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• How to Use RDA to Generate WLS Thread Dumps At Specified Intervals?

  - by Daniel Mortimer

  Introduction There are many ways to generate a thread dump of a WebLogic Managed Server. For example, take a look at: Taking Thread Dumps - [an excellent blog post on the Middleware Magic site]or  Different ways to take thread dumps in WebLogic Server (Document 1098691.1) There is another method - use Remote Diagnostic Agent! The solution described below is not documented, but it is relatively straightforward to execute. One advantage of using RDA to collect the thread dumps is RDA will also collect configuration, log files, network, system, performance information at the same time. Instructions 1. Not familiar with Remote Diagnostic Agent? Take a look at my previous blog "Resolve SRs Faster Using RDA - Find the Right Profile" 2. Choose a profile, which includes the WebLogic Server data collection modules (for example the profile "WebLogicServer"). At RDA setup time you should see the prompt below: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- S301WLS: Collects Oracle WebLogic Server Information ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Enter the location of the directory where the domains to analyze are located (For example in UNIX, <BEA Home>/user_projects/domains or <Middleware Home>/user_projects/domains) Hit 'Return' to accept the default (/oracle/11AS/Middleware/user_projects/domains) > For a successful WLS connection, ensure that the domain Admin Server is up and running. Data Collection Type:   1  Collect for a single server (offline mode)   2  Collect for a single server (using WLS connection)   3  Collect for multiple servers (using WLS connection) Enter the item number Hit 'Return' to accept the default (1) > 2 Choose option 2 or 3. Note: Collect for a single server or multiple servers using WLS connection means that RDA will attempt to connect to execute online WLST commands against the targeted server(s). The thread dumps are collected using the WLST function - "threadDumps()". If WLST cannot connect to the managed server, RDA will proceed to collect other data and ignore the request to collect thread dumps. If in the final output you see no Thread Dump menu item, then it's likely that the managed server is in a state which prevents new connections to it. If faced with this scenario, you would have to employ alternative methods for collecting thread dumps. 3. The RDA setup will create a setup.cfg file in the RDA_HOME directory. Open this file in an editor. You will find the following parameters which govern the number of thread dumps and thread dump interval. #N.Number of thread dumps to capture WREQ_THREAD_DUMP=10 #N.Thread dump interval WREQ_THREAD_DUMP_INTERVAL=5000 The example lines above show the default settings. In other words, RDA will collect 10 thread dumps at 5000 millisecond (5 second) intervals. You may want to change this to something like: #N.Number of thread dumps to capture WREQ_THREAD_DUMP=10 #N.Thread dump interval WREQ_THREAD_DUMP_INTERVAL=30000 However, bear in mind, that such change will increase the total amount of time it takes for RDA to complete its run. 4. Once you are happy with the setup.cfg, run RDA. RDA will collect, render, generate and package all files in the output directory. 5. For ease of viewing, open up the RDA Start html file - "xxxx__start.htm". The thread dumps can be found under the WLST Collections for the target managed server(s). See screenshots belowScreenshot 1:RDA Start Page - Main Index Screenshot 2: Managed Server Sub Index Screenshot 3: WLST Collections Screenshot 4: Thread Dump Page - List of dump file links Screenshot 5: Thread Dump Dat File Link Additional Comment: A) You can view the thread dump files within the RDA Start Page framework, but most likely you will want to download the dat files for in-depth analysis via thread dump analysis tools such as: Thread Dump Analyzer -  Samurai - a GUI based tail , thread dump analysis tool If you are new to thread dump analysis - take a look at this recorded Support Advisor Webcast  Oracle WebLogic Server: Diagnosing Performance Issues through Java Thread Dumps[Slidedeck from webcast in PDF format]B) I have logged a couple of enhancement requests for the RDA Development Team to consider: Add timestamp to dump file links, dat filename and at the top of the body of the dat file Package the individual thread dumps in a zip so all dump files can be conveniently downloaded in one go.

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• Employee Engagement Q&A with John Brunswick

  - by Kellsey Ruppel

  As we are focusing this week on Employee Engagement, I recently sat down with industry expert and thought leader John Brunswick on the topic. Here is the Q&A dialogue we shared.  Q: How do you effectively engage employees to drive business value?A: Motivation, both extrinsic and intrinsic, combined with the relevancy of various channels to support it.  Beyond chaining business strategies like compensation models within an organization, engagement ultimately is most successful when driven by employee's motivations.  Business value derived from engagement through technical capabilities can be objectively measured through metrics like the rate and accuracy of problem solving for a given business function or frequency of innovation created.  Providing employees performing "knowledge work" with capabilities that allow them to perform work with a higher degree of accuracy in the same or ideally less time, adds value for that individual and in turn, drives their level of engagement to drive business value. Q: Organizations with high levels of employee engagement outperform the total stock market index by 22%. Can you comment on why you think this might be? A: Alignment through shared purpose.  Zappos is an excellent example of a culture that arguably has higher than average levels of employee engagement and it permeates every aspect of their organization – embodied externally through their customer experience.  I recently made my first purchase with them and it was obvious through their web experience, visual design, communication style, customer service and attention to detail down to green packaging, that they have an amazingly strong shared purpose.  The Zappos.com ‘About page’ outlines their "Family Core Values", the first three being "Deliver WOW Through Service, Embrace and Drive Change & Create Fun and A Little Weirdness" – all reflected externally in my interaction with them.  Strong shared purpose enables higher product and service experience, equating to a dedicated customer base, repeat purchases and expanded marketshare. Q: Have you seen any trends in the market regarding employee engagement? A: Some companies now see offering a form of social engagement similar to Facebook and LinkedIn as standard communication infrastructure like email or instant messaging.  Originally offered as standalone tools, the value is now seen when these capabilities are offered in an integrated fashion in the context of business entities.  An emerging area of focus is around employee activities related to their organization on external social platforms, implicitly creating external communities with employees acting on behalf of the brand and interacting with each other (e.g. Twitter).  Companies have reached a formal understand that this now established communication medium requires strategies allowing employees to engage.  I have personally met colleagues from Oracle, like Oracle User Experience Director Ultan O'Broin (@ultan), via Twitter before meeting first through internal channels. Q: Employee engagement is important, but what about engaging customers and partners? A: The last few years we have witnessed an interesting evolution from the novelty of self-service to expectations of "intelligent" self-service.  From a consumer standpoint, engagement can end up being a key differentiator, especially in mature markets.  Customers that perform some level of interaction with a brand develop greater affinity for the brand and have a greater probability of acting as an advocate.  As organizations move toward a model of deeper engagement, they must ensure that their business is positioned to support deeper relationships, offering potentially greater transparency. From a partner standpoint greater engagement can lead to new types of business opportunities, much in the way that Amazon.com offers a unified shopping experience that can potentially span various vendors.  This same model can be extended to blending services and product delivery models, based on a closeness not easily possible before increased capability of engagement mechanisms. Q: What types of solutions are available to successfully deliver employee engagement? A: Solutions enabling higher levels of engagement do so on the basis of relevancy.  This relevancy is generally supported by aspects of content management, social collaboration, business intelligence, portal and process management technologies.  These technologies can help deliver an experience tailored to a given role or process within an organization that applies equally to work that is structured or unstructured, appearing in the form of functionality as simple as an online employee directory search, knowledge communities supported by social collaboration, as well as more feature rich business intelligence dashboards and portals. Looking to learn more about how to effectively engage your employees? Check out this webcast, or read more from John Brunswick. 

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• Architect Day: Boston - Agenda Update

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Here's the latest information on the session schedule and content for Oracle Technology Network Architect Day in Boston, MA on September 12, 2012. Registration is open, but seating is limited. When: September 12, 2012 8:30am – 5:00pm Where: Boston Marriott Burlington One Burlington Mall Road Burlington, MA 01803 Register now Agenda Time Session Title Room 8:30 am - 9:00 am Registration and Continental Breakfast Salon E Foyer 9:00 am - 9:15 am Welcome and Opening Comments | Bob Rhubart Salon E 9:15 am - 10:00 am Engineered Systems: Oracle's Vision for the Future | Ralf Dossmann Oracle's Exadata and Exalogic are impressive products in their own right. But working in combination they deliver unparalleled transaction processing performance with up to a 30x increase over existing legacy systems, with the lowest cost of ownership over a 3 or 5 year basis than any other hardware. In this session you'll learn how to leverage Oracle's Engineered Systems within your enterprise to deliver record-breaking performance at the lowest TCO. Salon E 10:00 am - 10:30 am Securing Public and Private Clouds | Anton Nielsen Long before the term "Cloud Computing" existed, Oracle technologies supported and promoted the concept. Centralized data with remote users has been at the core of these technologies for decades. The public cloud, and extending private clouds to the internet, though, has added security challenges never imagined decades ago. This presentation will examine a real life security breach and introduce architecture, technologies and policies to secure public and private clouds.  Salon E 10:30 am - 10:45 am Break 10:45 am - 11:30 am Breakout Sessions (pick one) Cloud Computing - Making IT Simple | Scott Mattoon The road to Cloud Computing is not without a few bumps. This session will help to smooth out your journey by tackling some of the potential complications. We'll examine whether standardization is a prerequisite for the Cloud. We'll look at why refactoring isn't just for application code. We'll check out deployable entities and their simplification via higher levels of abstraction. And we'll close out the session with a look at engineered systems and modular clouds. Salon E Innovations in Grid Computing with Oracle Coherence | Rob Misek Learn how Coherence can increase the availability, scalability and performance of your existing applications with its advanced low-latency data-grid technologies. Also hear some interesting industry-specific use cases that customers had implemented and how Oracle is integrating Coherence into its Enterprise Java stack. Salon C 11:30 am - 12:15 pm Breakout Sessions (pick one) Enterprise Strategy for Cloud Security | Dave Chappelle Security is high on the list of concerns for many organizations as they evaluate their cloud computing options. This session will examine security in the context of the various forms of cloud computing. We'll consider technical and non-technical aspects of security, and discuss several strategies for cloud computing, from both the consumer and producer perspectives. Salon E Oracle Enterprise Manager | Avi Huber Much more than a DB management tool, Oracle Enterprise Manager provides management and monitoring coverage for the entire Oracle stack, and beyond. This session will concentrate on the middleware management functionality in OEM, starting with Real User Experience monitoring, through AppServer management, and into deep-dive Java diagnostics. We’ll discuss Business Driven Application Management (BDAM) and the benefits of top-down monitoring. Lastly, we’ll demonstrate how to trace a specific user experience problem, through a multitier SOA application, to its root cause, deep in the JVM. Salon C 12:15 pm - 1:15 pm Lunch Salon E Foyer 1:15 pm - 2:00 pm Panel Discussion - Q&A with session speakers Salon E 2:00 pm - 2:45 pm Breakout Sessions (pick one) Oracle Cloud Reference Architecture | Anbu Krishnaswamy Cloud initiatives are beginning to dominate enterprise IT roadmaps. Successful adoption of Cloud and the subsequent governance challenges warrant a Cloud reference architecture that is applied consistently across the enterprise. This presentation will answer the important questions: What exactly is a Cloud, why you need it, what changes it will bring to the enterprise, and what are the key capabilities of a Cloud infrastructure are - using Oracle's Cloud Reference Architecture, which is part of the IT Strategies from Oracle (ITSO) Cloud Enterprise Technology Strategy (ETS). Salon E 21st Century SOA | Peter Belknap Service Oriented Architecture has evolved from concept to reality in the last decade. The right methodology coupled with mature SOA technologies has helped customers demonstrate success in both innovation and ROI. In this session you will learn how Oracle SOA Suite's orchestration, virtualization, and governance capabilities provide the infrastructure to run mission critical business and system applications. And we'll take a special look at the convergence of SOA & BPM using Oracle's Unified technology stack. Salon C 2:45 pm - 3:00 pm Break 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm Roundtable Discussion Salon E 4:00 pm - 4:15 pm Closing Comments & Readouts from Roundtables Salon E 4:15 pm - 5:00 pm Networking / Reception Salon E Foyer Note: Session schedule and content subject to change.

