Search Results

Search found 1787 results on 72 pages for 'reflection emit'.

Page 58/72 | < Previous Page | 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65  | Next Page >

• Moving data files failing

  - by Miles Hayler

  Trying to migrate data from C: to D: via the SBS console is failing. The wizard starts running but drops out in the first few seconds. I'll post the full logs, but the important lines appear to be as follows: An exception of type 'Type: System.IO.FileNotFoundException, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' has occurred. Message: The system cannot find the file specified. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070002) Stack: at TaskScheduler.TaskSchedulerClass.GetFolder(String Path) at Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Common.WindowsTaskScheduler..ctor(String taskPath, String taskName) BaseException: Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Storage.Common.StorageException: GetServerBackupTaskStatus: fail to find the task --- ErrorCode:0 I've been googling for days with no luck. I have found that mscorlib is a component of .net, and I've discovered multiple instances of the file in %windir%, %windir%\winsxs, %windir%\Microsoft.net Anyone come across and fixed this one before? --------------------------------------------------------- [1516] 110315.190856.1105: Storage: Initializing...C:\Program Files\Windows Small Business Server\Bin\MoveData.exe [1516] 110315.190856.2875: Storage: Data Store to be moved: Exchange [1516] 110315.190856.5305: TaskScheduler: Exception System.IO.FileNotFoundException: [1516] 110315.190856.5605: Exception: --------------------------------------- An exception of type 'Type: System.IO.FileNotFoundException, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' has occurred. Timestamp: 03/15/2011 19:08:56 Message: The system cannot find the file specified. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070002) Stack: at TaskScheduler.TaskSchedulerClass.GetFolder(String Path) at Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Common.WindowsTaskScheduler..ctor(String taskPath, String taskName) [1516] 110315.190856.5625: Storage: Exception Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Common.WindowsTaskSchedulerException: [1516] 110315.190856.5635: Exception: --------------------------------------- [b]An exception of type 'Type: Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Common.WindowsTaskSchedulerException, Common, Version=6.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35' has occurred.[/b] Timestamp: 03/15/2011 19:08:56 Message: Failed to find the task path Stack: at Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Common.WindowsTaskScheduler..ctor(String taskPath, String taskName) at Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Storage.Common.ServerBackupUtility.GetServerBackupTaskStatus() --------------------------------------- An exception of type 'Type: System.IO.FileNotFoundException, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' has occurred. Timestamp: 03/15/2011 19:08:56 Message: The system cannot find the file specified. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070002) Stack: at TaskScheduler.TaskSchedulerClass.GetFolder(String Path) at Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Common.WindowsTaskScheduler..ctor(String taskPath, String taskName) [1516] 110315.190856.5665: Storage: Error Retrieving Server Backup Task Status: ErrorCode:0 BaseException: Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Storage.Common.StorageException: GetServerBackupTaskStatus: fail to find the task ---> ErrorCode:0 BaseException: Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Common.WindowsTaskSchedulerException: Failed to find the task path ---> System.IO.FileNotFoundException: The system cannot find the file specified. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070002) at TaskScheduler.TaskSchedulerClass.GetFolder(String Path) at Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Common.WindowsTaskScheduler..ctor(String taskPath, String taskName) --- End of inner exception stack trace --- at Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Common.WindowsTaskScheduler..ctor(String taskPath, String taskName) at Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Storage.Common.ServerBackupUtility.GetServerBackupTaskStatus() --- End of inner exception stack trace --- at Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Storage.Common.ServerBackupUtility.GetServerBackupTaskStatus() at Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Storage.MoveData.Helper.get_ServerBackupTaskState() [1516] 110315.190857.6216: Storage: Backup Task State: Unknown [1516] 110315.190857.9347: Storage: Launching the Move Data Wizard! [1516] 110315.190857.9397: Wizard: Admin:QueryNextPage(null) = Storage.MoveDataWizard.GettingStartedPage [1516] 110315.190857.9417: Wizard: TOC Storage.MoveDataWizard.GettingStartedPage is on ExpectedPath [1516] 110315.190857.9577: Wizard: Storage.MoveDataWizard.GettingStartedPage entered [1516] 110315.190857.9657: Wizard: Admin:QueryNextPage(Storage.MoveDataWizard.GettingStartedPage) = Storage.MoveDataWizard.DiagnoseDataStorePage [1516] 110315.190857.9657: Wizard: TOC Storage.MoveDataWizard.DiagnoseDataStorePage is on ExpectedPath [1516] 110315.190857.9657: Wizard: Admin:QueryNextPage(Storage.MoveDataWizard.DiagnoseDataStorePage) = Storage.MoveDataWizard.NewDataStoreLocationPage [1516] 110315.190857.9657: Wizard: TOC Storage.MoveDataWizard.NewDataStoreLocationPage is on ExpectedPath [1516] 110315.190857.9657: Wizard: Admin:QueryNextPage(Storage.MoveDataWizard.NewDataStoreLocationPage) = null [1516] 110315.190857.9697: Wizard: ---------------------------------- [1516] 110315.190857.9697: Wizard: The pages visted: [1516] 110315.190857.9697: Wizard: Current Page := [TOC Storage.MoveDataWizard.GettingStartedPage] [1516] 110315.190857.9697: Wizard: [TOC] : TOC Storage.MoveDataWizard.DiagnoseDataStorePage [1516] 110315.190857.9697: Wizard: [TOC] : TOC Storage.MoveDataWizard.NewDataStoreLocationPage [1516] 110315.190857.9697: Wizard: Step 1 of 3 [1516] 110315.190907.0406: Wizard: Admin:QueryNextPage(Storage.MoveDataWizard.GettingStartedPage) = Storage.MoveDataWizard.DiagnoseDataStorePage [1516] 110315.190907.0416: Wizard: Storage.MoveDataWizard.GettingStartedPage exited with the button: Next [1516] 110315.190907.0416: WizardChainEngine Next Clicked: Going to page {0}.: Storage.MoveDataWizard.DiagnoseDataStorePage [1516] 110315.190907.0496: Wizard: Storage.MoveDataWizard.DiagnoseDataStorePage entered [1516] 110315.190907.0606: Wizard: Admin:QueryNextPage(Storage.MoveDataWizard.DiagnoseDataStorePage) = Storage.MoveDataWizard.NewDataStoreLocationPage [1516] 110315.190907.0606: Wizard: Admin:QueryNextPage(Storage.MoveDataWizard.NewDataStoreLocationPage) = null [1516] 110315.190907.0606: Wizard: ---------------------------------- [1516] 110315.190907.0606: Wizard: The pages visted: [1516] 110315.190907.0606: Wizard: [TOC] visited: TOC Storage.MoveDataWizard.GettingStartedPage [1516] 110315.190907.0606: Wizard: Current Page := [TOC Storage.MoveDataWizard.DiagnoseDataStorePage] [1516] 110315.190907.0616: Wizard: [TOC] : TOC Storage.MoveDataWizard.NewDataStoreLocationPage [1516] 110315.190907.0616: Wizard: Step 2 of 3 [19772] 110315.190907.0656: Storage: Starting System Diagnosis [19772] 110315.190907.0656: Storage: Getting Data Store Information [19772] 110315.190907.1086: Storage: Create the list of storage and DB directory path [19772] 110315.190907.1246: Messaging: Begin Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Messaging.Management.MessagingTasks..ctor [19772] 110315.190907.1546: Messaging: Begin Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Messaging.Management.MessagingTasks.Initialize [19772] 110315.190907.1596: Messaging: Begin Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Messaging.Management.MessagingRunspace.Initialize [19772] 110315.190907.1606: Messaging: Exchange install path: C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\bin [19772] 110315.190908.4157: Messaging: E12 Monad runspace created ID: Microsoft.PowerShell [19772] 110315.190908.4237: Messaging: Begin Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Messaging.Management.MessagingRunspace.StaticExecute [19772] 110315.190908.4287: Messaging: Executed management shell command: get-exchangeserver [19772] 110315.190910.2369: Messaging: End Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Messaging.Management.MessagingRunspace.StaticExecute [19772] 110315.190910.2369: Messaging: End Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Messaging.Management.MessagingRunspace.Initialize [19772] 110315.190910.5699: Messaging: Begin Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Messaging.Management.MessagingTasks.GatherAdminInfo [19772] 110315.190910.5699: Messaging: Begin Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Messaging.Management.MessagingRunspace.StaticExecute [19772] 110315.190910.5719: Messaging: Executed management shell command: get-user -Identity "dmagroup.local\Administrator" [19772] 110315.190911.0870: Messaging: End Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Messaging.Management.MessagingRunspace.StaticExecute [19772] 110315.190911.0880: Messaging: Begin Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Messaging.Management.MessagingRunspace.StaticExecute [19772] 110315.190911.0880: Messaging: Executed management shell command: get-mailbox -Identity "d2ae2bf0-48a7-4ce9-9e72-bb3c765454ac" [19772] 110315.190911.1300: Messaging: End Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Messaging.Management.MessagingRunspace.StaticExecute [19772] 110315.190911.1310: Messaging: User Administrator is mail enabled and can use MessagingManagement to send mail. [19772] 110315.190911.1310: Messaging: Email address used for user: [email protected] [19772] 110315.190911.1440: Messaging: Begin Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Messaging.Management.MessagingRunspace.StaticExecute [19772] 110315.190911.1440: Messaging: Executed management shell command: get-group -Identity "Domain Admins" [19772] 110315.190911.1630: Messaging: End Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Messaging.Management.MessagingRunspace.StaticExecute [19772] 110315.190911.1640: Messaging: User Administrator is a member of Domain Admins and can use MessagingManagement to manage Exchange. [19772] 110315.190911.1640: Messaging: End Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Messaging.Management.MessagingTasks.GatherAdminInfo [19772] 110315.190911.1640: Messaging: MessagingManagement enabled for Exchange management: True [19772] 110315.190911.1640: Messaging: MessagingManagement enabled for mail submission: True [19772] 110315.190911.1640: Messaging: End Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Messaging.Management.MessagingTasks.Initialize [19772] 110315.190911.1640: Messaging: End Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Messaging.Tasks.TaskMoveExchangeData.CreateDataStoreDriveList [19772] 110315.190911.1670: Messaging: Begin Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Messaging.Management.MessagingRunspace.Initialize [19772] 110315.190911.1670: Messaging: Begin Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Messaging.Management.MessagingRunspace.StaticExecute [19772] 110315.190911.1670: Messaging: Executed management shell command: get-storagegroup -Server "SERVER01" [19772] 110315.190911.2990: Messaging: End Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Messaging.Management.MessagingRunspace.StaticExecute [19772] 110315.190911.3070: Messaging: Begin Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Messaging.Management.MessagingRunspace.Initialize [19772] 110315.190911.3070: Messaging: Begin Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Messaging.Management.MessagingRunspace.StaticExecute [19772] 110315.190911.3070: Messaging: Executed management shell command: get-mailboxdatabase -Server "SERVER01" [19772] 110315.190911.4440: Messaging: End Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Messaging.Management.MessagingRunspace.StaticExecute [19772] 110315.190911.4520: Messaging: Begin Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Messaging.Management.MessagingRunspace.Initialize [19772] 110315.190911.4520: Messaging: Begin Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Messaging.Management.MessagingRunspace.StaticExecute [19772] 110315.190911.4520: Messaging: Executed management shell command: get-publicfolderdatabase -Server "SERVER01" [19772] 110315.190911.5240: Messaging: End Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Messaging.Management.MessagingRunspace.StaticExecute [19772] 110315.190911.5510: Storage: Data Store Drive/s Details:Name=C:\,Size=12675712420 [19772] 110315.190911.5510: Storage: Data Store Size Details: Current Total Size=12675712420 Required Size=12675712420 [19772] 110315.190911.5510: Storage: MoveData Task can move the Data Store=True [19772] 110315.190911.8401: Storage: An error was encountered when performing system diagnosis : ErrorCode:0 BaseException: Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Storage.Common.StorageException: WMI error occurred while accessing drive ---> System.Management.ManagementException: Not found at System.Management.ManagementException.ThrowWithExtendedInfo(ManagementStatus errorCode) at System.Management.ManagementObjectCollection.ManagementObjectEnumerator.MoveNext() at Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Storage.Common.DriveUtil.IsDriveRemovable(String drive) --- End of inner exception stack trace --- at Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Storage.Common.DriveUtil.IsDriveRemovable(String drive) at Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Storage.Common.DataStoreInfo.LoadAvailableDrives() at Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Storage.Common.MoveDataUtil.CanMoveData(DataStoreInfo storeInfo, MoveDataError& error) at Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Storage.MoveData.DiagnoseDataStorePagePresenter.DiagnoseDataStore(Object sender, DoWorkEventArgs args) [1516] 110315.190912.0331: Storage: An error occured during the execution: System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. ---> ErrorCode:0 BaseException: Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Storage.Common.StorageException: Diagnosing the Data Store failed (see the inner exception) ---> ErrorCode:0 BaseException: Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Storage.Common.StorageException: WMI error occurred while accessing drive ---> System.Management.ManagementException: Not found at System.Management.ManagementException.ThrowWithExtendedInfo(ManagementStatus errorCode) at System.Management.ManagementObjectCollection.ManagementObjectEnumerator.MoveNext() at Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Storage.Common.DriveUtil.IsDriveRemovable(String drive) --- End of inner exception stack trace --- at Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Storage.Common.DriveUtil.IsDriveRemovable(String drive) at Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Storage.Common.DataStoreInfo.LoadAvailableDrives() at Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Storage.Common.MoveDataUtil.CanMoveData(DataStoreInfo storeInfo, MoveDataError& error) at Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Storage.MoveData.DiagnoseDataStorePagePresenter.DiagnoseDataStore(Object sender, DoWorkEventArgs args) at System.ComponentModel.BackgroundWorker.WorkerThreadStart(Object argument) --- End of inner exception stack trace --- at Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Storage.MoveData.DiagnoseDataStorePagePresenter.backgroundWorker_RunWorkerCompleted(Object sender, RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e) --- End of inner exception stack trace --- at System.RuntimeMethodHandle._InvokeMethodFast(Object target, Object[] arguments, SignatureStruct& sig, MethodAttributes methodAttributes, RuntimeTypeHandle typeOwner) at System.Reflection.RuntimeMethodInfo.Invoke(Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, Binder binder, Object[] parameters, CultureInfo culture, Boolean skipVisibilityChecks) at System.Delegate.DynamicInvokeImpl(Object[] args) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.InvokeMarshaledCallbackDo(ThreadMethodEntry tme) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.InvokeMarshaledCallbackHelper(Object obj) at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.runTryCode(Object userData) at System.Runtime.CompilerServices.RuntimeHelpers.ExecuteCodeWithGuaranteedCleanup(TryCode code, CleanupCode backoutCode, Object userData) at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.InvokeMarshaledCallback(ThreadMethodEntry tme) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.InvokeMarshaledCallbacks() at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m) at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.DebuggableCallback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam) at System.Windows.Forms.UnsafeNativeMethods.DispatchMessageW(MSG& msg) at System.Windows.Forms.Application.ComponentManager.System.Windows.Forms.UnsafeNativeMethods.IMsoComponentManager.FPushMessageLoop(Int32 dwComponentID, Int32 reason, Int32 pvLoopData) at System.Windows.Forms.Application.ThreadContext.RunMessageLoopInner(Int32 reason, ApplicationContext context) at System.Windows.Forms.Application.ThreadContext.RunMessageLoop(Int32 reason, ApplicationContext context) at Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Common.Wizards.Framework.WizardFrameView.Create() at Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Common.Wizards.Framework.WizardChainEngine.Launch() at Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Storage.MoveData.MainClass.LaunchMoveDataWizard() at Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.Storage.MoveData.MainClass.Main(String[] args)

