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Silverlight 5 Hosting :: Features in Silverlight 5 and Release Date

- by mbridge

Silverlight 5 is finally announced in the Silverlight FireStarter Event on the 2nd December, 2010. This new version of Silverlight which was earlier labeled as 'Future of Microsoft Silverlight' has now come much closer to go live as the first Silverlight 5 Beta version is expected to be shipped during the early months of 2011. However for the full fledged and the final release of Silverlight 5, we have to wait many more months as the same is likely to be made available within the Q3 2011. As would have been usually expected, this latest edition would feature many new capabilities thereby extending the developer productivity to a whole new dimension of premium media experience and feature-rich business applications. It comes along with many new feature updates as well as the inclusion of new technologies to improve the standard of the Silverlight applications which are now fine-tuned to produce next generation business and media solutions that is capable to meet the requirements of the advanced web-based app development. The Silverlight 5 is all set to replace the previous fourth version which now includes more than forty new features while also dropping various deprecated elements that was prevalent earlier. It has brought around some major performance enhancements and also included better support for various other tools and technologies. Following are some of the changes that are registered to be available under the Silverlight 5 Beta edition which is scheduled to be launched during the Q1 2011. Silverlight 5 : Premium Media Experiences The media features of Silverlight 5 has seen some major enhancements with a lot of optimizations being made to deliver richer solutions. It's capability has now been extended to make things easier, faster and capable of performing the desired tasks in the most efficient manner. The Silverlight media solutions has already been a part of many companies in the recent days where various on-demand Silverlight services were featured but with the arrival of the next generation premium media solution of Silverlight 5, it is expected to register new heights of success and global user acclamation for using it with many esteemed web-based projects and media solutions. - The most happening element in the new Silverlight 5 will be its support for utilizing the GPU based hardware acceleration which is intended to lower down the CPU load to a significant extent and thereby allowing faster rendering of media contents without consuming much resources. This feature is believed to be particularly helpful for low configured machines to run full HD media content without any lagging caused due to processor load. It will hence be one great feature to revolutionize the new generation high quality media contents to be available within the web in a more efficient manner with its hardware decoded video playback capabilities. - With the inclusion of hardware video decoding to minimize the processor load, the Silverlight 5 also comes with another optimization enhancement to also reduce the power consumption level by making new methods to deal with the power-saver settings. With this optimization in effect, the computer would be automatically allowed to switch to sleep mode while no video playback is in progress and also to prevent any screensavers to popup and cause annoyances during any video playback. There would also be other power saver options which will be made available to best suit the users requirements and purpose. - The Silverlight trickplay feature is another great way to tweak any silverlight powered media content as is used for many video tutorial sites or for dealing with any sort of presentations. This feature enables the user to modify the playback speed to either slowdown or speedup during the playback durations based on the requirements without compromising on the quality of output. Normally such manipulations always makes the content's audio to go off-pitch, but the same will not be the case with TrickPlay and the audio would seamlessly progress with the video without skipping any of its part. - In addition to all of the above, the new Silverlight 5 will be featuring wireless control of all the media contents by making use of remote controllers. With the use of such remote devices, it will be easier to handle the various media playback controls thereby providing more freedom while experiencing the premium media services. Silverlight 5 : Business Application Development The application development standard has been extended with more possibilities by bringing forth new and useful technologies and also reviving the existing methods to work better than what it was used to. From the UI improvements to advanced technical aspects, the Silverlight 5 scores high on all grounds to produce great next generation business delivered applications by putting in more creativity and resourceful touch to all the apps being produced with it. - The WPF feature of Silverlight is made more effective by introducing new standards of Databinding which is intended to improve the productivity standards of the Silverlight application developer. It brings in a lot of convenience in debugging the databinding components or expressions and hence making things work in a flawless manner. Some additional features related to databinding includes that of Ancestor RelativeSource, Implicit DataTemplates and Model View ViewModel (MVVM) support with DataContextChanged event and many other new features relating it. - It now comes with a refined text and printing service which facilitates better clarity of the text rendering and also many positive changes which are being applied to the layout pattern. New supports has been added to include OpenType font, multi-column text, linked-text containers and character leading support to name a few among the available features.This also includes some important printing aspects like that of Postscript Vector Printing API which allows to program our printing tasks in a user defined way and Pivot functionality for visualization concerns of informations. - The Graphics support is the key improvements being incorporated which now enables to utilize three dimensional graphics pattern using GPU acceleration. It can manage to provide some really cool visualizations being curved to provide media contents within the business apps with also the support for full HD contents at 1080p quality. - Silverlight 5 includes the support for 64-bit operating systems and relevant browsers and is also optimized to provide better performance. It can support the background thread for the networking which can reduce the latency of the network to a considerable extent. The Out-of-Browser functionality adds the support for utilizing various libraries and also the Win32 API. It also comes with testing support with VS 2010 which is mostly an automated procedure and has also enabled increased security aspects of all the Silverlight 5 developed applications by using the improved version of group policy support.

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Faceted search with Solr on Windows

- by Dr.NETjes

With over 10 million hits a day, funda.nl is probably the largest ASP.NET website which uses Solr on a Windows platform. While all our data (i.e. real estate properties) is stored in SQL Server, we're using Solr 1.4.1 to return the faceted search results as fast as we can.And yes, Solr is very fast. We did do some heavy stress testing on our Solr service, which allowed us to do over 1,000 req/sec on a single 64-bits Solr instance; and that's including converting search-url's to Solr http-queries and deserializing Solr's result-XML back to .NET objects! Let me tell you about faceted search and how to integrate Solr in a .NET/Windows environment. I'll bet it's easier than you think :-) What is faceted search? Faceted search is the clustering of search results into categories, allowing users to drill into search results. By showing the number of hits for each facet category, users can easily see how many results match that category. If you're still a bit confused, this example from CNET explains it all: The SQL solution for faceted search Our ("pre-Solr") solution for faceted search was done by adding a lot of redundant columns to our SQL tables and doing a COUNT(...) for each of those columns: So if a user was searching for real estate properties in the city 'Amsterdam', our facet-query would be something like: SELECT COUNT(hasGarden), COUNT(has2Bathrooms), COUNT(has3Bathrooms), COUNT(etc...) FROM Houses WHERE city = 'Amsterdam' While this solution worked fine for a couple of years, it wasn't very easy for developers to add new facets. And also, performing COUNT's on all matched rows only performs well if you have a limited amount of rows in a table (i.e. less than a million). Enter Solr "Solr is an open source enterprise search server based on the Lucene Java search library, with XML/HTTP and JSON APIs, hit highlighting, faceted search, caching, replication, and a web administration interface." (quoted from Wikipedia's page on Solr) Solr isn't a database, it's more like a big index. Every time you upload data to Solr, it will analyze the data and create an inverted index from it (like the index-pages of a book). This way Solr can lookup data very quickly. To explain the inner workings of Solr is beyond the scope of this post, but if you want to learn more, please visit the Solr Wiki pages. Getting faceted search results from Solr is very easy; first let me show you how to send a http-query to Solr: http://localhost:8983/solr/select?q=city:Amsterdam This will return an XML document containing the search results (in this example only three houses in the city of Amsterdam): <response> <result name="response" numFound="3" start="0"> <doc> <long name="id">3203</long> <str name="city">Amsterdam</str> <str name="steet">Keizersgracht</str> <int name="numberOfBathrooms">2</int> </doc> <doc> <long name="id">3205</long> <str name="city">Amsterdam</str> <str name="steet">Vondelstraat</str> <int name="numberOfBathrooms">3</int> </doc> <doc> <long name="id">4293</long> <str name="city">Amsterdam</str> <str name="steet">Wibautstraat</str> <int name="numberOfBathrooms">2</int> </doc> </result> </response> By adding a facet-querypart for the field "numberOfBathrooms", Solr will return the facets for this particular field. We will see that there's one house in Amsterdam with three bathrooms and two houses with two bathrooms. http://localhost:8983/solr/select?q=city:Amsterdam&facet=true&facet.field=numberOfBathrooms The complete XML response from Solr now looks like: <response> <result name="response" numFound="3" start="0"> <doc> <long name="id">3203</long> <str name="city">Amsterdam</str> <str name="steet">Keizersgracht</str> <int name="numberOfBathrooms">2</int> </doc> <doc> <long name="id">3205</long> <str name="city">Amsterdam</str> <str name="steet">Vondelstraat</str> <int name="numberOfBathrooms">3</int> </doc> <doc> <long name="id">4293</long> <str name="city">Amsterdam</str> <str name="steet">Wibautstraat</str> <int name="numberOfBathrooms">2</int> </doc> </result> <lst name="facet_fields"> <lst name="numberOfBathrooms"> <int name="2">2</int> <int name="3">1</int> </lst> </lst> </response> Trying Solr for yourself To run Solr on your local machine and experiment with it, you should read the Solr tutorial. This tutorial really only takes 1 hour, in which you install Solr, upload sample data and get some query results. And yes, it works on Windows without a problem. Note that in the Solr tutorial, you're using Jetty as a Java Servlet Container (that's why you must start it using "java -jar start.jar"). In our environment we prefer to use Apache Tomcat to host Solr, which installs like a Windows service and works more like .NET developers expect. See the SolrTomcat page.Some best practices for running Solr on Windows: Use the 64-bits version of Tomcat. In our tests, this doubled the req/sec we were able to handle!Use a .NET XmlReader to convert Solr's XML output-stream to .NET objects. Don't use XPath; it won't scale well.Use filter queries ("fq" parameter) instead of the normal "q" parameter where possible. Filter queries are cached by Solr and will speed up Solr's response time (see FilterQueryGuidance)In my next post I’ll talk about how to keep Solr's indexed data in sync with the data in your SQL tables. Timestamps / rowversions will help you out here!

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 12, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 12, 2010New ProjectsAdverTool (Advertisement tool): AdverTool is an online tool which integrates the most popular advertisement networks (such as Microsoft adCenter, Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Mar...Authentication Configuration Tool for SharePoint: Helpful tools to automatically configure SharePoint 2007 and 2010 for forms based authentication and other authentication mechanisms.Bacicworx: A C# .Net 3.5 helper library containing functionality for compression, encryption, hashes, downloading, PayPal API, text analysis and generation, a...BlogEngine.Net iPhone Theme: A port of BETouch originally created by soundbbgBT UPnP Nat Library: This Library makes it extremly simple to add NAT upnp port forwarding to your .net applications. Developed in C# using .Net 4.0CheckBox & CheckBoxList Validators: These validators fill the much needed gap in the Asp.Net Server controlsDataFactories: The DataFactories project was created to provide a standardized interface to SSAS and MSSQL data. However, as it is implemented using the Abstract ...DVD Swarm: Converts unprotected DVD video & audio streams to H.264 with AAC/Vorbis.Frio IM: Frio IM - is cross protocol instant messenger.jiuyuan: jiuyuan management systemMGM: MyGroupManager is a simple graphical interface written in PowerShell that can be deployed to Active Directory users to simplify the managed of grou...MGR2010: This the MA thesis by Witold Stanik & Michał Sereja, PJWSTK.Nauplius.ActiveDirectory: Web-based Active Directory management.Partial rendering control using JQuery: This article show a web custom control that allows partial rendering using JQueryREG - The Random Entertainment Generator: A simple tool to make your mid up when you can't figure out what you want to do!Runes of Magic - Heilerrechner: Heilerrechner für die Heiler von Runes of Magic (www.runes.ofmagic.com)Semagsoft Calculator: Basic calculator for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.SO League Tables: SOLT: Stack Overflow League Tables. A fun little app that lets you compare your stack overflow performance for each month, relative to other member...Stacky StackApps .Net Client Library: StackApps is a REST API for which provides access to the stackoverflow.com family of websites. Stacky is a .net client for that API. Stacky current...TwitterDotNet: TwitterDotNet is a TwitterLibrary for .NET Framework.ValiVIN: VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) Validator Validate Vin NumberWorkLogger: Simple work hour logger in WPFNew ReleasesAdverTool (Advertisement tool): Official releases: Please visit http://advertool.org to access the complete source code and downloads.Authentication Configuration Tool for SharePoint: Auth Config Tool (WSS 3.0, MOSS 2007 version): This tool automates the setup of dual authentication web applications in SharePoint that use Windows Authentication and Forms Based Authentication....BlogEngine.Net iPhone Theme: Version 0.1: Original version 0.1 from soundbbgBraintree Client Library: Braintree-2.3.0: Return AvsErrorResponseCode, AvsPostalCodeResponseCode, AvsStreetAddressResponseCode, CurrencyIsoCode, CvvResponseCode with Transaction Return Cr...BT UPnP Nat Library: Bt_Upnp Nat Library Alpha: Alpha Release of the libraryCNZK Library: Silverlight Behaviors - Deep Zoom Tag Filter: Behavior library for Silverlight 4 containing a Deep Zoom Tag Filter Behavior. Sample at the Expression Gallery http://gallery.expression.microsof...Demina: Demina Binaries version 0.2: Updated binaries. This release contains all of the new features, including simple animation transitions.DTLoggedExec: 1.0.0.2: -Fixed a bug that prevented loading packages from SSIS Package Store -Added support for {filename} placeholder in both Data Flow Profiling and CSV ...DVD Swarm: v0.8.10.611: Initial release, mostly stable.Exchange 2010 RBAC Editor (RBAC GUI) - updated on 6/11/2010: RBAC Editor 0.9.5.1: now supports creating and editing Role Assignment Policies; rest of the stuff is the same - still a lot of way to go :) Please use email address i...Extend SmallBasic: Teaching Extensions v.021: Compatible with SmallBasic v0.9 Lame version of TicTacToe Added - more coming later.Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts v3.1.1 GA Released: Hi, Today we are releasing Visifire 3.1.1 GA with the following features: * Logarithmic Axis * ShowIndicator() in Chart. * HideIndica...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts v3.5.4 GA Released: Hi, Today we are releasing Visifire 3.1.1 GA with the following features: Logarithmic Axis ShowIndicator() in Chart. HideIndicator() in Chart...Keep Focused - an enhanced tool for Time Management using Pomodoro Technique: Release 0.3.1 Alpha: Release 0.3.1 Alpha Technical patch. The previous release 0.3 Alpha had some errors and missing features. It was probably not build from the source...Mesopotamia Experiment: Mesopotamia 1.2.96: Bug Fixes - Fixed duplicate cells being added on creating new cells via mutations - Fixed bug where organisms without IO synapses where getting ios...NLog - Advanced .NET Logging: Nightly Build 2010.06.11.001: Changes since the last build:No changes. Unit test results:Passed 243/243 (100%) Passed 243/243 (100%) Passed 267/267 (100%) Passed 269/269 (100%)...Partial rendering control using JQuery: JQuery Web Control V 1.0: This is the first release of the code. It includes the source code and a web application to see how it worksphpxw: Phpxw2.0: 框架目录说明 ./_mod 模块存放目录 ./phpxw/ 框架核心目录 ./phpxw/common/ 框架核心函数 ./phpxw/system/ 框架核心基础类存放目录 ./phpxw/userlib/ 用户继承类存放目录 ./temp...Questionable Content Screensaver: Questionable Content Screensaver: Should be pretty self explanatory, install the appropriate version for your computer (x64 or x86). Features Include Cache comics for offline viewi...Quick Performance Monitor: Version 1.4.1: Added option to change the 'minimum' maximum value visible on the graph at run-time. Also fixed a number of other bugs.Refix - .NET dependency management: Refix v0.1.0.82 ALPHA: This has now been run against a real life project to tease out some of the issues. While this remains alpha software, which you use at your own ris...Rhyduino - Arduino and Managed Code: Beta Release (v0.8.2): ContentsSample Project - Demonstrates basic functionality and is flooded with code comments, so it's capable of being used as a learning tool. It d...Runes of Magic - Heilerrechner: Rom_Heiler_0.1: Erste Version von "RoM Heilerrechner". .Net 4.0 Framework wird vorausgesetzt. Das erhälst du hier: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?...Semagsoft Calculator: 2.0: new theme and bug fix'sSilverlight Reporting: Release 2: Updated to correct issue in report footer xaml, and to add support for a calculated report footer.Stacky StackApps .Net Client Library: Beta Preview: This is a beta preview to go along with the StackApps beta.TwitterDotNet: TwitterDotNet Library: first versionUnOfficial AW Wrapper dot Net: Aw Wrapper 1.0.0.0 (5.0): New Functions :DValiVIN: ValiVIN first release: First Iteration. METHODS: IsValid(string vin) - Checks if a string is a valid VIN (returns true or false) GetCheckSumValue(string vin) - Returns...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30611.0: Automatic drop of latest buildViewModelSupport: ViewModelSupport 1.0: Version 1.0 More information: http://houseofbilz.net/archives/2010/05/08/adventures-in-mvvm-my-viewmodel-base/ http://houseofbilz.net/archives/201...VolgaTransTelecomClient: v.1.0.3.0: v.1.0.3.0WCF Client Generator: Version 0.9.3.19259: Changed: - Always generate full type names for parameters and return typesWCF Client Generator: Version 0.9.3.21153: Fixed: - Service contracts namespace generation Added: - Templates assembly code base read from configurationXen: Graphics API for XNA: Xen 2.0 ALPHA: This is a very early alpha for Xen 2.0. Please note: The documentation for this alpha has not been updated yet. Xen 2.0 is not backwards compatib...ZGuideTV.NET: ZGuideTV.NET 0.93: Vendredi 11 avril 2010 (ZGuideTV.NET bêta 9 build 0.93) - English below Ajout : - Classement du contenu dans la description (affichage légende si...Most Popular ProjectsCAML GeneratorSharePoint Geographic Data VisualizerDbIdiom for ADO.NET CorestudyDTSRun Job RunnerXBStudio.asp.net.automationSilverlight load on demand with MEFCloud Business ServicesSharePoint 2010 Taxonomy Import UtilitySTS Federation Metadata EditorMost Active ProjectsRhyduino - Arduino and Managed Codepatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleCommunity Forums NNTP bridgeCassandraemonBlogEngine.NETMediaCoder.NETMicrosoft Silverlight Media FrameworkAndrew's XNA Helpers