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• Adventures in Windows 8: Understanding and debugging design time data in Expression Blend

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  One of my favorite features in Expression Blend is the ability to attach a Visual Studio debugger to Blend. First let’s start by answering the question: why exactly do you want to do that? Note: If you are familiar with the creation and usage of design time data, feel free to scroll down to the paragraph titled “When design time data fails”. Creating design time data for your app When a designer works on an app, he needs to see something to design. For “static” UI such as buttons, backgrounds, etc, the user interface elements are going to show up in Blend just fine. If however the data is fetched dynamically from a service (web, database, etc) or created dynamically, most probably Blend is going to show just an empty element. The classical way to design at that stage is to run the application, navigate to the screen that is under construction (which can involve delays, need to log in, etc…), to measure what is on the screen (colors, margins, width and height, etc) using various tools, going back to Blend, editing the properties of the elements, running again, etc. Obviously this is not ideal. The solution is to create design time data. For more information about the creation of design time data by mocking services, you can refer to two talks of mine “Deep dive MVVM” and “MVVM Applied From Silverlight to Windows Phone to Windows 8”. The source code for these talks is here and here. Design time data in MVVM Light One of the main reasons why I developed MVVM Light is to facilitate the creation of design time data. To illustrate this, let’s create a new MVVM Light application in Visual Studio. Install MVVM Light from here: http://mvvmlight.codeplex.com (use the MSI in the Download section). After installing, make sure to read the Readme that opens up in your favorite browser, you will need one more step to install the Project Templates. Start Visual Studio 2012. Create a new MvvmLight (Win8) app. Run the application. You will see a string showing “Welcome to MVVM Light”. In the Solution explorer, right click on MainPage.xaml and select Open in Blend. Now you should see “Welcome to MVVM Light [Design]” What happens here is that Expression Blend runs different code at design time than the application runs at runtime. To do this, we use design-time detection (as explained in a previous article) and use that information to initialize a different data service at design time. To understand this better, open the ViewModelLocator.cs file in the ViewModel folder and see how the DesignDataService is used at design time, while the DataService is used at runtime. In a real-life applicationm, DataService would be used to connect to a web service, for instance. When design time data fails Sometimes however, the creation of design time data fails. It can be very difficult to understand exactly what is happening. Expression Blend is not giving a lot of information about what happened. Thankfully, we can use a trick: Attaching a debugger to Expression Blend and debug the design time code. In WPF and Silverlight (including Windows Phone 7), you could simply attach the debugger to Blend.exe (using the “Managed (v4.5, v4.0) code” option even for Silverlight!!) In Windows 8 however, things are just a bit different. This is because the designer that renders the actual representation of the Windows 8 app runs in its own process. Let’s illustrate that: Open the file DesignDataService in the Design folder. Modify the GetData method to look like this: public void GetData(Action<DataItem, Exception> callback) { throw new Exception(); // Use this to create design time data var item = new DataItem("Welcome to MVVM Light [design]"); callback(item, null); } Go to Blend and build the application. The build succeeds, but now the page is empty. The creation of the design time data failed, but we don’t get a warning message. We need to investigate what’s wrong. Close MainPage.xaml Go to Visual Studio and select the menu Debug, Attach to Process. Update: Make sure that you select “Managed (v4.5, v4.0) code” in the “Attach to” field. Find the process named XDesProc.exe. You should have at least two, one for the Visual Studio 2012 designer surface, and one for Expression Blend. Unfortunately in this screen it is not obvious which is which. Let’s find out in the Task Manager. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del and select Task Manager Go to the Details tab and sort the processes by name. Find the one that says “Blend for Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 XAML UI Designer” and write down the process ID. Go back to the Attach to Process dialog in Visual Studio. sort the processes by ID and attach the debugger to the correct instance of XDesProc.exe. Open the MainViewModel (in the ViewModel folder) Place a breakpoint on the first line of the MainViewModel constructor. Go to Blend and open the MainPage.xaml again. At this point, the debugger breaks in Visual Studio and you can execute your code step by step. Simply step inside the dataservice call, and find the exception that you had placed there. Visual Studio gives you additional information which helps you to solve the issue. More info and Conclusion I want to thank the amazing people on the Expression Blend team for being very fast in guiding me in that matter and encouraging me to blog about it. More information about the XDesProc.exe process can be found here. I had to work on a Windows 8 app for a few days without design time data because of an Exception thrown somewhere in the code, and it was really painful. With the debugger, finding the issue was a simple matter of stepping into the code until it threw the exception.   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• Blog Buzz - Devoxx 2011

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  Some day I will make it to Devoxx – for now, I’m content to vicariously follow the blogs of attendees and pick up on what’s happening.  I’ve been doing more blog "fishing," looking for the best commentary on 2011 Devoxx. There’s plenty of food for thought – and the ideas are not half-baked.The bloggers are out in full, offering useful summaries and commentary on Devoxx goings-on.Constantin Partac, a Java developer and a member of Transylvania JUG, a community from Cluj-Napoca/Romania, offers an excellent summary of the Devoxx keynotes. Here’s a sample:“Oracle Opening Keynote and JDK 7, 8, and 9 Presentation•    Oracle is committed to Java and wants to provide support for it on any device.•    JSE 7 for Mac will be released next week.•    Oracle would like Java developers to be involved in JCP, to adopt a JSR and to attend local JUG meetings.•    JEE 7 will be released next year.•    JEE 7 is focused on cloud integration, some of the features are already implemented in glassfish 4 development branch.•    JSE 8 will be release in summer of 2013 due to “enterprise community request” as they can not keep the pace with an 18    month release cycle.•    The main features included in JSE8 are lambda support, project Jigsaw, new Date/Time API, project Coin++ and adding   support for sensors. JSE 9 probably will focus on some of these features:1.    self tuning JVM2.    improved native language integration3.    processing enhancement for big data4.    reification (adding runtime class type info for generic types)5.    unification of primitive and corresponding object classes6.    meta-object protocol in order to use type and methods define in other JVM languages7.    multi-tenancy8.    JVM resource management” Thanks Constantin! Ivan St. Ivanov, of SAP Labs Bulgaria, also commented on the keynotes with a different focus.  He summarizes Henrik Stahl’s look ahead to Java SE 8 and JavaFX 3.0; Cameron Purdy on Java EE and the cloud; celebrated Java Champion Josh Bloch on what’s good and bad about Java; Mark Reinhold’s quick look ahead to Java SE 9; and Brian Goetz on lambdas and default methods in Java SE 8. Here’s St. Ivanov’s account of Josh Bloch’s comments on the pluses of Java:“He started with the virtues of the platform. To name a few:    Tightly specified language primitives and evaluation order – int is always 32 bits and operations are executed always from left  to right, without compilers messing around    Dynamic linking – when you change a class, you need to recompile and rebuild just the jar that has it and not the whole application    Syntax  similarity with C/C++ – most existing developers at that time felt like at home    Object orientations – it was cool at that time as well as functional programming is today    It was statically typed language – helps in faster runtime, better IDE support, etc.    No operator overloading – well, I’m not sure why it is good. Scala has it for example and that’s why it is far better for defining DSLs. But I will not argue with Josh.”It’s worth checking out St. Ivanov’s summary of Bloch’s views on what’s not so great about Java as well. What's Coming in JAX-RS 2.0Marek Potociar, Principal Software Engineer at Oracle and currently specification lead of Java EE RESTful web services API (JAX-RS), blogged on his talk about what's coming in JAX-RS 2.0, scheduled for final release in mid-2012.  Here’s a taste:“Perhaps the most wanted addition to the JAX-RS is the Client API, that would complete the JAX-RS story, that is currently server-side only. In JAX-RS 2.0 we are adding a completely interface-based and fluent client API that blends nicely in with the existing fluent response builder pattern on the server-side. When we started with the client API, the first proposal contained around 30 classes. Thanks to the feedback from our Expert Group we managed to reduce the number of API classes to 14 (2 of them being exceptions)! The resulting is compact while at the same time we still managed to create an API that reflects the method invocation context flow (e.g. once you decide on the target URI and start setting headers on the request, your IDE will not try to offer you a URI setter in the code completion). This is a subtle but very important usability aspect of an API…” Obviously, Devoxx is a great Java conference, one that is hitting this year at a time when much is brewing in the platform and beginning to be anticipated.

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• Goto for the Java Programming Language

  - by darcy

  Work on JDK 8 is well-underway, but we thought this late-breaking JEP for another language change for the platform couldn't wait another day before being published. Title: Goto for the Java Programming Language Author: Joseph D. Darcy Organization: Oracle. Created: 2012/04/01 Type: Feature State: Funded Exposure: Open Component: core/lang Scope: SE JSR: 901 MR Discussion: compiler dash dev at openjdk dot java dot net Start: 2012/Q2 Effort: XS Duration: S Template: 1.0 Reviewed-by: Duke Endorsed-by: Edsger Dijkstra Funded-by: Blue Sun Corporation Summary Provide the benefits of the time-testing goto control structure to Java programs. The Java language has a history of adding new control structures over time, the assert statement in 1.4, the enhanced for-loop in 1.5,and try-with-resources in 7. Having support for goto is long-overdue and simple to implement since the JVM already has goto instructions. Success Metrics The goto statement will allow inefficient and verbose recursive algorithms and explicit loops to be replaced with more compact code. The effort will be a success if at least twenty five percent of the JDK's explicit loops are replaced with goto's. Coordination with IDE vendors is expected to help facilitate this goal. Motivation The goto construct offers numerous benefits to the Java platform, from increased expressiveness, to more compact code, to providing new programming paradigms to appeal to a broader demographic. In JDK 8, there is a renewed focus on using the Java platform on embedded devices with more modest resources than desktop or server environments. In such contexts, static and dynamic memory footprint is a concern. One significant component of footprint is the code attribute of class files and certain classes of important algorithms can be expressed more compactly using goto than using other constructs, saving footprint. For example, to implement state machines recursively, some parties have asked for the JVM to support tail calls, that is, to perform a complex transformation with security implications to turn a method call into a goto. Such complicated machinery should not be assumed for an embedded context. A better solution is just to expose to the programmer the desired functionality, goto. The web has familiarized users with a model of traversing links among different HTML pages in a free-form fashion with some state being maintained on the side, such as login credentials, to effect behavior. This is exactly the programming model of goto and code. While in the past this has been derided as leading to "spaghetti code," spaghetti is a tasty and nutritious meal for programmers, unlike quiche. The invokedynamic instruction added by JSR 292 exposes the JVM's linkage operation to programmers. This is a low-level operation that can be leveraged by sophisticated programmers. Likewise, goto is a also a low-level operation that should not be hidden from programmers who can use more efficient idioms. Some may object that goto was consciously excluded from the original design of Java as one of the removed feature from C and C++. However, the designers of the Java programming languages have revisited these removals before. The enum construct was also left out only to be added in JDK 5 and multiple inheritance was left out, only to be added back by the virtual extension method methods of Project Lambda. As a living language, the needs of the growing Java community today should be used to judge what features are needed in the platform tomorrow; the language should not be forever bound by the decisions of the past. Description From its initial version, the JVM has had two instructions for unconditional transfer of control within a method, goto (0xa7) and goto_w (0xc8). The goto_w instruction is used for larger jumps. All versions of the Java language have supported labeled statements; however, only the break and continue statements were able to specify a particular label as a target with the onerous restriction that the label must be lexically enclosing. The grammar addition for the goto statement is: GotoStatement: goto Identifier ; The new goto statement similar to break except that the target label can be anywhere inside the method and the identifier is mandatory. The compiler simply translates the goto statement into one of the JVM goto instructions targeting the right offset in the method. Therefore, adding the goto statement to the platform is only a small effort since existing compiler and JVM functionality is reused. Other language changes to support goto include obvious updates to definite assignment analysis, reachability analysis, and exception analysis. Possible future extensions include a computed goto as found in gcc, which would replace the identifier in the goto statement with an expression having the type of a label. Testing Since goto will be implemented using largely existing facilities, only light levels of testing are needed. Impact Compatibility: Since goto is already a keyword, there are no source compatibility implications. Performance/scalability: Performance will improve with more compact code. JVMs already need to handle irreducible flow graphs since goto is a VM instruction.

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• Why do my 512x512 bitmaps look jaggy on Android OpenGL?

