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• Installing ASP.NET MVC 2 RTM on Visual Studio 2010 RC

  - by shiju

  Visual Studio 2010 RC is built against the ASP.NET MVC 2 RC version but you easily install ASP.NET MVC 2 RTM on the Visual Studio 2010 RC. For installing ASP.NET MVC 2 RTM, do the following steps 1) Uninstall "ASP.NET MVC 2 ". 2) Uninstall "Microsoft ASP.NET MVC 2 – Visual Studio 2008 Tools". 3) Install the new ASP.NET MVC 2 RTM version for Visual Studio 2008 SP1. The above steps will enable you to use ASP.NET MVC 2 RTM version on the Visual Studio 2010 RC. Note : Don't uninstall Microsoft ASP.NET MVC 2 – Visual Studio 2010 Tools

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• Transparency and AlphaBlending

  - by TechTwaddle

  In this post we'll look at the AlphaBlend() api and how it can be used for semi-transparent blitting. AlphaBlend() takes a source device context and a destination device context (DC) and combines the bits in such a way that it gives a transparent effect. Follow the links for the msdn documentation. So lets take a image like, and AlphaBlend() it on our window. The code to do so is below, (under the WM_PAINT message of WndProc) HBITMAP hBitmap=NULL, hBitmapOld=NULL; HDC hMemDC=NULL; BLENDFUNCTION bf; hdc = BeginPaint(hWnd, &ps); hMemDC = CreateCompatibleDC(hdc); hBitmap = LoadBitmap(g_hInst, MAKEINTRESOURCE(IDB_BITMAP1)); hBitmapOld = SelectObject(hMemDC, hBitmap); bf.BlendOp = AC_SRC_OVER; bf.BlendFlags = 0; bf.SourceConstantAlpha = 80; //transparency value between 0-255 bf.AlphaFormat = 0;    AlphaBlend(hdc, 0, 25, 240, 100, hMemDC, 0, 0, 240, 100, bf); SelectObject(hMemDC, hBitmapOld); DeleteDC(hMemDC); DeleteObject(hBitmap); EndPaint(hWnd, &ps);   The code above creates a memory DC (hMemDC) using CreateCompatibleDC(), loads a bitmap onto the memory DC and AlphaBlends it on the device DC (hdc), with a transparency value of 80. The result is: Pretty simple till now. Now lets try to do something a little more exciting. Lets get two images involved, each overlapping the other, giving a better demonstration of transparency. I am also going to add a few buttons so that the user can increase or decrease the transparency by clicking on the buttons. Since this is the first time I played around with GDI apis, I ran into something that everybody runs into sometime or the other, flickering. When clicking the buttons the images would flicker a lot, I figured out why and used something called double buffering to avoid flickering. We will look at both my first implementation and the second implementation just to give the concept a little more depth and perspective. A few pre-conditions before I dive into the code: - hBitmap and hBitmap2 are handles to the two images obtained using LoadBitmap(), these variables are global and are initialized under WM_CREATE - The two buttons in the application are labeled Opaque++ (make more opaque, less transparent) and Opaque-- (make less opaque, more transparent) - DrawPics(HWND hWnd, int step=0); is the function called to draw the images on the screen. This is called from under WM_PAINT and also when the buttons are clicked. When Opaque++ is clicked the 'step' value passed to DrawPics() is +20 and when Opaque-- is clicked the 'step' value is -20. The default value of 'step' is 0 Now lets take a look at my first implementation: //this funciton causes flicker, cos it draws directly to screen several times void DrawPics(HWND hWnd, int step) {     HDC hdc=NULL, hMemDC=NULL;     BLENDFUNCTION bf;     static UINT32 transparency = 100;     //no point in drawing when transparency is 0 and user clicks Opaque--     if (transparency == 0 && step < 0)         return;     //no point in drawing when transparency is 240 (opaque) and user clicks Opaque++     if (transparency == 240 && step > 0)         return;         hdc = GetDC(hWnd);     if (!hdc)         return;     //create a memory DC     hMemDC = CreateCompatibleDC(hdc);     if (!hMemDC)     {         ReleaseDC(hWnd, hdc);         return;     }     //while increasing transparency, clear the contents of screen     if (step < 0)     {         RECT rect = {0, 0, 240, 200};         FillRect(hdc, &rect, (HBRUSH)GetStockObject(WHITE_BRUSH));     }     SelectObject(hMemDC, hBitmap2);     BitBlt(hdc, 0, 25, 240, 100, hMemDC, 0, 0, SRCCOPY);         SelectObject(hMemDC, hBitmap);     transparency += step;     if (transparency >= 240)         transparency = 240;     if (transparency <= 0)         transparency = 0;     bf.BlendOp = AC_SRC_OVER;     bf.BlendFlags = 0;     bf.SourceConstantAlpha = transparency;     bf.AlphaFormat = 0;            AlphaBlend(hdc, 0, 75, 240, 100, hMemDC, 0, 0, 240, 100, bf);     DeleteDC(hMemDC);     ReleaseDC(hWnd, hdc); }   In the code above, we first get the window DC using GetDC() and create a memory DC using CreateCompatibleDC(). Then we select hBitmap2 onto the memory DC and Blt it on the window DC (hdc). Next, we select the other image, hBitmap, onto memory DC and AlphaBlend() it over window DC. As I told you before, this implementation causes flickering because it draws directly on the screen (hdc) several times. The video below shows what happens when the buttons were clicked rapidly: Well, the video recording tool I use captures only 15 frames per second and so the flickering is not visible in the video. So you're gonna have to trust me on this, it flickers (; To solve this problem we make sure that the drawing to the screen happens only once and to do that we create an additional memory DC, hTempDC. We perform all our drawing on this memory DC and finally when it is ready we Blt hTempDC on hdc, and the images are displayed in one go. Here is the code for our new DrawPics() function: //no flicker void DrawPics(HWND hWnd, int step) {     HDC hdc=NULL, hMemDC=NULL, hTempDC=NULL;     BLENDFUNCTION bf;     HBITMAP hBitmapTemp=NULL, hBitmapOld=NULL;     static UINT32 transparency = 100;     //no point in drawing when transparency is 0 and user clicks Opaque--     if (transparency == 0 && step < 0)         return;     //no point in drawing when transparency is 240 (opaque) and user clicks Opaque++     if (transparency == 240 && step > 0)         return;         hdc = GetDC(hWnd);     if (!hdc)         return;     hMemDC = CreateCompatibleDC(hdc);     hTempDC = CreateCompatibleDC(hdc);     hBitmapTemp = CreateCompatibleBitmap(hdc, 240, 150);     hBitmapOld = (HBITMAP)SelectObject(hTempDC, hBitmapTemp);     if (!hMemDC)     {         ReleaseDC(hWnd, hdc);         return;     }     //while increasing transparency, clear the contents     if (step < 0)     {         RECT rect = {0, 0, 240, 150};         FillRect(hTempDC, &rect, (HBRUSH)GetStockObject(WHITE_BRUSH));     }     SelectObject(hMemDC, hBitmap2);     //Blt hBitmap2 directly to hTempDC     BitBlt(hTempDC, 0, 0, 240, 100, hMemDC, 0, 0, SRCCOPY);         SelectObject(hMemDC, hBitmap);     transparency += step;     if (transparency >= 240)         transparency = 240;     if (transparency <= 0)         transparency = 0;     bf.BlendOp = AC_SRC_OVER;     bf.BlendFlags = 0;     bf.SourceConstantAlpha = transparency;     bf.AlphaFormat = 0;            AlphaBlend(hTempDC, 0, 50, 240, 100, hMemDC, 0, 0, 240, 100, bf);     //now hTempDC is ready, blt it directly on hdc     BitBlt(hdc, 0, 25, 240, 150, hTempDC, 0, 0, SRCCOPY);     SelectObject(hTempDC, hBitmapOld);     DeleteObject(hBitmapTemp);     DeleteDC(hMemDC);     DeleteDC(hTempDC);     ReleaseDC(hWnd, hdc); }   This function is very similar to the first version, except for the use of hTempDC. Another point to note is the use of CreateCompatibleBitmap(). When a memory device context is created using CreateCompatibleDC(), the context is exactly one monochrome pixel high and one monochrome pixel wide. So in order for us to draw anything onto hTempDC, we first have to set a bitmap on it. We use CreateCompatibleBitmap() to create a bitmap of required dimension (240x150 above), and then select this bitmap onto hTempDC. Think of it as utilizing an extra canvas, drawing everything on the canvas and finally transferring the contents to the display in one scoop. And with this version the flickering is gone, video follows:   If you want the entire solutions source code then leave a message, I will share the code over SkyDrive.

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• cocos2dx - Custom Fragment Shader and CCRenderTexture

  - by saiy2k

  I have a CCRenderTexture that is filled with a sprite when the scene is loaded, as follows, canvas = CCRenderTexture::create(this->getContentSize().width, this->getContentSize().height); canvas->setPosition(data->position); canvas->beginWithClear(0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0); this->visit(); canvas->end(); The above code is written within a class, which derives from CCSprite (Hence this). Then, in another function applyShader(), I create a sprite named splat, from the texture of CCRenderTexture *canvas. Thus splat will contain the whole texture of canvas. Now I apply a custom fragment shader to the splat by calling the function splat->renderShader(), which will modify some small portion of the whole texture. Then I draw the modified texture back to the CCRenderTexture *canvas. Hence, applyShader() will * take a texture from CCRenderTexture, * create a sprite based on it, * apply a fragment shader to it * and draw the modified texture back to CCRenderTexture. This applyShader() will be called repetitively and its code is as follows: splat = Splat::createWithTexture(art->canvas->getSprite()->getTexture()); splat->renderShader(); art->canvas->begin(); splat->visit(); art->canvas->end(); My shader code is (nothing fancy) precision mediump float; varying vec2 v_texCoord; uniform sampler2D u_texture; uniform sampler2D u_colorRampTexture; uniform float params[5]; void main() { gl_FragColor = texture2D(u_texture, v_texCoord); return; } So, with the above code I expect the original sprite this to get rendered over and over again without any visual changes. But on each call to applyShader(), the texture is getting stretched a little and the stretched image is getting rendered. After some 10 calls, the image gets so distorted. Can someone please tell me where I am going wrong? Thanks :-) PS: All code shown here is partial, not complete code. Edit: Adding Screens Update: The problem has nothing to do with shaders it seems. It happens even when I dont call renderShader(). The actual lines of code is: splat = Splat::createWithTexture(art->canvas->getSprite()->getTexture()); splat->setPosition( ccp( art->getContentSize().width * 0.5, art->getContentSize().height * 0.5 ) ); splat->setFlipY(true); art->canvas->begin(); splat->visit(); art->canvas->end();

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• Super-Charge GIMP’s Image Editing Capabilities with G’MIC [Cross-Platform]

  - by Asian Angel

  Recently we showed you how to enhance GIMP’s image editing power and today we help you super-charge GIMP even more. G’MIC (GREYC’s Magic Image Converter) will add an impressive array of filters and effects to your GIMP installation for image editing goodness. Note: We applied the Contrast Swiss Mask filter to the image shown in the screenshot above to create a nice, warm sunset effect. To add the new PPA open the Ubuntu Software Center, go to the Edit Menu, and select Software Sources. Access the Other Software Tab in the Software Sources Window and add the first of the PPAs shown below (outlined in red). The second PPA will be automatically added to your system. Once you have the new PPAs set up, go back to the Ubuntu Software Center and do a search for “G’MIC”. You will find two listings available and can select either one to add G’MIC to your system (both work equally well). Click on More Info for the listing that you choose and scroll down to where Add-ons are listed. Make sure to select the Add-on listed, click Apply Changes when it appears, and then click Install. We have both shown here for your convenience… When you get ready to use G’MIC to enhance an image, go to the Filters Menu and select G’MIC. A new window will appear where you can select from an impressive array of filters available for your use. Have fun! Command Line Installation For those of you who prefer using the command line for installation use the following commands: sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ferramroberto/gimp sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install gmic gimp-gmic Links Note: G’MIC is available for Linux, Windows, and Mac. G’MIC PPA at Launchpad [via Web Upd8] G’MIC Homepage at Sourceforge *Downloads for all three platforms available here. Bonus The anime wallpaper shown in the screenshots above can be found here: anime sport [DesktopNexus] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Learn To Adjust Contrast Like a Pro in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Have You Ever Wondered How Your Operating System Got Its Name? Should You Delete Windows 7 Service Pack Backup Files to Save Space? What Can Super Mario Teach Us About Graphics Technology? Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is Released: But Should You Install It? How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions Access and Manage Your Ubuntu One Account in Chrome and Iron Mouse Over YouTube Previews YouTube Videos in Chrome Watch a Machine Get Upgraded from MS-DOS to Windows 7 [Video] Bring the Whole Ubuntu Gang Home to Your Desktop with this Mascots Wallpaper Hack Apart a Highlighter to Create UV-Reactive Flowers [Science] Add a “Textmate Style” Lightweight Text Editor with Dropbox Syncing to Chrome and Iron