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WebLogic Server Performance and Tuning: Part I - Tuning JVM

- by Gokhan Gungor

Each WebLogic Server instance runs in its own dedicated Java Virtual Machine (JVM) which is their runtime environment. Every Admin Server in any domain executes within a JVM. The same also applies for Managed Servers. WebLogic Server can be used for a wide variety of applications and services which uses the same runtime environment and resources. Oracle WebLogic ships with 2 different JVM, HotSpot and JRocket but you can choose which JVM you want to use. JVM is designed to optimize itself however it also provides some startup options to make small changes. There are default values for its memory and garbage collection. In real world, you will not want to stick with the default values provided by the JVM rather want to customize these values based on your applications which can produce large gains in performance by making small changes with the JVM parameters. We can tell the garbage collector how to delete garbage and we can also tell JVM how much space to allocate for each generation (of java Objects) or for heap. Remember during the garbage collection no other process is executed within the JVM or runtime, which is called STOP THE WORLD which can affect the overall throughput. Each JVM has its own memory segment called Heap Memory which is the storage for java Objects. These objects can be grouped based on their age like young generation (recently created objects) or old generation (surviving objects that have lived to some extent), etc. A java object is considered garbage when it can no longer be reached from anywhere in the running program. Each generation has its own memory segment within the heap. When this segment gets full, garbage collector deletes all the objects that are marked as garbage to create space. When the old generation space gets full, the JVM performs a major collection to remove the unused objects and reclaim their space. A major garbage collect takes a significant amount of time and can affect system performance. When we create a managed server either on the same machine or on remote machine it gets its initial startup parameters from $DOMAIN_HOME/bin/setDomainEnv.sh/cmd file. By default two parameters are set: Xms: The initial heapsize Xmx: The max heapsize Try to set equal initial and max heapsize. The startup time can be a little longer but for long running applications it will provide a better performance. When we set -Xms512m -Xmx1024m, the physical heap size will be 512m. This means that there are pages of memory (in the state of the 512m) that the JVM does not explicitly control. It will be controlled by OS which could be reserve for the other tasks. In this case, it is an advantage if the JVM claims the entire memory at once and try not to spend time to extend when more memory is needed. Also you can use -XX:MaxPermSize (Maximum size of the permanent generation) option for Sun JVM. You should adjust the size accordingly if your application dynamically load and unload a lot of classes in order to optimize the performance. You can set the JVM options/heap size from the following places: Through the Admin console, in the Server start tab In the startManagedWeblogic script for the managed servers $DOMAIN_HOME/bin/startManagedWebLogic.sh/cmd JAVA_OPTIONS="-Xms1024m -Xmx1024m" ${JAVA_OPTIONS} In the setDomainEnv script for the managed servers and admin server (domain wide) USER_MEM_ARGS="-Xms1024m -Xmx1024m" When there is free memory available in the heap but it is too fragmented and not contiguously located to store the object or when there is actually insufficient memory we can get java.lang.OutOfMemoryError. We should create Thread Dump and analyze if that is possible in case of such error. The second option we can use to produce higher throughput is to garbage collection. We can roughly divide GC algorithms into 2 categories: parallel and concurrent. Parallel GC stops the execution of all the application and performs the full GC, this generally provides better throughput but also high latency using all the CPU resources during GC. Concurrent GC on the other hand, produces low latency but also low throughput since it performs GC while application executes. The JRockit JVM provides some useful command-line parameters that to control of its GC scheme like -XgcPrio command-line parameter which takes the following options; XgcPrio:pausetime (To minimize latency, parallel GC) XgcPrio:throughput (To minimize throughput, concurrent GC ) XgcPrio:deterministic (To guarantee maximum pause time, for real time systems) Sun JVM has similar parameters (like -XX:UseParallelGC or -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC) to control its GC scheme. We can add -verbosegc -XX:+PrintGCDetails to monitor indications of a problem with garbage collection. Try configuring JVM’s of all managed servers to execute in -server mode to ensure that it is optimized for a server-side production environment.

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Request Limit Length Limits for IIS’s requestFiltering Module

- by Rick Strahl

Today I updated my CodePaste.net site to MVC 3 and pushed an update to the site. The update of MVC went pretty smooth as well as most of the update process to the live site. Short of missing a web.config change in the /views folder that caused blank pages on the server, the process was relatively painless. However, one issue that kicked my ass for about an hour – and not foe the first time – was a problem with my OpenId authentication using DotNetOpenAuth. I tested the site operation fairly extensively locally and everything worked no problem, but on the server the OpenId returns resulted in a 404 response from IIS for a nice friendly OpenId return URL like this: http://codepaste.net/Account/OpenIdLogon?dnoa.userSuppliedIdentifier=http%3A%2F%2Frstrahl.myopenid.com%2F&dnoa.return_to_sig_handle=%7B634239223364590000%7D%7BjbHzkg%3D%3D%7D&dnoa.return_to_sig=7%2BcGhp7UUkcV2B8W29ibIDnZuoGoqzyS%2F%2FbF%2FhhYscgWzjg%2BB%2Fj10ZpNdBkUCu86dkTL6f4OK2zY5qHhCnJ2Dw%3D%3D&openid.assoc_handle=%7BHMAC-SHA256%7D%7B4cca49b2%7D%7BMVGByQ%3D%3D%7D&openid.claimed_id=http%3A%2F%2Frstrahl.myopenid.com%2F&openid.identity=http%3A%2F%2Frstrahl.myopenid.com%2F&openid.mode=id_res&openid.ns=http%3A%2F%2Fspecs.openid.net%2Fauth%2F2.0&openid.ns.sreg=http%3A%2F%2Fopenid.net%2Fextensions%2Fsreg%2F1.1&openid.op_endpoint=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.myopenid.com%2Fserver&openid.response_nonce=2010-10-29T04%3A12%3A53Zn5F4r5&openid.return_to=http%3A%2F%2Fcodepaste.net%2FAccount%2FOpenIdLogon%3Fdnoa.userSuppliedIdentifier%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Frstrahl.myopenid.com%252F%26dnoa.return_to_sig_handle%3D%257B634239223364590000%257D%257BjbHzkg%253D%253D%257D%26dnoa.return_to_sig%3D7%252BcGhp7UUkcV2B8W29ibIDnZuoGoqzyS%252F%252FbF%252FhhYscgWzjg%252BB%252Fj10ZpNdBkUCu86dkTL6f4OK2zY5qHhCnJ2Dw%253D%253D&openid.sig=h1GCSBTDAn1on98sLA6cti%2Bj1M6RffNerdVEI80mnYE%3D&openid.signed=assoc_handle%2Cclaimed_id%2Cidentity%2Cmode%2Cns%2Cns.sreg%2Cop_endpoint%2Cresponse_nonce%2Creturn_to%2Csigned%2Csreg.email%2Csreg.fullname&openid.sreg.email=rstrahl%40host.com&openid.sreg.fullname=Rick+Strahl A 404 of course isn’t terribly helpful – normally a 404 is a resource not found error, but the resource is definitely there. So how the heck do you figure out what’s wrong? If you’re just interested in the solution, here’s the short version: IIS by default allows only for a 1024 byte query string, which is obviously exceeded by the above. The setting is controlled by the RequestFiltering module in IIS 6 and later which can be configured in ApplicationHost.config (in \%windir\system32\inetsvr\config). To set the value configure the requestLimits key like so: <configuration> <security> <requestFiltering> <requestLimits maxQueryString="2048"> </requestLimits> </requestFiltering> </security> </configuration> This fixed me right up and made the requests work. How do you find out about problems like this? Ah yes the troubles of an administrator? Read on and I’ll take you through a quick review of how I tracked this down. Finding the Problem The issue with the error returned is that IIS returns a 404 Resource not found error and doesn’t provide much information about it. If you’re lucky enough to be able to run your site from the localhost IIS is actually very helpful and gives you the right information immediately in a nicely detailed error page. The bottom of the page actually describes exactly what needs to be fixed. One problem with this easy way to find an error: You HAVE TO run localhost. On my server which has about 10 domains running localhost doesn’t point at the particular site I had problems with so I didn’t get the luxury of this nice error page. Using Failed Request Tracing to retrieve Error Info The first place I go with IIS errors is to turn on Failed Request Tracing in IIS to get more error information. If you have access to the server to make a configuration change you can enable Failed Request Tracing like this: Find the Failed Request Tracing Rules in the IIS Service Manager. Select the option and then Edit Site Tracing to enable tracing. Then add a rule for * (all content) and specify status codes from 100-999 to capture all errors. if you know exactly what error you’re looking for it might help to specify it exactly to keep the number of errors down. Then run your request and let it fail. IIS will throw error log files into a folder like this C:\inetpub\logs\FailedReqLogFiles\W3SVC5 where the last 5 is the instance ID of the site. These files are XML but they include an XSL stylesheet that provides some decent formatting. In this case it pointed me straight at the offending module: Ok, it’s the RequestFilteringModule. Request Filtering is built into IIS 6-7 and configured in ApplicationHost.config. This module defines a few basic rules about what paths and extensions are allowed in requests and among other things how long a query string is allowed to be. Most of these settings are pretty sensible but the query string value can easily become a problem especially if you’re dealing with OpenId since these return URLs are quite extensive. Debugging failed requests is never fun, but IIS 6 and forward at least provides us the tools that can help us point in the right direction. The error message the FRT report isn’t as nice as the IIS error message but it at least points at the offending module which gave me the clue I needed to look at request restrictions in ApplicationHost.config. This would still be a stretch if you’re not intimately familiar, but I think with some Google searches it would be easy to track this down with a few tries… Hope this was useful to some of you. Useful to me to put this out as a reminder – I’ve run into this issue before myself and totally forgot. Next time I got it, right?© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET Security

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My Interview with Microsoft

- by Victor Hurdugaci

This post is for those who want to apply or have already applied (but not finished the interview) for a Microsoft Job. The recruitment process is quite similar for everyone and consists of a few steps. Application E-Mail Interview Phone Interview On Site Interview I will tell you my story and how I went through the four phases. 1. Application My blog's title (Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit) means "Nothing Comes Out of Nothing". You can't get a job at Microsoft by not doing anything - this is true for anything else. The first step you need to complete is the application process. For this, many options are available. You can... ... apply online on Microsoft's Careers website as I did ... send your CV to different e-mail addresses (there are some dedicated e-mails for different positions) ... apply through some 3rd party organization (job shop, campus recruitment, job agency, etc) On MS Careers you just have to post your CV and choose the job you want. That's all! No recommendation letter, no cover letter, no nothing. Of course, not every CV passes the selection process. Here are some tips for improving your resume (worked for me): Don't write it just before applying! Write a draft version, wait a few days and then review it. This way you will find a lot of mistakes and stupid things you wrote initially. If you review it immediately after writing, your mind will not be criticism oriented and will just ignore mistakes. Repeat the write-wait-review process as many times as necessary, until you find that the review revealed no mistakes. After you did the final review and the CV is bullet-proof, ask others to review it. They will definitely find inconsistencies and mistakes and this will make you feel stupid. This is good because will open your eyes will make you go into an 'I want to improve' mode. You'll try to correct everything. After you come up with a modified version go again through steps 1 and 2. Repeat this as many times as necessary. [Special thanks to Lucian Sasu, Nadia Comanici, Andrei Ciobanu, Monica Balan and Lavinia Tanase for reviewing my CV!] Make it short and give only relevant facts. Initially, I come up with a 5 pages CV because I wrote every single technology with which I worked. There were a lot irrelevant things, I wrote Windows Workflow Foundation just because I played with it for a few days. I added extensive descriptions for every project, made a personal details section (name, birth date, address, etc) of 1/2 page. Others suggested to cut everything that was not necessary. You don't need to give extensive descriptions, just add a few words. For example, I wrote "VS Image Visualizer - Visual Studio 2008 debug visualizer for images" and added a link to the project's page - you submit formatted andcan embed links. Add something that makes it different. I don't know if this makes a difference, but I added some lines to separate items just like in the picture below. Definitely Microsoft gets thousands of CVs per day. You need something special. Don't lie! Tell exactly what you did and what is the proficiency level of your skills. For example, don't write "Advanced" for UML if you don't know the difference between composition and aggregation. Be realistic and don't under/over estimate yourself. Use the spell chick. Make sure everything is written in correct English and there are no grammar/spelling mistakes. Noddy likes a WC with grammar mi takes. You mght fail just because of that. Once you completed your CV, choose the job that suits best your needs, apply and wait... The waiting is a problem because all these big companies like Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, Apple, etc. will contact you only if they find something interesting in your application. If you're not suitable, then no rejection is sent. I applied for an Intern Software Development Engineer position at Microsoft Redmond. I cannot apply for a full time position because I want to finish the master program on time, in the next summer - an internship is just what I need. 2. E-Mail Interview January 20, 2010. Two months since I submitted the CV. I wasn't hoping anymore that MS will contact me, when I got an e-mail titled: "Victor Hurdugaci ES DK" from Holly Peterson saying: Read more >>

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Updating the managed debugging API for .NET v4

