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  • Service Discovery in WCF 4.0 &ndash; Part 1

    - by Shaun
    When designing a service oriented architecture (SOA) system, there will be a lot of services with many service contracts, endpoints and behaviors. Besides the client calling the service, in a large distributed system a service may invoke other services. In this case, one service might need to know the endpoints it invokes. This might not be a problem in a small system. But when you have more than 10 services this might be a problem. For example in my current product, there are around 10 services, such as the user authentication service, UI integration service, location service, license service, device monitor service, event monitor service, schedule job service, accounting service, player management service, etc..   Benefit of Discovery Service Since almost all my services need to invoke at least one other service. This would be a difficult task to make sure all services endpoints are configured correctly in every service. And furthermore, it would be a nightmare when a service changed its endpoint at runtime. Hence, we need a discovery service to remove the dependency (configuration dependency). A discovery service plays as a service dictionary which stores the relationship between the contracts and the endpoints for every service. By using the discovery service, when service X wants to invoke service Y, it just need to ask the discovery service where is service Y, then the discovery service will return all proper endpoints of service Y, then service X can use the endpoint to send the request to service Y. And when some services changed their endpoint address, all need to do is to update its records in the discovery service then all others will know its new endpoint. In WCF 4.0 Discovery it supports both managed proxy discovery mode and ad-hoc discovery mode. In ad-hoc mode there is no standalone discovery service. When a client wanted to invoke a service, it will broadcast an message (normally in UDP protocol) to the entire network with the service match criteria. All services which enabled the discovery behavior will receive this message and only those matched services will send their endpoint back to the client. The managed proxy discovery service works as I described above. In this post I will only cover the managed proxy mode, where there’s a discovery service. For more information about the ad-hoc mode please refer to the MSDN.   Service Announcement and Probe The main functionality of discovery service should be return the proper endpoint addresses back to the service who is looking for. In most cases the consume service (as a client) will send the contract which it wanted to request to the discovery service. And then the discovery service will find the endpoint and respond. Sometimes the contract and endpoint are not enough. It also contains versioning, extensions attributes. This post I will only cover the case includes contract and endpoint. When a client (or sometimes a service who need to invoke another service) need to connect to a target service, it will firstly request the discovery service through the “Probe” method with the criteria. Basically the criteria contains the contract type name of the target service. Then the discovery service will search its endpoint repository by the criteria. The repository might be a database, a distributed cache or a flat XML file. If it matches, the discovery service will grab the endpoint information (it’s called discovery endpoint metadata in WCF) and send back. And this is called “Probe”. Finally the client received the discovery endpoint metadata and will use the endpoint to connect to the target service. Besides the probe, discovery service should take the responsible to know there is a new service available when it goes online, as well as stopped when it goes offline. This feature is named “Announcement”. When a service started and stopped, it will announce to the discovery service. So the basic functionality of a discovery service should includes: 1, An endpoint which receive the service online message, and add the service endpoint information in the discovery repository. 2, An endpoint which receive the service offline message, and remove the service endpoint information from the discovery repository. 3, An endpoint which receive the client probe message, and return the matches service endpoints, and return the discovery endpoint metadata. WCF 4.0 discovery service just covers all these features in it's infrastructure classes.   Discovery Service in WCF 4.0 WCF 4.0 introduced a new assembly named System.ServiceModel.Discovery which has all necessary classes and interfaces to build a WS-Discovery compliant discovery service. It supports ad-hoc and managed proxy modes. For the case mentioned in this post, what we need to build is a standalone discovery service, which is the managed proxy discovery service mode. To build a managed discovery service in WCF 4.0 just create a new class inherits from the abstract class System.ServiceModel.Discovery.DiscoveryProxy. This class implemented and abstracted the procedures of service announcement and probe. And it exposes 8 abstract methods where we can implement our own endpoint register, unregister and find logic. These 8 methods are asynchronized, which means all invokes to the discovery service are asynchronously, for better service capability and performance. 1, OnBeginOnlineAnnouncement, OnEndOnlineAnnouncement: Invoked when a service sent the online announcement message. We need to add the endpoint information to the repository in this method. 2, OnBeginOfflineAnnouncement, OnEndOfflineAnnouncement: Invoked when a service sent the offline announcement message. We need to remove the endpoint information from the repository in this method. 3, OnBeginFind, OnEndFind: Invoked when a client sent the probe message that want to find the service endpoint information. We need to look for the proper endpoints by matching the client’s criteria through the repository in this method. 4, OnBeginResolve, OnEndResolve: Invoked then a client sent the resolve message. Different from the find method, when using resolve method the discovery service will return the exactly one service endpoint metadata to the client. In our example we will NOT implement this method.   Let’s create our own discovery service, inherit the base System.ServiceModel.Discovery.DiscoveryProxy. We also need to specify the service behavior in this class. Since the build-in discovery service host class only support the singleton mode, we must set its instance context mode to single. 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Linq; 4: using System.Text; 5: using System.ServiceModel.Discovery; 6: using System.ServiceModel; 7:  8: namespace Phare.Service 9: { 10: [ServiceBehavior(InstanceContextMode = InstanceContextMode.Single, ConcurrencyMode = ConcurrencyMode.Multiple)] 11: public class ManagedProxyDiscoveryService : DiscoveryProxy 12: { 13: protected override IAsyncResult OnBeginFind(FindRequestContext findRequestContext, AsyncCallback callback, object state) 14: { 15: throw new NotImplementedException(); 16: } 17:  18: protected override IAsyncResult OnBeginOfflineAnnouncement(DiscoveryMessageSequence messageSequence, EndpointDiscoveryMetadata endpointDiscoveryMetadata, AsyncCallback callback, object state) 19: { 20: throw new NotImplementedException(); 21: } 22:  23: protected override IAsyncResult OnBeginOnlineAnnouncement(DiscoveryMessageSequence messageSequence, EndpointDiscoveryMetadata endpointDiscoveryMetadata, AsyncCallback callback, object state) 24: { 25: throw new NotImplementedException(); 26: } 27:  28: protected override IAsyncResult OnBeginResolve(ResolveCriteria resolveCriteria, AsyncCallback callback, object state) 29: { 30: throw new NotImplementedException(); 31: } 32:  33: protected override void OnEndFind(IAsyncResult result) 34: { 35: throw new NotImplementedException(); 36: } 37:  38: protected override void OnEndOfflineAnnouncement(IAsyncResult result) 39: { 40: throw new NotImplementedException(); 41: } 42:  43: protected override void OnEndOnlineAnnouncement(IAsyncResult result) 44: { 45: throw new NotImplementedException(); 46: } 47:  48: protected override EndpointDiscoveryMetadata OnEndResolve(IAsyncResult result) 49: { 50: throw new NotImplementedException(); 51: } 52: } 53: } Then let’s implement the online, offline and find methods one by one. WCF discovery service gives us full flexibility to implement the endpoint add, remove and find logic. For the demo purpose we will use an internal dictionary to store the services’ endpoint metadata. In the next post we will see how to serialize and store these information in database. Define a concurrent dictionary inside the service class since our it will be used in the multiple threads scenario. 1: [ServiceBehavior(InstanceContextMode = InstanceContextMode.Single, ConcurrencyMode = ConcurrencyMode.Multiple)] 2: public class ManagedProxyDiscoveryService : DiscoveryProxy 3: { 4: private ConcurrentDictionary<EndpointAddress, EndpointDiscoveryMetadata> _services; 5:  6: public ManagedProxyDiscoveryService() 7: { 8: _services = new ConcurrentDictionary<EndpointAddress, EndpointDiscoveryMetadata>(); 9: } 10: } Then we can simply implement the logic of service online and offline. 1: protected override IAsyncResult OnBeginOnlineAnnouncement(DiscoveryMessageSequence messageSequence, EndpointDiscoveryMetadata endpointDiscoveryMetadata, AsyncCallback callback, object state) 2: { 3: _services.AddOrUpdate(endpointDiscoveryMetadata.Address, endpointDiscoveryMetadata, (key, value) => endpointDiscoveryMetadata); 4: return new OnOnlineAnnouncementAsyncResult(callback, state); 5: } 6:  7: protected override void OnEndOnlineAnnouncement(IAsyncResult result) 8: { 9: OnOnlineAnnouncementAsyncResult.End(result); 10: } 11:  12: protected override IAsyncResult OnBeginOfflineAnnouncement(DiscoveryMessageSequence messageSequence, EndpointDiscoveryMetadata endpointDiscoveryMetadata, AsyncCallback callback, object state) 13: { 14: EndpointDiscoveryMetadata endpoint = null; 15: _services.TryRemove(endpointDiscoveryMetadata.Address, out endpoint); 16: return new OnOfflineAnnouncementAsyncResult(callback, state); 17: } 18:  19: protected override void OnEndOfflineAnnouncement(IAsyncResult result) 20: { 21: OnOfflineAnnouncementAsyncResult.End(result); 22: } Regards the find method, the parameter FindRequestContext.Criteria has a method named IsMatch, which can be use for us to evaluate which service metadata is satisfied with the criteria. So the implementation of find method would be like this. 1: protected override IAsyncResult OnBeginFind(FindRequestContext findRequestContext, AsyncCallback callback, object state) 2: { 3: _services.Where(s => findRequestContext.Criteria.IsMatch(s.Value)) 4: .Select(s => s.Value) 5: .All(meta => 6: { 7: findRequestContext.AddMatchingEndpoint(meta); 8: return true; 9: }); 10: return new OnFindAsyncResult(callback, state); 11: } 12:  13: protected override void OnEndFind(IAsyncResult result) 14: { 15: OnFindAsyncResult.End(result); 16: } As you can see, we checked all endpoints metadata in repository by invoking the IsMatch method. Then add all proper endpoints metadata into the parameter. Finally since all these methods are asynchronized we need some AsyncResult classes as well. Below are the base class and the inherited classes used in previous methods. 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Linq; 4: using System.Text; 5: using System.Threading; 6:  7: namespace Phare.Service 8: { 9: abstract internal class AsyncResult : IAsyncResult 10: { 11: AsyncCallback callback; 12: bool completedSynchronously; 13: bool endCalled; 14: Exception exception; 15: bool isCompleted; 16: ManualResetEvent manualResetEvent; 17: object state; 18: object thisLock; 19:  20: protected AsyncResult(AsyncCallback callback, object state) 21: { 22: this.callback = callback; 23: this.state = state; 24: this.thisLock = new object(); 25: } 26:  27: public object AsyncState 28: { 29: get 30: { 31: return state; 32: } 33: } 34:  35: public WaitHandle AsyncWaitHandle 36: { 37: get 38: { 39: if (manualResetEvent != null) 40: { 41: return manualResetEvent; 42: } 43: lock (ThisLock) 44: { 45: if (manualResetEvent == null) 46: { 47: manualResetEvent = new ManualResetEvent(isCompleted); 48: } 49: } 50: return manualResetEvent; 51: } 52: } 53:  54: public bool CompletedSynchronously 55: { 56: get 57: { 58: return completedSynchronously; 59: } 60: } 61:  62: public bool IsCompleted 63: { 64: get 65: { 66: return isCompleted; 67: } 68: } 69:  70: object ThisLock 71: { 72: get 73: { 74: return this.thisLock; 75: } 76: } 77:  78: protected static TAsyncResult End<TAsyncResult>(IAsyncResult result) 79: where TAsyncResult : AsyncResult 80: { 81: if (result == null) 82: { 83: throw new ArgumentNullException("result"); 84: } 85:  86: TAsyncResult asyncResult = result as TAsyncResult; 87:  88: if (asyncResult == null) 89: { 90: throw new ArgumentException("Invalid async result.", "result"); 91: } 92:  93: if (asyncResult.endCalled) 94: { 95: throw new InvalidOperationException("Async object already ended."); 96: } 97:  98: asyncResult.endCalled = true; 99:  100: if (!asyncResult.isCompleted) 101: { 102: asyncResult.AsyncWaitHandle.WaitOne(); 103: } 104:  105: if (asyncResult.manualResetEvent != null) 106: { 107: asyncResult.manualResetEvent.Close(); 108: } 109:  110: if (asyncResult.exception != null) 111: { 112: throw asyncResult.exception; 113: } 114:  115: return asyncResult; 116: } 117:  118: protected void Complete(bool completedSynchronously) 119: { 120: if (isCompleted) 121: { 122: throw new InvalidOperationException("This async result is already completed."); 123: } 124:  125: this.completedSynchronously = completedSynchronously; 126:  127: if (completedSynchronously) 128: { 129: this.isCompleted = true; 130: } 131: else 132: { 133: lock (ThisLock) 134: { 135: this.isCompleted = true; 136: if (this.manualResetEvent != null) 137: { 138: this.manualResetEvent.Set(); 139: } 140: } 141: } 142:  143: if (callback != null) 144: { 145: callback(this); 146: } 147: } 148:  149: protected void Complete(bool completedSynchronously, Exception exception) 150: { 151: this.exception = exception; 152: Complete(completedSynchronously); 153: } 154: } 155: } 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Linq; 4: using System.Text; 5: using System.ServiceModel.Discovery; 6: using Phare.Service; 7:  8: namespace Phare.Service 9: { 10: internal sealed class OnOnlineAnnouncementAsyncResult : AsyncResult 11: { 12: public OnOnlineAnnouncementAsyncResult(AsyncCallback callback, object state) 13: : base(callback, state) 14: { 15: this.Complete(true); 16: } 17:  18: public static void End(IAsyncResult result) 19: { 20: AsyncResult.End<OnOnlineAnnouncementAsyncResult>(result); 21: } 22:  23: } 24:  25: sealed class OnOfflineAnnouncementAsyncResult : AsyncResult 26: { 27: public OnOfflineAnnouncementAsyncResult(AsyncCallback callback, object state) 28: : base(callback, state) 29: { 30: this.Complete(true); 31: } 32:  33: public static void End(IAsyncResult result) 34: { 35: AsyncResult.End<OnOfflineAnnouncementAsyncResult>(result); 36: } 37: } 38:  39: sealed class OnFindAsyncResult : AsyncResult 40: { 41: public OnFindAsyncResult(AsyncCallback callback, object state) 42: : base(callback, state) 43: { 44: this.Complete(true); 45: } 46:  47: public static void End(IAsyncResult result) 48: { 49: AsyncResult.End<OnFindAsyncResult>(result); 50: } 51: } 52:  53: sealed class OnResolveAsyncResult : AsyncResult 54: { 55: EndpointDiscoveryMetadata matchingEndpoint; 56:  57: public OnResolveAsyncResult(EndpointDiscoveryMetadata matchingEndpoint, AsyncCallback callback, object state) 58: : base(callback, state) 59: { 60: this.matchingEndpoint = matchingEndpoint; 61: this.Complete(true); 62: } 63:  64: public static EndpointDiscoveryMetadata End(IAsyncResult result) 65: { 66: OnResolveAsyncResult thisPtr = AsyncResult.End<OnResolveAsyncResult>(result); 67: return thisPtr.matchingEndpoint; 68: } 69: } 70: } Now we have finished the discovery service. The next step is to host it. The discovery service is a standard WCF service. So we can use ServiceHost on a console application, windows service, or in IIS as usual. The following code is how to host the discovery service we had just created in a console application. 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: using (var host = new ServiceHost(new ManagedProxyDiscoveryService())) 4: { 5: host.Opened += (sender, e) => 6: { 7: host.Description.Endpoints.All((ep) => 8: { 9: Console.WriteLine(ep.ListenUri); 10: return true; 11: }); 12: }; 13:  14: try 15: { 16: // retrieve the announcement, probe endpoint and binding from configuration 17: var announcementEndpointAddress = new EndpointAddress(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["announcementEndpointAddress"]); 18: var probeEndpointAddress = new EndpointAddress(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["probeEndpointAddress"]); 19: var binding = Activator.CreateInstance(Type.GetType(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["bindingType"], true, true)) as Binding; 20: var announcementEndpoint = new AnnouncementEndpoint(binding, announcementEndpointAddress); 21: var probeEndpoint = new DiscoveryEndpoint(binding, probeEndpointAddress); 22: probeEndpoint.IsSystemEndpoint = false; 23: // append the service endpoint for announcement and probe 24: host.AddServiceEndpoint(announcementEndpoint); 25: host.AddServiceEndpoint(probeEndpoint); 26:  27: host.Open(); 28:  29: Console.WriteLine("Press any key to exit."); 30: Console.ReadKey(); 31: } 32: catch (Exception ex) 33: { 34: Console.WriteLine(ex.ToString()); 35: } 36: } 37:  38: Console.WriteLine("Done."); 39: Console.ReadKey(); 40: } What we need to notice is that, the discovery service needs two endpoints for announcement and probe. In this example I just retrieve them from the configuration file. I also specified the binding of these two endpoints in configuration file as well. 1: <?xml version="1.0"?