; BEGIN    SELECT CLOBHOLDERDDOC INTO lob_loc    FROM   TBL_CLOBHOLDERDDOC    WHERE  CLOBHOLDERDDOCID = p_id;    p_clob := UTL_RAW.CAST_TO_VARCHAR2(DBMS_LOB.SUBSTR(lob_loc, DBMS_LOB.GETLENGTH(lob_loc), 1)); END; / As you can see, I had originally been casting everything back and forth between RAW formats using the UTL_RAW.CAST_TO_VARCHAR2() and UTL_RAW.CAST_TO_RAW() functions all over the place, but it had the nasty side effect of working great on my Oracle express edition on my developer box, but having all the CLOBs above a certain size display garbage when read back on the Oracle test database server . So...I kept working at it and came up with the following, which ALSO worked on my Oracle Express Edition on my developer box:   CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE PRC_WR_CLOB (     p_document      IN VARCHAR2,     p_id        OUT NUMBER) IS       lob_loc CLOB; BEGIN     INSERT INTO TBL_CLOBHOLDERDOC (CLOBHOLDERDOC)         VALUES (empty_CLOB())         RETURNING CLOBHOLDERDOC, CLOBHOLDERDOCID INTO lob_loc, p_id;     DBMS_LOB.WRITE(lob_loc, LENGTH(p_document), 1, p_document);   END; / CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE PRC_UD_CLOB (     p_document      IN VARCHAR2,     p_id        IN NUMBER) IS       lob_loc CLOB; BEGIN     SELECT CLOBHOLDERDOC INTO lob_loc FROM TBL_CLOBHOLDERDOC     WHERE CLOBHOLDERDOCID = p_id FOR UPDATE;     DBMS_LOB.WRITE(lob_loc, LENGTH(p_document), 1, p_document); END; / CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE PRC_RD_CLOB (     p_id IN NUMBER,     p_clob OUT VARCHAR2) IS     lob_loc  CLOB; BEGIN     SELECT CLOBHOLDERDOC INTO lob_loc     FROM   TBL_CLOBHOLDERDOC     WHERE  CLOBHOLDERDOCID = p_id;     p_clob := DBMS_LOB.SUBSTR(lob_loc, DBMS_LOB.GETLENGTH(lob_loc), 1); END; / Unfortunately, by changing my code to what you see above, even though it kept working on my Oracle express edition, everything over a certain size just started truncating after about 7950 characters on the test server! Here is what I came up with in the end, which is actually the simplest solution and this time worked on both my express edition and on the database server (note that only the read function was changed to fix the truncation issue, and that I had Oracle worry about converting the CLOB into a VARCHAR2 internally): CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE PRC_WR_CLOB (        p_document      IN VARCHAR2,        p_id            OUT NUMBER) IS      lob_loc CLOB; BEGIN    INSERT INTO TBL_CLOBHOLDERDDOC (CLOBHOLDERDDOC)        VALUES (empty_CLOB())        RETURNING CLOBHOLDERDDOC, CLOBHOLDERDDOCID INTO lob_loc, p_id;    DBMS_LOB.WRITE(lob_loc, LENGTH(p_document), 1, p_document); END; / CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE PRC_UD_CLOB (        p_document      IN VARCHAR2,        p_id            IN NUMBER) IS      lob_loc CLOB; BEGIN        SELECT CLOBHOLDERDDOC INTO lob_loc FROM TBL_CLOBHOLDERDDOC        WHERE CLOBHOLDERDDOCID = p_id FOR UPDATE;    DBMS_LOB.WRITE(lob_loc, LENGTH(p_document), 1, p_document); END; / CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE PRC_RD_CLOB (    p_id IN NUMBER,    p_clob OUT VARCHAR2) IS BEGIN    SELECT CLOBHOLDERDDOC INTO p_clob    FROM   TBL_CLOBHOLDERDDOC    WHERE  CLOBHOLDERDDOCID = p_id; END; /   I hope that is useful to someone!