  - by Milo Mordaunt

  This is sort of driving me nuts, I've googled and googled and tried everything I can think of, but my sprites still look super blurry and super jaggy. Example: Here: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0Bx9Gbwnv9Hd2TmpiZkFycUNmRTA If you click through to the actual full size image you should see what I mean, it's like it's taking and average of every 5*5 pixels or something, the background looks really blurry and blocky, but the ball is the worst. The clouds look all right for some reason, probably because they're mostly transparent. I know the pngs aren't top notch themselves but hey, I'm no artist! I would imagine it's a problem with either: a. How the pngs are made example sprite (512x512): https://docs.google.com/open?id=0Bx9Gbwnv9Hd2a2RRQlJiQTFJUEE b. How my Matrices work This is the relevant parts of the renderer: public void onDrawFrame(GL10 unused) { if(world != null) { dt = System.currentTimeMillis() - endTime; world.update( (float) dt); // Redraw background color GLES20.glClear(GLES20.GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT); Matrix.setIdentityM(mvMatrix, 0); Matrix.translateM(mvMatrix, 0, 0f, 0f, 0f); world.draw(mvMatrix, mProjMatrix); endTime = System.currentTimeMillis(); } else { Log.d(TAG, "There is no world...."); } } public void onSurfaceChanged(GL10 unused, int width, int height) { GLES20.glViewport(0, 0, width, height); Matrix.orthoM(mProjMatrix, 0, 0, width /2, 0, height /2, -1.f, 1.f); } And this is what each Quad does when draw is called: public void draw(float[] mvMatrix, float[] pMatrix) { Matrix.setIdentityM(mMatrix, 0); Matrix.setIdentityM(mvMatrix, 0); Matrix.translateM(mMatrix, 0, xPos, yPos, 0.f); Matrix.multiplyMM(mvMatrix, 0, mvMatrix, 0, mMatrix, 0); Matrix.scaleM(mvMatrix, 0, scale, scale, 0f); Matrix.rotateM(mvMatrix, 0, angle, 0f, 0f, -1f); GLES20.glUseProgram(mProgram); posAttr = GLES20.glGetAttribLocation(mProgram, "vPosition"); texAttr = GLES20.glGetAttribLocation(mProgram, "aTexCo"); uSampler = GLES20.glGetUniformLocation(mProgram, "uSampler"); int alphaHandle = GLES20.glGetUniformLocation(mProgram, "alpha"); GLES20.glVertexAttribPointer(posAttr, COORDS_PER_VERTEX, GLES20.GL_FLOAT, false, 0, vertexBuffer); GLES20.glVertexAttribPointer(texAttr, 2, GLES20.GL_FLOAT, false, 0, texCoBuffer); GLES20.glEnableVertexAttribArray(posAttr); GLES20.glEnableVertexAttribArray(texAttr); GLES20.glActiveTexture(GLES20.GL_TEXTURE0); GLES20.glBindTexture(GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture); GLES20.glUniform1i(uSampler, 0); GLES20.glUniform1f(alphaHandle, alpha); mMVMatrixHandle = GLES20.glGetUniformLocation(mProgram, "uMVMatrix"); mPMatrixHandle = GLES20.glGetUniformLocation(mProgram, "uPMatrix"); GLES20.glUniformMatrix4fv(mMVMatrixHandle, 1, false, mvMatrix, 0); GLES20.glUniformMatrix4fv(mPMatrixHandle, 1, false, pMatrix, 0); GLES20.glDrawElements(GLES20.GL_TRIANGLE_STRIP, 4, GLES20.GL_UNSIGNED_SHORT, indicesBuffer); GLES20.glDisableVertexAttribArray(posAttr); GLES20.glDisableVertexAttribArray(texAttr); GLES20.glBindTexture(GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0); } c. How my texture loading/blending/shaders setup works Here is the renderer setup: public void onSurfaceCreated(GL10 unused, EGLConfig config) { // Set the background frame color GLES20.glClearColor(0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f); GLES20.glDisable(GLES20.GL_DEPTH_TEST); GLES20.glDepthMask(false); GLES20.glBlendFunc(GLES20.GL_ONE, GLES20.GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA); GLES20.glEnable(GLES20.GL_BLEND); GLES20.glEnable(GLES20.GL_DITHER); } Here is the vertex shader: attribute vec4 vPosition; attribute vec2 aTexCo; varying vec2 vTexCo; uniform mat4 uMVMatrix; uniform mat4 uPMatrix; void main() { gl_Position = uPMatrix * uMVMatrix * vPosition; vTexCo = aTexCo; } And here's the fragment shader: precision mediump float; uniform sampler2D uSampler; uniform vec4 vColor; varying vec2 vTexCo; varying float alpha; void main() { vec4 color = texture2D(uSampler, vec2(vTexCo)); gl_FragColor = color; if(gl_FragColor.a == 0.0) { "discard; } } This is how textures are loaded: private int loadTexture(int rescource) { int[] texture = new int[1]; BitmapFactory.Options opts = new BitmapFactory.Options(); opts.inScaled = false; Bitmap temp = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(context.getResources(), rescource, opts); GLES20.glGenTextures(1, texture, 0); GLES20.glActiveTexture(GLES20.GL_TEXTURE0); GLES20.glBindTexture(GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture[0]); GLES20.glTexParameterf(GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GLES20.GL_LINEAR); GLES20.glTexParameterf(GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GLES20.GL_LINEAR); GLUtils.texImage2D(GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, temp, 0); GLES20.glGenerateMipmap(GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_2D); GLES20.glBindTexture(GLES20.GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0); temp.recycle(); return texture[0]; } I'm sure I'm doing about 20,000 things wrong, so I'm really sorry if the problem is blindingly obvious... The test device is a Galaxy Note, running a JellyBean custom ROM, if that matters at all. So the screen resolution is 1280x800, which means... The background is 1024x1024, so yeah it might be a little blurry, but shouldn't be made of lego. Thank you so much, any answer at all would be appreciated.

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• Implementing synchronous MediaTypeFormatters in ASP.NET Web API

  - by cibrax

  One of main characteristics of MediaTypeFormatter’s in ASP.NET Web API is that they leverage the Task Parallel Library (TPL) for reading or writing an model into an stream. When you derive your class from the base class MediaTypeFormatter, you have to either implement the WriteToStreamAsync or ReadFromStreamAsync methods for writing or reading a model from a stream respectively. These two methods return a Task, which internally does all the serialization work, as it is illustrated bellow. public abstract class MediaTypeFormatter { public virtual Task WriteToStreamAsync(Type type, object value, Stream writeStream, HttpContent content, TransportContext transportContext); public virtual Task<object> ReadFromStreamAsync(Type type, Stream readStream, HttpContent content, IFormatterLogger formatterLogger); }   .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } However, most of the times, serialization is a safe operation that can be done synchronously. In fact, many of the serializer classes you will find in the .NET framework only provide sync methods. So the question is, how you can transform that synchronous work into a Task ?. Creating a new task using the method Task.Factory.StartNew for doing all the serialization work would be probably the typical answer. That would work, as a new task is going to be scheduled. However, that might involve some unnecessary context switches, which are out of our control and might be affect performance on server code specially.   If you take a look at the source code of the MediaTypeFormatters shipped as part of the framework, you will notice that they actually using another pattern, which uses a TaskCompletionSource class. public Task WriteToStreamAsync(Type type, object value, Stream writeStream, HttpContent content, TransportContext transportContext) {   var tsc = new TaskCompletionSource<AsyncVoid>(); tsc.SetResult(default(AsyncVoid));   //Do all the serialization work here synchronously   return tsc.Task; }   /// <summary> /// Used as the T in a "conversion" of a Task into a Task{T} /// </summary> private struct AsyncVoid { } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } They are basically doing all the serialization work synchronously and using a TaskCompletionSource for returning a task already done. To conclude this post, this is another approach you might want to consider when using serializers that are not compatible with an async model. Update: Henrik Nielsen from the ASP.NET team pointed out the existence of a built-in media type formatter for writing sync formatters. BufferedMediaTypeFormatter http://t.co/FxOfeI5x

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• Do you know your ADF "grace period?"

  - by Chris Muir

  What does the term "support" mean to you in context of vendors such as Oracle giving your organization support with our products? Over the last few weeks I'm taken a straw poll to discuss this very question with customers, and I've received a wide array of answers much to my surprise (which I've paraphrased): "Support means my staff can access dedicated resources to assist them solve problems" "Support means I can call Oracle at anytime to request assistance" "Support means we can expect fixes and patches to bugs in Oracle software" The last expectation is the one I'd like to focus on in this post, keep it in mind while reading this blog. From Oracle's perspective as we're in the business of support, we in fact offer numerous services which are captured on the table in the following page. As the text under the table indicates, you should consult the relevant Oracle Lifetime Support brochures to understand the length of time Oracle will support Oracle products. As I'm a product manager for ADF that sits under the FMW tree of Oracle products, let's consider ADF in particular. The FMW brochure is found here. On page 8 and 9 you'll see the current "Application Development Framework 11gR1 (11.1.1.x)" and "Application Development Framework 11gR2 (11.1.2)" releases are supported out to 2017 for Extended Support. This timeframe is pretty standard for Oracle's current released products, though as new releases roll in we should see those dates extended. On page 8 of the PDF note the comment at the end of this page that refers to the Oracle Support document 209768.1: For more-detailed information on bug fix and patch release policies, please refer to the “Error Correction Support Policy” on MyOracle Support. This policy document is important as it introduces Oracle's Error Correction Support Policy which addresses "patches and fixes". You can find it attached the previous Oracle Support document 209768.1. Broadly speaking while Oracle does provide "generalized support" up to 2017 for ADF, the Error Correction Support Policy dictates when Oracle will provide "patches and fixes" for Oracle software, and this is where the concept of the "grace period" comes in. As Oracle releases different versions of Oracle software, say 11.1.1.4.0, you are fully supported for patches and fixes for that specific version. However when we release the next version, say 11.1.1.5.0, Oracle provides at minimum of 3 months to a maximum of 1 year "grace period" where we'll continue to provide patches and fixes for the previous version. This gives you time to move from 11.1.1.4.0 to 11.1.1.5.0 without being unsupported for patches and fixes. The last paragraph does generalize as I've attempted to highlight the concept of the grace period rather than the specific dates for any version. For specific ADF and FMW versions and their respective grace periods and when they terminated you must visit Oracle Support Note 1290894.1. I'd like to include a screenshot here of the relevant table from that Oracle Support Note but as it is will be frequently updated it's better I force you to visit that note. Be careful to heed the comment in the note: According to policy, the Grace Period has passed because a newer Patch Set has been released for more than a year. Its important to note that the Lifetime Support Policy and Error Correction Support Policy documents are the single source of truth, subject to change, and will provide exceptions when required. This My Oracle Support document is providing a summary of the Grace Period dates and time lines for planning purposes. So remember to return to the policy document for all definitions, note 1290894.1 is a summary only and not guaranteed to be up to date or correct. A last point from Oracle's perspective. Why doesn't Oracle provide patches and fixes for all releases as long as they're supported? Amongst other reasons, it's a matter of practicality. Consider JDeveloper 10.1.3 released in 2005. JDeveloper 10.1.3 is still currently supported to 2017, but since that version was released there has been just under 20 newer releases of JDeveloper. Now multiply that across all Oracle's products and imagine the number of releases Oracle would have to provide fixes and patches for, and maintain environments to test them, build them, staff to write them and more, it's simple beyond the capabilities of even a large software vendor like Oracle. So the "grace period" restricts that patches and fixes window to something manageable. In conclusion does the concept of the "grace period" matter to you? If you define support as "getting assistance from Oracle" then maybe not. But if patches and fixes are important to you, then you need to understand the "grace period" and operate within the bounds of Oracle's Error Correction Support Policy. Disclaimer: this blog post was written July 2012. Oracle Support policies do change from time to time so the emphasis is on you to double check the facts presented in this blog.