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• Preview of MSDN Library Changes

  - by ScottGu

  The MSDN team has been working some potential changes to the online MSDN Library designed to help streamline the navigation experience and make it easier to find the .NET Framework information you need. To solicit feedback on the proposed changes while they are still in development, they’ve posted a preview version of some proposed changes to a new MSDN Library Preview site which you can check out.  They’ve also created a survey that leads you through the ideas and asks for your opinions on some of the changes.  We’d very much like to have as many people as possible people take the survey and give us feedback. Quick Preview of Some of the Changes Below are some examples of a few of the changes being proposed: Streamlined .NET Namespaces Navigation The current MSDN Class Library lists all .NET namespaces in a flat-namespace (sorted alphabetically): Two downsides of the above approach are: Some of the least-used namespaces are listed first (like Microsoft.Aspnet.Snapin and Microsoft.Build.BuildEngine) All sub-namespaces are listed, which makes the list a little overwhelming, and page-load times to be slow The new MSDN Library Preview Site now lists “System” namespaces first (since those are the most used), and the home-page lists just top-level namespace groups – which makes it easier to find things, and enables the page to load faster:   Class overview and members pages merged into a single topic about each class Previously you had to navigate to several different pages to find member information about types: Links to these are still available in the MSDN Library Preview Site TOC – but the members are also now listed on the overview page, which makes it easy to quickly find everything in one place: Commonly used things are nearer the top of the page One of the other usability improvements with the new MSDN Library Preview Site is that common elements like “Code Examples” and “Inheritance Hierarchy” (for classes) are now listed near the top of the help page – making them easy to quickly find: Give Us Feedback with a Survey Above are just a few of the changes made with the new MSDN preview site – there are many other changes also rolled into it.  The MSDN team is doing usability studies on the new layout and navigation right now, and would very much like feedback on it. If you have 15 minutes and want to help vote on which of these ideas makes it into the production MSDN site, please visit this survey before June 30, play with the changes a bit, and let the MSDN team know what you think. Important Note: the MSDN preview site is not a fully functional version of MSDN – it’s really only there to preview the new ideas themselves, so please don’t expect it to be integrated with the rest of MSDN, with search, etc.  Once the MSDN team gets feedback on some of the changes being proposed they will roll them into the live site for everyone to use. Hope this helps, Scott

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• Ancillary Objects: Separate Debug ELF Files For Solaris

  - by Ali Bahrami

  We introduced a new object ELF object type in Solaris 11 Update 1 called the Ancillary Object. This posting describes them, using material originally written during their development, the PSARC arc case, and the Solaris Linker and Libraries Manual. ELF objects contain allocable sections, which are mapped into memory at runtime, and non-allocable sections, which are present in the file for use by debuggers and observability tools, but which are not mapped or used at runtime. Typically, all of these sections exist within a single object file. Ancillary objects allow them to instead go into a separate file. There are different reasons given for wanting such a feature. One can debate whether the added complexity is worth the benefit, and in most cases it is not. However, one important case stands out — customers with very large 32-bit objects who are not ready or able to make the transition to 64-bits. We have customers who build extremely large 32-bit objects. Historically, the debug sections in these objects have used the stabs format, which is limited, but relatively compact. In recent years, the industry has transitioned to the powerful but verbose DWARF standard. In some cases, the size of these debug sections is large enough to push the total object file size past the fundamental 4GB limit for 32-bit ELF object files. The best, and ultimately only, solution to overly large objects is to transition to 64-bits. However, consider environments where: Hundreds of users may be executing the code on large shared systems. (32-bits use less memory and bus bandwidth, and on sparc runs just as fast as 64-bit code otherwise). Complex finely tuned code, where the original authors may no longer be available. Critical production code, that was expensive to qualify and bring online, and which is otherwise serving its intended purpose without issue. Users in these risk adverse and/or high scale categories have good reasons to push 32-bits objects to the limit before moving on. Ancillary objects offer these users a longer runway. Design The design of ancillary objects is intended to be simple, both to help human understanding when examining elfdump output, and to lower the bar for debuggers such as dbx to support them. The primary and ancillary objects have the same set of section headers, with the same names, in the same order (i.e. each section has the same index in both files). A single added section of type SHT_SUNW_ANCILLARY is added to both objects, containing information that allows a debugger to identify and validate both files relative to each other. Given one of these files, the ancillary section allows you to identify the other. Allocable sections go in the primary object, and non-allocable ones go into the ancillary object. A small set of non-allocable objects, notably the symbol table, are copied into both objects. As noted above, most sections are only written to one of the two objects, but both objects have the same section header array. The section header in the file that does not contain the section data is tagged with the SHF_SUNW_ABSENT section header flag to indicate its placeholder status. Compiler writers and others who produce objects can set the SUNW_SHF_PRIMARY section header flag to mark non-allocable sections that should go to the primary object rather than the ancillary. If you don't request an ancillary object, the Solaris ELF format is unchanged. Users who don't use ancillary objects do not pay for the feature. This is important, because they exist to serve a small subset of our users, and must not complicate the common case. If you do request an ancillary object, the runtime behavior of the primary object will be the same as that of a normal object. There is no added runtime cost. The primary and ancillary object together represent a logical single object. This is facilitated by the use of a single set of section headers. One can easily imagine a tool that can merge a primary and ancillary object into a single file, or the reverse. (Note that although this is an interesting intellectual exercise, we don't actually supply such a tool because there's little practical benefit above and beyond using ld to create the files). Among the benefits of this approach are: There is no need for per-file symbol tables to reflect the contents of each file. The same symbol table that would be produced for a standard object can be used. The section contents are identical in either case — there is no need to alter data to accommodate multiple files. It is very easy for a debugger to adapt to these new files, and the processing involved can be encapsulated in input/output routines. Most of the existing debugger implementation applies without modification. The limit of a 4GB 32-bit output object is now raised to 4GB of code, and 4GB of debug data. There is also the future possibility (not currently supported) to support multiple ancillary objects, each of which could contain up to 4GB of additional debug data. It must be noted however that the 32-bit DWARF debug format is itself inherently 32-bit limited, as it uses 32-bit offsets between debug sections, so the ability to employ multiple ancillary object files may not turn out to be useful. Using Ancillary Objects (From the Solaris Linker and Libraries Guide) By default, objects contain both allocable and non-allocable sections. Allocable sections are the sections that contain executable code and the data needed by that code at runtime. Non-allocable sections contain supplemental information that is not required to execute an object at runtime. These sections support the operation of debuggers and other observability tools. The non-allocable sections in an object are not loaded into memory at runtime by the operating system, and so, they have no impact on memory use or other aspects of runtime performance no matter their size. For convenience, both allocable and non-allocable sections are normally maintained in the same file. However, there are situations in which it can be useful to separate these sections. To reduce the size of objects in order to improve the speed at which they can be copied across wide area networks. To support fine grained debugging of highly optimized code requires considerable debug data. In modern systems, the debugging data can easily be larger than the code it describes. The size of a 32-bit object is limited to 4 Gbytes. In very large 32-bit objects, the debug data can cause this limit to be exceeded and prevent the creation of the object. To limit the exposure of internal implementation details. Traditionally, objects have been stripped of non-allocable sections in order to address these issues. Stripping is effective, but destroys data that might be needed later. The Solaris link-editor can instead write non-allocable sections to an ancillary object. This feature is enabled with the -z ancillary command line option. $ ld ... -z ancillary[=outfile] ...By default, the ancillary file is given the same name as the primary output object, with a .anc file extension. However, a different name can be provided by providing an outfile value to the -z ancillary option. When -z ancillary is specified, the link-editor performs the following actions. All allocable sections are written to the primary object. In addition, all non-allocable sections containing one or more input sections that have the SHF_SUNW_PRIMARY section header flag set are written to the primary object. All remaining non-allocable sections are written to the ancillary object. The following non-allocable sections are written to both the primary object and ancillary object. .shstrtab The section name string table. .symtab The full non-dynamic symbol table. .symtab_shndx The symbol table extended index section associated with .symtab. .strtab The non-dynamic string table associated with .symtab. .SUNW_ancillary Contains the information required to identify the primary and ancillary objects, and to identify the object being examined. The primary object and all ancillary objects contain the same array of sections headers. Each section has the same section index in every file. Although the primary and ancillary objects all define the same section headers, the data for most sections will be written to a single file as described above. If the data for a section is not present in a given file, the SHF_SUNW_ABSENT section header flag is set, and the sh_size field is 0. This organization makes it possible to acquire a full list of section headers, a complete symbol table, and a complete list of the primary and ancillary objects from either of the primary or ancillary objects. The following example illustrates the underlying implementation of ancillary objects. An ancillary object is created by adding the -z ancillary command line option to an otherwise normal compilation. The file utility shows that the result is an executable named a.out, and an associated ancillary object named a.out.anc. $ cat hello.c #include <stdio.h> int main(int argc, char **argv) { (void) printf("hello, world\n"); return (0); } $ cc -g -zancillary hello.c $ file a.out a.out.anc a.out: ELF 32-bit LSB executable 80386 Version 1 [FPU], dynamically linked, not stripped, ancillary object a.out.anc a.out.anc: ELF 32-bit LSB ancillary 80386 Version 1, primary object a.out $ ./a.out hello worldThe resulting primary object is an ordinary executable that can be executed in the usual manner. It is no different at runtime than an executable built without the use of ancillary objects, and then stripped of non-allocable content using the strip or mcs commands. As previously described, the primary object and ancillary objects contain the same section headers. To see how this works, it is helpful to use the elfdump utility to display these section headers and compare them. The following table shows the section header information for a selection of headers from the previous link-edit example. Index Section Name Type Primary Flags Ancillary Flags Primary Size Ancillary Size 13 .text PROGBITS ALLOC EXECINSTR ALLOC EXECINSTR SUNW_ABSENT 0x131 0 20 .data PROGBITS WRITE ALLOC WRITE ALLOC SUNW_ABSENT 0x4c 0 21 .symtab SYMTAB 0 0 0x450 0x450 22 .strtab STRTAB STRINGS STRINGS 0x1ad 0x1ad 24 .debug_info PROGBITS SUNW_ABSENT 0 0 0x1a7 28 .shstrtab STRTAB STRINGS STRINGS 0x118 0x118 29 .SUNW_ancillary SUNW_ancillary 0 0 0x30 0x30 The data for most sections is only present in one of the two files, and absent from the other file. The SHF_SUNW_ABSENT section header flag is set when the data is absent. The data for allocable sections needed at runtime are found