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• You Might Be a DBA

  - by BuckWoody

  With all apologies to Jeff Foxworthy, I was up late Friday night on a holiday weekend (which translated into T-SQL becomes “Maintenance Window”) and I got bored in between the two or three minutes I had between clicks. So I started a “Twitter” meme – and it just took off. I haven’t cleaned these up much, but here, in author order as of Saturday the 29th of May is the list “You might be a DBA” from around the Twitterverse: buckwoody Your two main enemies are developers and SAN admins #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody People can use Access as a cross or garlic on you #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You always plan an exit strategy, even when entering a McDonald's #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You can't explain to your family what you really do for a living #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You have at least one set of scripts you won't share #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You have an opinion on the best code-beautifier #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You have children older than the rest of your team #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You and the Oracle DBA would kill each other, but you'll happily fight off a developer together first #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You've threatened to quit if they give anyone the sa password on production #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You've sent a vendor suggestions on improving their database design or code (and been ignored) #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You've sent a vendor suggestions on improving their database design or code (and been ignored) #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You have an opinion on the best code-beautifier #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You have at least one set of scripts you won't share #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You refer to co-workers as "carbon-units" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Being paranoid is on your resume at the top #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Everyone comes to your cube to find the MSDN DVD's #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You always plan an exit strategy, even when entering a McDonald's #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You've worn down developers to get your way by explaining normalization levels #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You refer to clothes as "Data Abstractions" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Users pester you to be able to put data in a database, then they pester you to take it out and put it in Excel #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Others try to de-duplicate data, you try to copy it to more than three locations #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You have at least one DLT tape in the trunk of your car #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You use twitter and facebook to talk with colleagues because there's no one else in your company that does what you do #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Your spouse knows what "ETL" means #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You've referred to yourself as the "Data Janitor" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You don't have positive connotations of the word "upgrade" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You get your coffee before you check your servers, because you know you won't get any if you don't #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You always come to work through the back door so no one hijacks you on the way to your cube #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You check your server logs before you check your e-mail in the morning so you can reply "Yeah, I already fixed that." #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You have more conference badges than clean socks #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Your coffee mug says "It depends" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You can convince a boss that you need 16GB of RAM in your laptop #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You've used ebay to find production equipment #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You pad all project timelines by 2X, and you still miss them #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You know when your company is acquiring another even before the CFO #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You pad all project timelines by 2X, and you still miss them #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You call aspirin "work vitamins" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You get the same amount of sleep even after you have a child #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You obsess about performance metrics from over one year ago #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody The first thing you buy after the database software is aftermarket tools to manage the database software #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You've tried to convince someone else to become a DBA #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You use twitter and facebook to talk with colleagues because there's no one else in your company that does what you do #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You only know other DBA's by their Tweet Handle #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You've explained the difference between 32 and 64-bit to more than one manager in terms they can understand, using puppets #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Your two main enemies are developers and SAN admins #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You've driven to the Datacenter to install SQL Server because "you don't trust those NOC admins" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You pay more for faster Internet connections than cable at home so you don't have to drive in #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You call texting a "queuing system" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You know that if someone can read Perl, they manage an Oracle system #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You have an e-mail rule for backup notifications #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Your food pyramid includes coffee, salt and fat #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You wish everything had a graphical query plan #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You refactor your e-mails #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You've gotten more help from twitter and facebook than all your years in college #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You would pay money for a license plate that has the letters S-Q-L together #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You have actually considered making a RAID array from thumb drives #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Everything on your laptop is installed from your MSDN subscription #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You've written blog posts on technology you've never actually implemented in production #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Everything on your laptop is installed from your MSDN subscription #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody @MidnightDBA Click the #youmightbeaDBA tag. I've had WAY too much coffee today.  buckwoody There is no other position that is 1-deep except you and the CEO #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody When you watch "The Office" you call it "OJT" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You would pay money for a license plate that has the letters S-Q-L together #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Your blog would make a "best practices" or "worst practices" book #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You have actually considered making a RAID array from thumb drives #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody The first thing you install on your netbook is SSMS #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Everything on your laptop is installed from your MSDN subscription #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Your watch is set to UTC because it's just easier #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You make plenty of money, but you're excited to get a $2.00 squeeze-ball from Quest and Redgate #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You make plenty of money, but you're excited to get a $2.00 squeeze-ball from Quest and Redgate #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You think data can be represented as something OTHER than XML #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You tell people that you made a database query go faster, and expect them to be happy for you #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You take the word "NoSQL" as a personal attack #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody People can use Access as a cross or garlic on you #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody * == bad #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody * == bad #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody There are just as many females in your technical field as males #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody People can use Access as a cross or garlic on you #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You've gotten more help from twitter and facebook than all your years in college #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You think that something OTHER than the database might be the performance bottleneck #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You refer to time as a "Clustered Index" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You know why "user" refers to both business people and crack addicts #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You make plenty of money, but you're excited to get a $2.00 squeeze-ball from Quest and Redgate #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You can't explain to your family what you really do for a living #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You tell people that you made a database query go faster, and expect them to be happy for you #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You think a millisecond is a really long time #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You're sitting and typing #youmightbeaDBA when you could be outside #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You can't wait for a technical conference so you can wear a kilt - and you're not Scottish #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You know that "DBA" stands for "Default Blame Acceptor" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody People can use Access as a cross or garlic on you #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You know what "the truth, thole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me Codd" means #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You've gotten more help from twitter and facebook than all your years in college #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You can't talk fast enough to get a concept out of your head so you tweet it instead #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You cry when someone doesn't use a WHERE clause #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You think data can be represented as something OTHER than XML #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You think "Set theory" is not an verb but a noun #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You try to convince random strangers to vote on your Connect item #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You think 3 hours of contiguous sleep is a good thing #youmightbeaDBA or #youmightbeamother  buckwoody You don't like Oracle, and not just because of what she did to Neo #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You know when to say "sequel" and "s-q-l" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You know where the data is #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You refer to your children as "Fully Redundant Mirrors" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Holiday == "Maintenance Window" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Your laptop is more powerful than the servers in most companies - including your own #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You capitalize SELECTed words #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You take the word "NoSQL" as a personal attack #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You know why "user" refers to both business people and crack addicts #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You cringe in public when the word "upgrade" is used in a sentence #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Holiday == "Maintenance Window" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody All Data Is MetaData means something to you #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You've never seen the driveway to your house in the daylight #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You think that something OTHER than the database might be the performance bottleneck #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Most of your bloodstream is composed of caffeine #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody Your task list is labeled "CRUD Matrix" #youmightbeaDBA  buckwoody You call your wife/husband a "Linked Server" #youmightbeaDBA  anonythemouse When someone tells you they are going to take a dump and you wonder of which database then #youmightbeaDBA  anonythemouse When it's 11pm on a holiday weekend and you are working #youmightbeaDBA  anonythemouse When you sit down at a table and look for it's primary key #youmightbeaDBA  anonythemouse When getting milk from the fridge you check the expiry date is > getdate() #youmightbeaDBA  blakmk when you wake up dreaming about sql #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver You think a @buckwoody bobblehead would be a cool thing to have on the dashboard of your car #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver Your friends don't understand why you think there's a difference between single and double quotes #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver Even the newest employees know your name from all the downtime notices you've sent out #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver You sometimes feel anxious and think "I should test restoring those backups" and then the feeling passes #youmightbeadba  CharlesGarver You know what a co-worker means when they ask "how is your squirrel server?" #youmightbeadba  CharlesGarver You can't sleep at night and you ponder the logisitcs of collecting every copy of Access for the world's biggest bonfire #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver You can't sleep at night and you ponder the logisitcs of collecting every copy of Access for the world's biggest bonfire #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver You're willing to move someone's job up in priority for a box of #voodoodonuts #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver Each person in your company seems to think you work for THEM #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver You have a Love/Hate relationship going on with #Microsoft #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver People ask you to troubleshoot their Access program #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver The first words you hear in the morning are 'your voicemail box is full' #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver The thought of disrupting 500 people's work so you can do something doesn't phase you #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver You can't sleep at night and you ponder the logisitcs of collecting every copy of Access for the world's biggest bonfire #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver Your home computer is backed up in 3 different places #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver Your wardrobe for work includes pajamas #youmightbeaDBA  CharlesGarver Someone tells you to look in the INDEX and you look puzzled before finally going to the back of the book. #youmightbeaDBA  chuckboycejr If you have ever set up a SQLAgent job to email your mobile phone to serve as an alarm clock #youmightbeaDBA  chuckboycejr If you'd rather meet Itzik than Jay Z #youmightbeaDBA  chuckboycejr If you'd rather meet Itzik than Jay Z #youmightbeaDBA  chuckboycejr If you'd wrestle a SysAdmin to the ground to implement #DPA best practices as per @aspiringgeek #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy I need to be up in 7 hours, so I'm off to bed! I'll have to read the rest of @buckwoody's #youmightbeaDBA posts in the AM. (g'night Buck!)  databaseguy When people ask you about your house, the first thing you describe is the network. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy The last thing you say at the office each day is, "is anybody else here? I'm shutting off the lights!" #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy Your blood pressure rises when you read application specs drafted by marketing. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy A good day at work is one when nobody pays you no mind. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You care about latches and wait states. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You have worked over 200 hours on a performance tuning project that required no application changes at all. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy The late-night security guard knows the names of your spouse and kids. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You have had vigorous debates about whether it should be pronounced "sequel" or "ess-queue-ell". #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You have VPN and RDP software installed on your phone ... just in case. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You have edited a data file by hand, just to see what would happen. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You decorate your office walls with database catalog posters. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You've built programs that access data just to keep other developers from asking you to run queries all the time. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy When you watch movies like The Matrix, you find yourself calculating the fasibility of storing all that data. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You have tried to convince someone to spend money on an SSD storage array. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy When CPU is spiked on a server, you want to gather forensic evidence. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You have to remind developers not to push code to production without checking if the database is ready. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy Nobody cares what you wear to work, as long as the thing keeps running. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy Telepathy is a job requirement when working with app dev teams. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You read database statistics for the educational value. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy And your boss freely admits this to anyone within earshot. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy Your boss cannot explain or understand what you do. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You envision ERDs when you see a GUI. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You say things like "applications come and go, but data lasts forever." #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You have memorized the names of several of the AdventureWorks employees. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You know what MAXDOP setting you can get away with for a big query based on current server load. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy And you immediately recognize the recursion in my last tweet. #youmightbeaDBA  databaseguy You find 50 simultaneous tweets from @buckwoody about #youmightbeaDBA :O)  DBAishness You have "funny stories" about the times your developers accidentally deleted the T-log in their test environment. #youmightbeaDBA  DBAishness Planning to slice and dice your MDW data with PowerPivot makes you giggle like a schoolgirl. #youmightbeaDBA  donalddotfarmer You think @buckwoody lives in the "real world." #youmightbeaDBA  jamach09 @buckwoody #youmightbeaDBA Why go outside when you can sit in the nice cool server room?  jamach09 If you refer to procreation as "Replication", #youmightbeaDBA.  