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• Adding a Network Loopback Adapter to Windows 8

  - by Greg Low

  I have to say that I continue to be frustrated with finding out how to do things in Windows 8. Here's another one and it's recorded so it might help someone else. I've also documented what I tried so that if anyone from the product group ever reads this, they'll understand how I searched for it and might try to make it easier.I wanted to add a network loopback adapter, to have a fixed IP address to work with when using an "internal" network with Hyper-V. (The fact that I even need to do this is also painful. I don't know why Hyper-V can't make it easy to work with host system folders, etc. as easily as I can with VirtualPC, VirtualBox, etc. but that's a topic for another day).In the end, what I needed was a known IP address on the same network that my guest OS was using, via the internal network (which allows connectivity from the host OS to/from guest OS's).I started by looking in the network adapters areas but there is no "add" functionality there. Realising that this was likely to be another unexpected challenge, I resorted to searching for info on doing this. I found KB article 2777200 entitled "Installing the Microsoft Loopback Adapter in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012". Aha, I thought that's what I'd need. It describes the symptom as "You are trying to install the Microsoft Loopback Adapter, but are unable to find it." and that certainly sounded like me. There's a certain irony in documenting that something's hard to find instead of making it easier to find. Anyway, you'd hope that in that article, they'd then provide a step by step example of how to do it, but what they supply is this: The Microsoft Loopback Adapter was renamed in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. The new name is "Microsoft KM-TEST Loopback Adapter". When using the Add Hardware Wizard to manually add a network adapter, choose Manufacturer "Microsoft" and choose network adapter "Microsoft KM-TEST Loopback Adapter".The trick with this of course is finding the "Add Hardware Wizard". In Control Panel -> Hardware and Sound, there are options to "Add a device" and for "Device Manager". I tried the "Add a device" wizard (seemed logical to me) but after that wizard tries it's best, it just tells you that there isn't any hardware that it thinks it needs to install. It offers a link for when you can't find what you're looking for, but that leads to a generic help page that tells you how to do things like turning on your printer.In Device Manager, I checked the options in the program menus, and nothing useful was present. I even tried right-clicking "Network adapters", hoping that would lead to an option to add one, also to no avail.So back to the search engine I went, to try to find out where the "Add Hardware Wizard" is. Turns out I was in the right place in Device Manager, but I needed to right-click the computer's name, and choose "Add Legacy Hardware". No doubt that hasn't changed location lately but it's a while since I needed to add one so I'd forgotten. Regardless, I'm left wondering why it couldn't be in the menu as well.Anyway, for a step by step list, you need to do the following:1. From Control Panel, select "Device Manager" under the "Devices and Printers" section of the "Hardware and Sound" tab.2. Right-click the name of the computer at the top of the tree, and choose "Add Legacy Hardware".3. In the "Welcome to the Add Hardware Wizard" window, click Next.4. In the "The wizard can help you install other hardware" window, choose "Install the hardware that I manually select from a list" option and click Next.5. In the "The wizard did not find any new hardware on your computer" window, click Next.6. In the "From the list below, select the type of hardware you are installing" window, select "Network Adapters" from the list, and click Next.7. In the "Select Network Adapter" window, from the Manufacturer list, choose Microsoft, then in the Network Adapter window, choose "Microsoft KM-TEST Loopback Adapter", then click Next.8. In the "The wizard is ready to install your hardware" window, click Next.9. In the "Completing the Add Hardware Wizard" window, click Finish.Then you need to continue to set the IP address, etc.10. Back in Control Panel, select the "Network and Internet" tab, click "View Network Status and Tasks".11. In the "View your basic network information and set up connections" window, click "Change adapter settings".12. Right-click the new adapter that has been added (find it in the list by checking the device name of "Microsoft KM-TEST Loopback Adapter"), and click Properties.   

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• Some non-generic collections

  - by Simon Cooper

  Although the collections classes introduced in .NET 2, 3.5 and 4 cover most scenarios, there are still some .NET 1 collections that don't have generic counterparts. In this post, I'll be examining what they do, why you might use them, and some things you'll need to bear in mind when doing so. BitArray System.Collections.BitArray is conceptually the same as a List<bool>, but whereas List<bool> stores each boolean in a single byte (as that's what the backing bool[] does), BitArray uses a single bit to store each value, and uses various bitmasks to access each bit individually. This means that BitArray is eight times smaller than a List<bool>. Furthermore, BitArray has some useful functions for bitmasks, like And, Xor and Not, and it's not limited to 32 or 64 bits; a BitArray can hold as many bits as you need. However, it's not all roses and kittens. There are some fundamental limitations you have to bear in mind when using BitArray: It's a non-generic collection. The enumerator returns object (a boxed boolean), rather than an unboxed bool. This means that if you do this: foreach (bool b in bitArray) { ... } Every single boolean value will be boxed, then unboxed. And if you do this: foreach (var b in bitArray) { ... } you'll have to manually unbox b on every iteration, as it'll come out of the enumerator an object. Instead, you should manually iterate over the collection using a for loop: for (int i=0; i<bitArray.Length; i++) { bool b = bitArray[i]; ... } Following on from that, if you want to use BitArray in the context of an IEnumerable<bool>, ICollection<bool> or IList<bool>, you'll need to write a wrapper class, or use the Enumerable.Cast<bool> extension method (although Cast would box and unbox every value you get out of it). There is no Add or Remove method. You specify the number of bits you need in the constructor, and that's what you get. You can change the length yourself using the Length property setter though. It doesn't implement IList. Although not really important if you're writing a generic wrapper around it, it is something to bear in mind if you're using it with pre-generic code. However, if you use BitArray carefully, it can provide significant gains over a List<bool> for functionality and efficiency of space. OrderedDictionary System.Collections.Specialized.OrderedDictionary does exactly what you would expect - it's an IDictionary that maintains items in the order they are added. It does this by storing key/value pairs in a Hashtable (to get O(1) key lookup) and an ArrayList (to maintain the order). You can access values by key or index, and insert or remove items at a particular index. The enumerator returns items in index order. However, the Keys and Values properties return ICollection, not IList, as you might expect; CopyTo doesn't maintain the same ordering, as it copies from the backing Hashtable, not ArrayList; and any operations that insert or remove items from the middle of the collection are O(n), just like a normal list. In short; don't use this class. If you need some sort of ordered dictionary, it would be better to write your own generic dictionary combining a Dictionary<TKey, TValue> and List<KeyValuePair<TKey, TValue>> or List<TKey> for your specific situation. ListDictionary and HybridDictionary To look at why you might want to use ListDictionary or HybridDictionary, we need to examine the performance of these dictionaries compared to Hashtable and Dictionary<object, object>. For this test, I added n items to each collection, then randomly accessed n/2 items: So, what's going on here? Well, ListDictionary is implemented as a linked list of key/value pairs; all operations on the dictionary require an O(n) search through the list. However, for small n, the constant factor that big-o notation doesn't measure is much lower than the hashing overhead of Hashtable or Dictionary. HybridDictionary combines a Hashtable and ListDictionary; for small n, it uses a backing ListDictionary, but switches to a Hashtable when it gets to 9 items (you can see the point it switches from a ListDictionary to Hashtable in the graph). Apart from that, it's got very similar performance to Hashtable. So why would you want to use either of these? In short, you wouldn't. Any gain in performance by using ListDictionary over Dictionary<TKey, TValue> would be offset by the generic dictionary not having to cast or box the items you store, something the graphs above don't measure. Only if the performance of the dictionary is vital, the dictionary will hold less than 30 items, and you don't need type safety, would you use ListDictionary over the generic Dictionary. And even then, there's probably more useful performance gains you can make elsewhere.

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• Getting App.config to be configuration specific in VS2010

  - by MarkPearl

  I recently wanted to have a console application that had configuration specific settings. For instance, if I had two configurations “Debug” and “Release”, depending on the currently selected configuration I wanted it to use a specific configuration file (either debug or config). If you are wanting to do something similar, here is a potential solution that worked for me. Setting up a demo app to illustrate the point First, let’s set up an application that will demonstrate the most basic concept. using System; using System.Configuration; namespace ConsoleSpecificConfiguration { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine("Config"); Console.WriteLine(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["Example Config"]); Console.ReadLine(); } } }   This does a really simple thing. Display a config when run. To do this, you also need a config file set up. My default looks as follows… <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <configuration> <appSettings> <add key="Example Config" value="Default"/> </appSettings> </configuration>   Your entire solution will look as follows… Running the project you will get the following amazing output…   Let’s now say instead of having one config file we want depending on whether we are running in “Debug” or “Release” for the solution configuration we want different config settings to be propagated across you can do the following… Step 1 – Create alternate config Files First add additional config files to your solution. You should have some form of naming convention for these config files, I have decided to follow a similar convention to the one used for web.config, so in my instance I am going to add a App.Debug.config and a App.Release.config file BUT you can follow any naming convention you want provided you wire up the rest of the approach to use this convention. My files look as follows.. App.Debug.config <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <configuration> <appSettings> <add key="Example Config" value="Debug"/> </appSettings> </configuration>   App.Release.config <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <configuration> <appSettings> <add key="Example Config" value="Release"/> </appSettings> </configuration>   Your solution will now look as follows… Step 2 – Create a bat file that will overwrite files The next step is to create a bat file that will overwrite one file with another. If you right click on the solution in the solution explorer there will be a menu option to add new items to the solution. Create a text file called “copyifnewer.bat” which will be our copy script. It’s contents should look as follows… @echo off echo Comparing two files: %1 with %2 if not exist %1 goto File1NotFound if not exist %2 goto File2NotFound fc %1 %2 /A if %ERRORLEVEL%==0 GOTO NoCopy echo Files are not the same. Copying %1 over %2 copy %1 %2 /y & goto END :NoCopy echo Files are the same. Did nothing goto END :File1NotFound echo %1 not found. goto END :File2NotFound copy %1 %2 /y goto END :END echo Done. Your solution should now look as follows…   Step 3 – Customize the Post Build event command line We now need to wire up everything – which we will do using the post build event command line in VS2010. Right click on your project and go to it’s properties We are now going to wire up the script so that when we build our project it will overwrite the default App.config with whatever file we want. The syntax goes as follows… call "$(SolutionDir)copyifnewer.bat" "$(ProjectDir)App.$(ConfigurationName).config" "$(ProjectDir)$(OutDir)\$(TargetFileName).config" Testing it If I now change my project configuration to Release   And then run my application I get the following output… Toggling between Release and Debug mode will show that the config file is changing each time. And that is it!

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• How to make creating viewmodels at runtime less painful

  - by Mr Happy

  I apologize for the long question, it reads a bit as a rant, but I promise it's not! I've summarized my question(s) below In the MVC world, things are straightforward. The Model has state, the View shows the Model, and the Controller does stuff to/with the Model (basically), a controller has no state. To do stuff the Controller has some dependencies on web services, repository, the lot. When you instantiate a controller you care about supplying those dependencies, nothing else. When you execute an action (method on Controller), you use those dependencies to retrieve or update the Model or calling some other domain service. If there's any context, say like some user wants to see the details of a particular item, you pass the Id of that item as parameter to the Action. Nowhere in the Controller is there any reference to any state. So far so good. Enter MVVM. I love WPF, I love data binding. I love frameworks that make data binding to ViewModels even easier (using Caliburn Micro a.t.m.). I feel things are less straightforward in this world though. Let's do the exercise again: the Model has state, the View shows the ViewModel, and the ViewModel does stuff to/with the Model (basically), a ViewModel does have state! (to clarify; maybe it delegates all the properties to one or more Models, but that means it must have a reference to the model one way or another, which is state in itself) To do stuff the ViewModel has some dependencies on web services, repository, the lot. When you instantiate a ViewModel you care about supplying those dependencies, but also the state. And this, ladies and gentlemen, annoys me to no end. Whenever you need to instantiate a ProductDetailsViewModel from the ProductSearchViewModel (from which you called the ProductSearchWebService which in turn returned IEnumerable<ProductDTO>, everybody still with me?), you can do one of these things: call new ProductDetailsViewModel(productDTO, _shoppingCartWebService /* dependcy */);, this is bad, imagine 3 more dependencies, this means the ProductSearchViewModel needs to take on those dependencies as well. Also changing the constructor is painful. call _myInjectedProductDetailsViewModelFactory.Create().Initialize(productDTO);, the factory is just a Func, they are easily generated by most IoC frameworks. I think this is bad because Init methods are a leaky abstraction. You also can't use the readonly keyword for fields that are set in the Init method. I'm sure there are a few more reasons. call _myInjectedProductDetailsViewModelAbstractFactory.Create(productDTO); So... this is the pattern (abstract factory) that is usually recommended for this type of problem. I though it was genius since it satisfies my craving for static typing, until I actually started using it. The amount of boilerplate code is I think too much (you know, apart from the ridiculous variable names I get use). For each ViewModel that needs runtime parameters you'll get two extra files (factory interface and implementation), and you need to type the non-runtime dependencies like 4 extra times. And each time the dependencies change, you get to change it in the factory as well. It feels like I don't even use a DI container anymore. (I think Castle Windsor has some kind of solution for this [with it's own drawbacks, correct me if I'm wrong]). do something with anonymous types or dictionary. I like my static typing. So, yeah. Mixing state and behavior in this way creates a problem which don't exist at all in MVC. And I feel like there currently isn't a really adequate solution for this problem. Now I'd like to observe some things: People actually use MVVM. So they either don't care about all of the above, or they have some brilliant other solution. I haven't found an in-depth example of MVVM with WPF. For example, the NDDD-sample project immensely helped me understand some DDD concepts. I'd really like it if someone could point me in the direction of something similar for MVVM/WPF. Maybe I'm doing MVVM all wrong and I should turn my design upside down. Maybe I shouldn't have this problem at all. Well I know other people have asked the same question so I think I'm not the only one. To summarize Am I correct to conclude that having the ViewModel being an integration point for both state and behavior is the reason for some difficulties with the MVVM pattern as a whole? Is using the abstract factory pattern the only/best way to instantiate a ViewModel in a statically typed way? Is there something like an in depth reference implementation available? Is having a lot of ViewModels with both state/behavior a design smell?