  Read the article

• "Unable to initialize module" fileinfo php-pecl-Fileinfo.x86_64

  - by Myers Network

  I have a brand new server server that I am trying to get setup up. This is a 64 bit machine that I can not install "fileinfo" or "memcache". I have uninstalled these and reinstalled them using yum and pecl with no luck. Yum install fine "no error" but then get error when running php. pecl from what I can tell is only installing 32bit. Does not put anything in the lib64 directory. Here is my output from php -v: PHP Warning: PHP Startup: fileinfo: Unable to initialize module Module compiled with module API=20050922, debug=0, thread-safety=0 PHP compiled with module API=20060613, debug=0, thread-safety=0 These options need to match in Unknown on line 0 PHP Warning: PHP Startup: memcache: Unable to initialize module Module compiled with module API=20050922, debug=0, thread-safety=0 PHP compiled with module API=20060613, debug=0, thread-safety=0 These options need to match in Unknown on line 0 PHP 5.2.14 (cli) (built: Aug 12 2010 16:03:48) Copyright (c) 1997-2010 The PHP Group Zend Engine v2.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2010 Zend Technologies Here is some other system info incase you need it uname: Linux server.actham.us 2.6.18-194.26.1.el5 #1 SMP Tue Nov 9 12:54:20 EST 2010 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux php -m: PHP Warning: PHP Startup: fileinfo: Unable to initialize module Module compiled with module API=20050922, debug=0, thread-safety=0 PHP compiled with module API=20060613, debug=0, thread-safety=0 These options need to match in Unknown on line 0 PHP Warning: PHP Startup: memcache: Unable to initialize module Module compiled with module API=20050922, debug=0, thread-safety=0 PHP compiled with module API=20060613, debug=0, thread-safety=0 These options need to match in Unknown on line 0 [PHP Modules] bz2 calendar ctype curl date dbase dom exif filter ftp gd gettext gmp hash iconv imap json ldap libxml mbstring mcrypt mysql mysqli openssl pcntl pcre PDO pdo_mysql pdo_sqlite readline Reflection session shmop SimpleXML sockets SPL standard tokenizer wddx xml xmlreader xmlrpc xmlwriter xsl zip zlib [Zend Modules] Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks....

  Read the article

• "Unable to initialize module" fileinfo php-pecl-Fileinfo.x86_64

  - by Myers Network

  I have a brand new server server that I am trying to get setup up. This is a 64 bit machine that I can not install "fileinfo" or "memcache". I have uninstalled these and reinstalled them using yum and pecl with no luck. Yum install fine "no error" but then get error when running php. pecl from what I can tell is only installing 32bit. Does not put anything in the lib64 directory. Here is my output from php -v: PHP Warning: PHP Startup: fileinfo: Unable to initialize module Module compiled with module API=20050922, debug=0, thread-safety=0 PHP compiled with module API=20060613, debug=0, thread-safety=0 These options need to match in Unknown on line 0 PHP Warning: PHP Startup: memcache: Unable to initialize module Module compiled with module API=20050922, debug=0, thread-safety=0 PHP compiled with module API=20060613, debug=0, thread-safety=0 These options need to match in Unknown on line 0 PHP 5.2.14 (cli) (built: Aug 12 2010 16:03:48) Copyright (c) 1997-2010 The PHP Group Zend Engine v2.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2010 Zend Technologies Here is some other system info incase you need it uname: Linux server.actham.us 2.6.18-194.26.1.el5 #1 SMP Tue Nov 9 12:54:20 EST 2010 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux php -m: PHP Warning: PHP Startup: fileinfo: Unable to initialize module Module compiled with module API=20050922, debug=0, thread-safety=0 PHP compiled with module API=20060613, debug=0, thread-safety=0 These options need to match in Unknown on line 0 PHP Warning: PHP Startup: memcache: Unable to initialize module Module compiled with module API=20050922, debug=0, thread-safety=0 PHP compiled with module API=20060613, debug=0, thread-safety=0 These options need to match in Unknown on line 0 [PHP Modules] bz2 calendar ctype curl date dbase dom exif filter ftp gd gettext gmp hash iconv imap json ldap libxml mbstring mcrypt mysql mysqli openssl pcntl pcre PDO pdo_mysql pdo_sqlite readline Reflection session shmop SimpleXML sockets SPL standard tokenizer wddx xml xmlreader xmlrpc xmlwriter xsl zip zlib [Zend Modules] Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks....

  Read the article

• PHP - Centos OpenSSL error

  - by mabbs

  i'm currently having a problem with OpenSSL on my Centos 6.5 Server. it ran perfectly fine until sunday. and i checked the error_log and i saw this error in the log PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/lib64/php/modules/openssl.so' - /usr/lib64/php/modules/openssl.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory in Unknown on line 0 i tried phpinfo(); and i found that openssl is enabled i tried php -m it returned [PHP Modules] bz2 calendar Core ctype curl date dom ereg exif fileinfo filter ftp gd gettext gmp hash iconv interbase json libxml mbstring mcrypt memcache mysql mysqli openssl pcntl pcre PDO PDO_Firebird pdo_mysql pdo_sqlite Phar pspell readline Reflection session shmop SimpleXML snmp sockets SPL sqlite3 standard tokenizer wddx xml xmlreader xmlrpc xmlwriter xsl zip zlib UPDATE this is what i got from rpm -qa | grep php just like what Mike Suggested php-php-gettext-1.0.11-3.el6.noarch php-mcrypt-5.3.3-3.el6.x86_64 php-interbase-5.3.3-3.el6.x86_64 php-pdo-5.3.3-27.el6_5.1.x86_64 php-5.3.3-27.el6_5.1.x86_64 php-mysql-5.3.3-27.el6_5.1.x86_64 php-snmp-5.3.3-27.el6_5.1.x86_64 php-gd-5.3.3-27.el6_5.1.x86_64 php-xml-5.3.3-27.el6_5.1.x86_64 php-pear-1.9.4-4.el6.noarch php-pecl-memcache-3.0.5-4.el6.x86_64 phpMyAdmin-3.5.8.2-1.el6.noarch php-common-5.3.3-27.el6_5.1.x86_64 php-cli-5.3.3-27.el6_5.1.x86_64 php-devel-5.3.3-27.el6_5.1.x86_64 php-mbstring-5.3.3-27.el6_5.1.x86_64 php-xmlrpc-5.3.3-27.el6_5.1.x86_64 php-pspell-5.3.3-27.el6_5.1.x86_64

  Read the article

• Permissions Required for Sharepoint Backups

  - by Wyatt Barnett

  We are in the process of rolling out an extranet for some of our partners using WSS 3.0 as the platform. We already use it internally for a variety of things, and we are using the following powershell script to backup the server: param( $url="http://localhost", $backupFolder="c:\" ) [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SharePoint") $site= new-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite($url) $names=$site.WebApplication.Sites.Names foreach ($name in $names) { $n2 = "" if ($name.Length -eq 0) { $n2="ROOT" } else { $n2 = $name } $tmp=$n2.Replace("/", "_") + ".sbk" $saveas = "" if ($backupFolder.Length -eq 0) { $saveas = $tmp } else { $saveas = join-path -path $backupFolder -childPath $tmp } $site.WebApplication.Sites.Backup($name, $saveas, "true") write-host "$n2 backed up to $saveas." } This script works perfectly on the current installation running as our domain backup user. On the new box, it fails when ran as the backup user--claiming "The web application located at http://extranet/" could not be found. That url does, in fact, work so I'm fairly certain it isn't anything that dumb and rather is some permissions issue. Especially because, when executed from my security context, the script works perfectly. I have tried making the backup user a farm owner, as well as added him to the various site collection admin groups on the extranet. The one major difference between the extranet and the intranet server is that the extranet has an alternative access mapping (for https://xnet.example.com) and also uses forms authentication for that mapping. Anyhow, what permissions (or other voodoo) do I need to setup to get this script to work properly?

