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• Extensionless URLs in IIS 6

  - by Jason Marsell

  My client has asked me to build a personalized URL system so that they can send out really short URLs in postcards to customers like this: www.client.com/JasonSmith03 www.client.com/TonyAdams With these URLs, I need IIS 6 to trap the incoming request and pass that “JasonSmith03” token to my database to determine which landing page to redirect them to. I’d love to use an HttpHandler or HttpModule but they both look like they require an file extension (.aspx) in the URL. Wildcard mapping will chew up every incoming request and that’s ridiculous. ISAPI filters are just text routing files, so I can’t employ logic to call the database. According to Scott Guthrie, this would be cake if I had IIS 7, but I don’t. Can this be done using MVC? I’ve been working with MVP for the last few years, so I haven’t done any MVC and routing. I thought I remembered that MVC has the ability to use REST-style extensionless URLs. I’d be more than happy to have these personalized URLs land on a site that’s built in MVC, if it will work. Thank you!

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• Extension methods for encapsulation and reusability

  - by tzaman

  In C++ programming, it's generally considered good practice to "prefer non-member non-friend functions" instead of instance methods. This has been recommended by Scott Meyers in this classic Dr. Dobbs article, and repeated by Herb Sutter and Andrei Alexandrescu in C++ Coding Standards (item 44); the general argument being that if a function can do its job solely by relying on the public interface exposed by the class, it actually increases encapsulation to have it be external. While this confuses the "packaging" of the class to some extent, the benefits are generally considered worth it. Now, ever since I've started programming in C#, I've had a feeling that here is the ultimate expression of the concept that they're trying to achieve with "non-member, non-friend functions that are part of a class interface". C# adds two crucial components to the mix - the first being interfaces, and the second extension methods: Interfaces allow a class to formally specify their public contract, the methods and properties that they're exposing to the world. Any other class can choose to implement the same interface and fulfill that same contract. Extension methods can be defined on an interface, providing any functionality that can be implemented via the interface to all implementers automatically. And best of all, because of the "instance syntax" sugar and IDE support, they can be called the same way as any other instance method, eliminating the cognitive overhead! So you get the encapsulation benefits of "non-member, non-friend" functions with the convenience of members. Seems like the best of both worlds to me; the .NET library itself providing a shining example in LINQ. However, everywhere I look I see people warning against extension method overuse; even the MSDN page itself states: In general, we recommend that you implement extension methods sparingly and only when you have to. So what's the verdict? Are extension methods the acme of encapsulation and code reuse, or am I just deluding myself?

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• Validation L2S question

  - by user158020

  This may be a bit winded because I am new to wpf. I have created a partial class for an entity in my L2S class that is primarily used for validation. It implements the onchanging and onvalidate methods. I am trying to use the MVVM pattern, and in a window/view I have set the datacontext in the xaml: <Window.DataContext> <vm:StartViewModel /> </Window.DataContext> when a user leaves a required field in the view blank, the onchanging event of the partial class is fired when I close the form, not when I save the data. So, if a user leaves the textbox blank, the old value is retained and the onchaging method is fired, but I have no idea how to alert the user of the resulting error. here is my onchanging code in the partial class: partial void Ondocument_titleChanging(string value) { if (value.Length == 0) throw new Exception("Document title is required."); if (value.Length > 256) throw new Exception("Document title cannot be longer than 256 characters."); } throwing an exception doesn't notify the user of the error. it just allows the form to close and rejects the changes to the textbox. hope this makes sense... edit: this example was taken from Scott Guthries article here: http://aspalliance.com/1427_LINQ_to_SQL_Part_5__Binding_UI_using_the_ASPLinqDataSource_Control.5

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• why MVC instead of good old asp.net? Still not grasping why I should go this route??

  - by RJ

  I know this question has been asked before and I read all the answers but they still don't give me the answers I am looking for. I need something concrete. I volunteered to give a presentation on MVC to other developers in our group which forces me to learn it. The big question everyone has is: "What can MVC bring to the table that we can't do in asp.net or MVC can do faster. I have just gone through Nerd Dinner and actually created a complete website that sort of mimics Nerd Dinner. But as great a job that Scott Guthrie did on it, there are big gaps that aren't answered such as, how do I throw a textbox on the listing page with a button and do a simple search. In asp.net, I would throw a textbox, button and grid on the page and bind it to a sproc and away I go. What is the equivalent in MVC. I guess I need a really good tutorial on how to use MVC without using Linq-to-Sql. I know I am sort of babbling on about this but it is a very serious question that still seems to go unanswered. On a side note, the View page of MVC brings back nightmares of classic asp with all the in-line code that we got away from way back when with code behind pages. Yes, MVC has Controller and Model classes which are great but I still don't like the classic asp tags in the html. Help me out here, I really like the concept of MVC and want it to be successful but I need more!

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• Design of std::ifstream class

  - by Nawaz

  Those of us who have seen the beauty of STL try to use it as much as possible, and also encourage others to use it wherever we see them using raw pointers and arrays. Scott Meyers have written a whole book on STL, with title Effective STL. Yet what happened to the developers of ifstream that they preferred char* over std::string. I wonder why the first parameter of ifstream::open() is of type const char*, instead of const std::string &. Please have a look at it's signature: void open(const char * filename, ios_base::openmode mode = ios_base::in ); Why this? Why not this: void open(const string & filename, ios_base::openmode mode = ios_base::in ); Is this a serious mistake with the design? Or this design is deliberate? What could be the reason? I don't see any reason why they have preferred char* over std::string. Note we could still pass char* to the latter function that takes std::string. That's not a problem! By the way, I'm aware that ifstream is a typedef, so no comment on my title.:P. It looks short that is why I used it. The actual class template is : template<class _Elem,class _Traits> class basic_ifstream;

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• How do I read a public twitter feed using .Net

  - by Jeff Weber

  I'm trying to read the public twitter status of a user so I can display it in my Windows Phone application. I'm using Scott Gu's example: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/03/18/building-a-windows-phone-7-twitter-application-using-silverlight.aspx When my code comes back from the async call, I get a "System.Security.SecurityException" as soon as I try to use the e.Result. I know my uri is correct because I can plop it in the browser and get good results. Here is my relavent code: public void LoadNewsLine() { WebClient twitter = new WebClient(); twitter.DownloadStringCompleted += new DownloadStringCompletedEventHandler(twitter_DownloadStringCompleted); twitter.DownloadStringAsync(new Uri("http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.xml?screen_name=krashlander")); } void twitter_DownloadStringCompleted(object sender, DownloadStringCompletedEventArgs e) { XElement xmlTweets = XElement.Parse(e.Result); //exception thrown here! var message = from tweet in xmlTweets.Descendants("status") select tweet.Element("text").Value; //Set message and tell UI to update. //NewsLine = message.ToString(); //RaisePropertyChanged("NewsLine"); } Any ideas anyone?