- by Brian Donahue

In any successful investigation, the right tools play a big part in collecting evidence about the state of the "crime scene" as it was before the detectives arrived. Unfortunately for the Crash Scene Investigator, we don't have the budget to fly out to the customer's site, chalk the outline, and eat their doughnuts. We have to rely on the end-user to collect the evidence for us, which means giving them the fingerprint dust and the evidence baggies and leaving them to it. With that in mind, the Red Gate support team have been writing tools that can collect vital clues with a minimum of fuss. Years ago we would have asked for a memory dump, where we used to get the customer to run CDB.exe and produce dumps that we could analyze in-house, but those dumps were pretty unwieldy (500MB files) and the debugger often didn't dump exactly where we wanted, or made five or more dumps. What we wanted was just the minimum state information from the program at the time of failure, so we produced a managed debugger that captured every first and second-chance exception and logged the stack and a minimal amount of variables from the memory of the application, which could all be exported as XML. This caused less inconvenience to the end-user because it is much easier to send a 65KB XML file in an email than a 500MB file containing all of the application's memory. We don't need to have the entire victim shipped out to us when we just want to know what was under the fingernails. The thing that made creating a managed debugging tool possible was the MDbg Engine example written by Microsoft as part of the Debugging Tools for Windows distribution. Since the ICorDebug interface is a bit difficult to understand, they had kindly created some wrappers that provided an event-driven debugging model that was perfect for our needs, but .NET 4 applications under debugging started complaining that "The debugger's protocol is incompatible with the debuggee". The introduction of .NET Framework v4 had changed the managed debugging API significantly, however, without an update for the MDbg Engine code! After a few hours of research, I had finally worked out that most of the version 4 ICorDebug interface still works much the same way in "legacy" v2 mode and there was a relatively easy fix for the problem in that you can still get a reference to legacy ICorDebug by changing the way the interface is created. In .NET v2, the interface was acquired using the CreateDebuggingInterfaceFromVersion method in mscoree.dll. In v4, you must first create IClrMetaHost, enumerate the runtimes, get an ICLRRuntimeInfo interface to the .NET 4 runtime from that, and use the GetInterface method in mscoree.dll to return a "legacy" ICorDebug interface. The rest of the MDbg Engine will continue working the old way. Here is how I had changed the MDbg Engine code to support .NET v4: private void InitFromVersion(string debuggerVersion){if( debuggerVersion.StartsWith("v1") ){throw new ArgumentException( "Can't debug a version 1 CLR process (\"" + debuggerVersion + "\"). Run application in a version 2 CLR, or use a version 1 debugger instead." );} ICorDebug rawDebuggingAPI=null;if (debuggerVersion.StartsWith("v4")){Guid CLSID_MetaHost = new Guid("9280188D-0E8E-4867-B30C-7FA83884E8DE"); Guid IID_MetaHost = new Guid("D332DB9E-B9B3-4125-8207-A14884F53216"); ICLRMetaHost metahost = (ICLRMetaHost)NativeMethods.ClrCreateInterface(CLSID_MetaHost, IID_MetaHost); IEnumUnknown runtimes = metahost.EnumerateInstalledRuntimes(); ICLRRuntimeInfo runtime = GetRuntime(runtimes, debuggerVersion); //Defined in metahost.hGuid CLSID_CLRDebuggingLegacy = new Guid(0xDF8395B5, 0xA4BA, 0x450b, 0xA7, 0x7C, 0xA9, 0xA4, 0x77, 0x62, 0xC5, 0x20);Guid IID_ICorDebug = new Guid("3D6F5F61-7538-11D3-8D5B-00104B35E7EF"); Object res;runtime.GetInterface(ref CLSID_CLRDebuggingLegacy, ref IID_ICorDebug, out res); rawDebuggingAPI = (ICorDebug)res; }elserawDebuggingAPI = NativeMethods.CreateDebuggingInterfaceFromVersion((int)CorDebuggerVersion.Whidbey,debuggerVersion);if (rawDebuggingAPI != null)InitFromICorDebug(rawDebuggingAPI);elsethrow new ArgumentException("Support for debugging version " + debuggerVersion + " is not yet implemented");} The changes above will ensure that the debugger can support .NET Framework v2 and v4 applications with the same codebase, but we do compile two different applications: one targeting v2 and the other v4. As a footnote I need to add that some missing native methods and wrappers, along with the EnumerateRuntimes method code, came from the Mindbg project on Codeplex. Another change is that when using the MDbgEngine.CreateProcess to launch a process in the debugger, do not supply a null as the final argument. This does not work any more because GetCORVersion always returns "v2.0.50727" as the function has been deprecated in .NET v4. What's worse is that on a system with only .NET 4, the user will be prompted to download and install .NET v2! Not nice! This works much better: proc = m_Debugger.CreateProcess(ProcessName, ProcessArgs, DebugModeFlag.Default,String.Format("v{0}.{1}.{2}",System.Environment.Version.Major,System.Environment.Version.Minor,System.Environment.Version.Build)); Microsoft "unofficially" plan on updating the MDbg samples soon, but if you have an MDbg-based application, you can get it working right now by changing one method a bit and adding a few new interfaces (ICLRMetaHost, IEnumUnknown, and ICLRRuntimeInfo). The new, non-legacy implementation of MDbg Engine will add new, interesting features like dump-file support and by association I assume garbage-collection/managed object stats, so it will be well worth looking into if you want to extend the functionality of a managed debugger going forward.

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Passing multiple simple POST Values to ASP.NET Web API

- by Rick Strahl

A few weeks backs I posted a blog post about what does and doesn't work with ASP.NET Web API when it comes to POSTing data to a Web API controller. One of the features that doesn't work out of the box - somewhat unexpectedly - is the ability to map POST form variables to simple parameters of a Web API method. For example imagine you have this form and you want to post this data to a Web API end point like this via AJAX: <form> Name: <input type="name" name="name" value="Rick" /> Value: <input type="value" name="value" value="12" /> Entered: <input type="entered" name="entered" value="12/01/2011" /> <input type="button" id="btnSend" value="Send" /> </form> <script type="text/javascript"> $("#btnSend").click( function() { $.post("samples/PostMultipleSimpleValues?action=kazam", $("form").serialize(), function (result) { alert(result); }); }); </script> or you might do this more explicitly by creating a simple client map and specifying the POST values directly by hand:$.post("samples/PostMultipleSimpleValues?action=kazam", { name: "Rick", value: 1, entered: "12/01/2012" }, $("form").serialize(), function (result) { alert(result); }); On the wire this generates a simple POST request with Url Encoded values in the content:POST /AspNetWebApi/samples/PostMultipleSimpleValues?action=kazam HTTP/1.1 Host: localhost User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64; rv:15.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/15.0.1 Accept: application/json Connection: keep-alive Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8 X-Requested-With: XMLHttpRequest Referer: http://localhost/AspNetWebApi/FormPostTest.html Content-Length: 41 Pragma: no-cache Cache-Control: no-cachename=Rick&value=12&entered=12%2F10%2F2011 Seems simple enough, right? We are basically posting 3 form variables and 1 query string value to the server. Unfortunately Web API can't handle request out of the box. If I create a method like this:[HttpPost] public string PostMultipleSimpleValues(string name, int value, DateTime entered, string action = null) { return string.Format("Name: {0}, Value: {1}, Date: {2}, Action: {3}", name, value, entered, action); }You'll find that you get an HTTP 404 error and { "Message": "No HTTP resource was found that matches the request URI…"} Yes, it's possible to pass multiple POST parameters of course, but Web API expects you to use Model Binding for this - mapping the post parameters to a strongly typed .NET object, not to single parameters. Alternately you can also accept a FormDataCollection parameter on your API method to get a name value collection of all POSTed values. If you're using JSON only, using the dynamic JObject/JValue objects might also work. ModelBinding is fine in many use cases, but can quickly become overkill if you only need to pass a couple of simple parameters to many methods. Especially in applications with many, many AJAX callbacks the 'parameter mapping type' per method signature can lead to serious class pollution in a project very quickly. Simple POST variables are also commonly used in AJAX applications to pass data to the server, even in many complex public APIs. So this is not an uncommon use case, and - maybe more so a behavior that I would have expected Web API to support natively. The question "Why aren't my POST parameters mapping to Web API method parameters" is already a frequent one… So this is something that I think is fairly important, but unfortunately missing in the base Web API installation. Creating a Custom Parameter Binder Luckily Web API is greatly extensible and there's a way to create a custom Parameter Binding to provide this functionality! Although this solution took me a long while to find and then only with the help of some folks Microsoft (thanks Hong Mei!!!), it's not difficult to hook up in your own projects. It requires one small class and a GlobalConfiguration hookup. Web API parameter bindings allow you to intercept processing of individual parameters - they deal with mapping parameters to the signature as well as converting the parameters to the actual values that are returned. Here's the implementation of the SimplePostVariableParameterBinding class:public class SimplePostVariableParameterBinding : HttpParameterBinding { private const string MultipleBodyParameters = "MultipleBodyParameters"; public SimplePostVariableParameterBinding(HttpParameterDescriptor descriptor) : base(descriptor) { } /// <summary> /// Check for simple binding parameters in POST data. Bind POST /// data as well as query string data /// </summary> public override Task ExecuteBindingAsync(ModelMetadataProvider metadataProvider, HttpActionContext actionContext, CancellationToken cancellationToken) { // Body can only be read once, so read and cache it NameValueCollection col = TryReadBody(actionContext.Request); string stringValue = null; if (col != null) stringValue = col[Descriptor.ParameterName]; // try reading query string if we have no POST/PUT match if (stringValue == null) { var query = actionContext.Request.GetQueryNameValuePairs(); if (query != null) { var matches = query.Where(kv => kv.Key.ToLower() == Descriptor.ParameterName.ToLower()); if (matches.Count() > 0) stringValue = matches.First().Value; } } object value = StringToType(stringValue); // Set the binding result here SetValue(actionContext, value); // now, we can return a completed task with no result TaskCompletionSource<AsyncVoid> tcs = new TaskCompletionSource<AsyncVoid>(); tcs.SetResult(default(AsyncVoid)); return tcs.Task; } private object StringToType(string stringValue) { object value = null; if (stringValue == null) value = null; else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(string)) value = stringValue; else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(int)) value = int.Parse(stringValue, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture); else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(Int32)) value = Int32.Parse(stringValue, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture); else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(Int64)) value = Int64.Parse(stringValue, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture); else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(decimal)) value = decimal.Parse(stringValue, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture); else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(double)) value = double.Parse(stringValue, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture); else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(DateTime)) value = DateTime.Parse(stringValue, CultureInfo.CurrentCulture); else if (Descriptor.ParameterType == typeof(bool)) { value = false; if (stringValue == "true" || stringValue == "on" || stringValue == "1") value = true; } else value = stringValue; return value; } /// <summary> /// Read and cache the request body /// </summary> /// <param name="request"></param> /// <returns></returns> private NameValueCollection TryReadBody(HttpRequestMessage request) { object result = null; // try to read out of cache first if (!request.Properties.TryGetValue(MultipleBodyParameters, out result)) { // parsing the string like firstname=Hongmei&lastname=Ge result = request.Content.ReadAsFormDataAsync().Result; request.Properties.Add(MultipleBodyParameters, result); } return result as NameValueCollection; } private struct AsyncVoid { } } The ExecuteBindingAsync method is fired for each parameter that is mapped and sent for conversion. This custom binding is fired only if the incoming parameter is a simple type (that gets defined later when I hook up the binding), so this binding never fires on complex types or if the first type is not a simple type. For the first parameter of a request the Binding first reads the request body into a NameValueCollection and caches that in the request.Properties collection. The request body can only be read once, so the first parameter request reads it and then caches it. Subsequent parameters then use the cached POST value collection. Once the form collection is available the value of the parameter is read, and the value is translated into the target type requested by the Descriptor. SetValue writes out the value to be mapped. Once you have the ParameterBinding in place, the binding has to be assigned. This is done along with all other Web API configuration tasks at application startup in global.asax's Application_Start:GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.ParameterBindingRules .Insert(0, (HttpParameterDescriptor descriptor) => { var supportedMethods = descriptor.ActionDescriptor.SupportedHttpMethods; // Only apply this binder on POST and PUT operations if (supportedMethods.Contains(HttpMethod.Post) || supportedMethods.Contains(HttpMethod.Put)) { var supportedTypes = new Type[] { typeof(string), typeof(int), typeof(decimal), typeof(double), typeof(bool), typeof(DateTime) }; if (supportedTypes.Where(typ => typ == descriptor.ParameterType).Count() > 0) return new SimplePostVariableParameterBinding(descriptor); } // let the default bindings do their work return null; }); The ParameterBindingRules.Insert method takes a delegate that checks which type of requests it should handle. The logic here checks whether the request is POST or PUT and whether the parameter type is a simple type that is supported. Web API calls this delegate once for each method signature it tries to map and the delegate returns null to indicate it's not handling this parameter, or it returns a new parameter binding instance - in this case the SimplePostVariableParameterBinding. Once the parameter binding and this hook up code is in place, you can now pass simple POST values to methods with simple parameters. The examples I showed above should now work in addition to the standard bindings. Summary Clearly this is not easy to discover. I spent quite a bit of time digging through the Web API source trying to figure this out on my own without much luck. It took Hong Mei at Micrsoft to provide a base example as I asked around so I can't take credit for this solution :-). But once you know where to look, Web API is brilliantly extensible to make it relatively easy to customize the parameter behavior. I'm very stoked that this got resolved - in the last two months I've had two customers with projects that decided not to use Web API in AJAX heavy SPA applications because this POST variable mapping wasn't available. This might actually change their mind to still switch back and take advantage of the many great features in Web API. I too frequently use plain POST variables for communicating with server AJAX handlers and while I could have worked around this (with untyped JObject or the Form collection mostly), having proper POST to parameter mapping makes things much easier. I said this in my last post on POST data and say it again here: I think POST to method parameter mapping should have been shipped in the box with Web API, because without knowing about this limitation the expectation is that simple POST variables map to parameters just like query string values do. I hope Microsoft considers including this type of functionality natively in the next version of Web API natively or at least as a built-in HttpParameterBinding that can be just added. This is especially true, since this binding doesn't affect existing bindings. Resources SimplePostVariableParameterBinding Source on GitHub Global.asax hookup source Mapping URL Encoded Post Values in ASP.NET Web API© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Web Api AJAX Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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L2TP connection fails!

- by a.toraby

I've installed l2tp-ipsec-vpn but when I try to connect to the vpn server I get error 500. Here are the logs: Jun 17 12:54:37.449 ipsec_setup: Stopping Openswan IPsec... Jun 17 12:54:38.858 Stopping xl2tpd: xl2tpd. Jun 17 12:54:38.859 xl2tpd[1511]: death_handler: Fatal signal 15 received Jun 17 12:54:38.872 ipsec_setup: Starting Openswan IPsec U2.6.37/K3.2.0-23-generic... Jun 17 12:54:39.027 ipsec__plutorun: Starting Pluto subsystem... Jun 17 12:54:39.033 ipsec__plutorun: adjusting ipsec.d to /etc/ipsec.d Jun 17 12:54:39.037 recvref[30]: Protocol not available Jun 17 12:54:39.038 xl2tpd[2442]: This binary does not support kernel L2TP. Jun 17 12:54:39.038 xl2tpd[2444]: xl2tpd version xl2tpd-1.3.1 started on atp-ThinkPad-SL410 PID:2444 Jun 17 12:54:39.038 xl2tpd[2444]: Written by Mark Spencer, Copyright (C) 1998, Adtran, Inc. Jun 17 12:54:39.038 xl2tpd[2444]: Forked by Scott Balmos and David Stipp, (C) 2001 Jun 17 12:54:39.038 xl2tpd[2444]: Inherited by Jeff McAdams, (C) 2002 Jun 17 12:54:39.039 xl2tpd[2444]: Forked again by Xelerance (www.xelerance.com) (C) 2006 Jun 17 12:54:39.039 xl2tpd[2444]: Listening on IP address 0.0.0.0, port 1701 Jun 17 12:54:39.040 Starting xl2tpd: xl2tpd. Jun 17 12:54:39.062 ipsec__plutorun: 002 added connection description "L2TP" Jun 17 12:55:30.753 104 "L2TP" #1: STATE_MAIN_I1: initiate Jun 17 12:55:30.754 010 "L2TP" #1: STATE_MAIN_I1: retransmission; will wait 20s for response Jun 17 12:55:30.754 010 "L2TP" #1: STATE_MAIN_I1: retransmission; will wait 40s for response Jun 17 12:55:30.754 003 "L2TP" #1: ignoring Vendor ID payload [MS NT5 ISAKMPOAKLEY 00000008] Jun 17 12:55:30.754 003 "L2TP" #1: received Vendor ID payload [RFC 3947] method set to=109 Jun 17 12:55:30.754 003 "L2TP" #1: received Vendor ID payload [draft-ietf-ipsec-nat-t-ike-02_n] meth=106, but already using method 109 Jun 17 12:55:30.755 003 "L2TP" #1: ignoring Vendor ID payload [FRAGMENTATION] Jun 17 12:55:30.755 003 "L2TP" #1: ignoring Vendor ID payload [MS-Negotiation Discovery Capable] Jun 17 12:55:30.755 003 "L2TP" #1: ignoring Vendor ID payload [IKE CGA version 1] Jun 17 12:55:30.755 106 "L2TP" #1: STATE_MAIN_I2: sent MI2, expecting MR2 Jun 17 12:55:30.755 010 "L2TP" #1: STATE_MAIN_I2: retransmission; will wait 20s for response Jun 17 12:55:30.755 003 "L2TP" #1: NAT-Traversal: Result using RFC 3947 (NAT-Traversal): i am NATed Jun 17 12:55:30.755 108 "L2TP" #1: STATE_MAIN_I3: sent MI3, expecting MR3 Jun 17 12:55:30.756 004 "L2TP" #1: STATE_MAIN_I4: ISAKMP SA established {auth=OAKLEY_PRESHARED_KEY cipher=oakley_3des_cbc_192 prf=oakley_sha group=modp1024} Jun 17 12:55:30.756 117 "L2TP" #2: STATE_QUICK_I1: initiate Jun 17 12:55:30.756 010 "L2TP" #2: STATE_QUICK_I1: retransmission; will wait 20s for response Jun 17 12:55:30.756 003 "L2TP" #2: ignoring informational payload, type IPSEC_RESPONDER_LIFETIME msgid=6b03ff69 Jun 17 12:55:30.756 003 "L2TP" #2: NAT-Traversal: received 2 NAT-OA. ignored because peer is not NATed Jun 17 12:55:30.756 003 "L2TP" #2: our client subnet returned doesn't match my proposal - us:192.168.1.3/32 vs them:109.162.174.235/32 Jun 17 12:55:30.757 003 "L2TP" #2: Allowing questionable proposal anyway [ALLOW_MICROSOFT_BAD_PROPOSAL] Jun 17 12:55:30.757 004 "L2TP" #2: STATE_QUICK_I2: sent QI2, IPsec SA established transport mode {ESP=>0x23af21f8 <0xdb4a87b6 xfrm=AES_128-HMAC_SHA1 NATOA=none NATD=none DPD=none} Jun 17 12:55:31.759 xl2tpd[2444]: Connecting to host x.x.x.x, port 1701 Jun 17 12:55:32.021 xl2tpd[2444]: Connection established to x.x.x.x, 1701. Local: 4720, Remote: 200 (ref=0/0). Jun 17 12:55:32.023 xl2tpd[2444]: Calling on tunnel 4720 Jun 17 12:55:32.454 xl2tpd[2444]: Call established with x.x.x.x, Local: 9667, Remote: 3, Serial: 1 (ref=0/0) Jun 17 12:55:32.456 xl2tpd[2444]: start_pppd: I'm running: Jun 17 12:55:32.456 xl2tpd[2444]: "/usr/sbin/pppd" Jun 17 12:55:32.457 xl2tpd[2444]: "passive" Jun 17 12:55:32.458 xl2tpd[2444]: "nodetach" Jun 17 12:55:32.458 xl2tpd[2444]: ":" Jun 17 12:55:32.459 xl2tpd[2444]: "file" Jun 17 12:55:32.459 xl2tpd[2444]: "/etc/ppp/L2TP.options.xl2tpd" Jun 17 12:55:32.460 xl2tpd[2444]: "ipparam" Jun 17 12:55:32.461 xl2tpd[2444]: "x.x.x.x" Jun 17 12:55:32.462 xl2tpd[2444]: "/dev/pts/1" Jun 17 12:55:32.583 pppd[2711]: Plugin passprompt.so loaded. Jun 17 12:55:32.583 pppd[2711]: pppd 2.4.5 started by root, uid 0 Jun 17 12:55:32.619 pppd[2711]: Using interface ppp0 Jun 17 12:55:32.620 pppd[2711]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/pts/1 Jun 17 12:55:33.693 pppd[2711]: /usr/bin/L2tpIPsecVpn exited with code 0 Jun 17 12:55:34.454 [ERROR 404] Authentication failed: closing connection to 'L2TP' Jun 17 12:55:34.456 pppd[2711]: MS-CHAP authentication failed: E=691 Authentication failure Jun 17 12:55:34.457 pppd[2711]: CHAP authentication failed Jun 17 12:55:34.461 Stopping xl2tpd: xl2tpd. Jun 17 12:55:34.462 xl2tpd[2444]: death_handler: Fatal signal 15 received Jun 17 12:55:34.463 pppd[2711]: Modem hangup Jun 17 12:55:34.463 pppd[2711]: Connection terminated. Jun 17 12:55:34.474 ipsec_setup: Stopping Openswan IPsec... Jun 17 12:55:34.482 pppd[2711]: Exit. Jun 17 12:55:35.587 ipsec_setup: ERROR: Module xfrm4_mode_transport is in use Jun 17 12:55:35.665 ipsec_setup: ERROR: Module esp4 is in use I had this problem by ubuntu 11.10 though I can easily connect to the server from windows. I use ubuntu 12.0 64bit

