oracle applications strat - Page 588

Monitoring of Activities visibility

- by vochupin

Is it possible to determine the moment of switching of certain Activity from foreground to background and vice versa? This activity should run in the separate process. I need to write the application that collects some statistics from using of big set of applications (app names read from configuration file). My application works as Service and should remember moments of switching of activities between foreground and background. Set of applications is sufficiently big and most part of these applications will never work on certain phone.

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Using HTML 5 SessionState to save rendered Page Content

- by Rick Strahl

HTML 5 SessionState and LocalStorage are very useful and super easy to use to manage client side state. For building rich client side or SPA style applications it's a vital feature to be able to cache user data as well as HTML content in order to swap pages in and out of the browser's DOM. What might not be so obvious is that you can also use the sessionState and localStorage objects even in classic server rendered HTML applications to provide caching features between pages. These APIs have been around for a long time and are supported by most relatively modern browsers and even all the way back to IE8, so you can use them safely in your Web applications. SessionState and LocalStorage are easy The APIs that make up sessionState and localStorage are very simple. Both object feature the same API interface which is a simple, string based key value store that has getItem, setItem, removeitem, clear and key methods. The objects are also pseudo array objects and so can be iterated like an array with a length property and you have array indexers to set and get values with. Basic usage for storing and retrieval looks like this (using sessionStorage, but the syntax is the same for localStorage - just switch the objects):// set var lastAccess = new Date().getTime(); if (sessionStorage) sessionStorage.setItem("myapp_time", lastAccess.toString()); // retrieve in another page or on a refresh var time = null; if (sessionStorage) time = sessionStorage.getItem("myapp_time"); if (time) time = new Date(time * 1); else time = new Date(); sessionState stores data that is browser session specific and that has a liftetime of the active browser session or window. Shut down the browser or tab and the storage goes away. localStorage uses the same API interface, but the lifetime of the data is permanently stored in the browsers storage area until deleted via code or by clearing out browser cookies (not the cache). Both sessionStorage and localStorage space is limited. The spec is ambiguous about this - supposedly sessionStorage should allow for unlimited size, but it appears that most WebKit browsers support only 2.5mb for either object. This means you have to be careful what you store especially since other applications might be running on the same domain and also use the storage mechanisms. That said 2.5mb worth of character data is quite a bit and would go a long way. The easiest way to get a feel for how sessionState and localStorage work is to look at a simple example. You can go check out the following example online in Plunker: http://plnkr.co/edit/0ICotzkoPjHaWa70GlRZ?p=preview which looks like this: Plunker is an online HTML/JavaScript editor that lets you write and run Javascript code and similar to JsFiddle, but a bit cleaner to work in IMHO (thanks to John Papa for turning me on to it). The sample has two text boxes with counts that update session/local storage every time you click the related button. The counts are 'cached' in Session and Local storage. The point of these examples is that both counters survive full page reloads, and the LocalStorage counter survives a complete browser shutdown and restart. Go ahead and try it out by clicking the Reload button after updating both counters and then shutting down the browser completely and going back to the same URL (with the same browser). What you should see is that reloads leave both counters intact at the counted values, while a browser restart will leave only the local storage counter intact. The code to deal with the SessionStorage (and LocalStorage not shown here) in the example is isolated into a couple of wrapper methods to simplify the code: function getSessionCount() { var count = 0; if (sessionStorage) { var count = sessionStorage.getItem("ss_count"); count = !count ? 0 : count * 1; } $("#txtSession").val(count); return count; } function setSessionCount(count) { if (sessionStorage) sessionStorage.setItem("ss_count", count.toString()); } These two functions essentially load and store a session counter value. The two key methods used here are: sessionStorage.getItem(key); sessionStorage.setItem(key,stringVal); Note that the value given to setItem and return by getItem has to be a string. If you pass another type you get an error. Don't let that limit you though - you can easily enough store JSON data in a variable so it's quite possible to pass complex objects and store them into a single sessionStorage value:var user = { name: "Rick", id="ricks", level=8 } sessionStorage.setItem("app_user",JSON.stringify(user)); to retrieve it:var user = sessionStorage.getItem("app_user"); if (user) user = JSON.parse(user); Simple! If you're using the Chrome Developer Tools (F12) you can also check out the session and local storage state on the Resource tab: You can also use this tool to refresh or remove entries from storage. What we just looked at is a purely client side implementation where a couple of counters are stored. For rich client centric AJAX applications sessionStorage and localStorage provide a very nice and simple API to store application state while the application is running. But you can also use these storage mechanisms to manage server centric HTML applications when you combine server rendering with some JavaScript to perform client side data caching. You can both store some state information and data on the client (ie. store a JSON object and carry it forth between server rendered HTML requests) or you can use it for good old HTTP based caching where some rendered HTML is saved and then restored later. Let's look at the latter with a real life example. Why do I need Client-side Page Caching for Server Rendered HTML? I don't know about you, but in a lot of my existing server driven applications I have lists that display a fair amount of data. Typically these lists contain links to then drill down into more specific data either for viewing or editing. You can then click on a link and go off to a detail page that provides more concise content. So far so good. But now you're done with the detail page and need to get back to the list, so you click on a 'bread crumbs trail' or an application level 'back to list' button and… …you end up back at the top of the list - the scroll position, the current selection in some cases even filters conditions - all gone with the wind. You've left behind the state of the list and are starting from scratch in your browsing of the list from the top. Not cool! Sound familiar? This a pretty common scenario with server rendered HTML content where it's so common to display lists to drill into, only to lose state in the process of returning back to the original list. Look at just about any traditional forums application, or even StackOverFlow to see what I mean here. Scroll down a bit to look at a post or entry, drill in then use the bread crumbs or tab to go back… In some cases returning to the top of a list is not a big deal. On StackOverFlow that sort of works because content is turning around so quickly you probably want to actually look at the top posts. Not always though - if you're browsing through a list of search topics you're interested in and drill in there's no way back to that position. Essentially anytime you're actively browsing the items in the list, that's when state becomes important and if it's not handled the user experience can be really disrupting. Content Caching If you're building client centric SPA style applications this is a fairly easy to solve problem - you tend to render the list once and then update the page content to overlay the detail content, only hiding the list temporarily until it's used again later. It's relatively easy to accomplish this simply by hiding content on the page and later making it visible again. But if you use server rendered content, hanging on to all the detail like filters, selections and scroll position is not quite as easy. Or is it??? This is where sessionStorage comes in handy. What if we just save the rendered content of a previous page, and then restore it when we return to this page based on a special flag that tells us to use the cached version? Let's see how we can do this. A real World Use Case Recently my local ISP asked me to help out with updating an ancient classifieds application. They had a very busy, local classifieds app that was originally an ASP classic application. The old app was - wait for it: frames based - and even though I lobbied against it, the decision was made to keep the frames based layout to allow rapid browsing of the hundreds of posts that are made on a daily basis. The primary reason they wanted this was precisely for the ability to quickly browse content item by item. While I personally hate working with Frames, I have to admit that the UI actually works well with the frames layout as long as you're running on a large desktop screen. You can check out the frames based desktop site here: http://classifieds.gorge.net/ However when I rebuilt the app I also added a secondary view that doesn't use frames. The main reason for this of course was for mobile displays which work horribly with frames. So there's a somewhat mobile friendly interface to the interface, which ditches the frames and uses some responsive design tweaking for mobile capable operation: http://classifeds.gorge.net/mobile (or browse the base url with your browser width under 800px) Here's what the mobile, non-frames view looks like: As you can see this means that the list of classifieds posts now is a list and there's a separate page for drilling down into the item. And of course… originally we ran into that usability issue I mentioned earlier where the browse, view detail, go back to the list cycle resulted in lost list state. Originally in mobile mode you scrolled through the list, found an item to look at and drilled in to display the item detail. Then you clicked back to the list and BAM - you've lost your place. Because there are so many items added on a daily basis the full list is never fully loaded, but rather there's a "Load Additional Listings" entry at the button. Not only did we originally lose our place when coming back to the list, but any 'additionally loaded' items are no longer there because the list was now rendering as if it was the first page hit. The additional listings, and any filters, the selection of an item all were lost. Major Suckage! Using Client SessionStorage to cache Server Rendered Content To work around this problem I decided to cache the rendered page content from the list in SessionStorage. Anytime the list renders or is updated with Load Additional Listings, the page HTML is cached and stored in Session Storage. Any back links from the detail page or the login or write entry forms then point back to the list page with a back=true query string parameter. If the server side sees this parameter it doesn't render the part of the page that is cached. Instead the client side code retrieves the data from the sessionState cache and simply inserts it into the page. It sounds pretty simple, and the overall the process is really easy, but there are a few gotchas that I'll discuss in a minute. But first let's look at the implementation. Let's start with the server side here because that'll give a quick idea of the doc structure. As I mentioned the server renders data from an ASP.NET MVC view. On the list page when returning to the list page from the display page (or a host of other pages) looks like this: https://classifieds.gorge.net/list?back=True The query string value is a flag, that indicates whether the server should render the HTML. Here's what the top level MVC Razor view for the list page looks like:@model MessageListViewModel @{ ViewBag.Title = "Classified Listing"; bool isBack = !string.IsNullOrEmpty(Request.QueryString["back"]); } <form method="post" action="@Url.Action("list")"> <div id="SizingContainer"> @if (!isBack) { @Html.Partial("List_CommandBar_Partial", Model) <div id="PostItemContainer" class="scrollbox" xstyle="-webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch;"> @Html.Partial("List_Items_Partial", Model) @if (Model.RequireLoadEntry) { <div class="postitem loadpostitems" style="padding: 