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• Why would ASP.NET MVC use session state?

  - by ray247

  Recommended by the ASP.NET team to use cache instead of session, we stopped using session from working with the WebForm model the last few years. So we normally have the session turned off in the web.config <sessionState mode="Off" /> But, now when I'm testing out a ASP.NET MVC application with this setting it throw an error in class SessionStateTempDataProvider inside the mvc framework, it asked me to turn on session state, I did and it worked. Looking at the source it uses session Dictionary<string, object> tempDataDictionary = httpContext.Session[TempDataSessionStateKey] as Dictionary<string, object>; // line 20 in SessionStateTempDataProvider.cs So, why would they use session here? What am I missing? Thanks, Ray. ======================================================== Edit Sorry didn't mean for this post to debate on session vs. cache, but rather in the context of the ASP.NET MVC, I was just wondering why session is used here. In this Scott Watermasysk blog post he mentioned on turning off session too as a good practice, so I'm just wondering do I have to turn it on to use MVC from here on?

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• WPF - How do I use the UserControl with a dependency property and view model?

  - by user320849

  Hello, My goal is to have a user select a year and a month. Translate the selection into a date and have the user control send the date back to my view model. That part works for me....However, I cannot get the ViewModel's initial date to set those drop downs. public static readonly DependencyProperty Date = DependencyProperty.Register("ReturnDate", typeof(DateTime), typeof(DatePicker), new FrameworkPropertyMetadata{BindsTwoWayByDefault = true,}); public DateTime ReturnDate { get { return Convert.ToDateTime(GetValue(Date)); } set { SetDropDowns(value); SetValue(Date, value); } } The SetDropDowns(value) just sets the selected items on the combo boxes, however, the program never makes it to that method. On the view I am using: <cc1:DatePicker ReturnDate="{Binding Path=StartDate, Mode=TwoWay}" IsStart="True" /> If this has been answered, then my bad. I looked around and didn't see anything that worked for me. Thus, when the program loads how do I get the value from the view model to a method in order to set the combo boxes? Thanks, -Scott

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• how to check null value of Integer type field in ASP.NET MVC view?

  - by Vikas

  Hi, I have integer type field in database which is having property "Not Null". when i create a view & do a validation, if i left that field blank, it will consider it as 0 so i can not compare it with 0 because if someone insert a value 0 then it will be considered as error! one another problem is that i am using Model error as described in the book "ASP.NET MVC 1.0" @ Scott Gu blog. And I am checking the value in partial class of object (created by LINQ-To-SQL). i.e public partial class Person { public bool IsValid { get { return (GetRuleViolations().Count() == 0); } } public IEnumerable<RuleViolation> GetRuleViolations() { if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(Name)) yield return new RuleViolation("Name is Required", "Name"); if (Age == 0) yield return new RuleViolation("Age is Required", "Age"); yield break; } partial void OnValidate(ChangeAction action) { if (!IsValid) throw new ApplicationException("Rule violations prevent saving"); } } There is also problem with range. Like in database if i declared as smallint i.e. short in c#, now if i exceed that range then it gives error as "A Value is reguired". so finally is there any best way for validation in ASP.NET MVC?

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• Problem creating a custom input element using FluentHtml (MVCContrib)

  - by seth

  Hi there, I just recently started dabbling in ASP.NET MVC 1.0 and came across the wonderful MVCContrib. I had originally gone down the path of creating some extended html helpers, but after finding FluentHTML decided to try my hand at creating a custom input element. Basically I am wanting to ultimately create several custom input elements to make it easier for some other devs on the project I'm working on to add their input fields to the page and have all of my preferred markup to render for them. So, in short, I'd like to wrap certain input elements with additional markup.. A TextBox would be wrapped in an <li /> for example. I've created my custom input elements following Tim Scott's answer in another question on here: DRY in the MVC View. So, to further elaborate, I've created my class, "TextBoxListItem": public class TextBoxListItem : TextInput<TextBox> { public TextBoxListItem (string name) : base(HtmlInputType.Text, name) { } public TextBoxListItem (string name, MemberExpression forMember, IEnumerable<IBehaviorMarker> behaviors) : base(HtmlInputType.Text, name, forMember, behaviors) { } public override string ToString() { var liBuilder = new TagBuilder(HtmlTag.ListItem); liBuilder.InnerHtml = ToString(); return liBuilder.ToString(TagRenderMode.SelfClosing); } } I've also added it to my ViewModelContainerExtensions class: public static TextBox TextBoxListItem<T>(this IViewModelContainer<T> view, Expression<Func<T, object>> expression) where T : class { return new TextBoxListItem(expression.GetNameFor(view), expression.GetMemberExpression(), view.Behaviors) .Value(expression.GetValueFrom(view.ViewModel)); } And lastly, I've added it to ViewDataContainerExtensions as well: public static TextBox TextBoxListItem(this IViewDataContainer view, string name) { return new TextBox(name).Value(view.ViewData.Eval(name)); } I'm calling it in my view like so: <%= this.TextBoxListItem("username").Label("Username:") %> Anyway, I'm not getting anything other than the standard FluentHTML TextBox, not wrapped in <li></li> elements. What am I missing here? Thanks very much for any assistance.