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• Access Services in SharePoint Server 2010

  - by Wayne

  Another SharePoint Server 2010 feature which cannot go unnoticed is the Access Services. Access Services is a service in SharePoint Server 2010 that allows administrators to view, edit, and configure a Microsoft access application within a Web Browser. Access Services settings support backup and recovery, regardless of whether there is a UI setting in Central Administration. However, backup and recovery only apply to service-level and administrative-level settings; end-user content from the Access application is not backed up as part of this process. Access Services has Windows PowerShell functionality that can be used to provide the service that uses settings from a previous backup; configure and manage macro and query setting; manage and configure session management; and configure all the global settings of the service. Key Benefits of SharePoint Server Access Services Easier Access to right tools: The enhanced, customizable Ribbon in Access 2010 makes it easy to uncover more commands so you can focus on the end product. The new Microsoft Office BackstageTM view is yet another feature that can help you easily analyze and document your database, share, publish, and customize your Access 2010 experience, all from one convenient location. Helps build database effortlessly and quickly: Out-of-the box templates and reusable components make Access Services the fastest, simplest database solution available. It helps find new pre-built templates which you can start using without customization or select templates created by your peers in the Access online community and customize them to meet your needs. It builds your databases with new modular components. New Application Parts enable you to add a set of common Access components, such as a table and form for task management, to your database in a few simple clicks. Database navigation is now simplified. It creates Navigation Forms and makes your frequently used forms and reports more accessible without writing any code or logic. Create Impactful forms and reports: Whether it's an inventory of your assets or customer sales database, Access 2010 brings the innovative tools you'd expect from Microsoft Office. Access Services easily spot trends and add emphasis to your data. It quickly create coordinating database forms and reports and bring the Web into your database. Obtain a centralized landing pad for your data: Access 2010 offers easy ways to bring your data together and help increase work quality. New technologies help break down barriers so you can share and work together on your databases, making you or your team more efficient and productive. Add automation and complex expressions: If you need a more robust database design, such as preventing record deletion if a specific condition is met or if you need to create calculations to forecast your budget, Access 2010 empowers you to be your own developer. The enhanced Expression Builder greatly simplifies your expression building experience with IntelliSense®. With the revamped Macro Designer, it's now even easier for you to add basic logic to your database. New Data Macros allow you to attach logic to your data, centralizing the logic on the table, not the objects that update your data. Key features of Access Services 2010 - Access database content through a Web browser: Newly added Access Services on Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 enables you to make your databases available on the Web with new Web databases. Users without an Access client can open Web forms and reports via a browser and changes are automatically synchronized. - Simplify how you access the features you need: The Ribbon, improved in Access 2010, helps you access commands even more quickly by enabling you to customize or create your own tabs. The new Microsoft Office Backstage view replaces the traditional File menu to provide one central, organized location for all of your document management tasks. - Codeless navigation: Use professional looking web-like navigation forms to make frequently used forms and reports more accessible without writing any code or logic. - Easily reuse Access items in other databases: Use Application Parts to add pre-built Access components for common tasks to your database in a few simple clicks. You can also package common database components, such as data entry forms and reports for task management, and reuse them across your organization or other databases. - Simplified formatting: By using Office themes you can create coordinating professional forms and reports across your database. Simply select a familiar and great looking Office theme, or design your own, and apply it to your database. Newly created Access objects will automatically match your chosen theme.

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• Polite busy-waiting with WRPAUSE on SPARC

  - by Dave

  Unbounded busy-waiting is an poor idea for user-space code, so we typically use spin-then-block strategies when, say, waiting for a lock to be released or some other event. If we're going to spin, even briefly, then we'd prefer to do so in a manner that minimizes performance degradation for other sibling logical processors ("strands") that share compute resources. We want to spin politely and refrain from impeding the progress and performance of other threads — ostensibly doing useful work and making progress — that run on the same core. On a SPARC T4, for instance, 8 strands will share a core, and that core has its own L1 cache and 2 pipelines. On x86 we have the PAUSE instruction, which, naively, can be thought of as a hardware "yield" operator which temporarily surrenders compute resources to threads on sibling strands. Of course this helps avoid intra-core performance interference. On the SPARC T2 our preferred busy-waiting idiom was "RD %CCR,%G0" which is a high-latency no-nop. The T4 provides a dedicated and extremely useful WRPAUSE instruction. The processor architecture manuals are the authoritative source, but briefly, WRPAUSE writes a cycle count into the the PAUSE register, which is ASR27. Barring interrupts, the processor then delays for the requested period. There's no need for the operating system to save the PAUSE register over context switches as it always resets to 0 on traps. Digressing briefly, if you use unbounded spinning then ultimately the kernel will preempt and deschedule your thread if there are other ready threads than are starving. But by using a spin-then-block strategy we can allow other ready threads to run without resorting to involuntary time-slicing, which operates on a long-ish time scale. Generally, that makes your application more responsive. In addition, by blocking voluntarily we give the operating system far more latitude regarding power management. Finally, I should note that while we have OS-level facilities like sched_yield() at our disposal, yielding almost never does what you'd want or naively expect. Returning to WRPAUSE, it's natural to ask how well it works. To help answer that question I wrote a very simple C/pthreads benchmark that launches 8 concurrent threads and binds those threads to processors 0..7. The processors are numbered geographically on the T4, so those threads will all be running on just one core. Unlike the SPARC T2, where logical CPUs 0,1,2 and 3 were assigned to the first pipeline, and CPUs 4,5,6 and 7 were assigned to the 2nd, there's no fixed mapping between CPUs and pipelines in the T4. And in some circumstances when the other 7 logical processors are idling quietly, it's possible for the remaining logical processor to leverage both pipelines. Some number T of the threads will iterate in a tight loop advancing a simple Marsaglia xor-shift pseudo-random number generator. T is a command-line argument. The main thread loops, reporting the aggregate number of PRNG steps performed collectively by those T threads in the last 10 second measurement interval. The other threads (there are 8-T of these) run in a loop busy-waiting concurrently with the T threads. We vary T between 1 and 8 threads, and report on various busy-waiting idioms. The values in the table are the aggregate number of PRNG steps completed by the set of T threads. The unit is millions of iterations per 10 seconds. For the "PRNG step" busy-waiting mode, the busy-waiting threads execute exactly the same code as the T worker threads. We can easily compute the average rate of progress for individual worker threads by dividing the aggregate score by the number of worker threads T. I should note that the PRNG steps are extremely cycle-heavy and access almost no memory, so arguably this microbenchmark is not as representative of "normal" code as it could be. And for the purposes of comparison I included a row in the table that reflects a waiting policy where the waiting threads call poll(NULL,0,1000) and block in the kernel. Obviously this isn't busy-waiting, but the data is interesting for reference. _table { border:2px black dotted; margin: auto; width: auto; } _tr { border: 2px red dashed; } _td { border: 1px green solid; } _table { border:2px black dotted; margin: auto; width: auto; } _tr { border: 2px red dashed; } td { background-color : #E0E0E0 ; text-align : right ; } th { text-align : left ; } td { background-color : #E0E0E0 ; text-align : right ; } th { text-align : left ; } Aggregate progress T = #worker threads Wait Mechanism for 8-T threadsT=1T=2T=3T=4T=5T=6T=7T=8 Park thread in poll() 32653347334833483348334833483348 no-op 415 831 124316482060249729303349 RD %ccr,%g0 "pause" 14262429269228623013316232553349 PRNG step 412 829 124616702092251029303348 WRPause(8000) 32443361333133483349334833483348 WRPause(4000) 32153308331533223347334833473348 WRPause(1000) 30853199322432513310334833483348 WRPause(500) 29173070315032223270330933483348 WRPause(250) 26942864294930773205338833483348 WRPause(100) 21552469262227902911321433303348

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• HP Pavilion tx2000 - Wifi adapter no longer works after moving from 12.04 to a 12.10 clean install

  - by Marek L.

  I have a HP Pavilion tx2000 that I have been running Ubuntu 12.04 on for a couple of months without any problems (wifi worked great) until yesterday when my hard drive failed. I replaced the hard drive and decided to install Ubuntu 12.10. Unlike 12.04, the wifi did not work after the installation finished and all the updates where installed (over Ethernet). The network drop down in the top right didn't even show a wireless option. I Googled about for a bit and found some solutions that seemed like they might work. Unfortunately they did not. Here is what I tried: sudo apt-get remove bcmwl-kernel-source sudo apt-get install b43-fwcutter sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-lpphy-installer Restart the computer. And the wifi still didn't work. At which point I panicked a bit and tried to undo the previous commands by running: sudo apt-get remove b43-fwcutter firmware-b43-lpphy-installer sudo apt-get install bcmwl-kernel-source Restart the computer. The wifi still doesn't work. This is where I stopped because I have no idea what I am doing and don't want to mess something up. The network drop down still doesn't show a wireless option and the hardware wifi switch on the laptop is amber (it turns blue when the wifi is on). Using the hardware switch does not change the color. Output from: sudo lspci ... 08:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01) ... Output from: sudo lshw -class network *-network UNCLAIMED description: Network controller product: BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller vendor: Broadcom Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:08:00.0 version: 01 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list configuration: latency=0 resources: memory:d1100000-d1103fff ... Output from: sudo rfkill list all 0: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: yes UPDATE: After writing up this question tried the following command: sudo rfkill unblock all At first it didn't do anything but after running it about four times, sudo rfkill list all now returns: 0: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no But the network menu still does not have a wireless option and the hardware switch still glows amber. Pushing the hardware switch turns the hard block back on and I have to run sudo rfkill unblock all multiple times again to turn it off. Any help is appreciated! Update 2: Full output from sudo lspci -nn: 00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 Host Bridge [1022:9600] 00:01.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780/RS880 PCI to PCI bridge (int gfx) [1022:9602] 00:04.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780/RS880 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 0) [1022:9604] 00:05.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780/RS880 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 1) [1022:9605] 00:06.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] RS780 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 2) [1022:9606] 00:11.0 SATA controller [0106]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 SATA Controller [AHCI mode] [1002:4391] 00:12.0 USB controller [0c03]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI0 Controller [1002:4397] 00:12.1 USB controller [0c03]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0 USB OHCI1 Controller [1002:4398] 00:12.2 USB controller [0c03]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB EHCI Controller [1002:4396] 00:13.0 USB controller [0c03]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI0 Controller [1002:4397] 00:13.1 USB controller [0c03]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0 USB OHCI1 Controller [1002:4398] 00:13.2 USB controller [0c03]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB EHCI Controller [1002:4396] 00:14.0 SMBus [0c05]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SBx00 SMBus Controller [1002:4385] (rev 3a) 00:14.1 IDE interface [0101]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 IDE Controller [1002:439c] 00:14.2 Audio device [0403]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) [1002:4383] 00:14.3 ISA bridge [0601]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 LPC host controller [1002:439d] 00:14.4 PCI bridge [0604]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge [1002:4384] 00:14.5 USB controller [0c03]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI2 Controller [1002:4399] 00:18.0 Host bridge [0600]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h Processor HyperTransport Configuration [1022:1300] (rev 40) 00:18.1 Host bridge [0600]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h Processor Address Map [1022:1301] 00:18.2 Host bridge [0600]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h Processor DRAM Controller [1022:1302] 00:18.3 Host bridge [0600]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h Processor Miscellaneous Control [1022:1303] 00:18.4 Host bridge [0600]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h Processor Link Control [1022:1304] 01:05.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RS780M/RS780MN [Mobility Radeon HD 3200 Graphics] [1002:9612] 08:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:432b] (rev 01) 09:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller [10ec:8168] (rev 02)