15px;"> <div id="LoadProgress" class="smallprogressright"></div> <div class="control-progress"> Load additional listings... </div> </div> } </div> } </div> </form> As you can see the query string triggers a conditional block that if set is simply not rendered. The content inside of #SizingContainer basically holds the entire page's HTML sans the headers and scripts, but including the filter options and menu at the top. In this case this makes good sense - in other situations the fact that the menu or filter options might be dynamically updated might make you only cache the list rather than essentially the entire page. In this particular instance all of the content works and produces the proper result as both the list along with any filter conditions in the form inputs are restored. Ok, let's move on to the client. On the client there are two page level functions that deal with saving and restoring state. Like the counter example I showed earlier, I like to wrap the logic to save and restore values from sessionState into a separate function because they are almost always used in several places.page.saveData = function(id) { if (!sessionStorage) return; var data = { id: id, scroll: $("#PostItemContainer").scrollTop(), html: $("#SizingContainer").html() }; sessionStorage.setItem("list_html",JSON.stringify(data)); }; page.restoreData = function() { if (!sessionStorage) return; var data = sessionStorage.getItem("list_html"); if (!data) return null; return JSON.parse(data); }; The data that is saved is an object which contains an ID which is the selected element when the user clicks and a scroll position. These two values are used to reset the scroll position when the data is used from the cache. Finally the html from the #SizingContainer element is stored, which makes for the bulk of the document's HTML. In this application the HTML captured could be a substantial bit of data. If you recall, I mentioned that the server side code renders a small chunk of data initially and then gets more data if the user reads through the first 50 or so items. The rest of the items retrieved can be rather sizable. Other than the JSON deserialization that's Ok. Since I'm using SessionStorage the storage space has no immediate limits. Next is the core logic to handle saving and restoring the page state. At first though this would seem pretty simple, and in some cases it might be, but as the following code demonstrates there are a few gotchas to watch out for. Here's the relevant code I use to save and restore:$( function() { … var isBack = getUrlEncodedKey("back", location.href); if (isBack) { // remove the back key from URL setUrlEncodedKey("back", "", location.href); var data = page.restoreData(); // restore from sessionState if (!data) { // no data - force redisplay of the server side default list window.location = "list"; return; } $("#SizingContainer").html(data.html); var el = $(".postitem[data-id=" + data.id + "]"); $(".postitem").removeClass("highlight"); el.addClass("highlight"); $("#PostItemContainer").scrollTop(data.scroll); setTimeout(function() { el.removeClass("highlight"); }, 2500); } else if (window.noFrames) page.saveData(null); // save when page loads $("#SizingContainer").on("click", ".postitem", function() { var id = $(this).attr("data-id"); if (!id) return true; if (window.noFrames) page.saveData(id); var contentFrame = window.parent.frames["Content"]; if (contentFrame) contentFrame.location.href = "show/" + id; else window.location.href = "show/" + id; return false; }); … The code starts out by checking for the back query string flag which triggers restoring from the client cache. If cached the cached data structure is read from sessionStorage. It's important here to check if data was returned. If the user had back=true on the querystring but there is no cached data, he likely bookmarked this page or otherwise shut down the browser and came back to this URL. In that case the server didn't render any detail and we have no cached data, so all we can do is redirect to the original default list view using window.location. If we continued the page would render no data - so make sure to always check the cache retrieval result. Always! If there is data the it's loaded and the data.html data is restored back into the document by simply injecting the HTML back into the document's #SizingContainer element:$("#SizingContainer").html(data.html); It's that simple and it's quite quick even with a fully loaded list of additional items and on a phone. The actual HTML data is stored to the cache on every page load initially and then again when the user clicks on an element to navigate to a particular listing. The former ensures that the client cache always has something in it, and the latter updates with additional information for the selected element. For the click handling I use a data-id attribute on the list item (.postitem) in the list and retrieve the id from that. That id is then used to navigate to the actual entry as well as storing that Id value in the saved cached data. The id is used to reset the selection by searching for the data-id value in the restored elements. The overall process of this save/restore process is pretty straight forward and it doesn't require a bunch of code, yet it yields a huge improvement in the usability of the site on mobile devices (or anybody who uses the non-frames view). Some things to watch out for As easy as it conceptually seems to simply store and retrieve cached content, you have to be quite aware what type of content you are caching. The code above is all that's specific to cache/restore cycle and it works, but it took a few tweaks to the rest of the script code and server code to make it all work. There were a few gotchas that weren't immediately obvious. Here are a few things to pay attention to: Event Handling Logic Timing of manipulating DOM events Inline Script Code Bookmarking to the Cache Url when no cache exists Do you have inline script code in your HTML? That script code isn't going to run if you restore from cache and simply assign or it may not run at the time you think it would normally in the DOM rendering cycle. JavaScript Event Hookups The biggest issue I ran into with this approach almost immediately is that originally I had various static event handlers hooked up to various UI elements that are now cached. If you have an event handler like:$("#btnSearch").click( function() {…}); that works fine when the page loads with server rendered HTML, but that code breaks when you now load the HTML from cache. Why? Because the elements you're trying to hook those events to may not actually be there - yet. Luckily there's an easy workaround for this by using deferred events. With jQuery you can use the .on() event handler instead:$("#SelectionContainer").on("click","#btnSearch", function() {…}); which monitors a parent element for the events and checks for the inner selector elements to handle events on. This effectively defers to runtime event binding, so as more items are added to the document bindings still work. For any cached content use deferred events. Timing of manipulating DOM Elements Along the same lines make sure that your DOM manipulation code follows the code that loads the cached content into the page so that you don't manipulate DOM elements that don't exist just yet. Ideally you'll want to check for the condition to restore cached content towards the top of your script code, but that can be tricky if you have components or other logic that might not all run in a straight line. Inline Script Code Here's another small problem I ran into: I use a DateTime Picker widget I built a while back that relies on the jQuery date time picker. I also created a helper function that allows keyboard date navigation into it that uses JavaScript logic. Because MVC's limited 'object model' the only way to embed widget content into the page is through inline script. This code broken when I inserted the cached HTML into the page because the script code was not available when the component actually got injected into the page. As the last bullet - it's a matter of timing. There's no good work around for this - in my case I pulled out the jQuery date picker and relied on native <input type="date" /> logic instead - a better choice these days anyway, especially since this view is meant to be primarily to serve mobile devices which actually support date input through the browser (unlike desktop browsers of which only WebKit seems to support it). Bookmarking Cached Urls When you cache HTML content you have to make a decision whether you cache on the client and also not render that same content on the server. In the Classifieds app I didn't render server side content so if the user comes to the page with back=True and there is no cached content I have to a have a Plan B. Typically this happens when somebody ends up bookmarking the back URL. The easiest and safest solution for this scenario is to ALWAYS check the cache result to make sure it exists and if not have a safe URL to go back to - in this case to the plain uncached list URL which amounts to effectively redirecting. This seems really obvious in hindsight, but it's easy to overlook and not see a problem until much later, when it's not obvious at all why the page is not rendering anything. Don't use <body> to replace Content Since we're practically replacing all the HTML in the page it may seem tempting to simply replace the HTML content of the <body> tag. Don't. The body tag usually contains key things that should stay in the page and be there when it loads. Specifically script tags and elements and possibly other embedded content. It's best to create a top level DOM element specifically as a placeholder container for your cached content and wrap just around the actual content you want to replace. In the app above the #SizingContainer is that container. Other Approaches The approach I've used for this application is kind of specific to the existing server rendered application we're running and so it's just one approach you can take with caching. However for server rendered content caching this is a pattern I've used in a few apps to retrofit some client caching into list displays. In this application I took the path of least resistance to the existing server rendering logic. Here are a few other ways that come to mind: Using Partial HTML Rendering via AJAXInstead of rendering the page initially on the server, the page would load empty and the client would render the UI by retrieving the respective HTML and embedding it into the page from a Partial View. This effectively makes the initial rendering and the cached rendering logic identical and removes the server having to decide whether this request needs to be rendered or not (ie. not checking for a back=true switch). All the logic related to caching is made on the client in this case. Using JSON Data and Client RenderingThe hardcore client option is to do the whole UI SPA style and pull data from the server and then use client rendering or databinding to pull the data down and render using templates or client side databinding with knockout/angular et al. As with the Partial Rendering approach the advantage is that there's no difference in the logic between pulling the data from cache or rendering from scratch other than the initial check for the cache request. Of course if the app is a full on SPA app, then caching may not be required even - the list could just stay in memory and be hidden and reactivated. I'm sure there are a number of other ways this can be handled as well especially using AJAX. AJAX rendering might simplify the logic, but it also complicates search engine optimization since there's no content loaded initially. So there are always tradeoffs and it's important to look at all angles before deciding on any sort of caching solution in general. State of the Session SessionState and LocalStorage are easy to use in client code and can be integrated even with server centric applications to provide nice caching features of content and data. In this post I've shown a very specific scenario of storing HTML content for the purpose of remembering list view data and state and making the browsing experience for lists a bit more friendly, especially if there's dynamically loaded content involved. If you haven't played with sessionStorage or localStorage I encourage you to give it a try. There's a lot of cool stuff that you can do with this beyond the specific scenario I've covered here… Resources Overview of localStorage (also applies to sessionStorage) Web Storage Compatibility Modernizr Test Suite© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2013Posted in JavaScript HTML5 ASP.NET MVC Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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Understanding the value of Customer Experience & Loyalty for the Telecommunications Industry