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• Attaching methods to prototype from within constructor function

  - by Matthew Taylor

  Here is the textbook standard way of describing a 'class' or constructor function in JavaScript, straight from the Definitive Guide to JavaScript: function Rectangle(w,h) { this.width = w; this.height = h; } Rectangle.prototype.area = function() { return this.width * this.height; }; I don't like the dangling prototype manipulation here, so I was trying to think of a way to encapsulate the function definition for area inside the constructor. I came up with this, which I did not expect to work: function Rectangle(w,h) { this.width = w; this.height = h; this.constructor.prototype.area = function() { return this.width * this.height; }; } I didn't expect this to work because the this reference inside the area function should be pointing to the area function itself, so I wouldn't have access to width and height from this. But it turns out I do! var rect = new Rectangle(2,3); var area = rect.area(); // great scott! it is 6 Some further testing confirmed that the this reference inside the area function actually was a reference to the object under construction, not the area function itself. function Rectangle(w,h) { this.width = w; this.height = h; var me = this; this.constructor.prototype.whatever = function() { if (this === me) { alert ('this is not what you think');} }; } Turns out the alert pops up, and this is exactly the object under construction. So what is going on here? Why is this not the this I expect it to be?

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• breaking datetime into constituent parts ASP.NET MVC form

  - by nick

  hi guys, i have searched the web relentlessly for this and have not found anything - which is surprising because i would think it is such a common scenario! Basically, on my model i have a DateTime field which i wish the user to populate through a form. I am using the Html helper to render all other parts of the form (along with validation) So this question is in two parts... Html Helper Firstly, is there any way to use the Html helper to split the DateTime field to be rendered as the three constituent parts of a date: day, month, year (since i do not care about the time part). This could be rendered as text boxes, drop down lists or a combination of both. Model Binding And then when the form is posted, what is the best approach for binding back up to the model? I have seen Scott Hanselmann's solution to this, but it seems a little bloated for what i need - i was hoping for a slightly more elegant solution. Is it recommended to extend DefaultModelBinder and set that as default binder (since all dates would be handled in this way) or write a class that implements IModelBionder and set it as the default binder for the DateTime type? Thanks for all the help in advance :-) i'm loving MVC but it's infuriating me that something so trivial is causing so much headaches!

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• Passing array of pointers to another class

  - by user310153

  Hi, I am trying to do the following: in main.cpp: // Create an array of pointers to Block objects Block *blk[64]; for (i=0; i<8; i++) { for (j=0; j<8; j++) { int x_low = i*80; int y_low = j*45; blk[j*8+i] = new Block(30, x_low+40.0f, y_low+7.5f, &b); } } And then I am trying to pass it to the graphics object I have created: Graphics g(640, 480, &b, &p, blk[0], number_of_blocks); the graphics constructor looks like: Graphics::Graphics(int width, int height, Ball *b, Paddle *p, Block *blk, int number_of_blocks) { if I look at what is contained in the array from the graphics object, only the first item exists and then all the other items are in hyperspace: for (int i=0; i<64; i++) { printf("for block %d, %f, %f ", i, (_blk+(sizeof(_blk)*i))->_x_low, (_blk+(sizeof(_blk)*i))->_y_low); printf("blah %d\n", (_blk+(sizeof(_blk)*i))); } and if I look at the addresses, they are different (6956552 rather than 2280520 when I examine the addresses in the main class using: printf(" blah %d\n", &blk[j*8*i]); I am sure there must be something subtle I am doing wrong as its like I have copied the first item from the blk array to a new address when passed to the graphics object. Does this make sense? Any ideas? Cheers, Scott

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• What is the best (Windows) program launcher?

  - by AR

  One of the biggest general productivity boosters I've used is a good program launcher. I was a long-time user of SlickRun, and I've tried a few others. My current favorite is Executor - by far the best I've used. Other options: Executor: My current favorite Vista Start Menu: Pretty good, actually, but Executor is similar (binds to Win+Z) and much more flexible. Quicksilver: For Macs only, but it seems to be the gold standard against which most other launchers are measured. Google Desktop: Press Ctrl+Ctrl and it's a quick launcher! AutoHotKey: Much,much more than just a launcher - more than I need, really. SlickRun: simple and unobtrusive Launchy: Seems to be the launcher of choice for many StackOverflow users :) Colibri: "Type Ahead - Information at the tip of your wings". Quite a cool concept. Many, many others. Scott Hanselman outlines some more here. I realize that everyone will have their own preferences, but the question is: is there anything that really stands out in terms of speed, features, and especially productivity increase?

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• Managing My Database in Source Control

  - by Jason

  As I am working with a new database project (within VS2008), and as I have never developed a database from scratch, I immediately began looking into how to manage a database within source control (in this case, Subversion). I found some information on SO, including this post: Keeping development databases in multiple environments in sync. One of the answers in particular pointed to a number of a links, all of which had good, useful information. I was reading a series of posts by K. Scott Allen which describe how he manages database change. From my reading (and please pardon the noobishness of my question), it seems as though the database itself is never checked into a repository. Rather, scripts that can build the database, along with test data (which is also populated from scripts) is checked into the repository. Ultimately, this means that, when a developer is testing his or her app, these scripts, which are part of the build process, are run. This ensures that the database is up-to-date, but is also run locally from every developer's machine. This makes sense to me (if I am indeed reading that correctly). However, if I am missing something, I would appreciate correction or additional guidance. In addition, another question I wanted to ask - does this also mean that I should NOT check in the mdf or ldf files that are created from Visual Studio? Thanks for any help and additional insight. Always appreciated.