> 2: <configuration> 3: <startup> 4: <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.0"/> 5: </startup> 6: <appSettings> 7: <add key="announcementEndpointAddress" value="net.tcp://localhost:10010/announcement"/> 8: <add key="probeEndpointAddress" value="net.tcp://localhost:10011/probe"/> 9: <add key="bindingType" value="System.ServiceModel.NetTcpBinding, System.ServiceModel, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"/> 10: </appSettings> 11: </configuration> And this is the console screen when I ran my discovery service. As you can see there are two endpoints listening for announcement message and probe message.   Discoverable Service and Client Next, let’s create a WCF service that is discoverable, which means it can be found by the discovery service. To do so, we need to let the service send the online announcement message to the discovery service, as well as offline message before it shutdown. Just create a simple service which can make the incoming string to upper. The service contract and implementation would be like this. 1: [ServiceContract] 2: public interface IStringService 3: { 4: [OperationContract] 5: string ToUpper(string content); 6: } 1: public class StringService : IStringService 2: { 3: public string ToUpper(string content) 4: { 5: return content.ToUpper(); 6: } 7: } Then host this service in the console application. In order to make the discovery service easy to be tested the service address will be changed each time it’s started. 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: var baseAddress = new Uri(string.Format("net.tcp://localhost:11001/stringservice/{0}/", Guid.NewGuid().ToString())); 4:  5: using (var host = new ServiceHost(typeof(StringService), baseAddress)) 6: { 7: host.Opened += (sender, e) => 8: { 9: Console.WriteLine("Service opened at {0}", host.Description.Endpoints.First().ListenUri); 10: }; 11:  12: host.AddServiceEndpoint(typeof(IStringService), new NetTcpBinding(), string.Empty); 13:  14: host.Open(); 15:  16: Console.WriteLine("Press any key to exit."); 17: Console.ReadKey(); 18: } 19: } Currently this service is NOT discoverable. We need to add a special service behavior so that it could send the online and offline message to the discovery service announcement endpoint when the host is opened and closed. WCF 4.0 introduced a service behavior named ServiceDiscoveryBehavior. When we specified the announcement endpoint address and appended it to the service behaviors this service will be discoverable. 1: var announcementAddress = new EndpointAddress(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["announcementEndpointAddress"]); 2: var announcementBinding = Activator.CreateInstance(Type.GetType(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["bindingType"], true, true)) as Binding; 3: var announcementEndpoint = new AnnouncementEndpoint(announcementBinding, announcementAddress); 4: var discoveryBehavior = new ServiceDiscoveryBehavior(); 5: discoveryBehavior.AnnouncementEndpoints.Add(announcementEndpoint); 6: host.Description.Behaviors.Add(discoveryBehavior); The ServiceDiscoveryBehavior utilizes the service extension and channel dispatcher to implement the online and offline announcement logic. In short, it injected the channel open and close procedure and send the online and offline message to the announcement endpoint.   On client side, when we have the discovery service, a client can invoke a service without knowing its endpoint. WCF discovery assembly provides a class named DiscoveryClient, which can be used to find the proper service endpoint by passing the criteria. In the code below I initialized the DiscoveryClient, specified the discovery service probe endpoint address. Then I created the find criteria by specifying the service contract I wanted to use and invoke the Find method. This will send the probe message to the discovery service and it will find the endpoints back to me. The discovery service will return all endpoints that matches the find criteria, which means in the result of the find method there might be more than one endpoints. In this example I just returned the first matched one back. In the next post I will show how to extend our discovery service to make it work like a service load balancer. 1: static EndpointAddress FindServiceEndpoint() 2: { 3: var probeEndpointAddress = new EndpointAddress(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["probeEndpointAddress"]); 4: var probeBinding = Activator.CreateInstance(Type.GetType(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["bindingType"], true, true)) as Binding; 5: var discoveryEndpoint = new DiscoveryEndpoint(probeBinding, probeEndpointAddress); 6:  7: EndpointAddress address = null; 8: FindResponse result = null; 9: using (var discoveryClient = new DiscoveryClient(discoveryEndpoint)) 10: { 11: result = discoveryClient.Find(new FindCriteria(typeof(IStringService))); 12: } 13:  14: if (result != null && result.Endpoints.Any()) 15: { 16: var endpointMetadata = result.Endpoints.First(); 17: address = endpointMetadata.Address; 18: } 19: return address; 20: } Once we probed the discovery service we will receive the endpoint. So in the client code we can created the channel factory from the endpoint and binding, and invoke to the service. When creating the client side channel factory we need to make sure that the client side binding should be the same as the service side. WCF discovery service can be used to find the endpoint for a service contract, but the binding is NOT included. This is because the binding was not in the WS-Discovery specification. In the next post I will demonstrate how to add the binding information into the discovery service. At that moment the client don’t need to create the binding by itself. Instead it will use the binding received from the discovery service. 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: Console.WriteLine("Say something..."); 4: var content = Console.ReadLine(); 5: while (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(content)) 6: { 7: Console.WriteLine("Finding the service endpoint..."); 8: var address = FindServiceEndpoint(); 9: if (address == null) 10: { 11: Console.WriteLine("There is no endpoint matches the criteria."); 12: } 13: else 14: { 15: Console.WriteLine("Found the endpoint {0}", address.Uri); 16:  17: var factory = new ChannelFactory<IStringService>(new NetTcpBinding(), address); 18: factory.Opened += (sender, e) => 19: { 20: Console.WriteLine("Connecting to {0}.", factory.Endpoint.ListenUri); 21: }; 22: var proxy = factory.CreateChannel(); 23: using (proxy as IDisposable) 24: { 25: Console.WriteLine("ToUpper: {0} => {1}", content, proxy.ToUpper(content)); 26: } 27: } 28:  29: Console.WriteLine("Say something..."); 30: content = Console.ReadLine(); 31: } 32: } Similarly, the discovery service probe endpoint and binding were defined in the configuration file. 1: <?xml version="1.0"?> 2: <configuration> 3: <startup> 4: <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.0"/> 5: </startup> 6: <appSettings> 7: <add key="announcementEndpointAddress" value="net.tcp://localhost:10010/announcement"/> 8: <add key="probeEndpointAddress" value="net.tcp://localhost:10011/probe"/> 9: <add key="bindingType" value="System.ServiceModel.NetTcpBinding, System.ServiceModel, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"/> 10: </appSettings> 11: </configuration> OK, now let’s have a test. Firstly start the discovery service, and then start our discoverable service. When it started it will announced to the discovery service and registered its endpoint into the repository, which is the local dictionary. And then start the client and type something. As you can see the client asked the discovery service for the endpoint and then establish the connection to the discoverable service. And more interesting, do NOT close the client console but terminate the discoverable service but press the enter key. This will make the service send the offline message to the discovery service. Then start the discoverable service again. Since we made it use a different address each time it started, currently it should be hosted on another address. If we enter something in the client we could see that it asked the discovery service and retrieve the new endpoint, and connect the the service.   Summary In this post I discussed the benefit of using the discovery service and the procedures of service announcement and probe. I also demonstrated how to leverage the WCF Discovery feature in WCF 4.0 to build a simple managed discovery service. For test purpose, in this example I used the in memory dictionary as the discovery endpoint metadata repository. And when finding I also just return the first matched endpoint back. I also hard coded the bindings between the discoverable service and the client. In next post I will show you how to solve the problem mentioned above, as well as some additional feature for production usage. You can download the code here.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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  • Custom ASP.NET Routing to an HttpHandler

    - by Rick Strahl
    As of version 4.0 ASP.NET natively supports routing via the now built-in System.Web.Routing namespace. Routing features are automatically integrated into the HtttpRuntime via a few custom interfaces. New Web Forms Routing Support In ASP.NET 4.0 there are a host of improvements including routing support baked into Web Forms via a RouteData property available on the Page class and RouteCollection.MapPageRoute() route handler that makes it easy to route to Web forms. To map ASP.NET Page routes is as simple as setting up the routes with MapPageRoute:protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes); } void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes) { routes.MapPageRoute("StockQuote", "StockQuote/{symbol}", "StockQuote.aspx"); routes.MapPageRoute("StockQuotes", "StockQuotes/{symbolList}", "StockQuotes.aspx"); } and then accessing the route data in the page you can then use the new Page class RouteData property to retrieve the dynamic route data information:public partial class StockQuote1 : System.Web.UI.Page { protected StockQuote Quote = null; protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { string symbol = RouteData.Values["symbol"] as string; StockServer server = new StockServer(); Quote = server.GetStockQuote(symbol); // display stock data in Page View } } Simple, quick and doesn’t require much explanation. If you’re using WebForms most of your routing needs should be served just fine by this simple mechanism. Kudos to the ASP.NET team for putting this in the box and making it easy! How Routing Works To handle Routing in ASP.NET involves these steps: Registering Routes Creating a custom RouteHandler to retrieve an HttpHandler Attaching RouteData to your HttpHandler Picking up Route Information in your Request code Registering routes makes ASP.NET aware of the Routes you want to handle via the static RouteTable.Routes collection. You basically add routes to this collection to let ASP.NET know which URL patterns it should watch for. You typically hook up routes off a RegisterRoutes method that fires in Application_Start as I did in the example above to ensure routes are added only once when the application first starts up. When you create a route, you pass in a RouteHandler instance which ASP.NET caches and reuses as routes are matched. Once registered ASP.NET monitors the routes and if a match is found just prior to the HttpHandler instantiation, ASP.NET uses the RouteHandler registered for the route and calls GetHandler() on it to retrieve an HttpHandler instance. The RouteHandler.GetHandler() method is responsible for creating an instance of an HttpHandler that is to handle the request and – if necessary – to assign any additional custom data to the handler. At minimum you probably want to pass the RouteData to the handler so the handler can identify the request based on the route data available. To do this you typically add  a RouteData property to your handler and then assign the property from the RouteHandlers request context. This is essentially how Page.RouteData comes into being and this approach should work well for any custom handler implementation that requires RouteData. It’s a shame that ASP.NET doesn’t have a top level intrinsic object that’s accessible off the HttpContext object to provide route data more generically, but since RouteData is directly tied to HttpHandlers and not all handlers support it it might cause some confusion of when it’s actually available. Bottom line is that if you want to hold on to RouteData you have to assign it to a custom property of the handler or else pass it to the handler via Context.Items[] object that can be retrieved on an as needed basis. It’s important to understand that routing is hooked up via RouteHandlers that are responsible for loading HttpHandler instances. RouteHandlers are invoked for every request that matches a route and through this RouteHandler instance the Handler gains access to the current RouteData. Because of this logic it’s important to understand that Routing is really tied to HttpHandlers and not available prior to handler instantiation, which is pretty late in the HttpRuntime’s request pipeline. IOW, Routing works with Handlers but not with earlier in the pipeline within Modules. Specifically ASP.NET calls RouteHandler.GetHandler() from the PostResolveRequestCache HttpRuntime pipeline event. Here’s the call stack at the beginning of the GetHandler() call: which fires just before handler resolution. Non-Page Routing – You need to build custom RouteHandlers If you need to route to a custom Http Handler or other non-Page (and non-MVC) endpoint in the HttpRuntime, there is no generic mapping support available. You need to create a custom RouteHandler that can manage creating an instance of an HttpHandler that is fired in response to a routed request. Depending on what you are doing this process can be simple or fairly involved as your code is responsible based on the route data provided which handler to instantiate, and more importantly how to pass the route data on to the Handler. Luckily creating a RouteHandler is easy by implementing the IRouteHandler interface which has only a single GetHttpHandler(RequestContext context) method. In this method you can pick up the requestContext.RouteData, instantiate the HttpHandler of choice, and assign the RouteData to it. Then pass back the handler and you’re done.Here’s a simple example of GetHttpHandler() method that dynamically creates a handler based on a passed in Handler type./// <summary> /// Retrieves an Http Handler based on the type specified in the constructor /// </summary> /// <param name="requestContext"></param> /// <returns></returns> IHttpHandler IRouteHandler.GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext) { IHttpHandler handler = Activator.CreateInstance(CallbackHandlerType) as IHttpHandler; // If we're dealing with a Callback Handler // pass the RouteData for this route to the Handler if (handler is CallbackHandler) ((CallbackHandler)handler).RouteData = requestContext.RouteData; return handler; } Note that this code checks for a specific type of handler and if it matches assigns the RouteData to this handler. This is optional but quite a common scenario if you want to work with RouteData. If the handler you need to instantiate isn’t under your control but you still need to pass RouteData to Handler code, an alternative is to pass the RouteData via the HttpContext.Items collection:IHttpHandler IRouteHandler.GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext) { IHttpHandler handler = Activator.CreateInstance(CallbackHandlerType) as IHttpHandler; requestContext.HttpContext.Items["RouteData"] = requestContext.RouteData; return handler; } The code in the handler implementation can then pick up the RouteData from the context collection as needed:RouteData routeData = HttpContext.Current.Items["RouteData"] as RouteData This isn’t as clean as having an explicit RouteData property, but it does have the advantage that the route data is visible anywhere in the Handler’s code chain. It’s definitely preferable to create a custom property on your handler, but the Context work-around works in a pinch when you don’t’ own the handler code and have dynamic code executing as part of the handler execution. An Example of a Custom RouteHandler: Attribute Based Route Implementation In this post I’m going to discuss a custom routine implementation I built for my CallbackHandler class in the West Wind Web & Ajax Toolkit. CallbackHandler can be very easily used for creating AJAX, REST and POX requests following RPC style method mapping. You can pass parameters via URL query string, POST data or raw data structures, and you can retrieve results as JSON, XML or raw string/binary data. It’s a quick and easy way to build service interfaces with no fuss. As a quick review here’s how CallbackHandler works: You create an Http Handler that derives from CallbackHandler You implement methods that have a [CallbackMethod] Attribute and that’s it. Here’s an example of an CallbackHandler implementation in an ashx.cs based handler:// RestService.ashx.cs public class RestService : CallbackHandler { [CallbackMethod] public StockQuote GetStockQuote(string symbol) { StockServer server = new StockServer(); return server.GetStockQuote(symbol); } [CallbackMethod] public StockQuote[] GetStockQuotes(string symbolList) { StockServer server = new StockServer(); string[] symbols = symbolList.Split(new char[2] { ',',';' },StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries); return server.GetStockQuotes(symbols); } } CallbackHandler makes it super easy to create a method on the server, pass data to it via POST, QueryString or raw JSON/XML data, and then retrieve the results easily back in various formats. This works wonderful and I’ve used these tools in many projects for myself and with clients. But one thing missing has been the ability to create clean URLs. Typical URLs looked like this: http://www.west-wind.com/WestwindWebToolkit/samples/Rest/StockService.ashx?Method=GetStockQuote&symbol=msfthttp://www.west-wind.com/WestwindWebToolkit/samples/Rest/StockService.ashx?Method=GetStockQuotes&symbolList=msft,intc,gld,slw,mwe&format=xml which works and is clear enough, but also clearly very ugly. It would be much nicer if URLs could look like this: http://www.west-wind.com//WestwindWebtoolkit/Samples/StockQuote/msfthttp://www.west-wind.com/WestwindWebtoolkit/Samples/StockQuotes/msft,intc,gld,slw?format=xml (the Virtual Root in this sample is WestWindWebToolkit/Samples and StockQuote/{symbol} is the route)(If you use FireFox try using the JSONView plug-in make it easier to view JSON content) So, taking a clue from the WCF REST tools that use RouteUrls I set out to create a way to specify RouteUrls for each of the endpoints. The change made basically allows changing the above to: [CallbackMethod(RouteUrl="RestService/StockQuote/{symbol}")] public StockQuote GetStockQuote(string symbol) { StockServer server = new StockServer(); return server.GetStockQuote(symbol); } [CallbackMethod(RouteUrl = "RestService/StockQuotes/{symbolList}")] public StockQuote[] GetStockQuotes(string symbolList) { StockServer server = new StockServer(); string[] symbols = symbolList.Split(new char[2] { ',',';' },StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries); return server.GetStockQuotes(symbols); } where a RouteUrl is specified as part of the Callback attribute. And with the changes made with RouteUrls I can now get URLs like the second set shown earlier. So how does that work? Let’s find out… How to Create Custom Routes As mentioned earlier Routing is made up of several steps: Creating a custom RouteHandler to create HttpHandler instances Mapping the actual Routes to the RouteHandler Retrieving the RouteData and actually doing something useful with it in the HttpHandler In the CallbackHandler routing example above this works out to something like this: Create a custom RouteHandler that includes a property to track the method to call Set up the routes using Reflection against the class Looking for any RouteUrls in the CallbackMethod attribute Add a RouteData property to the CallbackHandler so we can access the RouteData in the code of the handler Creating a Custom Route Handler To make the above work I created a custom RouteHandler class that includes the actual IRouteHandler implementation as well as a generic and static method to automatically register all routes marked with the [CallbackMethod(RouteUrl="…")] attribute. Here’s the code:/// <summary> /// Route handler that can create instances of CallbackHandler derived /// callback classes. The route handler tracks the method name and /// creates an instance of the service in a predictable manner /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TCallbackHandler">CallbackHandler type</typeparam> public class CallbackHandlerRouteHandler : IRouteHandler { /// <summary> /// Method name that is to be called on this route. /// Set by the automatically generated RegisterRoutes /// invokation. /// </summary> public string MethodName { get; set; } /// <summary> /// The type of the handler we're going to instantiate. /// Needed so we can semi-generically instantiate the /// handler and call the method on it. /// </summary> public Type CallbackHandlerType { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Constructor to pass in the two required components we /// need to create an instance of our handler. /// </summary> /// <param name="methodName"></param> /// <param name="callbackHandlerType"></param> public CallbackHandlerRouteHandler(string methodName, Type callbackHandlerType) { MethodName = methodName; CallbackHandlerType = callbackHandlerType; } /// <summary> /// Retrieves an Http Handler based on the type specified in the constructor /// </summary> /// <param name="requestContext"></param> /// <returns></returns> IHttpHandler IRouteHandler.GetHttpHandler(RequestContext requestContext) { IHttpHandler handler = Activator.CreateInstance(CallbackHandlerType) as IHttpHandler; // If we're dealing with a Callback Handler // pass the RouteData for this route to the Handler if (handler is CallbackHandler) ((CallbackHandler)handler).RouteData = requestContext.RouteData; return handler; } /// <summary> /// Generic method to register all routes from a CallbackHandler /// that have RouteUrls defined on the [CallbackMethod] attribute /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TCallbackHandler">CallbackHandler Type</typeparam> /// <param name="routes"></param> public static void RegisterRoutes<TCallbackHandler>(RouteCollection routes) { // find all methods var methods = typeof(TCallbackHandler).GetMethods(BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.Public); foreach (var method in methods) { var attrs = method.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(CallbackMethodAttribute), false); if (attrs.Length < 1) continue; CallbackMethodAttribute attr = attrs[0] as CallbackMethodAttribute; if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(attr.RouteUrl)) continue; // Add the route routes.Add(method.Name, new Route(attr.RouteUrl, new CallbackHandlerRouteHandler(method.Name, typeof(TCallbackHandler)))); } } } The RouteHandler implements IRouteHandler, and its responsibility via the GetHandler method is to create an HttpHandler based on the route data. When ASP.NET calls GetHandler it passes a requestContext parameter which includes a requestContext.RouteData property. This parameter holds the current request’s route data as well as an instance of the current RouteHandler. If you look at GetHttpHandler() you can see that the code creates an instance of the handler we are interested in and then sets the RouteData property on the handler. This is how you can pass the current request’s RouteData to the handler. The RouteData object also has a  RouteData.RouteHandler property that is also available to the Handler later, which is useful in order to get additional information about the current route. In our case here the RouteHandler includes a MethodName property that identifies the method to execute in the handler since that value no longer comes from the URL so we need to figure out the method name some other way. The method name is mapped explicitly when the RouteHandler is created and here the static method that auto-registers all CallbackMethods with RouteUrls sets the method name when it creates the routes while reflecting over the methods (more on this in a minute). The important point here is that you can attach additional properties to the RouteHandler and you can then later access the RouteHandler and its properties later in the Handler to pick up these custom values. This is a crucial feature in that the RouteHandler serves in passing additional context to the handler so it knows what actions to perform. The automatic route registration is handled by the static RegisterRoutes<TCallbackHandler> method. This method is generic and totally reusable for any CallbackHandler type handler. To register a CallbackHandler and any RouteUrls it has defined you simple use code like this in Application_Start (or other application startup code):protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { // Register Routes for RestService CallbackHandlerRouteHandler.RegisterRoutes<RestService>(RouteTable.Routes); } If you have multiple CallbackHandler style services you can make multiple calls to RegisterRoutes for each of the service types. RegisterRoutes internally uses reflection to run through all the methods of the Handler, looking for CallbackMethod attributes and whether a RouteUrl is specified. If it is a new instance of a CallbackHandlerRouteHandler is created and the name of the method and the type are set. routes.Add(method.Name,           new Route(attr.RouteUrl, new CallbackHandlerRouteHandler(method.Name, typeof(TCallbackHandler) )) ); While the routing with CallbackHandlerRouteHandler is set up automatically for all methods that use the RouteUrl attribute, you can also use code to hook up those routes manually and skip using the attribute. The code for this is straightforward and just requires that you manually map each individual route to each method you want a routed: protected void Application_Start(objectsender, EventArgs e){    RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);}void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes) { routes.Add("StockQuote Route",new Route("StockQuote/{symbol}",                     new CallbackHandlerRouteHandler("GetStockQuote",typeof(RestService) ) ) );     routes.Add("StockQuotes Route",new Route("StockQuotes/{symbolList}",                     new CallbackHandlerRouteHandler("GetStockQuotes",typeof(RestService) ) ) );}I think it’s clearly easier to have CallbackHandlerRouteHandler.RegisterRoutes() do this automatically for you based on RouteUrl attributes, but some people have a real aversion to attaching logic via attributes. Just realize that the option to manually create your routes is available as well. Using the RouteData in the Handler A RouteHandler’s responsibility is to create an HttpHandler and as mentioned earlier, natively IHttpHandler doesn’t have any support for RouteData. In order to utilize RouteData in your handler code you have to pass the RouteData to the handler. In my CallbackHandlerRouteHandler when it creates the HttpHandler instance it creates the instance and then assigns the custom RouteData property on the handler:IHttpHandler handler = Activator.CreateInstance(CallbackHandlerType) as IHttpHandler; if (handler is CallbackHandler) ((CallbackHandler)handler).RouteData = requestContext.RouteData; return handler; Again this only works if you actually add a RouteData property to your handler explicitly as I did in my CallbackHandler implementation:/// <summary> /// Optionally store RouteData on this handler /// so we can access it internally /// </summary> public RouteData RouteData {get; set; } and the RouteHandler needs to set it when it creates the handler instance. Once you have the route data in your handler you can access Route Keys and Values and also the RouteHandler. Since my RouteHandler has a custom property for the MethodName to retrieve it from within the handler I can do something like this now to retrieve the MethodName (this example is actually not in the handler but target is an instance pass to the processor): // check for Route Data method name if (target is CallbackHandler) { var routeData = ((CallbackHandler)target).RouteData; if (routeData != null) methodToCall = ((CallbackHandlerRouteHandler)routeData.RouteHandler).MethodName; } When I need to access the dynamic values in the route ( symbol in StockQuote/{symbol}) I can retrieve it easily with the Values collection (RouteData.Values["symbol"]). In my CallbackHandler processing logic I’m basically looking for matching parameter names to Route parameters: // look for parameters in the routeif(routeData != null){    string parmString = routeData.Values[parameter.Name] as string;    adjustedParms[parmCounter] = ReflectionUtils.StringToTypedValue(parmString, parameter.ParameterType);} And with that we’ve come full circle. We’ve created a custom RouteHandler() that passes the RouteData to the handler it creates. We’ve registered our routes to use the RouteHandler, and we’ve utilized the route data in our handler. For completeness sake here’s the routine that executes a method call based on the parameters passed in and one of the options is to retrieve the inbound parameters off RouteData (as well as from POST data or QueryString parameters):internal object ExecuteMethod(string method, object target, string[] parameters, CallbackMethodParameterType paramType, ref CallbackMethodAttribute callbackMethodAttribute) { HttpRequest Request = HttpContext.Current.Request; object Result = null; // Stores parsed parameters (from string JSON or QUeryString Values) object[] adjustedParms = null; Type PageType = target.GetType(); MethodInfo MI = PageType.GetMethod(method, BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.NonPublic); if (MI == null) throw new InvalidOperationException("Invalid Server Method."); object[] methods = MI.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(CallbackMethodAttribute), false); if (methods.Length < 1) throw new InvalidOperationException("Server method is not accessible due to missing CallbackMethod attribute"); if (callbackMethodAttribute != null) callbackMethodAttribute = methods[0] as CallbackMethodAttribute; ParameterInfo[] parms = MI.GetParameters(); JSONSerializer serializer = new JSONSerializer(); RouteData routeData = null; if (target is CallbackHandler) routeData = ((CallbackHandler)target).RouteData; int parmCounter = 0; adjustedParms = new object[parms.Length]; foreach (ParameterInfo parameter in parms) { // Retrieve parameters out of QueryString or POST buffer if (parameters == null) { // look for parameters in the route if (routeData != null) { string parmString = routeData.Values[parameter.Name] as string; adjustedParms[parmCounter] = ReflectionUtils.StringToTypedValue(parmString, parameter.ParameterType); } // GET parameter are parsed as plain string values - no JSON encoding else if (HttpContext.Current.Request.HttpMethod == "GET") { // Look up the parameter by name string parmString = Request.QueryString[parameter.Name]; adjustedParms[parmCounter] = ReflectionUtils.StringToTypedValue(parmString, parameter.ParameterType); } // POST parameters are treated as methodParameters that are JSON encoded else if (paramType == CallbackMethodParameterType.Json) //string newVariable = methodParameters.GetValue(parmCounter) as string; adjustedParms[parmCounter] = serializer.Deserialize(Request.Params["parm" + (parmCounter + 1).ToString()], parameter.ParameterType); else adjustedParms[parmCounter] = SerializationUtils.DeSerializeObject( Request.Params["parm" + (parmCounter + 1).ToString()], parameter.ParameterType); } else if (paramType == CallbackMethodParameterType.Json) adjustedParms[parmCounter] = serializer.Deserialize(parameters[parmCounter], parameter.ParameterType); else adjustedParms[parmCounter] = SerializationUtils.DeSerializeObject(parameters[parmCounter], parameter.ParameterType); parmCounter++; } Result = MI.Invoke(target, adjustedParms); return Result; } The code basically uses Reflection to loop through all the parameters available on the method and tries to assign the parameters from RouteData, QueryString or POST variables. The parameters are converted into their appropriate types and then used to eventually make a Reflection based method call. What’s sweet is that the RouteData retrieval is just another option for dealing with the inbound data in this scenario and it adds exactly two lines of code plus the code to retrieve the MethodName I showed previously – a seriously low impact addition that adds a lot of extra value to this endpoint callback processing implementation. Debugging your Routes If you create a lot of routes it’s easy to run into Route conflicts where multiple routes have the same path and overlap with each other. This can be difficult to debug especially if you are using automatically generated routes like the routes created by CallbackHandlerRouteHandler.RegisterRoutes. Luckily there’s a tool that can help you out with this nicely. Phill Haack created a RouteDebugging tool you can download and add to your project. The easiest way to do this is to grab and add this to your project is to use NuGet (Add Library Package from your Project’s Reference Nodes):   which adds a RouteDebug assembly to your project. Once installed you can easily debug your routes with this simple line of code which needs to be installed at application startup:protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { CallbackHandlerRouteHandler.RegisterRoutes<StockService>(RouteTable.Routes); // Debug your routes RouteDebug.RouteDebugger.RewriteRoutesForTesting(RouteTable.Routes); } Any routed URL then displays something like this: The screen shows you your current route data and all the routes that are mapped along with a flag that displays which route was actually matched. This is useful – if you have any overlap of routes you will be able to see which routes are triggered – the first one in the sequence wins. This tool has saved my ass on a few occasions – and with NuGet now it’s easy to add it to your project in a few seconds and then remove it when you’re done. Routing Around Custom routing seems slightly complicated on first blush due to its disconnected components of RouteHandler, route registration and mapping of custom handlers. But once you understand the relationship between a RouteHandler, the RouteData and how to pass it to a handler, utilizing of Routing becomes a lot easier as you can easily pass context from the registration to the RouteHandler and through to the HttpHandler. The most important thing to understand when building custom routing solutions is to figure out how to map URLs in such a way that the handler can figure out all the pieces it needs to process the request. This can be via URL routing parameters and as I did in my example by passing additional context information as part of the RouteHandler instance that provides the proper execution context. In my case this ‘context’ was the method name, but it could be an actual static value like an enum identifying an operation or category in an application. Basically user supplied data comes in through the url and static application internal data can be passed via RouteHandler property values. Routing can make your application URLs easier to read by non-techie types regardless of whether you’re building Service type or REST applications, or full on Web interfaces. Routing in ASP.NET 4.0 makes it possible to create just about any extensionless URLs you can dream up and custom RouteHanmdler References Sample ProjectIncludes the sample CallbackHandler service discussed here along with compiled versionsof the Westwind.Web and Westwind.Utilities assemblies.  (requires .NET 4.0/VS 2010) West Wind Web Toolkit includes full implementation of CallbackHandler and the Routing Handler West Wind Web Toolkit Source CodeContains the full source code to the Westwind.Web and Westwind.Utilities assemblies usedin these samples. Includes the source described in the post.(Latest build in the Subversion Repository) CallbackHandler Source(Relevant code to this article tree in Westwind.Web assembly) JSONView FireFoxPluginA simple FireFox Plugin to easily view JSON data natively in FireFox.For IE you can use a registry hack to display JSON as raw text.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in ASP.NET  AJAX  HTTP  