in the primary object. The data for non-allocable sections used for debugging but not needed at runtime are placed in the ancillary file. A small set of non-allocable sections are fully present in both files. These are the .SUNW_ancillary section used to relate the primary and ancillary objects together, the section name string table .shstrtab, as well as the symbol table.symtab, and its associated string table .strtab. It is possible to strip the symbol table from the primary object. A debugger that encounters an object without a symbol table can use the .SUNW_ancillary section to locate the ancillary object, and access the symbol contained within. The primary object, and all associated ancillary objects, contain a .SUNW_ancillary section that allows all the objects to be identified and related together. $ elfdump -T SUNW_ancillary a.out a.out.anc a.out: Ancillary Section: .SUNW_ancillary index tag value [0] ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM 0x8724 [1] ANC_SUNW_MEMBER 0x1 a.out [2] ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM 0x8724 [3] ANC_SUNW_MEMBER 0x1a3 a.out.anc [4] ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM 0xfbe2 [5] ANC_SUNW_NULL 0 a.out.anc: Ancillary Section: .SUNW_ancillary index tag value [0] ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM 0xfbe2 [1] ANC_SUNW_MEMBER 0x1 a.out [2] ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM 0x8724 [3] ANC_SUNW_MEMBER 0x1a3 a.out.anc [4] ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM 0xfbe2 [5] ANC_SUNW_NULL 0 The ancillary sections for both objects contain the same number of elements, and are identical except for the first element. Each object, starting with the primary object, is introduced with a MEMBER element that gives the file name, followed by a CHECKSUM that identifies the object. In this example, the primary object is a.out, and has a checksum of 0x8724. The ancillary object is a.out.anc, and has a checksum of 0xfbe2. The first element in a .SUNW_ancillary section, preceding the MEMBER element for the primary object, is always a CHECKSUM element, containing the checksum for the file being examined. The presence of a .SUNW_ancillary section in an object indicates that the object has associated ancillary objects. The names of the primary and all associated ancillary objects can be obtained from the ancillary section from any one of the files. It is possible to determine which file is being examined from the larger set of files by comparing the first checksum value to the checksum of each member that follows. Debugger Access and Use of Ancillary Objects Debuggers and other observability tools must merge the information found in the primary and ancillary object files in order to build a complete view of the object. This is equivalent to processing the information from a single file. This merging is simplified by the primary object and ancillary objects containing the same section headers, and a single symbol table. The following steps can be used by a debugger to assemble the information contained in these files. Starting with the primary object, or any of the ancillary objects, locate the .SUNW_ancillary section. The presence of this section identifies the object as part of an ancillary group, contains information that can be used to obtain a complete list of the files and determine which of those files is the one currently being examined. Create a section header array in memory, using the section header array from the object being examined as an initial template. Open and read each file identified by the .SUNW_ancillary section in turn. For each file, fill in the in-memory section header array with the information for each section that does not have the SHF_SUNW_ABSENT flag set. The result will be a complete in-memory copy of the section headers with pointers to the data for all sections. Once this information has been acquired, the debugger can proceed as it would in the single file case, to access and control the running program. Note - The ELF definition of ancillary objects provides for a single primary object, and an arbitrary number of ancillary objects. At this time, the Oracle Solaris link-editor only produces a single ancillary object containing all non-allocable sections. This may change in the future. Debuggers and other observability tools should be written to handle the general case of multiple ancillary objects. ELF Implementation Details (From the Solaris Linker and Libraries Guide) To implement ancillary objects, it was necessary to extend the ELF format to add a new object type (ET_SUNW_ANCILLARY), a new section type (SHT_SUNW_ANCILLARY), and 2 new section header flags (SHF_SUNW_ABSENT, SHF_SUNW_PRIMARY). In this section, I will detail these changes, in the form of diffs to the Solaris Linker and Libraries manual. Part IV ELF Application Binary Interface Chapter 13: Object File Format Object File Format Edit Note: This existing section at the beginning of the chapter describes the ELF header. There's a table of object file types, which now includes the new ET_SUNW_ANCILLARY type. e_type Identifies the object file type, as listed in the following table. NameValueMeaning ET_NONE0No file type ET_REL1Relocatable file ET_EXEC2Executable file ET_DYN3Shared object file ET_CORE4Core file ET_LOSUNW0xfefeStart operating system specific range ET_SUNW_ANCILLARY0xfefeAncillary object file ET_HISUNW0xfefdEnd operating system specific range ET_LOPROC0xff00Start processor-specific range ET_HIPROC0xffffEnd processor-specific range Sections Edit Note: This overview section defines the section header structure, and provides a high level description of known sections. It was updated to define the new SHF_SUNW_ABSENT and SHF_SUNW_PRIMARY flags and the new SHT_SUNW_ANCILLARY section. ... sh_type Categorizes the section's contents and semantics. Section types and their descriptions are listed in Table 13-5. sh_flags Sections support 1-bit flags that describe miscellaneous attributes. Flag definitions are listed in Table 13-8. ... Table 13-5 ELF Section Types, sh_type NameValue . . . SHT_LOSUNW0x6fffffee SHT_SUNW_ancillary0x6fffffee . . . ... SHT_LOSUNW - SHT_HISUNW Values in this inclusive range are reserved for Oracle Solaris OS semantics. SHT_SUNW_ANCILLARY Present when a given object is part of a group of ancillary objects. Contains information required to identify all the files that make up the group. See Ancillary Section. ... Table 13-8 ELF Section Attribute Flags NameValue . . . SHF_MASKOS0x0ff00000 SHF_SUNW_NODISCARD0x00100000 SHF_SUNW_ABSENT0x00200000 SHF_SUNW_PRIMARY0x00400000 SHF_MASKPROC0xf0000000 . . . ... SHF_SUNW_ABSENT Indicates that the data for this section is not present in this file. When ancillary objects are created, the primary object and any ancillary objects, will all have the same section header array, to facilitate merging them to form a complete view of the object, and to allow them to use the same symbol tables. Each file contains a subset of the section data. The data for allocable sections is written to the primary object while the data for non-allocable sections is written to an ancillary file. The SHF_SUNW_ABSENT flag is used to indicate that the data for the section is not present in the object being examined. When the SHF_SUNW_ABSENT flag is set, the sh_size field of the section header must be 0. An application encountering an SHF_SUNW_ABSENT section can choose to ignore the section, or to search for the section data within one of the related ancillary files. SHF_SUNW_PRIMARY The default behavior when ancillary objects are created is to write all allocable sections to the primary object and all non-allocable sections to the ancillary objects. The SHF_SUNW_PRIMARY flag overrides this behavior. Any output section containing one more input section with the SHF_SUNW_PRIMARY flag set is written to the primary object without regard for its allocable status. ... Two members in the section header, sh_link, and sh_info, hold special information, depending on section type. Table 13-9 ELF sh_link and sh_info Interpretation sh_typesh_linksh_info . . . SHT_SUNW_ANCILLARY The section header index of the associated string table. 0 . . . Special Sections Edit Note: This section describes the sections used in Solaris ELF objects, using the types defined in the previous description of section types. It was updated to define the new .SUNW_ancillary (SHT_SUNW_ANCILLARY) section. Various sections hold program and control information. Sections in the following table are used by the system and have the indicated types and attributes. Table 13-10 ELF Special Sections NameTypeAttribute . . . .SUNW_ancillarySHT_SUNW_ancillaryNone . . . ... .SUNW_ancillary Present when a given object is part of a group of ancillary objects. Contains information required to identify all the files that make up the group. See Ancillary Section for details. ... Ancillary Section Edit Note: This new section provides the format reference describing the layout of a .SUNW_ancillary section and the meaning of the various tags. Note that these sections use the same tag/value concept used for dynamic and capabilities sections, and will be familiar to anyone used to working with ELF. In addition to the primary output object, the Solaris link-editor can produce one or more ancillary objects. Ancillary objects contain non-allocable sections that would normally be written to the primary object. When ancillary objects are produced, the primary object and all of the associated ancillary objects contain a SHT_SUNW_ancillary section, containing information that identifies these related objects. Given any one object from such a group, the ancillary section provides the information needed to identify and interpret the others. This section contains an array of the following structures. See sys/elf.h. typedef struct { Elf32_Word a_tag; union { Elf32_Word a_val; Elf32_Addr a_ptr; } a_un; } Elf32_Ancillary; typedef struct { Elf64_Xword a_tag; union { Elf64_Xword a_val; Elf64_Addr a_ptr; } a_un; } Elf64_Ancillary; For each object with this type, a_tag controls the interpretation of a_un. a_val These objects represent integer values with various interpretations. a_ptr These objects represent file offsets or addresses. The following ancillary tags exist. Table 13-NEW1 ELF Ancillary Array Tags NameValuea_un ANC_SUNW_NULL0Ignored ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM1a_val ANC_SUNW_MEMBER2a_ptr ANC_SUNW_NULL Marks the end of the ancillary section. ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM Provides the checksum for a file in the c_val element. When ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM precedes the first instance of ANC_SUNW_MEMBER, it provides the checksum for the object from which the ancillary section is being read. When it follows an ANC_SUNW_MEMBER tag, it provides the checksum for that member. ANC_SUNW_MEMBER Specifies an object name. The a_ptr element contains the string table offset of a null-terminated string, that provides the file name. An ancillary section must always contain an ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM before the first instance of ANC_SUNW_MEMBER, identifying the current object. Following that, there should be an ANC_SUNW_MEMBER for each object that makes up the complete set of objects. Each ANC_SUNW_MEMBER should be followed by an ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM for that object. A typical ancillary section will therefore be structured as: TagMeaning ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUMChecksum of this object ANC_SUNW_MEMBERName of object #1 ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUMChecksum for object #1 . . . ANC_SUNW_MEMBERName of object N ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUMChecksum for object N ANC_SUNW_NULL An object can therefore identify itself by comparing the initial ANC_SUNW_CHECKSUM to each of the ones that follow, until it finds a match. Related Other Work The GNU developers have also encountered the need/desire to support separate debug information files, and use the solution detailed at http://sourceware.org/gdb/onlinedocs/gdb/Separate-Debug-Files.html. At the current time, the separate debug file is constructed by building the standard object first, and then copying the debug data out of it in a separate post processing step, Hence, it is limited to a total of 4GB of code and debug data, just as a single object file would be. They are aware of this, and I have seen online comments indicating that they may add direct support for generating these separate files to their link-editor. It is worth noting that the GNU objcopy utility is available on Solaris, and that the Studio dbx debugger is able to use these GNU style separate debug files even on Solaris. Although this is interesting in terms giving Linux users a familiar environment on Solaris, the 4GB limit means it is not an answer to the problem of very large 32-bit objects. We have also encountered issues with objcopy not understanding Solaris-specific ELF sections, when using this approach. The GNU community also has a current effort to adapt their DWARF debug sections in order to move them to separate files before passing the relocatable objects to the linker. The details of Project Fission can be found at http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/DebugFission. The goal of this project appears to be to reduce the amount of data seen by the link-editor. The primary effort revolves around moving DWARF data to separate .dwo files so that the link-editor never encounters them. The details of modifying the DWARF data to be usable in this form are involved — please see the above URL for details.