  Read the article

• How to read cell data in excel and output to command prompt

  - by Max Ollerenshaw

  Hi All, I'm a sys admin and I am trying to learn how to use powershell... I have never done any type of scripting or coding before and I have been teaching myself online by learning from the technet script centre and online forums. What I am trying to accomplish is to open an excel spreadsheet get information from it (usernames and password) and then output it into the command prompt in powershell. When ever I try to do this I get an Exception calling "InvokeMember" anyway, here is the code I have so far: function Invoke([object]$m, [string]$method, $parameters) { $m.PSBase.GetType().InvokeMember( $method, [Reflection.BindingFlags]::InvokeMethod, $null, $m, $parameters,$ciUS ) } $ciUS = [System.Globalization.CultureInfo]'en-US' $objExcel = New-Object -comobject Excel.Application $objExcel.Visible = $False $objExcel.DisplayAlerts = $False $objWorkbook = Invoke $objExcel.Workbooks.Open "C:\PS\User Data.xls" Write-Host "Numer of worksheets: " $objWorkbook.Sheets.Count $objWorksheet = $objWorkbook.Worksheets.Item(1) Write-Host "Worksheet: " $objWorksheet.Name $Forename = $objWorksheet.Cells.Item(2,1).Text $Surname = $objWorksheet.Cells.Item(2,2).Text Write-Host "Forename: " $Forename Write-Host "Surname: " $Surname $objExcel.Quit() If (ps excel) { kill -name excel} I have read many different posts on forums and articles on how to try and get around the en-US problem but I cannot seem to get around it and hope that someone here can help! Here is the Exeption problem I mentioned: Exception calling "InvokeMember" with "6" argument(s): "Method 'System.Management.Automation.PSMethod.C:\PS\User Data.x ls' not found." At C:\PS\excel.ps1:3 char:33 + $m.PSBase.GetType().InvokeMember <<<< ( + CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (:) [], MethodInvocationException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : DotNetMethodException Numer of worksheets: You cannot call a method on a null-valued expression. At C:\PS\excel.ps1:18 char:45 + $objWorksheet = $objWorkbook.Worksheets.Item <<<< (1) + CategoryInfo : InvalidOperation: (Item:String) [], RuntimeException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : InvokeMethodOnNull Worksheet: You cannot call a method on a null-valued expression. At C:\PS\excel.ps1:21 char:37 + $Forename = $objWorksheet.Cells.Item <<<< (2,1).Text + CategoryInfo : InvalidOperation: (Item:String) [], RuntimeException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : InvokeMethodOnNull You cannot call a method on a null-valued expression. At C:\PS\excel.ps1:22 char:36 + $Surname = $objWorksheet.Cells.Item <<<< (2,2).Text + CategoryInfo : InvalidOperation: (Item:String) [], RuntimeException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : InvokeMethodOnNull Forename: Surname: This is the first question I have ever asked, try to be nice! :)) Many Thanks Max

  Read the article

• pfSense Load Balancer and Virtual IP

  - by jshin47

  I have two identical web servers on 10.2.1.13 and 10.2.1.113. I would like to set up pfSense load balancer to balance requests to both of these. I set up pools that included HTTP and HTTPS for both of these hosts, then set up virtual servers that responded on HTTP and HTTPS and referred traffic to its respective pool. However, I set up the virtual server to listen on 10.2.1.213, a LAN IP rather than a WAN IP, because I want LAN traffic to be able use the load balancer virtual server as well. So, I set up a Virtual IP for 10.2.1.213 on LAN IP, and a NAT port forwarding rule for HTTP and HTTPS traffic on a WAN IP to forward to 10.2.1.213. It seems like this should work, but it fails. What eventually happens is that when I try to access the page from WAN, I am directed to the login page for my pfSense device rather than the page I am expecting. When I try to access 10.2.1.213 from LAN, the request times out. What is going wrong here? I have tried it with and without NAT reflection to no avail. Please advise

  Read the article

• What is the peak theoretical WiFi G user density? [closed]

  - by Bigbio2002

  I've seen a few WiFi capacity planning questions, and this one is related, but hopefully different enough not to be closed. Also, this is related specifically to 802.11g, but a similar question could be made for N. In order to squeeze more WiFi users into a space, the transmit power on the APs need to be reduced and the APs squeezed closer together. My question is, how far can you practically take this before the network becomes unusable? There will come a point where the transmit power is so weak that nobody will actually be able to pick up a connection, or be constantly roaming to/from APs spaced a few feet apart as they walk around. There are also only 3 available channels to use as well, which is a factor to consider. After determining the peak AP density, then multiply by users-per-AP, which should be easier to find out. After factoring all of this in and running some back-of-the-envelope calculations, I'd like to be able to get a figure of "XX users per 10ft^2" or something. This can be considered the physical limit of WiFi, and will keep people from asking about getting 3,000 people in a ballroom conference on WiFi. Can anyone with WiFi experience chime in, or better yet, provide some calculations for a more accurate figure? Assumptions: Let's assume an ideal environment with no reflection (think of a big, square, open room, with the APs spaced out on a plane), APs are placed on the ceiling so humans won't absorb the waves, and the only interference are from the APs themselves and the devices. As for what devices specifically, that's irrelevant for the first point of the question (AP density, so only channel and transmit power should matter). User experience: Wikipedia states that Wireless G has about 22Mbps maximum effective throughput, or about 2.75MB/s. For the purpose of this question, anything below 100KB/s per user can be deemed to be a poor user experience. As for roaming, I'll assume the user is standing in the same place, so hopefully that will be a non-issue.

  Read the article

• Writing xml with powershell

  - by alex

  i have a script that get all the info i need about my SharePoint farm : [System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Microsoft.SharePoint") > $null $farm = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFarm]::Local $websvcs = $farm.Services | where -FilterScript {$_.GetType() -eq [Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebService]} $webapps = @() foreach ($websvc in $websvcs) { write-output "Web Applications" write-output "" foreach ($webapp in $websvc.WebApplications) { write-output "Webapp Name -->"$webapp.Name write-output "" write-output "Site Collections" write-output "" foreach ($site in $webapp.Sites) { write-output "Site URL --> -->" $site.URL write-output "" write-output "Websites" write-output "" foreach ($web in $site.AllWebs) { write-output "Web URL --> --> -->" $web.URL write-output "" write-output "Lists" write-output "" foreach ($list in $web.Lists) { write-output "List Title --> --> --> -->" $list.Title write-output "" } foreach ($group in $web.Groups) { write-output "Group Name --> --> --> -->" $group.Name write-output "" foreach ($user in $group.Users) { write-output "User Name --> --> --> -->" $user.Name write-output "" } } } } } } i want to make the output to an XML file and then connect the xml file to HTML and make a site of it for manager use how can i do it ? thanks for the help !

  Read the article

• C# SMTP virtual server doesn't send mail [closed]

  - by ragaei

  I have got the following Exception : System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. - System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x8004020F): The server rejected one or more recipient addresses. The server response was: 550 5.7.1 Unable to relay for [email protected] --- End of inner exception stack trace --- at System.RuntimeType.InvokeDispMethod(String name, BindingFlags invokeAttr, Object target, Object[] args, Boolean[] byrefModifiers, Int32 culture, String[] namedParameters) at System.RuntimeType.InvokeMember(String name, BindingFlags bindingFlags, Binder binder, Object target, Object[] providedArgs, ParameterModifier[] modifiers, CultureInfo culture, String[] namedParams) at System.Type.InvokeMember(String name, BindingFlags, invokeAttr, Binder binder, Object target, Object[] args, CultureInfo culture) at System.Web.Mail.SmtpMail.LateBoundAccessHelper.CallMethod(Type type, Object obj, String methodName, Object[] args) at System.Web.Mail.SmtpMail.LateBoundAccessHelper.CallMethod(Object obj, String methodName, Object[] args) public static void SendEmail(string _FromEmail, string _ToEmail, string _Subject, string _EmailBody) { // setup email header . SmtpMail.SmtpServer = "127.0.0.1"; MailMessage _MailMessage = new MailMessage(); _MailMessage.From = _FromEmail; _MailMessage.To = _ToEmail; _MailMessage.Subject = _Subject; _MailMessage.Body = _EmailBody; try { SmtpMail.Send(_MailMessage); } catch (Exception ex) { if (ex.InnerException != null) { String str = ex.InnerException.ToString(); } } }

  Read the article

• Chester Devs Presentation and source code &ndash; &lsquo;Event Store - an introduction to a DSD for event sourcing and notifications&rsquo;

  - by Liam Westley

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/twickers/archive/2013/11/11/chester-devs-presentation-and-source-code-ndash-lsquoevent-store.aspxThank you everyone at Chester Devs Thanks to Fran Hoey and all the people from Chester Devs. It was a hard drive up and back but the enthusiasm of the audience, with some great questions does make it worthwhile. Presentation and source code My presentation, source code, Event Store runners and text files containing the various command line parameters used for curl is now available on GitHub; https://github.com/westleyl/ChesterDevs-EventStore. Don’t worry if you don’t have a GitHub account, you don’t need one, you can just click on the Download Zip button on the right hand menu to download all the files as a single ZIP file.  If all you want is the PowerPoint presentation, go to https://github.com/westleyl/ChesterDevs-EventStore/blob/master/Powerpoint/Huddle-EventStore.pptx, and click on the View Raw button. Downloading and installing Event Store and Tools Download Event Store http://download.geteventstore.com – I unzipped these files into C:\EventStore\v2.0.1 Download Curl from http://curl.haxx.se/download.html – I downloaded Win64 Generic (with SSL) and unzipped these files into C:\curl version 7.31.0 Running the tools I used in my presentation Demonstration 1 (running Event Store) You can use one of my Event Store runner command files to run the single node version of Event Store, using default ports of 2213 for HTTP and 1113  for TCP, and with a wildcard HTTP pattern.  Both take a single command line parameter to specify the location of the data and log files.  The runners assume the single node executable is located in C:\EventStore\v2.0.1, and will placed data files and logs beneath C:\EventStore\Data, i.e. RunEventStore.cmd TestData1 This will create data files in C:\EventStore\Data\TestData1\Data and log files in C:\EventStore\Data\TestData1\logs. If, when running Event Store you may see the following message, [03288,15,06:23:00.622] Failed to start http server Access is denied You will either need to run Event Store in an administrator console window, or you can use the netsh command to create a firewall permission to allow HTTP listening (this will need to be run, once, in an administrator console window), netsh http add urlacl url=http://*:2213/ user=liam You can always delete this later by running the delete; netsh http delete urlacl url=http://*:2213/ If you want to confirm that everything is running OK, open the management console in a browser by navigating to http://127.0.0.1:2213. If at any point you are asked for a user name and password use the default of ‘admin’/‘changeit’. Demonstration 2 (reading and adding data, curl) In my second demonstration I used curl directly from the console to read streams, write events and then read back those events. On GitHub I have included is a set of curl commands, CurlCommandLine.txt, and a sample data file, SampleData.json, to load an event into a DDDNorth3 stream. As there is not much data in the Event Store at this point I used the $stats-127.0.0.1:2113 which is a stream containing performance statistics for Event Store and is updated every 30 seconds (default). Demonstration 3 (projections) On GitHub I have included a sample projection, Projection-ByRoom.txt, which will create streams based on the room on which a session was held on the DDDNorth3 agenda. Browse to the management console, http://127.0.0.1:2213.  Click on Projections, New Projection, give it a name, Sessions-ByRoom, and copy in the JavaScript in the Projection-ByRoom.txt file.  Select Continuous, tick Emit Enabled and then click on Post. It should run immediately. You may by challenged for the administration login for the management console, if so use the default user name and password; 'admin'/'changeit'. Demonstration 4 (C# client) The final demonstration was the Visual Studio 2012 project using the Event Store client – referenced directly as C:\EventStore\v2.0.1\EventStore.ClientAPI.dll, although you can switch this to the latest Event Store client NuGet package. The source code provides a console app for viewing projections with the projection manager (HTTP connection), as well as containing a full set of data for the entire DDDNorth3 agenda.  It also deals with the strategy for reading newest events backwards to older events and ignoring older events that have been superseded. Resources Event Store home page: http://www.geteventstore.com/ Event Store source code on GitHub: https://github.com/eventstore/eventstore Event Store documentation on GitHub: https://github.com/eventstore/eventstore/wiki (includes index to @RobAshton’s blog series on Event Store at https://github.com/eventstore/eventstore/wiki#rob-ashton---projections-series) Event Store forum in Google Groups: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/event-store TopShelf Windows service wrapper is available on github: https://gist.github.com/trbngr/5083266

  Read the article

• DDD North 3 Presentation and source code &ndash; &lsquo;Event Store - an introduction to a DSD for event sourcing and notifications&rsquo;