jamach09 If you think ORM is a four-letter word, #youmightbeaDBA  JamesMarsh If you have ever preached the value of Source Code Control, #YouMightBeADBA  jethrocarr @venzann You store your shopping list in a ACID compliant DB #youmightbeaDBA  joe_positive @buckwoody thought it stood for "Don't Bother Asking" #youmightbeaDBA  joe_positive when you check your IT Events Calendar before making weekend plans #youmightbeaDBA  LadyRuna You cringe whenever someone calls Excel a database #youmightbeaDBA  LadyRuna When the waiter says he'll be your server today, you ask how many terabytes he is #youmightbeaDBA  LadyRuna you always call the asterisk a "Star" #youmightbeaDBA  LadyRuna You walk into a server room, say "Nice RACK!" and everyone there knows you're talking about server rack... #youmightbeaDBA  LadyRuna You receive more messages from servers than from friends #youmightbeaDBA  LadyRuna hmmm... #youmightbeaDBA if your recipe for gumbo is "SELECT * FROM Refrigerator"  markjholmes @SQLSoldier Heh. #youmightbeaDBA if you correct other DBAs' spelling of @PaulRandal  markjholmes #youmightbeaDBA if you actually test RAID5 vs RAID10 on your SAN because when it comes to configuration, "it depends."  markjholmes #youmightbeaDBA if you have at least 3 definitions of the word "cluster"  MarlonRibunal 3 Words: @BrentO, snicker, & Access #youmightbeaDBA  MarlonRibunal @onpnt @mikeSQL my appeal was a couple of mins late. Enjoying #youmightbeaDBA  MarlonRibunal @mikeSQL @onpnt pls, don't mention bacon #youmightbeaDBA  merv @buckwoody You HATE 3-way joins #youmightbeaDBA  MidnightDBA If you're up at midnight Tweeting about SQL #youmightbeaDBA  MidnightDBA @buckwoody I'd noticed that. :) #youmightbeaDBA  mikeSQL when people talk about "their type" you're thinking varchar, bigint, binary, etc #youmightbeadba  mikeSQL people ask you to go to lunch , but you can't go because you're attending #SQLlunch #youmightbeadba  mikeSQL you laugh for hours at all of the #sqlmoviequotes ....things in which a normal individual would scratch their head at. #youmightbeadba  mikeSQL you laugh for hours at all of the #sqlmoviequotes ....things in which a normal individual would scratch their head at. #youmightbeadba  mrdenny If you think that @buckwoody's demo using PowerPivot to analyze index usage data from DMVs is awesome then #youmightbeaDBA  mrdenny You wish @PaulRandal still worked at Microsoft so that they would make a bobble head of him #youmightbeadba  mrdenny When it's 11pm on a holiday weekend, and your posting stupid jokes on Twitter then #youmightbeadba  mrdenny If you go out with friends and wonder why no one's wearing a kilt then #YouMightBeADBA  mrdenny You can't do basic math, but you know off the top of your head how many CALs $14,412 can buy you. #YoumightbeaDBA  mrdenny If you've ever setup a SQL Job to email you to get you out of a regularly scheduled meeting #YouMightBeADBA.  mrdenny You throw up in your mouth a little when ever you here the word "Access". Even if it doesn't relate to a MS product. #YouMightBeADBA  msdtjones You spend more time listening to @buckwoody than your wife #youmightbeaDBA  NFDotCom You perform "hail deltas" on a regular basis. #YouMightBeADBA  NoelMcKinney If you tell your wife you want to go to Columbus Ohio for your wedding anniversary so you can attend #sqlsat42 then #youmightbeaDBA  NoelMcKinney You read a union is on strike and wonder if it's a UNION ALL #youmightbeaDBA  NoelMcKinney You read a union is on strike and wonder if it's a UNION ALL #youmightbeaDBA  NoelMcKinney Someone asks you to throw another log on the fire and you tell them not to worry about it because Autogrowth is turned on #youmightbeaDBA  Nuurdygirl Even if you have a girlfriend...its possible #youmightbeadba. Yeah-i said its possible!  Nuurdygirl When your girlfriend has to lean around the laptop to kiss you goodnight #youmightbeadba  Old_Man_Fish If you worry about how big your package is and how long it takes to finish #youmightbeaDBA  Old_Man_Fish If you no longer wonder if someone is in trouble or died if you are getting calls at 2AM #youmightbeaDBA  Old_Man_Fish If, when you hear the word ACCESS with no connotation you blood pressure jumps 50 points, #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt When you hear the word inject you immediately get concerned if your databases are OK #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt Your servers haven't been rebooted in a year #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt You know why it's funny when @PaulRandal has the word, "Sheep" in a tweet #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt You have read BOL without actually having a problem to figure out #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt You can type "SELECT columns FROM tables" without typos but tipen ni Banglish ares a messis #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt DR strategies doesn't include the word, RAID in them #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt you can move a SQL Server instance to a new server without the users ever knowing #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt You have made an SSIS package that is more than one step #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt You have the balls to say no to your boss when they ask for the sa password #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt you google to trouble shoot a problem and end up at your own blog (and it fixes it) #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt You talk your wife into moving the family vacation a week earlier so you can attend the areas local SSUG meeting #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt you can explain to a nontechnical person what a deadlock is #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt You hope a girl asks you what your collation is #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt you make jokes that include the words shrink, truncate and 1205. And you are the only one that laughs at them #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt You rate your ability to stay awake to work longer on blogs, twitter, forums and your day to day job with the 5 9's goal #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt you have major surgery and beg the doctor to release you back to work 5 days later because you miss your servers #youmightbeaDBA #TrueStory  onpnt You do have backups and you know how to use them #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt It's the network #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt When the developers get to work your mood changes rapidly #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt When someone says, "PASS", you first think of karaoke #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt Recruiters try to get you to call them *just* because they think you'll give them @BrentO contact info #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt You chuckle every time you go to grab the "CLR" Calcium, Lime and Rust Remover to clean something #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt @MarlonRibunal @mikeSQL Sorry man, it was already in motion ;-) #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt When you have an "I love bacon" sticker on your laptop. #youmightbeaDBA http://twitpic.com/1ry671  onpnt You sing SELECT statements in the shower #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt When you see a chicken it doesn't remind you of food. It reminds you of a guy named Jorge #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt At time, SQL is your mistress #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt Your wife wonders if SQL is the code name of your mistress at times #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt it's Friday and you are on twitter thinking really hard about what would be funny for hash tag #youmightbeaDBA  onpnt You organize your wife's "decorative"pillows on the bed in a B-Tree structure #youmightbeaDBA  PaulWhiteNZ If you: SELECT TOP (1) milk FROM fridge WHERE use_by_date >= GET_DATE() ORDER BY use_by_date ASC #YouMightBeaDBA  RonDBA #youmightbeaDBA if you read @buckwoody's and @BrentO's blogs.  ryaneastabrook @buckwoody omg, you have to stand up a website with these on them, they are awesome #youmightbeaDBA  soulvy @StrateSQL @LadyRuna Or a "Splat" #youmightbeaDBA  speedracer You can still fall asleep after three cups of coffee #youmightbeaDBA  speedracer You retweet @buckwoody on a Friday night #youmightbeaDBA  speedracer You can still fall asleep after three cups of coffee #youmightbeaDBA  speedracer Developers make you twitch #youmightbeaDBA  sqlagentman You know what X/1024*8 is. #YouMightBeADBA  SqlAsylum Your still in the office at 5:00 on memorial day weekend. #youmightbeadba :)  SQLBob Whenever someone you know gets pregnant you bring up INNER JOINs or SQL Injection attacks... #youmightbeaDBA  SQLChicken You know one or more SQL folks in the community with an animal in their username #youmightbeaDBA  SQLChicken You've used one or more car analogies to explain how a database works #youmightbeaDBA  SQLChicken “@sqljoe: #youmightbeaDBA if you applied to attend #sqlu and requested @SQLChicken to pull strings for you” lmao nice!  SQLChicken When talking about SSIS your discussions break down into various jokes about packages #youmightbeaDBA  SQLChicken Just SEEING the code for cursors makes you break out in hives #youmightbeaDBA  SQLChicken Just SEEING the code for cursors makes you break out in hives #youmightbeaDBA  SQLCraftsman You coined the phrase "Magic SAN Dust" because calling a vendor's marketing claims BS is not acceptable in a meeting. #YouMightBeADBA  SQLCraftsman If you hear about a new feature with the acronym "DAC" and wonder what disaster of a feature it is attached to this time. #YouMightBeADBA  SQLCraftsman You really own a "Stick of Much Developer Whacking" #YouMightBeADBA  SQLCraftsman You coined the phrase "Magic SAN Dust" because calling a vendor's marketing claims BS is not acceptable in a meeting. #YouMightBeADBA  SQLCraftsman Default Blame Acceptor #YouMightBeADBA  SQLCraftsman If you hear about a new feature with the acronym "DAC" and wonder what disaster of a feature it is attached to this time. #YouMightBeADBA  SQLCraftsman Default Blame Acceptor #YouMightBeADBA  SQLCraftsman If you hear about a new feature with the acronym "DAC" and wonder what disaster of a feature it is attached to this time. #YouMightBeADBA  sqljoe #youmightbeaDBA if you wished your wife knew T-sql. USE ShoppingList SELECT NecessaryItems from Supermarket WHERE Category<> ("junk food")  sqljoe #youmightbeaDBA if the first thing you kiss when you wake up is your mobile for not waking you up in the middle of the night  sqljoe #youmightbeaDBA if your wife has a "Do Not Fly" family vacation list of her own including your laptop and mobile  sqljoe #youmightbeaDBA if you have researched for DBA Anonymous groups and attended a #SSUG willing to drop your database (vice)  sqljoe #youmightbeaDBA if your only maintenance windows are staff meetings  sqljoe #youmightbeaDBA if you think of yourself as "The One" in The Matrix "balancing the equation" from The Architect's (developers) poor coding  sqljoe #youmightbeaDBA if you think @PaulRandal should have played the Oracle in The Matrix  sqljoe #youmightbeaDBA if home CD & Movie collection is stored in secured containers,in logical order & naming convention,and with a backup copy  sqljoe #youmightbeaDBA if you applied to attend #sqlu and requested @SQLChicken to pull strings for you  sqljoe #youmightbeaDBA if you have tried to TiVo @MidnightDBA broadcasts  sqljoe #youmightbeaDBA if your #sql user group feels like #AA meetings  sqljoe #youmightbeaDBA if you thought of bringing your #sql books to #sqlsaturday and #sqlpass for autographs  sqljoe #youmightbeaDBA if #sqlpass feels like the #oscars  sqljoe #youmightbeaDBA if you are proud of your small package  SQLLawman #youmightbeaDBA when you hear MDX and Acura is not first thought that comes to mind.  sqlrunner If your wife double checks that there isn't a SQLSat within 200 miles of your vacation destination #youmightbeaDBA  sqlrunner When you're on a conference call and your wife thinks your speaking in a foreign language #youmightbeaDBA  sqlrunner When you're on a conference call and your wife thinks your speaking in a foreign language #youmightbeaDBA  sqlrunner You treat the word 'access' as a verb, not a noun #youmightbeaDBA  sqlrunner If you are happy with sub-second performance #youmightbeaDBA  sqlrunner When you know the names of the NOC people AND their families #youmightbeadba  sqlrunner When you know the names of the NOC people AND their families #youmightbeadba  sqlrunner Your company set's up international phone coverage for your cruise #youmightbeaDBA  sqlsamson @buckwoody if your manager asks you for data and you respond with "there's a script for that" #youmightbeadba  sqlsamson @buckwoody If you receive more messages from your server then your spouse #youmightbeadba  SQLSoldier You've spent all night Valentines Day upgrading the SQL Servers and forgot to tell your wife you'd be working late. #youmightbeadba  SQLSoldier You're flattered when someone calls you a geek. #youmightbeadba  SQLSoldier @llangit @mrdenny it's 11pm on a holiday weekend, & your reading stupid jokes on Twitter then #youmightbeadba  SQLSoldier Your manager borrows lunch money from you because your salary is 30% higher than his. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You think "intellisense" is a double negative because it's not intelligent nor makes sense. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier 75% of the emails you receive at home have the phrase "now following you on Twitter!" in the subject line. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You petition Ken Burns to remake Office Space because it should have been 18 hours long. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You select a candidate for a Jr DBA position because his resume said he's willing to get your coffee. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier Somebody misquotes @PaulRandall and you call him on your cell to verify. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You wish the elevator in your building was slower because it's the last time you'll be left alone all day. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier The developers sacrifice small animals before giving you their code for review. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier Developers bring you coffee and a BLT when you review their code. #youmightbeaDBA #IWish  SQLSoldier You can get out of any family get-together by saying you have to work and nobody questions it. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You've requested a HP Superdome for you "test" box. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier Your leave work early because your internet connection to the data center is better at home #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier The new CEO asks you to justify your salary, so you go on vacation for 2 weeks. And he never questions you again. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You cheer when Milton burns down the company in Office Space #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier A dev. asks if you've heard about some great new feature in SQL and you show the 16 blog posts you wrote on it ... last year #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier Your dev team is still testing SQL 2008 and you're already planning for SQL 11. #youmightbeaDBA #TrueStory  SQLSoldier The new CEO asks you to justify your salary, so you go on vacation for 2 weeks. And he never questions you again. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier Your dev team is still testing SQL 2008 and you're already planning for SQL 11. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You use a cell phone service coverage map to plan your next vacation. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You come in to work at 7 AM because it gives you at least 3 hours without any developers around. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You figure out a way to make take your wife on a cruise and deduct it as a business expense. #youmightbeaDBA #sqlcruise  SQLSoldier You name your cat SQLDog because the name @SQLCat was already taken. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You rate your blog posts based on the number of retweets you get. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You disable random logins just to mess with people. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You fall for the pickup line, "Hey baby, what's your collation?" #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You can blame an outage on anyone in the company because you're the only one that knows how to find out what really happened #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You can blame an outage on anyone in the company because you're the only one that knows how to find out what really happened #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You cheer when Milton burns down the company in Office Space #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier Your leave work early because your internet connection to the data center is better at home #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You cheer when Milton burns down the company in Office Space #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier Your think the 4 food groups are coffee, bacon, fast food, and Mountain Dew. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You tell someone your job title and they ask "What?" You describe it and they ask "What?". So you say "computer geek". #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier The #1 referrer to your blog is Twitter.com. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier Your idea of a good time on a Saturday involves free training. #youmightbeaDBA #sqlsat43  SQLSoldier You write a book that all of your co-workers have and none have read it. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You write a book that sells a couple thousand copies and is heralded a best seller. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier No matter how sick you are, you go to work if it's time to pass the pager on to the next guy. #youmightbeaDBA #TrueStory  SQLSoldier You go out on the town, and strangers walk up to you and say, "Hey you're that SQL guy" #youmightbeaDBA #TrueStory  SQLSoldier Your wife asks you to fix something, and you request a downtime window. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier Your wife asks when you'll be home, and you tell her that you wish you knew. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier Your best pickup line, "Hey baby, what's your collation?" #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier Your wife asks when you'll be home, and you tell her that you wish you knew. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You know that @BuckWoody is not someone's porno name. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You list TSQL as your native language on the 2010 census. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier Starbucks' stock price drops every time you go on vacation. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You're happy when the web master says that the website is down. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You know that @BuckWoody is not someone's porno name. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You get mad when someone calls your car a "heap" because you've always considered it to be a "clustered index". #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier Your blog has more hits than your company's website. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You systematically remove the asterisk key from all keyboards in the company except yours. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier When asked if you recycle, you reply that you run sp_cycle_errorlog every night at midnight #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You wouldn't allow someone named @AdamMachanic to work on your car. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You switch offices every 3 days to avoid developers #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier PSS has your number on speed dial. #youmightbeaDBA  SQLSoldier You frown when you they tell Neo that he's going to the Oracle #youmightbeaDBA  swhaley you regretted saying "This shouldn't effect production" #youmightbeaDBA  swhaley you regretted saying "This shouldn't effect production" #youmightbeaDBA  Tarwn A pleasurable saturday means spending the day learning more about what you already do the rest of the week #youmightbeaDBA ...oh, wait...  thelostforum For great justice; all our base are belong to YOU !! #youmightbeadba  thelostforum @SQLSoldier: You need a witness to use a mirror #youmightbeaDBA ;)  TimCost you capitalize key words. always. everywhere. you can't help it, usually don't even notice. #youmightbeaDBA  Toshana Your the only one in your company not impressed with the developers new application. #youmightbeaDBA  venzann Coming soon from a (respected) book publisher - @buckwoody's #youmightbeaDBA  venzann He's on a role tonight. @buckwoody is summing up my life with his #youmightbeaDBA tweets...  venzann I love the #youmightbeaDBA tag. Found at least 6 new DBAs to follow..  venzann He's on a role tonight. @buckwoody is summing up my life with his #youmightbeaDBA tweets...  venzann You use #sqlhelp as a primary resource during troubleshooting #youmightbeaDBA  venzann You insist on stricter password security for your sql servers than you implement on your own laptop #youmightbeaDBA  WesBrownSQL @buckwoody you are up so late the only tweets you see are from @buckwoody #youmightbeaDBA  WesBrownSQL @SQLSoldier you are upgrading all your 2005 prod servers to 2008 R2 on a three day weekend... #youmightbeaDBA  zippy1981 #youmightbeaDBA if everytime you do something with #mongodb you think of the Vulcan proverb "only Nixon could go to China."  Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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