- by raul.goycoolea

Worried by economic woes and market forces, especially in mature markets, communications service providers (CSPs) increasingly focus on improving customer experience. In fact, it seems difficult to find a major message by a C-level executive in the developed world that does not include something on "meeting and exceeding customers' needs". Frequently in customer satisfaction studies by prominent firms, CSPs fall short of the leadership demonstrated by other industries that take customer-centric approaches to their bottom-line strategies. Consider the following:Despite the continued impact of global economic crisis, in July 2010, Apple Computer posted record revenue and net quarterly profit. Those who attribute the results primarily to the iPhone 4 launch should note that Apple also shipped around 30% more Macintosh computers than the same period the previous year. Even sales of the iPod line increased by 8% in a highly commoditized, shrinking media player market. Finally, Apple began selling iPads during the quarter, with total sales of more than 3 million units. What does Apple have that the others lack? Well, some great products (and services) to be sure, but it also excels at customer service and support, marketing, and distribution, and has one of the strongest brands globally. Its products are useful, simple to use, easy to acquire and augment, high quality, and considered very cool. They also evoke such an emotional response from many of Apple's customers, which they turn up their noses at competitive products.In other words, Apple appears to have mastered virtually every aspect of customer experience and the resultant loyalty of its customer base - even in difficult financial times. Through that unwavering customer focus, Apple continues to drive its revenues and profits to new heights. Other customer loyalty leaders like Wal-Mart, Google, Toyota and Honda are also doing well by focusing on customer experience as an essential driver of profitability. Service providers should note this performance and ask themselves how they might leverage the same principles to increase their own profitability. After all, that is what customer experience and loyalty are all about: profitability.To successfully manage all the critical touch points of customer experience, CSPs must shun the one-size-fits-all approach. They can no longer afford to view customer service fundamentally as an act of altruism - which mentality dates back to the industry's civil service days, when CSPs were typically government organizations that were critical to economic development and public safety.As regulators and public officials have pushed, and continue to push, service providers to new heights of reliability - using incentives and punishments - most CSPs already have some of the fundamental building blocks of customer service in place. Yet despite that history and experience, service providers still lag other industries in providing what is seen as good customer service.As we observed in the TMF's 2009 Insights Research report, Customer Experience Management: Driving Loyalty & Profitability there has been resurgence in interest by CSPs. More and more of them have stated ambitions to catch up other industries, and they are realizing that good customer service is a powerful strategy for increasing business performance and profitability, not an act of good will.CSPs are recognizing the connection between customer experience and profitability, as demonstrated in many studies. For example, according to research by Bain & Company, a 5 percent improvement in customer retention rates can yield as much as a 75 percent increase in profits for companies across a range of industries.After decades of customer experience strategy formulation, Bain partner and business author, Frederick Reichheld, considers "would you recommend us to a friend?" as the ultimate question for a customer. How many times have you or your friends recommended an iPod, iPhone or a Mac? What do your children recommend to their peers? Their peers to them?There are certain steps service providers have to take to create more personalized relationships with their customers, as well as reduce churn and increase profitability, all while becoming leaner and more agile. First, they have to define customer experience, we define it as the result of the sum of observations, perceptions, thoughts and feelings arising from interactions and relationships between customers and their service provider(s). Virtually every customer touch point - whether directly or indirectly linked to service providers and their partners - contributes to customer perception, satisfaction, loyalty, and ultimately profitability. Gaining leadership in customer experience and satisfaction will not be a simple task, as it is affected by virtually every customer-facing aspect of the service provider, and in turn impacts the service provider deeply - especially on the all-important bottom line. The scope of issues affecting customer experience is complex and dynamic.With new services, devices and applications extending the basis of customer experience to domains beyond the direct control of the service provider, it is likely to increase in complexity and dynamism.Customer loyalty = increased profitsAs stated earlier, customer experience programs are not fundamentally altruistic exercises, but a strategic means of improving competitiveness and profitability in the short and long term. Loyalty is essential to deriving long term profits from customers.Some of the earliest loyalty programs date back to the 1930s, when packaged goods companies offered embedded coupons for rewards to buyers, and eventually retail chains began offering reward programs to frequent shoppers. These programs continued for decades but were leapfrogged in the 1980s by more aggressive programs from the airlines.This movement was led by American Airlines, which launched the first full-scale loyalty marketing program of the modern era with the AAdvantage frequent flyer scheme. It was the first to reward frequent fliers with notional air miles that could be accumulated and later redeemed for free travel. Figure 1: Opportunities example of Customer loyalty driven profitOther airlines and travel providers were quick to grasp the incredible value of providing customers with an incentive to use their company exclusively. Within a few years, dozens of travel industry companies launched similar initiatives and now loyalty programs are achieving near-ubiquity in many service industries, especially those in which it is difficult to differentiate offerings by product attributes.The belief is that increased profitability will result from customer retention efforts because:• The cost of acquisition occurs only at the beginning of a relationship: the longer the relationship, the lower the amortized cost;• Account maintenance costs decline as a percentage of total costs, or as a percentage of revenue, over the lifetime of the relationship;• Long term customers tend to be less inclined to switch and less price sensitive which can result in stable unit sales volume and increases in dollar-sales volume;• Long term customers may initiate word-of-mouth promotions and referrals, which cost the company nothing and arguably are the most effective form of advertising;• Long-term customers are more likely to buy ancillary products and higher margin supplemental products;• Long term customers tend to be satisfied with their relationship with the company and are less likely to switch to competitors, making market entry or competitors gaining market share difficult;• Regular customers tend to be less expensive to service, as they are familiar with the processes involved, require less 'education', and are consistent in their order placement;• Increased customer retention and loyalty makes the employees' jobs easier and more satisfying. In turn, happy employees feed back into higher customer satisfaction in a virtuous circle. Figure 2: The virtuous circle of customer loyaltyFigure 2 represents a high-level example of a virtuous cycle driven by customer satisfaction and loyalty, depicting how superiority in product and service offerings, as well as strong customer support by competent employees, lead to higher sales and ultimately profitability. As stated above, this is not a new concept, but succeeding with it is difficult. It has eluded many a company driven to achieve profitability goals. Of course, for this circle to be virtuous, the customer relationship(s) must be profitable.Trying to maintain the loyalty of unprofitable customers is not a viable business strategy. It is, therefore, important that marketers can assess the profitability of each customer (or customer segment), and either improve or terminate relationships that are not profitable. This means each customer's 'relationship costs' must be understood and compared to their 'relationship revenue'. Customer lifetime value (CLV) is the most commonly used metric here, as it is generally accepted as a representation of exactly how much each customer is worth in monetary terms, and therefore a determinant of exactly how much a service provider should be willing to spend to acquire or retain that customer.CLV models make several simplifying assumptions and often involve the following inputs:• Churn rate represents the percentage of customers who end their relationship with a company in a given period;• Retention rate is calculated by subtracting the churn rate percentage from 100;• Period/horizon equates to the units of time into which a customer relationship can be divided for analysis. A year is the most commonly used period for this purpose. Customer lifetime value is a multi-period calculation, often projecting three to seven years into the future. In practice, analysis beyond this point is viewed as too speculative to be reliable. The model horizon is the number of periods used in the calculation;• Periodic revenue is the amount of revenue collected from a customer in a given period (though this is often extended across multiple periods into the future to understand lifetime value), such as usage revenue, revenues anticipated from cross and upselling, and often some weighting for referrals by a loyal customer to others; • Retention cost describes the amount of money the service provider must spend, in a given period, to retain an existing customer. Again, this is often forecast across multiple periods. Retention costs include customer support, billing, promotional incentives and so on;• Discount rate means the cost of capital used to discount future revenue from a customer. Discounting is an advanced method used in more sophisticated CLV calculations;• Profit margin is the projected profit as a percentage of revenue for the period. This may be reflected as a percentage of gross or net profit. Again, this is generally projected across the model horizon to understand lifetime value.A strong focus on managing these inputs can help service providers realize stronger customer relationships and profits, but there are some obstacles to overcome in achieving accurate calculations of CLV, such as the complexity of allocating costs across the customer base. There are many costs that serve all customers which must be properly allocated across the base, and often a simple proportional allocation across the whole base or a segment may not accurately reflect the true cost of serving that customer; This is made worse by the fragmentation of customer information, which is likely to be across a variety of product or operations groups, and may be difficult to aggregate due to different representations.In addition, there is the complexity of account relationships and structures to take into consideration. Complex account structures may not be understood or properly represented. For example, a profitable customer may have a separate account for a second home or another family member, which may appear to be unprofitable. If the service provider cannot relate the two accounts, CLV is not properly represented and any resultant cancellation of the apparently unprofitable account may result in the customer churning from the profitable one.In summary, if service providers are to realize strong customer relationships and their attendant profits, there must be a very strong focus on data management. This needs to be coupled with analytics that help business managers and those who work in customer-facing functions offer highly personalized solutions to customers, while maintaining profitability for the service provider. It's clear that acquiring new customers is expensive. Advertising costs, campaign management expenses, promotional service pricing and discounting, and equipment subsidies make a serious dent in a new customer's profitability. That is especially true given the rising subsidies for Smartphone users, which service providers hope will result in greater profits from profits from data services profitability in future. The situation is made worse by falling prices and greater competition in mature markets.Customer acquisition through industry consolidation isn't cheap either. A North American service provider spent about $2,000 per subscriber in its acquisition of a smaller company earlier this year. While this has allowed it to leapfrog to become the largest mobile service provider in the country, it required a total investment of more than $28 billion (including assumption of the acquiree's debt).While many operating cost synergies clearly made this deal more attractive to the acquiring company, this is certainly an expensive way to acquire customers: the cost per subscriber in this case is not out of line with the prices others have paid for acquisitions.While growth by acquisition certainly increases overall revenues, it often creates tremendous challenges for profitability. Organic growth through increased customer loyalty and retention is a more effective driver of profit, as well as a stronger predictor of future profitability. Service providers, especially those in mature markets, are increasingly recognizing this and taking steps toward a creating a more personalized, flexible and satisfying experience for their customers.In summary, the clearest path to profitability for companies in virtually all industries is through customer retention and maximization of lifetime value. Service providers would do well to recognize this and focus attention on profitable customer relationships.