  - by Liam Westley

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/twickers/archive/2013/10/15/ddd-north-3-presentation-and-source-code-ndash-lsquoevent-store.aspxThank you everyone at DDD North Thanks to all the people who helped organise the cracking conference that is DDD North 3, returning to Sunderland, and the great facilities at the University of Sunderland, and the fine drinks reception at Sunderland Software City.  The whole event wouldn’t be possible without the sponsors who ensured over 400 people were kept fed and watered so they could enjoy the impressive range of sessions. And lastly, a thank you to all those delegates who gave up their free time on a Saturday to spend a day dashing between lecture rooms, including a late change to my room which saw 40 people having to brave a journey between buildings in the fine drizzle. The enthusiasm from the delegates always helps recharge my geek batteries. Presentation and source code My presentation, source code, Event Store runners and text files containing the various command line parameters used for curl is now available on GitHub; https://github.com/westleyl/DDDNorth3-EventStore. Don’t worry if you don’t have a GitHub account, you don’t need one, you can just click on the Download Zip button on the right hand menu to download all the files as a single ZIP file.  If all you want is the PowerPoint presentation, go to https://github.com/westleyl/DDDNorth3-EventStore/blob/master/Powerpoint/DDDNorth-EventStore.pptx, and click on the View Raw button. Downloading and installing Event Store and Tools Download Event Store http://download.geteventstore.com – I unzipped these files into C:\EventStore\v2.0.1 Download Curl from http://curl.haxx.se/download.html – I downloaded Win64 Generic (with SSL) and unzipped these files into C:\curl version 7.31.0 Running the tools I used in my presentation Demonstration 1 (running Event Store) You can use one of my Event Store runner command files to run the single node version of Event Store, using default ports of 2213 for HTTP and 1113  for TCP, and with a wildcard HTTP pattern.  Both take a single command line parameter to specify the location of the data and log files.  The runners assume the single node executable is located in C:\EventStore\v2.0.1, and will placed data files and logs beneath C:\EventStore\Data, i.e. RunEventStore.cmd TestData1 This will create data files in C:\EventStore\Data\TestData1\Data and log files in C:\EventStore\Data\TestData1\logs. If, when running Event Store you may see the following message, [03288,15,06:23:00.622] Failed to start http server Access is denied You will either need to run Event Store in an administrator console window, or you can use the netsh command to create a firewall permission to allow HTTP listening (this will need to be run, once, in an administrator console window), netsh http add urlacl url=http://*:2213/ user=liam You can always delete this later by running the delete; netsh http delete urlacl url=http://*:2213/ If you want to confirm that everything is running OK, open the management console in a browser by navigating to http://127.0.0.1:2213. If at any point you are asked for a user name and password use the default of ‘admin’/‘changeit’.   Demonstration 2 (reading and adding data, curl) In my second demonstration I used curl directly from the console to read streams, write events and then read back those events. On GitHub I have included is a set of curl commands, CurlCommandLine.txt, and a sample data file, SampleData.json, to load an event into a DDDNorth3 stream. As there is not much data in the Event Store at this point I used the $stats-127.0.0.1:2113 which is a stream containing performance statistics for Event Store and is updated every 30 seconds (default). Demonstration 3 (projections) On GitHub I have included a sample projection, Projection-ByRoom.txt, which will create streams based on the room on which a session was held on the DDDNorth3 agenda. Browse to the management console, http://127.0.0.1:2213.  Click on Projections, New Projection, give it a name, Sessions-ByRoom, and copy in the JavaScript in the Projection-ByRoom.txt file.  Select Continuous, tick Emit Enabled and then click on Post. It should run immediately. You may by challenged for the administration login for the management console, if so use the default user name and password; 'admin'/'changeit'.   Demonstration 4 (C# client) The final demonstration was the Visual Studio 2012 project using the Event Store client – referenced directly as C:\EventStore\v2.0.1\EventStore.ClientAPI.dll, although you can switch this to the latest Event Store client NuGet package. The source code provides a console app for viewing projections with the projection manager (HTTP connection), as well as containing a full set of data for the entire DDDNorth3 agenda.  It also deals with the strategy for reading newest events backwards to older events and ignoring older events that have been superseded. Resources Event Store home page: http://www.geteventstore.com/ Event Store source code on GitHub: https://github.com/eventstore/eventstore Event Store documentation on GitHub: https://github.com/eventstore/eventstore/wiki (includes index to @RobAshton’s blog series on Event Store at https://github.com/eventstore/eventstore/wiki#rob-ashton---projections-series) Event Store forum in Google Groups: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/event-store TopShelf Windows service wrapper is available on github: https://gist.github.com/trbngr/5083266

  Read the article

• C# 4.0: Named And Optional Arguments

  - by Paulo Morgado

  As part of the co-evolution effort of C# and Visual Basic, C# 4.0 introduces Named and Optional Arguments. First of all, let’s clarify what are arguments and parameters: Method definition parameters are the input variables of the method. Method call arguments are the values provided to the method parameters. In fact, the C# Language Specification states the following on §7.5: The argument list (§7.5.1) of a function member invocation provides actual values or variable references for the parameters of the function member. Given the above definitions, we can state that: Parameters have always been named and still are. Parameters have never been optional and still aren’t. Named Arguments Until now, the way the C# compiler matched method call definition arguments with method parameters was by position. The first argument provides the value for the first parameter, the second argument provides the value for the second parameter, and so on and so on, regardless of the name of the parameters. If a parameter was missing a corresponding argument to provide its value, the compiler would emit a compilation error. For this call: Greeting("Mr.", "Morgado", 42); this method: public void Greeting(string title, string name, int age) will receive as parameters: title: “Mr.” name: “Morgado” age: 42 What this new feature allows is to use the names of the parameters to identify the corresponding arguments in the form: name:value Not all arguments in the argument list must be named. However, all named arguments must be at the end of the argument list. The matching between arguments (and the evaluation of its value) and parameters will be done first by name for the named arguments and than by position for the unnamed arguments. This means that, for this method definition: public static void Method(int first, int second, int third) this call declaration: int i = 0; Method(i, third: i++, second: ++i); will have this code generated by the compiler: int i = 0; int CS$0$0000 = i++; int CS$0$0001 = ++i; Method(i, CS$0$0001, CS$0$0000); which will give the method the following parameter values: first: 2 second: 2 third: 0 Notice the variable names. Although invalid being invalid C# identifiers, they are valid .NET identifiers and thus avoiding collision between user written and compiler generated code. Besides allowing to re-order of the argument list, this feature is very useful for auto-documenting the code, for example, when the argument list is very long or not clear, from the call site, what the arguments are. Optional Arguments Parameters can now have default values: public static void Method(int first, int second = 2, int third = 3) Parameters with default values must be the last in the parameter list and its value is used as the value of the parameter if the corresponding argument is missing from the method call declaration. For this call declaration: int i = 0; Method(i, third: ++i); will have this code generated by the compiler: int i = 0; int CS$0$0000 = ++i; Method(i, 2, CS$0$0000); which will give the method the following parameter values: first: 1 second: 2 third: 1 Because, when method parameters have default values, arguments can be omitted from the call declaration, this might seem like method overloading or a good replacement for it, but it isn’t. Although methods like this: public static StreamReader OpenTextFile( string path, Encoding encoding = null, bool detectEncoding = true, int bufferSize = 1024) allow to have its calls written like this: OpenTextFile("foo.txt", Encoding.UTF8); OpenTextFile("foo.txt", Encoding.UTF8, bufferSize: 4096); OpenTextFile( bufferSize: 4096, path: "foo.txt", detectEncoding: false); The complier handles default values like constant fields taking the value and useing it instead of a reference to the value. So, like with constant fields, methods with parameters with default values are exposed publicly (and remember that internal members might be publicly accessible – InternalsVisibleToAttribute). If such methods are publicly accessible and used by another assembly, those values will be hard coded in the calling code and, if the called assembly has its default values changed, they won’t be assumed by already compiled code. At the first glance, I though that using optional arguments for “bad” written code was great, but the ability to write code like that was just pure evil. But than I realized that, since I use private constant fields, it’s OK to use default parameter values on privately accessed methods.

  Read the article

• 256 Windows Azure Worker Roles, Windows Kinect and a 90's Text-Based Ray-Tracer