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  • Introduction to the ASP.NET Web API

    - by Stephen.Walther
    I am a huge fan of Ajax. If you want to create a great experience for the users of your website – regardless of whether you are building an ASP.NET MVC or an ASP.NET Web Forms site — then you need to use Ajax. Otherwise, you are just being cruel to your customers. We use Ajax extensively in several of the ASP.NET applications that my company, Superexpert.com, builds. We expose data from the server as JSON and use jQuery to retrieve and update that data from the browser. One challenge, when building an ASP.NET website, is deciding on which technology to use to expose JSON data from the server. For example, how do you expose a list of products from the server as JSON so you can retrieve the list of products with jQuery? You have a number of options (too many options) including ASMX Web services, WCF Web Services, ASHX Generic Handlers, WCF Data Services, and MVC controller actions. Fortunately, the world has just been simplified. With the release of ASP.NET 4 Beta, Microsoft has introduced a new technology for exposing JSON from the server named the ASP.NET Web API. You can use the ASP.NET Web API with both ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Web Forms applications. The goal of this blog post is to provide you with a brief overview of the features of the new ASP.NET Web API. You learn how to use the ASP.NET Web API to retrieve, insert, update, and delete database records with jQuery. We also discuss how you can perform form validation when using the Web API and use OData when using the Web API. Creating an ASP.NET Web API Controller The ASP.NET Web API exposes JSON data through a new type of controller called an API controller. You can add an API controller to an existing ASP.NET MVC 4 project through the standard Add Controller dialog box. Right-click your Controllers folder and select Add, Controller. In the dialog box, name your controller MovieController and select the Empty API controller template: A brand new API controller looks like this: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Net.Http; using System.Web.Http; namespace MyWebAPIApp.Controllers { public class MovieController : ApiController { } } An API controller, unlike a standard MVC controller, derives from the base ApiController class instead of the base Controller class. Using jQuery to Retrieve, Insert, Update, and Delete Data Let’s create an Ajaxified Movie Database application. We’ll retrieve, insert, update, and delete movies using jQuery with the MovieController which we just created. Our Movie model class looks like this: namespace MyWebAPIApp.Models { public class Movie { public int Id { get; set; } public string Title { get; set; } public string Director { get; set; } } } Our application will consist of a single HTML page named Movies.html. We’ll place all of our jQuery code in the Movies.html page. Getting a Single Record with the ASP.NET Web API To support retrieving a single movie from the server, we need to add a Get method to our API controller: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Net; using System.Net.Http; using System.Web.Http; using MyWebAPIApp.Models; namespace MyWebAPIApp.Controllers { public class MovieController : ApiController { public Movie GetMovie(int id) { // Return movie by id if (id == 1) { return new Movie { Id = 1, Title = "Star Wars", Director = "Lucas" }; } // Otherwise, movie was not found throw new HttpResponseException(HttpStatusCode.NotFound); } } } In the code above, the GetMovie() method accepts the Id of a movie. If the Id has the value 1 then the method returns the movie Star Wars. Otherwise, the method throws an exception and returns 404 Not Found HTTP status code. After building your project, you can invoke the MovieController.GetMovie() method by entering the following URL in your web browser address bar: http://localhost:[port]/api/movie/1 (You’ll need to enter the correct randomly generated port). In the URL api/movie/1, the first “api” segment indicates that this is a Web API route. The “movie” segment indicates that the MovieController should be invoked. You do not specify the name of the action. Instead, the HTTP method used to make the request – GET, POST, PUT, DELETE — is used to identify the action to invoke. The ASP.NET Web API uses different routing conventions than normal ASP.NET MVC controllers. When you make an HTTP GET request then any API controller method with a name that starts with “GET” is invoked. So, we could have called our API controller action GetPopcorn() instead of GetMovie() and it would still be invoked by the URL api/movie/1. The default route for the Web API is defined in the Global.asax file and it looks like this: routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "DefaultApi", routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{id}", defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional } ); We can invoke our GetMovie() controller action with the jQuery code in the following HTML page: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Get Movie</title> </head> <body> <div> Title: <span id="title"></span> </div> <div> Director: <span id="director"></span> </div> <script type="text/javascript" src="Scripts/jquery-1.6.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> getMovie(1, function (movie) { $("#title").html(movie.Title); $("#director").html(movie.Director); }); function getMovie(id, callback) { $.ajax({ url: "/api/Movie", data: { id: id }, type: "GET", contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", statusCode: { 200: function (movie) { callback(movie); }, 404: function () { alert("Not Found!"); } } }); } </script> </body> </html> In the code above, the jQuery $.ajax() method is used to invoke the GetMovie() method. Notice that the Ajax call handles two HTTP response codes. When the GetMove() method successfully returns a movie, the method returns a 200 status code. In that case, the details of the movie are displayed in the HTML page. Otherwise, if the movie is not found, the GetMovie() method returns a 404 status code. In that case, the page simply displays an alert box indicating that the movie was not found (hopefully, you would implement something more graceful in an actual application). You can use your browser’s Developer Tools to see what is going on in the background when you open the HTML page (hit F12 in the most recent version of most browsers). For example, you can use the Network tab in Google Chrome to see the Ajax request which invokes the GetMovie() method: Getting a Set of Records with the ASP.NET Web API Let’s modify our Movie API controller so that it returns a collection of movies. The following Movie controller has a new ListMovies() method which returns a (hard-coded) collection of movies: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Net; using System.Net.Http; using System.Web.Http; using MyWebAPIApp.Models; namespace MyWebAPIApp.Controllers { public class MovieController : ApiController { public IEnumerable<Movie> ListMovies() { return new List<Movie> { new Movie {Id=1, Title="Star Wars", Director="Lucas"}, new Movie {Id=1, Title="King Kong", Director="Jackson"}, new Movie {Id=1, Title="Memento", Director="Nolan"} }; } } } Because we named our action ListMovies(), the default Web API route will never match it. Therefore, we need to add the following custom route to our Global.asax file (at the top of the RegisterRoutes() method): routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "ActionApi", routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{action}/{id}", defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional } ); This route enables us to invoke the ListMovies() method with the URL /api/movie/listmovies. Now that we have exposed our collection of movies from the server, we can retrieve and display the list of movies using jQuery in our HTML page: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>List Movies</title> </head> <body> <div id="movies"></div> <script type="text/javascript" src="Scripts/jquery-1.6.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> listMovies(function (movies) { var strMovies=""; $.each(movies, function (index, movie) { strMovies += "<div>" + movie.Title + "</div>"; }); $("#movies").html(strMovies); }); function listMovies(callback) { $.ajax({ url: "/api/Movie/ListMovies", data: {}, type: "GET", contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", }).then(function(movies){ callback(movies); }); } </script> </body> </html>     Inserting a Record with the ASP.NET Web API Now let’s modify our Movie API controller so it supports creating new records: public HttpResponseMessage<Movie> PostMovie(Movie movieToCreate) { // Add movieToCreate to the database and update primary key movieToCreate.Id = 23; // Build a response that contains the location of the new movie var response = new HttpResponseMessage<Movie>(movieToCreate, HttpStatusCode.Created); var relativePath = "/api/movie/" + movieToCreate.Id; response.Headers.Location = new Uri(Request.RequestUri, relativePath); return response; } The PostMovie() method in the code above accepts a movieToCreate parameter. We don’t actually store the new movie anywhere. In real life, you will want to call a service method to store the new movie in a database. When you create a new resource, such as a new movie, you should return the location of the new resource. In the code above, the URL where the new movie can be retrieved is assigned to the Location header returned in the PostMovie() response. Because the name of our method starts with “Post”, we don’t need to create a custom route. The PostMovie() method can be invoked with the URL /Movie/PostMovie – just as long as the method is invoked within the context of a HTTP POST request. The following HTML page invokes the PostMovie() method. <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Create Movie</title> </head> <body> <script type="text/javascript" src="Scripts/jquery-1.6.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> var movieToCreate = { title: "The Hobbit", director: "Jackson" }; createMovie(movieToCreate, function (newMovie) { alert("New movie created with an Id of " + newMovie.Id); }); function createMovie(movieToCreate, callback) { $.ajax({ url: "/api/Movie", data: JSON.stringify( movieToCreate ), type: "POST", contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", statusCode: { 201: function (newMovie) { callback(newMovie); } } }); } </script> </body> </html> This page creates a new movie (the Hobbit) by calling the createMovie() method. The page simply displays the Id of the new movie: The HTTP Post operation is performed with the following call to the jQuery $.ajax() method: $.ajax({ url: "/api/Movie", data: JSON.stringify( movieToCreate ), type: "POST", contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", statusCode: { 201: function (newMovie) { callback(newMovie); } } }); Notice that the type of Ajax request is a POST request. This is required to match the PostMovie() method. Notice, furthermore, that the new movie is converted into JSON using JSON.stringify(). The JSON.stringify() method takes a JavaScript object and converts it into a JSON string. Finally, notice that success is represented with a 201 status code. The HttpStatusCode.Created value returned from the PostMovie() method returns a 201 status code. Updating a Record with the ASP.NET Web API Here’s how we can modify the Movie API controller to support updating an existing record. In this case, we need to create a PUT method to handle an HTTP PUT request: public void PutMovie(Movie movieToUpdate) { if (movieToUpdate.Id == 1) { // Update the movie in the database return; } // If you can't find the movie to update throw new HttpResponseException(HttpStatusCode.NotFound); } Unlike our PostMovie() method, the PutMovie() method does not return a result. The action either updates the database or, if the movie cannot be found, returns an HTTP Status code of 404. The following HTML page illustrates how you can invoke the PutMovie() method: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Put Movie</title> </head> <body> <script type="text/javascript" src="Scripts/jquery-1.6.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> var movieToUpdate = { id: 1, title: "The Hobbit", director: "Jackson" }; updateMovie(movieToUpdate, function () { alert("Movie updated!"); }); function updateMovie(movieToUpdate, callback) { $.ajax({ url: "/api/Movie", data: JSON.stringify(movieToUpdate), type: "PUT", contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", statusCode: { 200: function () { callback(); }, 404: function () { alert("Movie not found!"); } } }); } </script> </body> </html> Deleting a Record with the ASP.NET Web API Here’s the code for deleting a movie: public HttpResponseMessage DeleteMovie(int id) { // Delete the movie from the database // Return status code return new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.NoContent); } This method simply deletes the movie (well, not really, but pretend that it does) and returns a No Content status code (204). The following page illustrates how you can invoke the DeleteMovie() action: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Delete Movie</title> </head> <body> <script type="text/javascript" src="Scripts/jquery-1.6.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> deleteMovie(1, function () { alert("Movie deleted!"); }); function deleteMovie(id, callback) { $.ajax({ url: "/api/Movie", data: JSON.stringify({id:id}), type: "DELETE", contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", statusCode: { 204: function () { callback(); } } }); } </script> </body> </html> Performing Validation How do you perform form validation when using the ASP.NET Web API? Because validation in ASP.NET MVC is driven by the Default Model Binder, and because the Web API uses the Default Model Binder, you get validation for free. Let’s modify our Movie class so it includes some of the standard validation attributes: using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations; namespace MyWebAPIApp.Models { public class Movie { public int Id { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage="Title is required!")] [StringLength(5, ErrorMessage="Title cannot be more than 5 characters!")] public string Title { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage="Director is required!")] public string Director { get; set; } } } In the code above, the Required validation attribute is used to make both the Title and Director properties required. The StringLength attribute is used to require the length of the movie title to be no more than 5 characters. Now let’s modify our PostMovie() action to validate a movie before adding the movie to the database: public HttpResponseMessage PostMovie(Movie movieToCreate) { // Validate movie if (!ModelState.IsValid) { var errors = new JsonArray(); foreach (var prop in ModelState.Values) { if (prop.Errors.Any()) { errors.Add(prop.Errors.First().ErrorMessage); } } return new HttpResponseMessage<JsonValue>(errors, HttpStatusCode.BadRequest); } // Add movieToCreate to the database and update primary key movieToCreate.Id = 23; // Build a response that contains the location of the new movie var response = new HttpResponseMessage<Movie>(movieToCreate, HttpStatusCode.Created); var relativePath = "/api/movie/" + movieToCreate.Id; response.Headers.Location = new Uri(Request.RequestUri, relativePath); return response; } If ModelState.IsValid has the value false then the errors in model state are copied to a new JSON array. Each property – such as the Title and Director property — can have multiple errors. In the code above, only the first error message is copied over. The JSON array is returned with a Bad Request status code (400 status code). The following HTML page illustrates how you can invoke our modified PostMovie() action and display any error messages: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Create Movie</title> </head> <body> <script type="text/javascript" src="Scripts/jquery-1.6.