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• Extending Blend for Visual Studio 2013

  - by Chris Skardon

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/cskardon/archive/2013/11/01/extending-blend-for-visual-studio-2013.aspxSo, I got a comment yesterday on my post about Extending Blend 4 and Blend for Visual Studio 2012 asking if I knew how to get it working for Blend for Visual Studio 2013.. My initial thoughts were, just change the location to get the blend dlls from Visual Studio 11.0 to 12.0 and you’re all set, so I went to do that, only to discover that the dlls I normally reference, well – they don’t exist. So… I’ve made a presumption that the actual process of using MEF etc is still the same. I was wrong. So, the route to discovery – required DotPeek and opening a few of blends dlls.. Browsing through the Blend install directory (./Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0/Blend/) I notice the .addin files: So I decide to peek into the SketchFlow dll, then promptly remember SketchFlow is quite a big thing, and hunting through there is not ideal, luckily there is another dll using an .addin file, ‘Microsoft.Expression.Importers.Host’, so we’ll go for that instead. We can see it’s still using the ‘IPackage’ formula, but where is that sucker? Well, we just press F12 on the ‘IPackage’ bit and DotPeek takes us there, with a very handy comment at the top: // Type: Microsoft.Expression.Framework.IPackage // Assembly: Microsoft.Expression.Framework, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a // MVID: E092EA54-4941-463C-BD74-283FD36478E2 // Assembly location: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Blend\Microsoft.Expression.Framework.dll Now we know where the IPackage interface is defined, so let’s just try writing a control. Last time I did a separate dll for the control, this time I’m not, but it still works if you want to do it that way. Let’s build a control! STEP 1 Create a new WPF application Naming doesn’t matter any more! I have gone with ‘Hello2013’ (see what I did there?) STEP 2 Delete: App.Config App.xaml MainWindow.xaml We won’t be needing them STEP 3 Change your application to be a Class Library instead. (You might also want to delete the ‘vshost’ stuff in your output directory now, as they only exist for hosting the WPF app, and just cause clutter) STEP 4 Add a reference to the ‘Microsoft.Expression.Framework.dll’ (which you can find in ‘C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Blend’ – that’s Program Files (x86) if you’re on an x64 machine!). STEP 5 Add a User Control, I’m going with ‘Hello2013Control’, and following from last time, it’s just a TextBlock in a Grid: <UserControl x:Class="Hello2013.Hello2013Control" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="300"> <Grid> <TextBlock>Hello Blend for VS 2013</TextBlock> </Grid> </UserControl> STEP 6 Add a class to load the package – I’ve called it – yes you guessed – Hello2013Package, which will look like this: namespace Hello2013 { using Microsoft.Expression.Framework; using Microsoft.Expression.Framework.UserInterface; public class Hello2013Package : IPackage { private Hello2013Control _hello2013Control; private IWindowService _windowService; public void Load(IServices services) { _windowService = services.GetService<IWindowService>(); Initialize(); } private void Initialize() { _hello2013Control = new Hello2013Control(); if (_windowService.PaletteRegistry["HelloPanel"] == null) _windowService.RegisterPalette("HelloPanel", _hello2013Control, "Hello Window"); } public void Unload(){} } } You might note that compared to the 2012 version we’re no longer [Exporting(typeof(IPackage))]. The file you create in STEP 7 covers this for us. STEP 7 Add a new file called: ‘<PROJECT_OUTPUT_NAME>.addin’ – in reality you can call it anything and it’ll still read it in just fine, it’s just nicer if it all matches up, so I have ‘Hello2013.addin’. Content wise, we need to have: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <AddIn AssemblyFile="Hello2013.dll" /> obviously, replacing ‘Hello2013.dll’ with whatever your dll is called. STEP 8 We set the ‘addin’ file to be copied to the output directory: STEP 9 Build! STEP 10 Go to your output directory (./bin/debug) and copy the 3 files (Hello2013.dll, Hello2013.pdb, Hello2013.addin) and then paste into the ‘Addins’ folder in your Blend directory (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Blend\Addins) STEP 11 Start Blend for Visual Studio 2013 STEP 12 Go to the ‘Window’ menu and select ‘Hello Window’ STEP 13 Marvel at your new control! Feel free to email me / comment with any problems!

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• How do I turn on wireless adapter on HP Envy dv6 7200 under Ubuntu (any version)?

  - by Dave B.

  I have a new HP Envy dv6 7200 with dual boot Windows 8 / Ubuntu 12.04. In windows, the F12 key in Windows activates the "airplane mode" switch which enables/disables both on-board (mini PCIe) and USB wireless adapters. In Ubuntu, however, the wireless adapter is turned off by default and cannot be turned back on via the F12 key (or any other combination of F12 and Ctrl, Fn, Shift, etc.). Let me explain the "fixes" I've seen in various forums and explain what did or did not happen. These are listed in no particular order. (Spoiler alert: wireless is still broke). Solution 1? Use HP's "Wireless Assistant" utility to permanently activate the wireless card in Windows, then boot into Ubuntu to happily find it working. Unfortunately, this utility works in Windows 7 but not Windows 8. On the other hand, hardware drivers from HP are only available for Windows 8 for this model. Catch 22 (I could not find a comparable utility for Windows 8). Solution 2? Use a USB wireless adapter to sidestep the on-board device. I purchased such a device from thinkpenguin.com to be sure that it would be Linux-friendly. However, the wireless switch enables / disables all wireless devices including USB. So, there's my $50 donation to the nice folks at thinkpenguin.com, but still no solution. Solution 3? Following the Think Penguin folk's suggestion, modify the mini PCI express adapter following instructions here: http://www.notebookforums.com/t/225429/broken-wireless-hardware-switch-fix Tempting, but I then violate the terms of my warranty mere days after opening the box. This might be a good solution for an older machine that you want to get your geek on with, but not for a new box. Solution 4? rfkill unblock all No effect whatsoever. ubuntu@ubuntu-hp-evny:~$ rfkill unblock all ubuntu@ubuntu-hp-evny:~$ rfkill list all 0: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: yes Solution 5? Re-install drivers. Done and done. Ubuntu recognizes the device - perhaps even without re-installing the drivers? - but cannot turn it on. How do I know this? In the Network Manager drop-down menu, the wireless option is blacked out and a message reads something like: "wireless network is disabled by a hardware switch". Solution 6? Identify a physical switch on the laptop and flip it. There is no such switch on this machine. In fact, walking through Best Buy yesterday, I checked and not a single new laptop PC had a physical switch on it. All of the wireless switches are either the F2 or F12 key ... I wonder if askubuntu will not be plagued by this exact issue in the near future? Additional info - lspci ubuntu@ubuntu-hp-evny:~$ lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge DRAM Controller (rev 09) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge PCI Express Root Port (rev 09) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge Graphics Controller (rev 09) 00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB xHCI Host Controller (rev 04) 00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point MEI Controller #1 (rev 04) 00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 04) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Panther Point High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev c4) 00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev c4) 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev c4) 00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 6 (rev c4) 00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 04) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point LPC Controller (rev 04) 00:1f.2 RAID bus controller: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile SATA Controller [RAID mode] (rev 04) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation Panther Point SMBus Controller (rev 04) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation Device 0de9 (rev a1) 08:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device 5229 (rev 01) 0a:00.0 Network controller: Ralink corp. Device 539b 0b:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 07) Any suggestions would be much appreciated!

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• Updated Agenda for OTN Architect Day Los Angeles (Oct 25)

  - by Bob Rhubart

  Here's the latest information on the session schedule and content for Oracle Technology Network Architect Day in Los Angeles on October 25, 2012. Registration is open, but seating is limited. When: Thursday October 25 12, 2012 8:30am – 5:00pm Where: Sofitel Los Angeles 8555 Beverly Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90048 Agenda Time Session Title Room 8:30 am - 9:00 am Registration and Continental Breakfast 9:00 am - 9:15 am Welcome and Opening Comments | Bob Rhubart Beverly Ballroom 9:15 am - 10:00 am Engineered Systems: Oracle's Vision for the Future | Ralf Dossmann Oracle's Exadata and Exalogic are impressive products in their own right. But working in combination they deliver unparalleled transaction processing performance with up to a 30x increase over existing legacy systems, with the lowest cost of ownership over a 3 or 5 year basis than any other hardware. In this session you'll learn how to leverage Oracle's Engineered Systems within your enterprise to deliver record-breaking performance at the lowest TCO. Beverly Ballroom 10:00 am - 10:30 am Monitoring and Managing Applications in the Cloud | Basheer Khan Oracle offers a broad portfolio of software and hardware products and services to enable public, private and hybrid clouds to power the enterprise. However, enterprise cloud computing presents new management challenges, that need to be addressed to realize the economic benefits of cloud computing. In this session you will learn about the methods and tools you can use to proactively monitor your end-to-end Oracle Applications environment in the cloud, define service-level objectives, gain insight into your end users, and troubleshoot performance problems from a single console. Beverly Ballroom 10:30 am - 10:45 am Break 10:45 am - 11:30 am Breakout Sessions (pick one) Cloud Computing - Making IT Simple | Dr. James Baty The road to Cloud Computing is not without a few bumps. This session will help to smooth out your journey by tackling some of the potential complications. We'll examine whether standardization is a prerequisite for the Cloud. We'll look at why refactoring isn't just for application code. We'll check out deployable entities and their simplification via higher levels of abstraction. And we'll close out the session with a look at engineered systems and modular clouds. Beverly Ballroom Innovations in Grid Computing with Oracle Coherence | Ashok Aletty Learn how Oracle Coherence can increase the availability, scalability and performance of your existing applications with its advanced low-latency data-grid technologies. Also hear some interesting industry-specific use cases that customers had implemented and how Oracle is integrating Coherence into its Enterprise Java stack. Hollywood Room 11:30 am - 12:15 pm Breakout Sessions (pick one) Enterprise Strategy for Cloud Security | Dave Chappelle Security is high on the list of concerns for many organizations as they evaluate their cloud computing options. This session will examine security in the context of the various forms of cloud computing. We'll consider technical and non-technical aspects of security, and discuss several strategies for cloud computing, from both the consumer and producer perspectives. Beverly Ballroom Oracle Enterprise Manager | Perren Walker This session examines new Oracle Enterprise Manager monitoring, administration, and management features for Oracle Exalogic. It focuses on two management themes: cloud management related to virtualization and applications-to-disk management. For private cloud management, it discusses virtualization management features providing an enhanced set of application deployment capabilities enabling IaaS as well as PaaS interactions. Then from an end-to-end perspective, it covers the specific capabilities and—where applicable—best practices for machine, cloud, middleware, and application administration. Hollywood Room 12:15 pm - 1:15 pm Lunch Beverly Ballroom Lounge 1:15 pm - 2:00 pm Panel Discussion - Q&A with session speakers Beverly Ballroom 2:00 pm - 2:45 pm Breakout Sessions (pick one) Oracle Cloud Reference Architecture | Anbu Krishnaswamy Cloud initiatives are beginning to dominate enterprise IT roadmaps. Successful adoption of Cloud and the subsequent governance challenges warrant a Cloud reference architecture that is applied consistently across the enterprise. This presentation will answer the important questions: What exactly is a Cloud, why you need it, what changes it will bring to the enterprise, and what are the key capabilities of a Cloud infrastructure are - using Oracle's Cloud Reference Architecture, which is part of the IT Strategies from Oracle (ITSO) Cloud Enterprise Technology Strategy ETS). Beverly Ballroom 21st Century SOA | Jeff Davies Service Oriented Architecture has evolved from concept to reality in the last decade. The right methodology coupled with mature SOA technologies has helped customers demonstrate success in both innovation and ROI. In this session you will learn how Oracle SOA Suite's orchestration, virtualization, and governance capabilities provide the infrastructure to run mission critical business and system applications. We'll also take a special look at the convergence of SOA & BPM using Oracle's Unified technology stack. Hollywood Room 2:45 pm - 3:00 pm Break 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm Roundtable Discussion Beverly Ballroom 4:00 pm - 4:15 pm Closing Comments & Readouts from Roundtables Beverly Ballroom 4:15 pm - 5:00 pm Networking / Reception Beverly Ballroom Lounge Note: Session schedule and content subject to change.