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• Printing Infopath form 2010(.xml) in Sharepoint 2010

  - by Surendra J

  Hi Everyone, My question is related to printing an Infopath 2010 form in Sharepoint 2010.I designed an Infopath 2010 form in Infopath Designer 2010 and published it to a form library in Sharepoint 2010.The end user fill the form and store it in .xml format in the document library.Now I would like to print the form filled by the end user? Any Ideas or suggestion about the above scenario?Please consider both browser based forms and normal forms Thanking you in advance.

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• SQL SERVER – Introduction to SQL Server 2014 In-Memory OLTP

  - by Pinal Dave

  In SQL Server 2014 Microsoft has introduced a new database engine component called In-Memory OLTP aka project “Hekaton” which is fully integrated into the SQL Server Database Engine. It is optimized for OLTP workloads accessing memory resident data. In-memory OLTP helps us create memory optimized tables which in turn offer significant performance improvement for our typical OLTP workload. The main objective of memory optimized table is to ensure that highly transactional tables could live in memory and remain in memory forever without even losing out a single record. The most significant part is that it still supports majority of our Transact-SQL statement. Transact-SQL stored procedures can be compiled to machine code for further performance improvements on memory-optimized tables. This engine is designed to ensure higher concurrency and minimal blocking. In-Memory OLTP alleviates the issue of locking, using a new type of multi-version optimistic concurrency control. It also substantially reduces waiting for log writes by generating far less log data and needing fewer log writes. Points to remember Memory-optimized tables refer to tables using the new data structures and key words added as part of In-Memory OLTP. Disk-based tables refer to your normal tables which we used to create in SQL Server since its inception. These tables use a fixed size 8 KB pages that need to be read from and written to disk as a unit. Natively compiled stored procedures refer to an object Type which is new and is supported by in-memory OLTP engine which convert it into machine code, which can further improve the data access performance for memory –optimized tables. Natively compiled stored procedures can only reference memory-optimized tables, they can’t be used to reference any disk –based table. Interpreted Transact-SQL stored procedures, which is what SQL Server has always used. Cross-container transactions refer to transactions that reference both memory-optimized tables and disk-based tables. Interop refers to interpreted Transact-SQL that references memory-optimized tables. Using In-Memory OLTP In-Memory OLTP engine has been available as part of SQL Server 2014 since June 2013 CTPs. Installation of In-Memory OLTP is part of the SQL Server setup application. The In-Memory OLTP components can only be installed with a 64-bit edition of SQL Server 2014 hence they are not available with 32-bit editions. Creating Databases Any database that will store memory-optimized tables must have a MEMORY_OPTIMIZED_DATA filegroup. This filegroup is specifically designed to store the checkpoint files needed by SQL Server to recover the memory-optimized tables, and although the syntax for creating the filegroup is almost the same as for creating a regular filestream filegroup, it must also specify the option CONTAINS MEMORY_OPTIMIZED_DATA. Here is an example of a CREATE DATABASE statement for a database that can support memory-optimized tables: CREATE DATABASE InMemoryDB ON PRIMARY(NAME = [InMemoryDB_data], FILENAME = 'D:\data\InMemoryDB_data.mdf', size=500MB), FILEGROUP [SampleDB_mod_fg] CONTAINS MEMORY_OPTIMIZED_DATA (NAME = [InMemoryDB_mod_dir], FILENAME = 'S:\data\InMemoryDB_mod_dir'), (NAME = [InMemoryDB_mod_dir], FILENAME = 'R:\data\InMemoryDB_mod_dir') LOG ON (name = [SampleDB_log], Filename='L:\log\InMemoryDB_log.ldf', size=500MB) COLLATE Latin1_General_100_BIN2; Above example code creates files on three different drives (D:  S: and R:) for the data files and in memory storage so if you would like to run this code kindly change the drive and folder locations as per your convenience. Also notice that binary collation was specified as Windows (non-SQL). BIN2 collation is the only collation support at this point for any indexes on memory optimized tables. It is also possible to add a MEMORY_OPTIMIZED_DATA file group to an existing database, use the below command to achieve the same. ALTER DATABASE AdventureWorks2012 ADD FILEGROUP hekaton_mod CONTAINS MEMORY_OPTIMIZED_DATA; GO ALTER DATABASE AdventureWorks2012 ADD FILE (NAME='hekaton_mod', FILENAME='S:\data\hekaton_mod') TO FILEGROUP hekaton_mod; GO Creating Tables There is no major syntactical difference between creating a disk based table or a memory –optimized table but yes there are a few restrictions and a few new essential extensions. Essentially any memory-optimized table should use the MEMORY_OPTIMIZED = ON clause as shown in the Create Table query example. DURABILITY clause (SCHEMA_AND_DATA or SCHEMA_ONLY) Memory-optimized table should always be defined with a DURABILITY value which can be either SCHEMA_AND_DATA or  SCHEMA_ONLY the former being the default. A memory-optimized table defined with DURABILITY=SCHEMA_ONLY will not persist the data to disk which means the data durability is compromised whereas DURABILITY= SCHEMA_AND_DATA ensures that data is also persisted along with the schema. Indexing Memory Optimized Table A memory-optimized table must always have an index for all tables created with DURABILITY= SCHEMA_AND_DATA and this can be achieved by declaring a PRIMARY KEY Constraint at the time of creating a table. The following example shows a PRIMARY KEY index created as a HASH index, for which a bucket count must also be specified. CREATE TABLE Mem_Table ( [Name] VARCHAR(32) NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY NONCLUSTERED HASH WITH (BUCKET_COUNT = 100000), [City] VARCHAR(32) NULL, [State_Province] VARCHAR(32) NULL, [LastModified] DATETIME NOT NULL, ) WITH (MEMORY_OPTIMIZED = ON, DURABILITY = SCHEMA_AND_DATA); Now as you can see in the above query example we have used the clause MEMORY_OPTIMIZED = ON to make sure that it is considered as a memory optimized table and not just a normal table and also used the DURABILITY Clause= SCHEMA_AND_DATA which means it will persist data along with metadata and also you can notice this table has a PRIMARY KEY mentioned upfront which is also a mandatory clause for memory-optimized tables. We will talk more about HASH Indexes and BUCKET_COUNT in later articles on this topic which will be focusing more on Row and Index storage on Memory-Optimized tables. So stay tuned for that as well. Now as we covered the basics of Memory Optimized tables and understood the key things to remember while using memory optimized tables, let’s explore more using examples to understand the Performance gains using memory-optimized tables. I will be using the database which i created earlier in this article i.e. InMemoryDB in the below Demo Exercise. USE InMemoryDB GO -- Creating a disk based table CREATE TABLE dbo.Disktable ( Id INT IDENTITY, Name CHAR(40) ) GO CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX IX_ID ON dbo.Disktable (Id) GO -- Creating a memory optimized table with similar structure and DURABILITY = SCHEMA_AND_DATA CREATE TABLE dbo.Memorytable_durable ( Id INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY NONCLUSTERED Hash WITH (bucket_count =1000000), Name CHAR(40) ) WITH (MEMORY_OPTIMIZED = ON, DURABILITY = SCHEMA_AND_DATA) GO -- Creating an another memory optimized table with similar structure but DURABILITY = SCHEMA_Only CREATE TABLE dbo.Memorytable_nondurable ( Id INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY NONCLUSTERED Hash WITH (bucket_count =1000000), Name CHAR(40) ) WITH (MEMORY_OPTIMIZED = ON, DURABILITY = SCHEMA_only) GO -- Now insert 100000 records in dbo.Disktable and observe the Time Taken DECLARE @i_t bigint SET @i_t =1 WHILE @i_t<= 100000 BEGIN INSERT INTO dbo.Disktable(Name) VALUES('sachin' + CONVERT(VARCHAR,@i_t)) SET @i_t+=1 END -- Do the same inserts for Memory table dbo.Memorytable_durable and observe the Time Taken DECLARE @i_t bigint SET @i_t =1 WHILE @i_t<= 100000 BEGIN INSERT INTO dbo.Memorytable_durable VALUES(@i_t, 'sachin' + CONVERT(VARCHAR,@i_t)) SET @i_t+=1 END -- Now finally do the same inserts for Memory table dbo.Memorytable_nondurable and observe the Time Taken DECLARE @i_t bigint SET @i_t =1 WHILE @i_t<= 100000 BEGIN INSERT INTO dbo.Memorytable_nondurable VALUES(@i_t, 'sachin' + CONVERT(VARCHAR,@i_t)) SET @i_t+=1 END The above 3 Inserts took 1.20 minutes, 54 secs, and 2 secs respectively to insert 100000 records on my machine with 8 Gb RAM. This proves the point that memory-optimized tables can definitely help businesses achieve better performance for their highly transactional business table and memory- optimized tables with Durability SCHEMA_ONLY is even faster as it does not bother persisting its data to disk which makes it supremely fast. Koenig Solutions is one of the few organizations which offer IT training on SQL Server 2014 and all its updates. Now, I leave the decision on using memory_Optimized tables on you, I hope you like this article and it helped you understand  the fundamentals of IN-Memory OLTP . Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Koenig

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• Integrating Flickr with ASP.Net application

  - by sreejukg

  Flickr is the popular photo management and sharing application offered by yahoo. The services from flicker allow you to store and share photos and videos online. Flicker offers strong API support for almost all services they provide. Using this API, developers can integrate photos to their public website. Since 2005, developers have collaborated on top of Flickr's APIs to build fun, creative, and gorgeous experiences around photos that extend beyond Flickr. In this article I am going to demonstrate how easily you can bring the photos stored on flicker to your website. Let me explain the scenario this article is trying to address. I have a flicker account where I upload photos and share in many ways offered by Flickr. Now I have a public website, instead of re-upload the photos again to public website, I want to show this from Flickr. Also I need complete control over what photo to display. So I went and referred the Flickr documentation and there is API support ready to address my scenario (and more… ). FlickerAPI for ASP.Net To Integrate Flicker with ASP.Net applications, there is a library available in CodePlex. You can find it here http://flickrnet.codeplex.com/ Visit the URL and download the latest version. The download includes a Zip file, when you unzip you will get a number of dlls. Since I am going to use ASP.Net application, I need FlickrNet.dll. See the screenshot of all the dlls, and there is a help file available in the download (.chm) for your reference. Once you have the dll, you need to use Flickr API from your website. I assume you have a flicker account and you are familiar with Flicker services. Arrange your photos using Sets in Flickr In flicker, you can define sets and add your uploaded photos to sets. You can compare set to photo album. A set is a logical collection of photos, which is an excellent option for you to categorize your photos. Typically you will have a number of sets each set having few photos. You can write application that brings photos from sets to your website. For the purpose of this article I already created a set Flickr and added some photos to it. Once you logged in to Flickr, you can see the Sets under the Menu. In the Sets page, you will see all the sets you have created. As you notice, you can see certain sample images I have uploaded just to test the functionality. Though I wish I couldn’t create good photos so please bear with me. I have created 2 photo sets named Blue Album and Red Album. Click on the image for the set, will take you to the corresponding set page. In the set “Red Album” there are 4 photos and the set has a unique ID (highlighted in the URL). You can simply retrieve the photos with the set id from your application. In this article I am going to retrieve the images from Red album in my ASP.Net page. For that First I need to setup FlickrAPI for my usage. Configure Flickr API Key As I mentioned, we are going to use Flickr API to retrieve the photos stored in Flickr. In order to get access to Flickr API, you need an API key. To create an API key, navigate to the URL http://www.flickr.com/services/apps/create/ Click on Request an API key link, now you need to tell Flickr whether your application in commercial or non-commercial. I have selected a non-commercial key. Now you need to enter certain information about your application. Once you enter the details, Click on the submit button. Now Flickr will create the API key for your application. Generating non-commercial API key is very easy, in couple of steps the key will be generated and you can use the key in your application immediately. ASP.Net application for retrieving photos Now we need write an ASP.Net application that display pictures from Flickr. Create an empty web application (I named this as FlickerIntegration) and add a reference to FlickerNet.dll. Add a web form page to the application where you will retrieve and display photos(I have named this as Gallery.aspx). After doing all these, the solution explorer will look similar to following. I have used the below code in the Gallery.aspx page. The output for the above code is as follows. I am going to explain the code line by line here. First it is adding a reference to the FlickrNet namespace. using FlickrNet; Then create a Flickr object by using your API key. Flickr f = new Flickr("<yourAPIKey>"); Now when you retrieve photos, you can decide what all fields you need to retrieve from Flickr. Every photo in Flickr contains lots of information. Retrieving all will affect the performance. For the demonstration purpose, I have retrieved all the available fields as follows. PhotoSearchExtras.All But if you want to specify the fields you can use logical OR operator(|). For e.g. the following statement will retrieve owner name and date taken. PhotoSearchExtras extraInfo = PhotoSearchExtras.OwnerName | PhotoSearchExtras.DateTaken; Then retrieve all the photos from a photo set using PhotoSetsGetPhotos method. I have passed the PhotoSearchExtras object created earlier. PhotosetPhotoCollection photos = f.PhotosetsGetPhotos("72157629872940852", extraInfo); The PhotoSetsGetPhotos method will return a collection of Photo objects. You can just navigate through the collection using a foreach statement. foreach (Photo p in photos) {     //access each photo properties } Photo class have lot of properties that map with the properties from Flickr. The chm documentation comes along with the CodePlex download is a great asset for you to understand the fields. In the above code I just used the following p.LargeUrl – retrieves the large image url for the photo. p.ThumbnailUrl – retrieves the thumbnail url for the photo p.Title – retrieves the Title of the photo p.DateUploaded – retrieves the date of upload Visual Studio intellisense will give you all properties, so it is easy, you can just try with Visual Studio intellisense to find the right properties you are looking for. Most of hem are self-explanatory. So you can try retrieving the required properties. In the above code, I just pushed the photos to the page. In real time you can use the retrieved photos along with JQuery libraries to create animated photo galleries, slideshows etc. Configuration and Troubleshooting If you get access denied error while executing the code, you need to disable the caching in Flickr API. FlickrNet cache the photos to your local disk when retrieved. You can specify a cache folder where the application need write permission. You can specify the Cache folder in the code as follows. Flickr.CacheLocation = Server.MapPath("./FlickerCache/"); If the application doesn’t have have write permission to the cache folder, the application will throw access denied error. If you cannot give write permission to the cache folder, then you must disable the caching. You can do this from code as follows. Flickr.CacheDisabled = true; Disabling cache will have an impact on the performance. Take care! Also you can define the Flickr settings in web.config file.You can find the documentation here. http://flickrnet.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=ExampleConfigFile&ProjectName=flickrnet Flickr is a great place for storing and sharing photos. The API access allows developers to do seamless integration with the photos uploaded on Flickr.