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Building services with .Net Part 1

- by Allan Rwakatungu

On the 26th of May 2010 , I made a presentation to the .NET user group meeting (thanks to Malisa Ncube for organizing this event every month … ). If you missed my presentation , we talked about why we should all be building services … better still using the .NET framework. This blog post is an introduction to services , why you would want to build services and how you can build services using the .NET framework. What is a service? OASIS defines service as "a mechanism to enable access to one or more capabilities, where the access is provided using a prescribed interface and is exercised consistent with constraints and policies as specified by the service description." [1]. If the above definition sounds to academic , you can also define a service as loosely coupled units of functionality that have no calls to each other embedded in the. Instead of services embedding calls to each other in their service code they use defined protocols that describe how services pass and parse messages. This is a good way to think about services if you’re from an objected oriented background. While in object oriented programming functions make calls to each other, in service oriented programming, functions pass messages between each other. Why would you want to use services? 1. If your enterprise architecture looks like this Services are the building blocks for SOA . With SOA you can move away from the sphaggetti infrastructure that is common in most enterprises. The complexity or lack of visibility of the integration points in your enterprises makes it difficult and costly to implement new initiatives and changes into the business - and even impossible in some cases - as it is not possible to identify the impact a change in one system might have to other systems. With services you can move to an architecture like this Your building blocks from Spaghetti infrastructure to something that is more well-defined and manageable to achieve cost efficiency and not least business agility - enabling you to react to changes in the market with speed and achieve operational efficiency and control are services. 2. If you want to become the Gates or Zuckerburger. Have you heard about Web 2.0 ? Mashups? Software as a service (SAAS) ? Cloud computing ? They all offer you the opportunity to have scalable but low cost business models and they built using services. Some of my favorite companies that leverage services for their business models include https://www.salesforce.com/ (cloud CRM) http://www. twitter.com (more people use twitter clients built by 3rd parties than their official clients) http://www.kayak.com/ (compares data from other travel sites to give information to users in one location) Services with the .NET framework If you are a .NET developer and you want to develop services, Windows Communication Framework (WCF) is the tool for you. WCF is Microsoft’s unified programming model (service model) for building service oriented applications. ( Before .NET 3.0 you had several models for programming services in .NET including .NET remoting, Web services (ASMX), COM +, Microsoft Messaging queuing (MSMQ) etc, after .NET 3.0 the programming model was unified into one i.e. WCF ). Windows Communication Framework (WCF) provides you 1. An Software Development Kit (SDK) for creating SOA applications 2. A runtime for running services on the Windows platform Why should you use Windows Communication Foundation if you’re programming services? 1. It supports interoperable and open standards e.g. WS* protocols for programming SOAP services 2. It has a unified programming model. Whether you use TCP or Http or Pipes or transmitting using Messaging Queues, programmers need to learn just one way to program. Previously you had .NET remoting, MSMQ, Web services, COM+ and they were all done differently 3. Productive programming model You don’t have to worry about all the plumbing involved to write services. You have a rich declarative programming model to add stuff like logging, transactions, and reliable messages in-built in the Windows Communication Framework. Understanding services in WCF The basic principles of WCF are as easy as ABC A – Address This is where the service is located B- Binding This describes how you communicate with the service e.g. Use TCP, HTTP or both. How to exchange security information with the service etc. C – Contract This defines what the service can do. E.g. Pay water bill, Make a phone call A - Addresses In WCF, an address is a combination of transport, server name, port and path Example addresses may include http://localhost:8001 net.tcp://localhost:8002/MyService net.pipe://localhost/MyPipe net.msmq://localhost/private/MyService net.msmq://localhost/MyService B- Binding There are numerous ways to communicate with services , different ways that a message can be formatted/sent/secured, that allows you to tailor your service for the compatibility/performance you require for your solution. Transport You can use HTTP TCP MSMQ , Named pipes, Your own custom transport etc Message You can send a plain text binary, Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism (MTOM) message Communication security No security Transport security Message security Authenticating and authorizing callers etc Behaviour You service can support Transactions Be reliable Use queues Support ajax etc C - Contract You define what your service can do using Service contracts :- Define operations that your service can do, communications and behaviours Data contracts :- Define the messages that are passed from and into your service and how they are formatted Fault contracts :- Defines errors types in your service As an example, suppose your service service shows money. You define your service contract using a interface [ServiceContract] public interface IShowMeTheMoney { [OperationContract] Money Show(); } You define the data contract by annotating a class it with the Data Contract attribute and fields you want to pass in the message as Data Members. (Note:- In the latest versions of WCF you dont have to use attributes if you passing all the objects properties in the message) [DataContract] public Money { [DataMember] public string Currency { get; set; } [DataMember] public Decimal Amount { get; set; } public string Comment { get; set; } } Features of Windows Communication Foundation Windows Communication Foundation is not only simple but feature rich , offering you several options to tweak your service to fit your business requirements. Some of the features of WCF include 1. Workflow services You can combine WCF with Windows WorkFlow Foundation (WWF) to write workflow type services 2. Control how your data (messages) are transferred and serialized e.g. you can serialize your business objects as XML or binary 3. control over session management , instance creation and concurrency management without writing code if you like 4. Queues and reliable sessions. You can store messages from the sending client and later forward them to the receiving application. You can also guarantee that messages will arrive at their destincation. 5.Transactions: You can have different services participate in a transaction operations that can be rolled back if needed 6. Security. WCF has rich features for authorization and authentication as well as keep audit trails 7. Web programming model. WCF allows developers to expose services as non SOAP endpoints 8. Inbuilt features that you can use to write JSON and services that support AJAX applications And lots more In my next blog I will show you how you can use WCF features to write a real world business service. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 ]] /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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Nerdstock 2012: A photo review of Microsoft TechEd North America 2012

- by The Un-T Guy

Not only could I not fathom that I would ever be attending a tech event of the magnitude of TechEd, neither could any of my co-workers. As the least technical person in the history of Information Technology ever, I felt as though I were walking into the belly of the beast, fearing I’d not be allowed out until I could write SSIS packages, program in Visual Basic, or at least arm wrestle a DBA. Most of my fears were unrealized. But I made it. I was here. I even got to wear the Mark of the Geek neck package with schedule, eyeglass cleaners, name badge (company name obfuscated so they don’t fire me), and a pen. The name badge was seemingly the key element, as every vendor in the place wanted to scan it to capture name, email address, and numbers to show their bosses back home. It also let me eat the food and drink the coffee so that’s a fair trade. A recurring theme throughout the presentations and vendor demos was “the Cloud” and BYOD (bring your own device). The below was a common site throughout the week, as attendees from all over the world brought their own devices and were able to (seemingly) seamlessly connect to the Worldwide Innerwebs. Apparently proof that Microsoft and the event organizers were practicing what they were preaching. “Cavernous” is one way to describe the downstairs facility itself. “Freaking cavernous” might be more accurate. Work sessions were held in classrooms on the second and third floors but the real action was happening downstairs. Microsoft bookstore, blogger hub (shoutout to Geekswithblogs.net), The Wall (sans Pink Floyd, sadly), couches, recharging stations… …a game zone with pool and air hockey tables, pinball machines, foosball… …vintage video games… …and a even giant chess board. Looked like this guy was opening with the Kaspersky parry. The blend of technology and fantasy even went so far as to bring childhood favorites to life. Assuming, of course, your childhood was pre-video games (like mine) and you were stuck with electric football and Rock ‘em Sock ‘em robots: And, lest the “combatants” become unruly or – God forbid – afternoon snacks were late, Orange County’s finest was on the scene to keep the peace. On a high-tech mode of transport, of course. She wasn’t the only one to think this was a swell way to transition from one concourse to the next. Given the level of support provided by the entire Orange County Convention Center staff, I knew they had to have some secret. Here’s one entrance to the vendor zone/”Technical Learning Center.” Couldn’t help but think of them as the remora attached to the Whale Shark that is Microsoft… …or perhaps planets orbiting the sun. Microsoft is just that huge and it seemed like every vendor in the industry looks forward to partnering with the tech behemoth. Aside from the free stuff from the vendors, probably the most popular place in the house was the dining area. Amazing spreads every day, multiple times a day. While no attendance numbers were available at press time, literally thousands of attendees were fed, and fed well, every day. And lest you think my post from earlier in the week exaggerated about the backpacks… …or that I’m exaggerating about the lunch crowds. This represents only about between 25-30% of the lunch crowd – it was all my camera could capture at once. No one went away hungry. The only thing missing was a a vat of Red Bull but apparently organizers went old school, with probably 100 urns of the original energy drink – coffee – all around the venue. Of course, following lunch and afternoon sessions, some preferred the even older school method of re-energizing. There were rumors that Microsoft was serving graham crackers and milk in this area. But they were only rumors. Cannot overstate the wonderful service provided by the Orange County Convention Center staff. Coffee, soft drinks, juice, and water were available always. Buffet meals were delicious with a wide range of healthy options available, in addition to hundreds (at least) special meal requests supported every day. Ever tried to keep up with an estimated 9,000 hungry and thirsty IT-ers? These folks did. Kudos to all of the staff and many thanks! And while I occasionally poke fun at the Whale Shark, if nothing else this experience convinced me of one thing: Microsoft knows how to put on a professional event. Hundreds of informative, professionally delivered sessions, covering a wide range of topics set at varying levels of expertise (some that even I was able to follow), social activities, vendor partnerships…they brought everything you could ask for to inform, educate, and inspire an entire IT industry. So as I depart the belly of the beast, I can both take pride in the fact that I survived the week and marvel at the brilliance surrounding me. The IT industry – or at least the segment associated with Microsoft – is in good, professional hands. And what won’t fit in their hands can be toted in the Microsoft provided backpacks. Win-win. Until New Orleans…

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ODI 12c's Mapping Designer - Combining Flow Based and Expression Based Mapping

- by Madhu Nair

post by David Allan ODI is renowned for its declarative designer and minimal expression based paradigm. The new ODI 12c release has extended this even further to provide an extended declarative mapping designer. The ODI 12c mapper is a fusion of ODI's new declarative designer with the familiar flow based designer while retaining ODI’s key differentiators of: Minimal expression based definition, The ability to incrementally design an interface and to extract/load data from any combination of sources, and most importantly Backed by ODI’s extensible knowledge module framework. The declarative nature of the product has been extended to include an extensible library of common components that can be used to easily build simple to complex data integration solutions. Big usability improvements through consistent interactions of components and concepts all constructed around the familiar knowledge module framework provide the utmost flexibility. Here is a little taster: So what is a mapping? A mapping comprises of a logical design and at least one physical design, it may have many. A mapping can have many targets, of any technology and can be arbitrarily complex. You can build reusable mappings and use them in other mappings or other reusable mappings. In the example below all of the information from an Oracle bonus table and a bonus file are joined with an Oracle employees table before being written to a target. Some things that are cool include the one-click expression cross referencing so you can easily see what's used where within the design. The logical design in a mapping describes what you want to accomplish (see the animated GIF here illustrating how the above mapping was designed) . The physical design lets you configure how it is to be accomplished. So you could have one logical design that is realized as an initial load in one physical design and as an incremental load in another. In the physical design below we can customize how the mapping is accomplished by picking Knowledge Modules, in ODI 12c you can pick multiple nodes (on logical or physical) and see common properties. This is useful as we can quickly compare property values across objects - below we can see knowledge modules settings on the access points between execution units side by side, in the example one table is retrieved via database links and the other is an external table. In the logical design I had selected an append mode for the integration type, so by default the IKM on the target will choose the most suitable/default IKM - which in this case is an in-built Oracle Insert IKM (see image below). This supports insert and select hints for the Oracle database (the ANSI SQL Insert IKM does not support these), so by default you will get direct path inserts with Oracle on this statement. In ODI 12c, the mapper is just that, a mapper. Design your mapping, write to multiple targets, the targets can be in the same data server, in different data servers or in totally different technologies - it does not matter. ODI 12c will derive and generate a plan that you can use or customize with knowledge modules. Some of the use cases which are greatly simplified include multiple heterogeneous targets, multi target inserts for Oracle and writing of XML. Let's switch it up now and look at a slightly different example to illustrate expression reuse. In ODI you can define reusable expressions using user functions. These can be reused across mappings and the implementations specialized per technology. So you can have common expressions across Oracle, SQL Server, Hive etc. shielding the design from the physical aspects of the generated language. Another way to reuse is within a mapping itself. In ODI 12c expressions can be defined and reused within a mapping. Rather than replicating the expression text in larger expressions you can decompose into smaller snippets, below you can see UNIT_TAX AMOUNT has been defined and is used in two downstream target columns - its used in the TOTAL_TAX_AMOUNT plus its used in the UNIT_TAX_AMOUNT (a recording of the calculation). You can see the columns that the expressions depend on (upstream) and the columns the expression is used in (downstream) highlighted within the mapper. Also multi selecting attributes is a convenient way to see what's being used where, below I have selected the TOTAL_TAX_AMOUNT in the target datastore and the UNIT_TAX_AMOUNT in UNIT_CALC. You can now see many expressions at once now and understand much more at the once time without needlessly clicking around and memorizing information. Our mantra during development was to keep it simple and make the tool more powerful and do even more for the user. The development team was a fusion of many teams from Oracle Warehouse Builder, Sunopsis and BEA Aqualogic, debating and perfecting the mapper in ODI 12c. This was quite a project from supporting the capabilities of ODI in 11g to building the flow based mapping tool to support the future. I hope this was a useful insight, there is so much more to come on this topic, this is just a preview of much more that you will see of the mapper in ODI 12c.