  - by Alan Smith

  For a couple of years I have been demoing a simple render farm hosted in Windows Azure using worker roles and the Azure Storage service. At the start of the presentation I deploy an Azure application that uses 16 worker roles to render a 1,500 frame 3D ray-traced animation. At the end of the presentation, when the animation was complete, I would play the animation delete the Azure deployment. The standing joke with the audience was that it was that it was a “$2 demo”, as the compute charges for running the 16 instances for an hour was $1.92, factor in the bandwidth charges and it’s a couple of dollars. The point of the demo is that it highlights one of the great benefits of cloud computing, you pay for what you use, and if you need massive compute power for a short period of time using Windows Azure can work out very cost effective. The “$2 demo” was great for presenting at user groups and conferences in that it could be deployed to Azure, used to render an animation, and then removed in a one hour session. I have always had the idea of doing something a bit more impressive with the demo, and scaling it from a “$2 demo” to a “$30 demo”. The challenge was to create a visually appealing animation in high definition format and keep the demo time down to one hour.  This article will take a run through how I achieved this. Ray Tracing Ray tracing, a technique for generating high quality photorealistic images, gained popularity in the 90’s with companies like Pixar creating feature length computer animations, and also the emergence of shareware text-based ray tracers that could run on a home PC. In order to render a ray traced image, the ray of light that would pass from the view point must be tracked until it intersects with an object. At the intersection, the color, reflectiveness, transparency, and refractive index of the object are used to calculate if the ray will be reflected or refracted. Each pixel may require thousands of calculations to determine what color it will be in the rendered image. Pin-Board Toys Having very little artistic talent and a basic understanding of maths I decided to focus on an animation that could be modeled fairly easily and would look visually impressive. I’ve always liked the pin-board desktop toys that become popular in the 80’s and when I was working as a 3D animator back in the 90’s I always had the idea of creating a 3D ray-traced animation of a pin-board, but never found the energy to do it. Even if I had a go at it, the render time to produce an animation that would look respectable on a 486 would have been measured in months. PolyRay Back in 1995 I landed my first real job, after spending three years being a beach-ski-climbing-paragliding-bum, and was employed to create 3D ray-traced animations for a CD-ROM that school kids would use to learn physics. I had got into the strange and wonderful world of text-based ray tracing, and was using a shareware ray-tracer called PolyRay. PolyRay takes a text file describing a scene as input and, after a few hours processing on a 486, produced a high quality ray-traced image. The following is an example of a basic PolyRay scene file. background Midnight_Blue   static define matte surface { ambient 0.1 diffuse 0.7 } define matte_white texture { matte { color white } } define matte_black texture { matte { color dark_slate_gray } } define position_cylindrical 3 define lookup_sawtooth 1 define light_wood <0.6, 0.24, 0.1> define median_wood <0.3, 0.12, 0.03> define dark_wood <0.05, 0.01, 0.005>     define wooden texture { noise surface { ambient 0.2  diffuse 0.7  specular white, 0.5 microfacet Reitz 10 position_fn position_cylindrical position_scale 1  lookup_fn lookup_sawtooth octaves 1 turbulence 1 color_map( [0.0, 0.2, light_wood, light_wood] [0.2, 0.3, light_wood, median_wood] [0.3, 0.4, median_wood, light_wood] [0.4, 0.7, light_wood, light_wood] [0.7, 0.8, light_wood, median_wood] [0.8, 0.9, median_wood, light_wood] [0.9, 1.0, light_wood, dark_wood]) } } define glass texture { surface { ambient 0 diffuse 0 specular 0.2 reflection white, 0.1 transmission white, 1, 1.5 }} define shiny surface { ambient 0.1 diffuse 0.6 specular white, 0.6 microfacet Phong 7  } define steely_blue texture { shiny { color black } } define chrome texture { surface { color white ambient 0.0 diffuse 0.2 specular 0.4 microfacet Phong 10 reflection 0.8 } }   viewpoint {     from <4.000, -1.000, 1.000> at <0.000, 0.000, 0.000> up <0, 1, 0> angle 60     resolution 640, 480 aspect 1.6 image_format 0 }       light <-10, 30, 20> light <-10, 30, -20>   object { disc <0, -2, 0>, <0, 1, 0>, 30 wooden }   object { sphere <0.000, 0.000, 0.000>, 1.00 chrome } object { cylinder <0.000, 0.000, 0.000>, <0.000, 0.000, -4.000>, 0.50 chrome }   After setting up the background and defining colors and textures, the viewpoint is specified. The “camera” is located at a point in 3D space, and it looks towards another point. The angle, image resolution, and aspect ratio are specified. Two lights are present in the image at defined coordinates. The three objects in the image are a wooden disc to represent a table top, and a sphere and cylinder that intersect to form a pin that will be used for the pin board toy in the final animation. When the image is rendered, the following image is produced. The pins are modeled with a chrome surface, so they reflect the environment around them. Note that the scale of the pin shaft is not correct, this will be fixed later. Modeling the Pin Board The frame of the pin-board is made up of three boxes, and six cylinders, the front box is modeled using a clear, slightly reflective solid, with the same refractive index of glass. The other shapes are modeled as metal. object { box <-5.5, -1.5, 1>, <5.5, 5.5, 1.2> glass } object { box <-5.5, -1.5, -0.04>, <5.5, 5.5, -0.09> steely_blue } object { box <-5.5, -1.5, -0.52>, <5.5, 5.5, -0.59> steely_blue } object { cylinder <-5.2, -1.2, 1.4>, <-5.2, -1.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <5.2, -1.2, 1.4>, <5.2, -1.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <-5.2, 5.2, 1.4>, <-5.2, 5.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <5.2, 5.2, 1.4>, <5.2, 5.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <0, -1.2, 1.4>, <0, -1.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue } object { cylinder <0, 5.2, 1.4>, <0, 5.2, -0.74>, 0.2 steely_blue }   In order to create the matrix of pins that make up the pin board I used a basic console application with a few nested loops to create two intersecting matrixes of pins, which models the layout used in the pin boards. The resulting image is shown below. The pin board contains 11,481 pins, with the scene file containing 23,709 lines of code. For the complete animation 2,000 scene files will be created, which is over 47 million lines of code. Each pin in the pin-board will slide out a specific distance when an object is pressed into the back of the board. This is easily modeled by setting the Z coordinate of the pin to a specific value. In order to set all of the pins in the pin-board to the correct position, a bitmap image can be used. The position of the pin can be set based on the color of the pixel at the appropriate position in the image. When the Windows Azure logo is used to set the Z coordinate of the pins, the following image is generated. The challenge now was to make a cool animation. The Azure Logo is fine, but it is static. Using a normal video to animate the pins would not work; the colors in the video would not be the same as the depth of the objects from the camera. In order to simulate the pin board accurately a series of frames from a depth camera could be used. Windows Kinect The Kenect controllers for the X-Box 360 and Windows feature a depth camera. The Kinect SDK for Windows provides a programming interface for Kenect, providing easy access for .NET developers to the Kinect sensors. The Kinect Explorer provided with the Kinect SDK is a great starting point for exploring Kinect from a developers perspective. Both the X-Box 360 Kinect and the Windows Kinect will work with the Kinect SDK, the Windows Kinect is required for commercial applications, but the X-Box Kinect can be used for hobby projects. The Windows Kinect has the advantage of providing a mode to allow depth capture with objects closer to the camera, which makes for a more accurate depth image for setting the pin positions. Creating a Depth Field Animation The depth field animation used to set the positions of the pin in the pin board was created using a modified version of the Kinect Explorer sample application. In order to simulate the pin board accurately, a small section of the depth range from the depth sensor will be used. Any part of the object in front of the depth range will result in a white pixel; anything behind the depth range will be black. Within the depth range the pixels in the image will be set to RGB values from 0,0,0 to 255,255,255. A screen shot of the modified Kinect Explorer application is shown below. The Kinect Explorer sample application was modified to include slider controls that are used to set the depth range that forms the image from the depth stream. This allows the fine tuning of the depth image that is required for simulating the position of the pins in the pin board. The Kinect Explorer was also modified to record a series of images from the depth camera and save them as a sequence JPEG files that will be used to animate the pins in the animation the Start and Stop buttons are used to start and stop the image recording. En example of one of the depth images is shown below. Once a series of 2,000 depth images has been captured, the task of creating the animation can begin. Rendering a Test Frame In order to test the creation of frames and get an approximation of the time required to render each frame a test frame was rendered on-premise using PolyRay. The output of the rendering process is shown below. The test frame contained 23,629 primitive shapes, most of which are the spheres and cylinders that are used for the 11,800 or so pins in the pin board. The 1280x720 image contains 921,600 pixels, but as anti-aliasing was used the number of rays that were calculated was 4,235,777, with 3,478,754,073 object boundaries checked. The test frame of the pin board with the depth field image applied is shown below. The tracing time for the test frame was 4 minutes 27 seconds, which means rendering the2,000 frames in the animation would take over 148 hours, or a little over 6 days. Although this is much faster that an old 486, waiting almost a week to see the results of an animation would make it challenging for animators to create, view, and refine their animations. It would be much better if the animation could be rendered in less than one hour. Windows Azure Worker Roles The cost of creating an on-premise render farm to render animations increases in proportion to the number of servers. The table below shows the cost of servers for creating a render farm, assuming a cost of $500 per server. Number of Servers Cost 1 $500 16 $8,000 256 $128,000   As well as the cost of the servers, there would be additional costs for networking, racks etc. Hosting an environment of 256 servers on-premise would require a server room with cooling, and some pretty hefty power cabling. The Windows Azure compute services provide worker roles, which are ideal for performing processor intensive compute tasks. With the scalability available in Windows Azure a job that takes 256 hours to complete could be perfumed using different numbers of worker roles. The time and cost of using 1, 16 or 256 worker roles is shown below. Number of Worker Roles Render Time Cost 1 256 hours $30.72 16 16 hours $30.72 256 1 hour $30.72   Using worker roles in Windows Azure provides the same cost for the 256 hour job, irrespective of the number of worker roles used. Provided the compute task can be broken down into many small units, and the worker role compute power can be used effectively, it makes sense to scale the application so that the task is completed quickly, making the results available in a timely fashion. The task of rendering 2,000 frames in an animation is one that can easily be broken down into 2,000 individual pieces, which can be performed by a number of worker roles. Creating a Render Farm in Windows Azure The architecture of the render farm is shown in the following diagram. The render farm is a hybrid application with the following components: ·         On-Premise o   Windows Kinect – Used combined with the Kinect Explorer to create a stream of depth images. o   Animation Creator – This application uses the depth images from the Kinect sensor to create scene description files for PolyRay. These files are then uploaded to the jobs blob container, and job messages added to the jobs queue. o   Process Monitor – This application queries the role instance lifecycle table and displays statistics about the render farm environment and render process. o   Image Downloader – This application polls the image queue and downloads the rendered animation files once they are complete. ·         Windows Azure o   Azure Storage – Queues and blobs are used for the scene description files and completed frames. A table is used to store the statistics about the rendering environment.   The architecture of each worker role is shown below.   The worker role is configured to use local storage, which provides file storage on the worker role instance that can be use by the applications to render the image and transform the format of the image. The service definition for the worker role with the local storage configuration highlighted is shown below. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceDefinition name="CloudRay" >   <WorkerRole name="CloudRayWorkerRole" vmsize="Small">     <Imports>     </Imports>     <ConfigurationSettings>       <Setting name="DataConnectionString" />     </ConfigurationSettings>     <LocalResources>       <LocalStorage name="RayFolder" cleanOnRoleRecycle="true" />     </LocalResources>   </WorkerRole> </ServiceDefinition>     The two executable programs, PolyRay.exe and DTA.exe are included in the Azure project, with Copy Always set as the property. PolyRay will take the scene description file and render it to a Truevision TGA file. As the TGA format has not seen much use since the mid 90’s it is converted to a JPG image using Dave's Targa Animator, another shareware application from the 90’s. Each worker roll will use the following process to render the animation frames. 1.       The worker process polls the job queue, if a job is available the scene description file is downloaded from blob storage to local storage. 2.       PolyRay.exe is started in a process with the appropriate command line arguments to render the image as a TGA file. 3.       DTA.exe is started in a process with the appropriate command line arguments convert the TGA file to a JPG file. 4.       The JPG file is uploaded from local storage to the images blob container. 5.       A message is placed on the images queue to indicate a new image is available for download. 6.       The job message is deleted from the job queue. 7.       The role instance lifecycle table is updated with statistics on the number of frames rendered by the worker role instance, and the CPU time used. The code for this is shown below. public override void Run() {     // Set environment variables     string polyRayPath = Path.Combine(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("RoleRoot"), PolyRayLocation);     string dtaPath = Path.Combine(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("RoleRoot"), DTALocation);       LocalResource rayStorage = RoleEnvironment.GetLocalResource("RayFolder");     string localStorageRootPath = rayStorage.RootPath;       JobQueue jobQueue = new JobQueue("renderjobs");     JobQueue downloadQueue = new JobQueue("renderimagedownloadjobs");     CloudRayBlob sceneBlob = new CloudRayBlob("scenes");     CloudRayBlob imageBlob = new CloudRayBlob("images");     RoleLifecycleDataSource roleLifecycleDataSource = new RoleLifecycleDataSource();       Frames = 0;       while (true)     {         // Get the render job from the queue         CloudQueueMessage jobMsg = jobQueue.Get();           if (jobMsg != null)         {             // Get the file details             string sceneFile = jobMsg.AsString;             string tgaFile = sceneFile.Replace(".pi", ".tga");             string jpgFile = sceneFile.Replace(".pi", ".jpg");               string sceneFilePath = Path.Combine(localStorageRootPath, sceneFile);             string tgaFilePath = Path.Combine(localStorageRootPath, tgaFile);             string jpgFilePath = Path.Combine(localStorageRootPath, jpgFile);               // Copy the scene file to local storage             sceneBlob.DownloadFile(sceneFilePath);               // Run the ray tracer.             string polyrayArguments =                 string.Format("\"{0}\" -o \"{1}\" -a 2", sceneFilePath, tgaFilePath);             Process polyRayProcess = new Process();             polyRayProcess.StartInfo.FileName =                 Path.Combine(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("RoleRoot"), polyRayPath);             polyRayProcess.StartInfo.Arguments = polyrayArguments;             polyRayProcess.Start();             polyRayProcess.WaitForExit();               // Convert the image             string dtaArguments =                 string.Format(" {0} /FJ /P{1}", tgaFilePath, Path.GetDirectoryName (jpgFilePath));             Process dtaProcess = new Process();             dtaProcess.StartInfo.FileName =                 Path.Combine(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("RoleRoot"), dtaPath);             dtaProcess.StartInfo.Arguments = dtaArguments;             dtaProcess.Start();             dtaProcess.WaitForExit();               // Upload the image to blob storage             imageBlob.UploadFile(jpgFilePath);               // Add a download job.             downloadQueue.Add(jpgFile);               // Delete the render job message             jobQueue.Delete(jobMsg);               Frames++;         }         else         {             Thread.Sleep(1000);         }           // Log the worker role activity.         roleLifecycleDataSource.Alive             ("CloudRayWorker", RoleLifecycleDataSource.RoleLifecycleId, Frames);     } }     Monitoring Worker Role Instance Lifecycle In order to get more accurate statistics about the lifecycle of the worker role instances used to render the animation data was tracked in an Azure storage table. The following class was used to track the worker role lifecycles in Azure storage.   public class RoleLifecycle : TableServiceEntity {     public string ServerName { get; set; }     public string Status { get; set; }     public DateTime StartTime { get; set; }     public DateTime EndTime { get; set; }     public long SecondsRunning { get; set; }     public DateTime LastActiveTime { get; set; }     public int Frames { get; set; }     public string Comment { get; set; }       public RoleLifecycle()     {     }       public RoleLifecycle(string roleName)     {         PartitionKey = roleName;         RowKey = Utils.GetAscendingRowKey();         Status = "Started";         StartTime = DateTime.UtcNow;         LastActiveTime = StartTime;         EndTime = StartTime;         SecondsRunning = 0;         Frames = 0;     } }     A new instance of this class is created and added to the storage table when the role starts. It is then updated each time the worker renders a frame to record the total number of frames rendered and the total processing time. These statistics are used be the monitoring application to determine the effectiveness of use of resources in the render farm. Rendering the Animation The Azure solution was deployed to Windows Azure with the service configuration set to 16 worker role instances. This allows for the application to be tested in the cloud environment, and the performance of the application determined. When I demo the application at conferences and user groups I often start with 16 instances, and then scale up the application to the full 256 instances. The configuration to run 16 instances is shown below. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="CloudRay" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="1" osVersion="*">   <Role name="CloudRayWorkerRole">     <Instances count="16" />     <ConfigurationSettings>       <Setting name="DataConnectionString"         value="DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=cloudraydata;AccountKey=..." />     </ConfigurationSettings>   </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>     About six minutes after deploying the application the first worker roles become active and start to render the first frames of the animation. The CloudRay Monitor application displays an icon for each worker role instance, with a number indicating the number of frames that the worker role has rendered. The statistics on the left show the number of active worker roles and statistics about the render process. The render time is the time since the first worker role became active; the CPU time is the total amount of processing time used by all worker role instances to render the frames.   Five minutes after the first worker role became active the last of the 16 worker roles activated. By this time the first seven worker roles had each rendered one frame of the animation.   With 16 worker roles u and running it can be seen that one hour and 45 minutes CPU time has been used to render 32 frames with a render time of just under 10 minutes.     At this rate it would take over 10 hours to render the 2,000 frames of the full animation. In order to complete the animation in under an hour more processing power will be required. Scaling the render farm from 16 instances to 256 instances is easy using the new management portal. The slider is set to 256 instances, and the configuration saved. We do not need to re-deploy the application, and the 16 instances that are up and running will not be affected. Alternatively, the configuration file for the Azure service could be modified to specify 256 instances.   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="CloudRay" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="1" osVersion="*">   <Role name="CloudRayWorkerRole">     <Instances count="256" />     <ConfigurationSettings>       <Setting name="DataConnectionString"         value="DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=cloudraydata;AccountKey=..." />     </ConfigurationSettings>   </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>     Six minutes after the new configuration has been applied 75 new worker roles have activated and are processing their first frames.   Five minutes later the full configuration of 256 worker roles is up and running. We can see that the average rate of frame rendering has increased from 3 to 12 frames per minute, and that over 17 hours of CPU time has been utilized in 23 minutes. In this test the time to provision 140 worker roles was about 11 minutes, which works out at about one every five seconds.   We are now half way through the rendering, with 1,000 frames complete. This has utilized just under three days of CPU time in a little over 35 minutes.   The animation is now complete, with 2,000 frames rendered in a little over 52 minutes. The CPU time used by the 256 worker roles is 6 days, 7 hours and 22 minutes with an average frame rate of 38 frames per minute. The rendering of the last 1,000 frames took 16 minutes 27 seconds, which works out at a rendering rate of 60 frames per minute. The frame counts in the server instances indicate that the use of a queue to distribute the workload has been very effective in distributing the load across the 256 worker role instances. The first 16 instances that were deployed first have rendered between 11 and 13 frames each, whilst the 240 instances that were added when the application was scaled have rendered between 6 and 9 frames each.   Completed Animation I’ve uploaded the completed animation to YouTube, a low resolution preview is shown below. Pin Board Animation Created using Windows Kinect and 256 Windows Azure Worker Roles   The animation can be viewed in 1280x720 resolution at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5jy6bvSxWc Effective Use of Resources According to the CloudRay monitor statistics the animation took 6 days, 7 hours and 22 minutes CPU to render, this works out at 152 hours of compute time, rounded up to the nearest hour. As the usage for the worker role instances are billed for the full hour, it may have been possible to render the animation using fewer than 256 worker roles. When deciding the optimal usage of resources, the time required to provision and start the worker roles must also be considered. In the demo I started with 16 worker roles, and then scaled the application to 256 worker roles. It would have been more optimal to start the application with maybe 200 worker roles, and utilized the full hour that I was being billed for. This would, however, have prevented showing the ease of scalability of the application. The new management portal displays the CPU usage across the worker roles in the deployment. The average CPU usage across all instances is 93.27%, with over 99% used when all the instances are up and running. This shows that the worker role resources are being used very effectively. Grid Computing Scenarios Although I am using this scenario for a hobby project, there are many scenarios where a large amount of compute power is required for a short period of time. Windows Azure provides a great platform for developing these types of grid computing applications, and can work out very cost effective. ·         Windows Azure can provide massive compute power, on demand, in a matter of minutes. ·         The use of queues to manage the load balancing of jobs between role instances is a simple and effective solution. ·         Using a cloud-computing platform like Windows Azure allows proof-of-concept scenarios to be tested and evaluated on a very low budget. ·         No charges for inbound data transfer makes the uploading of large data sets to Windows Azure Storage services cost effective. (Transaction charges still apply.) Tips for using Windows Azure for Grid Computing Scenarios I found the implementation of a render farm using Windows Azure a fairly simple scenario to implement. I was impressed by ease of scalability that Azure provides, and by the short time that the application took to scale from 16 to 256 worker role instances. In this case it was around 13 minutes, in other tests it took between 10 and 20 minutes. The following tips may be useful when implementing a grid computing project in Windows Azure. ·         Using an Azure Storage queue to load-balance the units of work across multiple worker roles is simple and very effective. The design I have used in this scenario could easily scale to many thousands of worker role instances. ·         Windows Azure accounts are typically limited to 20 cores. If you need to use more than this, a call to support and a credit card check will be required. ·         Be aware of how the billing model works. You will be charged for worker role instances for the full clock our in which the instance is deployed. Schedule the workload to start just after the clock hour has started. ·         Monitor the utilization of the resources you are provisioning, ensure that you are not paying for worker roles that are idle. ·         If you are deploying third party applications to worker roles, you may well run into licensing issues. Purchasing software licenses on a per-processor basis when using hundreds of processors for a short time period would not be cost effective. ·         Third party software may also require installation onto the worker roles, which can be accomplished using start-up tasks. Bear in mind that adding a startup task and possible re-boot will add to the time required for the worker role instance to start and activate. An alternative may be to use a prepared VM and use VM roles. ·         Consider using the Windows Azure Autoscaling Application Block (WASABi) to autoscale the worker roles in your application. When using a large number of worker roles, the utilization must be carefully monitored, if the scaling algorithms are not optimal it could get very expensive!