  - by Ricardo Ferreira

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

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• default xna 4.0 gametime don´t works well for 2D physics

  - by EusKoder

  I am developing a game using Visual Studio 2010 and XNA 4.0, after advancing to some extent with the project (a platform based 2d platformer msdn starter kit) I got to test it on different computers with different hardware (CPU, graphics, etc.) and I found that the speed of movement object of the game is quite different, I implemented the PSK physics msdn that are based on time, /// <summary> /// Updates the player's velocity and position based on input, gravity, etc. /// </summary> public void ApplyPhysics(GameTime gameTime) { float elapsed = (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds; Vector2 previousPosition = Position; // Base velocity is a combination of horizontal movement control and // acceleration downward due to gravity. velocity.X += movement * MoveAcceleration * elapsed; velocity.Y = MathHelper.Clamp(velocity.Y + GravityAcceleration * elapsed, -MaxFallSpeed, MaxFallSpeed); velocity.Y = DoJump(velocity.Y, gameTime); // Apply pseudo-drag horizontally. if (IsOnGround) velocity.X *= GroundDragFactor; else velocity.X *= GroundDragFactor; //velocity.X *= AirDragFactor; // Prevent the player from running faster than his top speed. velocity.X = MathHelper.Clamp(velocity.X, -MaxMoveSpeed, MaxMoveSpeed); // Apply velocity. Position += velocity *elapsed; Position = new Vector2((float)Math.Round(Position.X), (float)Math.Round(Position.Y)); // If the player is now colliding with the level, separate them. HandleCollisions(gameTime); // If the collision stopped us from moving, reset the velocity to zero. if (Position.X == previousPosition.X) velocity.X = 0; if (Position.Y == previousPosition.Y) { velocity.Y = 0; jumpTime = 0.0f; } } tested eg with a PC (PC1) 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 6400 / ATI Radeon HD 4670 and another one: (pc2) 3.00GHz Intel Pentium D / Intel 82945G Express Chipset Family by displacement difference (moving x axis at supossed (position = velocity * gametime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds) constant velocity, for example) is 3 seconds in a total of 20 (example: moving pc1 player sprite 6000 pixels in the x-axis at 20 seconds and pc 2 runs the same distance in 17 ). Tested on a 3rd PC: i72700k / Gigabyte GTX 560 TI the results are even worse, after some time after starting the game gets like 3 times slower and showing the number of pixels in each frame moved in a debug window in the game (counting updatespersecond with counter variable for updates cuantity and gametime for counting a second show 63fps), it appears as if the number is always constant ( refreshments lose the Update method?). In this pc if I put the game in fullscreen during the course of the game, the effect of "go slow" is immediate and restore window mode sometimes yield returns to "normal" and sometimes not. Eventually I began to try a new project to test whether the movement is constant in different pc loading only one sprite and its position value in screen printing. Occur The same. I even tried moving a constant amount of pixels explicitly (position + = 5) and different speeds in different pc quantities of pixels moved in x time. I have the game loop as the default (fixedTimeStep=true;SynchronizeWithVerticalRetrace=true;). I've also tried turning off and creating another timestep as discussed in different post (eg http://gafferongames.com/game-physics/fix-your-timestep/ but i can´t achieve the desired result, move the same number of pixels in X seconds on different computers with windows. All pc used for tests use windows 7 enterprise pc1 == x86 the others are x64. The weirdest thing is that I find information about people describing the same problem and that I wear long nights of searches. Thanks for your help.

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• ASP.NET Web API - Screencast series with downloadable sample code - Part 1

  - by Jon Galloway

  There's a lot of great ASP.NET Web API content on the ASP.NET website at http://asp.net/web-api. I mentioned my screencast series in original announcement post, but we've since added the sample code so I thought it was worth pointing the series out specifically. This is an introductory screencast series that walks through from File / New Project to some more advanced scenarios like Custom Validation and Authorization. The screencast videos are all short (3-5 minutes) and the sample code for the series is both available for download and browsable online. I did the screencasts, but the samples were written by the ASP.NET Web API team. So - let's watch them together! Grab some popcorn and pay attention, because these are short. After each video, I'll talk about what I thought was important. I'm embedding the videos using HTML5 (MP4) with Silverlight fallback, but if something goes wrong or your browser / device / whatever doesn't support them, I'll include the link to where the videos are more professionally hosted on the ASP.NET site. Note also if you're following along with the samples that, since Part 1 just looks at the File / New Project step, the screencast part numbers are one ahead of the sample part numbers - so screencast 4 matches with sample code demo 3. Note: I started this as one long post for all 6 parts, but as it grew over 2000 words I figured it'd be better to break it up. Part 1: Your First Web API [Video and code on the ASP.NET site] This screencast starts with an overview of why you'd want to use ASP.NET Web API: Reach more clients (thinking beyond the browser to mobile clients, other applications, etc.) Scale (who doesn't love the cloud?!) Embrace HTTP (a focus on HTTP both on client and server really simplifies and focuses service interactions) Next, I start a new ASP.NET Web API application and show some of the basics of the ApiController. We don't write any new code in this first step, just look at the example controller that's created by File / New Project. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Net.Http; using System.Web.Http; namespace NewProject_Mvc4BetaWebApi.Controllers { public class ValuesController : ApiController { // GET /api/values public IEnumerable<string> Get() { return new string[] { "value1", "value2" }; } // GET /api/values/5 public string Get(int id) { return "value"; } // POST /api/values public void Post(string value) { } // PUT /api/values/5 public void Put(int id, string value) { } // DELETE /api/values/5 public void Delete(int id) { } } } Finally, we walk through testing the output of this API controller using browser tools. There are several ways you can test API output, including Fiddler (as described by Scott Hanselman in this post) and built-in developer tools available in all modern browsers. For simplicity I used Internet Explorer 9 F12 developer tools, but you're of course welcome to use whatever you'd like. A few important things to note: This class derives from an ApiController base class, not the standard ASP.NET MVC Controller base class. They're similar in places where API's and HTML returning controller uses are similar, and different where API and HTML use differ. A good example of where those things are different is in the routing conventions. In an HTTP controller, there's no need for an "action" to be specified, since the HTTP verbs are the actions. We don't need to do anything to map verbs to actions; when a request comes in to /api/values/5 with the DELETE HTTP verb, it'll automatically be handled by the Delete method in an ApiController. The comments above the API methods show sample URL's and HTTP verbs, so we can test out the first two GET methods by browsing to the site in IE9, hitting F12 to bring up the tools, and entering /api/values in the URL: That sample action returns a list of values. To get just one value back, we'd browse to /values/5: That's it for Part 1. In Part 2 we'll look at getting data (beyond hardcoded strings) and start building out a sample application.