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• URL path changes between dev and published version

  - by Bob Horn

  I just got Scott Hanselman's chat app with SignalR working with ASP.NET MVC 4. After hours of configuration, trial and error, and getting different versions of Windows to talk to each other on my home network, it's all working except that I'm left with one issue that I'm not sure how to handle. This line of javascript has to change, depending on if I'm running the app through Visual Studio or the published (IIS) version: Works when running within VS: var connection = $.connection('echo'); Works with published version: var connection = $.connection('ChatWithSignalR/echo'); When I run within VS, the URL is: http://localhost:9145/ And the published version is: http://localhost/ChatWithSignalR If I don't change that line of code, and try to run the app within VS, using the javascript that has ChatWithSignalR in it, I get an error like this: Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 404 (Not Found) http://localhost:9145/ChatWithSignalR/echo/negotiate?_=1347809290826 What can I do so that I can use the same javascript code and have it work in both scenarios? var connection = $.connection('??????'); Note, this is in my Global.asax.cs: RouteTable.Routes.MapConnection<MyConnection>("echo", "echo/{*operation}");

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• l2tp server always 'sent [CCP ResetReq id=0x3]' when got compressed data request

  - by wilbur

  I have built a xl2tpd/ipsec server on my ubuntu 12.04.3, and I managed to make a l2tp vpn connection to the xl2tpd server from my android phone. The xl2tpd log said xl2tpd[10828]: Enabling IPsec SAref processing for L2TP transport mode SAs xl2tpd[10828]: IPsec SAref does not work with L2TP kernel mode yet, enabling forceuserspace=yes xl2tpd[10828]: setsockopt recvref[22]: Protocol not available xl2tpd[10828]: This binary does not support kernel L2TP. xl2tpd[10828]: xl2tpd version xl2tpd-1.2.8 started on atime.me PID:10828 xl2tpd[10828]: Written by Mark Spencer, Copyright (C) 1998, Adtran, Inc. xl2tpd[10828]: Forked by Scott Balmos and David Stipp, (C) 2001 xl2tpd[10828]: Inherited by Jeff McAdams, (C) 2002 xl2tpd[10828]: Forked again by Xelerance (www.xelerance.com) (C) 2006 xl2tpd[10828]: Listening on IP address 0.0.0.0, port 1701 xl2tpd[10828]: control_finish: Peer requested tunnel 39154 twice, ignoring second one. xl2tpd[10828]: Connection established to 117.136.8.59, 43149. Local: 25339, Remote: 39154 (ref=0/0). LNS session is 'default' However I cannot access the web in my browser. The pppd log said rcvd [Compressed data] 00 1d 82 c4 7c 04 d8 09 ... sent [CCP ResetReq id=0x7] I have googled a lot and found that this was mostly caused by a mppe decompression error. I have disabled BSD-Compress compression with nobsdcomp in /etc/ppp/xl2tpd-options but it did not work. I used openswan-2.6.33 and xl2tpd-1.2.8 which were built from source. And my configurations: /etc/ipsec.conf version 2.0 config setup nat_traversal=yes virtual_private=%v4:10.0.0.0/8,%v4:192.168.0.0/16,%v4:172.16.0.0/12 oe=off protostack=netkey conn L2TP-PSK-NAT rightsubnet=vhost:%priv also=L2TP-PSK-noNAT conn L2TP-PSK-noNAT authby=secret pfs=no auto=add keyingtries=3 rekey=no ikelifetime=8h keylife=1h type=transport left=106.186.121.214 leftprotoport=17/1701 right=%any rightprotoport=17/%any /etc/xl2tpd/xl2tpd.conf [global] ipsec saref = yes [lns default] local ip = 10.10.11.1 ip range = 10.10.11.2-10.10.11.245 refuse chap = yes refuse pap = yes require authentication = yes ppp debug = yes pppoptfile = /etc/ppp/xl2tpd-options length bit = yes /etc/ppp/xl2tpd-options require-mschap-v2 ms-dns 8.8.8.8 ms-dns 8.8.4.4 asyncmap 0 auth crtscts lock hide-password modem name l2tpd proxyarp lcp-echo-interval 30 lcp-echo-failure 4 debug nobsdcomp Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

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• Windows Azure: Announcing Support for Windows Server 2012 R2 + Some Nice Price Cuts

  - by ScottGu

  Today we released some great updates to Windows Azure: Virtual Machines: Support for Windows Server 2012 R2 Cloud Services: Support for Windows Server 2012 R2 and .NET 4.5.1 Windows Azure Pack: Use Windows Azure features on-premises using Windows Server 2012 R2 Price Cuts: Up to 22% Price Reduction on Memory-Intensive Instances Below are more details about each of the improvements: Virtual Machines: Support for Windows Server 2012 R2 This morning we announced the release of Windows Server 2012 R2 – which is a fantastic update to Windows Server and includes a ton of great enhancements. This morning we are also excited to announce that the general availability image of Windows Server 2012 RC is now supported on Windows Azure.  Windows Azure is the first cloud provider to offer the final release of Windows Server 2012 R2, and it is incredibly easy to launch your own Windows Server 2012 R2 instance with it. To create a new Windows Server 2012 R2 instance simply choose New->Compute->Virtual Machine within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  You can select the “Windows Server 2012 R2” image and create a new Virtual Machine using the “Quick Create” option: Or alternatively click the “From Gallery” option if you want to customize even more configuration options (endpoints, remote powershell, availability set, etc): Creating and instantiating a new Virtual Machine on Windows Azure is very fast.  In fact, the Windows Server 2012 R2 image now deploys and runs 30% faster than previous versions of Windows Server. Once the VM is deployed you can drill into it to track its health and manage its settings: Clicking the “Connect” button allows you to remote desktop into the VM – at which point you can customize and manage it as a full administrator however you want: If you haven’t tried Windows Server 2012 R2 yet – give it a try with Windows Azure.  There is no easier way to get an instance of it up and running! Cloud Services: Support for using Windows Server 2012 R2 with Web and Worker Roles Today’s Windows Azure release also allows you to now use Windows Server 2012 R2 and .NET 4.5.1 within Web and Worker Roles within Cloud Service based applications.  Enabling this is easy.  You can configure existing existing Cloud Service application to use Windows Server 2012 R2 by updating your Cloud Service Configuration File (.cscfg) to use the new “OS Family 4” setting: Or alternatively you can use the Windows Azure Management Portal to update cloud services that are already deployed on Windows Azure.  Simply choose the configure tab on them and select Windows Server 2012 R2 in the Operating System Family dropdown: The approaches above enable you to immediately take advantage of Windows Server 2012 R2 and .NET 4.5.1 and all the great features they provide. Windows Azure Pack: Use Windows Azure features on Windows Server 2012 R2 Today we also made generally available the Windows Azure Pack, which is a free download that enables you to run Windows Azure Technology within your own datacenter, an on-premises private cloud environment, or with one of our service provider/hosting partners who run Windows Server. Windows Azure Pack enables you to use a management portal that has the exact same UI as the Windows Azure Management Portal, and within which you can create and manage Virtual Machines, Web Sites, and Service Bus – all of which can run on Windows Server and System Center.  The services provided with the Windows Azure Pack are consistent with the services offered within our Windows Azure public cloud offering.  This consistency enables organizations and developers to build applications and solutions that can run in any hosting environment – and which use the same development and management approach.  The end result is an offering with incredible flexibility. You can learn more about Windows Azure Pack and download/deploy it today here. Price Cuts: Up to 22% Reduction on Memory Intensive Instances Today we are also reducing prices by up to 22% on our memory-intensive VM instances (specifically our A5, A6, and A7 instances).  These price reductions apply to both Windows and Linux VM instances, as well as for Cloud Service based applications: These price reductions will take effect in November, and will enable you to run applications that demand larger memory (such as SharePoint, Databases, in-memory analytics, etc) even more cost effectively. Summary Today’s release enables you to start using Windows Server 2012 R2 within Windows Azure immediately, and take advantage of our Cloud OS vision both within our datacenters – and using the Windows Azure Pack within both your existing datacenters and those of our partners. If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today.  Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• Importing Multiple Schemas to a Model in Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler

  - by thatjeffsmith

  Your physical data model might stretch across multiple Oracle schemas. Or maybe you just want a single diagram containing tables, views, etc. spanning more than a single user in the database. The process for importing a data dictionary is the same, regardless if you want to suck in objects from one schema, or many schemas. Let’s take a quick look at how to get started with a data dictionary import. I’m using Oracle SQL Developer in this example. The process is nearly identical in Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler – the only difference being you’ll use the ‘File’ menu to get started versus the ‘File – Data Modeler’ menu in SQL Developer. Remember, the functionality is exactly the same whether you use SQL Developer or SQL Developer Data Modeler when it comes to the data modeling features – you’ll just have a cleaner user interface in SQL Developer Data Modeler. Importing a Data Dictionary to a Model You’ll want to open or create your model first. You can import objects to an existing or new model. The easiest way to get started is to simply open the ‘Browser’ under the View menu. The Browser allows you to navigate your open designs/models You’ll see an ‘Untitled_1′ model by default. I’ve renamed mine to ‘hr_sh_scott_demo.’ Now go back to the File menu, and expand the ‘Data Modeler’ section, and select ‘Import – Data Dictionary.’ This is a fancy way of saying, ‘suck objects out of the database into my model’ Connect! If you haven’t already defined a connection to the database you want to reverse engineer, you’ll need to do that now. I’m going to assume you already have that connection – so select it, and hit the ‘Next’ button. Select the Schema(s) to be imported Select one or more schemas you want to import The schemas selected on this page of the wizard will dictate the lists of tables, views, synonyms, and everything else you can choose from in the next wizard step to import. For brevity, I have selected ALL tables, views, and synonyms from 3 different schemas: HR SCOTT SH Once I hit the ‘Finish’ button in the wizard, SQL Developer will interrogate the database and add the objects to our model. The Big Model and the 3 Little Models I can now see ALL of the objects I just imported in the ‘hr_sh_scott_demo’ relational model in my design tree, and in my relational diagram. Quick Tip: Oracle SQL Developer calls what most folks think of as a ‘Physical Model’ the ‘Relational Model.’ Same difference, mostly. In SQL Developer, a Physical model allows you to define partitioning schemes, advanced storage parameters, and add your PL/SQL code. You can have multiple physical models per relational models. For example I might have a 4 Node RAC in Production that uses partitioning, but in test/dev, only have a single instance with no partitioning. I can have models for both of those physical implementations. The list of tables in my relational model Wouldn’t it be nice if I could segregate the objects based on their schema? Good news, you can! And it’s done by default Several of you might already know where I’m going with this – SUBVIEWS. You can easily create a ‘SubView’ by selecting one or more objects in your model or diagram and add them to a new SubView. SubViews are just mini-models. They contain a subset of objects from the main model. This is very handy when you want to break your model into smaller, more digestible parts. The model information is identical across the model and subviews, so you don’t have to worry about making a change in one place and not having it propagate across your design. SubViews can be used as filters when you create reports and exports as well. So instead of generating a PDF for everything, just show me what’s in my ‘ABC’ subview. But, I don’t want to do any work! Remember, I’m really lazy. More good news – it’s already done by default! The schemas are automatically used to create default SubViews Auto-Navigate to the Object in the Diagram In the subview tree node, right-click on the object you want to navigate to. You can ask to be taken to the main model view or to the SubView location. If you haven’t already opened the SubView in the diagram, it will be automatically opened for you. The SubView diagram only contains the objects from that SubView Your SubView might still be pretty big, many dozens of objects, so don’t forget about the ‘Navigator‘ either! In summary, use the ‘Import’ feature to add existing database objects to your model. If you import from multiple schemas, take advantage of the default schema based SubViews to help you manage your models! Sometimes less is more!

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• The ASP.NET Daily Community Spotlight - How posts get there, and how to make it your Visual Studio Start Page