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MySQL Syslog Audit Plugin

- by jonathonc

This post shows the construction process of the Syslog Audit plugin that was presented at MySQL Connect 2012. It is based on an environment that has the appropriate development tools enabled including gcc,g++ and cmake. It also assumes you have downloaded the MySQL source code (5.5.16 or higher) and have compiled and installed the system into the /usr/local/mysql directory ready for use. The information provided below is designed to show the different components that make up a plugin, and specifically an audit type plugin, and how it comes together to be used within the MySQL service. The MySQL Reference Manual contains information regarding the plugin API and how it can be used, so please refer there for more detailed information. The code in this post is designed to give the simplest information necessary, so handling every return code, managing race conditions etc is not part of this example code. Let's start by looking at the most basic implementation of our plugin code as seen below: /* Copyright (c) 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Author: Jonathon Coombes Licence: GPL Description: An auditing plugin that logs to syslog and can adjust the loglevel via the system variables. */ #include <stdio.h> #include <string.h> #include <mysql/plugin_audit.h> #include <syslog.h> There is a commented header detailing copyright/licencing and meta-data information and then the include headers. The two important include statements for our plugin are the syslog.h plugin, which gives us the structures for syslog, and the plugin_audit.h include which has details regarding the audit specific plugin api. Note that we do not need to include the general plugin header plugin.h, as this is done within the plugin_audit.h file already. To implement our plugin within the current implementation we need to add it into our source code and compile. > cd /usr/local/src/mysql-5.5.28/plugin > mkdir audit_syslog > cd audit_syslog A simple CMakeLists.txt file is created to manage the plugin compilation: MYSQL_ADD_PLUGIN(audit_syslog audit_syslog.cc MODULE_ONLY) Run the cmake command at the top level of the source and then you can compile the plugin using the 'make' command. This results in a compiled audit_syslog.so library, but currently it is not much use to MySQL as there is no level of api defined to communicate with the MySQL service. Now we need to define the general plugin structure that enables MySQL to recognise the library as a plugin and be able to install/uninstall it and have it show up in the system. The structure is defined in the plugin.h file in the MySQL source code. /* Plugin library descriptor */ mysql_declare_plugin(audit_syslog) { MYSQL_AUDIT_PLUGIN, /* plugin type */ &audit_syslog_descriptor, /* descriptor handle */ "audit_syslog", /* plugin name */ "Author Name", /* author */ "Simple Syslog Audit", /* description */ PLUGIN_LICENSE_GPL, /* licence */ audit_syslog_init, /* init function */ audit_syslog_deinit, /* deinit function */ 0x0001, /* plugin version */ NULL, /* status variables */ NULL, /* system variables */ NULL, /* no reserves */ 0, /* no flags */ } mysql_declare_plugin_end; The general plugin descriptor above is standard for all plugin types in MySQL. The plugin type is defined along with the init/deinit functions and interface methods into the system for sharing information, and various other metadata information. The descriptors have an internally recognised version number so that plugins can be matched against the api on the running server. The other details are usually related to the type-specific methods and structures to implement the plugin. Each plugin has a type-specific descriptor as well which details how the plugin is implemented for the specific purpose of that plugin type. /* Plugin type-specific descriptor */ static struct st_mysql_audit audit_syslog_descriptor= { MYSQL_AUDIT_INTERFACE_VERSION, /* interface version */ NULL, /* release_thd function */ audit_syslog_notify, /* notify function */ { (unsigned long) MYSQL_AUDIT_GENERAL_CLASSMASK | MYSQL_AUDIT_CONNECTION_CLASSMASK } /* class mask */ }; In this particular case, the release_thd function has not been defined as it is not required. The important method for auditing is the notify function which is activated when an event occurs on the system. The notify function is designed to activate on an event and the implementation will determine how it is handled. For the audit_syslog plugin, the use of the syslog feature sends all events to the syslog for recording. The class mask allows us to determine what type of events are being seen by the notify function. There are currently two major types of event: 1. General Events: This includes general logging, errors, status and result type events. This is the main one for tracking the queries and operations on the database. 2. Connection Events: This group is based around user logins. It monitors connections and disconnections, but also if somebody changes user while connected. With most audit plugins, the principle behind the plugin is to track changes to the system over time and counters can be an important part of this process. The next step is to define and initialise the counters that are used to track the events in the service. There are 3 counters defined in total for our plugin - the # of general events, the # of connection events and the total number of events. static volatile int total_number_of_calls; /* Count MYSQL_AUDIT_GENERAL_CLASS event instances */ static volatile int number_of_calls_general; /* Count MYSQL_AUDIT_CONNECTION_CLASS event instances */ static volatile int number_of_calls_connection; The init and deinit functions for the plugin are there to be called when the plugin is activated and when it is terminated. These offer the best option to initialise the counters for our plugin: /* Initialize the plugin at server start or plugin installation. */ static int audit_syslog_init(void *arg __attribute__((unused))) { openlog("mysql_audit:",LOG_PID|LOG_PERROR|LOG_CONS,LOG_USER); total_number_of_calls= 0; number_of_calls_general= 0; number_of_calls_connection= 0; return(0); } The init function does a call to openlog to initialise the syslog functionality. The parameters are the service to log under ("mysql_audit" in this case), the syslog flags and the facility for the logging. Then each of the counters are initialised to zero and a success is returned. If the init function is not defined, it will return success by default. /* Terminate the plugin at server shutdown or plugin deinstallation. */ static int audit_syslog_deinit(void *arg __attribute__((unused))) { closelog(); return(0); } The deinit function will simply close our syslog connection and return success. Note that the syslog functionality is part of the glibc libraries and does not require any external factors. The function names are what we define in the general plugin structure, so these have to match otherwise there will be errors. The next step is to implement the event notifier function that was defined in the type specific descriptor (audit_syslog_descriptor) which is audit_syslog_notify. /* Event notifier function */ static void audit_syslog_notify(MYSQL_THD thd __attribute__((unused)), unsigned int event_class, const void *event) { total_number_of_calls++; if (event_class == MYSQL_AUDIT_GENERAL_CLASS) { const struct mysql_event_general *event_general= (const struct mysql_event_general *) event; number_of_calls_general++; syslog(audit_loglevel,"%lu: User: %s Command: %s Query: %s\n", event_general->general_thread_id, event_general->general_user, event_general->general_command, event_general->general_query ); } else if (event_class == MYSQL_AUDIT_CONNECTION_CLASS) { const struct mysql_event_connection *event_connection= (const struct mysql_event_connection *) event; number_of_calls_connection++; syslog(audit_loglevel,"%lu: User: %s@%s[%s] Event: %d Status: %d\n", event_connection->thread_id, event_connection->user, event_connection->host, event_connection->ip, event_connection->event_subclass, event_connection->status ); } } In the case of an event, the notifier function is called. The first step is to increment the total number of events that have occurred in our database.The event argument is then cast into the appropriate event structure depending on the class type, of general event or connection event. The event type counters are incremented and details are sent via the syslog() function out to the system log. There are going to be different line formats and information returned since the general events have different data compared to the connection events, even though some of the details overlap, for example, user, thread id, host etc. On compiling the code now, there should be no errors and the resulting audit_syslog.so can be loaded into the server and ready to use. Log into the server and type: mysql> INSTALL PLUGIN audit_syslog SONAME 'audit_syslog.so'; This will install the plugin and will start updating the syslog immediately. Note that the audit plugin attaches to the immediate thread and cannot be uninstalled while that thread is active. This means that you cannot run the UNISTALL command until you log into a different connection (thread) on the server. Once the plugin is loaded, the system log will show output such as the following: Oct 8 15:33:21 machine mysql_audit:[8337]: 87: User: root[root] @ localhost [] Command: (null) Query: INSTALL PLUGIN audit_syslog SONAME 'audit_syslog.so' Oct 8 15:33:21 machine mysql_audit:[8337]: 87: User: root[root] @ localhost [] Command: Query Query: INSTALL PLUGIN audit_syslog SONAME 'audit_syslog.so' Oct 8 15:33:40 machine mysql_audit:[8337]: 87: User: root[root] @ localhost [] Command: (null) Query: show tables Oct 8 15:33:40 machine mysql_audit:[8337]: 87: User: root[root] @ localhost [] Command: Query Query: show tables Oct 8 15:33:43 machine mysql_audit:[8337]: 87: User: root[root] @ localhost [] Command: (null) Query: select * from t1 Oct 8 15:33:43 machine mysql_audit:[8337]: 87: User: root[root] @ localhost [] Command: Query Query: select * from t1 It appears that two of each event is being shown, but in actuality, these are two separate event types - the result event and the status event. This could be refined further by changing the audit_syslog_notify function to handle the different event sub-types in a different manner. So far, it seems that the logging is working with events showing up in the syslog output. The issue now is that the counters created earlier to track the number of events by type are not accessible when the plugin is being run. Instead there needs to be a way to expose the plugin specific information to the service and vice versa. This could be done via the information_schema plugin api, but for something as simple as counters, the obvious choice is the system status variables. This is done using the standard structure and the declaration: /* Plugin status variables for SHOW STATUS */ static struct st_mysql_show_var audit_syslog_status[]= { { "Audit_syslog_total_calls", (char *) &total_number_of_calls, SHOW_INT }, { "Audit_syslog_general_events", (char *) &number_of_calls_general, SHOW_INT }, { "Audit_syslog_connection_events", (char *) &number_of_calls_connection, SHOW_INT }, { 0, 0, SHOW_INT } }; The structure is simply the name that will be displaying in the mysql service, the address of the associated variables, and the data type being used for the counter. It is finished with a blank structure to show that there are no more variables. Remember that status variables may have the same name for variables from other plugin, so it is considered appropriate to add the plugin name at the start of the status variable name to avoid confusion. Looking at the status variables in the mysql client shows something like the following: mysql> show global status like "audit%"; +--------------------------------+-------+ | Variable_name | Value | +--------------------------------+-------+ | Audit_syslog_connection_events | 1 | | Audit_syslog_general_events | 2 | | Audit_syslog_total_calls | 3 | +--------------------------------+-------+ 3 rows in set (0.00 sec) The final connectivity piece for the plugin is to allow the interactive change of the logging level between the plugin and the system. This requires the ability to send changes via the mysql service through to the plugin. This is done using the system variables interface and defining a single variable to keep track of the active logging level for the facility. /* Plugin system variables for SHOW VARIABLES */ static MYSQL_SYSVAR_STR(loglevel, audit_loglevel, PLUGIN_VAR_RQCMDARG, "User can specify the log level for auditing", audit_loglevel_check, audit_loglevel_update, "LOG_NOTICE"); static struct st_mysql_sys_var* audit_syslog_sysvars[] = { MYSQL_SYSVAR(loglevel), NULL }; So now the system variable 'loglevel' is defined for the plugin and associated to the global variable 'audit_loglevel'. The check or validation function is defined to make sure that no garbage values are attempted in the update of the variable. The update function is used to save the new value to the variable. Note that the audit_syslog_sysvars structure is defined in the general plugin descriptor to associate the link between the plugin and the system and how much they interact. Next comes the implementation of the validation function and the update function for the system variable. It is worth noting that if you have a simple numeric such as integers for the variable types, the validate function is often not required as MySQL will handle the automatic check and validation of simple types. /* longest valid value */ #define MAX_LOGLEVEL_SIZE 100 /* hold the valid values */ static const char *possible_modes[]= { "LOG_ERROR", "LOG_WARNING", "LOG_NOTICE", NULL }; static int audit_loglevel_check( THD* thd, /*!< in: thread handle */ struct st_mysql_sys_var* var, /*!< in: pointer to system variable */ void* save, /*!< out: immediate result for update function */ struct st_mysql_value* value) /*!< in: incoming string */ { char buff[MAX_LOGLEVEL_SIZE]; const char *str; const char **found; int length; length= sizeof(buff); if (!(str= value->val_str(value, buff, &length))) return 1; /* We need to return a pointer to a locally allocated value in "save". Here we pick to search for the supplied value in an global array of constant strings and return a pointer to one of them. The other possiblity is to use the thd_alloc() function to allocate a thread local buffer instead of the global constants. */ for (found= possible_modes; *found; found++) { if (!strcmp(*found, str)) { *(const char**)save= *found; return 0; } } return 1; } The validation function is simply to take the value being passed in via the SET GLOBAL VARIABLE command and check if it is one of the pre-defined values allowed in our possible_values array. If it is found to be valid, then the value is assigned to the save variable ready for passing through to the update function. static void audit_loglevel_update( THD* thd, /*!< in: thread handle */ struct st_mysql_sys_var* var, /*!< in: system variable being altered */ void* var_ptr, /*!< out: pointer to dynamic variable */ const void* save) /*!< in: pointer to temporary storage */ { /* assign the new value so that the server can read it */ *(char **) var_ptr= *(char **) save; /* assign the new value to the internal variable */ audit_loglevel= *(char **) save; } Since all the validation has been done already, the update function is quite simple for this plugin. The first part is to update the system variable pointer so that the server can read the value. The second part is to update our own global plugin variable for tracking the value. Notice that the save variable is passed in as a void type to allow handling of various data types, so it must be cast to the appropriate data type when assigning it to the variables. Looking at how the latest changes affect the usage of the plugin and the interaction within the server shows: mysql> show global variables like "audit%"; +-----------------------+------------+ | Variable_name | Value | +-----------------------+------------+ | audit_syslog_loglevel | LOG_NOTICE | +-----------------------+------------+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec) mysql> set global audit_syslog_loglevel="LOG_ERROR"; Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec) mysql> show global status like "audit%"; +--------------------------------+-------+ | Variable_name | Value | +--------------------------------+-------+ | Audit_syslog_connection_events | 1 | | Audit_syslog_general_events | 11 | | Audit_syslog_total_calls | 12 | +--------------------------------+-------+ 3 rows in set (0.00 sec) mysql> show global variables like "audit%"; +-----------------------+-----------+ | Variable_name | Value | +-----------------------+-----------+ | audit_syslog_loglevel | LOG_ERROR | +-----------------------+-----------+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec) So now we have a plugin that will audit the events on the system and log the details to the system log. It allows for interaction to see the number of different events within the server details and provides a mechanism to change the logging level interactively via the standard system methods of the SET command. A more complex auditing plugin may have more detailed code, but each of the above areas is what will be involved and simply expanded on to add more functionality. With the above skeleton code, it is now possible to create your own audit plugins to implement your own auditing requirements. If, however, you are not of the coding persuasion, then you could always consider the option of the MySQL Enterprise Audit plugin that is available to purchase.