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• Caveat utilitor - Can I run two versions of Microsoft Project side-by-side?

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  A number of out customers have asked if there are any problems in installing and running multiple versions of Microsoft Project on a single client. Although this is a case of Caveat utilitor (Let the user beware), as long as the user understands and accepts the issues that can occur then they can do this. Although Microsoft provide the ability to leave old versions of Office products (except Outlook) on your client when you are installing a new version of the product they certainly do not endorse doing so. Figure: For Project you can choose to keep the old stuff   That being the case I would have preferred that they put a “(NOT RECOMMENDED)” after the options to impart that knowledge to the rest of us, but they did not. The default and recommended behaviour is for the newer version installer to remove the older versions. Of course this does not apply in the revers. There are no forward compatibility packs for Office. There are a number of negative behaviours (or bugs) that can occur in this configuration: There is only one MS Project In Windows a file extension can only be associated with a single program.  In this case, MPP files can be associated with only one version of winproj.exe.  The executables are in different folders so if a user double-clicks a Project file on the desktop, file explorer, or Outlook email, Windows will launch the winproj.exe associated with MPP and then load the MPP file.  There are problems associated with this situation and in some cases workarounds. The user double-clicks on a Project 2010 file, Project 2007 launches but is unable to open the file because it is a newer version.  The workaround is for the user to launch Project 2010 from the Start menu then open the file.  If the file is attached to an email they will need to first drag the file to the desktop. All your linked MS Project files need to be of the same version There are a number of problems that occur when people use on Microsoft’s Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technology.  The three common uses of OLE are: for inserted projects where a Master project contains sub-projects and each sub-project resides in its own MPP file shared resource pools where multiple MPP files share a common resource pool kept in a single MPP file cross-project links where a task or milestone in one MPP file has a  predecessor/successor relationship with a task or milestone in a different MPP file What I’ve seen happen before is that if you are running in a version of Project that is not associated with the MPP extension and then try and activate an OLE link then Project tries to launch the other version of Project.  Things start getting very confused since different MPP files are being controlled by different versions of Project running at the same time.  I haven’t tried this in awhile so I can’t give you exact symptoms but I suspect that if Project 2010 is involved the symptoms will be different then in a Project 2003/2007 scenario.  I’ve noticed that Project 2010 gives different error messages for the exact same problem when it occurs in Project 2003 or 2007.  -Anonymous The recommendation would be either not to use this feature if you have to have multiple versions of Project installed or to use only a single version of Project. You may get unexpected negative behaviours if you are using shared resource pools or resource pools even when you are not running multiple versions as I have found that they can get broken very easily. If you need these thing then it is probably best to use Project Server as it was created to solve many of these specific issues. Note: I would not even allow multiple people to access a network copy of a Project file because of the way Windows locks files in write mode. This can cause write-locks that get so bad a server restart is required I’ve seen user’s files get write-locked to the point where the only resolution is to reboot the server. Changing the default version to run for an extension So what if you want to change the default association from Project 2007 to Project 2010?   Figure: “Control Panel | Folder Options | Change the file associated with a file extension” Windows normally only lists the last version installed for a particular extension. You can select a specific version by selecting the program you want to change and clicking “Change program… | Browse…” and then selecting the .exe you want to use on the file system. Figure: You will need to select the exact version of “winproj.exe” that you want to run Conclusion Although it is possible to run multiple versions of Project on one system in the main it does not really make sense.

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• First Foray&ndash;About timeout

  - by SQLMonger

  It has been quite a while since I signed up for this blog site and high time that something was posted.  I have a list of topics that I will be working through and posting.  Some I am sure will have been posted by others, but I will be sticking to the technical problems and challenges that I’ve recently faced, and the solutions that worked for me.  My motto when learning something new has always been “My kingdom for an example!”, and I plan on delivering useful examples here so others can learn from my efforts, failures and successes.   A bit of background about me… My name is Clayton Groom. I am a founding partner of a consulting firm in St. Louis Missouri, Covenant Technology Partners, LLC and focus on SQL Server Data Warehouse design, Analysis Services and Enterprise Reporting solutions.  I have been working with SQL Server since the early nineties, when it still only ran on OS/2. I love solving puzzles and technical challenges.   Enough about me… On to a real problem… SSIS Connection Time outs versus Command Time outs Last week, I was working on automating the processing for a large Analysis Services cube.  I had reworked an SSIS package and script task originally posted by Vidas Matelis that automates the process of adding new and dropping old partitions to/from an Analysis Services cube.  I had the package working great, tested, and ready for deployment.  It basically performs a query against the source system to determine if there is new data in the warehouse that will require a new partition to be added to the cube, and it checks the cube to see if there are any partitions that are present that are no longer needed in a rolling 60 month window. My client uses Tivoli for running all their production jobs, and not SQL Agent, so I had to build a command line file for Tivoli to use to run the package. Everything was going great. I had tested the command file from my development workstation using an XML configuration file to pass in server-specific parameters into the package when executed using the DTExec utility. With all the pieces ready, I updated the dtsconfig file to point to the UAT environment and started working with the Tivoli developer to test the job.  On the first run, the job failed, and from what I could see in the SSIS log, it had failed because of a timeout. Other errors in the log made me think that perhaps the connection string had not been passed into the package correctly. We bumped the Connection Manager  timeout values from 20 seconds to 120 seconds and tried again. The job still failed. After changing the command line to use the /SET option instead of the /CONFIGFILE option, we tested again, and again failure. After a number more failed attempts, and getting the Teradata DBA involved to monitor and see if we were connecting and failing or just failing to connect, we determined that the job was indeed connecting to the server and then disconnecting itself after 30 seconds.  This seemed odd, as we had the timeout values for the connection manager set to 180 seconds by then.  At this point one of the DBA’s found a post on the Teradata forum that had the clues to the puzzle: There is a separate “CommandTimeout” custom property on the Data source object that may needed to be adjusted for longer running queries.  I opened up the SSIS package, opened the data flow task that generated the partition list table and right-clicked on the data source. from the context menu, I selected “Show Advanced Editor” and found the property. Sure enough, it was set to 30 seconds. The CommandTimeout property can also be edited in the SSIS Properties sheet. In order to determine how long the timeout needed to be, I ran the query from the task in the development environment and received a response in a matter of seconds.  I then tried the same query against the production database and waited several minutes for a response. This did not seem to be a reasonable response time for the query involved, and indeed it wasn’t. The Teradata DBA’s adjusted the query governor settings for the service account I was testing with, and we were able to get the response back down under a minute.  Still, I set the CommandTimeout property to a much higher value in case the job was ever started during a time of high-demand on the production server. With this change in place, the job finally completed successfully.  The lesson learned for me was two-fold: Always compare query execution times between development and production environments, and don’t assume that production will always be faster.  With higher user demands, query governors, and a whole lot more data, the execution time of even what might seem to be simple queries can vary greatly. SSIS Connection time out settings do not affect command time outs.  Connection timeouts control how long the package will wait for a response from the server before assuming the server is not available or is not responding. Command time outs control how long a task will wait for results to start being returned before deciding that the server is not responding. Both lessons seem pretty straight forward, and I felt pretty sheepish once I finally figured out what the issue was.  To be fair though, In the 5+ years that I have been working with SSIS, I could only recall one other time where I had to set the CommandTimeout property, and that memory only resurfaced while I was penning this post.

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• Thought Oracle Usability Advisory Board Was Stuffy? Wrong. Justification for Attending OUAB: ROI

  - by ultan o'broin

  Looking for reasons tell your boss why your organization needs to join the Oracle Usability Advisory Board or why you need approval to attend one of its meetings (see the requirements)? Try phrases such as "Continued Return on Investment (ROI)", "Increased Productivity" or "Happy Workers". With OUAB your participation is about realizing and sustaining ROI across the entire applications life-cycle from input to designs to implementation choices and integration, usage and performance and on measuring and improving the onboarding and support experience. If you think this is a boring meeting of middle-aged people sitting around moaning about customizing desktop forms and why the BlackBerry is here to stay, think again! How about this for a rich agenda, all designed to engage the audience in a thought-provoking and feedback-illiciting day of swirling interactions, contextual usage, global delivery, mobility, consumerizationm, gamification and tailoring your implementation to reflect real users doing real work in real environments.  Foldable, rollable ereader devices provide a newspaper-like UK for electronic news. Or a way to wrap silicon chips, perhaps. Explored at the OUAB Europe Meeting (photograph from Terrace Restaurant in TVP. Nom.) At the 7 December 2012 OUAB Europe meeting in Oracle Thames Valley Park, UK, Oracle partners and customers stepped up to the mic and PPT decks with a range of facts and examples to astound any UX conference C-level sceptic. Over the course of the day we covered much ground, but it was all related in a contextual, flexibile, simplication, engagement way aout delivering results for business: that means solving problems. This means being about the user and their tasks and how to make design and technology transforms work into a productive activity that users and bean counters will be excited by. The sessions really gelled for me: 1. Mobile design patterns and the powerful propositions for customers and partners offered by using the design guidance with Oracle ADF Mobile. Customers' and partners' developers existing ADF developers are now productive, efficient ADF Mobile developers applying proven UX guidance using ADF Mobile components and other Oracle Fusion Middleware in the development toolkit. You can find the Mobile UX Design Patterns and Guidance on Building Mobile Apps on OTN. 2. Oracle Voice and Apps. How this medium offers so much potentual in the enterprise and offers a window in Fusion Apps cloud webservices, Oracle RightNow NLP and Nuance technology. Exciting stuff, demoed live on a mobile phone. Stay tuned for more features and modalities and how you can tailor your own apps experience.  3. Oracle RightNow Natural Language Processing (NLP) Virtual Assistant technology (Ella): how contextual intervention and learning from users sessions delivers a great personalized UX for users interacting with Ella, a fifth generation VA to solve problems and seek knowledge. 4. BYOD Keynote: A balanced keynote address contrasting Fujitsu's explaining of the conceprt, challenges, and trends and setting the expectation that BYOD must be embraced in a flexible way,  with the resolute, crafted high security enterprise requirements that nuancing the BYOD concept and proposals with the realities of their world of water tight information and device sharing policies. Fascinating stuff, as well providing anecdotes to make us thing about out own DYOD Deployments. One size does not fit all. 5. Icon Cultural Surveys Results and Insights Arising: Ever wondered about the cultural appropriateness of icons used in software UIs and how these icons assessed for global use? Or considered that social media "Like" icons might be  unacceptable hand gestures in culture or enterprise? Or do the old world icons like Save floppy disk icons still find acceptable? Well the survey results told you. Challenges must be tested, over time, and context of use is critical now, including external factors such as the internet and social media adoption. Indeed the fears about global rejection of the face and hand icons was not borne out, and some of the more anachronistic icons (checkbooks, microphones, real-to-real tape decks, 3.5" floppies for "save") have become accepted metaphors for current actions. More importantly the findings brought into focus the reason for OUAB - engage with and illicit feedback though working groups before we build anything. 6. EReaders and Oracle iBook: What is the uptake and trends of ereaders? And how about a demo of an iBook with enterprise apps content?  Well received by the audience, the session included a live running poll of ereader usage. 7. Gamification Design Jam: Fun, hands on event for teams of Oracle staff, partners and customers, actually building gamified flows, a practice that can be applied right away by customers and partners.  8. UX Direct: A new offering of usability best practices, coming to an external website for you in 2013. FInd a real user, observe their tasks, design and approve, build and measure. Simple stuff to improve apps implications no end. 9. FUSE (an internal term only, basically Fusion Simplified Experience): demo of the new Face of Fusion Applications: inherently mobile, simple to use, social, personalizable and FAST, three great demos from the HCM, CRM and ICT world on how these UX designs can be used in different ways. So, a powerful breadth and depth of UX solutions and opporunities for customers and partners to engage with and explore how they can make their users happy and benefit their business reaping continued ROI from those apps investments. Find out more about the OUAB and how to get involved here ... 