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• Start Developing a Multiplayer Online Client to host existing video game

  - by Rami.Shareef

  GameRanger Garena ... etc I'm planning to start developing a small online client like these mentioned above (for friends usage), where the player that hosts the game is the server him self. was looking through the web for something to start with, but couldnt find any resources for this request!. Planning to do it with .NET technology, I have a good decent development experience. Any good resources to start with? the game I'm aiming to support is WarCraft III The frozen throne as start

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• Mocking the Unmockable: Using Microsoft Moles with Gallio

  - by Thomas Weller

  Usual opensource mocking frameworks (like e.g. Moq or Rhino.Mocks) can mock only interfaces and virtual methods. In contrary to that, Microsoft’s Moles framework can ‘mock’ virtually anything, in that it uses runtime instrumentation to inject callbacks in the method MSIL bodies of the moled methods. Therefore, it is possible to detour any .NET method, including non-virtual/static methods in sealed types. This can be extremely helpful when dealing e.g. with code that calls into the .NET framework, some third-party or legacy stuff etc… Some useful collected resources (links to website, documentation material and some videos) can be found in my toolbox on Delicious under this link: http://delicious.com/thomasweller/toolbox+moles A Gallio extension for Moles Originally, Moles is a part of Microsoft’s Pex framework and thus integrates best with Visual Studio Unit Tests (MSTest). However, the Moles sample download contains some additional assemblies to also support other unit test frameworks. They provide a Moled attribute to ease the usage of mole types with the respective framework (there are extensions for NUnit, xUnit.net and MbUnit v2 included with the samples). As there is no such extension for the Gallio platform, I did the few required lines myself – the resulting Gallio.Moles.dll is included with the sample download. With this little assembly in place, it is possible to use Moles with Gallio like that: [Test, Moled] public void SomeTest() {     ... What you can do with it Moles can be very helpful, if you need to ‘mock’ something other than a virtual or interface-implementing method. This might be the case when dealing with some third-party component, legacy code, or if you want to ‘mock’ the .NET framework itself. Generally, you need to announce each moled type that you want to use in a test with the MoledType attribute on assembly level. For example: [assembly: MoledType(typeof(System.IO.File))] Below are some typical use cases for Moles. For a more detailed overview (incl. naming conventions and an instruction on how to create the required moles assemblies), please refer to the reference material above.  Detouring the .NET framework Imagine that you want to test a method similar to the one below, which internally calls some framework method:   public void ReadFileContent(string fileName) {     this.FileContent = System.IO.File.ReadAllText(fileName); } Using a mole, you would replace the call to the File.ReadAllText(string) method with a runtime delegate like so: [Test, Moled] [Description("This 'mocks' the System.IO.File class with a custom delegate.")] public void ReadFileContentWithMoles() {     // arrange ('mock' the FileSystem with a delegate)     System.IO.Moles.MFile.ReadAllTextString = (fname => fname == FileName ? FileContent : "WrongFileName");       // act     var testTarget = new TestTarget.TestTarget();     testTarget.ReadFileContent(FileName);       // assert     Assert.AreEqual(FileContent, testTarget.FileContent); } Detouring static methods and/or classes A static method like the below… public static string StaticMethod(int x, int y) {     return string.Format("{0}{1}", x, y); } … can be ‘mocked’ with the following: [Test, Moled] public void StaticMethodWithMoles() {     MStaticClass.StaticMethodInt32Int32 = ((x, y) => "uups");       var result = StaticClass.StaticMethod(1, 2);       Assert.AreEqual("uups", result); } Detouring constructors You can do this delegate thing even with a class’ constructor. The syntax for this is not all  too intuitive, because you have to setup the internal state of the mole, but generally it works like a charm. For example, to replace this c’tor… public class ClassWithCtor {     public int Value { get; private set; }       public ClassWithCtor(int someValue)     {         this.Value = someValue;     } } … you would do the following: [Test, Moled] public void ConstructorTestWithMoles() {     MClassWithCtor.ConstructorInt32 =            ((@class, @value) => new MClassWithCtor(@class) {ValueGet = () => 99});       var classWithCtor = new ClassWithCtor(3);       Assert.AreEqual(99, classWithCtor.Value); } Detouring abstract base classes You can also use this approach to ‘mock’ abstract base classes of a class that you call in your test. Assumed that you have something like that: public abstract class AbstractBaseClass {     public virtual string SaySomething()     {         return "Hello from base.";     } }      public class ChildClass : AbstractBaseClass {     public override string SaySomething()     {         return string.Format(             "Hello from child. Base says: '{0}'",             base.SaySomething());     } } Then you would set up the child’s underlying base class like this: [Test, Moled] public void AbstractBaseClassTestWithMoles() {     ChildClass child = new ChildClass();     new MAbstractBaseClass(child)         {                 SaySomething = () => "Leave me alone!"         }         .InstanceBehavior = MoleBehaviors.Fallthrough;       var hello = child.SaySomething();       Assert.AreEqual("Hello from child. Base says: 'Leave me alone!'", hello); } Setting the moles behavior to a value of  MoleBehaviors.Fallthrough causes the ‘original’ method to be called if a respective delegate is not provided explicitly – here it causes the ChildClass’ override of the SaySomething() method to be called. There are some more possible scenarios, where the Moles framework could be of much help (e.g. it’s also possible to detour interface implementations like IEnumerable<T> and such…). One other possibility that comes to my mind (because I’m currently dealing with that), is to replace calls from repository classes to the ADO.NET Entity Framework O/R mapper with delegates to isolate the repository classes from the underlying database, which otherwise would not be possible… Usage Since Moles relies on runtime instrumentation, mole types must be run under the Pex profiler. This only works from inside Visual Studio if you write your tests with MSTest (Visual Studio Unit Test). While other unit test frameworks generally can be used with Moles, they require the respective tests to be run via command line, executed through the moles.runner.exe tool. A typical test execution would be similar to this: moles.runner.exe <mytests.dll> /runner:<myframework.console.exe> /args:/<myargs> So, the moled test can be run through tools like NCover or a scripting tool like MSBuild (which makes them easy to run in a Continuous Integration environment), but they are somewhat unhandy to run in the usual TDD workflow (which I described in some detail here). To make this a bit more fluent, I wrote a ReSharper live template to generate the respective command line for the test (it is also included in the sample download – moled_cmd.xml). - This is just a quick-and-dirty ‘solution’. Maybe it makes sense to write an extra Gallio adapter plugin (similar to the many others that are already provided) and include it with the Gallio download package, if  there’s sufficient demand for it. As of now, the only way to run tests with the Moles framework from within Visual Studio is by using them with MSTest. From the command line, anything with a managed console runner can be used (provided that the appropriate extension is in place)… A typical Gallio/Moles command line (as generated by the mentioned R#-template) looks like that: "%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Moles\bin\moles.runner.exe" /runner:"%ProgramFiles%\Gallio\bin\Gallio.Echo.exe" "Gallio.Moles.Demo.dll" /args:/r:IsolatedAppDomain /args:/filter:"ExactType:TestFixture and Member:ReadFileContentWithMoles" -- Note: When using the command line with Echo (Gallio’s console runner), be sure to always include the IsolatedAppDomain option, otherwise the tests won’t use the instrumentation callbacks! -- License issues As I already said, the free mocking frameworks can mock only interfaces and virtual methods. if you want to mock other things, you need the Typemock Isolator tool for that, which comes with license costs (Although these ‘costs’ are ridiculously low compared to the value that such a tool can bring to a software project, spending money often is a considerable gateway hurdle in real life...).  The Moles framework also is not totally free, but comes with the same license conditions as the (closely related) Pex framework: It is free for academic/non-commercial use only, to use it in a ‘real’ software project requires an MSDN Subscription (from VS2010pro on). The demo solution The sample solution (VS 2008) can be downloaded from here. It contains the Gallio.Moles.dll which provides the here described Moled attribute, the above mentioned R#-template (moled_cmd.xml) and a test fixture containing the above described use case scenarios. To run it, you need the Gallio framework (download) and Microsoft Moles (download) being installed in the default locations. Happy testing…

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• Asp.net session on browser close

  - by budugu

  Note: Cross posted from Vijay Kodali's Blog. Permalink How to capture logoff time when user closes browser? Or How to end user session when browser closed? These are some of the frequently asked questions in asp.net forums. In this post I'll show you how to do this when you're building an ASP.NET web application. Before we start, one fact: There is no full-proof technique to catch the browser close event for 100% of time. The trouble lies in the stateless nature of HTTP. The Web server is out of the picture as soon as it finishes sending the page content to the client. After that, all you can rely on is a client side script. Unfortunately, there is no reliable client side event for browser close. Solution: The first thing you need to do is create the web service. I've added web service and named it AsynchronousSave.asmx.    Make this web service accessible from Script, by setting class qualified with the ScriptServiceAttribute attribute...  Add a method (SaveLogOffTime) marked with [WebMethod] attribute. This method simply accepts UserId as a string variable and writes that value and logoff time to text file. But you can pass as many variables as required. You can then use this information for many purposes. To end user session, you can just call Session.Abandon() in the above web method. To enable web service to be called from page’s client side code, add script manager to page. Here i am adding to SessionTest.aspx page When the user closes the browser, onbeforeunload event fires on the client side. Our final step is adding a java script function to that event, which makes web service calls. The code is simple but effective My Code HTML:( SessionTest.aspx ) C#:( SessionTest.aspx.cs ) That’s’ it. Run the application and after browser close, open the text file to see the log off time. The above code works well in IE 7/8. If you have any questions, leave a comment.

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• Asp.net session on browser close

  - by budugu

  Note: Cross posted from Vijay Kodali's Blog. Permalink How to capture logoff time when user closes browser? Or How to end user session when browser closed? These are some of the frequently asked questions in asp.net forums. In this post I'll show you how to do this when you're building an ASP.NET web application. Before we start, one fact: There is no full-proof technique to catch the browser close event for 100% of time. The trouble lies in the stateless nature of HTTP. The Web server is out of the picture as soon as it finishes sending the page content to the client. After that, all you can rely on is a client side script. Unfortunately, there is no reliable client side event for browser close. Solution: The first thing you need to do is create the web service. I've added web service and named it AsynchronousSave.asmx.    Make this web service accessible from Script, by setting class qualified with the ScriptServiceAttribute attribute...  Add a method (SaveLogOffTime) marked with [WebMethod] attribute. This method simply accepts UserId as a string variable and writes that value and logoff time to text file. But you can pass as many variables as required. You can then use this information for many purposes. To end user session, you can just call Session.Abandon() in the above web method. To enable web service to be called from page’s client side code, add script manager to page. Here i am adding to SessionTest.aspx page When the user closes the browser, onbeforeunload event fires on the client side. Our final step is adding a java script function to that event, which makes web service calls. The code is simple but effective My Code HTML:( SessionTest.aspx ) C#:( SessionTest.aspx.cs ) That’s’ it. Run the application and after browser close, open the text file to see the log off time. The above code works well in IE 7/8. If you have any questions, leave a comment.

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• How to Enable Google Chrome’s Secret Gold Icon

  - by The Geek

  You might not realize this, but there’s actually another icon hidden inside the Google Chrome executable file—and it’s a high-quality version of the same logo, but golden. Here’s how to use it. If you’re wondering how we got the smooth icon you’re seeing above, it’s because the latest dev channel version switched the icon from the older style.How to Enable Google Chrome’s Secret Gold IconHow to Create an Easy Pixel Art Avatar in Photoshop or GIMPInternet Explorer 9 Released: Here’s What You Need To Know

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• Editing Project files, Resource Editors in VS 2010

  - by rajbk

  Editing Project Files Visual Studio 2010 gives you the ability to easily edit the project file associated with your project (.csproj or .vbproj). You might do this to change settings related to how the project is compiled since proj files are MSBuild files. One would normally close Visual Studio and edit the proj file using a text editor.  The better way is to first unload the project in Visual Studio by right clicking on the project in the solution explorer and selecting “Unload Project”   The project gets unloaded and is marked “unavailable” The project file can now be edited by right clicking on the unloaded project.    After editing the file, the project can be reloaded. Resource editors in VS 2010 Visual studio also comes with a number of resource editors (see list here). For example, you could open a file using the Binary editor like so. Go to File > Open > File.. Select a File and choose the “Open With..” option in the bottom right.   We are given the option to choose an editor.   Note that clicking on the “Add..” in the dialog above allows you to include your favorite editor.   Choosing the “Binary editor” above allows us to edit the file in hex format. In addition, we can also search for hex bytes or ASCII strings using the Find command.   The “Open With..” option is also available from within the solution explorer as shown below: Enjoy!   Mr. Incredible: No matter how many times you save the world, it always manages to get back in jeopardy again. Sometimes I just want it to stay saved! You know, for a little bit? I feel like the maid; I just cleaned up this mess! Can we keep it clean for... for ten minutes!