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Clean Up the New Ubuntu Grub2 Boot Menu

- by Trevor Bekolay

Ubuntu adopted the new version of the Grub boot manager in version 9.10, getting rid of the old problematic menu.lst. Today we look at how to change the boot menu options in Grub2. Grub2 is a step forward in a lot of ways, and most of the annoying menu.lst issues from the past are gone. Still, if you’re not vigilant with removing old versions of the kernel, the boot list can still end up being longer than it needs to be. Note: You may have to hold the SHIFT button on your keyboard while booting up to get this menu to show. If only one operating system is installed on your computer, it may load it automatically without displaying this menu. Remove Old Kernel Entries The most common clean up task for the boot menu is to remove old kernel versions lying around on your machine. In our case we want to remove the 2.6.32-21-generic boot menu entries. In the past, this meant opening up /boot/grub/menu.lst…but with Grub2, if we remove the kernel package from our computer, Grub automatically removes those options. To remove old kernel versions, open up Synaptic Package Manager, found in the System > Administration menu. When it opens up, type the kernel version that you want to remove in the Quick search text field. The first few numbers should suffice. For each of the entries associated with the old kernel (e.g. linux-headers-2.6.32-21 and linux-image-2.6.32-21-generic), right-click and choose Mark for Complete Removal. Click the Apply button in the toolbar and then Apply in the summary window that pops up. Close Synaptic Package Manager. The next time you boot up your computer, the Grub menu will not contain the entries associated with the removed kernel version. Remove Any Option by Editing /etc/grub.d If you need more fine-grained control, or want to remove entries that are not kernel versions, you must change the files located in /etc/grub.d. /etc/grub.d contains files that hold the menu entries that used to be contained in /boot/grub/menu.lst. If you want to add new boot menu entries, you would create a new file in this folder, making sure to mark it as executable. If you want to remove boot menu entries, as we do, you would edit files in this folder. If we wanted to remove all of the memtest86+ entries, we could just make the 20_memtest86+ file non-executable, with the terminal command sudo chmod –x 20_memtest86+ Followed by the terminal command sudo update-grub Note that memtest86+ was not found by update-grub because it will only consider executable files. However, instead, we’re going to remove the Serial console 115200 entry for memtest86+… Open a terminal window Applications > Accessories > Terminal. In the terminal window, type in the command: sudo gedit /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ The menu entries are found at the bottom of this file. Comment out the menu entry for serial console 115200 by adding a “#” to the start of each line. Save and close this file. In the terminal window you opened, enter in the command sudo update-grub Note: If you don’t run update-grub, the boot menu options will not change! Now, the next time you boot up, that strange entry will be gone, and you’re left with a simple and clean boot menu. Conclusion While changing Grub2’s boot menu may seem overly complicated to legacy Grub masters, for normal users, Grub2 means that you won’t have to change the boot menu that often. Fortunately, if you do have to do it, the process is still pretty easy. For more detailed information about how to change entries in Grub2, this Ubuntu forum thread is a great resource. If you’re using an older version of Ubuntu, check out our article on how to clean up Ubuntu grub boot menu after upgrades. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Clean Up Ubuntu Grub Boot Menu After UpgradesReinstall Ubuntu Grub Bootloader After Windows Wipes it OutChange the GRUB Menu Timeout on UbuntuHow To Switch to Console Mode for Ubuntu VMware GuestSet Windows as Default OS when Dual Booting Ubuntu TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Daily Motivator (Firefox) FetchMp3 Can Download Videos & Convert Them to Mp3 Use Flixtime To Create Video Slideshows Creating a Password Reset Disk in Windows Bypass Waiting Time On Customer Service Calls With Lucyphone MELTUP – "The Beginning Of US Currency Crisis And Hyperinflation"

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Restful Services, oData, and Rest Sharp

- by jkrebsbach

After a great presentation by Jason Sheehan at MDC about RestSharp, I decided to implement it. RestSharp is a .Net framework for consuming restful data sources via either Json or XML. My first step was to put together a Restful data source for RestSharp to consume. Staying entirely withing .Net, I decided to use Microsoft's oData implementation, built on System.Data.Services.DataServices. Natively, these support Json, or atom+pub xml. (XML with a few bells and whistles added on) There are three main steps for creating an oData data source: 1) override CreateDSPMetaData This is where the metadata data is returned. The meta data defines the structure of the data to return. The structure contains the relationships between data objects, along with what properties the objects expose. The meta data can and should be somehow cached so that the structure is not rebuild with every data request. 2) override CreateDataSource The context contains the data the data source will publish. This method is the conduit which will populate the metadata objects to be returned to the requestor. 3) implement static InitializeService At this point we can set up security, along with setting up properties of the web service (versioning, etc) Here is a web service which publishes stock prices for various Products (stocks) in various Categories. namespace RestService { public class RestServiceImpl : DSPDataService<DSPContext> { private static DSPContext _context; private static DSPMetadata _metadata; /// <summary> /// Populate traversable data source /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> protected override DSPContext CreateDataSource() { if (_context == null) { _context = new DSPContext(); Category utilities = new Category(0); utilities.Name = "Electric"; Category financials = new Category(1); financials.Name = "Financial"; IList products = _context.GetResourceSetEntities("Products"); Product electric = new Product(0, utilities); electric.Name = "ABC Electric"; electric.Description = "Electric Utility"; electric.Price = 3.5; products.Add(electric); Product water = new Product(1, utilities); water.Name = "XYZ Water"; water.Description = "Water Utility"; water.Price = 2.4; products.Add(water); Product banks = new Product(2, financials); banks.Name = "FatCat Bank"; banks.Description = "A bank that's almost too big"; banks.Price = 19.9; // This will never get to the client products.Add(banks); IList categories = _context.GetResourceSetEntities("Categories"); categories.Add(utilities); categories.Add(financials); utilities.Products.Add(electric); utilities.Products.Add(electric); financials.Products.Add(banks); } return _context; } /// <summary> /// Setup rules describing published data structure - relationships between data, /// key field, other searchable fields, etc. /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> protected override DSPMetadata CreateDSPMetadata() { if (_metadata == null) { _metadata = new DSPMetadata("DemoService", "DataServiceProviderDemo"); // Define entity type product ResourceType product = _metadata.AddEntityType(typeof(Product), "Product"); _metadata.AddKeyProperty(product, "ProductID"); // Only add properties we wish to share with end users _metadata.AddPrimitiveProperty(product, "Name"); _metadata.AddPrimitiveProperty(product, "Description"); EntityPropertyMappingAttribute att = new EntityPropertyMappingAttribute("Name", SyndicationItemProperty.Title, SyndicationTextContentKind.Plaintext, true); product.AddEntityPropertyMappingAttribute(att); att = new EntityPropertyMappingAttribute("Description", SyndicationItemProperty.Summary, SyndicationTextContentKind.Plaintext, true); product.AddEntityPropertyMappingAttribute(att); // Define products as a set of product entities ResourceSet products = _metadata.AddResourceSet("Products", product); // Define entity type category ResourceType category = _metadata.AddEntityType(typeof(Category), "Category"); _metadata.AddKeyProperty(category, "CategoryID"); _metadata.AddPrimitiveProperty(category, "Name"); _metadata.AddPrimitiveProperty(category, "Description"); // Define categories as a set of category entities ResourceSet categories = _metadata.AddResourceSet("Categories", category); att = new EntityPropertyMappingAttribute("Name", SyndicationItemProperty.Title, SyndicationTextContentKind.Plaintext, true); category.AddEntityPropertyMappingAttribute(att); att = new EntityPropertyMappingAttribute("Description", SyndicationItemProperty.Summary, SyndicationTextContentKind.Plaintext, true); category.AddEntityPropertyMappingAttribute(att); // A product has a category, a category has products _metadata.AddResourceReferenceProperty(product, "Category", categories); _metadata.AddResourceSetReferenceProperty(category, "Products", products); } return _metadata; } /// <summary> /// Based on the requesting user, can set up permissions to Read, Write, etc. /// </summary> /// <param name="config"></param> public static void InitializeService(DataServiceConfiguration config) { config.SetEntitySetAccessRule("*", EntitySetRights.All); config.DataServiceBehavior.MaxProtocolVersion = DataServiceProtocolVersion.V2; config.DataServiceBehavior.AcceptProjectionRequests = true; } } } The objects prefixed with DSP come from the samples on the oData site: http://www.odata.org/developers The products and categories objects are POCO business objects with no special modifiers. Three main options are available for defining the MetaData of data sources in .Net: 1) Generate Entity Data model (Potentially directly from SQL Server database). This requires the least amount of manual interaction, and uses the edmx WYSIWYG editor to generate a data model. This can be directly tied to the SQL Server database and generated from the database if you want a data access layer tightly coupled with your database. 2) Object model decorations. If you already have a POCO data layer, you can decorate your objects with properties to statically inform the compiler how the objects are related. The disadvantage is there are now tags strewn about your business layer that need to be updated as the business rules change. 3) Programmatically construct metadata object. This is the object illustrated above in CreateDSPMetaData. This puts all relationship information into one central programmatic location. Here business rules are constructed when the DSPMetaData response object is returned. Once you have your service up and running, RestSharp is designed for XML / Json, along with the native Microsoft library. There are currently some differences between how Jason made RestSharp expect XML with how atom+pub works, so I found better results currently with the Json implementation - modifying the RestSharp XML parser to make an atom+pub parser is fairly trivial though, so use what implementation works best for you. I put together a sample console app which calls the RestSvcImpl.svc service defined above (and assumes it to be running on port 2000). I used both RestSharp as a client, and also the default Microsoft oData client tools. namespace RestConsole { class Program { private static DataServiceContext _ctx; private enum DemoType { Xml, Json } static void Main(string[] args) { // Microsoft implementation _ctx = new DataServiceContext(new System.Uri("http://localhost:2000/RestServiceImpl.svc")); var msProducts = RunQuery<Product>("Products").ToList(); var msCategory = RunQuery<Category>("/Products(0)/Category").AsEnumerable().Single(); var msFilteredProducts = RunQuery<Product>("/Products?$filter=length(Name) ge 4").ToList(); // RestSharp implementation DemoType demoType = DemoType.Json; var client = new RestClient("http://localhost:2000/RestServiceImpl.svc"); client.ClearHandlers(); // Remove all available handlers // Set up handler depending on what situation dictates if (demoType == DemoType.Json) client.AddHandler("application/json", new RestSharp.Deserializers.JsonDeserializer()); else if (demoType == DemoType.Xml) { client.AddHandler("application/atom+xml", new RestSharp.Deserializers.XmlDeserializer()); } var request = new RestRequest(); if (demoType == DemoType.Json) request.RootElement = "d"; // service root element for json else if (demoType == DemoType.Xml) { request.XmlNamespace = "http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"; } // Return all products request.Resource = "/Products?$orderby=Name"; RestResponse<List<Product>> productsResp = client.Execute<List<Product>>(request); List<Product> products = productsResp.Data; // Find category for product with ProductID = 1 request.Resource = string.Format("/Products(1)/Category"); RestResponse<Category> categoryResp = client.Execute<Category>(request); Category category = categoryResp.Data; // Specialized queries request.Resource = string.Format("/Products?$filter=ProductID eq {0}", 1); RestResponse<Product> productResp = client.Execute<Product>(request); Product product = productResp.Data; request.Resource = string.Format("/Products?$filter=Name eq '{0}'", "XYZ Water"); productResp = client.Execute<Product>(request); product = productResp.Data; } private static IEnumerable<TElement> RunQuery<TElement>(string queryUri) { try { return _ctx.Execute<TElement>(new Uri(queryUri, UriKind.Relative)); } catch (Exception ex) { throw ex; } } } } Feel free to step through the code a few times and to attach a debugger to the service as well to see how and where the context and metadata objects are constructed and returned. Pay special attention to the response object being returned by the oData service - There are several properties of the RestRequest that can be used to help troubleshoot when the structure of the response is not exactly what would be expected.

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 13, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 13, 2010New ProjectsCurve Drawer: A Java project to explore the possibilities of drawing curves and knots.File Manager Redux: .NET version of the original File Manager.Hierachical Gantt Chart In SharePoint 2010: This solution makes it easier for shedule management. We will provide a wsp including a list definition and a custom gantt control. The list defi...Light Box Control for Asp.Net: Lightbox control for asp.net is used to display the thumbnail images. on clicking the thumbnail images the original images is displayed in the ligh...Linquify: Linquify is a Visual Studio 2008/2010 Addin and C# .NET business class / DTO generator for LINQ to SQL and the Entity Framework. It supports rapid ...Microsoft Dynamics CRM Query - T4 Template: A T4 Template that generates code that leverages LINQ to SQL and the Microsoft Dynamics CRM API to give a CRM data access solution. There is also ...Open Sound Control Library: A .NET Library for the Open Sound Control Protocol. This library makes it easy to use devices which communicate via OSC.Questionable Content Screensaver: A screensaver for the questionable content comic. It is written in C#, and uses the windows presentation foundation. See the comic at http://ww...Reflect: Reflect is an open source .NET reflection tool used for viewing metadata of .NET assemblies.runescape 602 client tools and server: runescape 602 client tools and serverSharpCrack: Hash cracker written in managed code.SilverCAT project: This is my Windows Azure study project. So far I did not find any value to share it to the public. If I find it out one day, I will add hereSilverStackAPI: My entry for the Stack Exchange API contest. A silverlight library and demo app.social bookmark control for asp.net: social bookmark control for asp.net, This control is used to bookmark the current asp.net page into popular social networking sites like facebook, ...SSIS Event Log Source: An SSIS 2005 Data Source component for loading Windows 2003/XP event logs (*.evt) into SQL Server 2005 for analysisUnOfficial ActiveWorlds Wrapper.Net: UnOfficial ActiveWorlds Wrapper .Net makes it easier for programmers to make active worlds bots. You'll no longer have to make it by yourself. It'...Using Named Pipe and self-elevation feature of Vista in a console application.: NPipeWithElevatedProc, make it easier for console application users, running programs with administrator privileges. The processing messages are al...Virtual Keyboard control for asp.net: Virtual Keyboard control for asp.net, This control is used to get the secured inputs through virtual keyboards.Visual Studio 2010 PowerShell Code Generator: Brings rich PowerShell functionalities into VS Templating. You can access the file system, the registry, and many other PowerShell features. You ca...WatchersNET.UrlShorty: This Module allows users to shorten a long URL and share it, this is a similiar service to web services like bit.ly, tinyurl.com and others. It als...New ReleasesBD File Hash: BD File Hash 1.0.5: The first public release of BD File Hash.Cassandraemon: Cassandraemon 0.6.0: Cassandraemon is LINQ Provider for Apache Cassandra. This is first release of Cassandraemon. Features You can Query by LINQ Support Regist, Del...Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V36: Release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open source NNTP bridge. This release has ad...Curve Drawer: Alpha 1: Basic functionality is available to draw curves and clear them.CycleMania Starter Kit EAP - ASP.NET 4 Problem - Design - Solution: Cyclemania 09.32: see Source Code tab for recent change historyDEWD: DEWD for Umbraco v1.0 (beta-2): Beta release of the package. Functional feature set and fairly stable. Since the last release: Default values (support for dynamic values such as t...Fiddler TreeView Panel Extension: FiddlerTreeViewPanel 0.71: Added support for double-click to expand/collapse all child nodes. Keep selected node when losing focus from the TreeView. Please refer to http://...HKGolden Express: HKGoldenExpress (Build 201006130200): New features: User can reply to message with quoting others' message. Bug fix: Incorrect format of dynamically generated Sitemap XML. Improveme...Liekhus ADO.NET Entity Data Model XAF Extensions: Version 1.1.2: Latest patches and changes.Light Box Control for Asp.Net: Light Box Control for asp.net: Lightbox control for asp.net is used to display the thumbnail images. on clicking the thumbnail images the original images is displayed in the ligh...Lightweight Fluent Workflow: Objectflow 1.1.0.0: This release has support for multi-threaded operations. As this required significant changes to the fluent interface I have introduced breaking ch...Linquify: Linquify 1.6: Linquify 1.6 Includes: - Support for Entity Framework foreign keys - TransactionsLiteFx: LiteFx Alpha: Versão alpha do LiteFx.Microsoft Dynamics CRM Query - T4 Template: MS CRM Query T4 Template Version 0.5 Beta: Initial ReleaseNHibernate Membership Provider: NHibernate Membership Provider 0.9c: This is an updated source package with updated unit tests and some minor refactoring.NLog - Advanced .NET Logging: Nightly Build 2010.06.12.001: Changes since the last build:2010-06-12 10:42:41 Jarek Kowalski Added Width, Height, AutoScroll and MaxLines parameters to RichTextBoxTarget. 2010...Radical: Radical 1.0.1 (Vacuum): First drop with support for Windows Phone 7SharpCrack: SharpCrack v0.8: First release of SharpCrack. It does not support brute-force mode.social bookmark control for asp.net: social bookmark control for asp.net: social bookmark control for asp.net, This control is used to bookmark the current asp.net page into popular social networking sites like facebook, ...StardustExtensions: Simple hello: This is a very simple hello world script. Is just a basic script, is not packaged and works on IronPythonTiledLib: TiledLib 1.5: This release introduces breaking changes from 1.2. If you upgrade to this version from 1.2, you may have compiler errors and/or runtime differences...UDC indexes parser: UDC Parser RC1: Обновлена библиотека токенов, добавлены xml-doc комментарии, обновлен и исправлен код, обновлена логика лексера, обновлена грамматика парсера. Доба...UnOfficial ActiveWorlds Wrapper.Net: UnOfficial ActiveWorlds Wrapper.Net V0.5.85.1: NewLogin Structure. LaserBeam. ChangedOld Functions Changes Function Names Old New WorldInstanceSet SetWorldInstance WorldInstanceGet GetWo...UrzaGatherer: UrzaGatherer v2.0.2a: Inegration of VS Installer.VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30612.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVirtual Keyboard control for asp.net: virtual keyboard control: Virtual Keyboard control for asp.net, This control is used to get the secured inputs through virtual keyboards.Visual Studio 2010 PowerShell Code Generator: PSCodeGenerator: How to install PowerShell Code GeneratorDownload the zip Unzip Run .\Install-PSCodeGenerator.ps1 at the PowerShell console prompt Copies the te...VsTortoise - a TortoiseSVN add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio: VsTortoise Build 25 Beta: Build 25 (beta) New: Added support for Filter items (virtual folders) in Solution Explorer. New: Added "Get Lock..." to Solution Explorer context...WatchersNET.UrlShorty: WatchersNET.UrlShorty 01.00.00: First BETA Release Please Read the Readme or the Online Documentation for Install Instructions.Yet Another GPS: Release Beta 2.1: Release Beta 2.1: - Fix KML Template with Google Map Mobile Version - Add Signal Strength indecator - Add Time indecator - Fix Sound Language Prob...Most Popular ProjectsWBFS ManagerRawrAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)patterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryPHPExcelMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesASP.NETMost Active Projectspatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleRhyduino - Arduino and Managed CodeBlogEngine.NETCommunity Forums NNTP bridgeCassandraemonMediaCoder.NETAndrew's XNA HelpersMicrosoft Silverlight Media Framework