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> var movieToCreate = { title: "The Hobbit", director: "" }; createMovie(movieToCreate, function (newMovie) { alert("New movie created with an Id of " + newMovie.Id); }, function (errors) { var strErrors = ""; $.each(errors, function(index, err) { strErrors += "*" + err + "\n"; }); alert(strErrors); } ); function createMovie(movieToCreate, success, fail) { $.ajax({ url: "/api/Movie", data: JSON.stringify(movieToCreate), type: "POST", contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", statusCode: { 201: function (newMovie) { success(newMovie); }, 400: function (xhr) { var errors = JSON.parse(xhr.responseText); fail(errors); } } }); } </script> </body> </html> The createMovie() function performs an Ajax request and handles either a 201 or a 400 status code from the response. If a 201 status code is returned then there were no validation errors and the new movie was created. If, on the other hand, a 400 status code is returned then there was a validation error. The validation errors are retrieved from the XmlHttpRequest responseText property. The error messages are displayed in an alert: (Please don’t use JavaScript alert dialogs to display validation errors, I just did it this way out of pure laziness) This validation code in our PostMovie() method is pretty generic. There is nothing specific about this code to the PostMovie() method. In the following video, Jon Galloway demonstrates how to create a global Validation filter which can be used with any API controller action: http://www.asp.net/web-api/overview/web-api-routing-and-actions/video-custom-validation His validation filter looks like this: using System.Json; using System.Linq; using System.Net; using System.Net.Http; using System.Web.Http.Controllers; using System.Web.Http.Filters; namespace MyWebAPIApp.Filters { public class ValidationActionFilter:ActionFilterAttribute { public override void OnActionExecuting(HttpActionContext actionContext) { var modelState = actionContext.ModelState; if (!modelState.IsValid) { dynamic errors = new JsonObject(); foreach (var key in modelState.Keys) { var state = modelState[key]; if (state.Errors.Any()) { errors[key] = state.Errors.First().ErrorMessage; } } actionContext.Response = new HttpResponseMessage<JsonValue>(errors, HttpStatusCode.BadRequest); } } } } And you can register the validation filter in the Application_Start() method in the Global.asax file like this: GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Filters.Add(new ValidationActionFilter()); After you register the Validation filter, validation error messages are returned from any API controller action method automatically when validation fails. You don’t need to add any special logic to any of your API controller actions to take advantage of the filter. Querying using OData The OData protocol is an open protocol created by Microsoft which enables you to perform queries over the web. The official website for OData is located here: http://odata.org For example, here are some of the query options which you can use with OData: · $orderby – Enables you to retrieve results in a certain order. · $top – Enables you to retrieve a certain number of results. · $skip – Enables you to skip over a certain number of results (use with $top for paging). · $filter – Enables you to filter the results returned. The ASP.NET Web API supports a subset of the OData protocol. You can use all of the query options listed above when interacting with an API controller. The only requirement is that the API controller action returns its data as IQueryable. For example, the following Movie controller has an action named GetMovies() which returns an IQueryable of movies: public IQueryable<Movie> GetMovies() { return new List<Movie> { new Movie {Id=1, Title="Star Wars", Director="Lucas"}, new Movie {Id=2, Title="King Kong", Director="Jackson"}, new Movie {Id=3, Title="Willow", Director="Lucas"}, new Movie {Id=4, Title="Shrek", Director="Smith"}, new Movie {Id=5, Title="Memento", Director="Nolan"} }.AsQueryable(); } If you enter the following URL in your browser: /api/movie?$top=2&$orderby=Title Then you will limit the movies returned to the top 2 in order of the movie Title. You will get the following results: By using the $top option in combination with the $skip option, you can enable client-side paging. For example, you can use $top and $skip to page through thousands of products, 10 products at a time. The $filter query option is very powerful. You can use this option to filter the results from a query. Here are some examples: Return every movie directed by Lucas: /api/movie?$filter=Director eq ‘Lucas’ Return every movie which has a title which starts with ‘S’: /api/movie?$filter=startswith(Title,’S') Return every movie which has an Id greater than 2: /api/movie?$filter=Id gt 2 The complete documentation for the $filter option is located here: http://www.odata.org/developers/protocols/uri-conventions#FilterSystemQueryOption Summary The goal of this blog entry was to provide you with an overview of the new ASP.NET Web API introduced with the Beta release of ASP.NET 4. In this post, I discussed how you can retrieve, insert, update, and delete data by using jQuery with the Web API. I also discussed how you can use the standard validation attributes with the Web API. You learned how to return validation error messages to the client and display the error messages using jQuery. Finally, we briefly discussed how the ASP.NET Web API supports the OData protocol. For example, you learned how to filter records returned from an API controller action by using the $filter query option. I’m excited about the new Web API. This is a feature which I expect to use with almost every ASP.NET application which I build in the future.

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  • Introduction to the ASP.NET Web API

    - by Stephen.Walther
    I am a huge fan of Ajax. If you want to create a great experience for the users of your website – regardless of whether you are building an ASP.NET MVC or an ASP.NET Web Forms site — then you need to use Ajax. Otherwise, you are just being cruel to your customers. We use Ajax extensively in several of the ASP.NET applications that my company, Superexpert.com, builds. We expose data from the server as JSON and use jQuery to retrieve and update that data from the browser. One challenge, when building an ASP.NET website, is deciding on which technology to use to expose JSON data from the server. For example, how do you expose a list of products from the server as JSON so you can retrieve the list of products with jQuery? You have a number of options (too many options) including ASMX Web services, WCF Web Services, ASHX Generic Handlers, WCF Data Services, and MVC controller actions. Fortunately, the world has just been simplified. With the release of ASP.NET 4 Beta, Microsoft has introduced a new technology for exposing JSON from the server named the ASP.NET Web API. You can use the ASP.NET Web API with both ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Web Forms applications. The goal of this blog post is to provide you with a brief overview of the features of the new ASP.NET Web API. You learn how to use the ASP.NET Web API to retrieve, insert, update, and delete database records with jQuery. We also discuss how you can perform form validation when using the Web API and use OData when using the Web API. Creating an ASP.NET Web API Controller The ASP.NET Web API exposes JSON data through a new type of controller called an API controller. You can add an API controller to an existing ASP.NET MVC 4 project through the standard Add Controller dialog box. Right-click your Controllers folder and select Add, Controller. In the dialog box, name your controller MovieController and select the Empty API controller template: A brand new API controller looks like this: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Net.Http; using System.Web.Http; namespace MyWebAPIApp.Controllers { public class MovieController : ApiController { } } An API controller, unlike a standard MVC controller, derives from the base ApiController class instead of the base Controller class. Using jQuery to Retrieve, Insert, Update, and Delete Data Let’s create an Ajaxified Movie Database application. We’ll retrieve, insert, update, and delete movies using jQuery with the MovieController which we just created. Our Movie model class looks like this: namespace MyWebAPIApp.Models { public class Movie { public int Id { get; set; } public string Title { get; set; } public string Director { get; set; } } } Our application will consist of a single HTML page named Movies.html. We’ll place all of our jQuery code in the Movies.html page. Getting a Single Record with the ASP.NET Web API To support retrieving a single movie from the server, we need to add a Get method to our API controller: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Net; using System.Net.Http; using System.Web.Http; using MyWebAPIApp.Models; namespace MyWebAPIApp.Controllers { public class MovieController : ApiController { public Movie GetMovie(int id) { // Return movie by id if (id == 1) { return new Movie { Id = 1, Title = "Star Wars", Director = "Lucas" }; } // Otherwise, movie was not found throw new HttpResponseException(HttpStatusCode.NotFound); } } } In the code above, the GetMovie() method accepts the Id of a movie. If the Id has the value 1 then the method returns the movie Star Wars. Otherwise, the method throws an exception and returns 404 Not Found HTTP status code. After building your project, you can invoke the MovieController.GetMovie() method by entering the following URL in your web browser address bar: http://localhost:[port]/api/movie/1 (You’ll need to enter the correct randomly generated port). In the URL api/movie/1, the first “api” segment indicates that this is a Web API route. The “movie” segment indicates that the MovieController should be invoked. You do not specify the name of the action. Instead, the HTTP method used to make the request – GET, POST, PUT, DELETE — is used to identify the action to invoke. The ASP.NET Web API uses different routing conventions than normal ASP.NET MVC controllers. When you make an HTTP GET request then any API controller method with a name that starts with “GET” is invoked. So, we could have called our API controller action GetPopcorn() instead of GetMovie() and it would still be invoked by the URL api/movie/1. The default route for the Web API is defined in the Global.asax file and it looks like this: routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "DefaultApi", routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{id}", defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional } ); We can invoke our GetMovie() controller action with the jQuery code in the following HTML page: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Get Movie</title> </head> <body> <div> Title: <span id="title"></span> </div> <div> Director: <span id="director"></span> </div> <script type="text/javascript" src="Scripts/jquery-1.6.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> getMovie(1, function (movie) { $("#title").html(movie.Title); $("#director").html(movie.Director); }); function getMovie(id, callback) { $.ajax({ url: "/api/Movie", data: { id: id }, type: "GET", contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", statusCode: { 200: function (movie) { callback(movie); }, 404: function () { alert("Not Found!"); } } }); } </script> </body> </html> In the code above, the jQuery $.ajax() method is used to invoke the GetMovie() method. Notice that the Ajax call handles two HTTP response codes. When the GetMove() method successfully returns a movie, the method returns a 200 status code. In that case, the details of the movie are displayed in the HTML page. Otherwise, if the movie is not found, the GetMovie() method returns a 404 status code. In that case, the page simply displays an alert box indicating that the movie was not found (hopefully, you would implement something more graceful in an actual application). You can use your browser’s Developer Tools to see what is going on in the background when you open the HTML page (hit F12 in the most recent version of most browsers). For example, you can use the Network tab in Google Chrome to see the Ajax request which invokes the GetMovie() method: Getting a Set of Records with the ASP.NET Web API Let’s modify our Movie API controller so that it returns a collection of movies. The following Movie controller has a new ListMovies() method which returns a (hard-coded) collection of movies: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Net; using System.Net.Http; using System.Web.Http; using MyWebAPIApp.Models; namespace MyWebAPIApp.Controllers { public class MovieController : ApiController { public IEnumerable<Movie> ListMovies() { return new List<Movie> { new Movie {Id=1, Title="Star Wars", Director="Lucas"}, new Movie {Id=1, Title="King Kong", Director="Jackson"}, new Movie {Id=1, Title="Memento", Director="Nolan"} }; } } } Because we named our action ListMovies(), the default Web API route will never match it. Therefore, we need to add the following custom route to our Global.asax file (at the top of the RegisterRoutes() method): routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "ActionApi", routeTemplate: "api/{controller}/{action}/{id}", defaults: new { id = RouteParameter.Optional } ); This route enables us to invoke the ListMovies() method with the URL /api/movie/listmovies. Now that we have exposed our collection of movies from the server, we can retrieve and display the list of movies using jQuery in our HTML page: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>List Movies</title> </head> <body> <div id="movies"></div> <script type="text/javascript" src="Scripts/jquery-1.6.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> listMovies(function (movies) { var strMovies=""; $.each(movies, function (index, movie) { strMovies += "<div>" + movie.Title + "</div>"; }); $("#movies").html(strMovies); }); function listMovies(callback) { $.ajax({ url: "/api/Movie/ListMovies", data: {}, type: "GET", contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", }).then(function(movies){ callback(movies); }); } </script> </body> </html>     Inserting a Record with the ASP.NET Web API Now let’s modify our Movie API controller so it supports creating new records: public HttpResponseMessage<Movie> PostMovie(Movie movieToCreate) { // Add movieToCreate to the database and update primary key movieToCreate.Id = 23; // Build a response that contains the location of the new movie var response = new HttpResponseMessage<Movie>(movieToCreate, HttpStatusCode.Created); var relativePath = "/api/movie/" + movieToCreate.Id; response.Headers.Location = new Uri(Request.RequestUri, relativePath); return response; } The PostMovie() method in the code above accepts a movieToCreate parameter. We don’t actually store the new movie anywhere. In real life, you will want to call a service method to store the new movie in a database. When you create a new resource, such as a new movie, you should return the location of the new resource. In the code above, the URL where the new movie can be retrieved is assigned to the Location header returned in the PostMovie() response. Because the name of our method starts with “Post”, we don’t need to create a custom route. The PostMovie() method can be invoked with the URL /Movie/PostMovie – just as long as the method is invoked within the context of a HTTP POST request. The following HTML page invokes the PostMovie() method. <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Create Movie</title> </head> <body> <script type="text/javascript" src="Scripts/jquery-1.6.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> var movieToCreate = { title: "The Hobbit", director: "Jackson" }; createMovie(movieToCreate, function (newMovie) { alert("New movie created with an Id of " + newMovie.Id); }); function createMovie(movieToCreate, callback) { $.ajax({ url: "/api/Movie", data: JSON.stringify( movieToCreate ), type: "POST", contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", statusCode: { 201: function (newMovie) { callback(newMovie); } } }); } </script> </body> </html> This page creates a new movie (the Hobbit) by calling the createMovie() method. The page simply displays the Id of the new movie: The HTTP Post operation is performed with the following call to the jQuery $.ajax() method: $.ajax({ url: "/api/Movie", data: JSON.stringify( movieToCreate ), type: "POST", contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", statusCode: { 201: function (newMovie) { callback(newMovie); } } }); Notice that the type of Ajax request is a POST request. This is required to match the PostMovie() method. Notice, furthermore, that the new movie is converted into JSON using JSON.stringify(). The JSON.stringify() method takes a JavaScript object and converts it into a JSON string. Finally, notice that success is represented with a 201 status code. The HttpStatusCode.Created value returned from the PostMovie() method returns a 201 status code. Updating a Record with the ASP.NET Web API Here’s how we can modify the Movie API controller to support updating an existing record. In this case, we need to create a PUT method to handle an HTTP PUT request: public void PutMovie(Movie movieToUpdate) { if (movieToUpdate.Id == 1) { // Update the movie in the database return; } // If you can't find the movie to update throw new HttpResponseException(HttpStatusCode.NotFound); } Unlike our PostMovie() method, the PutMovie() method does not return a result. The action either updates the database or, if the movie cannot be found, returns an HTTP Status code of 404. The following HTML page illustrates how you can invoke the PutMovie() method: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Put Movie</title> </head> <body> <script type="text/javascript" src="Scripts/jquery-1.6.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> var movieToUpdate = { id: 1, title: "The Hobbit", director: "Jackson" }; updateMovie(movieToUpdate, function () { alert("Movie updated!"); }); function updateMovie(movieToUpdate, callback) { $.ajax({ url: "/api/Movie", data: JSON.stringify(movieToUpdate), type: "PUT", contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", statusCode: { 200: function () { callback(); }, 404: function () { alert("Movie not found!"); } } }); } </script> </body> </html> Deleting a Record with the ASP.NET Web API Here’s the code for deleting a movie: public HttpResponseMessage DeleteMovie(int id) { // Delete the movie from the database // Return status code return new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.NoContent); } This method simply deletes the movie (well, not really, but pretend that it does) and returns a No Content status code (204). The following page illustrates how you can invoke the DeleteMovie() action: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Delete Movie</title> </head> <body> <script type="text/javascript" src="Scripts/jquery-1.6.