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• Romanian parter Omnilogic Delivers “No Limits” Scalability, Performance, Security, and Affordability through Next-Generation, Enterprise-Grade Engineered Systems

  - by swalker

  Omnilogic SRL is a leading technology and information systems provider in Romania and central and Eastern Europe. An Oracle Value-Added Distributor Partner, Omnilogic resells Oracle software, hardware, and engineered systems to Oracle Partner Network members and provides specialized training, support, and testing facilities. Independent software vendors (ISVs) also use Omnilogic’s demonstration and testing facilities to upgrade the performance and efficiency of their solutions and those of their customers by migrating them from competitor technologies to Oracle platforms. Omnilogic also has a dedicated offering for ISV solutions, based on Oracle technology in a hosting service provider model. Omnilogic wanted to help Oracle Partners and ISVs migrate solutions to Oracle Exadata and sell Oracle Exadata to end-customers. It installed Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-2 Quarter Rack at its data center to create a demonstration and testing environment. Demonstrations proved that Oracle Exadata achieved processing speeds up to 100 times faster than competitor systems, cut typical back-up times from 6 hours to 20 minutes, and stored 10 times more data. Oracle Partners and ISVs learned that migrating solutions to Oracle Exadata’s preconfigured, pre-integrated hardware and software can be completed rapidly, at low cost, without business disruption, and with reduced ongoing operating costs. Challenges A word from Omnilogic “Oracle Exadata is the new killer application—the smartest solution on the market. There is no competition.” – Sorin Dragomir, Chief Operating Officer, Omnilogic SRL Enable Oracle Partners in Romania and central and eastern Europe to achieve Oracle Exadata Ready status by providing facilities to test and optimize existing applications and build real-life proofs of concept (POCs) for new solutions on Oracle Exadata Database Machine Provide technical support and demonstration facilities for ISVs migrating their customers’ solutions from competitor technologies to Oracle Exadata to maximize performance, scalability, and security; optimize hardware and datacenter space; cut maintenance costs; and improve return on investment Demonstrate power of Oracle Exadata’s high-performance, high-capacity engineered systems for customer-facing businesses, such as government organizations, telecommunications, banking and insurance, and utility companies, which typically require continuous availability to support very large data volumes Showcase Oracle Exadata’s unchallenged online transaction processing (OLTP) capabilities that cut application run times to provide unrivalled query turnaround and user response speeds while significantly reducing back-up times and eliminating risk of unplanned outages Capitalize on providing a world-class training and demonstration environment for Oracle Exadata to accelerate sales with Oracle Partners Solutions Created a testing environment to enable Oracle Partners and ISVs to test their own solutions and those of their customers on Oracle Exadata running on Oracle Enterprise Linux or Oracle Solaris Express to benchmark performance prior to migration Leveraged expertise on Oracle Exadata to offer Oracle Exadata training, migration, support seminars and to showcase live demonstrations for Oracle Partners Proved how Oracle Exadata’s pre-engineered systems, that come assembled, configured, and ready to run, reduce deployment time and cost, minimize risk, and help customers achieve the full performance potential immediately after go live Increased processing speeds 10-fold and with zero data loss for a telecommunications provider’s client-facing customer relationship management solution Achieved performance improvements of between 6 and 100 times faster for financial and utility company applications currently running on IBM, Microsoft, or SAP HANA platforms Showed how daily closure procedures carried out overnight by banks, insurance companies, and other financial institutions to analyze each day’s business, can typically be cut from around six hours to 20 minutes, some 18 times faster, when running on Oracle Exadata Simulated concurrent back-ups while running applications under normal working conditions to prove that Oracle Exadata-based solutions can be backed up during business hours without causing bottlenecks or impacting the end-user experience Demonstrated that Oracle Exadata’s built-in analytics, data mining and OLTP capabilities make it the highest-performance, lowest-cost choice for large data warehousing operations Showed how Oracle Exadata’s columnar compression and intelligent storage architecture allows 10 times more data to be stored than on competitor platforms Demonstrated how Oracle Exadata cuts hardware requirements significantly by consolidating workloads on to fewer servers which delivers greater power efficiency and lower operating costs that competing systems from IBM and other manufacturers Proved to ISVs that migrating solutions to Oracle Exadata’s preconfigured, pre-integrated hardware and software can be completed rapidly, at low cost, and with minimal business disruption Demonstrated how storage servers, database servers, and network switches can be added incrementally and inexpensively to the Oracle Exadata platform to support business expansion On track to grow revenues by 10% in year one and by 15% annually thereafter through increased business generated from Oracle Partners and ISVs

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• Things to install on a new machine – revisited

  - by RoyOsherove

  as I prepare to get a new dev machine at work, I write the things I am going to install on it, before writing the first line of code on that machine: Control Freak Tools: Everything Search Engine – a free and amazingly fast search engine for files all over your machine. (just file names, not inside files). This is so fast I use it almost as a replacement for my start menu, but it’s also great for finding those files that get hidden and tucked away in dark places on my system. Ever had a situation where you needed to see exactly how many copies of X.dll were hiding on your machine and where? this tool is perfect for that. Google Chrome. It’s just fast. very fast. and Firefox has become the IE of alternative browsers in terms of speed and memory. Don’t even get me started on IE. TweetDeck – get a complete view of what’s up on twitter Total Commander – my still favorite file manager, over five years now. KatMouse – will scroll any window your hovering on, even if it’s not an active window, when you use scroll the wheel on it. PowerIso or Daemon Tools – for loading up ISO images of discs LogMeIn Ignition – quick access to your LogMeIn computers for online Backup: JungleDisk or BackBlaze KeePass – save important passwords MS Security Essentials – free anti virus that’s quoest and doesn’t make a mess of your system. for home: uTorrent – a torrent client that can read rss feeds (like the ones from ezrss.it ) Camtasia Studio and SnagIt – for recording and capturing the screen, and then adding cool effects on top. Foxit PDF Reader – much faster that adove reader. Toddler Keys (for home) – for when your baby wants to play with your keyboard. Live Writer – for writing blog posts for Lenovo ThinkPads – Lenovo System Update – if you have a “custom” system instead of the one that came built in, this will keep all your lenovo drivers up to date. FileZilla – for FTP stuff All the utils from sysinternals, (or try the live-links) especially: AutoRuns for deciding what’s really going to load at startup, procmon to see what’s really going on with processes in your system   Developer stuff: Reflector. Pure magic. Time saver. See source code of any compiled assembly. Resharper. Great for productivity and navigation across your source code FinalBuilder – a commercial build automation tool. Love it. much better than any xml based time hog out there. TeamCity – a great visual and friendly server to manage continuous integration. powerful features. Test Lint – a free addin for vs 2010 I helped create, that checks your unit tests for possible problems and hints you about it. TestDriven.NET – a great test runner for vs 2008 and 2010 with some powerful features. VisualSVN – a commercial tool if you use subversion. very reliable addin for vs 2008 and 2010 Beyond Compare – a powerful file and directory comparison tool. I love the fact that you can right click in windows exporer on any file and select “select left side to compare”, then right click on another file and select “compare with left side”. Great usability thought! PostSharp 2.0 – for addind system wide concepts into your code (tracing, exception management). Goes great hand in hand with.. SmartInspect – a powerful framework and viewer for tracing for your application. lots of hidden features. Crypto Obfuscator – a relatively new obfuscation tool for .NET that seems to do the job very well. Crypto Licensing – from the same company –finally a licensing solution that seems to really fit what I needed. And it works. Fiddler 2 – great for debugging and tracing http traffic to and from your app. Debugging Tools for Windows and DebugDiag  - great for debugging scenarios. still wanting more? I think this should keep you busy for a while.   Regulator and Regulazy – for testing and generating regular expressions Notepad 2 – for quick editing and viewing with syntax highlighting

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• Tool to convert blogger.com content to dasBlog

  - by Daniel Moth

  Due to blogger.com dropping FTP support, I've had to move my blog. If you are in a similar situation, this post will help you by showing you the necessary steps to take. Goals No loss on blog posts, comments AND all existing permalinks continue to work (redirect to the correct place). Steps Download the XML files corresponding to your blogger.com content and store them in a folder. Install and configure dasBlog on your local machine. Configure your web.config file (will need updating once you run step 4). Use the tool I describe further down to generate the content and place it at the right place. Test your site locally. Once you are happy, repeat step 2 on your hosting provider of choice. Remember to copy up your dasBlog theme folder if you created one. Copy up the local web.config file and the XML dasBlog content files generated by the tool of step 4. Test your site on the server. Once you are happy, go live (following instructions from your hoster). In my case, I gave the nameservers from my new hoster to my existing domain registrar and they made the switch. Tool (code) At step 4 above I referred to a tool. That is an overstatement, it is simply one 450-line C#code file that you can download here: BloggerToDasBlog.cs. I used this from a .NET 2.0 console app (and I run it under the Visual Studio debugger, i.e. F5) like this: Program.cs. The console app referenced the dasBlog 2.3 ASP.NET Blogging Engine i.e. the newtelligence.DasBlog.Runtime.dll assembly. Let me describe what the code does: Input: A path to a folder where the XML files from the old blogger.com blog reside. It can deal with both types of XML file. A full file path to a file where it creates XML redirect input (as required by the rewriteMap mentioned here). The blog URL. The author's email. The blog author name. A path to an empty folder where the new XML dasBlog content files will get created. The subfolder name used after the domain name in the URL. The 3 reg ex patterns to use. You can use the same as mine, but will need to tweak the monthly_archive rule. Again, to see what values I passed for all the above, see my Program.cs file. Output: It creates dasBlog XML files in the folder specified. It creates those by parsing the old blogger.com XML files that reside in the folder specified. After that is generated, copy it to the "Content" folder under your dasBlog installation. It creates an XML file with a single ignorable root element and a bunch of inner XML elements. You can copy paste these in the web.config file as discussed in this post. Other notes: For each blog post, it detects outgoing links to itself (i.e. to the same blog), and rewrites those to point to the new URLs. So internal links do not rely on the web.config redirects. It deals with duplicate post titles; it does not deal with triplicates and higher. Removes all references to blogger.com (e.g. references to [email protected], the injected hidden footer for statistics that each blog post has and others – see the code). It creates a lot of diagnostic output (in the Output window) and indeed the documentation for the code is in the Debug.WriteLine statements ;) This is not code I will maintain or support – it was a throwaway one-use project that I am sharing here as a starting point for anyone finding themselves in the same boat that I was. Enjoy "as is". Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• Creating typed WSDL’s for generic WCF services of the ESB Toolkit