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Guidelines for using Merge task in SSIS

- by thursdaysgeek

I have a table with three fields, one an identity field, and I need to add some new records from a source that has the other two fields. I'm using SSIS, and I think I should use the merge tool, because one of the sources is not in the local database. But, I'm confused by the merge tool and the proper process. I have my one source (an Oracle table), and I get two fields, well_id and well_name, with a sort after, sorting by well_id. I have the destination table (sql server), and I'm also using that as a source. It has three fields: well_key (identity field), well_id, and well_name, and I then have a sort task, sorting on well_id. Both of those are input to my merge task. I was going to output to a temporary table, and then somehow get the new records back into the sql server table. Oracle Well SQL Well | | V V Sort Source Sort Well | | -------> Merge* <----------- | V Temp well table I suspect this isn't the best way to use this tool, however. What are the proper steps for a merge like this? One of my reasons for questioning this method is that my merge has an error, telling me that the "Merge Input 2" must be sorted, but its source is a sort task, so it IS sorted. Example data SQL Well (before merge) well_key well_id well_name 1 123 well k 2 292 well c 3 344 well t 5 439 well d Oracle Well well_id well_name 123 well k 292 well c 311 well y 344 well t 439 well d 532 well j SQL Well (after merge) well_key well_id well_name 1 123 well k 2 292 well c 3 344 well t 5 439 well d 6 311 well y 7 532 well j Would it be better to load my Oracle Well to a temporary local file, and then just use a sql insert statment on it?

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Blocking on DBCP connection pool (open and close connnection). Is database connection pooling in OpenEJB pluggable?

- by topchef

We use OpenEJB on Tomcat (used to run on JBoss, Weblogic, etc.). While running load tests we experience significant performance problems with handling JMS messages (queues). Problem was localized to blocking on database connection pool getting or releasing connection to the pool. Blocking prevented concurrent MDB instances (threads) from running hence performance suffered 10-fold and worse. The same code used to run on application servers (with their respective connection pool implementations) with no blocking at all. Example of thread blocked: Name: JMS Resource Adapter-worker-23 State: BLOCKED on org.apache.commons.pool.impl.GenericObjectPool@1ea6b4a owned by: JMS Resource Adapter-worker-19 Total blocked: 18,426 Total waited: 0 Stack trace: org.apache.commons.pool.impl.GenericObjectPool.returnObject(GenericObjectPool.java:916) org.apache.commons.dbcp.PoolableConnection.close(PoolableConnection.java:91) - locked org.apache.commons.dbcp.PoolableConnection@1bcba8 org.apache.commons.dbcp.managed.ManagedConnection.close(ManagedConnection.java:147) com.xxxxx.persistence.DbHelper.closeConnection(DbHelper.java:290) .... Couple of questions. I am almost certain that some transactional attributes and properties contribute to this blocking, but MDBs are defined as non-transactional (we use both annotations and ejb-jar.xml). Some EJBs do use container-managed transactions though (and we can observe blocking there as well). Are there any DBCP configurations that may fix blocking? Is DBCP connection pool implementation replaceable in OpenEJB? How easy (difficult) to replace it with another library? Just in case this is how we define data source in OpenEJB (openejb.xml): <Resource id="MyDataSource" type="DataSource"> JdbcDriver oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver JdbcUrl ${oracle.jdbc} UserName ${oracle.user} Password ${oracle.password} JtaManaged true InitialSize 5 MaxActive 30 ValidationQuery SELECT 1 FROM DUAL TestOnBorrow true </Resource>

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How to test a struts 2.1.x developer?

- by Jason Pyeron

We employ test to filter out those who can't. The tests are designed to be very low effort for those who can and too much effort for those who can't. Here is an example for java web application developer on an Oracle project: We only work with contractors who can use the tools we use, to determine if you can use the tools we have devised some very simple tests. Instructions If you are prepared and knowledgeable this will take you about 2-5 minutes. Suggested knowledge and tools: * subversion 1.6 see http://subversion.tigris.org/ or http://cygwin.com/setup.exe * java 1.6 see http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp * oracle >=10g see http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/jdev/index.html * j2ee server see http://tomcat.apache.org/download-55.cgi or http://www.jboss.org/jbossas/downloads/ Steps 1. check out svn://statics32.pdinc.us/home/subversion/guest 2. deploy the war file found at trunk/test.war 3. browse to the web application you installed from the war file and answer the one SQL question: How many rows are in the table 'testdata' where column 'value' ends with either an 'A' or an 'a'? The login credentials are in trunk/doc/oracle.txt 4. make a RESULTS HASH by submitting your answer to the form. 5. create a file in tmp/YourUserName.txt and put the RESULTS HASH in it, not the answer. 6. check in your file (don't forget to add the file first). 7. message me with the revision number of your check in. As such I am looking for ideas on how to test for someone to be a struts 2.1 w/ annotations.

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Duplicate C# web service proxy classes generated for Java types

- by Sergey

My question is about integration between a Java web service and a C# .NET client. Service: CXF 2.2.3 with Aegis databinding Client: C#, .NET 3.5 SP1 For some reason Visual Studio generates two C# proxy enums for each Java enum. The generated C# classes do not compile. For example, this Java enum: public enum SqlDialect { GENERIC, SYBASE, SQL_SERVER, ORACLE; } Produces this WSDL: <xsd:simpleType name="SqlDialect"> <xsd:restriction base="xsd:string"> <xsd:enumeration value="GENERIC" /> <xsd:enumeration value="SYBASE" /> <xsd:enumeration value="SQL_SERVER" /> <xsd:enumeration value="ORACLE" /> </xsd:restriction> </xsd:simpleType> For this WSDL Visual Studio generates two partial C# classes (generated comments removed): [System.CodeDom.Compiler.GeneratedCodeAttribute("System.Runtime.Serialization", "3.0.0.0")] [System.Runtime.Serialization.DataContractAttribute(Name="SqlDialect", Namespace="http://somenamespace")] public enum SqlDialect : int { [System.Runtime.Serialization.EnumMemberAttribute()] GENERIC = 0, [System.Runtime.Serialization.EnumMemberAttribute()] SYBASE = 1, [System.Runtime.Serialization.EnumMemberAttribute()] SQL_SERVER = 2, [System.Runtime.Serialization.EnumMemberAttribute()] ORACLE = 3, } [System.CodeDom.Compiler.GeneratedCodeAttribute("System.Xml", "2.0.50727.3082")] [System.SerializableAttribute()] [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlTypeAttribute(Namespace="http://somenamespace")] public enum SqlDialect { GENERIC, SYBASE, SQL_SERVER, ORACLE, } The resulting C# code does not compile: The namespace 'somenamespace' already contains a definition for 'SqlDialect' I will appreciate any ideas...

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Working on WPF application Memory Profiling

- by akjoshi

Today, I am going to start with the task of memory profiling the WPF application, on which I am working from past few months. I have successfully done this in past, fixing a lot of memory leaks and improving the performance of WPF applications; As in past, I am hopeful of fixing some very interesting bugs and improve the application performance. I am very excited as current application is very different from the previous WPF applications I had profiled, all the previous application were pure WPF...(read more)

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DiscountASP.NET adds Web Application Gallery

- by wisecarver

Apr 23, 2010 What if you could install a blog, CMS, image gallery, wiki or other application with a few simple entries and one click of your mouse? Now you can! DiscountASP.NET is happy to announce that we are now providing access to "one-click" installation of many popular applications in Control Panel . The applications are part of Microsoft's Web Application Gallery and are tested for compatibility with our platform before they are made available to you. You can glean more details...(read more)

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[News] S?rie d'articles sur Silverlight 4 et RIA Services de Brad Abrams

Brad Abrams, un des co-fondateurs de .NET et de la CLR livre ici une s?rie d'articles tr?s int?ressants sur le couple Silverlight 4 et RIA Services : "I thought it would be worthwhile to highlight some of the key features of the platform and tools that make Silverlight a fantastic platform for building business applications. I?ll avoid gratuitous video and dancing hippos and focus on just the bread and butter of business applications (...)"

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Learn WinRT or Unity 3d?

- by user1582878

I am not sure where to ask advices about career development, so I am sorry if I am wrong. My question is what is better for me to learn, Win 8 and metro style applications or try to focus on some 3d engine, like Unity 3d? On the one hand I`ve got enought experience in c# and programming for business applications (WinForms and WPF), on the other hand I was always been fasinated by the creation of computer games and have strong math background. Which is better in terms of my career and new job opportunities?