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> deleteMovie(1, function () { alert("Movie deleted!"); }); function deleteMovie(id, callback) { $.ajax({ url: "/api/Movie", data: JSON.stringify({id:id}), type: "DELETE", contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", statusCode: { 204: function () { callback(); } } }); } </script> </body> </html> Performing Validation How do you perform form validation when using the ASP.NET Web API? Because validation in ASP.NET MVC is driven by the Default Model Binder, and because the Web API uses the Default Model Binder, you get validation for free. Let’s modify our Movie class so it includes some of the standard validation attributes: using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations; namespace MyWebAPIApp.Models { public class Movie { public int Id { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage="Title is required!")] [StringLength(5, ErrorMessage="Title cannot be more than 5 characters!")] public string Title { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage="Director is required!")] public string Director { get; set; } } } In the code above, the Required validation attribute is used to make both the Title and Director properties required. The StringLength attribute is used to require the length of the movie title to be no more than 5 characters. Now let’s modify our PostMovie() action to validate a movie before adding the movie to the database: public HttpResponseMessage PostMovie(Movie movieToCreate) { // Validate movie if (!ModelState.IsValid) { var errors = new JsonArray(); foreach (var prop in ModelState.Values) { if (prop.Errors.Any()) { errors.Add(prop.Errors.First().ErrorMessage); } } return new HttpResponseMessage<JsonValue>(errors, HttpStatusCode.BadRequest); } // Add movieToCreate to the database and update primary key movieToCreate.Id = 23; // Build a response that contains the location of the new movie var response = new HttpResponseMessage<Movie>(movieToCreate, HttpStatusCode.Created); var relativePath = "/api/movie/" + movieToCreate.Id; response.Headers.Location = new Uri(Request.RequestUri, relativePath); return response; } If ModelState.IsValid has the value false then the errors in model state are copied to a new JSON array. Each property – such as the Title and Director property — can have multiple errors. In the code above, only the first error message is copied over. The JSON array is returned with a Bad Request status code (400 status code). The following HTML page illustrates how you can invoke our modified PostMovie() action and display any error messages: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Create Movie</title> </head> <body> <script type="text/javascript" src="Scripts/jquery-1.6.2.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> var movieToCreate = { title: "The Hobbit", director: "" }; createMovie(movieToCreate, function (newMovie) { alert("New movie created with an Id of " + newMovie.Id); }, function (errors) { var strErrors = ""; $.each(errors, function(index, err) { strErrors += "*" + err + "n"; }); alert(strErrors); } ); function createMovie(movieToCreate, success, fail) { $.ajax({ url: "/api/Movie", data: JSON.stringify(movieToCreate), type: "POST", contentType: "application/json;charset=utf-8", statusCode: { 201: function (newMovie) { success(newMovie); }, 400: function (xhr) { var errors = JSON.parse(xhr.responseText); fail(errors); } } }); } </script> </body> </html> The createMovie() function performs an Ajax request and handles either a 201 or a 400 status code from the response. If a 201 status code is returned then there were no validation errors and the new movie was created. If, on the other hand, a 400 status code is returned then there was a validation error. The validation errors are retrieved from the XmlHttpRequest responseText property. The error messages are displayed in an alert: (Please don’t use JavaScript alert dialogs to display validation errors, I just did it this way out of pure laziness) This validation code in our PostMovie() method is pretty generic. There is nothing specific about this code to the PostMovie() method. In the following video, Jon Galloway demonstrates how to create a global Validation filter which can be used with any API controller action: http://www.asp.net/web-api/overview/web-api-routing-and-actions/video-custom-validation His validation filter looks like this: using System.Json; using System.Linq; using System.Net; using System.Net.Http; using System.Web.Http.Controllers; using System.Web.Http.Filters; namespace MyWebAPIApp.Filters { public class ValidationActionFilter:ActionFilterAttribute { public override void OnActionExecuting(HttpActionContext actionContext) { var modelState = actionContext.ModelState; if (!modelState.IsValid) { dynamic errors = new JsonObject(); foreach (var key in modelState.Keys) { var state = modelState[key]; if (state.Errors.Any()) { errors[key] = state.Errors.First().ErrorMessage; } } actionContext.Response = new HttpResponseMessage<JsonValue>(errors, HttpStatusCode.BadRequest); } } } } And you can register the validation filter in the Application_Start() method in the Global.asax file like this: GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Filters.Add(new ValidationActionFilter()); After you register the Validation filter, validation error messages are returned from any API controller action method automatically when validation fails. You don’t need to add any special logic to any of your API controller actions to take advantage of the filter. Querying using OData The OData protocol is an open protocol created by Microsoft which enables you to perform queries over the web. The official website for OData is located here: http://odata.org For example, here are some of the query options which you can use with OData: · $orderby – Enables you to retrieve results in a certain order. · $top – Enables you to retrieve a certain number of results. · $skip – Enables you to skip over a certain number of results (use with $top for paging). · $filter – Enables you to filter the results returned. The ASP.NET Web API supports a subset of the OData protocol. You can use all of the query options listed above when interacting with an API controller. The only requirement is that the API controller action returns its data as IQueryable. For example, the following Movie controller has an action named GetMovies() which returns an IQueryable of movies: public IQueryable<Movie> GetMovies() { return new List<Movie> { new Movie {Id=1, Title="Star Wars", Director="Lucas"}, new Movie {Id=2, Title="King Kong", Director="Jackson"}, new Movie {Id=3, Title="Willow", Director="Lucas"}, new Movie {Id=4, Title="Shrek", Director="Smith"}, new Movie {Id=5, Title="Memento", Director="Nolan"} }.AsQueryable(); } If you enter the following URL in your browser: /api/movie?$top=2&$orderby=Title Then you will limit the movies returned to the top 2 in order of the movie Title. You will get the following results: By using the $top option in combination with the $skip option, you can enable client-side paging. For example, you can use $top and $skip to page through thousands of products, 10 products at a time. The $filter query option is very powerful. You can use this option to filter the results from a query. Here are some examples: Return every movie directed by Lucas: /api/movie?$filter=Director eq ‘Lucas’ Return every movie which has a title which starts with ‘S’: /api/movie?$filter=startswith(Title,’S') Return every movie which has an Id greater than 2: /api/movie?$filter=Id gt 2 The complete documentation for the $filter option is located here: http://www.odata.org/developers/protocols/uri-conventions#FilterSystemQueryOption Summary The goal of this blog entry was to provide you with an overview of the new ASP.NET Web API introduced with the Beta release of ASP.NET 4. In this post, I discussed how you can retrieve, insert, update, and delete data by using jQuery with the Web API. I also discussed how you can use the standard validation attributes with the Web API. You learned how to return validation error messages to the client and display the error messages using jQuery. Finally, we briefly discussed how the ASP.NET Web API supports the OData protocol. For example, you learned how to filter records returned from an API controller action by using the $filter query option. I’m excited about the new Web API. This is a feature which I expect to use with almost every ASP.NET application which I build in the future.

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  • A way of doing real-world test-driven development (and some thoughts about it)

    - by Thomas Weller
    Lately, I exchanged some arguments with Derick Bailey about some details of the red-green-refactor cycle of the Test-driven development process. In short, the issue revolved around the fact that it’s not enough to have a test red or green, but it’s also important to have it red or green for the right reasons. While for me, it’s sufficient to initially have a NotImplementedException in place, Derick argues that this is not totally correct (see these two posts: Red/Green/Refactor, For The Right Reasons and Red For The Right Reason: Fail By Assertion, Not By Anything Else). And he’s right. But on the other hand, I had no idea how his insights could have any practical consequence for my own individual interpretation of the red-green-refactor cycle (which is not really red-green-refactor, at least not in its pure sense, see the rest of this article). This made me think deeply for some days now. In the end I found out that the ‘right reason’ changes in my understanding depending on what development phase I’m in. To make this clear (at least I hope it becomes clear…) I started to describe my way of working in some detail, and then something strange happened: The scope of the article slightly shifted from focusing ‘only’ on the ‘right reason’ issue to something more general, which you might describe as something like  'Doing real-world TDD in .NET , with massive use of third-party add-ins’. This is because I feel that there is a more general statement about Test-driven development to make:  It’s high time to speak about the ‘How’ of TDD, not always only the ‘Why’. Much has been said about this, and me myself also contributed to that (see here: TDD is not about testing, it's about how we develop software). But always justifying what you do is very unsatisfying in the long run, it is inherently defensive, and it costs time and effort that could be used for better and more important things. And frankly: I’m somewhat sick and tired of repeating time and again that the test-driven way of software development is highly preferable for many reasons - I don’t want to spent my time exclusively on stating the obvious… So, again, let’s say it clearly: TDD is programming, and programming is TDD. Other ways of programming (code-first, sometimes called cowboy-coding) are exceptional and need justification. – I know that there are many people out there who will disagree with this radical statement, and I also know that it’s not a description of the real world but more of a mission statement or something. But nevertheless I’m absolutely sure that in some years this statement will be nothing but a platitude. Side note: Some parts of this post read as if I were paid by Jetbrains (the manufacturer of the ReSharper add-in – R#), but I swear I’m not. Rather I think that Visual Studio is just not production-complete without it, and I wouldn’t even consider to do professional work without having this add-in installed... The three parts of a software component Before I go into some details, I first should describe my understanding of what belongs to a software component (assembly, type, or method) during the production process (i.e. the coding phase). Roughly, I come up with the three parts shown below:   First, we need to have some initial sort of requirement. This can be a multi-page formal document, a vague idea in some programmer’s brain of what might be needed, or anything in between. In either way, there has to be some sort of requirement, be it explicit or not. – At the C# micro-level, the best way that I found to formulate that is to define interfaces for just about everything, even for internal classes, and to provide them with exhaustive xml comments. The next step then is to re-formulate these requirements in an executable form. This is specific to the respective programming language. - For C#/.NET, the Gallio framework (which includes MbUnit) in conjunction with the ReSharper add-in for Visual Studio is my toolset of choice. The third part then finally is the production code itself. It’s development is entirely driven by the requirements and their executable formulation. This is the delivery, the two other parts are ‘only’ there to make its production possible, to give it a decent quality and reliability, and to significantly reduce related costs down the maintenance timeline. So while the first two parts are not really relevant for the customer, they are very important for the developer. The customer (or in Scrum terms: the Product Owner) is not interested at all in how  the product is developed, he is only interested in the fact that it is developed as cost-effective as possible, and that it meets his functional and non-functional requirements. The rest is solely a matter of the developer’s craftsmanship, and this is what I want to talk about during the remainder of this article… An example To demonstrate my way of doing real-world TDD, I decided to show the development of a (very) simple Calculator component. The example is deliberately trivial and silly, as examples always are. I am totally aware of the fact that real life is never that simple, but I only want to show some development principles here… The requirement As already said above, I start with writing down some words on the initial requirement, and I normally use interfaces for that, even for internal classes - the typical question “intf or not” doesn’t even come to mind. I need them for my usual workflow and using them automatically produces high componentized and testable code anyway. To think about their usage in every single situation would slow down the production process unnecessarily. So this is what I begin with: namespace Calculator {     /// <summary>     /// Defines a very simple calculator component for demo purposes.     /// </summary>     public interface ICalculator     {         /// <summary>         /// Gets the result of the last successful operation.         /// </summary>         /// <value>The last result.</value>         /// <remarks>         /// Will be <see langword="null" /> before the first successful operation.         /// </remarks>         double? LastResult { get; }       } // interface ICalculator   } // namespace Calculator So, I’m not beginning with a test, but with a sort of code declaration - and still I insist on being 100% test-driven. There are three important things here: Starting this way gives me a method signature, which allows to use IntelliSense and AutoCompletion and thus eliminates the danger of typos - one of the most regular, annoying, time-consuming, and therefore expensive sources of error in the development process. In my understanding, the interface definition as a whole is more of a readable requirement document and technical documentation than anything else. So this is at least as much about documentation than about coding. The documentation must completely describe the behavior of the documented element. I normally use an IoC container or some sort of self-written provider-like model in my architecture. In either case, I need my components defined via service interfaces anyway. - I will use the LinFu IoC framework here, for no other reason as that is is very simple to use. The ‘Red’ (pt. 1)   First I create a folder for the project’s third-party libraries and put the LinFu.Core dll there. Then I set up a test project (via a Gallio project template), and add references to the Calculator project and the LinFu dll. Finally I’m ready to write the first test, which will look like the following: namespace Calculator.Test {     [TestFixture]     public class CalculatorTest     {         private readonly ServiceContainer container = new ServiceContainer();           [Test]         public void CalculatorLastResultIsInitiallyNull()         {             ICalculator calculator = container.GetService<ICalculator>();               Assert.IsNull(calculator.LastResult);         }       } // class CalculatorTest   } // namespace Calculator.Test       This is basically the executable formulation of what the interface definition states (part of). Side note: There’s one principle of TDD that is just plain wrong in my eyes: I’m talking about the Red is 'does not compile' thing. How could a compiler error ever be interpreted as a valid test outcome? I never understood that, it just makes no sense to me. (Or, in Derick’s terms: this reason is as wrong as a reason ever could be…) A compiler error tells me: Your code is incorrect, but nothing more.  Instead, the ‘Red’ part of the red-green-refactor cycle has a clearly defined meaning to me: It means that the test works as intended and fails only if its assumptions are not met for some reason. Back to our Calculator. When I execute the above test with R#, the Gallio plugin will give me this output: So this tells me that the test is red for the wrong reason: There’s no implementation that the IoC-container could load, of course. So let’s fix that. With R#, this is very easy: First, create an ICalculator - derived type:        Next, implement the interface members: And finally, move the new class to its own file: So far my ‘work’ was six mouse clicks long, the only thing that’s left to do manually here, is to add the Ioc-specific wiring-declaration and also to make the respective class non-public, which I regularly do to force my components to communicate exclusively via interfaces: This is what my Calculator class looks like as of now: using System; using LinFu.IoC.Configuration;   namespace Calculator {     [Implements(typeof(ICalculator))]     internal class Calculator : ICalculator     {         public double? LastResult         {             get             {                 throw new NotImplementedException();             }         }     } } Back to the test fixture, we have to put our IoC container to work: [TestFixture] public class CalculatorTest {     #region Fields       private readonly ServiceContainer container = new ServiceContainer();       #endregion // Fields       #region Setup/TearDown       [FixtureSetUp]     public void FixtureSetUp()     {        container.LoadFrom(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory, "Calculator.dll");     }       ... Because I have a R# live template defined for the setup/teardown method skeleton as well, the only manual coding here again is the IoC-specific stuff: two lines, not more… The ‘Red’ (pt. 2) Now, the execution of the above test gives the following result: This time, the test outcome tells me that the method under test is called. And this is the point, where Derick and I seem to have somewhat different views on the subject: Of course, the test still is worthless regarding the red/green outcome (or: it’s still red for the wrong reasons, in that it gives a false negative). But as far as I am concerned, I’m not really interested in the test outcome at this point of the red-green-refactor cycle. Rather, I only want to assert that my test actually calls the right method. If that’s the case, I will happily go on to the ‘Green’ part… The ‘Green’ Making the test green is quite trivial. Just make LastResult an automatic property:     [Implements(typeof(ICalculator))]     internal class Calculator : ICalculator     {         public double? LastResult { get; private set; }     }         One more round… Now on to something slightly more demanding (cough…). Let’s state that our Calculator exposes an Add() method:         ...   /// <summary>         /// Adds the specified operands.         /// </summary>         /// <param name="operand1">The operand1.</param>         /// <param name="operand2">The operand2.</param>         /// <returns>The result of the additon.</returns>         /// <exception cref="ArgumentException">         /// Argument <paramref name="operand1"/> is &lt; 0.<br/>         /// -- or --<br/>         /// Argument <paramref name="operand2"/> is &lt; 0.         /// </exception>         double Add(double operand1, double operand2);       } // interface ICalculator A remark: I sometimes hear the complaint that xml comment stuff like the above is hard to read. That’s certainly true, but irrelevant to me, because I read xml code comments with the CR_Documentor tool window. And using that, it looks like this:   Apart from that, I’m heavily using xml code comments (see e.g. here for a detailed guide) because there is the possibility of automating help generation with nightly CI builds (using MS Sandcastle and the Sandcastle Help File Builder), and then publishing the results to some intranet location.  This way, a team always has first class, up-to-date technical documentation at hand about the current codebase. (And, also very important for speeding up things and avoiding typos: You have IntelliSense/AutoCompletion and R# support, and the comments are subject to compiler checking…).     Back to our Calculator again: Two more R# – clicks implement the Add() skeleton:         ...           public double Add(double operand1, double operand2)         {             throw new NotImplementedException();         }       } // class Calculator As we have stated in the interface definition (which actually serves as our requirement document!), the operands are not allowed to be negative. So let’s start implementing that. Here’s the test: [Test] [Row(-0.5, 2)] public void AddThrowsOnNegativeOperands(double operand1, double operand2) {     ICalculator calculator = container.GetService<ICalculator>();       Assert.Throws<ArgumentException>(() => calculator.Add(operand1, operand2)); } As you can see, I’m using a data-driven unit test method here, mainly for these two reasons: Because I know that I will have to do the same test for the second operand in a few seconds, I save myself from implementing another test method for this purpose. Rather, I only will have to add another Row attribute to the existing one. From the test report below, you can see that the argument values are explicitly printed out. This can be a valuable documentation feature even when everything is green: One can quickly review what values were tested exactly - the complete Gallio HTML-report (as it will be produced by the Continuous Integration runs) shows these values in a quite clear format (see below for an example). Back to our Calculator development again, this is what the test result tells us at the moment: So we’re red again, because there is not yet an implementation… Next we go on and implement the necessary parameter verification to become green again, and then we do the same thing for the second operand. To make a long story short, here’s the test and the method implementation at the end of the second cycle: // in CalculatorTest:   [Test] [Row(-0.5, 2)] [Row(295, -123)] public void AddThrowsOnNegativeOperands(double operand1, double operand2) {     ICalculator calculator = container.GetService<ICalculator>();       Assert.Throws<ArgumentException>(() => calculator.Add(operand1, operand2)); }   // in Calculator: public double Add(double operand1, double operand2) {     if (operand1 < 0.0)     {         throw new ArgumentException("Value must not be negative.", "operand1");     }     if (operand2 < 0.0)     {         throw new ArgumentException("Value must not be negative.", "operand2");     }     throw new NotImplementedException(); } So far, we have sheltered our method from unwanted input, and now we can safely operate on the parameters without further caring about their validity (this is my interpretation of the Fail Fast principle, which is regarded here in more detail). Now we can think about the method’s successful outcomes. First let’s write another test for that: [Test] [Row(1, 1, 2)] public void TestAdd(double operand1, double operand2, double expectedResult) {     ICalculator calculator = container.GetService<ICalculator>();       double result = calculator.Add(operand1, operand2);       Assert.AreEqual(expectedResult, result); } Again, I’m regularly using row based test methods for these kinds of unit tests. The above shown pattern proved to be extremely helpful for my development work, I call it the Defined-Input/Expected-Output test idiom: You define your input arguments together with the expected method result. There are two major benefits from that way of testing: In the course of refining a method, it’s very likely to come up with additional test cases. In our case, we might add tests for some edge cases like ‘one of the operands is zero’ or ‘the sum of the two operands causes an overflow’, or maybe there’s an external test protocol that has to be fulfilled (e.g. an ISO norm for medical software), and this results in the need of testing against additional values. In all these scenarios we only have to add another Row attribute to the test. Remember that the argument values are written to the test report, so as a side-effect this produces valuable documentation. (This can become especially important if the fulfillment of some sort of external requirements has to be proven). So your test method might look something like that in the end: [Test, Description("Arguments: operand1, operand2, expectedResult")] [Row(1, 1, 2)] [Row(0, 999999999, 999999999)] [Row(0, 0, 0)] [Row(0, double.MaxValue, double.MaxValue)] [Row(4, double.MaxValue - 2.5, double.MaxValue)] public void TestAdd(double operand1, double operand2, double expectedResult) {     ICalculator calculator = container.GetService<ICalculator>();       double result = calculator.Add(operand1, operand2);       Assert.AreEqual(expectedResult, result); } And this will produce the following HTML report (with Gallio):   Not bad for the amount of work we invested in it, huh? - There might be scenarios where reports like that can be useful for demonstration purposes during a Scrum sprint review… The last requirement to fulfill is that the LastResult property is expected to store the result of the last operation. I don’t show this here, it’s trivial enough and brings nothing new… And finally: Refactor (for the right reasons) To demonstrate my way of going through the refactoring portion of the red-green-refactor cycle, I added another method to our Calculator component, namely Subtract(). Here’s the code (tests and production): // CalculatorTest.cs:   [Test, Description("Arguments: operand1, operand2, expectedResult")] [Row(1, 1, 0)] [Row(0, 999999999, -999999999)] [Row(0, 0, 0)] [Row(0, double.MaxValue, -double.MaxValue)] [Row(4, double.MaxValue - 2.5, -double.MaxValue)] public void TestSubtract(double operand1, double operand2, double expectedResult) {     ICalculator calculator = container.GetService<ICalculator>();       double result = calculator.Subtract(operand1, operand2);       Assert.AreEqual(expectedResult, result); }   [Test, Description("Arguments: operand1, operand2, expectedResult")] [Row(1, 1, 0)] [Row(0, 999999999, -999999999)] [Row(0, 0, 0)] [Row(0, double.MaxValue, -double.MaxValue)] [Row(4, double.MaxValue - 2.5, -double.MaxValue)] public void TestSubtractGivesExpectedLastResult(double operand1, double operand2, double expectedResult) {     ICalculator calculator = container.GetService<ICalculator>();       calculator.Subtract(operand1, operand2);       Assert.AreEqual(expectedResult, calculator.LastResult); }   ...   // ICalculator.cs: /// <summary> /// Subtracts the specified operands. /// </summary> /// <param name="operand1">The operand1.</param> /// <param name="operand2">The operand2.</param> /// <returns>The result of the subtraction.</returns> /// <exception cref="ArgumentException"> /// Argument <paramref name="operand1"/> is &lt; 0.<br/> /// -- or --<br/> /// Argument <paramref name="operand2"/> is &lt; 0. /// </exception> double Subtract(double operand1, double operand2);   ...   // Calculator.cs:   public double Subtract(double operand1, double operand2) {     if (operand1 < 0.0)     {         throw new ArgumentException("Value must not be negative.", "operand1");     }       if (operand2 < 0.0)     {         throw new ArgumentException("Value must not be negative.", "operand2");     }       return (this.LastResult = operand1 - operand2).Value; }   Obviously, the argument validation stuff that was produced during the red-green part of our cycle duplicates the code from the previous Add() method. So, to avoid code duplication and minimize the number of code lines of the production code, we do an Extract Method refactoring. One more time, this is only a matter of a few mouse clicks (and giving the new method a name) with R#: Having done that, our production code finally looks like that: using System; using LinFu.IoC.Configuration;   namespace Calculator {     [Implements(typeof(ICalculator))]     internal class Calculator : ICalculator     {         #region ICalculator           public double? LastResult { get; private set; }           public double Add(double operand1, double operand2)         {             ThrowIfOneOperandIsInvalid(operand1, operand2);               return (this.LastResult = operand1 + operand2).Value;         }           public double Subtract(double operand1, double operand2)         {             ThrowIfOneOperandIsInvalid(operand1, operand2);               return (this.LastResult = operand1 - operand2).Value;         }           #endregion // ICalculator           #region Implementation (Helper)           private static void ThrowIfOneOperandIsInvalid(double operand1, double operand2)         {             if (operand1 < 0.0)             {                 throw new ArgumentException("Value must not be negative.", "operand1");             }               if (operand2 < 0.0)             {                 throw new ArgumentException("Value must not be negative.", "operand2");             }         }           #endregion // Implementation (Helper)       } // class Calculator   } // namespace Calculator But is the above worth the effort at all? It’s obviously trivial and not very impressive. All our tests were green (for the right reasons), and refactoring the code did not change anything. It’s not immediately clear how this refactoring work adds value to the project. Derick puts it like this: STOP! Hold on a second… before you go any further and before you even think about refactoring what you just wrote to make your test pass, you need to understand something: if your done with your requirements after making the test green, you are not required to refactor the code. I know… I’m speaking heresy, here. Toss me to the wolves, I’ve gone over to the dark side! Seriously, though… if your test is passing for the right reasons, and you do not need to write any test or any more code for you class at this point, what value does refactoring add? Derick immediately answers his own question: So why should you follow the refactor portion of red/green/refactor? When you have added code that makes the system less readable, less understandable, less expressive of the domain or concern’s intentions, less architecturally sound, less DRY, etc, then you should refactor it. I couldn’t state it more precise. From my personal perspective, I’d add the following: You have to keep in mind that real-world software systems are usually quite large and there are dozens or even hundreds of occasions where micro-refactorings like the above can be applied. It’s the sum of them all that counts. And to have a good overall quality of the system (e.g. in terms of the Code Duplication Percentage metric) you have to be pedantic on the individual, seemingly trivial cases. My job regularly requires the reading and understanding of ‘foreign’ code. So code quality/readability really makes a HUGE difference for me – sometimes it can be even the difference between project success and failure… Conclusions The above described development process emerged over the years, and there were mainly two things that guided its evolution (you might call it eternal principles, personal beliefs, or anything in between): Test-driven development is the normal, natural way of writing software, code-first is exceptional. So ‘doing TDD or not’ is not a question. And good, stable code can only reliably be produced by doing TDD (yes, I know: many will strongly disagree here again, but I’ve never seen high-quality code – and high-quality code is code that stood the test of time and causes low maintenance costs – that was produced code-first…) It’s the production code that pays our bills in the end. (Though I have seen customers these days who demand an acceptance test battery as part of the final delivery. Things seem to go into the right direction…). The test code serves ‘only’ to make the production code work. But it’s the number of delivered features which solely counts at the end of the day - no matter how much test code you wrote or how good it is. With these two things in mind, I tried to optimize my coding process for coding speed – or, in business terms: productivity - without sacrificing the principles of TDD (more than I’d do either way…).  As a result, I consider a ratio of about 3-5/1 for test code vs. production code as normal and desirable. In other words: roughly 60-80% of my code is test code (This might sound heavy, but that is mainly due to the fact that software development standards only begin to evolve. The entire software development profession is very young, historically seen; only at the very beginning, and there are no viable standards yet. If you think about software development as a kind of casting process, where the test code is the mold and the resulting production code is the final product, then the above ratio sounds no longer extraordinary…) Although the above might look like very much unnecessary work at first sight, it’s not. With the aid of the mentioned add-ins, doing all the above is a matter of minutes, sometimes seconds (while writing this post took hours and days…). The most important thing is to have the right tools at hand. Slow developer machines or the lack of a tool or something like that - for ‘saving’ a few 100 bucks -  is just not acceptable and a very bad decision in business terms (though I quite some times have seen and heard that…). Production of high-quality products needs the usage of high-quality tools. This is a platitude that every craftsman knows… The here described round-trip will take me about five to ten minutes in my real-world development practice. I guess it’s about 30% more time compared to developing the ‘traditional’ (code-first) way. But the so manufactured ‘product’ is of much higher quality and massively reduces maintenance costs, which is by far the single biggest cost factor, as I showed in this previous post: It's the maintenance, stupid! (or: Something is rotten in developerland.). In the end, this is a highly cost-effective way of software development… But on the other hand, there clearly is a trade-off here: coding speed vs. code quality/later maintenance costs. The here described development method might be a perfect fit for the overwhelming majority of software projects, but there certainly are some scenarios where it’s not - e.g. if time-to-market is crucial for a software project. So this is a business decision in the end. It’s just that you have to know what you’re doing and what consequences this might have… Some last words First, I’d like to thank Derick Bailey again. His two aforementioned posts (which I strongly recommend for reading) inspired me to think deeply about my own personal way of doing TDD and to clarify my thoughts about it. I wouldn’t have done that without this inspiration. I really enjoy that kind of discussions… I agree with him in all respects. But I don’t know (yet?) how to bring his insights into the described production process without slowing things down. The above described method proved to be very “good enough” in my practical experience. But of course, I’m open to suggestions here… My rationale for now is: If the test is initially red during the red-green-refactor cycle, the ‘right reason’ is: it actually calls the right method, but this method is not yet operational. Later on, when the cycle is finished and the tests become part of the regular, automated Continuous Integration process, ‘red’ certainly must occur for the ‘right reason’: in this phase, ‘red’ MUST mean nothing but an unfulfilled assertion - Fail By Assertion, Not By Anything Else!