  - by charlie.mott

  source: http://geekswithblogs.net/charliemott Question How do you make it easy for client systems to consume the generic WCF services exposed by the ESB Toolkit using messages that conform to agreed schemas\contracts?  Usually the developer of a system consuming a web service adds a service reference using a WSDL. However, the WSDL’s for the generic services exposed by the ESB Toolkit do not make it easy to develop clients that conform to agreed schemas\contracts. Recommendation Take a copy of the generic WSDL’s and modify it to use the proper contracts. This is very easy.  It will work with the generic on ramps so long as the <part>?</part> wrapping is removed from the WCF adapter configuration in the BizTalk receive locations.  Attempting to create a WSDL where the input and output messages are sent/returned with a <part> wrapper is a nightmare.  I have not managed it.  Consequences I can only see the following consequences of removing the <part> wrapper: ESB Test Client – I needed to modify the out-of-the-box ESB Test Client source code to make it send non-wrapped messages.  Flat file formatted messages – the endpoint will no longer support flat file message formats.  However, even if you needed to support this integration pattern through WCF, you would most-likely want to create a separate receive location anyway with its’ own independently configured XML disassembler pipeline component. Instructions These steps show how to implement a request-response implementation of this. WCF Receive Locations In BizTalk, for the WCF receive location for the ESB on-ramp, set the adapter Message settings\bindings to “UseBodyPath”: Inbound BizTalk message body  = Body Outbound WCF message body = Body Create a WSDL’s for each supported integration use-case Save a copy of the WSDL for the WCF generic receive location above that you intend the client system to use. Give it a name that mirrors the interface agreement (e.g. Esb_SuppliersSearchCommand_wsHttpBinding.wsdl).   Add any xsd schemas files imported below to this same folder.   Edit the WSDL to import schemas For example, this: <xsd:schema targetNamespace=http://microsoft.practices.esb/Imports /> … would become something like: <xsd:schema targetNamespace="http://microsoft.practices.esb/Imports">     <xsd:import schemaLocation="SupplierSearchCommand_V1.xsd"                            namespace="http://schemas.acme.co.uk/suppliersearchcommand/1.0"/>     <xsd:import  schemaLocation="SuppliersDocument_V1.xsd"                              namespace="http://schemas.acme.co.uk/suppliersdocument/1.0"/>     <xsd:import schemaLocation="Types\Supplier_V1.xsd"                              namespace="http://schemas.acme.co.uk/types/supplier/1.0"/>     <xsd:import  schemaLocation="GovTalk\bs7666-v2-0.xsd"                               namespace="http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/people/bs7666"/>     <xsd:import  schemaLocation="GovTalk\CommonSimpleTypes-v1-3.xsd"                             namespace="http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/core"/>     <xsd:import  schemaLocation="GovTalk\AddressTypes-v2-0.xsd"                              namespace="http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/people/AddressAndPersonalDetails"/> </xsd:schema> Modify the Input and Output message For example, this: <wsdl:message name="ProcessRequestResponse_SubmitRequestResponse_InputMessage">   <wsdl:part name="part" type="xsd:anyType"/> </wsdl:message> <wsdl:message name="ProcessRequestResponse_SubmitRequestResponse_OutputMessage">   <wsdl:part name="part" type="xsd:anyType"/> </wsdl:message> … would become something like: <wsdl:message name="ProcessRequestResponse_SubmitRequestResponse_InputMessage">   <wsdl:part name="part"                       element="ssc:SupplierSearchEvent"                         xmlns:ssc="http://schemas.acme.co.uk/suppliersearchcommand/1.0" /> </wsdl:message> <wsdl:message name="ProcessRequestResponse_SubmitRequestResponse_OutputMessage">   <wsdl:part name="part"                       element="sd:SuppliersDocument"                       xmlns:sd="http://schemas.acme.co.uk/suppliersdocument/1.0"/> </wsdl:message> This WSDL can now be added as a service reference in client solutions.

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• How to reproject a shapefile from WGS 84 to Spherical/Web Mercator projection.

  - by samkea

  Definitions: You will need to know the meaning of these terms below. I have given a small description to the acronyms but you can google and know more about them. #1:WGS-84- World Geodetic Systems (1984)- is a standard reference coordinate system used for Cartography, Geodesy and Navigation. #2: EPGS-European Petroleum Survey Group-was a scientific organization with ties to the European petroleum industry consisting of specialists working in applied geodesy, surveying, and cartography related to oil exploration. EPSG::4326 is a common coordinate reference system that refers to WGS84 as (latitude, longitude) pair coordinates in degrees with Greenwich as the central meridian. Any degree representation (e.g., decimal or DMSH: degrees minutes seconds hemisphere) may be used. Which degree representation is used must be declared for the user by the supplier of data. So, the Spherical/Web Mercator projection is referred to as EPGS::3785 which is renamed to EPSG:900913 by google for use in googlemaps. The associated CRS(Coordinate Reference System) for this is the "Popular Visualisation CRS / Mercator ". This is the kind of projection that is used by GoogleMaps, BingMaps,OSM,Virtual Earth, Deep Earth excetra...to show interactive maps over the web with thier nearly precise coordinates.  Reprojection: After reading alot about reprojecting my coordinates from the deepearth project on Codeplex, i still could not do it. After some help from a colleague, i got my ball rolling.This is how i did it. #1 You need to download and open your shapefile using Q-GIS; its the one with the biggest number of coordinate reference systems/ projections. #2 Use the plugins menu, and enable ftools and the WFS plugin. #3 Use the Vector menu--> Data Management Tools and choose define current projection. Enable, use predefined reference system and choose WGS 84 coodinate system. I am personally in zone 36, so i chose WGS84-UTM Zone 36N under ( Projected Coordinate Systems--> Universal Transverse Mercator) and click ok. #4 Now use the Vector menu--> Data Management Tools and choose export to new projection. The same dialog will pop-up. Now choose WGS 84 EPGS::4326 under Geodetic Coordinate Systems. My Input user Defined Spatial Reference System should looks like this: +proj=tmerc +lat_0=0 +lon_0=33 +k=0.9996 +x_0=500000 +y_0=200000 +ellps=WGS84 +datum=WGS84 +units=m +no_defs Your Output user Defined Spatial Reference System should look like this: +proj=longlat +ellps=WGS84 +datum=WGS84 +no_defs Browse for the place where the shapefile is going to be and give the shapefile a name(like origna_reprojected). If it prompts you to add the projected layer to the TOC, accept. There, you have your re-projected map with latitude and longitude pair of coordinates. #5 Now, this is not the actual Spherical/Web Mercator projection, but dont worry, this is where you have to stop. All the other custom web-mapping portals will pick this projection and transform it into EPGS::3785 or EPSG:900913 but the coordinates will still remain as the LatLon pair of the projected shapefile. If you want to test, a particular know point, Q-GIS has a lot of room for that. Go ahead and test it.

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• A Few of My Favorite HTML5 and CSS3 Online Tools

  - by dwahlin

  I really enjoy coding up HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript applications but there are some things that I’m better off writing with the help of a development tool. For example, CSS3 gradients aren’t exactly the most fun thing to write by hand and the same could be said for animations, transforms, or styles that require various vendor extensions. There are a lot of online tools that can simplify building HTML5/CSS3 sites and increase productivity in the process so I thought I’d put together a post on a few of my favorites tools. HTML5 Boilerplate HTML5 Boilerplate provides a great way to get started building HTML5 sites. It includes many best practices out of the box and even includes a few tricks that many people don’t even know about. The custom download option allows you to pick the features that you want to include in the files that’s generated. You can read more about it here.   Initializr Although HTML5 Boilerplate provides a great foundation for starting HTML5 sites, it focuses on providing a starting shell structure (namely an html page, JavaScript files, and a CSS stylesheet) and doesn’t include much in the way of page content to get started with. Initializer builds on HTML5 Boilerplate and provides an initial test page that can be tweaked to meet your needs. It also provides several different customization options to include/exclude features. CSS3 Maker CSS3 provides a lot of great features ranging from gradient support to rounded corners. Although many of the features are fairly straightforward there are some that are pretty involved such as gradients, animations, and really any styles that require custom vendor extensions to use across browsers. Sure, you can type everything by hand, but sites such as CSS3 Maker provide a visual way to generate CSS3 styles. CSS3, Please! CSS3, Please! is a code generation tool that can be used to generate cross-browser CSS3 styles quickly and easily. All of the main things you can do with CSS3 are available including a clever way to visually generate CSS3 transform styles.       Ultimate CSS Gradient Generator CSS3 Maker (above) has a gradient generator built-in but my favorite tool for creating CSS3 gradients is the Ultimate CSS Gradient Generator. If you’ve created gradients in tools like Photoshop then you’ll love what this tool has to offer especially since it makes it extremely straightforward to work with different gradient stops. @font-face Fonts Although @font-face has been available for awhile, I think fonts are cool and wanted to mention a site that provides a lot of font choices. When used correctly fonts can really enhance a page and when used incorrectly (think Comic Sans) they can absolutely ruin a page. Several sites exist that provide fonts that can be used with @font-face definitions in CSS style sheets. One of my favorites is Font Squirrel.   HTML5 & CSS3 Support and Tests Interested in knowing what HTML5 and CSS3 features a given browser supports? Want to know how various browsers stack up with each other as far as HTML5/CSS3 support. Look no further than the HTML5 & CSS3 Support page or the HTML5 Test page.   CSS3 Easing Animation Tool CSS3 animations aren’t widely supported across browsers right now (I’m not really using them at this point) but they do offer a lot of promise. Creating easings for animations can definitely be a challenge but they’re something that are critical for adding that “professional touch” to your animations. Fortunately you can use the Ceaser CSS Easing Animation Tool to simplify the process and handle animation easing with…...ease.   There are several other online tools that I like but these are some of the ones I find myself using the most. If you have any favorite online tools that simplify working with HTML5 or CSS3 let me know.     For more information about onsite or online training, mentoring and consulting solutions for HTML5, jQuery, .NET, SharePoint or Silverlight please visit http://www.thewahlingroup.com.