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• Using the HTML5 &lt;input type=&quot;file&quot; multiple=&quot;multiple&quot;&gt; Tag in ASP.NET

  - by Rick Strahl

  Per HTML5 spec the <input type="file" /> tag allows for multiple files to be picked from a single File upload button. This is actually a very subtle change that's very useful as it makes it much easier to send multiple files to the server without using complex uploader controls. Please understand though, that even though you can send multiple files using the <input type="file" /> tag, the process of how those files are sent hasn't really changed - there's still no progress information or other hooks that allow you to automatically make for a nicer upload experience without additional libraries or code. For that you will still need some sort of library (I'll post an example in my next blog post using plUpload). All the new features allow for is to make it easier to select multiple images from disk in one operation. Where you might have required many file upload controls before to upload several files, one File control can potentially do the job. How it works To create a file input box that allows with multiple file support you can simply do:<form method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data"> <label>Upload Images:</label> <input type="file" multiple="multiple" name="File1" id="File1" accept="image/*" /> <hr /> <input type="submit" id="btnUpload" value="Upload Images" /> </form> Now when the file open dialog pops up - depending on the browser and whether the browser supports it - you can pick multiple files. Here I'm using Firefox using the thumbnail preview I can easily pick images to upload on a form: Note that I can select multiple images in the dialog all of which get stored in the file textbox. The UI for this can be different in some browsers. For example Chrome displays 3 files selected as text next to the Browse… button when I choose three rather than showing any files in the textbox. Most other browsers display the standard file input box and display the multiple filenames as a comma delimited list in the textbox. Note that you can also specify the accept attribute in the <input> tag, which specifies a mime-type to specify what type of content to allow.Here I'm only allowing images (image/*) and the browser complies by just showing me image files to display. Likewise I could use text/* for all text formats registered on the machine or text/xml to only show XML files (which would include xml,xst,xsd etc.). Capturing Files on the Server with ASP.NET When you upload files to an ASP.NET server there are a couple of things to be aware of. When multiple files are uploaded from a single file control, they are assigned the same name. In other words if I select 3 files to upload on the File1 control shown above I get three file form variables named File1. This means I can't easily retrieve files by their name:HttpPostedFileBase file = Request.Files["File1"]; because there will be multiple files for a given name. The above only selects the first file. Instead you can only reliably retrieve files by their index. Below is an example I use in app to capture a number of images uploaded and store them into a database using a business object and EF 4.2.for (int i = 0; i < Request.Files.Count; i++) { HttpPostedFileBase file = Request.Files[i]; if (file.ContentLength == 0) continue; if (file.ContentLength > App.Configuration.MaxImageUploadSize) { ErrorDisplay.ShowError("File " + file.FileName + " is too large. Max upload size is: " + App.Configuration.MaxImageUploadSize); return View("UploadClassic",model); } var image = new ClassifiedsBusiness.Image(); var ms = new MemoryStream(16498); file.InputStream.CopyTo(ms); image.Entered = DateTime.Now; image.EntryId = model.Entry.Id; image.ContentType = "image/jpeg"; image.ImageData = ms.ToArray(); ms.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin); // resize image if necessary and turn into jpeg Bitmap bmp = Imaging.ResizeImage(ms.ToArray(), App.Configuration.MaxImageWidth, App.Configuration.MaxImageHeight); ms.Close(); ms = new MemoryStream(); bmp.Save(ms,ImageFormat.Jpeg); image.ImageData = ms.ToArray(); bmp.Dispose(); ms.Close(); model.Entry.Images.Add(image); } This works great and also allows you to capture input from multiple input controls if you are dealing with browsers that don't support multiple file selections in the file upload control. The important thing here is that I iterate over the files by index, rather than using a foreach loop over the Request.Files collection. The files collection returns key name strings, rather than the actual files (who thought that was good idea at Microsoft?), and so that isn't going to work since you end up getting multiple keys with the same name. Instead a plain for loop has to be used to loop over all files. Another Option in ASP.NET MVC If you're using ASP.NET MVC you can use the code above as well, but you have yet another option to capture multiple uploaded files by using a parameter for your post action method.public ActionResult Save(HttpPostedFileBase[] file1) { foreach (var file in file1) { if (file.ContentLength < 0) continue; // do something with the file }} Note that in order for this to work you have to specify each posted file variable individually in the parameter list. This works great if you have a single file upload to deal with. You can also pass this in addition to your main model to separate out a ViewModel and a set of uploaded files:public ActionResult Edit(EntryViewModel model,HttpPostedFileBase[] uploadedFile) You can also make the uploaded files part of the ViewModel itself - just make sure you use the appropriate naming for the variable name in the HTML document (since there's Html.FileFor() extension). Browser Support You knew this was coming, right? The feature is really nice, but unfortunately not supported universally yet. Once again Internet Explorer is the problem: No shipping version of Internet Explorer supports multiple file uploads. IE10 supposedly will, but even IE9 does not. All other major browsers - Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera - support multi-file uploads in their latest versions. So how can you handle this? If you need to provide multiple file uploads you can simply add multiple file selection boxes and let people either select multiple files with a single upload file box or use multiples. Alternately you can do some browser detection and if IE is used simply show the extra file upload boxes. It's not ideal, but either one of these approaches makes life easier for folks that use a decent browser and leaves you with a functional interface for those that don't. Here's a UI I recently built as an alternate uploader with multiple file upload buttons: I say this is my 'alternate' uploader - for my primary uploader I continue to use an add-in solution. Specifically I use plUpload and I'll discuss how that's implemented in my next post. Although I think that plUpload (and many of the other packaged JavaScript upload solutions) are a better choice especially for large uploads, for simple one file uploads input boxes work well enough. The advantage of this solution is that it's very easy to handle on the server side. Any of the JavaScript controls require special handling for uploads which I'll also discuss in my next post.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in HTML5  ASP.NET  MVC   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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• RequestValidation Changes in ASP.NET 4.0

  - by Rick Strahl

  There’s been a change in the way the ValidateRequest attribute on WebForms works in ASP.NET 4.0. I noticed this today while updating a post on my WebLog all of which contain raw HTML and so all pretty much trigger request validation. I recently upgraded this app from ASP.NET 2.0 to 4.0 and it’s now failing to update posts. At first this was difficult to track down because of custom error handling in my app – the custom error handler traps the exception and logs it with only basic error information so the full detail of the error was initially hidden. After some more experimentation in development mode the error that occurs is the typical ASP.NET validate request error (‘A potentially dangerous Request.Form value was detetected…’) which looks like this in ASP.NET 4.0: At first when I got this I was real perplexed as I didn’t read the entire error message and because my page does have: <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="NewEntry.aspx.cs" Inherits="Westwind.WebLog.NewEntry" MasterPageFile="~/App_Templates/Standard/AdminMaster.master" ValidateRequest="false" EnableEventValidation="false" EnableViewState="false" %> WTF? ValidateRequest would seem like it should be enough, but alas in ASP.NET 4.0 apparently that setting alone is no longer enough. Reading the fine print in the error explains that you need to explicitly set the requestValidationMode for the application back to V2.0 in web.config: <httpRuntime executionTimeout="300" requestValidationMode="2.0" /> Kudos for the ASP.NET team for putting up a nice error message that tells me how to fix this problem, but excuse me why the heck would you change this behavior to require an explicit override to an optional and by default disabled page level switch? You’ve just made a relatively simple fix to a solution a nasty morass of hard to discover configuration settings??? The original way this worked was perfectly discoverable via attributes in the page. Now you can set this setting in the page and get completely unexpected behavior and you are required to set what effectively amounts to a backwards compatibility flag in the configuration file. It turns out the real reason for the .config flag is that the request validation behavior has moved from WebForms pipeline down into the entire ASP.NET/IIS request pipeline and is now applied against all requests. Here’s what the breaking changes page from Microsoft says about it: The request validation feature in ASP.NET provides a certain level of default protection against cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. In previous versions of ASP.NET, request validation was enabled by default. However, it applied only to ASP.NET pages (.aspx files and their class files) and only when those pages were executing. In ASP.NET 4, by default, request validation is enabled for all requests, because it is enabled before the BeginRequest phase of an HTTP request. As a result, request validation applies to requests for all ASP.NET resources, not just .aspx page requests. This includes requests such as Web service calls and custom HTTP handlers. Request validation is also active when custom HTTP modules are reading the contents of an HTTP request. As a result, request validation errors might now occur for requests that previously did not trigger errors. To revert to the behavior of the ASP.NET 2.0 request validation feature, add the following setting in the Web.config file: <httpRuntime requestValidationMode="2.0" /> However, we recommend that you analyze any request validation errors to determine whether existing handlers, modules, or other custom code accesses potentially unsafe HTTP inputs that could be XSS attack vectors. Ok, so ValidateRequest of the form still works as it always has but it’s actually the ASP.NET Event Pipeline, not WebForms that’s throwing the above exception as request validation is applied to every request that hits the pipeline. Creating the runtime override removes the HttpRuntime checking and restores the WebForms only behavior. That fixes my immediate problem but still leaves me wondering especially given the vague wording of the above explanation. One thing that’s missing in the description is above is one important detail: The request validation is applied only to application/x-www-form-urlencoded POST content not to all inbound POST data. When I first read this this freaked me out because it sounds like literally ANY request hitting the pipeline is affected. To make sure this is not really so I created a quick handler: public class Handler1 : IHttpHandler { public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) { context.Response.ContentType = "text/plain"; context.Response.Write("Hello World <hr>" + context.Request.Form.ToString()); } public bool IsReusable { get { return false; } } } and called it with Fiddler by posting some XML to the handler using a default form-urlencoded POST content type: and sure enough – hitting the handler also causes the request validation error and 500 server response. Changing the content type to text/xml effectively fixes the problem however, bypassing the request validation filter so Web Services/AJAX handlers and custom modules/handlers that implement custom protocols aren’t affected as long as they work with special input content types. It also looks that multipart encoding does not trigger event validation of the runtime either so this request also works fine: POST http://rasnote/weblog/handler1.ashx HTTP/1.1 Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=------7cf2a327f01ae User-Agent: West Wind Internet Protocols 5.53 Host: rasnote Content-Length: 40 Pragma: no-cache <xml>asdasd</xml>--------7cf2a327f01ae *That* probably should trigger event validation – since it is a potential HTML form submission, but it doesn’t. New Runtime Feature, Global Scope Only? Ok, so request validation is now a runtime feature but sadly it’s a feature that’s scoped to the ASP.NET Runtime – effective scope to the entire running application/app domain. You can still manually force validation using Request.ValidateInput() which gives you the option to do this in code, but that realistically will only work with the requestValidationMode set to V2.0 as well since the 4.0 mode auto-fires before code ever gets a chance to intercept the call. Given all that, the new setting in ASP.NET 4.0 seems to limit options and makes things more difficult and less flexible. Of course Microsoft gets to say ASP.NET is more secure by default because of it but what good is that if you have to turn off this flag the very first time you need to allow one single request that bypasses request validation??? This is really shortsighted design… <sigh>© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  

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• Awesome Serenity (Firefly) – My Little Pony Movie Trailer Mashup [Video]

  - by Asian Angel

  Recently we featured an awesome Watchmen – My Little Pony mashup and today we are back with another great movie trailer mixer. This latest mashup video from BronyVids once again features the ever popular ponies and the movie trailer from the 2005 movie Serenity. Just for fun here is the original Serenity trailer that the video above is based on. My Little Serenity [via Geeks are Sexy] Serenity (2005) Trailer 1080p HD [YouTube] How To Encrypt Your Cloud-Based Drive with BoxcryptorHTG Explains: Photography with Film-Based CamerasHow to Clean Your Dirty Smartphone (Without Breaking Something)

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• SQL SERVER – Detecting Leap Year in T-SQL using SQL Server 2012 – IIF, EOMONTH and CONCAT Function

  - by pinaldave

  Note: Tomorrow is February 29th. This blog post is dedicated to coming tomorrow – a special day :) Subu: “How can I find leap year in using SQL Server 2012?“ Pinal: “Are you asking me how to year 2012 is leap year using T-SQL – search online and you will find many example of the same.” Subu: “No. I am asking – How can I find leap year in using SQL Server 2012?“ Pinal: “Oh so you are asking – How can I find leap year in using SQL Server 2012?“ Subu: “Yeah - How can I find leap year in using SQL Server 2012?“ Pinal: “Let me do that for you – How can you find leap year in using SQL Server 2012?“ Indeed a fun conversation. Honestly, only reason I pasted our conversation here is – it was fun. What he was asking is that how to do it using new functions introduced in SQL Server 2012. Here is the article I have written which introduces all the new functions in SQL Server 2012 Summary of All the Analytic Functions – MSDN and SQLAuthority and 14 New Functions – A Quick Guide. There are many functions written to figure out to figure out if any year is Leap Year or not. The same I have written using T-SQL function over here. CREATE FUNCTION dbo.IsLeapYear (@year INT) RETURNS INT AS BEGIN RETURN(IIF(DATEPART(dd,(EOMONTH(CONCAT(@year,'0201')))) = 29,1,0)) END GO What I really like is that I was able to use three newly introduced function in SQL Server 2012 in above script. You can read more about them here. IIF, EOMONTH and CONCAT. You can validate above query by running following script. SELECT dbo.IsLeapYear('2011') 'IsLeapYear'; SELECT dbo.IsLeapYear('2012') 'IsLeapYear'; GO You will get result 1 if the year is leap year and 0 if year is not leap year. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL DateTime, SQL Function, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Solaris X86 AESNI OpenSSL Engine