  Read the article

• Breaking through the class sealing

  - by Jason Crease

  Do you understand 'sealing' in C#?  Somewhat?  Anyway, here's the lowdown. I've done this article from a C# perspective, but I've occasionally referenced .NET when appropriate. What is sealing a class? By sealing a class in C#, you ensure that you ensure that no class can be derived from that class.  You do this by simply adding the word 'sealed' to a class definition: public sealed class Dog {} Now writing something like " public sealed class Hamster: Dog {} " you'll get a compile error like this: 'Hamster: cannot derive from sealed type 'Dog' If you look in an IL disassembler, you'll see a definition like this: .class public auto ansi sealed beforefieldinit Dog extends [mscorlib]System.Object Note the addition of the word 'sealed'. What about sealing methods? You can also seal overriding methods.  By adding the word 'sealed', you ensure that the method cannot be overridden in a derived class.  Consider the following code: public class Dog : Mammal { public sealed override void Go() { } } public class Mammal { public virtual void Go() { } } In this code, the method 'Go' in Dog is sealed.  It cannot be overridden in a subclass.  Writing this would cause a compile error: public class Dachshund : Dog { public override void Go() { } } However, we can 'new' a method with the same name.  This is essentially a new method; distinct from the 'Go' in the subclass: public class Terrier : Dog { public new void Go() { } } Sealing properties? You can also seal seal properties.  You add 'sealed' to the property definition, like so: public sealed override string Name {     get { return m_Name; }     set { m_Name = value; } } In C#, you can only seal a property, not the underlying setters/getters.  This is because C# offers no override syntax for setters or getters.  However, in underlying IL you seal the setter and getter methods individually - a property is just metadata. Why bother sealing? There are a few traditional reasons to seal: Invariance. Other people may want to derive from your class, even though your implementation may make successful derivation near-impossible.  There may be twisted, hacky logic that could never be second-guessed by another developer.  By sealing your class, you're protecting them from wasting their time.  The CLR team has sealed most of the framework classes, and I assume they did this for this reason. Security.  By deriving from your type, an attacker may gain access to functionality that enables him to hack your system.  I consider this a very weak security precaution. Speed.  If a class is sealed, then .NET doesn't need to consult the virtual-function-call table to find the actual type, since it knows that no derived type can exist.  Therefore, it could emit a 'call' instead of 'callvirt' or at least optimise the machine code, thus producing a performance benefit.  But I've done trials, and have been unable to demonstrate this If you have an example, please share! All in all, I'm not convinced that sealing is interesting or important.  Anyway, moving-on... What is automatically sealed? Value types and structs.  If they were not always sealed, all sorts of things would go wrong.  For instance, structs are laid-out inline within a class.  But what if you assigned a substruct to a struct field of that class?  There may be too many fields to fit. Static classes.  Static classes exist in C# but not .NET.  The C# compiler compiles a static class into an 'abstract sealed' class.  So static classes are already sealed in C#. Enumerations.  The CLR does not track the types of enumerations - it treats them as simple value types.  Hence, polymorphism would not work. What cannot be sealed? Interfaces.  Interfaces exist to be implemented, so sealing to prevent implementation is dumb.  But what if you could prevent interfaces from being extended (i.e. ban declarations like "public interface IMyInterface : ISealedInterface")?  There is no good reason to seal an interface like this.  Sealing finalizes behaviour, but interfaces have no intrinsic behaviour to finalize Abstract classes.  In IL you can create an abstract sealed class.  But C# syntax for this already exists - declaring a class as a 'static', so it forces you to declare it as such. Non-override methods.  If a method isn't declared as override it cannot be overridden, so sealing would make no difference.  Note this is stated from a C# perspective - the words are opposite in IL.  In IL, you have four choices in total: no declaration (which actually seals the method), 'virtual' (called 'override' in C#), 'sealed virtual' ('sealed override' in C#) and 'newslot virtual' ('new virtual' or 'virtual' in C#, depending on whether the method already exists in a base class). Methods that implement interface methods.  Methods that implement an interface method must be virtual, so cannot be sealed. Fields.  A field cannot be overridden, only hidden (using the 'new' keyword in C#), so sealing would make no sense.

  Read the article

• Access Control Service v2: Registering Web Identities in your Applications [concepts]

  - by Your DisplayName here!

  ACS v2 support two fundamental types of client identities– I like to call them “enterprise identities” (WS-*) and “web identities” (Google, LiveID, OpenId in general…). I also see two different “mind sets” when it comes to application design using the above identity types: Enterprise identities – often the fact that a client can present a token from a trusted identity provider means he is a legitimate user of the application. Trust relationships and authorization details have been negotiated out of band (often on paper). Web identities – the fact that a user can authenticate with Google et al does not necessarily mean he is a legitimate (or registered) user of an application. Typically additional steps are necessary (like filling out a form, email confirmation etc). Sometimes also a mixture of both approaches exist, for the sake of this post, I will focus on the web identity case. I got a number of questions how to implement the web identity scenario and after some conversations it turns out it is the old authentication vs. authorization problem that gets in the way. Many people use the IsAuthenticated property on IIdentity to make security decisions in their applications (or deny user=”?” in ASP.NET terms). That’s a very natural thing to do, because authentication was done inside the application and we knew exactly when the IsAuthenticated condition is true. Been there, done that. Guilty ;) The fundamental difference between these “old style” apps and federation is, that authentication is not done by the application anymore. It is done by a third party service, and in the case of web identity providers, in services that are not under our control (nor do we have a formal business relationship with these providers). Now the issue is, when you switch to ACS, and someone with a Google account authenticates, indeed IsAuthenticated is true – because that’s what he is! This does not mean, that he is also authorized to use the application. It just proves he was able to authenticate with Google. Now this obviously leads to confusion. How can we solve that? Easy answer: We have to deal with authentication and authorization separately. Job done ;) For many application types I see this general approach: Application uses ACS for authentication (maybe both enterprise and web identities, we focus on web identities but you could easily have a dual approach here) Application offers to authenticate (or sign in) via web identity accounts like LiveID, Google, Facebook etc. Application also maintains a database of its “own” users. Typically you want to store additional information about the user In such an application type it is important to have a unique identifier for your users (think the primary key of your user database). What would that be? Most web identity provider (and all the standard ACS v2 supported ones) emit a NameIdentifier claim. This is a stable ID for the client (scoped to the relying party – more on that later). Furthermore ACS emits a claims identifying the identity provider (like the original issuer concept in WIF). When you combine these two values together, you can be sure to have a unique identifier for the user, e.g.: Facebook-134952459903700\799880347 You can now check on incoming calls, if the user is already registered and if yes, swap the ACS claims with claims coming from your user database. One claims would maybe be a role like “Registered User” which can then be easily used to do authorization checks in the application. The WIF claims authentication manager is a perfect place to do the claims transformation. If the user is not registered, show a register form. Maybe you can use some claims from the identity provider to pre-fill form fields. (see here where I show how to use the Facebook API to fetch additional user properties). After successful registration (which may include other mechanisms like a confirmation email), flip the bit in your database to make the web identity a registered user. This is all very theoretical. In the next post I will show some code and provide a download link for the complete sample. More on NameIdentifier Identity providers “guarantee” that the name identifier for a given user in your application will always be the same. But different applications (in the case of ACS – different ACS namespaces) will see different name identifiers. This is by design to protect the privacy of users because identical name identifiers could be used to create “profiles” of some sort for that user. In technical terms they create the name identifier approximately like this: name identifier = Hash((Provider Internal User ID) + (Relying Party Address)) Why is this important to know? Well – when you change the name of your ACS namespace, the name identifiers will change as well and you will will lose your “connection” to your existing users. Oh an btw – never use any other claims (like email address or name) to form a unique ID – these can often be changed by users.