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• Book Reviews: Art of Community and Eyetracking Web Usability

  - by ultan o'broin

  Holidays time offers a chance to catch up on some user experience and user assistance related material. So, two short book reviews (which I considered using my new Tumblr blog for. More about that another time) coming up. The Art of Community by Jono Bacon Excellent starting point for anyone wanting to get going in the community software (FLOSS, for example) space or understand how to set up, manage, and leverage the collective intelligence of communities for whatever ends. The book is a little too long in my opinion, and of course, usage of what Jono is recommending needs to be nuanced and adapted for enterprise applications space (hardly surprising there is a lot about Ubuntu, Lug Radio, and so on given Jono's interests). Shame there wasn't more information on international, non-English community considerations too. Still, some great ideas and insight into setting up and managing communities that I will leverage (watch out for the results on this blog, later in 2011). One section, on collaborative writing really jumped out. It reinforced the whole idea that to successful community initiatives are based on instigators knowing what makes the community tick in the first place. How about this for insight into user profiles for people who write community user assistance (OK then, "doc") and what tools they might use (in this case, we're talking about Jokosher): "Most people who write documentation for open source software projects would fall into the category of power user. They are technology enthusiasts who are not interested in the super-technical avenues of programming, but want to help out. Many of these people have good writing skills and a good knowledge of using the software, so the documentation fit is natural. With Jokosher we wanted to acknowledge this profile of user. As such, instead of focussing on complex text processing tools, we encouraged our documentation contributors to use a wiki." The book is available for free here, and well as being available from usual sources. Eyetracking Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen and Kara Prentice Another fine book by established experts. I have some field experience of eyetracking studies myself --in the user assistance for enterprise applications space--though Jakob and Kara concentrate on websites for their research here. I would caution how much about websites transfers easily to the applications space, especially enterprise applications, as claimed in the book too. However, Jakob and Kara do make the case very well that understanding design goals (for example, productivity improvement in the case of applications) and the context of the software use is critical. Executing a study using eyetracking technology requires that you know what you want to test, can set up realistic tasks for testing by representative testers, and then analyze the results. Be precise, as lots of data will be generated (I think the authors underplay the effort in analyzing data too). What I found disappointing was the lack of emphasis on eyetracking as only part of the usability solution. It's really for fine-tuning designs in my opinion, and should be used after other design reviews. I also wasn't that crazy about the level of disengagement between the qualitative and quantitative side of this kind of testing that the book indicated. I think it is useful to have testers verbalize their thoughts and for test engineers to prompt, intervene, or guide as necessary. More on cultural or international aspects to usability testing might have been included too (websites are available to everyone). To conclude, I enjoyed the book, took on board some key takeaways about methodologies and found the recommendations sensible and easy to follow (for example about Forms layouts). Applying enterprise applications requirements such as those relating to user profiles, design goals, and overall context of use in conjunction with what's in this book would be the way to go here. It also made me think of how interesting it would be to compare eyetracking findings between website and enterprise applications usage.

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• Redirect all access requests to a domain and subdomain(s) except from specific IP address? [closed]

  - by Christopher

  This is a self-answered question... After much wrangling I found the magic combination of mod_rewrite rules so I'm posting here. My scenario is that I have two domains - domain1.com and domain2.com - both of which are currently serving identical content (by way of a global 301 redirect from domain1 to domain2). Domain1 was then chosen to be repurposed to be a 'portal' domain - with a corporate CMS-based site leading off from the front page, and the existing 'retail' domain (domain2) left to serve the main web site. In addition, a staging subdomain was created on domain1 in order to prepare the new corporate site without impinging on the root domain's existing operation. I contemplated just rewriting all requests to domain2 and setting up the new corporate site 'behind the scenes' without using a staging domain, but I usually use subdomains when setting up new sites. Finally, I required access to the 'actual' contents of the domains and subdomains - i.e., to not be redirected like all other visitors - in order that I can develop the new site and test it in the staging environment on the live server, as I'm not using a separate development webserver in this case. I also have another test subdomain on domain1 which needed to be preserved. The way I eventually set it up was as follows: (10.2.2.1 would be my home WAN IP) .htaccess in root of domain1 RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^10\.2\.2\.1 RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^staging.domain1.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^staging2.domain1.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain2.com/$1 [R=301] .htaccess in staging subdomain on domain1: RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^10\.2\.2\.1 RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^staging.revolver.coop$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://domain2.com/$1 [R=301,L] The multiple .htaccess files and multiple rulesets require more processing overhead and longer iteration as the visitor is potentially redirected twice, however I find it to be a more granular method of control as I can selectively allow more than one IP address access to individual staging subdomain(s) without automatically granting them access to everything else. It also keeps the rulesets fairly simple and easy to read. (or re-interpret, because I'm always forgetting how I put rules together!) If anybody can suggest a more efficient way of merging all these rules and conditions into just one main ruleset in the root of domain1, please post! I'm always keen to learn, this post is more my attempt to preserve this information for those who are looking to redirect entire domains for all visitors except themselves (for design/testing purposes) and not just denying specific file access for maintenance mode (there are many good examples of simple mod_rewrite rules for 'maintenance mode' style operation easily findable via Google). You can also extend the IP address detection - firstly by using wildcards ^10\.2\.2\..*: the last octet's \..* denotes the usual "." and then "zero or more arbitrary characters", signified by the .* - so you can specify specific ranges of IPs in a subnet or entire subnets if you wish. You can also use square brackets: ^10\.2\.[1-255]\.[120-140]; ^10\.2\.[1-9]?[0-9]\.; ^10\.2\.1[0-1][0-9]\. etc. The third way, if you wish to specify multiple discrete IP addresses, is to bracket them in the style of ^(1.1.1.1|2.2.2.2|3.3.3.3)$, and you can of course use square brackets to substitute octets or single digits again. NB: if you're using individual RewriteCond lines to specify multiple IPs / ranges, make sure to put [OR] at the end of each one otherwise mod_rewrite will interpret as "if IP address matches 1.1.1.1 AND if IP address matches 2.2.2.2... which is of course impossible! However as far as I'm aware this isn't necessary if you're using the ! negator to specify "and is not...". Kudos also to SE: this older question also came in useful when I was verifying my own knowledge prior to my futzing around with code. This page was helpful, as were the various other links posted below (can't hyperlink them all due to spam protection... other regex checkers are available). The AddedBytes cheat sheet's useful to pin up on your wall. Other referenced URLs: internetofficer.com/seo-tool/regex-tester/ fantomaster.com/faarticles/rewritingurls.txt internetofficer.com/seo-tool/regex-tester/ addedbytes.com/cheat-sheets/mod_rewrite-cheat-sheet/

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• Calling Web Services in classic ASP

  - by cabhilash

    Last day my colleague asked me the provide her a solution to call the Web service from classic ASP. (Yes Classic ASP. still people are using this :D ) We can call web service SOAP toolkit also. But invoking the service using the XMLHTTP object was more easier & fast. To create the Service I used the normal Web Service in .Net 2.0 with [Webmethod] public class WebService1 : System.Web.Services.WebService { [WebMethod] public string HelloWorld(string name){return name + " Pay my dues :) "; // a reminder to pay my consultation fee :D} } In Web.config add the following entry in System.web<webServices><protocols><add name="HttpGet"/><add name="HttpPost"/></protocols></webServices> Alternatively, you can enable these protocols for all Web services on the computer by editing the <protocols> section in Machine.config. The following example enables HTTP GET, HTTP POST, and also SOAP and HTTP POST from localhost: <protocols> <add name="HttpSoap"/> <add name="HttpPost"/> <add name="HttpGet"/> <add name="HttpPostLocalhost"/> <!-- Documentation enables the documentation/test pages --> <add name="Documentation"/> </protocols> By adding these entries I am enabling the HTTPGET & HTTPPOST (After .Net 1.1 by default HTTPGET & HTTPPOST is disabled because of security concerns)The .NET Framework 1.1 defines a new protocol that is named HttpPostLocalhost. By default, this new protocol is enabled. This protocol permits invoking Web services that use HTTP POST requests from applications on the same computer. This is true provided the POST URL uses http://localhost, not http://hostname. This permits Web service developers to use the HTML-based test form to invoke the Web service from the same computer where the Web service resides. Classic ASP Code to call Web service <%Option Explicit Dim objRequest, objXMLDoc, objXmlNode Dim strRet, strError, strNome Dim strName strName= "deepa" Set objRequest = Server.createobject("MSXML2.XMLHTTP") With objRequest .open "GET", "http://localhost:3106/WebService1.asmx/HelloWorld?name=" & strName, False .setRequestHeader "Content-Type", "text/xml" .setRequestHeader "SOAPAction", "http://localhost:3106/WebService1.asmx/HelloWorld" .send End With Set objXMLDoc = Server.createobject("MSXML2.DOMDocument") objXmlDoc.async = false Response.ContentType = "text/xml" Response.Write(objRequest.ResponseText) %> In Line 6 I created an MSXML XMLHTTP object. Line 9 Using the HTTPGET protocol I am openinig connection to WebService Line 10:11 – setting the Header for the service In line 15, I am getting the output from the webservice in XML Doc format & reading the responseText(line 18). In line 9 if you observe I am passing the parameter strName to the Webservice You can pass multiple parameters to the Web service by just like any other QueryString Parameters. In similar fashion you can invoke the Web service using HTTPPost. Only you have to ensure that the form contains all th required parameters for webmethod.  Happy coding !!!!!!!