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Finding the problem on a partially succeeded build

- by Martin Hinshelwood

Now that I have the Build failing because of a genuine bug and not just because of a test framework failure, lets see if we can trace through to finding why the first test in our new application failed. Lets look at the build and see if we can see why there is a red cross on it. First, lets open that build list. On Team Explorer Expand your Team Project Collection | Team Project and then Builds. Double click the offending build. Figure: Opening the Build list is a key way to see what the current state of your software is. Figure: A test is failing, but we can now view the Test Results to find the problem Figure: You can quite clearly see that the test has failed with “The device is not ready”. To me the “The Device is not ready” smacks of a System.IO exception, but it passed on my local computer, so why not on the build server? Its a FaultException so it is most likely coming from the Service and not the client, so lets take a look at the client method that the test is calling: bool IProfileService.SaveDefaultProjectFile(string strComputerName) { ProjectFile file = new ProjectFile() { ProjectFileName = strComputerName + "_" + System.DateTime.Now.ToString("yyyyMMddhhmmsss") + ".xml", ConnectionString = "persist security info=False; pooling=False; data source=(local); application name=SSW.SQLDeploy.vshost.exe; integrated security=SSPI; initial catalog=SSWSQLDeployNorthwindSample", DateCreated = System.DateTime.Now, DateUpdated = System.DateTime.Now, FolderPath = @"C:\Program Files\SSW SQL Deploy\SampleData\", IsComplete=false, Version = "1.3", NewDatabase = true, TimeOut = 5, TurnOnMSDE = false, Mode="AutomaticMode" }; string strFolderPath = "D:\\"; //LocalSettings.ProjectFileBasePath; string strFileName = strFolderPath + file.ProjectFileName; try { using (FileStream fs = new FileStream(strFileName, FileMode.Create)) { DataContractSerializer serializer = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(ProjectFile)); using (XmlDictionaryWriter writer = XmlDictionaryWriter.CreateTextWriter(fs)) { serializer.WriteObject(writer, file); } } } catch (Exception ex) { //TODO: Log the exception throw ex; return false; } return true; } Figure: You can see on lines 9 and 18 that there are calls being made to specific folders and disks. What is wrong with this code? What assumptions mistakes could the developer have made to make this look OK: That every install would be to “C:\Program Files\SSW SQL Deploy” That every computer would have a “D:\\” That checking in code at 6pm because the had to go home was a good idea. lets solve each of these problems: We are in a web service… lets store data within the web root. So we can call “Server.MapPath(“~/App_Data/SSW SQL Deploy\SampleData”) instead. Never reference an explicit path. If you need some storage for your application use IsolatedStorage. Shelve your code instead. What else could have been done? Code review before check-in – The developer should have shelved their code and asked another dev to look at it. Use Defensive programming – Make sure that any code that has the possibility of failing has checks. Any more options? Let me know and I will add them. What do we do? The correct things to do is to add a Bug to the backlog, but as this is probably going to be fixed in sprint, I will add it directly to the sprint backlog. Right click on the failing test Select “Create Work Item | Bug” Figure: Create an associated bug to add to the backlog. Set the values for the Bug making sure that it goes into the right sprint and Area. Make your steps to reproduce as explicit as possible, but “See test” is valid under these circumstances. Figure: Add it to the correct Area and set the Iteration to the Area name or the Sprint if you think it will be fixed in Sprint and make sure you bring it up at the next Scrum Meeting. Note: make sure you leave the “Assigned To” field blank as in Scrum team members sign up for work, you do not give it to them. The developer who broke the test will most likely either sign up for the bug, or say that they are stuck and need help. Note: Visual Studio has taken care of associating the failing test with the Bug. Save… Technorati Tags: WCF,MSTest,MSBuild,Team Build 2010,Team Test 2010,Team Build,Team Test

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Internet Explorer and Cookie Domains

- by Rick Strahl

I've been bitten by some nasty issues today in regards to using a domain cookie as part of my FormsAuthentication operations. In the app I'm currently working on we need to have single sign-on that spans multiple sub-domains (www.domain.com, store.domain.com, mail.domain.com etc.). That's what a domain cookie is meant for - when you set the cookie with a Domain value of the base domain the cookie stays valid for all sub-domains. I've been testing the app for quite a while and everything is working great. Finally I get around to checking the app with Internet Explorer and I start discovering some problems - specifically on my local machine using localhost. It appears that Internet Explorer (all versions) doesn't allow you to specify a domain of localhost, a local IP address or machine name. When you do, Internet Explorer simply ignores the cookie. In my last post I talked about some generic code I created to basically parse out the base domain from the current URL so a domain cookie would automatically used using this code:private void IssueAuthTicket(UserState userState, bool rememberMe) { FormsAuthenticationTicket ticket = new FormsAuthenticationTicket(1, userState.UserId, DateTime.Now, DateTime.Now.AddDays(10), rememberMe, userState.ToString()); string ticketString = FormsAuthentication.Encrypt(ticket); HttpCookie cookie = new HttpCookie(FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName, ticketString); cookie.HttpOnly = true; if (rememberMe) cookie.Expires = DateTime.Now.AddDays(10); var domain = Request.Url.GetBaseDomain(); if (domain != Request.Url.DnsSafeHost) cookie.Domain = domain; HttpContext.Response.Cookies.Add(cookie); } This code works fine on all browsers but Internet Explorer both locally and on full domains. And it also works fine for Internet Explorer with actual 'real' domains. However, this code fails silently for IE when the domain is localhost or any other local address. In that case Internet Explorer simply refuses to accept the cookie and fails to log in. Argh! The end result is that the solution above trying to automatically parse the base domain won't work as local addresses end up failing. Configuration Setting Given this screwed up state of affairs, the best solution to handle this is a configuration setting. Forms Authentication actually has a domain key that can be set for FormsAuthentication so that's natural choice for the storing the domain name: <authentication mode="Forms"> <forms loginUrl="~/Account/Login" name="gnc" domain="mydomain.com" slidingExpiration="true" timeout="30" xdt:Transform="Replace"/> </authentication> Although I'm not actually letting FormsAuth set my cookie directly I can still access the domain name from the static FormsAuthentication.CookieDomain property, by changing the domain assignment code to:if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(FormsAuthentication.CookieDomain)) cookie.Domain = FormsAuthentication.CookieDomain; The key is to only set the domain when actually running on a full authority, and leaving the domain key blank on the local machine to avoid the local address debacle. Note if you want to see this fail with IE, set the domain to domain="localhost" and watch in Fiddler what happens. Logging Out When specifying a domain key for a login it's also vitally important that that same domain key is used when logging out. Forms Authentication will do this automatically for you when the domain is set and you use FormsAuthentication.SignOut(). If you use an explicit Cookie to manage your logins or other persistant value, make sure that when you log out you also specify the domain. IOW, the expiring cookie you set for a 'logout' should match the same settings - name, path, domain - as the cookie you used to set the value.HttpCookie cookie = new HttpCookie("gne", ""); cookie.Expires = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-5); // make sure we use the same logic to release cookie var domain = Request.Url.GetBaseDomain(); if (domain != Request.Url.DnsSafeHost) cookie.Domain = domain; HttpContext.Response.Cookies.Add(cookie); I managed to get my code to do what I needed it to, but man I'm getting so sick and tired of fixing IE only bugs. I spent most of the day today fixing a number of small IE layout bugs along with this issue which took a bit of time to trace down.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in ASP.NET Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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System locking up with suspicious messages about hard disk

- by Chris Conway

My system has started behaving strangely, intermittently locking up. I see messages like the following in syslog: Nov 18 22:22:00 claypool kernel: [ 3428.078156] ata3.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 Nov 18 22:22:00 claypool kernel: [ 3428.078163] ata3.00: irq_stat 0x40000000 Nov 18 22:22:00 claypool kernel: [ 3428.078167] sr 2:0:0:0: CDB: Test Unit Ready: 00 00 00 00 00 00 Nov 18 22:22:00 claypool kernel: [ 3428.078182] ata3.00: cmd a0/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 tag 0 Nov 18 22:22:00 claypool kernel: [ 3428.078184] res 50/00:03:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 Emask 0x1 (device error) Nov 18 22:22:00 claypool kernel: [ 3428.078188] ata3.00: status: { DRDY } Nov 18 22:22:00 claypool kernel: [ 3428.080887] ata3.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 Nov 18 22:22:00 claypool kernel: [ 3428.080890] ata3.00: irq_stat 0x40000000 Nov 18 22:22:00 claypool kernel: [ 3428.080893] sr 2:0:0:0: CDB: Test Unit Ready: 00 00 00 00 00 00 Nov 18 22:22:00 claypool kernel: [ 3428.080905] ata3.00: cmd a0/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 tag 0 Nov 18 22:22:00 claypool kernel: [ 3428.080906] res 50/00:03:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 Emask 0x1 (device error) Nov 18 22:22:00 claypool kernel: [ 3428.080910] ata3.00: status: { DRDY } And then this: Nov 18 23:13:56 claypool kernel: [ 6544.000798] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen Nov 18 23:13:56 claypool kernel: [ 6544.000804] ata1.00: failed command: FLUSH CACHE EXT Nov 18 23:13:56 claypool kernel: [ 6544.000814] ata1.00: cmd ea/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 tag 0 Nov 18 23:13:56 claypool kernel: [ 6544.000815] res 40/00:00:00:4f:c2/00:00:00:00:00/40 Emask 0x4 (timeout) Nov 18 23:13:56 claypool kernel: [ 6544.000819] ata1.00: status: { DRDY } Nov 18 23:13:56 claypool kernel: [ 6544.000825] ata1: hard resetting link Nov 18 23:14:01 claypool kernel: [ 6549.360324] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0) Nov 18 23:14:06 claypool kernel: [ 6554.008091] ata1: COMRESET failed (errno=-16) Nov 18 23:14:06 claypool kernel: [ 6554.008103] ata1: hard resetting link Nov 18 23:14:11 claypool kernel: [ 6559.372246] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0) Nov 18 23:14:16 claypool kernel: [ 6564.020228] ata1: COMRESET failed (errno=-16) Nov 18 23:14:16 claypool kernel: [ 6564.020235] ata1: hard resetting link Nov 18 23:14:21 claypool kernel: [ 6569.380109] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0) Nov 18 23:14:31 claypool kernel: [ 6579.460243] ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300) Nov 18 23:14:31 claypool kernel: [ 6579.486595] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133 Nov 18 23:14:31 claypool kernel: [ 6579.486601] ata1.00: retrying FLUSH 0xea Emask 0x4 Nov 18 23:14:31 claypool kernel: [ 6579.486939] ata1.00: device reported invalid CHS sector 0 Nov 18 23:14:31 claypool kernel: [ 6579.486952] ata1: EH complete Nov 18 23:17:01 claypool CRON[3910]: (root) CMD ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly) Nov 18 23:17:01 claypool CRON[3908]: (CRON) error (grandchild #3910 failed with exit status 1) Nov 18 23:17:01 claypool postfix/sendmail[3925]: fatal: open /etc/postfix/main.cf: No such file or directory Nov 18 23:17:01 claypool CRON[3908]: (root) MAIL (mailed 1 byte of output; but got status 0x004b, #012) Nov 18 23:39:01 claypool CRON[4200]: (root) CMD ( [ -x /usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime ] && [ -d /var/lib/php5 ] && find /var/lib/php5/ -type f -cmin +$(/usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime) -print0 | xargs -n 200 -r -0 rm) There are no messages marked after 23:39. When I next tried to use the machine, it would not return from the screensaver (blank screen), nor switch to another terminal, and I had to hard reboot it. [UPDATE] The output of smartctl is here. I had trouble getting this, because / is being mounted read-only (?!), which prevents most applications from running. Also, it may not be related, but I have the following worrying messages in dmesg: [ 10.084596] k8temp 0000:00:18.3: Temperature readouts might be wrong - check erratum #141 [ 10.098477] i2c i2c-0: nForce2 SMBus adapter at 0x600 [ 10.098483] ACPI: resource nForce2_smbus [io 0x0700-0x073f] conflicts with ACPI region SM00 [??? 0x00000700-0x0000073f flags 0x30] [ 10.098486] ACPI: This conflict may cause random problems and system instability [ 10.098487] ACPI: If an ACPI driver is available for this device, you should use it instead of the native driver [ 10.098509] i2c i2c-1: nForce2 SMBus adapter at 0x700 [ 10.112570] Linux agpgart interface v0.103 [ 10.155329] atk: Resources not safely usable due to acpi_enforce_resources kernel parameter [ 10.161506] it87: Found IT8712F chip at 0x290, revision 8 [ 10.161517] it87: VID is disabled (pins used for GPIO) [ 10.161527] it87: in3 is VCC (+5V) [ 10.161528] it87: in7 is VCCH (+5V Stand-By) [ 10.161560] ACPI: resource it87 [io 0x0295-0x0296] conflicts with ACPI region ECRE [??? 0x00000290-0x000002af flags 0x45] [ 10.161562] ACPI: This conflict may cause random problems and system instability [ 10.161564] ACPI: If an ACPI driver is available for this device, you should use it instead of the native driver [UPDATE 2] I swapped in a new SATA cable, per Phil's suggestion. The current output of smartctl is here, if it helps. [UPDATE 3] I don't think the cable fixed it. The system hasn't locked up yet, but my media player crashed a few minutes ago and I have the following in the syslog: Nov 20 16:07:17 claypool kernel: [ 2294.400033] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0) Nov 20 16:07:47 claypool kernel: [ 2324.084581] ata1: COMRESET failed (errno=-16) Nov 20 16:07:47 claypool kernel: [ 2324.084588] ata1: limiting SATA link speed to 1.5 Gbps Nov 20 16:07:47 claypool kernel: [ 2324.084592] ata1: hard resetting link I get the following response from smartctl: $ sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda [sudo] password for chris: sudo: Can't open /var/lib/sudo/chris/0: Read-only file system smartctl 5.40 2010-03-16 r3077 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net Device: /0:0:0:0 Version: scsiModePageOffset: response length too short, resp_len=47 offset=50 bd_len=46 >> Terminate command early due to bad response to IEC mode page A mandatory SMART command failed: exiting. To continue, add one or more '-T permissive' options.