  - by danx

  Solaris X86 AESNI OpenSSL Engine Cryptography is a major component of secure e-commerce. Since cryptography is compute intensive and adds a significant load to applications, such as SSL web servers (https), crypto performance is an important factor. Providing accelerated crypto hardware greatly helps these applications and will help lead to a wider adoption of cryptography, and lower cost, in e-commerce and other applications. The Intel Westmere microprocessor has six new instructions to acclerate AES encryption. They are called "AESNI" for "AES New Instructions". These are unprivileged instructions, so no "root", other elevated access, or context switch is required to execute these instructions. These instructions are used in a new built-in OpenSSL 1.0 engine available in Solaris 11, the aesni engine. Previous Work Previously, AESNI instructions were introduced into the Solaris x86 kernel and libraries. That is, the "aes" kernel module (used by IPsec and other kernel modules) and the Solaris pkcs11 library (for user applications). These are available in Solaris 10 10/09 (update 8) and above, and Solaris 11. The work here is to add the aesni engine to OpenSSL. X86 AESNI Instructions Intel's Xeon 5600 is one of the processors that support AESNI. This processor is used in the Sun Fire X4170 M2 As mentioned above, six new instructions acclerate AES encryption in processor silicon. The new instructions are: aesenc performs one round of AES encryption. One encryption round is composed of these steps: substitute bytes, shift rows, mix columns, and xor the round key. aesenclast performs the final encryption round, which is the same as above, except omitting the mix columns (which is only needed for the next encryption round). aesdec performs one round of AES decryption aesdeclast performs the final AES decryption round aeskeygenassist Helps expand the user-provided key into a "key schedule" of keys, one per round aesimc performs an "inverse mixed columns" operation to convert the encryption key schedule into a decryption key schedule pclmulqdq Not a AESNI instruction, but performs "carryless multiply" operations to acclerate AES GCM mode. Since the AESNI instructions are implemented in hardware, they take a constant number of cycles and are not vulnerable to side-channel timing attacks that attempt to discern some bits of data from the time taken to encrypt or decrypt the data. Solaris x86 and OpenSSL Software Optimizations Having X86 AESNI hardware crypto instructions is all well and good, but how do we access it? The software is available with Solaris 11 and is used automatically if you are running Solaris x86 on a AESNI-capable processor. AESNI is used internally in the kernel through kernel crypto modules and is available in user space through the PKCS#11 library. For OpenSSL on Solaris 11, AESNI crypto is available directly with a new built-in OpenSSL 1.0 engine, called the "aesni engine." This is in lieu of the extra overhead of going through the Solaris OpenSSL pkcs11 engine, which accesses Solaris crypto and digest operations. Instead, AESNI assembly is included directly in the new aesni engine. Instead of including the aesni engine in a separate library in /lib/openssl/engines/, the aesni engine is "built-in", meaning it is included directly in OpenSSL's libcrypto.so.1.0.0 library. This reduces overhead and the need to manually specify the aesni engine. Since the engine is built-in (that is, in libcrypto.so.1.0.0), the openssl -engine command line flag or API call is not needed to access the engine—the aesni engine is used automatically on AESNI hardware. Ciphers and Digests supported by OpenSSL aesni engine The Openssl aesni engine auto-detects if it's running on AESNI hardware and uses AESNI encryption instructions for these ciphers: AES-128-CBC, AES-192-CBC, AES-256-CBC, AES-128-CFB128, AES-192-CFB128, AES-256-CFB128, AES-128-CTR, AES-192-CTR, AES-256-CTR, AES-128-ECB, AES-192-ECB, AES-256-ECB, AES-128-OFB, AES-192-OFB, and AES-256-OFB. Implementation of the OpenSSL aesni engine The AESNI assembly language routines are not a part of the regular Openssl 1.0.0 release. AESNI is a part of the "HEAD" ("development" or "unstable") branch of OpenSSL, for future release. But AESNI is also available as a separate patch provided by Intel to the OpenSSL project for OpenSSL 1.0.0. A minimal amount of "glue" code in the aesni engine works between the OpenSSL libcrypto.so.1.0.0 library and the assembly functions. The aesni engine code is separate from the base OpenSSL code and requires patching only a few source files to use it. That means OpenSSL can be more easily updated to future versions without losing the performance from the built-in aesni engine. OpenSSL aesni engine Performance Here's some graphs of aesni engine performance I measured by running openssl speed -evp $algorithm where $algorithm is aes-128-cbc, aes-192-cbc, and aes-256-cbc. These are using the 64-bit version of openssl on the same AESNI hardware, a Sun Fire X4170 M2 with a Intel Xeon E5620 @2.40GHz, running Solaris 11 FCS. "Before" is openssl without the aesni engine and "after" is openssl with the aesni engine. The numbers are MBytes/second. OpenSSL aesni engine performance on Sun Fire X4170 M2 (Xeon E5620 @2.40GHz) (Higher is better; "before"=OpenSSL on AESNI without AESNI engine software, "after"=OpenSSL AESNI engine) As you can see the speedup is dramatic for all 3 key lengths and for data sizes from 16 bytes to 8 Kbytes—AESNI is about 7.5-8x faster over hand-coded amd64 assembly (without aesni instructions). Verifying the OpenSSL aesni engine is present The easiest way to determine if you are running the aesni engine is to type "openssl engine" on the command line. No configuration, API, or command line options are needed to use the OpenSSL aesni engine. If you are running on Intel AESNI hardware with Solaris 11 FCS, you'll see this output indicating you are using the aesni engine: intel-westmere $ openssl engine (aesni) Intel AES-NI engine (no-aesni) (dynamic) Dynamic engine loading support (pkcs11) PKCS #11 engine support If you are running on Intel without AESNI hardware you'll see this output indicating the hardware can't support the aesni engine: intel-nehalem $ openssl engine (aesni) Intel AES-NI engine (no-aesni) (dynamic) Dynamic engine loading support (pkcs11) PKCS #11 engine support For Solaris on SPARC or older Solaris OpenSSL software, you won't see any aesni engine line at all. Third-party OpenSSL software (built yourself or from outside Oracle) will not have the aesni engine either. Solaris 11 FCS comes with OpenSSL version 1.0.0e. The output of typing "openssl version" should be "OpenSSL 1.0.0e 6 Sep 2011". 64- and 32-bit OpenSSL OpenSSL comes in both 32- and 64-bit binaries. 64-bit executable is now the default, at /usr/bin/openssl, and OpenSSL 64-bit libraries at /lib/amd64/libcrypto.so.1.0.0 and libssl.so.1.0.0 The 32-bit executable is at /usr/bin/i86/openssl and the libraries are at /lib/libcrytpo.so.1.0.0 and libssl.so.1.0.0. Availability The OpenSSL AESNI engine is available in Solaris 11 x86 for both the 64- and 32-bit versions of OpenSSL. It is not available with Solaris 10. You must have a processor that supports AESNI instructions, otherwise OpenSSL will fallback to the older, slower AES implementation without AESNI. Processors that support AESNI include most Westmere and Sandy Bridge class processor architectures. Some low-end processors (such as for mobile/laptop platforms) do not support AESNI. The easiest way to determine if the processor supports AESNI is with the isainfo -v command—look for "amd64" and "aes" in the output: $ isainfo -v 64-bit amd64 applications pclmulqdq aes sse4.2 sse4.1 ssse3 popcnt tscp ahf cx16 sse3 sse2 sse fxsr mmx cmov amd_sysc cx8 tsc fpu Conclusion The Solaris 11 OpenSSL aesni engine provides easy access to powerful Intel AESNI hardware cryptography, in addition to Solaris userland PKCS#11 libraries and Solaris crypto kernel modules.

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• How can a code editor effectively hint at code nesting level - without using indentation?

  - by pgfearo

  I've written an XML text editor that provides 2 view options for the same XML text, one indented (virtually), the other left-justified. The motivation for the left-justified view is to help users 'see' the whitespace characters they're using for indentation of plain-text or XPath code without interference from indentation that is an automated side-effect of the XML context. I want to provide visual clues (in the non-editable part of the editor) for the left-justified mode that will help the user, but without getting too elaborate. I tried just using connecting lines, but that seemed too busy. The best I've come up with so far is shown in a mocked up screenshot of the editor below, but I'm seeking better/simpler alternatives (that don't require too much code). [Edit] Taking the heatmap idea (from: @jimp) I get this and 3 alternatives - labelled a, b and c: The following section describes the accepted answer as a proposal, bringing together ideas from a number of other answers and comments. As this question is now community wiki, please feel free to update this. NestView The name for this idea which provides a visual method to improve the readability of nested code without using indentation. Contour Lines The name for the differently shaded lines within the NestView The image above shows the NestView used to help visualise an XML snippet. Though XML is used for this illustration, any other code syntax that uses nesting could have been used for this illustration. An Overview: The contour lines are shaded (as in a heatmap) to convey nesting level The contour lines are angled to show when a nesting level is being either opened or closed. A contour line links the start of a nesting level to the corresponding end. The combined width of contour lines give a visual impression of nesting level, in addition to the heatmap. The width of the NestView may be manually resizable, but should not change as the code changes. Contour lines can either be compressed or truncated to keep acheive this. Blank lines are sometimes used code to break up text into more digestable chunks. Such lines could trigger special behaviour in the NestView. For example the heatmap could be reset or a background color contour line used, or both. One or more contour lines associated with the currently selected code can be highlighted. The contour line associated with the selected code level would be emphasized the most, but other contour lines could also 'light up' in addition to help highlight the containing nested group Different behaviors (such as code folding or code selection) can be associated with clicking/double-clicking on a Contour Line. Different parts of a contour line (leading, middle or trailing edge) may have different dynamic behaviors associated. Tooltips can be shown on a mouse hover event over a contour line The NestView is updated continously as the code is edited. Where nesting is not well-balanced assumptions can be made where the nesting level should end, but the associated temporary contour lines must be highlighted in some way as a warning. Drag and drop behaviors of Contour Lines can be supported. Behaviour may vary according to the part of the contour line being dragged. Features commonly found in the left margin such as line numbering and colour highlighting for errors and change state could overlay the NestView. Additional Functionality The proposal addresses a range of additional issues - many are outside the scope of the original question, but a useful side-effect. Visually linking the start and end of a nested region The contour lines connect the start and end of each nested level Highlighting the context of the currently selected line As code is selected, the associated nest-level in the NestView can be highlighted Differentiating between code regions at the same nesting level In the case of XML different hues could be used for different namespaces. Programming languages (such as c#) support named regions that could be used in a similar way. Dividing areas within a nesting area into different visual blocks Extra lines are often inserted into code to aid readability. Such empty lines could be used to reset the saturation level of the NestView's contour lines. Multi-Column Code View Code without indentation makes the use of a multi-column view more effective because word-wrap or horizontal scrolling is less likely to be required. In this view, once code has reach the bottom of one column, it flows into the next one: Usage beyond merely providing a visual aid As proposed in the overview, the NestView could provide a range of editing and selection features which would be broadly in line with what is expected from a TreeView control. The key difference is that a typical TreeView node has 2 parts: an expander and the node icon. A NestView contour line can have as many as 3 parts: an opener (sloping), a connector (vertical) and a close (sloping). On Indentation The NestView presented alongside non-indented code complements, but is unlikely to replace, the conventional indented code view. It's likely that any solutions adopting a NestView, will provide a method to switch seamlessly between indented and non-indented code views without affecting any of the code text itself - including whitespace characters. One technique for the indented view would be 'Virtual Formatting' - where a dynamic left-margin is used in lieu of tab or space characters. The same nesting-level data used to dynamically render the NestView could also used for the more conventional-looking indented view. Printing Indentation will be important for the readability of printed code. Here, the absence of tab/space characters and a dynamic left-margin means that the text can wrap at the right-margin and still maintain the integrity of the indented view. Line numbers can be used as visual markers that indicate where code is word-wrapped and also the exact position of indentation: Screen Real-Estate: Flat Vs Indented Addressing the question of whether the NestView uses up valuable screen real-estate: Contour lines work well with a width the same as the code editor's character width. A NestView width of 12 character widths can therefore accommodate 12 levels of nesting before contour lines are truncated/compressed. If an indented view uses 3 character-widths for each nesting level then space is saved until nesting reaches 4 levels of nesting, after this nesting level the flat view has a space-saving advantage that increases with each nesting level. Note: A minimum indentation of 4 character widths is often recommended for code, however XML often manages with less. Also, Virtual Formatting permits less indentation to be used because there's no risk of alignment issues A comparison of the 2 views is shown below: Based on the above, its probably fair to conclude that view style choice will be based on factors other than screen real-estate. The one exception is where screen space is at a premium, for example on a Netbook/Tablet or when multiple code windows are open. In these cases, the resizable NestView would seem to be a clear winner. Use Cases Examples of real-world examples where NestView may be a useful option: Where screen real-estate is at a premium a. On devices such as tablets, notepads and smartphones b. When showing code on websites c. When multiple code windows need to be visible on the desktop simultaneously Where consistent whitespace indentation of text within code is a priority For reviewing deeply nested code. For example where sub-languages (e.g. Linq in C# or XPath in XSLT) might cause high levels of nesting. Accessibility Resizing and color options must be provided to aid those with visual impairments, and also to suit environmental conditions and personal preferences: Compatability of edited code with other systems A solution incorporating a NestView option should ideally be capable of stripping leading tab and space characters (identified as only having a formatting role) from imported code. Then, once stripped, the code could be rendered neatly in both the left-justified and indented views without change. For many users relying on systems such as merging and diff tools that are not whitespace-aware this will be a major concern (if not a complete show-stopper). Other Works: Visualisation of Overlapping Markup Published research by Wendell Piez, dated from 2004, addresses the issue of the visualisation of overlapping markup, specifically LMNL. This includes SVG graphics with significant similarities to the NestView proposal, as such, they are acknowledged here. The visual differences are clear in the images (below), the key functional distinction is that NestView is intended only for well-nested XML or code, whereas Wendell Piez's graphics are designed to represent overlapped nesting. The graphics above were reproduced - with kind permission - from http://www.piez.org Sources: Towards Hermenutic Markup Half-steps toward LMNL