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Deeper Integration with phpBB

- by The Official Microsoft IIS Site

More good news on the Interoperability front: the new phpBB release is now available for installation from the Windows Web Application Gallery and Web Platform Installer (Web PI) for Windows, IIS and SQL Server. Version 3.0.7-PL1 of phpBB takes advantage of a number of features for PHP applications on the Microsoft Web Platform with Windows, IIS and SQL Server, including SQL Server Driver for PHP 1.1 , which provides key interoperability for PHP applications to use SQL Server or SQL Azure for data...(read more)

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Apprenez à utiliser Flex 4 et Flash Builder 4 en moins d'une semaine, avec les tutoriels « pas à pas

Mise à jour du 29/03/10 Adobe sort deux outils complémentaires de Flex 4 et Flash Builder 4 Pour optimiser le développement d'applications web RIA Comme dit précédemment (lire ci-avant le très bon article détaillé de ferber), Adobe vient de sortir Flash Builder 4. Mais une autre nouveauté vient également d'arriver: ColdFusion Builder. ColdFusion Builder est un nouvel environnement de développement intégré basé sur Eclipse (IDE) qui permet de créer - « rapidement et efficacement » selon les termes d'Adobe - des applications ColdFusion. ColdFusion Builder offre donc un environnement de développement évolutif, pers...

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Facebook Application Development - Tips For Owners and Designers

Facebook applications are an innovation aimed to help their owners to make the most of one of the largest social networks. But like any other popular novelty, this Facebook option raises a lot of questions too. In this article you will find tips and recommendations which can be helpful when planning, designing, and developing Facebook applications.

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SQL SERVER – Automated Type Conversion using Expressor Studio

- by pinaldave

Recently I had an interesting situation during my consultation project. Let me share to you how I solved the problem using Expressor Studio. Consider a situation in which you need to read a field, such as customer_identifier, from a text file and pass that field into a database table. In the source file’s metadata structure, customer_identifier is described as a string; however, in the target database table, customer_identifier is described as an integer. Legitimately, all the source values for customer_identifier are valid numbers, such as “109380”. To implement this in an ETL application, you probably would have hard-coded a type conversion function call, such as: output.customer_identifier=stringToInteger(input.customer_identifier) That wasn’t so bad, was it? For this instance, programming this hard-coded type conversion function call was relatively easy. However, hard-coding, whether type conversion code or other business rule code, almost always means that the application containing hard-coded fields, function calls, and values is: a) specific to an instance of use; b) is difficult to adapt to new situations; and c) doesn’t contain many reusable sub-parts. Therefore, in the long run, applications with hard-coded type conversion function calls don’t scale well. In addition, they increase the overall level of effort and degree of difficulty to write and maintain the ETL applications. To get around the trappings of hard-coding type conversion function calls, developers need an access to smarter typing systems. Expressor Studio product offers this feature exactly, by providing developers with a type conversion automation engine based on type abstraction. The theory behind the engine is quite simple. A user specifies abstract data fields in the engine, and then writes applications against the abstractions (whereas in most ETL software, developers develop applications against the physical model). When a Studio-built application is run, Studio’s engine automatically converts the source type to the abstracted data field’s type and converts the abstracted data field’s type to the target type. The engine can do this because it has a couple of built-in rules for type conversions. So, using the example above, a developer could specify customer_identifier as an abstract data field with a type of integer when using Expressor Studio. Upon reading the string value from the text file, Studio’s type conversion engine automatically converts the source field from the type specified in the source’s metadata structure to the abstract field’s type. At the time of writing the data value to the target database, the engine doesn’t have any work to do because the abstract data type and the target data type are just the same. Had they been different, the engine would have automatically provided the conversion. ?Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Database, Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: SSIS

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The SQL Server Reporting Services SDK for PHP Debuts

- by The Official Microsoft IIS Site

Microsoft has just released the SQL Server Reporting Services SDK for PHP, which enables PHP developers to easily create reports and integrate them in their web applications. The SDK offers a simple Application Programming Interface to interoperate with SQL Server Reporting Services, Microsoft's Reporting and Business Intelligence solution. Developers will be able to use the SDK to perform common operations like listing reports in PHP applications, providing custom report parameters from a PHP...(read more)

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endpoint.tv - Troubleshooting with AppFabric

- by The Official Microsoft IIS Site

Troubleshooting applications in production is always a challenge. With AppFabric monitoring your workflows and services, you get great information about exactly what is happening, including notices about unhandled exceptions. In this episode, Michael McKeown will show you more about how you can use these features to troubleshoot problems with your applications. Be sure to check out the AppFabric Wiki for more great tips, and to share yours as well....( read more ) Read More......(read more)

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Création d'une application « Hello World » dans Visual Studio Lightswitch, un article d'Avkash Chauhan, traduit par Deepin Prayag

Citation: Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 propose des « starter kits » et des options de déploiement flexibles qui vous aident à créer et à facilement publier des applications métier personnalisées à l'aspect professionnel et distingué, sans nécessité de code. Visual Studio LightSwitch propose une manière simple de développer des applications métier de type bureau ou Cloud. LightSwitch gère toute la plomberie pour vous, afin que vous puissiez vous concentrer sur la création de valeurs métier. Partie 1 :

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Improve Application Quality with Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC) Restart and Recovery

Windows Vista and 7 provide the ability to restart crashed or hung applications and recover your work. By building on the strength of the Document-View Architecture, Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC) 10 allows new and existing applications to easily take advantage of these Windows features.

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Smile sort son « Guide Michelin » 2013 de l'Open-Source, le Livre Blanc gratuit s'enrichit de rubriques sur le Cloud et le Big Data

Smile sort son « Guide Michelin » 2013 de l'Open-Source Le Livre Blanc gratuit s'enrichit de rubriques sur le Cloud et le Big Data Pour l'édition 2013 de son Guide de référence sur l'open source, Smile a enrichit son Livre Blanc (285 pages) d'une trentaine de nouvelles solutions et de deux nouvelles rubriques (Cloud et Big Data). Plus 300 solutions y sont recensées (dont 200 évaluées dans le détail) dans plus de 40 domaines d'applications, répartis en trois « dimensions » (Infrastructure, Développement et couches intermédiaires, Applications). Le livre se présente sous la forme de fiches de présentation (version du produit, site web, aute...

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Mono for Android Book has been Released!!!!!

- by Wallym

If I understand things correctly, and I make no guarantees that I do, our Mono for Android book has been RELEASED! I'm not quite sure what this means, but my guess is that that it has been printed and is being shipped to various book sellers.So, if you have pre-ordered a copy, its now up to Amazon to send it to you. Its fully out of my control, Wrox, Wiley, as well as everyone but Amazon.If you haven't bought a copy already, why? Seriously, go order 8-10 copies for the ones you love. They'll make great romantic gifts for the ones you love. Just think at the look on the other person's face when you give them a copy of our book. Here's a little about the book:The wait is over! For the millions of .NET/C# developers who have been eagerly awaiting the book that will guide them through the white-hot field of Android application programming, this is the book. As the first guide to focus on Mono for Android, this must-have resource dives into writing applications against Mono with C# and compiling executables that run on the Android family of devices.Putting the proven Wrox Professional format into practice, the authors provide you with the knowledge you need to become a successful Android application developer without having to learn another programming language. You'll explore screen controls, UI development, tables and layouts, and MonoDevelop as you become adept at developing Android applications with Mono for Android.Develop Android apps using tools you already know—C# and .NETAimed at providing readers with a thorough, reliable resource that guides them through the field of Android application programming, this must-have book shows how to write applications using Mono with C# that run on the Android family of devices. A team of authors provides you with the knowledge you need to become a successful Android application developer without having to learn another programming language. You'll explore screen controls, UI development, tables and layouts, and MonoDevelop as you become adept at planning, building, and developing Android applications with Mono for Android.Professional Android Programming with Mono for Android and .NET/C#:Shows you how to use your existing C# and .NET skills to build Android appsDetails optimal ways to work with data and bind data to controlsExplains how to program with Android device hardwareDives into working with the file system and application preferencesDiscusses how to share code between Mono for Android, MonoTouch, and Windows® Phone 7Reveals tips for globalizing your apps with internationalization and localization supportCovers development of tablet apps with Android 4Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.Now, go buy a bunch of copies!!!!!If you are interested in iPhone and Android and would like to get a little more knowledgeable in the area of development, you can purchase the 3 pack of books from Wrox on Mobile Development with Mono. This will cover MonoTouch, Mono for Android, and cross platform methods for using both tools. A great package in and of itself. The name of that package is: Wrox Cross Platform Android and iOS Mobile Development Three-Pack

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A first look at SignalR

- by Rick Strahl

Last month I finally had a chance to use SignalR in a live project for the first time, and I've been impressed by what this technology offers to .NET developers. It's easy to use and provides rich real-time two way messaging between client and server applications, as well as the ability to broadcast message to all connected clients. This is technology that offers many opportunities to rethink of what we can build with Web applications.

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Scripting with the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 Appliance