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Good ol fashioned debugging

- by Tim Dexter

I have been helping out one of our new customers over the last day or two and I have even managed to get to the bottom of their problem FTW! They use BIEE and BIP and wanted to mount a BIP report in a dashboard page, so far so good, BIP does that! Just follow the instructions in the BIEE user guide. The wrinkle is that they want to enter some fixed instruction strings into the dashboard prompts to help the user. These are added as fixed values to the prompt as the default values so they appear first. Once the user makes a selection, the default strings disappear. Its a fair requirement but the BIP report chokes Now, the BIP report had been setup with the Autorun checkbox, unchecked. I expected the BIP report to wait for the Go button to be hit but it was trying to run immediately and failing. That was the first issue. You can not stop the BIP report from trying to run in a dashboard. Even if the Autorun is turned off, it seems that dashboard still makes the request to BIP to run the report. Rather than BIP refusing because its waiting for input it goes ahead anyway, I guess the mechanism does not check the autorun flag when the request is coming from the dashboard. It appears that between BIEE and BIP, they collectively ignore the autorun flag. A bug? might be, at least an enhancement request. With that in mind, how could we get BIP to not at least not fail? This fact was stumping me on the parameter error, if the autorun flag was being respected then why was BIP complaining about the parameter values it should not even be doing anything until the Go button is clicked. I now knew that the autorun flag was being ignored, it was a simple case of putting BIP into debug mode. I use the OC4J server on my laptop so debug msgs are routed through the dos box used to start the OC4J container. When I changed a value on the dashboard prompt I spotted some debug text rushing by that subsequently disappeared from the log once the operation was complete. Another bug? I needed to catch that text as it went by, using the print screen function with some software to grab multiple screens as the log appeared and then disappeared. The upshot is that when you change the dashboard prompt value, BIP validates the value against its own LOVs, if its not in the list then it throws the error. Because 'Fill this first' and 'Fill this second' ie fixed strings from the dashboard prompts, are not in the LOV lists and because the report is auto running as soon as the dashboard page is brought up, the report complains about invalid parameters. To get around this, I needed to get the strings into the LOVs. Easily done with a UNION clause: select 'Fill this first' from SH.Products Products UNION select Products."Prod Category" as "Prod Category" from SH.Products Products Now when BIP wants to validate the prompt value, the LOV query fires and finds the fixed string -> No Error. No data, but definitely no errors :0) If users do run with the fixed values, you can capture that in the template. If there is no data in the report, either the fixed values were used or the parameters selected resulted in no rows. You can capture this in the template and display something like. 'Either your parameter values resulted in no data or you have not changed the default values' Thats the upside, the downside is that if your users run the report in the BP UI they re going to see the fixed strings. You could alleviate that by having BIP display the fixed strings in top of its parameter drop boxes (just set them as the default value for the parameter.) But they will not disappear like they do in the dashboard prompts, see below. If the expected autorun behaviour worked ie wait for the Go button, then we would not have to workaround it but for now, its a pretty good solution. It was an enjoyable hour or so for me, took me back to my developer daze, when we used to race each other for the most number of bug fixes. I used to run a distant 2nd behind 'Bugmeister Chen Hu' but led the chasing pack by a reasonable distance.

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, April 15, 2012

CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, April 15, 2012Popular ReleasesAssaultCube Reloaded: 2.4.1 Valor: POSSIBLE KNIFE CRASH FIX Codename Valor as suggested by LMFAO! on the forums Weapon tweaks Linux has Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit precompiled binaries and Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, download the Linux package. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compile your own for linux (source included)callisto: callisto 2.0.25: removed 2 ip ranges from hotspot shield black list.KBCsv: KBCsv V1.4.0.0: #11872 (skipping records with delimited text can break parser) #11873 (globalization support in CsvWriter) #11185 (more versatile constructor and method overloads)National Geographic Photo of the Day Wallpaper Changer: Photo of the Day Wallpaper Changer v2.0: National Geographic - Photo of the Day Wallpaper Changer v2.0 is an improved version. It has some new features like improved GUI, automatic update and date to date photo archiver etc. please check out the user guide for more information. Please copy the exe in a directory and run. Its that simple to use :).Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.5.6: Bug Fixes nuget was broken for Timespan and complete build due to how i did the target. Corrected and made all 3 match. Color Slider (and by default Color Picker) didn't respect view state for being disabled depending on how it was set. Test application now has test cases.Json.NET: Json.NET 4.5 Release 3: Change - DefaultContractResolver.IgnoreSerializableAttribute is now true by default Fix - Fixed MaxDepth on JsonReader recursively throwing an error Fix - Fixed SerializationBinder.BindToName not being called with full assembly namesVisual Studio Team Foundation Server Branching and Merging Guide: v2 - For Visual Studio 11: Welcome to the BETA of the Branching and Merging Guide preview As this is a BETA release and the quality bar for the final Release has not been achieved, we value your candid feedback and recommend that you do not use or deploy these BETA artifacts in a production environment. Quality-Bar Details Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has not been through an independent technical review Documentation has been reviewed by the quality and recording te...Media Companion: MC 3.435b Release: This release should be the last beta for 3.4xx. A handful of problems have been sorted out since last weeks release. If there are no major problems this time, it will upgraded to 3.500 Stable at the end of the week! General The .NET Framework has been modified to use the Client profile, as provided by normal Windows updates; no longer is there a requirement to download and install the Full profile! mc_com.exe has been worked on to mimic proper Media Companion output (a big thanks to vbat99...Wholemy.LinkedLists: wholemy.linkedlists.2012.04.12.38: libs and srcTHE NVL Maker: The NVL Maker Ver 3.12: SIM??????，TRA??????，ZIP????。 ????????????????，??????~（??????????????????） ??????? simpatch1440x900 trapatch1440x900 ?????1400x900??1440x900，?????????????Data.xp3。 ???? ?????3.12?EXE????????????????， ??????????????，??Tool/krkrconf.exe，??Editor.exe， ???????????????「??????」。 ?????Editor.exe??????。 ???? ???? http://etale.us/gameupload/THE_NVL_Maker_ver3.12_sim.zip ???? http://www.mediafire.com/?je51683g22bz8vo ??Infinite Creation?? http://bbs.etale.us/forum.php ?????? ???? 3.12 ??? ???、????...Quick Performance Monitor: Version 1.8.2: Version 1.8.2. Add the ability for qpmset files to also store the Window location/size so predefined 'sets' can be forced to always open on the same place of the screen.SnmpMessenger: 0.1.1.1: Project Description SnmpMessenger, a messenger. Using the SNMP protocol to exchange messages. It's developed in C#. SnmpMessenger For .Net 4.0, Mono 2.8. Support SNMP V1, V2, V3. Features Send get, set and other requests and get the response. Send and receive traps. Handle requests and return the response. Note This library is compliant with the Common Language Specification(CLS). The latest version is 0.1.1.1. It is only a messenger, does not involve VACM. Any problems, Please mailto: wa...Python Tools for Visual Studio: 1.1.1: We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 1.1.1. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including: • Supports CPython and IronPython • Python editor with advanced member and signature intellisense • Code navigation: “Find all refs”, goto definition, and object browser • Local and remote debugging • Profiling with multiple view...Supporting Guidance and Whitepapers: v1 - Team Foundation Service Whitepapers: Welcome to the BETA release of the Team Foundation Service Whitepapers preview As this is a BETA release and the quality bar for the final Release has not been achieved, we value your candid feedback and recommend that you do not use or deploy these BETA artifacts in a production environment. Quality-Bar Details Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has been through an independent technical review All critical bugs have been resolved Known Issue...LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter Beta v2.0.24: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, and Client Profile. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also available via NuGet.Kendo UI ASP.NET Sample Applications: Sample Applications (2012-04-11): Sample application(s) demonstrating the use of Kendo UI in ASP.NET applications.SCCM Client Actions Tool: SCCM Client Actions Tool v1.12: SCCM Client Actions Tool v1.12 is the latest version. It comes with following changes since last version: Improved WMI date conversion to be aware of timezone differences and DST. Fixed new version check. The tool is downloadable as a ZIP file that contains four files: ClientActionsTool.hta – The tool itself. Cmdkey.exe – command line tool for managing cached credentials. This is needed for alternate credentials feature when running the HTA on Windows XP. Cmdkey.exe is natively availab...Dual Browsing: Dual Browser: Please note the following: I setup the address bar temporarily to only accepts http:// .com addresses. Just type in the name of the website excluding: http://, www., and .com; (Ex: for www.youtube.com just type: youtube then click OK). The page splitter can be grabbed by holding down your left mouse button and move left or right. By right clicking on the page background, you can choose to refresh, go back a page and so on. Demo video: http://youtu.be/L7NTFVM3JUYLiberty: v3.2.0.1 Release 9th April 2012: Change Log-Fixed -Reach Fixed a bug where the object editor did not work on non-English operating systemsPath Copy Copy: 10.1: This release addresses the following work items: 11357 11358 11359 This release is a recommended upgrade, especially for users who didn't install the 10.0.1 version.New ProjectsADENA: This project consists in the development of a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for a proof assistant for Propositional Classical Logic based on Natural Deduction method.Alternity Warships Editor: This is a tool designed to easy the process of creating a new spaceship for Alternity using the Warship rules.BigBallz: Projeto de site de Bolões para campeonatos diversos. A princípio pensado para copa do mundo de futebol de 2010Crescent: bunch of mac scriptsDemoVasquez: Demo Proyecto 1Didrotuos: DidrotuosEat Out Advocate: Eat Out Advocate --------------------Kuttiflow: A simple implementation of Workflow for .NetLuan Van Cuoi Khoa: Lu?n van cu?i khoa ÐH Tây Nguyênmapaconwindowsphone: probar un mapa de bing mapsMovie Renamer: Is your movie collection a mess? No idea which movie is which? This tool easily renames movies based on the title and the year of the movie. Helps you sort out that movie collection! It will download from IMDB the closest matches based on the name of the file. Very simple written in WPF, so it will need the .NET 4 framework. At the moment you cannot set how you want to movie to be renamed, it will always be: "MovieTitle (Year).ext".Online Math Calculator: This is an Online Math Calculator. What this does is take your equation in the usual form and convert every variable to x, y, and every constant to a, b, c, d, e, etc... use wolfram|alpha and then convert back to the input format. This allows to input most equations.Orchard on Windows Azure with Dynamic Deploy: Dynamic Deploy is a cloud deployment platform. This project includes the Orchard source code that was used to create a Windows Azure build. The original source has not been modified. We have just added more themes and modules and modified web.config with a machine key. visit httppcvvpes: pcvvpesPesquisa de Satisfacao: PesquisaPit of Despair: An XNA 4.0 game in C# focused on learning to write overhead dungeon crawl games. Inpired from games such as Zelda, Wizardy, perhaps some original Final Fantasy.Prova Branquinho: Prova BranquinhoRibHat: RibHat is a framework for building websites, forums, blogs, and web-based information systems. It is a set of libraries that help the programmer to get rid from the immobility of CMS, obtaining a maximum level of customization.SetupWizard: a SetupWizard, install windows service, create IIS site, create database during installation.SharkOS: This operating system is the system Arkadia OS but with a GUI, it is created in c #, it will be fast and no lag.Shopping List: Shopping List is a simple WP7 application that enables tracking of items to buy when going for groceries.Sim Cricket: Cricket simulation game.. For cricket and C# fans.. Simple InterNET Daemon: Simple InterNET DaemonSteggy: Steganography project. SychevIgor Win8 Apps Source Code: SychevIgor Win8 Apps Source Codetest53768492156478: nothingTool to change monitor display frequency on HTPC: This is a small application that can change the monitors refresh-rate by simply running one of the applications for the desired refresh-rate. It was developed to make it easy to change the refresh rate, when launching external media players from XBMC and so on... And it was published here, so that others can see how easily it can be done.TravelSaver: Hajj Umrah USA, Travel SaverUpdateBot: UpdateBot is a GUI application that simplifies and automates the downloading and parsing of FileHippo.com's Update Checker result pages.

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jQuery Datatable in MVC … extended.

- by Steve Clements

There are a million plugins for jQuery and when a web forms developer like myself works in MVC making use of them is par-for-the-course! MVC is the way now, web forms are but a memory!! Grids / tables are my focus at the moment. I don’t want to get in to righting reems of css and html, but it’s not acceptable to simply dump a table on the screen, functionality like sorting, paging, fixed header and perhaps filtering are expected behaviour. What isn’t always required though is the massive functionality like editing etc you get with many grid plugins out there. You potentially spend a long time getting everything hooked together when you just don’t need it. That is where the jQuery DataTable plugin comes in. It doesn’t have editing “out of the box” (you can add other plugins as you require to achieve such functionality). What it does though is very nicely format a table (and integrate with jQuery UI) without needing to hook up and Async actions etc. Take a look here… http://www.datatables.net I did in the first instance start looking at the Telerik MVC grid control – I’m a fan of Telerik controls and if you are developing an in-house of open source app you get the MVC stuff for free…nice! Their grid however is far more than I require. Note: Using Telerik MVC controls with your own jQuery and jQuery UI does come with some hurdles, mainly to do with the order in which all your jQuery is executing – I won’t cover that here though – mainly because I don’t have a clear answer on the best way to solve it! One nice thing about the dataTable above is how easy it is to extend http://www.datatables.net/examples/plug-ins/plugin_api.html and there are some nifty examples on the site already… I however have a requirement that wasn’t on the site … I need a grid at the bottom of the page that will size automatically to the bottom of the page and be scrollable if required within its own space i.e. everything above the grid didn’t scroll as well. Now a CSS master may have a great solution to this … I’m not that master and so didn’t! The content above the grid can vary so any kind of fixed positioning is out. So I wrote a little extension for the DataTable, hooked that up to the document.ready event and window.resize event. Initialising my dataTable ( s )… $(document).ready(function () { var dTable = $(".tdata").dataTable({ "bPaginate": false, "bLengthChange": false, "bFilter": true, "bSort": true, "bInfo": false, "bAutoWidth": true, "sScrollY": "400px" }); My extension to the API to give me the resizing…. // ********************************************************************** // jQuery dataTable API extension to resize grid and adjust column sizes // $.fn.dataTableExt.oApi.fnSetHeightToBottom = function (oSettings) { var id = oSettings.nTable.id; var dt = $("#" + id); var top = dt.position().top; var winHeight = $(document).height(); var remain = (winHeight - top) - 83; dt.parent().attr("style", "overflow-x: auto; overflow-y: auto; height: " + remain + "px;"); this.fnAdjustColumnSizing(); } This is very much is debug mode, so pretty verbose at the moment – I’ll tidy that up later! You can see the last call is a call to an existing method, as the columns are fixed and that normally involves so CSS voodoo, a call to adjust those sizes is required. Just above is the style that the dataTable gives the grid wrapper div, I got that from some firebug action and stick in my new height. The –83 is to give me the space at the bottom i require for fixed footer! Finally I hook that up to the load and window resize. I’m actually using jQuery UI tabs as well, so I’ve got that in the open event of the tabs. $(document).ready(function () { var oTable; $("#tabs").tabs({ "show": function (event, ui) { oTable = $('div.dataTables_scrollBody>table.tdata', ui.panel).dataTable(); if (oTable.length > 0) { oTable.fnSetHeightToBottom(); } } }); $(window).bind("resize", function () { oTable.fnSetHeightToBottom(); }); }); And that all there is too it. Testament to the wonders of jQuery and the immense community surrounding it – to which I am extremely grateful. I’ve also hooked up some custom column filtering on the grid – pretty normal stuff though – you can get what you need for that from their website. I do hide the out of the box filter input as I wanted column specific, you need filtering turned on when initialising to get it to work and that input come with it! Tip: fnFilter is the method you want. With column index as a param – I used data tags to simply that one.