  Read the article

• How to use AVCaptureSession to stream live preview video, then take a photo, then return to streaming

  - by Matthew

  I have an application that creates its own live preview prior to taking a still photo. The app needs to run some processing on the image data and thus is not able to rely on AVCaptureVideoPreviewLayer. Getting the initial stream to work is going quite well, using Apple's example code. The problem comes when I try to switch to the higher quality image to take the snapshot. In response to a button press I attempt to reconfigure the session for taking a full resolution photo. I've tried many variations but here is my latest example (which still does not work): - (void)sessionSetupForPhoto { [session beginConfiguration]; session.sessionPreset = AVCaptureSessionPresetPhoto; AVCaptureStillImageOutput *output = [[[AVCaptureStillImageOutput alloc] init] autorelease]; for (AVCaptureOutput *output in [session outputs]) { [session removeOutput:output]; } if ([session canAddOutput:output]){ [session addOutput:output]; } else { NSLog(@"Not able to add an AVCaptureStillImageOutput"); } [session commitConfiguration]; } I am consistently getting an error message just after the commitConfiguration line that looks like this: (that is to say, I am getting an AVCaptureSessionRuntimeErrorNotification sent to my registered observer) Received an error: NSConcreteNotification 0x19d870 {name = AVCaptureSessionRuntimeErrorNotification; object = ; userInfo = { AVCaptureSessionErrorKey = "Error Domain=AVFoundationErrorDomain Code=-11800 \"The operation couldn\U2019t be completed. (AVFoundationErrorDomain error -11800.)\" UserInfo=0x19d810 {}"; The documentation in XCode ostensibly provides more information for the error number (-11800), "AVErrorUnknown - Reason for the error is unknown."; Previously I had also tried calls to stopRunning and startRunning, but no longer do that after watching WWDC Session 409, where it is discouraged. When I was stopping and starting, I was getting a different error message -11819, which corresponds to "AVErrorMediaServicesWereReset - The operation could not be completed because media services became unavailable.", which is much nicer than simply "unknown", but not necessarily any more helpful. It successfully adds the AVCaptureStillImageOutput (i.e., does NOT emit the log message). I am testing on an iPhone 3g (w/4.1) and iPhone 4. This call is happening in the main thread, which is also where my original AVCaptureSession setup took place. How can I avoid the error? How can I switch to the higher resolution to take the photo? Thank you!

  Read the article

• How can I highlight empty fields in ASP.NET MVC 2 before model binding has occurred?

  - by Richard Poole

  I'm trying to highlight certain form fields (let's call them important fields) when they're empty. In essence, they should behave a bit like required fields, but they should be highlighted if they are empty when the user first GETs the form, before POST & model validation has occurred. The user can also ignore the warnings and submit the form when these fields are empty (i.e. empty important fields won't cause ModelState.IsValid to be false). Ideally it needs to work server-side (empty important fields are highlighted with warning message on GET) and client-side (highlighted if empty when losing focus). I've thought of a few ways of doing this, but I'm hoping some bright spark can come up with a nice elegant solution... Just use a CSS class to flag important fields Update every view/template to render important fields with an important CSS class. Write some jQuery to highlight empty important fields when the DOM is ready and hook their blur events so highlights & warning messages can be shown/hidden as appropriate. Pros: Quick and easy. Cons: Unnecessary duplication of importance flags and warning messages across views & templates. Clients with JavaScript disabled will never see highlights/warnings. Custom data annotation and client-side validator Create classes similar to RequiredAttribute, RequiredAttributeAdapter and ModelClientValidationRequiredRule, and register the adapter with DataAnnotationsModelValidatorProvider.RegisterAdapter. Create a client-side validator like this that responds to the blur event. Pros: Data annotation follows DRY principle (Html.ValidationMessageFor<T> picks up field importance and warning message from attribute, no duplication). Cons: Must call TryValidateModel from GET actions to ensure empty fields are decorated. Not technically validation (client- & server-side rules don't match) so it's at the mercy of framework changes. Clients with JavaScript disabled will never see highlights/warnings. Clone the entire validation framework It strikes me that I'm trying to achieve exactly the same thing as validation but with warnings rather than errors. It needs to run before model binding (and therefore validation) has occurred. Perhaps it's worth designing a similar framework with annotations like Required, RegularExpression, StringLength, etc. that somehow cause Html.TextBoxFor<T> etc. to render the warning CSS class and Html.ValidationMessageFor<T> to emit the warning message and JSON needed to enable client-side blur checks. Pros: Sounds like something MVC 2 could do with out of the box. Cons: Way too much effort for my current requirement! I'm swaying towards option 1. Can anyone think of a better solution?

  Read the article

• Insertions into Zipper trees on XML files in Clojure

  - by ivar

  I'm confused as how to idiomatically change a xml tree accessed through clojure.contrib's zip-filter.xml. Should be trying to do this at all, or is there a better way? Say that I have some dummy xml file "itemdb.xml" like this: <itemlist> <item id="1"> <name>John</name> <desc>Works near here.</desc> </item> <item id="2"> <name>Sally</name> <desc>Owner of pet store.</desc> </item> </itemlist> And I have some code: (require '[clojure.zip :as zip] '[clojure.contrib.duck-streams :as ds] '[clojure.contrib.lazy-xml :as lxml] '[clojure.contrib.zip-filter.xml :as zf]) (def db (ref (zip/xml-zip (lxml/parse-trim (java.io.File. "itemdb.xml"))))) ;; Test that we can traverse and parse. (doall (map #(print (format "%10s: %s\n" (apply str (zf/xml-> % :name zf/text)) (apply str (zf/xml-> % :desc zf/text)))) (zf/xml-> @db :item))) ;; I assume something like this is needed to make the xml tags (defn create-item [name desc] {:tag :item :attrs {:id "3"} :contents (list {:tag :name :attrs {} :contents (list name)} {:tag :desc :attrs {} :contents (list desc)})}) (def fred-item (create-item "Fred" "Green-haired astrophysicist.")) ;; This disturbs the structure somehow (defn append-item [xmldb item] (zip/insert-right (-> xmldb zip/down zip/rightmost) item)) ;; I want to do something more like this (defn append-item2 [xmldb item] (zip/insert-right (zip/rightmost (zf/xml-> xmldb :item)) item)) (dosync (alter db append-item2 fred-item)) ;; Save this simple xml file with some added stuff. (ds/spit "appended-itemdb.xml" (with-out-str (lxml/emit (zip/root @db) :pad true))) I am unclear about how to use the clojure.zip functions appropriately in this case, and how that interacts with zip-filter. If you spot anything particularly weird in this small example, please point it out.

  Read the article

• Embedded QGraphicsView do not hide after Dialog closes

  - by torsten

  I call a QDialog in to modes, showNormal and showFullscreen. In normal mode all works fine. With a Keyevent the Dialog closes as expected. In Fullscreen, after a keyevent the Dialog closes, but the QGraphicsView will stay on top. All things i've tried (like closing/updating the view) failed. the View sta on top. view = new QGraphicsView(scene); view->setViewport(new QGLWidget(QGLFormat(QGL::SampleBuffers))); view->setHorizontalScrollBarPolicy(Qt::ScrollBarAlwaysOff); view->setVerticalScrollBarPolicy(Qt::ScrollBarAlwaysOff); view->setViewportUpdateMode(QGraphicsView::FullViewportUpdate); view->setFrameStyle(QFrame::NoFrame); view->setBackgroundBrush(Qt::white); view->setRenderHints(QPainter::Antialiasing); view->setSceneRect(0,0,resolution.x(),resolution.y()); Maybe my structure will help to solve the Problem: This call the QDialog named GraphicsWidgetDialog. void DemoArrowDialog::setDemo() { gwd->graphicsWidget->setListenKeyEvents(true); gwd->setWindowTitle("Demo"); gwd->setFixedSize(500,500); gwd->restoreGeometry(settings); gwd->setContentsMargins(0,0,0,0); gwd->setModal(false); gwd->showNormal(); gwd->graphicsWidget->show(); gwd->setFocus(); } void DemoArrowDialog::setFullScreenDemo() { settings = gwd->saveGeometry(); gwd->graphicsWidget->setListenKeyEvents(true); gwd->setContentsMargins(0,0,0,0); gwd->setModal(true); gwd->graphicsWidget->showFullScreen(); gwd->showFullScreen(); gwd->setFocus(); } This is the Definition of the GraphicsWidgetDialog GraphicsWidgetDialog::GraphicsWidgetDialog(QWidget *parent) : QDialog(parent) { graphicsWidget = new GraphicsWidget; QGridLayout *layout = new QGridLayout; layout->addWidget(graphicsWidget); layout->setContentsMargins(0,0,0,0); graphicsWidget->loadConfig(); graphicsWidget->loadArrowConfig("Arrow"); graphicsWidget->setArrowPosition(arrowPosition(arrowCenter)); graphicsWidget->update(); setLayout(layout); connect(graphicsWidget,SIGNAL(closeEvent()),this,SLOT(reject())); } The GraphicsWidget is the Widget that contains the QGraphcisView and Scene On keyPessEvent it will emit the closeEvent(). Any Idea?

  Read the article

• Modular GWT design concerns

  - by GlGuru

  Hi, I have a couple of questions regarding a modular GWT based application framework. I have some ideas about them but being new to the field of web development I feel they are far from ideal. I'd appreciate a few comments and suggestions in this regard. Here are my questions: I am developing a framework which will allow third parties to embed GWT applications into our website and do some communication with them using simple iFrame postMessage. All these third party modules are going to use our SDK which is also GWT based. The problem arises that even though all the modules will be using the same codebase there is going to be a massive overheard in the amount of duplicate Javascript code (i.e. our common SDK code base which is quite large) being downloaded on the client's machine. This is highly redundant and problematic, not only due to the sheer size of duplicate code but, also due to the fact that subsequent updates of the SDK would require the modules to be recompiled which is going to create a DLL hell kind of scenario in the long run. What is the best way of doing this kind of thing? Is there a way where I can have some static GWT code (i.e. the SDK) and the dynamic GWT module refers to it (even if lies on a different domain) and it all work happily? The other part of the problem lies in providing robust scripting front end to the SDK. At first it appears to be trivial since Javascript itself is a scripting language. However, I do not know how to load and call a piece of pure Javascript code at runtime? I am willing to put restrictions on the target Javascript (i.e. having a function main and unique namespace or something). Furthermore the Javascript will come as a string from a database and not as a full URL. If its doable in Javascript how does one get this right in GWT i.e. forcing the compiler to emit a certain function in the generated Javascript? This I believe can be lesser of a problem by having a stub Javascript with all the right requirements which just loads up a GWT generated Javascript. Is any of this possible at all? I generally hate to be this verbose but I hope to find a quick solution to the problem as its holding up my progress. I'd highly appreciate any comments, suggestions and experiences.