- by Geoff Ongley

The Sun ZFS Storage 7000 appliance has a user friendly and easy to understand graphical web based interface we call the "BUI" or "Browser User Interface".This interface is very useful for many tasks, but in some cases a script (or workflow) may be more appropriate, such as:Repetitive tasksTasks which work on (or obtain information about) a large number of shares or usersTasks which are triggered by an alert threshold (workflows)Tasks where you want a only very basic input, but a consistent output (workflows)The appliance scripting language is based on ECMAscript 3 (close to javascript). I'm not going to cover ECMAscript 3 in great depth (I'm far from an expert here), but I would like to show you some neat things you can do with the appliance, to get you started based on what I have found from my own playing around.I'm making the assumption you have some sort of programming background, and understand variables, arrays, functions to some extent - but of course if something is not clear, please let me know so I can fix it up or clarify it.Variable Declarations and ArraysVariablesECMAScript is a dynamically and weakly typed language. If you don't know what that means, google is your friend - but at a high level it means we can just declare variables with no specific type and on the fly.For example, I can declare a variable and use it straight away in the middle of my code, for example:projects=list();Which makes projects an array of values that are returned from the list(); function (which is usable in most contexts). With this kind of variable, I can do things like:projects.length (this property on array tells you how many objects are in it, good for for loops etc). Alternatively, I could say:projects=3;and now projects is just a simple number.Should we declare variables like this so loosely? In my opinion, the answer is no - I feel it is a better practice to declare variables you are going to use, before you use them - and given them an initial value. You can do so as follows:var myVariable=0;To demonstrate the ability to just randomly assign and change the type of variables, you can create a simple script at the cli as follows (bold for input):fishy10:> script("." to run)> run("cd /");("." to run)> run ("shares");("." to run)> var projects;("." to run)> projects=list();("." to run)> printf("Number of projects is: %d\n",projects.length);("." to run)> projects=152;("." to run)> printf("Value of the projects variable as an integer is now: %d\n",projects);("." to run)> .Number of projects is: 7Value of the projects variable as an integer is now: 152You can also confirm this behaviour by checking the typeof variable we are dealing with:fishy10:> script("." to run)> run("cd /");("." to run)> run ("shares");("." to run)> var projects;("." to run)> projects=list();("." to run)> printf("var projects is of type %s\n",typeof(projects));("." to run)> projects=152;("." to run)> printf("var projects is of type %s\n",typeof(projects));("." to run)> .var projects is of type objectvar projects is of type numberArraysSo you likely noticed that we have already touched on arrays, as the list(); (in the shares context) stored an array into the 'projects' variable.But what if you want to declare your own array? Easy! This is very similar to Java and other languages, we just instantiate a brand new "Array" object using the keyword new:var myArray = new Array();will create an array called "myArray".A quick example:fishy10:> script("." to run)> testArray = new Array();("." to run)> testArray[0]="This";("." to run)> testArray[1]="is";("." to run)> testArray[2]="just";("." to run)> testArray[3]="a";("." to run)> testArray[4]="test";("." to run)> for (i=0; i < testArray.length; i++)("." to run)> {("." to run)> printf("Array element %d is %s\n",i,testArray[i]);("." to run)> }("." to run)> .Array element 0 is ThisArray element 1 is isArray element 2 is justArray element 3 is aArray element 4 is testWorking With LoopsFor LoopFor loops are very similar to those you will see in C, java and several other languages. One of the key differences here is, as you were made aware earlier, we can be a bit more sloppy with our variable declarations.The general way you would likely use a for loop is as follows:for (variable; test-case; modifier for variable){}For example, you may wish to declare a variable i as 0; and a MAX_ITERATIONS variable to determine how many times this loop should repeat:var i=0;var MAX_ITERATIONS=10;And then, use this variable to be tested against some case existing (has i reached MAX_ITERATIONS? - if not, increment i using i++);for (i=0; i < MAX_ITERATIONS; i++){ // some work to do}So lets run something like this on the appliance:fishy10:> script("." to run)> var i=0;("." to run)> var MAX_ITERATIONS=10;("." to run)> for (i=0; i < MAX_ITERATIONS; i++)("." to run)> {("." to run)> printf("The number is %d\n",i);("." to run)> }("." to run)> .The number is 0The number is 1The number is 2The number is 3The number is 4The number is 5The number is 6The number is 7The number is 8The number is 9While LoopWhile loops again are very similar to other languages, we loop "while" a condition is met. For example:fishy10:> script("." to run)> var isTen=false;("." to run)> var counter=0;("." to run)> while(isTen==false)("." to run)> {("." to run)> if (counter==10) ("." to run)> { ("." to run)> isTen=true; ("." to run)> } ("." to run)> printf("Counter is %d\n",counter);("." to run)> counter++; ("." to run)> }("." to run)> printf("Loop has ended and Counter is %d\n",counter);("." to run)> .Counter is 0Counter is 1Counter is 2Counter is 3Counter is 4Counter is 5Counter is 6Counter is 7Counter is 8Counter is 9Counter is 10Loop has ended and Counter is 11So what do we notice here? Something has actually gone wrong - counter will technically be 11 once the loop completes... Why is this?Well, if we have a loop like this, where the 'while' condition that will end the loop may be set based on some other condition(s) existing (such as the counter has reached 10) - we must ensure that we terminate this iteration of the loop when the condition is met - otherwise the rest of the code will be followed which may not be desirable. In other words, like in other languages, we will only ever check the loop condition once we are ready to perform the next iteration, so any other code after we set "isTen" to be true, will still be executed as we can see it was above.We can avoid this by adding a break into our loop once we know we have set the condition - this will stop the rest of the logic being processed in this iteration (and as such, counter will not be incremented). So lets try that again:fishy10:> script("." to run)> var isTen=false;("." to run)> var counter=0;("." to run)> while(isTen==false)("." to run)> {("." to run)> if (counter==10) ("." to run)> { ("." to run)> isTen=true; ("." to run)> break;("." to run)> } ("." to run)> printf("Counter is %d\n",counter);("." to run)> counter++; ("." to run)> }("." to run)> printf("Loop has ended and Counter is %d\n", counter);("." to run)> .Counter is 0Counter is 1Counter is 2Counter is 3Counter is 4Counter is 5Counter is 6Counter is 7Counter is 8Counter is 9Loop has ended and Counter is 10Much better!Methods to Obtain and Manipulate DataGet MethodThe get method allows you to get simple properties from an object, for example a quota from a user. The syntax is fairly simple:var myVariable=get('property');An example of where you may wish to use this, is when you are getting a bunch of information about a user (such as quota information when in a shares context):var users=list();for(k=0; k < users.length; k++){ user=users[k]; run('select ' + user); var username=get('name'); var usage=get('usage'); var quota=get('quota');...Which you can then use to your advantage - to print or manipulate infomation (you could change a user's information with a set method, based on the information returned from the get method). The set method is explained next.Set MethodThe set method can be used in a simple manner, similar to get. The syntax for set is:set('property','value'); // where value is a string, if it was a number, you don't need quotesFor example, we could set the quota on a share as follows (first observing the initial value):fishy10:shares default/test-geoff> script("." to run)> var currentQuota=get('quota');("." to run)> printf("Current Quota is: %s\n",currentQuota);("." to run)> set('quota','30G');("." to run)> run('commit');("." to run)> currentQuota=get('quota');("." to run)> printf("Current Quota is: %s\n",currentQuota);("." to run)> .Current Quota is: 0Current Quota is: 32212254720This shows us using both the get and set methods as can be used in scripts, of course when only setting an individual share, the above is overkill - it would be much easier to set it manually at the cli using 'set quota=3G' and then 'commit'.List MethodThe list method can be very powerful, especially in more complex scripts which iterate over large amounts of data and manipulate it if so desired. The general way you will use list is as follows:var myVar=list();Which will make "myVar" an array, containing all the objects in the relevant context (this could be a list of users, shares, projects, etc). You can then gather or manipulate data very easily.We could list all the shares and mountpoints in a given project for example:fishy10:shares another-project> script("." to run)> var shares=list();("." to run)> for (i=0; i < shares.length; i++)("." to run)> {("." to run)> run('select ' + shares[i]);("." to run)> var mountpoint=get('mountpoint');("." to run)> printf("Share %s discovered, has mountpoint %s\n",shares[i],mountpoint);("." to run)> run('done');("." to run)> }("." to run)> .Share and-another discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-project/and-anotherShare another-share discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-project/another-shareShare bob discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-projectShare more-shares-for-all discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-project/more-shares-for-allShare yep discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-project/yepWriting More Complex and Re-Usable CodeFunctionsThe best way to be able to write more complex code is to use functions to split up repeatable or reusable sections of your code. This also makes your more complex code easier to read and understand for other programmers.We write functions as follows:function functionName(variable1,variable2,...,variableN){}For example, we could have a function that takes a project name as input, and lists shares for that project (assuming we're already in the 'project' context - context is important!):function getShares(proj){ run('select ' + proj); shares=list(); printf("Project: %s\n", proj); for(j=0; j < shares.length; j++) { printf("Discovered share: %s\n",shares[i]); } run('done'); // exit selected project}Commenting your CodeLike any other language, a large part of making it readable and understandable is to comment it. You can use the same comment style as in C and Java amongst other languages.In other words, sngle line comments use://at the beginning of the comment.Multi line comments use:/*at the beginning, and:*/ at the end.For example, here we will use both:fishy10:> script("." to run)> // This is a test comment("." to run)> printf("doing some work...\n");("." to run)> /* This is a multi-line("." to run)> comment which I will span across("." to run)> three lines in total */("." to run)> printf("doing some more work...