  - by Jon Galloway

  One really cool part of my job is selecting the articles for the Daily Community Spotlight, on the home page of the ASP.NET website. The spotlight highlights a new post about ASP.NET development every day from a member of the ASP.NET community. You can find it on the home page of the ASP.NET site, at http://asp.net These posts aren't automatically drawn from a pool of RSS feeds or anything - I pick a new post for each day of the year. How I pick the posts I have a few important selection criteria: Interesting to well rounded ASP.NET developers The ASP.NET website has a lot of material for all skill and experience levels, from download / get started to advanced. I try to select community spotlight posts to round that out with fresh and timely information that working ASP.NET developers can really use. Posts highlight solutions to common problems, clever projects and code that helps you leverage ASP.NET, and important announcements about things you can use today. As part of that, I try to mix between ASP.NET MVC, Web Forms, and Web Pages (a.k.a. WebMatrix). As a professional developer, I want to keep on top of all of my options for ASP.NET development, and the common platform base they all share generally means that good ASP.NET code is good ASP.NET code. Exposing new and non-Microsoft community members as much as possible The exercise of selecting good ASP.NET community posts every day of the year has made me think about what the community is. Given the choice, I'll always favor non-Microsoft employees, but since Microsoft often hires ASP.NET community members and MVP's (myself included), I really think that the ASP.NET community includes developers who are using and writing about ASP.NET, both inside and outside of Microsoft. I'm especially excited about the opportunity to highlight new and lesser known bloggers. Usually being featured on the ASP.NET Community Spotlight gives a pretty good traffic bump, and I love being able to both provide great content to the community and encourage lesser known community members by giving them some (much deserved) attention. Announcements only when they're useful to working developers - not marketing Some of the posts are announcements about new releases, such as Scott Hanselman's post on ASP.NET Universal Providers for Session, Memebership, and Roles. I include those when I think they're interesting and of immediate use to you on projects. I occasionally get asked to link to new content from a team at Microsoft; if it's useful and timely content I'll ask them to point me to a blog post by an actual person rather than a faceless team. How the posts are managed This feed used to be managed by an internal spreadsheet on a Sharepoint site, which was painful for a lot of reasons. I took a cue from Jon Udell, who uses of a public Delicious feed feed for his Elm City project, and we moved the management of these posts over to a Delicious feed as well. You can hear more about Jon's use of Delicious in Elm City in our Herding Code interview - still one of my favorite interviews. We ended up with a simpler scenario, but Note: I watched the Yahoo/Delicious news over the past year and was happy to see that Delicious was recently acquired by the founders of YouTube. I investigated several other Delicious competitors, but am happy with Delicious for now. My Delicious feed here: http://www.delicious.com/jon_galloway You can also browse through this past year's ASP.NET Community Spotlight posts using the (pretty cool) Delicious Browse Bar Submitting articles I'm always on the lookout for new articles to feature. The best way to get them to me is to share them via Delicious. It's pretty easy - sign up for an account, then you can add a post and share it to me. Alternatively, you can send them to me via Twitter (@jongalloway) or e-mail (). If you do e-mail me, it helps to include a short description and your full name so I can credit you. Way too many developer blogs don't include names and pictures; if I can't find them I can't feature the post. Subscribing to the Community Spotlight feed The Community Spotlight is available as an RSS feed, so you might want to subscribe to it: http://www.asp.net/rss/spotlight Setting the ASP.NET Community Spotlight feed as your Visual Studio start page If you're an ASP.NET developer, you might consider setting the ASP.NET Community Spotlight as the content for your Visual Studio Start Page. It's really easy - here's how to do it in Visual Studio 2010: Display the Visual Studio Start Page if it's not already showing (View / Start Page) Click on the Latest News tab and enter the following RSS URL: http://www.asp.net/rss/spotlight If you didn't previously have RSS feeds enabled for your start page, click the Enable RSS Feed button Now, every time you start up Visual Studio you'll see great content from members of the ASP.NET community: You can also configure - and disable, if you'd like - the Visual Studio start page in the Tools / Options / Environment / Startup dialog. Credits I'll do a follow-up highlighting some places I commonly find great content for the feed, but I'd like to specifically point out two of them: Elijah Manor posts a lot of great content, which is available in his Twitter feed at @elijahmanor, on his Delicious feed, and on a dedicated website - Web Dev Tweets Chris Alcock's The Morning Brew is a must-read blog which highlights each day's best blog posts across the .NET community. He's an absolute machine, and no matter how obscure the post I find, I can guarantee he'll find it as well if he hasn't already. Did I say must read?

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• ASP.NET MVC 3: Razor’s @: and <text> syntax

  - by ScottGu

  This is another in a series of posts I’m doing that cover some of the new ASP.NET MVC 3 features: New @model keyword in Razor (Oct 19th) Layouts with Razor (Oct 22nd) Server-Side Comments with Razor (Nov 12th) Razor’s @: and <text> syntax (today) In today’s post I’m going to discuss two useful syntactical features of the new Razor view-engine – the @: and <text> syntax support. Fluid Coding with Razor ASP.NET MVC 3 ships with a new view-engine option called “Razor” (in addition to the existing .aspx view engine).  You can learn more about Razor, why we are introducing it, and the syntax it supports from my Introducing Razor blog post.  Razor minimizes the number of characters and keystrokes required when writing a view template, and enables a fast, fluid coding workflow. Unlike most template syntaxes, you do not need to interrupt your coding to explicitly denote the start and end of server blocks within your HTML. The Razor parser is smart enough to infer this from your code. This enables a compact and expressive syntax which is clean, fast and fun to type. For example, the Razor snippet below can be used to iterate a list of products: When run, it generates output like:   One of the techniques that Razor uses to implicitly identify when a code block ends is to look for tag/element content to denote the beginning of a content region.  For example, in the code snippet above Razor automatically treated the inner <li></li> block within our foreach loop as an HTML content block because it saw the opening <li> tag sequence and knew that it couldn’t be valid C#.  This particular technique – using tags to identify content blocks within code – is one of the key ingredients that makes Razor so clean and productive with scenarios involving HTML creation. Using @: to explicitly indicate the start of content Not all content container blocks start with a tag element tag, though, and there are scenarios where the Razor parser can’t implicitly detect a content block. Razor addresses this by enabling you to explicitly indicate the beginning of a line of content by using the @: character sequence within a code block.  The @: sequence indicates that the line of content that follows should be treated as a content block: As a more practical example, the below snippet demonstrates how we could output a “(Out of Stock!)” message next to our product name if the product is out of stock: Because I am not wrapping the (Out of Stock!) message in an HTML tag element, Razor can’t implicitly determine that the content within the @if block is the start of a content block.  We are using the @: character sequence to explicitly indicate that this line within our code block should be treated as content. Using Code Nuggets within @: content blocks In addition to outputting static content, you can also have code nuggets embedded within a content block that is initiated using a @: character sequence.  For example, we have two @: sequences in the code snippet below: Notice how within the second @: sequence we are emitting the number of units left within the content block (e.g. - “(Only 3 left!”). We are doing this by embedding a @p.UnitsInStock code nugget within the line of content. Multiple Lines of Content Razor makes it easy to have multiple lines of content wrapped in an HTML element.  For example, below the inner content of our @if container is wrapped in an HTML <p> element – which will cause Razor to treat it as content: For scenarios where the multiple lines of content are not wrapped by an outer HTML element, you can use multiple @: sequences: Alternatively, Razor also allows you to use a <text> element to explicitly identify content: The <text> tag is an element that is treated specially by Razor. It causes Razor to interpret the inner contents of the <text> block as content, and to not render the containing <text> tag element (meaning only the inner contents of the <text> element will be rendered – the tag itself will not).  This makes it convenient when you want to render multi-line content blocks that are not wrapped by an HTML element.  The <text> element can also optionally be used to denote single-lines of content, if you prefer it to the more concise @: sequence: The above code will render the same output as the @: version we looked at earlier.  Razor will automatically omit the <text> wrapping element from the output and just render the content within it.  Summary Razor enables a clean and concise templating syntax that enables a very fluid coding workflow.  Razor’s smart detection of <tag> elements to identify the beginning of content regions is one of the reasons that the Razor approach works so well with HTML generation scenarios, and it enables you to avoid having to explicitly mark the beginning/ending of content regions in about 95% of if/else and foreach scenarios. Razor’s @: and <text> syntax can then be used for scenarios where you want to avoid using an HTML element within a code container block, and need to more explicitly denote a content region. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• L2TP connection fails!