  Read the article

• Reducer getting fewer records than expected

  - by sathishs

  We have a scenario of generating unique key for every single row in a file. we have a timestamp column but the are multiple rows available for a same timestamp in few scenarios. We decided unique values to be timestamp appended with their respective count as mentioned in the below program. Mapper will just emit the timestamp as key and the entire row as its value, and in reducer the key is generated. Problem is Map outputs about 236 rows, of which only 230 records are fed as an input for reducer which outputs the same 230 records. public class UniqueKeyGenerator extends Configured implements Tool { private static final String SEPERATOR = "\t"; private static final int TIME_INDEX = 10; private static final String COUNT_FORMAT_DIGITS = "%010d"; public static class Map extends Mapper<LongWritable, Text, Text, Text> { @Override protected void map(LongWritable key, Text row, Context context) throws IOException, InterruptedException { String input = row.toString(); String[] vals = input.split(SEPERATOR); if (vals != null && vals.length >= TIME_INDEX) { context.write(new Text(vals[TIME_INDEX - 1]), row); } } } public static class Reduce extends Reducer<Text, Text, NullWritable, Text> { @Override protected void reduce(Text eventTimeKey, Iterable<Text> timeGroupedRows, Context context) throws IOException, InterruptedException { int cnt = 1; final String eventTime = eventTimeKey.toString(); for (Text val : timeGroupedRows) { final String res = SEPERATOR.concat(getDate( Long.valueOf(eventTime)).concat( String.format(COUNT_FORMAT_DIGITS, cnt))); val.append(res.getBytes(), 0, res.length()); cnt++; context.write(NullWritable.get(), val); } } } public static String getDate(long time) { SimpleDateFormat utcSdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMddhhmmss"); utcSdf.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("America/Los_Angeles")); return utcSdf.format(new Date(time)); } public int run(String[] args) throws Exception { conf(args); return 0; } public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception { conf(args); } private static void conf(String[] args) throws IOException, InterruptedException, ClassNotFoundException { Configuration conf = new Configuration(); Job job = new Job(conf, "uniquekeygen"); job.setJarByClass(UniqueKeyGenerator.class); job.setOutputKeyClass(Text.class); job.setOutputValueClass(Text.class); job.setMapperClass(Map.class); job.setReducerClass(Reduce.class); job.setInputFormatClass(TextInputFormat.class); job.setOutputFormatClass(TextOutputFormat.class); // job.setNumReduceTasks(400); FileInputFormat.addInputPath(job, new Path(args[0])); FileOutputFormat.setOutputPath(job, new Path(args[1])); job.waitForCompletion(true); } } It is consistent for higher no of lines and the difference is as huge as 208969 records for an input of 20855982 lines. what might be the reason for reduced inputs to reducer?

  Read the article

• Strange Map Reduce Behavior in CouchDB. Rereduce?

  - by Tony

  I have a mapreduce issue with couchdb (both functions shown below): when I run it with grouplevel = 2 (exact) I get accurate output: {"rows":[ {"key":["2011-01-11","staff-1"],"value":{"total":895.72,"count":2,"services":6,"services_ignored":6,"services_liked":0,"services_disliked":0,"services_disliked_avg":0,"Revise":{"total":275.72,"count":1},"Review":{"total":620,"count":1}}}, {"key":["2011-01-11","staff-2"],"value":{"total":8461.689999999999,"count":2,"services":41,"services_ignored":37,"services_liked":4,"services_disliked":0,"services_disliked_avg":0,"Revise":{"total":4432.4,"count":1},"Review":{"total":4029.29,"count":1}}}, {"key":["2011-01-11","staff-3"],"value":{"total":2100.72,"count":1,"services":10,"services_ignored":4,"services_liked":3,"services_disliked":3,"services_disliked_avg":2.3333333333333335,"Revise":{"total":2100.72,"count":1}}}, However, changing to grouplevel=1 so the values for all the different staff keys should be all grouped by date no longer gives accurate output (notice the total is currect but all others are wrong): {"rows":[ {"key":["2011-01-11"],"value":{"total":11458.130000000001,"count":2,"services":0,"services_ignored":0,"services_liked":0,"services_disliked":0,"services_disliked_avg":0,"None":{"total":11458.130000000001,"count":2}}}, My only theory is this has something to do with rereduce, which I have not yet learned. Should I explore that option or am I missing something else here? This is the Map function: function(doc) { if(doc.doc_type == 'Feedback') { emit([doc.date.split('T')[0], doc.staff_id], doc); } } And this is the Reduce: function(keys, vals) { // sum all key points by status: total, count, services (liked, rejected, ignored) var ret = { 'total':0, 'count':0, 'services': 0, 'services_ignored': 0, 'services_liked': 0, 'services_disliked': 0, 'services_disliked_avg': 0, }; var total_disliked_score = 0; // handle status function handle_status(doc) { if(!doc.status || doc.status == '' || doc.status == undefined) { status = 'None'; } else if (doc.status == 'Declined') { status = 'Rejected'; } else { status = doc.status; } if(!ret[status]) ret[status] = {'total':0, 'count':0}; ret[status]['total'] += doc.total; ret[status]['count'] += 1; }; // handle likes / dislikes function handle_services(services) { ret.services += services.length; for(var a in services) { if (services[a].user_likes == 10) { ret.services_liked += 1; } else if (services[a].user_likes >= 1) { ret.services_disliked += 1; total_disliked_score += services[a].user_likes; if (total_disliked_score >= ret.services_disliked) { ret.services_disliked_avg = total_disliked_score / ret.services_disliked; } } else { ret.services_ignored += 1; } } } // loop thru docs for(var i in vals) { // increment the total $ ret.total += vals[i].total; ret.count += 1; // update totals and sums for the status of this route handle_status(vals[i]); // do the likes / dislikes stats if(vals[i].groups) { for(var ii in vals[i].groups) { if(vals[i].groups[ii].services) { handle_services(vals[i].groups[ii].services); } } } // handle deleted services if(vals[i].hidden_services) { if (vals[i].hidden_services) { handle_services(vals[i].hidden_services); } } } return ret; }

  Read the article

• Asp.NET ReportViewer “report execution has expired or cannot be found” error when using session state service or SQL Server session state

  - by dotneteer

  We encountered an error like: ReportServerException: The report execution x5pl2245iwvvq055khsxzlj5 has expired or cannot be found. (rsExecutionNotFound)]    Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.ServerReportSoapProxy.OnSoapException(SoapException e) +72    Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.Internal.Soap.ReportingServices2005.Execution.ProxyMethodInvocation.Execute(RSExecutionConnection connection, ProxyMethod`1 initialMethod, ProxyMethod`1 retryMethod) +428    Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.Internal.Soap.ReportingServices2005.Execution.RSExecutionConnection.GetExecutionInfo() +133    Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.ServerReport.EnsureExecutionSession() +197    Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.ServerReport.LoadViewState(Object viewStateObj) +256    Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.ServerReport..ctor(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context) +355 [TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.]    System.RuntimeMethodHandle._SerializationInvoke(Object target, SignatureStruct&amp; declaringTypeSig, SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context) +0    System.Reflection.RuntimeConstructorInfo.SerializationInvoke(Object target, SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context) +108    System.Runtime.Serialization.ObjectManager.CompleteISerializableObject(Object obj, SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context) +273    System.Runtime.Serialization.ObjectManager.FixupSpecialObject(ObjectHolder holder) +49    System.Runtime.Serialization.ObjectManager.DoFixups() +223    System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.ObjectReader.Deserialize(HeaderHandler handler, __BinaryParser serParser, Boolean fCheck, Boolean isCrossAppDomain, IMethodCallMessage methodCallMessage) +188    System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.BinaryFormatter.Deserialize(Stream serializationStream, HeaderHandler handler, Boolean fCheck, Boolean isCrossAppDomain, IMethodCallMessage methodCallMessage) +203    System.Web.Util.AltSerialization.ReadValueFromStream(BinaryReader reader) +788    System.Web.SessionState.SessionStateItemCollection.ReadValueFromStreamWithAssert() +55    System.Web.SessionState.SessionStateItemCollection.DeserializeItem(String name, Boolean check) +281    System.Web.SessionState.SessionStateItemCollection.DeserializeItem(Int32 index) +110    System.Web.SessionState.SessionStateItemCollection.get_Item(Int32 index) +17    System.Web.SessionState.HttpSessionStateContainer.get_Item(Int32 index) +13    System.Web.Util.AspCompatApplicationStep.OnPageStartSessionObjects() +71    System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +2065 This error occurs long after the report viewer page has closed. It occurs to any asp.net page in the application, rendering the entire application unusable until the user gets a new session. The cause of the problem is that the ReportViewer uses session state. When a page retrieves session from any out-of-state session, the session variable of type Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.ReportHierarchy is deserialized from the session storage. The deserialization could cause the object to connect to the report server when the report is no longer available. The solution is simple but not pretty. We need to clean up the session variable when the report viewer page is closed. One way is to add some Javascript to the page to handle the window.onunload event. In the event handler, call a web service to clean up the session variable. The name of the session variable appears to be randomly generated. So we need to loop through the session variable to find a variable of the type Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.ReportHierarchy. Microsoft has implemented pinging between the report viewer and the report server to keep the report alive on the server when the report viewer is up; I hope they will go one step further to take care of this problem.

  Read the article

• Do We Indeed Have a Future? George Takei on Star Wars.

  - by Bil Simser

  George Takei (rhymes with Okay), probably best known for playing Hikaru Sulu on the original Star Trek, has always had deep concerns for the present and the future. Whether on Earth or among the stars, he has the welfare of humanity very much at heart. I was digging through my old copies of Famous Monsters of Filmland, a great publication on monster and films that I grew up with, and came across this. This was his reaction to STAR WARS from issue 139 of Famous Monsters of Filmland and was written June 6, 1977. It is reprinted here without permission but I hope since the message is still valid to this day and has never been reprinted anywhere, nobody will mind me sharing it. STAR WARS is the most pre-posterously diverting galactic escape and at the same time the most hideously credible portent of the future yet.While I thrilled to the exploits that reminded me of the heroics of Errol Flynn as Robin Hood, Burt Lancaster as the Crimson Pirate and Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon, I was at the same time aghast at the phantasmagoric violence technology can place at our disposal. STAR WARS raised in my mind the question - do we indeed have a future?It seems to me what George Lucas has done is to masterfully guide us on a journey through space and time and bring us back face to face with today's reality. STAR WARS is more than science fiction, I think it is science fictitious reality.Just yesterday, June 7, 1977, I read that the United States will embark on the production of a neutron bomb - a bomb that will kill people on a gigantic scale but will not destroy buildings. A few days before that, I read that the Pentagon is fearful that the Soviets may have developed a warhead that could neutralize ours that have a capacity for that irrational concept overkill to the nth power. Already, it seems we have the technology to realize the awesome special effects simulations that we saw in the film.The political scene of STAR WARS is that of government by force and power, of revolutions based on some unfathomable grievance, survival through a combination of cunning and luck and success by the harnessing of technology -  a picture not very much at variance from the political headlines that we read today.And most of all, look at the people; both the heroes in the film and the reaction of the audience. First, the heroes; Luke Skywalker is a pretty but easily led youth. Without any real philosophy to guide him, he easily falls under the influence of a mystical old man believed previously to be an eccentric hermit. Recognize a 1960's hippie or a 1970's moonie? Han Solo has a philosophy coupled with courage and skill. His philosophy is money. His proficiency comes for a price - the highest. Solo is a thoroughly avaricious mercenary. And the Princess, a decisive, strong, self-confident and chilly woman. The audience cheered when she wielded a gun. In all three, I missed qualities that could be called humane - love, kindness, yes, I missed sensuality. I also missed a sense of ideals and faith. In this regard the machines seemed more human. They demonstrated real affection for each other and an occasional poutiness. They exhibited a sense of fidelity and constancy. The machines were humanized and the humans conversely seemed mechanical.As a member of the audience, I was swept up by the sheer romantic escapsim of it all. The deering-dos, the rope swing escape across the pit, the ray gun battles and especially the swash buckle with the ray swords. Great fun!But I just hope that we weren't too intoxicated by the escapism to be able to focus on the recognizable. I hope the beauty of the effects didn't narcotize our sensitivity to violence. I hope the people see through the fantastically well done futuristic mirrors to the disquieting reflection of our own society. I hope they enjoy STAR WARS without being "purely entertained".

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65  | Next Page >