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Edit Media Center TV Recordings with Windows Live Movie Maker

- by DigitalGeekery

Have you ever wanted to take a TV program you’ve recorded in Media Center and remove the commercials or save clips of favorite scenes? Today we’ll take a look at editing WTV and DVR-MS files with Windows Live Movie Maker. Download and Install Windows Live Movie Maker. The download link can be found at the end of the article. WLMM is part of Windows Live Essentials, but you can choose to install only the applications you want. You’ll also want to be sure to uncheck any unwanted settings like settings Bing as default search provider or MSN as your browser home page. Add your recorded TV file to WLMM by clicking the Add videos and photos button, or by dragging and dropping it onto the storyboard. You’ll see your video displayed in the Preview window on the left and on the storyboard. Adjust the Zoom Time Scale slider at the lower right to change the level of detail displayed on the storyboard. You may want to start zoomed out and zoom in for more detailed edits. Removing Commercials or Unwanted Sections Note: Changes and edits made in Windows Live Movie Maker do not change or effect the original video file. To accomplish this, we will makes cuts, or “splits,” and the beginning and end of the section we want to remove, and then we will delete that section from our project. Click and drag the slider bar along the the storyboard to scroll through the video. When you get to the end of a row in on the storyboard, drag the slider down to the beginning of the next row. We’ve found it easiest and most accurate to get close to the end of the commercial break and then use the Play button and the Previous Frame and Next Frame buttons underneath the Preview window to fine tune your cut point. When you find the right place to make your first cut, click the split button on the Edit tab on the ribbon. You will see your video “split” into two sections. Now, repeat the process of scrolling through the storyboard to find the end of the section you wish to cut. When you are at the proper point, click the Split button again. Now we’ll delete that section by selecting it and pressing the Delete key, selecting remove on the Home tab, or by right clicking on the section and selecting Remove. Trim Tool This tool allows you to select a portion of the video to keep while trimming away the rest. Click and drag the sliders in the preview windows to select the area you want to keep. The area outside the sliders will be trimmed away. The area inside is the section that is kept in the movie. You can also adjust the Start and End points manually on the ribbon. Delete any additional clips you don’t want in the final output. You can also accomplish this by using the Set start point and Set end point buttons. Clicking Set start point will eliminate everything before the start point. Set end point will eliminate everything after the end point. And you’re left with only the clip you want to keep. Output your Video Select the icon at the top left, then select Save movie. All of these settings will output your movie as a WMV file, but file size and quality will vary by setting. The Burn to DVD option also outputs a WMV file, but then opens Windows DVD Maker and prompts you to create and burn a DVD. Conclusion WLMM is one of the few applications that can edit WTV files, and it’s the only one we’re aware of that’s free. We should note only WTV and DVR-MS files will appear in the Recorded TV library in Media Center, so if you want to view your WMV output file in WMC you’ll need to add it to the Video or Movie library. Would you like to learn more about Windows Live Movie Maker? Check out are article on how to turn photos and home videos into movies with Windows Live Movie Maker. Need to add videos from a network location? WLMM doesn’t allow this by default, but you check out how to add network support to Windows Live Move Maker. Download Windows Live Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Rotate a Video 90 degrees with VLC or Windows Live Movie MakerHow to Make/Edit a movie with Windows Movie Maker in Windows VistaFamily Fun: Share Photos with Photo Gallery and Windows Live SpacesAutomatically Mount and View ISO files in Windows 7 Media CenterAutomatically Start Windows 7 Media Center in Live TV Mode TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 Get a free copy of WinUtilities Pro 2010 World Cup Schedule Boot Snooze – Reboot and then Standby or Hibernate Customize Everything Related to Dates, Times, Currency and Measurement in Windows 7 Google Earth replacement Icon (Icons we like) Build Great Charts in Excel with Chart Advisor

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PHP OCI8 and Oracle 11g DRCP Connection Pooling in Pictures

- by christopher.jones

Here is a screen shot from a PHP OCI8 connection pooling demo that I like to run. It graphically shows how little database host memory is needed when using DRCP connection pooling with Oracle Database 11g. Migrating to DRCP can be as simple as starting the pool and changing the connection string in your PHP application. The script that generated the data for this graph was a simple "Parts" query application being run under various simulated user loads. I was running the database on a small Oracle Linux server with just 2G of memory. I used PHP OCI8 1.4. Apache is in pre-fork mode, as needed for PHP. Each graph has time on the horizontal access in arbitrary 'tick' time units. Click the image to see it full sized. Pooled connections Beginning with the top left graph, At tick time 65 I used Apache's 'ab' tool to start 100 concurrent 'users' running the application. These users connected to the database using DRCP: $c = oci_pconnect('phpdemo', 'welcome', 'myhost/orcl:pooled'); A second hundred DRCP users were added to the system at tick 80 and a final hundred users added at tick 100. At about tick 110 I stopped the test and restarted Apache. This closed all the connections. The bottom left graph shows the number of statements being executed by the database per second, with some spikes for background database activity and some variability for this small test. Each extra batch of users adds another 'step' of load to the system. Looking at the top right Server Process graph shows the database server processes doing the query work for each web user. As user load is added, the DRCP server pool increases (in green). The pool is initially at its default size 4 and quickly ramps up to about (I'm guessing) 35. At tick time 100 the pool increases to my configured maximum of 40 processes. Those 40 processes are doing the query work for all 300 web users. When I stopped the test at tick 110, the pooled processes remained open waiting for more users to connect. If I had left the test quiet for the DRCP 'inactivity_timeout' period (300 seconds by default), the pool would have shrunk back to 4 processes. Looking at the bottom right, you can see the amount of memory being consumed by the database. During the initial quiet period about 500M of memory was in use. The absolute number is just an indication of my particular DB configuration. As the number of pooled processes increases, each process needs more memory. You can see the shape of the memory graph echoes the Server Process graph above it. Each of the 300 web users will also need a few kilobytes but this is almost too small to see on the graph. Non-pooled connections Compare the DRCP case with using 'dedicated server' processes. At tick 140 I started 100 web users who did not use pooled connections: $c = oci_pconnect('phpdemo', 'welcome', 'myhost/orcl'); This connection string change is the only difference between the two tests. At ticks 155 and 165 I started two more batches of 100 simulated users each. At about tick 195 I stopped the user load but left Apache running. Apache then gradually returned to its quiescent state, killing idle httpd processes and producing the downward slope at the right of the graphs as the persistent database connection in each Apache process was closed. The Executions per Second graph on the bottom left shows the same step increases as for the earlier DRCP case. The database is handling this load. But look at the number of Server processes on the top right graph. There is now a one-to-one correspondence between Apache/PHP processes and DB server processes. Each PHP processes has one DB server processes dedicated to it. Hence the term 'dedicated server'. The memory required on the database is proportional to all those database server processes started. Almost all my system's memory was consumed. I doubt it would have coped with any more user load. Summary Oracle Database 11g DRCP connection pooling significantly reduces database host memory requirements allow more system memory to be allocated for the SGA and allowing the system to scale to handled thousands of concurrent PHP users. Even for small systems, using DRCP allows more web users to be active. More information about PHP and DRCP can be found in the PHP Scalability and High Availability chapter of The Underground PHP and Oracle Manual.

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Getting WCF Bindings and Behaviors from any config source

- by cibrax

The need of loading WCF bindings or behaviors from different sources such as files in a disk or databases is a common requirement when dealing with configuration either on the client side or the service side. The traditional way to accomplish this in WCF is loading everything from the standard configuration section (serviceModel section) or creating all the bindings and behaviors by hand in code. However, there is a solution in the middle that becomes handy when more flexibility is needed. This solution involves getting the configuration from any place, and use that configuration to automatically configure any existing binding or behavior instance created with code. In order to configure a binding instance (System.ServiceModel.Channels.Binding) that you later inject in any endpoint on the client channel or the service host, you first need to get a binding configuration section from any configuration file (you can generate a temp file on the fly if you are using any other source for storing the configuration). private BindingsSection GetBindingsSection(string path) { System.Configuration.Configuration config = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.OpenMappedExeConfiguration( new System.Configuration.ExeConfigurationFileMap() { ExeConfigFilename = path }, System.Configuration.ConfigurationUserLevel.None); var serviceModel = ServiceModelSectionGroup.GetSectionGroup(config); return serviceModel.Bindings; } The BindingsSection contains a list of all the configured bindings in the serviceModel configuration section, so you can iterate through all the configured binding that get the one you need (You don’t need to have a complete serviceModel section, a section with the bindings only works). public Binding ResolveBinding(string name) { BindingsSection section = GetBindingsSection(path); foreach (var bindingCollection in section.BindingCollections) { if (bindingCollection.ConfiguredBindings.Count > 0 && bindingCollection.ConfiguredBindings[0].Name == name) { var bindingElement = bindingCollection.ConfiguredBindings[0]; var binding = (Binding)Activator.CreateInstance(bindingCollection.BindingType); binding.Name = bindingElement.Name; bindingElement.ApplyConfiguration(binding); return binding; } } return null; } The code above does just that, and also instantiates and configures the Binding object (System.ServiceModel.Channels.Binding) you are looking for. As you can see, the binding configuration element contains a method “ApplyConfiguration” that receives the binding instance that needs to be configured. A similar thing can be done for instance with the “Endpoint” behaviors. You first get the BehaviorsSection, and then, the behavior you want to use. private BehaviorsSection GetBehaviorsSection(string path) { System.Configuration.Configuration config = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.OpenMappedExeConfiguration( new System.Configuration.ExeConfigurationFileMap() { ExeConfigFilename = path }, System.Configuration.ConfigurationUserLevel.None); var serviceModel = ServiceModelSectionGroup.GetSectionGroup(config); return serviceModel.Behaviors; }public List<IEndpointBehavior> ResolveEndpointBehavior(string name) { BehaviorsSection section = GetBehaviorsSection(path); List<IEndpointBehavior> endpointBehaviors = new List<IEndpointBehavior>(); if (section.EndpointBehaviors.Count > 0 && section.EndpointBehaviors[0].Name == name) { var behaviorCollectionElement = section.EndpointBehaviors[0]; foreach (BehaviorExtensionElement behaviorExtension in behaviorCollectionElement) { object extension = behaviorExtension.GetType().InvokeMember("CreateBehavior", BindingFlags.InvokeMethod | BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance, null, behaviorExtension, null); endpointBehaviors.Add((IEndpointBehavior)extension); } return endpointBehaviors; } return null; } In this case, the code for creating the behavior instance is more tricky. First of all, a behavior in the configuration section actually represents a set of “IEndpoint” behaviors, and the behavior element you get from the configuration does not have any public method to configure an existing behavior instance. This last one only contains a protected method “CreateBehavior” that you can use for that purpose. Once you get this code implemented, a client channel can be easily configured as follows var binding = resolver.ResolveBinding("MyBinding"); var behaviors = resolver.ResolveEndpointBehavior("MyBehavior"); SampleServiceClient client = new SampleServiceClient(binding, new EndpointAddress(new Uri("http://localhost:13749/SampleService.svc"), new DnsEndpointIdentity("localhost"))); foreach (var behavior in behaviors) { if(client.Endpoint.Behaviors.Contains(behavior.GetType())) { client.Endpoint.Behaviors.Remove(behavior.GetType()); } client.Endpoint.Behaviors.Add(behavior); } The code above assumes that a configuration file (in any place) with a binding “MyBinding” and a behavior “MyBehavior” exists. That file can look like this, <system.serviceModel> <bindings> <basicHttpBinding> <binding name="MyBinding"> <security mode="Transport"></security> </binding> </basicHttpBinding> </bindings> <behaviors> <endpointBehaviors> <behavior name="MyBehavior"> <clientCredentials> <windows/> </clientCredentials> </behavior> </endpointBehaviors> </behaviors> </system.serviceModel> The same thing can be done of course in the service host if you want to manually configure the bindings and behaviors.

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Sun Fire X4800 M2 Delivers World Record TPC-C for x86 Systems

- by Brian

Oracle's Sun Fire X4800 M2 server equipped with eight 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon Processor E7-8870 chips obtained a result of 5,055,888 tpmC on the TPC-C benchmark. This result is a world record for x86 servers. Oracle demonstrated this world record database performance running Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition with Partitioning. The Sun Fire X4800 M2 server delivered a new x86 TPC-C world record of 5,055,888 tpmC with a price performance of $0.89/tpmC using Oracle Database 11g Release 2. This configuration is available 06/26/12. The Sun Fire X4800 M2 server delivers 3.0x times better performance than the next 8-processor result, an IBM System p 570 equipped with POWER6 processors. The Sun Fire X4800 M2 server has 3.1x times better price/performance than the 8-processor 4.7GHz POWER6 IBM System p 570. The Sun Fire X4800 M2 server has 1.6x times better performance than the 4-processor IBM x3850 X5 system equipped with Intel Xeon processors. This is the first TPC-C result on any system using eight Intel Xeon Processor E7-8800 Series chips. The Sun Fire X4800 M2 server is the first x86 system to get over 5 million tpmC. The Oracle solution utilized Oracle Linux operating system and Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 2 with Partitioning to produce the x86 world record TPC-C benchmark performance. Performance Landscape Select TPC-C results (sorted by tpmC, bigger is better) System p/c/t tpmC Price/tpmC Avail Database MemorySize Sun Fire X4800 M2 8/80/160 5,055,888 0.89 USD 6/26/2012 Oracle 11g R2 4 TB IBM x3850 X5 4/40/80 3,014,684 0.59 USD 7/11/2011 DB2 ESE 9.7 3 TB IBM x3850 X5 4/32/64 2,308,099 0.60 USD 5/20/2011 DB2 ESE 9.7 1.5 TB IBM System p 570 8/16/32 1,616,162 3.54 USD 11/21/2007 DB2 9.0 2 TB p/c/t - processors, cores, threads Avail - availability date Oracle and IBM TPC-C Response times System tpmC Response Time (sec) New Order 90th% Response Time (sec) New Order Average Sun Fire X4800 M2 5,055,888 0.210 0.166 IBM x3850 X5 3,014,684 0.500 0.272 Ratios - Oracle Better 1.6x 1.4x 1.3x Oracle uses average new order response time for comparison between Oracle and IBM. Graphs of Oracle's and IBM's response times for New-Order can be found in the full disclosure reports on TPC's website TPC-C Official Result Page. Configuration Summary and Results Hardware Configuration: Server Sun Fire X4800 M2 server 8 x 2.4 GHz Intel Xeon Processor E7-8870 4 TB memory 8 x 300 GB 10K RPM SAS internal disks 8 x Dual port 8 Gbs FC HBA Data Storage 10 x Sun Fire X4270 M2 servers configured as COMSTAR heads, each with 1 x 3.06 GHz Intel Xeon X5675 processor 8 GB memory 10 x 2 TB 7.2K RPM 3.5" SAS disks 2 x Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array storage (1.92 TB each) 1 x Brocade 5300 switches Redo Storage 2 x Sun Fire X4270 M2 servers configured as COMSTAR heads, each with 1 x 3.06 GHz Intel Xeon X5675 processor 8 GB memory 11 x 2 TB 7.2K RPM 3.5" SAS disks Clients 8 x Sun Fire X4170 M2 servers, each with 2 x 3.06 GHz Intel Xeon X5675 processors 48 GB memory 2 x 300 GB 10K RPM SAS disks Software Configuration: Oracle Linux (Sun Fire 4800 M2) Oracle Solaris 11 Express (COMSTAR for Sun Fire X4270 M2) Oracle Solaris 10 9/10 (Sun Fire X4170 M2) Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition with Partitioning Oracle iPlanet Web Server 7.0 U5 Tuxedo CFS-R Tier 1 Results: System: Sun Fire X4800 M2 tpmC: 5,055,888 Price/tpmC: 0.89 USD Available: 6/26/2012 Database: Oracle Database 11g Cluster: no New Order Average Response: 0.166 seconds Benchmark Description TPC-C is an OLTP system benchmark. It simulates a complete environment where a population of terminal operators executes transactions against a database. The benchmark is centered around the principal activities (transactions) of an order-entry environment. These transactions include entering and delivering orders, recording payments, checking the status of orders, and monitoring the level of stock at the warehouses. Key Points and Best Practices Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition with Partitioning scales easily to this high level of performance. COMSTAR (Common Multiprotocol SCSI Target) is the software framework that enables an Oracle Solaris host to serve as a SCSI Target platform. COMSTAR uses a modular approach to break the huge task of handling all the different pieces in a SCSI target subsystem into independent functional modules which are glued together by the SCSI Target Mode Framework (STMF). The modules implementing functionality at SCSI level (disk, tape, medium changer etc.) are not required to know about the underlying transport. And the modules implementing the transport protocol (FC, iSCSI, etc.) are not aware of the SCSI-level functionality of the packets they are transporting. The framework hides the details of allocation providing execution context and cleanup of SCSI commands and associated resources and simplifies the task of writing the SCSI or transport modules. Oracle iPlanet Web Server middleware is used for the client tier of the benchmark. Each web server instance supports more than a quarter-million users while satisfying the response time requirement from the TPC-C benchmark. See Also Oracle Press Release -- Sun Fire X4800 M2 TPC-C Executive Summary tpc.org Complete Sun Fire X4800 M2 TPC-C Full Disclosure Report tpc.org Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) Home Page Ideas International Benchmark Page Sun Fire X4800 M2 Server oracle.com OTN Oracle Linux oracle.com OTN Oracle Solaris oracle.com OTN Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition oracle.com OTN Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array oracle.com OTN Disclosure Statement TPC Benchmark C, tpmC, and TPC-C are trademarks of the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC). Sun Fire X4800 M2 (8/80/160) with Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition with Partitioning, 5,055,888 tpmC, $0.89 USD/tpmC, available 6/26/2012. IBM x3850 X5 (4/40/80) with DB2 ESE 9.7, 3,014,684 tpmC, $0.59 USD/tpmC, available 7/11/2011. IBM x3850 X5 (4/32/64) with DB2 ESE 9.7, 2,308,099 tpmC, $0.60 USD/tpmC, available 5/20/2011. IBM System p 570 (8/16/32) with DB2 9.0, 1,616,162 tpmC, $3.54 USD/tpmC, available 11/21/2007. Source: http://www.tpc.org/tpcc, results as of 7/15/2011.

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