  - by a.toraby

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

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• ViewBag dynamic in ASP.NET MVC 3 - RC 2

  - by hajan

  Earlier today Scott Guthrie announced the ASP.NET MVC 3 - Release Candidate 2. I installed the new version right after the announcement since I was eager to see the new features. Among other cool features included in this release candidate, there is a new ViewBag dynamic which can be used to pass data from Controllers to Views same as you use ViewData[] dictionary. What is great and nice about ViewBag (despite the name) is that its a dynamic type which means you can dynamically get/set values and add any number of additional fields without need of strongly-typed classes. In order to see the difference, please take a look at the following examples. Example - Using ViewData Controller public ActionResult Index() {     List<string> colors = new List<string>();     colors.Add("red");     colors.Add("green");     colors.Add("blue");                 ViewData["listColors"] = colors;     ViewData["dateNow"] = DateTime.Now;     ViewData["name"] = "Hajan";     ViewData["age"] = 25;     return View(); } View (ASPX View Engine) <p>     My name is     <b><%: ViewData["name"] %></b>,     <b><%: ViewData["age"] %></b> years old.     <br />         I like the following colors: </p> <ul id="colors"> <% foreach (var color in ViewData["listColors"] as List<string>){ %>     <li>        <font color="<%: color %>"><%: color %></font>    </li> <% } %> </ul> <p>     <%: ViewData["dateNow"] %> </p> (I know the code might look cleaner with Razor View engine, but it doesn’t matter right? ;) ) Example - Using ViewBag Controller public ActionResult Index() {     List<string> colors = new List<string>();     colors.Add("red");     colors.Add("green");     colors.Add("blue");     ViewBag.ListColors = colors; //colors is List     ViewBag.DateNow = DateTime.Now;     ViewBag.Name = "Hajan";     ViewBag.Age = 25;     return View(); } You see the difference? View (ASPX View Engine) <p>     My name is     <b><%: ViewBag.Name %></b>,     <b><%: ViewBag.Age %></b> years old.     <br />         I like the following colors: </p> <ul id="colors"> <% foreach (var color in ViewBag.ListColors) { %>     <li>         <font color="<%: color %>"><%: color %></font>     </li> <% } %> </ul> <p>     <%: ViewBag.DateNow %> </p> In my example now I don’t need to cast ViewBag.ListColors as List<string> since ViewBag is dynamic type! On the other hand the ViewData[“key”] is object.I would like to note that if you use ViewData["ListColors"] = colors; in your Controller, you can retrieve it in the View by using ViewBag.ListColors. And the result in both cases is Hope you like it! Regards, Hajan

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• Guest Post: Christian Finn: Is Facebook About to Become a Victim of its Own Success?

  - by Michael Snow

  12.00 Print 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}  Since we have a number of new members of the WebCenter Evangelist team - I thought it would be appropriate to close the week with the newest hire and leader of the global WebCenter Evangelists, Christian Finn, who has just joined the Red team after many years with the small technology company up in Redmond, WA. He gave an intro to himself in an earlier post this morning but his post below is a great example of how customer engagement takes on a life of its own in our global online connected and social digital ecosystem. Is Facebook About to Become a Victim of its Own Success? What if I told you that your brand could advertise so successfully, you wouldn’t have to pay for the ads? A recent campaign by Ford Motor Company for the Ford Focus featuring Doug the spokespuppet (I am not making this up) did just that—and it raises some interesting issues for marketers and social media alike in the brave new world of customer engagement that is the Social Web. Allow me to elaborate. An article in the Wall Street Journal last week—“Big Brands Like Facebook, But They Don’t Like to Pay” tells the story of Ford’s recently concluded online campaign for the 2012 Ford Focus. (Ford, by the way, under the leadership of people such as Scott Monty, has been a pioneer of effective social campaigns.) The centerpiece of the campaign was the aforementioned Doug, who appeared as a character on Facebook in videos and via chat. (If you are not familiar with Doug, you can see him in action here, and read the WSJ story here.) You may be thinking puppet ads are a sign of Internet Bubble 2.0 and want to stop now, but bear with me. The Journal reported that Ford spent about $95M on its overall Ford Focus campaign, with TV accounting for over $60M of that spend. The Internet buy for the campaign was just over $10M, which included ad buys to drive traffic to Facebook for people to meet and ‘Like’ Doug and some amount on Facebook ads, too, to promote Doug and by extension, the Ford Focus. So far, a fairly straightforward consumer marketing story in the Internet Era. Yet here’s the curious thing: once Doug reached 10,000 fans on Facebook, Ford stopped paying for Facebook ads. Doug had gone viral with people sharing his videos with one another; once critical mass was reached there was no need to buy more ads on Facebook. Doug went on to be Liked by over 43,000 people, and 61% of his fans said they would be more likely to consider buying a Focus. According to the article, Ford says Focus sales are up this year—and increasing sales is every marketer’s goal. And so in effect, Ford found its Facebook campaign so successful that it could stop paying for it, instead letting its target consumers communicate its messages for fun—and for free. Not only did they get a 3X increase in fans beyond their paid campaign, they had thousands of customers sharing their messages in video form for months. Since free advertising is the Holy Grail of marketing both old and new-- and it appears social networks have an advantage in generating that buzz—it seems reasonable to ask: what would happen to brands’ advertising strategies—and the media they use to engage customers, if this success were repeated at scale? It seems logical to conclude that, at least initially, more ad dollars would be spent with social networks like Facebook as brands attempt to replicate Ford’s success. Certainly Facebook ad revenues are on the rise—eMarketer expects Facebook’s ad revenues to quintuple by 2012 compared with 2009 levels, to nearly 2.9B. That’s bad news for TV and the already battered print media and good news for Facebook. But perhaps not so over the longer run. With TV buys, you have to keep paying to generate impressions. If Doug the spokespuppet is any guide, however, that may not be true for social media campaigns. After an initial outlay, if a social campaign takes off, the audience will generate more impressions on its own. Thus a social medium like Facebook could be the victim of its own success when it comes to ad revenue. It may be there is an inherent limiting factor in the ad spend they can capture, as exemplified by Ford’s experience with Dough and the Focus. And brands may spend much less overall on advertising, with as good or better results, than they ever have in the past. How will these trends evolve? Can brands create social campaigns that repeat Ford’s formula for the Focus with effective results? Can social networks find ways to capture more spend and overcome their potential tendency to make further spend unnecessary? And will consumers become tired and insulated from social campaigns, much as they have to traditional advertising channels? These are the questions CMOs and Facebook execs alike will be asking themselves in the brave new world of customer engagement. As always, your thoughts and comments are most welcome.