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• SOA 11g Technology Adapters – ECID Propagation

  - by Greg Mally

  Overview Many SOA Suite 11g deployments include the use of the technology adapters for various activities including integration with FTP, database, and files to name a few. Although the integrations with these adapters are easy and feature rich, there can be some challenges from the operations perspective. One of these challenges is how to correlate a logical business transaction across SOA component instances. This correlation is typically accomplished via the execution context ID (ECID), but we lose the ECID correlation when the business transaction spans technologies like FTP, database, and files. A new feature has been introduced in the Oracle adapter JCA framework to allow the propagation of the ECID. This feature is available in the forthcoming SOA Suite 11.1.1.7 (PS6). The basic concept of propagating the ECID is to identify somewhere in the payload of the message where the ECID can be stored. Then two Binding Properties, relating to the location of the ECID in the message, are added to either the Exposed Service (left-hand side of composite) or External Reference (right-hand side of composite). This will give the JCA framework enough information to either extract the ECID from or add the ECID to the message. In the scenario of extracting the ECID from the message, the ECID will be used for the new component instance. Where to Put the ECID When trying to determine where to store the ECID in the message, you basically have two options: Add a new optional element to your message schema. Leverage an existing element that is not used in your schema. The best scenario is that you are able to add the optional element to your message since trying to find an unused element will prove difficult in most situations. The schema will be holding the ECID value which looks something like the following: 11d1def534ea1be0:7ae4cac3:13b4455735c:-8000-00000000000002dc Configuring Composite Services/References Now that you have identified where you want the ECID to be stored in the message, the JCA framework needs to have this information as well. The two pieces of information that the framework needs relates to the message schema: The namespace for the element in the message. The XPath to the element in the message. To better understand this, let's look at an example for the following database table: When an Exposed Service is created via the Database Adapter Wizard in the composite, the following schema is created: For this example, the two Binding Properties we add to the ReadRow service in the composite are: <!-- Properties for the binding to propagate the ECID from the database table --> <property name="jca.ecid.nslist" type="xs:string" many="false">  xmlns:ns1="http://xmlns.oracle.com/pcbpel/adapter/db/top/ReadRow"</property> <property name="jca.ecid.xpath" type="xs:string" many="false">  /ns1:EcidPropagationCollection/ns1:EcidPropagation/ns1:ecid</property> Notice that the property called jca.ecid.nslist contains the targetNamespace defined in the schema and the property called jca.ecid.xpath contains the XPath statement to the element. The XPath statement also contains the appropriate namespace prefix (ns1) which is defined in the jca.ecid.nslist property. When the Database Adapter service reads a row from the database, it will retrieve the ECID value from the payload and remove the element from the payload. When the component instance is created, it will be associated with the retrieved ECID and the payload contains everything except the ECID element/value. The only time the ECID is visible is when it is stored safely in the resource technology like the database, a file, or a queue. Simple Database/File/JMS Example This section contains a simplified example of how the ECID can propagate through a database table, a file, and JMS queue. The composite for the example looks like the following: The flow of this example is as follows: Invoke database insert using the insertwithecidbpelprocess_client_ep Service. The InsertWithECIDBPELProcess adds a row to the database via the Database Adapter. The JCA Framework adds the ECID to the message prior to inserting. The ReadRow Service retrieves the record and the JCA Framework extracts the ECID from the message. The ECID element is removed from the message. An instance of ReadRowBPELProcess is created and it is associated with the retried ECID. The ReadRowBPELProcess now writes the record to the file system via the File Adapter. The JCA Framework adds the ECID to the message prior to writing the message to file. The ReadFile Service retrieves the record from the file system and the JCA Framework extracts the ECID from the message. The ECID element is removed from the message. An instance of ReadFileBPELProcess is created and it is associated with the retried ECID. The ReadFileBPELProcess now enqueues the message via the JMS Adapter. The JCA Framework adds the ECID to the message prior to enqueuing the message. The DequeueMessage Service retrieves the record and the JCA Framework extracts the ECID from the message. The ECID element is removed from the message. An instance of DequeueMessageBPELProcess is created and it is associated with the retried ECID. The logical flow ends. When viewing the Flow Trace in the Enterprise Manger, you will now see all the instances correlated via ECID: Please check back here when SOA Suite 11.1.1.7 is released for this example. With the example you can run it yourself and reinforce what has been shared in this blog via a hands-on experience. One final note: the contents of this blog may be included in the official SOA Suite 11.1.1.7 documentation, but you will still need to come here to get the example.

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• Books are Dead! Long Live the Books!

  - by smisner

  We live in interesting times with regard to the availability of technical material. We have lots of free written material online in the form of vendor documentation online, forums, blogs, and Twitter. And we have written material that we can buy in the form of books, magazines, and training materials. Online videos and training – some free and some not free – are also an option. All of these formats are useful for one need or another. As an author, I pay particular attention to the demand for books, and for now I see no reason to stop authoring books. I assure you that I don’t get rich from the effort, and fortunately that is not my motivation. As someone who likes to refer to books frequently, I am still a big believer in books and have evidence from book sales that there are others like me. If I can do my part to help others learn about the technologies I work with, I will continue to produce content in a variety of formats, including books. (You can view a list of all of my books on the Publications page of my site and my online training videos at Pluralsight.) As a consumer of technical information, I prefer books because a book typically can get into a topic much more deeply than a blog post, and can provide more context than vendor documentation. It comes with a table of contents and a (hopefully accurate) index that helps me zero in on a topic of interest, and of course I can use the Search feature in digital form. Some people suggest that technology books are outdated as soon as they get published. I guess it depends on where you are with technology. Not everyone is able to upgrade to the latest and greatest version at release. I do assume, however, that the SQL Server 7.0 titles in my library have little value for me now, but I’m certain that the minute I discard the book, I’m going to want it for some reason! Meanwhile, as electronic books overtake physical books in sales, my husband is grateful that I can continue to build my collection digitally rather than physically as the books have a way of taking over significant square footage in our house! Blog posts, on the other hand, are useful for describing the scenarios that come up in real-life implementations that wouldn’t fit neatly into a book. As many years that I have working with the Microsoft BI stack, I still run into new problems that require creative thinking. Likewise, people who work with BI and other technologies that I use share what they learn through their blogs. Internet search engines help us find information in blogs that simply isn’t available anywhere else. Another great thing about blogs, also, is the connection to community and the dialog that can ensue between people with common interests. With the trend towards electronic formats for books, I imagine that we’ll see books continue to adapt to incorporate different forms of media and better ways to keep the information current. At the moment, I wish I had a better way to help readers with my last two Reporting Services books. In the case of the Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Reporting Services Step by Step book, I have heard many cases of readers having problems with the sample database that shipped on CD – either the database was missing or it was corrupt. So I’ve provided a copy of the database on my site for download from http://datainspirations.com/uploads/rs2005sbsDW.zip. Then for the Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2008 Reporting Services Step by Step book, we decided to avoid the database problem by using the AdventureWorks2008 samples that Microsoft published on Codeplex (although code samples are still available on CD). We had this silly idea that the URL for the download would remain constant, but it seems that expectation was ill-founded. Currently, the sample database is found at http://msftdbprodsamples.codeplex.com/releases/view/37109 but I have no idea how long that will remain valid. My latest books (#9 and #10 which are milestones I never anticipated), Building Integrated Business Intelligence Solutions with SQL Server 2008 R2 and Office 2010 (McGraw Hill, 2011) and Business Intelligence in Microsoft SharePoint 2010 (Microsoft Press, 2011), will not ship with a CD, but will provide all code samples for download at a site maintained by the respective publishers. I expect that the URLs for the downloads for the book will remain valid, but there are lots of references to other sites that can change or disappear over time. Does that mean authors shouldn’t make reference to such sites? Personally, I think the benefits to be gained from including links are greater than the risks of the links becoming invalid at some point. Do you think the time for technology books has come to an end? Is the delivery of books in electronic format enough to keep them alive? If technological barriers were no object, what would make a book more valuable to you than other formats through which you can obtain information?

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• Building a plug-in for Windows Live Writer

  - by mbcrump

  This tutorial will show you how to build a plug-in for Windows Live Writer. Windows Live Writer is a blogging tool that Microsoft provides for free. It includes an open API for .NET developers to create custom plug-ins. In this tutorial, I will show you how easy it is to build one. Open VS2008 or VS2010 and create a new project. Set the target framework to 2.0, Application Type to Class Library and give it a name. In this tutorial, we are going to create a plug-in that generates a twitter message with your blog post name and a TinyUrl link to the blog post.  It will do all of this automatically after you publish your post. Once, we have a new projected created. We need to setup the references. Add a reference to the WindowsLive.Writer.Api.dll located in the C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Live\Writer\ folder, if you are using X64 version of Windows. You will also need to add a reference to System.Windows.Forms System.Web from the .NET tab as well. Once that is complete, add your “using” statements so that it looks like whats shown below: Live Writer Plug-In "Using" using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Text; using WindowsLive.Writer.Api; using System.Web; Now, we are going to setup some build events to make it easier to test our custom class. Go into the Properties of your project and select Build Events, click edit the Post-build and copy/paste the following line: XCOPY /D /Y /R "$(TargetPath)" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Live\Writer\Plugins\" Your screen should look like the one pictured below: Next, we are going to launch an external program on debug. Click the debug tab and enter C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Live\Writer\WindowsLiveWriter.exe Your screen should look like the one pictured below:   Now we have a blank project and we need to add some code. We start with adding the attributes for the Live Writer Plugin. Before we get started creating the Attributes, we need to create a GUID. This GUID will uniquely identity our plug-in. So, to create a GUID follow the steps in VS2008/2010. Click Tools from the VS Menu ->Create GUID It will generate a GUID like the one listed below: GUID <Guid("56ED8A2C-F216-420D-91A1-F7541495DBDA")> We only want what’s inside the quotes, so your final product should be: "56ED8A2C-F216-420D-91A1-F7541495DBDA". Go ahead and paste this snipped into your class just above the public class. Live Writer Plug-In Attributes [WriterPlugin("56ED8A2C-F216-420D-91A1-F7541495DBDA",    "Generate Twitter Message",    Description = "After your new post has been published, this plug-in will attempt to generate a Twitter status messsage with the Title and TinyUrl link.",    HasEditableOptions = false,    Name = "Generate Twitter Message",    PublisherUrl = "http://michaelcrump.net")] [InsertableContentSource("Generate Twitter Message")] So far, it should look like the following: Next, we need to implement the PublishNotifcationHook class and override the OnPostPublish. I’m not going to dive into what the code is doing as you should be able to follow pretty easily. The code below is the entire code used in the project. PublishNotificationHook public class Class1 :  PublishNotificationHook  {      public override void OnPostPublish(System.Windows.Forms.IWin32Window dialogOwner, IProperties properties, IPublishingContext publishingContext, bool publish)      {          if (!publish) return;          if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(publishingContext.PostInfo.Permalink))          {              PluginDiagnostics.LogError("Live Tweet didn't execute, due to blank permalink");          }          else          {                var strBlogName = HttpUtility.UrlEncode("#blogged : " + publishingContext.PostInfo.Title);  //Blog Post Title              var strUrlFinal = getTinyUrl(publishingContext.PostInfo.Permalink); //Blog Permalink URL Converted to TinyURL              System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("http://twitter.com/home?status=" + strBlogName + strUrlFinal);            }      } We are going to go ahead and create a method to create the short url (tinyurl). TinyURL Helper Method private static string getTinyUrl(string url) {     var cmpUrl = System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture.CompareInfo;     if (!cmpUrl.IsPrefix(url, "http://tinyurl.com"))     {         var address = "http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url=" + url;         var client = new System.Net.WebClient();         return (client.DownloadString(address));     }     return (url); } Go ahead and build your project, it should have copied the .DLL into the Windows Live Writer Plugin Directory. If it did not, then you will want to check your configuration. Once that is complete, open Windows Live Writer and select Tools-> Options-> Plug-ins and enable your plug-in that you just created. Your screen should look like the one pictured below: Go ahead and click OK and publish your blog post. You should get a pop-up with the following: Hit OK and It should open a Twitter and either ask for a login or fill in your status as shown below:   That should do it, you can do so many other things with the API. I suggest that if you want to build something really useful consult the MSDN pages. This plug-in that I created was perfect for what I needed and I hope someone finds it useful.

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