\n");("." to run)> .doing some work...doing some more work...Your comments do not have to be on their own, they can begin (particularly with single line comments this is handy) at the end of a statement, for examplevar projects=list(); // The variable projects is an array containing all projects on the system.Try and Catch StatementsYou may be used to using try and catch statements in other languages, and they can (and should) be utilised in your code to catch expected or unexpected error conditions, that you do NOT wish to stop your code from executing (if you do not catch these errors, your script will exit!):try{ // do some work}catch(err) // Catch any error that could occur{ // do something here under the error condition}For example, you may wish to only execute some code if a context can be reached. If you can't perform certain actions under certain circumstances, that may be perfectly acceptable.For example if you want to test a condition that only makes sense when looking at a SMB/NFS share, but does not make sense when you hit an iscsi or FC LUN, you don't want to stop all processing of other shares you may not have covered yet.For example we may wish to obtain quota information on all shares for all users on a share (but this makes no sense for a LUN):function getShareQuota(shar) // Get quota for each user of this share{ run('select ' + shar); printf(" SHARE: %s\n", shar); try { run('users'); printf(" %20s %11s %11s %3s\n","Username","Usage(G)","Quota(G)","Quota(%)"); printf(" %20s %11s %11s %4s\n","--------","--------","--------","----"); users=list(); for(k=0; k < users.length; k++) { user=users[k]; getUserQuota(user); } run('done'); // exit user context } catch(err) { printf(" SKIPPING %s - This is NOT a NFS or CIFs share, not looking for users\n", shar); } run('done'); // done with this share}Running Scripts Remotely over SSHAs you have likely noticed, writing and running scripts for all but the simplest jobs directly on the appliance is not going to be a lot of fun.There's a couple of choices on what you can do here:Create scripts on a remote system and run them over sshCreate scripts, wrapping them in workflow code, so they are stored on the appliance and can be triggered under certain circumstances (like a threshold being reached)We'll cover the first one here, and then cover workflows later on (as these are for the most part just scripts with some wrapper information around them).Creating a SSH Public/Private SSH Key PairLog on to your handy Solaris box (You wouldn't be using any other OS, right? :P) and use ssh-keygen to create a pair of ssh keys. I'm storing this separate to my normal key:[geoff@lightning ~] ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 1024Generating public/private rsa key pair.Enter file in which to save the key (/export/home/geoff/.ssh/id_rsa): /export/home/geoff/.ssh/nas_key_rsaEnter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): Enter same passphrase again: Your identification has been saved in /export/home/geoff/.ssh/nas_key_rsa.Your public key has been saved in /export/home/geoff/.ssh/nas_key_rsa.pub.The key fingerprint is:7f:3d:53:f0:2a:5e:8b:2d:94:2a:55:77:66:5c:9b:14 geoff@lightningInstalling the Public Key on the ApplianceOn your Solaris host, observe the public key:[geoff@lightning ~] cat .ssh/nas_key_rsa.pub ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAIEAvYfK3RIaAYmMHBOvyhKM41NaSmcgUMC3igPN5gUKJQvSnYmjuWG6CBr1CkF5UcDji7v19jG3qAD5lAMFn+L0CxgRr8TNaAU+hA4/tpAGkjm+dKYSyJgEdMIURweyyfUFXoerweR8AWW5xlovGKEWZTAfvJX9Zqvh8oMQ5UJLUUc= geoff@lightningNow, copy and paste everything after "ssh-rsa" and before "user@hostname" - in this case, geoff@lightning. That is, this bit:AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAIEAvYfK3RIaAYmMHBOvyhKM41NaSmcgUMC3igPN5gUKJQvSnYmjuWG6CBr1CkF5UcDji7v19jG3qAD5lAMFn+L0CxgRr8TNaAU+hA4/tpAGkjm+dKYSyJgEdMIURweyyfUFXoerweR8AWW5xlovGKEWZTAfvJX9Zqvh8oMQ5UJLUUc=Logon to your appliance and get into the preferences -> keys area for this user (root):[geoff@lightning ~] ssh [email protected]: Last login: Mon Dec 6 17:13:28 2010 from 192.168.0.2fishy10:> configuration usersfishy10:configuration users> select rootfishy10:configuration users root> preferences fishy10:configuration users root preferences> keysOR do it all in one hit:fishy10:> configuration users select root preferences keysNow, we create a new public key that will be accepted for this user and set the type to RSA:fishy10:configuration users root preferences keys> createfishy10:configuration users root preferences key (uncommitted)> set type=RSASet the key itself using the string copied previously (between ssh-rsa and user@host), and set the key ensuring you put double quotes around it (eg. set key="<key>"):fishy10:configuration users root preferences key (uncommitted)> set key="AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAIEAvYfK3RIaAYmMHBOvyhKM41NaSmcgUMC3igPN5gUKJQvSnYmjuWG6CBr1CkF5UcDji7v19jG3qAD5lAMFn+L0CxgRr8TNaAU+hA4/tpAGkjm+dKYSyJgEdMIURweyyfUFXoerweR8AWW5xlovGKEWZTAfvJX9Zqvh8oMQ5UJLUUc="Now set the comment for this key (do not use spaces):fishy10:configuration users root preferences key (uncommitted)> set comment="LightningRSAKey" Commit the new key:fishy10:configuration users root preferences key (uncommitted)> commitVerify the key is there:fishy10:configuration users root preferences keys> lsKeys:NAME MODIFIED TYPE COMMENT key-000 2010-10-25 20:56:42 RSA cycloneRSAKey key-001 2010-12-6 17:44:53 RSA LightningRSAKey As you can see, we now have my new key, and a previous key I have created on this appliance.Running your Script over SSH from a Remote SystemHere I have created a basic test script, and saved it as test.ecma3:[geoff@lightning ~] cat test.ecma3 script// This is a test script, By Geoff Ongley 2010.printf("Testing script remotely over ssh\n");.Now, we can run this script remotely with our keyless login:[geoff@lightning ~] ssh -i .ssh/nas_key_rsa root@fishy10 < test.ecma3Pseudo-terminal will not be allocated because stdin is not a terminal.Testing script remotely over sshPutting it Together - An Example Completed Quota Gathering ScriptSo now we have a lot of the basics to creating a script, let us do something useful, like, find out how much every user is using, on every share on the system (you will recognise some of the code from my previous examples): script/************************************** Quick and Dirty Quota Check script ** Written By Geoff Ongley ** 25 October 2010 **************************************/function getUserQuota(usr){ run('select ' + usr); var username=get('name'); var usage=get('usage'); var quota=get('quota'); var usage_g=usage / 1073741824; // convert bytes to gigabytes var quota_g=quota / 1073741824; // as above var quota_percent=0 if (quota > 0) { quota_percent=(usage / quota)*(100/1); } printf(" %20s %8.2f %8.2f %d%%\n",username,usage_g,quota_g,quota_percent); run('done'); // done with this selected user}function getShareQuota(shar){ //printf("DEBUG: selecting share %s\n", shar); run('select ' + shar); printf(" SHARE: %s\n", shar); try { run('users'); printf(" %20s %11s %11s %3s\n","Username","Usage(G)","Quota(G)","Quota(%)"); printf(" %20s %11s %11s %4s\n","--------","--------","--------","--------"); users=list(); for(k=0; k < users.length; k++) { user=users[k]; getUserQuota(user); } run('done'); // exit user context } catch(err) { printf(" SKIPPING %s - This is NOT a NFS or CIFs share, not looking for users\n", shar); } run('done'); // done with this share}function getShares(proj){ //printf("DEBUG: selecting project %s\n",proj); run('select ' + proj); shares=list(); printf("Project: %s\n", proj); for(j=0; j < shares.length; j++) { share=shares[j]; getShareQuota(share); } run('done'); // exit selected project}function getProjects(){ run('cd /'); run('shares'); projects=list(); for (i=0; i < projects.length; i++) { var project=projects[i]; getShares(project); } run('done'); // exit context for all projects}getProjects();.Which can be run as follows, and will print information like this:[geoff@lightning ~/FISHWORKS_SCRIPTS] ssh -i ~/.ssh/nas_key_rsa root@fishy10 < get_quota_utilisation.ecma3Pseudo-terminal will not be allocated because stdin is not a terminal.Project: another-project SHARE: and-another Username Usage(G) Quota(G) Quota(%) -------- -------- -------- -------- nobody 0.00 0.00 0% geoffro 0.05 0.00 0% Billy 0.10 0.00 0% root 0.00 0.00 0% testing-user 0.05 0.00 0% SHARE: another-share Username Usage(G) Quota(G) Quota(%) -------- -------- -------- -------- root 0.00 0.00 0% nobody 0.00 0.00 0% geoffro 0.05 0.49 9% testing-user 0.05 0.02 249% Billy 0.10 0.29 33% SHARE: bob Username Usage(G) Quota(G) Quota(%) -------- -------- -------- -------- nobody 0.00 0.00 0% root 0.00 0.00 0% SHARE: more-shares-for-all Username Usage(G) Quota(G) Quota(%) -------- -------- -------- -------- Billy 0.10 0.00 0% testing-user 0.05 0.00 0% nobody 0.00 0.00 0% root 0.00 0.00 0% geoffro 0.05 0.00 0% SHARE: yep Username Usage(G) Quota(G) Quota(%) -------- -------- -------- -------- root 0.00 0.00 0% nobody 0.00 0.00 0% Billy 0.10 0.01 999% testing-user 0.05 0.49 9% geoffro 0.05 0.00 0%Project: default SHARE: Test-LUN SKIPPING Test-LUN - This is NOT a NFS or CIFs share, not looking for users SHARE: test-geoff Username Usage(G) Quota(G) Quota(%) -------- -------- -------- -------- geoffro 0.05 0.00 0% root 3.18 10.00 31% uucp 0.00 0.00 0% nobody 0.59 0.49 119%^CKilled by signal 2.Creating a WorkflowWorkflows are scripts that we store on the appliance, and can have the script execute either on request (even from the BUI), or on an event such as a threshold being met.Workflow BasicsA workflow allows you to create a simple process that can be executed either via the BUI interface interactively, or by an alert being raised (for some threshold being reached, for example).The basics parameters you will have to set for your "workflow object" (notice you're creating a variable, that embodies ECMAScript) are as follows (parameters is optional):name: A name for this workflowdescription: A Description for the workflowparameters: A set of input parameters (useful when you need user input to execute the workflow)execute: The code, the script itself to execute, which will be function (parameters)With parameters, you can specify things like this (slightly modified sample taken from the System Administration Guide): ...parameters: variableParam1: { label: 'Name of Share', type: 'String' }, variableParam2 { label: 'Share Size', type: 'size' },execute: ....}; Note the commas separating the sections of name, parameters, execute, and so on. This is important!Also - there is plenty of properties you can set on the parameters for your workflow, these are described in the Sun ZFS Storage System Administration Guide.Creating a Basic Workflow from a Basic ScriptTo make a basic script into a basic workflow, you need to wrap the following around your script to create a 'workflow' object:var workflow = {name: 'Get User Quotas',description: 'Displays Quota Utilisation for each user on each share',execute: function() {// (basic script goes here, minus the "script" at the beginning, and "." at the end)}};However, it appears (at least in my experience to date) that the workflow object may only be happy with one function in the execute parameter - either that or I'm doing something wrong. As far as I can tell, after execute: you should only have a basic one function context like so:execute: function(){}To deal with this, and to give an example similar to our script earlier, I have created another simple quota check, to show the same basic functionality, but in a workflow format:var workflow = {name: 'Get User Quotas',description: 'Displays Quota Utilisation for each user on each share',execute: function () { run('cd /'); run('shares'); projects=list(); for (i=0; i < projects.length; i++) { run('select ' + projects[i]); shares=list('filesystem'); printf("Project: %s\n", projects[i]); for(j=0; j < shares.length; j++) { run('select ' +shares[j]); try { run('users'); printf(" SHARE: %s\n", shares[j]); printf(" %20s %11s %11s %3s\n","Username","Usage(G)","Quota(G)","Quota(%)"); printf(" %20s %11s %11s %4s\n","--------","--------","--------","-------"); users=list(); for(k=0; k < users.length; k++) { run('select ' + users[k]); username=get('name'); usage=get('usage'); quota=get('quota'); usage_g=usage / 1073741824; // convert bytes to gigabytes quota_g=quota / 1073741824; // as above quota_percent=0 if (quota > 0) { quota_percent=(usage / quota)*(100/1); } printf(" %20s %8.2f %8.2f %d%%\n",username,usage_g,quota_g,quota_percent); run('done'); } run('done'); // exit user context } catch(err) { // printf(" %s is a LUN, Not looking for users\n", shares[j]); } run('done'); // exit selected share context } run('done'); // exit project context } }};SummaryThe Sun ZFS Storage 7000 Appliance offers lots of different and interesting features to Sun/Oracle customers, including the world renowned Analytics. Hopefully the above will help you to think of new creative things you could be doing by taking advantage of one of the other neat features, the internal scripting engine!Some references are below to help you continue learning more, I'll update this post as I do the same! Enjoy...More information on ECMAScript 3A complete reference to ECMAScript 3 which will help you learn more of the details you may be interested in, can be found here:http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST-ARCH/ECMA-262,%203rd%20edition,%20December%201999.pdfMore Information on Administering the Sun ZFS Storage 7000The Sun ZFS Storage 7000 System Administration guide can be a useful reference point, and can be found here:http://wikis.sun.com/download/attachments/186238602/2010_Q3_2_ADMIN.pdf

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