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• Microsoft, jQuery, and Templating

  - by Stephen Walther

  About two months ago, John Resig and I met at Café Algiers in Harvard square to discuss how Microsoft can contribute to the jQuery project. Today, Scott Guthrie announced in his second-day MIX keynote that Microsoft is throwing its weight behind jQuery and making it the primary way to develop client-side Ajax applications using Microsoft technologies. What does this announcement mean? It means that Microsoft is shifting its resources to invest in jQuery. Developers on the ASP.NET team are now working full-time to contribute features to the core jQuery library. Furthermore, we are working with other teams at Microsoft to ensure that our technologies work great with jQuery. We are contributing to the open-source jQuery project in the exact same way that any other company or individual from the community can contribute to jQuery. We are writing proposals, submitting the proposals to the jQuery forums, and revising the proposals in response to community feedback. The jQuery team can decide to reject or accept any feature that we propose. Any feature that Microsoft contributes to jQuery will be platform neutral. In other words, Microsoft contributions will benefit PHP and RAILS developers just as much as they benefit ASP.NET developers. Microsoft contributions to jQuery will improve the web for everyone. Contributing Support for Templates to jQuery Core Our first proposal concerns templating. We want to contribute support for templates to jQuery so that JavaScript developers can use jQuery to easily display a set of database records. You can read our templating proposal here: http://wiki.github.com/nje/jquery/jquery-templates-proposal You can download and play with our prototype for templating here: http://github.com/nje/jquery-tmpl The following code illustrates how you can use a template to display a set of products in a bulleted list: <script type="text/javascript"> jQuery(function(){ var products = [ { name: "Product 1", price: 12.99}, { name: "Product 2", price: 9.99}, { name: "Product 3", price: 35.59} ]; $("ul").append("#template", products); }); </script> <script id="template" type="text/html"> <li>{%= name %} - {%= price %}</li> </script> <ul></ul> The template is contained in a SCRIPT element that has a TYPE=”text/html” attribute. Browsers ignore the contents of a SCRIPT element when they don’t understand the content type. Notice that the placeholder {%=...%} is used within the template to indicate where the name and price of a product should appear. The delimiters {%=…%} are used for expressions and the delimiters {%...%} are used for code. Finally, the products are rendered using the template with the call to $(“ul”).append(“#template”, products). The standard jQuery DOM manipulation methods have been modified to support templates. When the page above is rendered, you get the bulleted list displayed in the following figure. Our goal is to keep our proposal for templates as simple as possible. After support for templating has been added to jQuery, plug-in authors can take advantage of templating when building complex data-driven plug-ins such as a DataGrid plug-in. The Ajax Control Toolkit Over 100,000 developers download the Ajax Control Toolkit every month. That’s a mind-boggling number of downloads. We realize that the Ajax Control Toolkit is extremely popular among ASP.NET Web Forms developers and we want to continue to invest in the Ajax Control Toolkit. If you are adding JavaScript interactivity to an ASP.NET Web Forms application, and you don’t want to write JavaScript, then we recommend that you use the server controls in the Ajax Control Toolkit. Using the Ajax Control Toolkit does not require knowledge of JavaScript and the toolkit enables you to build applications with the concepts familiar to ASP.NET Web Forms applications developers. If, however, you are interested in creating client-side interactivity without server controls then we recommend that you use jQuery. We plan to continue to release new versions of the Ajax Control Toolkit every few months. Our goal is to continue to improve the quality of the Ajax Control Toolkit and to make it easier for the community to contribute code, bug fixes, and documentation. The ASP.NET Ajax Library We are moving the ASP.NET Ajax Library into the Ajax Control Toolkit. If you currently use ASP.NET Ajax Library client templates, client data-binding, or the client script loader then you can continue to use these features by downloading the Ajax Control Toolkit. Be aware that our focus with the Ajax Control Toolkit is server-side Ajax.  For client-side Ajax, we are shifting our focus to jQuery. For example, if you have been using ASP.NET Ajax Library client templates then we recommend that you shift to using jQuery instead. Conclusion Our plan is to focus on jQuery as the primary technology for building client-side Ajax applications moving forward. We want to adapt Microsoft technologies to work great with jQuery and we want to contribute features to jQuery that will make the web better for everyone. We are very excited to be working with the jQuery core team.

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