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• SQL SERVER – DMV – sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks and sys.dm_exec_requests – Wait Type – Day 4 of 28

  - by pinaldave

  Previously, we covered the DMV sys.dm_os_wait_stats, and also saw how it can be useful to identify the major resource bottleneck. However, at the same time, we discussed that this is only useful when we are looking at an instance-level picture. Quite often we want to know about the processes going in our server at the given instant. Here is the query for the same. This DMV is written taking the following into consideration: we want to analyze the queries that are currently running or which have recently ran and their plan is still in the cache. SELECT dm_ws.wait_duration_ms, dm_ws.wait_type, dm_es.status, dm_t.TEXT, dm_qp.query_plan, dm_ws.session_ID, dm_es.cpu_time, dm_es.memory_usage, dm_es.logical_reads, dm_es.total_elapsed_time, dm_es.program_name, DB_NAME(dm_r.database_id) DatabaseName, -- Optional columns dm_ws.blocking_session_id, dm_r.wait_resource, dm_es.login_name, dm_r.command, dm_r.last_wait_type FROM sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks dm_ws INNER JOIN sys.dm_exec_requests dm_r ON dm_ws.session_id = dm_r.session_id INNER JOIN sys.dm_exec_sessions dm_es ON dm_es.session_id = dm_r.session_id CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_sql_text (dm_r.sql_handle) dm_t CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_query_plan (dm_r.plan_handle) dm_qp WHERE dm_es.is_user_process = 1 GO You can change CROSS APPLY to OUTER APPLY if you want to see all the details which are omitted because of the plan cache. Let us analyze the result of the above query and see how it can be helpful to identify the query and the kind of wait type it creates. Click to Enlarage The above query will return various columns. There are various columns that provide very important details. e.g. wait_duration_ms – it indicates current wait for the query that executes at that point of time. wait_type – it indicates the current wait type for the query text – indicates the query text query_plan – when clicked on the same, it will display the query plans There are many other important information like CPU_time, memory_usage, and logical_reads, which can be read from the query as well. In future posts on this series, we will see how once identified wait type we can attempt to reduce the same. Read all the post in the Wait Types and Queue series. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: DMV, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL DMV, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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• Dynamically creating a Generic Type at Runtime

  - by Rick Strahl

  I learned something new today. Not uncommon, but it's a core .NET runtime feature I simply did not know although I know I've run into this issue a few times and worked around it in other ways. Today there was no working around it and a few folks on Twitter pointed me in the right direction. The question I ran into is: How do I create a type instance of a generic type when I have dynamically acquired the type at runtime? Yup it's not something that you do everyday, but when you're writing code that parses objects dynamically at runtime it comes up from time to time. In my case it's in the bowels of a custom JSON parser. After some thought triggered by a comment today I realized it would be fairly easy to implement two-way Dictionary parsing for most concrete dictionary types. I could use a custom Dictionary serialization format that serializes as an array of key/value objects. Basically I can use a custom type (that matches the JSON signature) to hold my parsed dictionary data and then add it to the actual dictionary when parsing is complete. Generic Types at Runtime One issue that came up in the process was how to figure out what type the Dictionary<K,V> generic parameters take. Reflection actually makes it fairly easy to figure out generic types at runtime with code like this: if (arrayType.GetInterface("IDictionary") != null) { if (arrayType.IsGenericType) { var keyType = arrayType.GetGenericArguments()[0]; var valueType = arrayType.GetGenericArguments()[1]; … } } The GetArrayType method gets passed a type instance that is the array or array-like object that is rendered in JSON as an array (which includes IList, IDictionary, IDataReader and a few others). In my case the type passed would be something like Dictionary<string, CustomerEntity>. So I know what the parent container class type is. Based on the the container type using it's then possible to use GetGenericTypeArguments() to retrieve all the generic types in sequential order of definition (ie. string, CustomerEntity). That's the easy part. Creating a Generic Type and Providing Generic Parameters at RunTime The next problem is how do I get a concrete type instance for the generic type? I know what the type name and I have a type instance is but it's generic, so how do I get a type reference to keyvaluepair<K,V> that is specific to the keyType and valueType above? Here are a couple of things that come to mind but that don't work (and yes I tried that unsuccessfully first): Type elementType = typeof(keyvalue<keyType, valueType>); Type elementType = typeof(keyvalue<typeof(keyType), typeof(valueType)>); The problem is that this explicit syntax expects a type literal not some dynamic runtime value, so both of the above won't even compile. I turns out the way to create a generic type at runtime is using a fancy bit of syntax that until today I was completely unaware of: Type elementType = typeof(keyvalue<,>).MakeGenericType(keyType, valueType); The key is the type(keyvalue<,>) bit which looks weird at best. It works however and produces a non-generic type reference. You can see the difference between the full generic type and the non-typed (?) generic type in the debugger: The nonGenericType doesn't show any type specialization, while the elementType type shows the string, CustomerEntity (truncated above) in the type name. Once the full type reference exists (elementType) it's then easy to create an instance. In my case the parser parses through the JSON and when it completes parsing the value/object it creates a new keyvalue<T,V> instance. Now that I know the element type that's pretty trivial with: // Objects start out null until we find the opening tag resultObject = Activator.CreateInstance(elementType); Here the result object is picked up by the JSON array parser which creates an instance of the child object (keyvalue<K,V>) and then parses and assigns values from the JSON document using the types  key/value property signature. Internally the parser then takes each individually parsed item and adds it to a list of  List<keyvalue<K,V>> items. Parsing through a Generic type when you only have Runtime Type Information When parsing of the JSON array is done, the List needs to be turned into a defacto Dictionary<K,V>. This should be easy since I know that I'm dealing with an IDictionary, and I know the generic types for the key and value. The problem is again though that this needs to happen at runtime which would mean using several Convert.ChangeType() calls in the code to dynamically cast at runtime. Yuk. In the end I decided the easier and probably only slightly slower way to do this is a to use the dynamic type to collect the items and assign them to avoid all the dynamic casting madness: else if (IsIDictionary) { IDictionary dict = Activator.CreateInstance(arrayType) as IDictionary; foreach (dynamic item in items) { dict.Add(item.key, item.value); } return dict; } This code creates an instance of the generic dictionary type first, then loops through all of my custom keyvalue<K,V> items and assigns them to the actual dictionary. By using Dynamic here I can side step all the explicit type conversions that would be required in the three highlighted areas (not to mention that this nested method doesn't have access to the dictionary item generic types here). Static <- -> Dynamic Dynamic casting in a static language like C# is a bitch to say the least. This is one of the few times when I've cursed static typing and the arcane syntax that's required to coax types into the right format. It works but it's pretty nasty code. If it weren't for dynamic that last bit of code would have been a pretty ugly as well with a bunch of Convert.ChangeType() calls to litter the code. Fortunately this type of type convulsion is rather rare and reserved for system level code. It's not every day that you create a string to object parser after all :-)© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in .NET  CSharp   Tweet (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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• Show "results - of" of internal search in Google search result

  - by Petra Barus

  I was doing some searches on Google Search and I stumbled on this As you can see in the screenshot above, the search results show a summary of an internal search page (the one I highlighted by red underline) on the website (homes.com and findaproperty.com). I would like to show up this kind of result in the Google search for my website internal search. How do I do it? Do I have to put some metatag or something?

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• CDN on Hosted Service in Windows Azure

  - by Shaun

  Yesterday I told Wang Tao, an annoying colleague sitting beside me, about how to make the static content enable the CDN in his website which had just been published on Windows Azure. The approach would be Move the static content, the images, CSS files, etc. into the blob storage. Enable the CDN on his storage account. Change the URL of those static files to the CDN URL. I think these are the very common steps when using CDN. But this morning I found that the new Windows Azure SDK 1.4 and new Windows Azure Developer Portal had just been published announced at the Windows Azure Blog. One of the new features in this release is about the CDN, which means we can enabled the CDN not only for a storage account, but a hosted service as well. Within this new feature the steps I mentioned above would be turned simpler a lot.   Enable CDN for Hosted Service To enable the CDN for a hosted service we just need to log on the Windows Azure Developer Portal. Under the “Hosted Services, Storage Accounts & CDN” item we will find a new menu on the left hand side said “CDN”, where we can manage the CDN for storage account and hosted service. As we can see the hosted services and storage accounts are all listed in my subscriptions. To enable a CDN for a hosted service is veru simple, just select a hosted service and click the New Endpoint button on top. In this dialog we can select the subscription and the storage account, or the hosted service we want the CDN to be enabled. If we selected the hosted service, like I did in the image above, the “Source URL for the CDN endpoint” will be shown automatically. This means the windows azure platform will make all contents under the “/cdn” folder as CDN enabled. But we cannot change the value at the moment. The following 3 checkboxes next to the URL are: Enable CDN: Enable or disable the CDN. HTTPS: If we need to use HTTPS connections check it. Query String: If we are caching content from a hosted service and we are using query strings to specify the content to be retrieved, check it. Just click the “Create” button to let the windows azure create the CDN for our hosted service. The CDN would be available within 60 minutes as Microsoft mentioned. My experience is that about 15 minutes the CDN could be used and we can find the CDN URL in the portal as well.   Put the Content in CDN in Hosted Service Let’s create a simple windows azure project in Visual Studio with a MVC 2 Web Role. When we created the CDN mentioned above the source URL of CDN endpoint would be under the “/cdn” folder. So in the Visual Studio we create a folder under the website named “cdn” and put some static files there. Then all these files would be cached by CDN if we use the CDN endpoint. The CDN of the hosted service can cache some kind of “dynamic” result with the Query String feature enabled. We create a controller named CdnController and a GetNumber action in it. The routed URL of this controller would be /Cdn/GetNumber which can be CDN-ed as well since the URL said it’s under the “/cdn” folder. In the GetNumber action we just put a number value which specified by parameter into the view model, then the URL could be like /Cdn/GetNumber?number=2. 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Linq; 4: using System.Web; 5: using System.Web.Mvc; 6:  7: namespace MvcWebRole1.Controllers 8: { 9: public class CdnController : Controller 10: { 11: // 12: // GET: /Cdn/ 13:  14: public ActionResult GetNumber(int number) 15: { 16: return View(number); 17: } 18:  19: } 20: } And we add a view to display the number which is super simple. 1: <%@ Page Title="" Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/Views/Shared/Site.Master" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage<int>" %> 2:  3: <asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="TitleContent" runat="server"> 4: GetNumber 5: </asp:Content> 6:  7: <asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent" runat="server"> 8:  9: <h2>The number is: <% 1: : Model.ToString() %></h2> 10:  11: </asp:Content> Since this action is under the CdnController the URL would be under the “/cdn” folder which means it can be CDN-ed. And since we checked the “Query String” the content of this dynamic page will be cached by its query string. So if I use the CDN URL, http://az25311.vo.msecnd.net/GetNumber?number=2, the CDN will firstly check if there’s any content cached with the key “GetNumber?number=2”. If yes then the CDN will return the content directly; otherwise it will connect to the hosted service, http://aurora-sys.cloudapp.net/Cdn/GetNumber?number=2, and then send the result back to the browser and cached in CDN. But to be notice that the query string are treated as string when used by the key of CDN element. This means the URLs below would be cached in 2 elements in CDN: http://az25311.vo.msecnd.net/GetNumber?number=2&page=1 http://az25311.vo.msecnd.net/GetNumber?page=1&number=2 The final step is to upload the project onto azure. Test the Hosted Service CDN After published the project on azure, we can use the CDN in the website. The CDN endpoint we had created is az25311.vo.msecnd.net so all files under the “/cdn” folder can be requested with it. Let’s have a try on the sample.htm and c_great_wall.jpg static files. Also we can request the dynamic page GetNumber with the query string with the CDN endpoint. And if we refresh this page it will be shown very quickly since the content comes from the CDN without MCV server side process. We style of this page was missing. This is because the CSS file was not includes in the “/cdn” folder so the page cannot retrieve the CSS file from the CDN URL.   Summary In this post I introduced the new feature in Windows Azure CDN with the release of Windows Azure SDK 1.4 and new Developer Portal. With the CDN of the Hosted Service we can just put the static resources under a “/cdn” folder so that the CDN can cache them automatically and no need to put then into the blob storage. Also it support caching the dynamic content with the Query String feature. So that we can cache some parts of the web page by using the UserController and CDN. For example we can cache the log on user control in the master page so that the log on part will be loaded super-fast. There are some other new features within this release you can find here. And for more detailed information about the Windows Azure CDN please have a look here as well.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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