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• Running ODI 11gR1 Standalone Agent as a Windows Service

  - by fx.nicolas

  ODI 11gR1 introduces the capability to use OPMN to start and protect agent processes as services. Setting up the OPMN agent is covered in the following post and extensively in the ODI Installation Guide. Unfortunately, OPMN is not installed along with ODI, and ODI 10g users who are really at ease with the old Java Wrapper are a little bit puzzled by OPMN, and ask: "How can I simply set up the agent as a service?". Well... although the Tanuki Service Wrapper is no longer available for free, and the agentservice.bat script lost, you can switch to another service wrapper for the same result. For example, Yet Another Java Service Wrapper (YAJSW) is a good candidate. To configure a standalone agent with YAJSW: download YAJSW Uncompress the zip to a folder (called %YAJSW% in this example) Configure, start and test your standalone agent. Make sure that this agent is loaded with all the required libraries and drivers, as the service will not load dynamically the drivers added subsequently in the /drivers directory. Retrieve the PID of the agent process: Open Task Manager. Select View Select Columns Select the PID (Process Identifier) column, then click OK In the list of processes, find the java.exe process corresponding to your agent, and note its PID. Open a command line prompt in %YAJSW%/bat and run: genConfig.bat <your_pid> This command generates a wrapper configuration file for the agent. This file is called %YAJSW%/conf/wrapper.conf. Stop your agent. Edit the wrapper.conf file and modify the configuration of your service. For example, modify the display name and description of the service as shown in the example below. Important: Make sure to escape the commas in the ODI encoded passwords with a backslash! In the example below, the ODI_SUPERVISOR_ENCODED_PASS contained a comma character which had to be prefixed with a backslash. # Title to use when running as a console wrapper.console.title=\"AGENT\" #******************************************************************** # Wrapper Windows Service and Posix Daemon Properties #******************************************************************** # Name of the service wrapper.ntservice.name=AGENT_113 # Display name of the service wrapper.ntservice.displayname=ODI Agent # Description of the service wrapper.ntservice.description=Oracle Data Integrator Agent 11gR3 (11.1.1.3.0) ... # Escape the comma in the password with a backslash. wrapper.app.parameter.7 = -ODI_SUPERVISOR_ENCODED_PASS=fJya.vR5kvNcu9TtV\,jVZEt Execute your wrapped agent as console by calling in the command line prompt: runConsole.bat Check that your agent is running, and test it again.This command starts the agent with the configuration but does not install it yet as a service. To Install the agent as service call installService.bat From that point, you can view, start and stop the agent via the windows services. Et voilà ! Two final notes: - To modify the agent configuration, you must uninstall/reinstall the service. For this purpose, run the uninstallService.bat to uninstall it and play again the process above. - To be able to uninstall the agent service, you should keep a backup of the wrapper.conf file. This is particularly important when starting several services with the wrapper.

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• Auto-cancel reason not found (6, 13906)

  - by Rajesh Sharma

  There are many errors in the application which are never invoked because of appropriate application configuration done at the time of implementation by the solution architects. So typically, as an application end user you would never stumble upon such errors. But what if the application administrator inadvertently changes the configuration/setup in the development, test, QA, or production environment? This is the time when you as an end user are introduced to a brand-new error for which you may not have a clue or understanding to what it means and neither the access/privilege to rectify it.    In this post we'll focus on one such error '6, 13906 - Auto-cancel reason not found'.   You get this error if you have not defined a Bill (Segment) Cancel Reason (Admin Menu, B, Bill Cancel Reason) code with System Default value of Turn off auto-cancel.   Consider a scenario when you are about to final bill an 'Account' for which the bill period's cut-off date you selected is falling on or after the Service Agreement's (SA) end/stop date (basically SA is Stopped with a date earlier than it was billed previously). And for the same 'Account' either: Bill segments exists that end after the SA's end date OR Non-closing bill segments exists that end on the SA's end date (OR closing bill segments that do not end on SA's end date or do not exist at all - remember closing/final bill segment is generated if the SA is in Stopped status).   CC&B detects such scenario and attempts to cancel all such violating bill segments automatically, but NOT if you are generating the bill Online. If online, the system assumes that you know what you are doing, and prompts you with error 2, 13716 - Bill segments that violate the SA (%1) End Date (%2) exist to take necessary action.   If in batch, system automatically cancels these kinds of bill segment(s).   Since this happens in the background, you have to define within the application which System Default Bill (Segment) cancellation reason code identified as Turn off auto-cancel, should be used by the process when it attempts to cancel any such violating bill segments (You already know that you cannot cancel a bill segment without giving a reason for cancellation).   So what exactly happens during batch billing?   Bill Segment generation routine at first determines billing eligibility of the service agreement being billed. One of the billing eligibility criteria is to check the SA's previous bill segments which have end dates greater than the current cut-off date/end date. Technically, the routine retrieves a count of such violating bill segments.     SELECT COUNT (*) FROM CI_BSEG WHERE SA_ID = :SA-ID AND BSEG_STAT_FLG = '50' -- Frozen AND END_DT IS NOT NULL AND (END_DT > '03-JUN-2010' -- Bill segment greater than SA's End Date OR OR (END_DT = '03-JUN-2010' AND CLOSING_BSEG_SW = 'N')) -- Non-closing bill segment ending on SA's end date   If the count is greater than zero, Bill segment generation routine executes another program to auto-cancel such bill segments. Auto-cancel program retrieves the 'Bill Cancel Reason' code which is identified as Turn off auto-cancel. Retrieved cancel reason code is then placed on the bill segments that are being cancelled automatically.   During this process if the routine fails to determine the bill cancel reason code having System Default Turn off auto-cancel because it was not been configured, you get a bill exception 6, 13906 - Auto-cancel reason not found.   Also note that duplicate or multiple System Default codes identified as Turn off auto-cancel are not allowed. CC&B would complain with an error 2, 54201.   Duplicate validation/check is also performed within Auto-cancel routine, if suppose for test purposes you executed a DML statement updating CI_BILL_CAN_RSN.BSCAN_SYS_DFLT_FLG with a value 'T'.

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• Deploying BAM Data Control Application to WLS server

  - by [email protected]

  var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www."); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); try { var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-15829414-1"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {} Typically we would test our ADF pages that use BAM Data control using integrated wls server (ADRS). If we have to deploy this same application to a standalone WLS we have to make sure we have the BAM server connection created in WLS.unless we do that we may face runtime errors.In Development mode of WLS(Reference) For development-mode WebLogic Server, you can set the mode to OVERWRITE to test user names and passwords. You can set the mode by running setDomainEnv.cmd or setDomainEnv.sh with the following option added to the command. Add the following to the JAVA_PROPERTIES entry in the <FMW_HOME>/user_projects/domains/<yourdomain>/bin/setDomainEnv.sh file: -Djps.app.credential.overwrite.allowed=true In Production mode of WLS Enable MDS Create and/or Register your MDS repository. For more details refer this Edit adf-config.xml from your application and add the following tag <adf-mds-config xmlns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/adf/mds/config">     <mds-config version="11.1.1.000">     <persistence-config>   <metadata-store-usages>     <metadata-store-usage default-cust-store="true" deploy-target="true" id="myRepos">     </metadata-store-usage>   </metadata-store-usages>   </persistence-config>           </mds-config>  </adf-mds-config>Deploy the application to WLS server after picking the appropriate repository during deployment from the MDS Repository dialog that pops up Enterprise Manager (Use these steps if using a version prior to 11gR1 PS1 release of JDeveloper) Go to EM (http://<host>:<port>/EMIn the left pane, deployments select Application1(your application)In the right pane, top dropdown select "System Mbean Browser->oracle.adf.share.connections->Server: AdminServer->Server: AdminServer->Application:<Appname>->ADFConnections"Right pane click "Operations->CreateConnection"Enter Connection Type as "BAMConnection"Enter the connection name same as the one defined in JdevClick "Invoke"Click "Return"Click on Operation->SaveNow in the ADFConnections in the navigator, select the connection just created and enter all the configuration details.Save and run the page. Enterprise Manager (Use these steps or the steps above if using 11gR1 PS1 or newer) Go to EM (http://<host>:<port>/EMIn the left pane, deployments select Application1(your application)In the right pane, click on "Application Deployment" to invoke to dropdown. In that select "ADF -> Configure ADF Connections"Select Connection Type as "BAM" from the drop downEnter Connection Type as to be the same as the one defined in JDevClick on "Create Connection". This should add a new row below under "BAM Connections"Select the new connection and click on the "Edit" icon. This should bring up a dialogSpecific appropriate values for all connection parameters - Username, password, BAM Server Host, BAM Server Port, Webtier Server Host, Webtier Server Port and BAM Webtier Protocol - and then click on OK to dismiss the dialogClick on "Apply"Run the page page.

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