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  • Silverlight for Windows Embedded tutorial (step 4)

    - by Valter Minute
    I’m back with my Silverlight for Windows Embedded tutorial. Sorry for the long delay between step 3 and step 4, the MVP summit and some work related issue prevented me from working on the tutorial during the last weeks. In our first,  second and third tutorial steps we implemented some very simple applications, just to understand the basic structure of a Silverlight for Windows Embedded application, learn how to handle events and how to operate on images. In this third step our sample application will be slightly more complicated, to introduce two new topics: list boxes and custom control. We will also learn how to create controls at runtime. I choose to explain those topics together and provide a sample a bit more complicated than usual just to start to give the feeling of how a “real” Silverlight for Windows Embedded application is organized. As usual we can start using Expression Blend to define our main page. In this case we will have a listbox and a textblock. Here’s the XAML code: <UserControl xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" x:Class="ListDemo.Page" Width="640" Height="480" x:Name="ListPage" xmlns:ListDemo="clr-namespace:ListDemo">   <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White"> <ListBox Margin="19,57,19,66" x:Name="FileList" SelectionChanged="Filelist_SelectionChanged"/> <TextBlock Height="35" Margin="19,8,19,0" VerticalAlignment="Top" TextWrapping="Wrap" x:Name="CurrentDir" Text="TextBlock" FontSize="20"/> </Grid> </UserControl> In our listbox we will load a list of directories, starting from the filesystem root (there are no drives in Windows CE, the filesystem has a single root named “\”). When the user clicks on an item inside the list, the corresponding directory path will be displayed in the TextBlock object and the subdirectories of the selected branch will be shown inside the list. As you can see we declared an event handler for the SelectionChanged event of our listbox. We also used a different font size for the TextBlock, to make it more readable. XAML and Expression Blend allow you to customize your UI pretty heavily, experiment with the tools and discover how you can completely change the aspect of your application without changing a single line of code! Inside our ListBox we want to insert the directory presenting a nice icon and their name, just like you are used to see them inside Windows 7 file explorer, for example. To get this we will define a user control. This is a custom object that will behave like “regular” Silverlight for Windows Embedded objects inside our application. First of all we have to define the look of our custom control, named DirectoryItem, using XAML: <UserControl xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" mc:Ignorable="d" x:Class="ListDemo.DirectoryItem" Width="500" Height="80">   <StackPanel x:Name="LayoutRoot" Orientation="Horizontal"> <Canvas Width="31.6667" Height="45.9583" Margin="10,10,10,10" RenderTransformOrigin="0.5,0.5"> <Canvas.RenderTransform> <TransformGroup> <ScaleTransform/> <SkewTransform/> <RotateTransform Angle="-31.27"/> <TranslateTransform/> </TransformGroup> </Canvas.RenderTransform> <Rectangle Width="31.6667" Height="45.8414" Canvas.Left="0" Canvas.Top="0.116943" Stretch="Fill"> <Rectangle.Fill> <LinearGradientBrush StartPoint="0.142631,0.75344" EndPoint="1.01886,0.75344"> <LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform> <TransformGroup> <SkewTransform CenterX="0.142631" CenterY="0.75344" AngleX="19.3128" AngleY="0"/> <RotateTransform CenterX="0.142631" CenterY="0.75344" Angle="-35.3436"/> </TransformGroup> </LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform> <LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops> <GradientStop Color="#FF7B6802" Offset="0"/> <GradientStop Color="#FFF3D42C" Offset="1"/> </LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops> </LinearGradientBrush> </Rectangle.Fill> </Rectangle> <Rectangle Width="29.8441" Height="43.1517" Canvas.Left="0.569519" Canvas.Top="1.05249" Stretch="Fill"> <Rectangle.Fill> <LinearGradientBrush StartPoint="0.142632,0.753441" EndPoint="1.01886,0.753441"> <LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform> <TransformGroup> <SkewTransform CenterX="0.142632" CenterY="0.753441" AngleX="19.3127" AngleY="0"/> <RotateTransform CenterX="0.142632" CenterY="0.753441" Angle="-35.3437"/> </TransformGroup> </LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform> <LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops> <GradientStop Color="#FFCDCDCD" Offset="0.0833333"/> <GradientStop Color="#FFFFFFFF" Offset="1"/> </LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops> </LinearGradientBrush> </Rectangle.Fill> </Rectangle> <Rectangle Width="29.8441" Height="43.1517" Canvas.Left="0.455627" Canvas.Top="2.28036" Stretch="Fill"> <Rectangle.Fill> <LinearGradientBrush StartPoint="0.142631,0.75344" EndPoint="1.01886,0.75344"> <LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform> <TransformGroup> <SkewTransform CenterX="0.142631" CenterY="0.75344" AngleX="19.3128" AngleY="0"/> <RotateTransform CenterX="0.142631" CenterY="0.75344" Angle="-35.3436"/> </TransformGroup> </LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform> <LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops> <GradientStop Color="#FFCDCDCD" Offset="0.0833333"/> <GradientStop Color="#FFFFFFFF" Offset="1"/> </LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops> </LinearGradientBrush> </Rectangle.Fill> </Rectangle> <Rectangle Width="29.8441" Height="43.1517" Canvas.Left="0.455627" Canvas.Top="1.34485" Stretch="Fill"> <Rectangle.Fill> <LinearGradientBrush StartPoint="0.142631,0.75344" EndPoint="1.01886,0.75344"> <LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform> <TransformGroup> <SkewTransform CenterX="0.142631" CenterY="0.75344" AngleX="19.3128" AngleY="0"/> <RotateTransform CenterX="0.142631" CenterY="0.75344" Angle="-35.3436"/> </TransformGroup> </LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform> <LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops> <GradientStop Color="#FFCDCDCD" Offset="0.0833333"/> <GradientStop Color="#FFFFFFFF" Offset="1"/> </LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops> </LinearGradientBrush> </Rectangle.Fill> </Rectangle> <Rectangle Width="26.4269" Height="45.8414" Canvas.Left="0.227798" Canvas.Top="0" Stretch="Fill"> <Rectangle.Fill> <LinearGradientBrush StartPoint="0.142631,0.75344" EndPoint="1.01886,0.75344"> <LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform> <TransformGroup> <SkewTransform CenterX="0.142631" CenterY="0.75344" AngleX="19.3127" AngleY="0"/> <RotateTransform CenterX="0.142631" CenterY="0.75344" Angle="-35.3436"/> </TransformGroup> </LinearGradientBrush.RelativeTransform> <LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops> <GradientStop Color="#FF7B6802" Offset="0"/> <GradientStop Color="#FFF3D42C" Offset="1"/> </LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops> </LinearGradientBrush> </Rectangle.Fill> </Rectangle> <Rectangle Width="1.25301" Height="45.8414" Canvas.Left="1.70862" Canvas.Top="0.116943" Stretch="Fill" Fill="#FFEBFF07"/> </Canvas> <TextBlock Height="80" x:Name="Name" Width="448" TextWrapping="Wrap" VerticalAlignment="Center" FontSize="24" Text="Directory"/> </StackPanel> </UserControl> As you can see, this XAML contains many graphic elements. Those elements are used to design the folder icon. The original drawing has been designed in Expression Design and then exported as XAML. In Silverlight for Windows Embedded you can use vector images. This means that your images will look good even when scaled or rotated. In our DirectoryItem custom control we have a TextBlock named Name, that will be used to display….(suspense)…. the directory name (I’m too lazy to invent fancy names for controls, and using “boring” intuitive names will make code more readable, I hope!). Now that we have some XAML code, we may execute XAML2CPP to generate part of the aplication code for us. We should then add references to our XAML2CPP generated resource file and include in our code and add a reference to the XAML runtime library to our sources file (you can follow the instruction of the first tutorial step to do that), To generate the code used in this tutorial you need XAML2CPP ver 1.0.1.0, that is downloadable here: http://geekswithblogs.net/WindowsEmbeddedCookbook/archive/2010/03/08/xaml2cpp-1.0.1.0.aspx We can now create our usual simple Win32 application inside Platform Builder, using the same step described in the first chapter of this tutorial (http://geekswithblogs.net/WindowsEmbeddedCookbook/archive/2009/10/01/silverlight-for-embedded-tutorial.aspx). We can declare a class for our main page, deriving it from the template that XAML2CPP generated for us: class ListPage : public TListPage<ListPage> { ... } We will see the ListPage class code in a short time, but before we will see the code of our DirectoryItem user control. This object will be used to populate our list, one item for each directory. To declare a user control things are a bit more complicated (but also in this case XAML2CPP will write most of the “boilerplate” code for use. To interact with a user control you should declare an interface. An interface defines the functions of a user control that can be called inside the application code. Our custom control is currently quite simple and we just need some member functions to store and retrieve a full pathname inside our control. The control will display just the last part of the path inside the control. An interface is declared as a C++ class that has only abstract virtual members. It should also have an UUID associated with it. UUID means Universal Unique IDentifier and it’s a 128 bit number that will identify our interface without the need of specifying its fully qualified name. UUIDs are used to identify COM interfaces and, as we discovered in chapter one, Silverlight for Windows Embedded is based on COM or, at least, provides a COM-like Application Programming Interface (API). Here’s the declaration of the DirectoryItem interface: class __declspec(novtable,uuid("{D38C66E5-2725-4111-B422-D75B32AA8702}")) IDirectoryItem : public IXRCustomUserControl { public:   virtual HRESULT SetFullPath(BSTR fullpath) = 0; virtual HRESULT GetFullPath(BSTR* retval) = 0; }; The interface is derived from IXRCustomControl, this will allow us to add our object to a XAML tree. It declares the two functions needed to set and get the full path, but don’t implement them. Implementation will be done inside the control class. The interface only defines the functions of our control class that are accessible from the outside. It’s a sort of “contract” between our control and the applications that will use it. We must support what’s inside the contract and the application code should know nothing else about our own control. To reference our interface we will use the UUID, to make code more readable we can declare a #define in this way: #define IID_IDirectoryItem __uuidof(IDirectoryItem) Silverlight for Windows Embedded objects (like COM objects) use a reference counting mechanism to handle object destruction. Every time you store a pointer to an object you should call its AddRef function and every time you no longer need that pointer you should call Release. The object keeps an internal counter, incremented for each AddRef and decremented on Release. When the counter reaches 0, the object is destroyed. Managing reference counting in our code can be quite complicated and, since we are lazy (I am, at least!), we will use a great feature of Silverlight for Windows Embedded: smart pointers.A smart pointer can be connected to a Silverlight for Windows Embedded object and manages its reference counting. To declare a smart pointer we must use the XRPtr template: typedef XRPtr<IDirectoryItem> IDirectoryItemPtr; Now that we have defined our interface, it’s time to implement our user control class. XAML2CPP has implemented a class for us, and we have only to derive our class from it, defining the main class and interface of our new custom control: class DirectoryItem : public DirectoryItemUserControlRegister<DirectoryItem,IDirectoryItem> { ... } XAML2CPP has generated some code for us to support the user control, we don’t have to mind too much about that code, since it will be generated (or written by hand, if you like) always in the same way, for every user control. But knowing how does this works “under the hood” is still useful to understand the architecture of Silverlight for Windows Embedded. Our base class declaration is a bit more complex than the one we used for a simple page in the previous chapters: template <class A,class B> class DirectoryItemUserControlRegister : public XRCustomUserControlImpl<A,B>,public TDirectoryItem<A,XAML2CPPUserControl> { ... } This class derives from the XAML2CPP generated template class, like the ListPage class, but it uses XAML2CPPUserControl for the implementation of some features. This class shares the same ancestor of XAML2CPPPage (base class for “regular” XAML pages), XAML2CPPBase, implements binding of member variables and event handlers but, instead of loading and creating its own XAML tree, it attaches to an existing one. The XAML tree (and UI) of our custom control is created and loaded by the XRCustomUserControlImpl class. This class is part of the Silverlight for Windows Embedded framework and implements most of the functions needed to build-up a custom control in Silverlight (the guys that developed Silverlight for Windows Embedded seem to care about lazy programmers!). We have just to initialize it, providing our class (DirectoryItem) and interface (IDirectoryItem). Our user control class has also a static member: protected:   static HINSTANCE hInstance; This is used to store the HINSTANCE of the modules that contain our user control class. I don’t like this implementation, but I can’t find a better one, so if somebody has good ideas about how to handle the HINSTANCE object, I’ll be happy to hear suggestions! It also implements two static members required by XRCustomUserControlImpl. The first one is used to load the XAML UI of our custom control: static HRESULT GetXamlSource(XRXamlSource* pXamlSource) { pXamlSource->SetResource(hInstance,TEXT("XAML"),IDR_XAML_DirectoryItem); return S_OK; }   It initializes a XRXamlSource object, connecting it to the XAML resource that XAML2CPP has included in our resource script. The other method is used to register our custom control, allowing Silverlight for Windows Embedded to create it when it load some XAML or when an application creates a new control at runtime (more about this later): static HRESULT Register() { return XRCustomUserControlImpl<A,B>::Register(__uuidof(B), L"DirectoryItem", L"clr-namespace:DirectoryItemNamespace"); } To register our control we should provide its interface UUID, the name of the corresponding element in the XAML tree and its current namespace (namespaces compatible with Silverlight must use the “clr-namespace” prefix. We may also register additional properties for our objects, allowing them to be loaded and saved inside XAML. In this case we have no permanent properties and the Register method will just register our control. An additional static method is implemented to allow easy registration of our custom control inside our application WinMain function: static HRESULT RegisterUserControl(HINSTANCE hInstance) { DirectoryItemUserControlRegister::hInstance=hInstance; return DirectoryItemUserControlRegister<A,B>::Register(); } Now our control is registered and we will be able to create it using the Silverlight for Windows Embedded runtime functions. But we need to bind our members and event handlers to have them available like we are used to do for other XAML2CPP generated objects. To bind events and members we need to implement the On_Loaded function: virtual HRESULT OnLoaded(__in IXRDependencyObject* pRoot) { HRESULT retcode; IXRApplicationPtr app; if (FAILED(retcode=GetXRApplicationInstance(&app))) return retcode; return ((A*)this)->Init(pRoot,hInstance,app); } This function will call the XAML2CPPUserControl::Init member that will connect the “root” member with the XAML sub tree that has been created for our control and then calls BindObjects and BindEvents to bind members and events to our code. Now we can go back to our application code (the code that you’ll have to actually write) to see the contents of our DirectoryItem class: class DirectoryItem : public DirectoryItemUserControlRegister<DirectoryItem,IDirectoryItem> { protected:   WCHAR fullpath[_MAX_PATH+1];   public:   DirectoryItem() { *fullpath=0; }   virtual HRESULT SetFullPath(BSTR fullpath) { wcscpy_s(this->fullpath,fullpath);   WCHAR* p=fullpath;   for(WCHAR*q=wcsstr(p,L"\\");q;p=q+1,q=wcsstr(p,L"\\")) ;   Name->SetText(p); return S_OK; }   virtual HRESULT GetFullPath(BSTR* retval) { *retval=SysAllocString(fullpath); return S_OK; } }; It’s pretty easy and contains a fullpath member (used to store that path of the directory connected with the user control) and the implementation of the two interface members that can be used to set and retrieve the path. The SetFullPath member parses the full path and displays just the last branch directory name inside the “Name” TextBlock object. As you can see, implementing a user control in Silverlight for Windows Embedded is not too complex and using XAML also for the UI of the control allows us to re-use the same mechanisms that we learnt and used in the previous steps of our tutorial. Now let’s see how the main page is managed by the ListPage class. class ListPage : public TListPage<ListPage> { protected:   // current path TCHAR curpath[_MAX_PATH+1]; It has a member named “curpath” that is used to store the current directory. It’s initialized inside the constructor: ListPage() { *curpath=0; } And it’s value is displayed inside the “CurrentDir” TextBlock inside the initialization function: virtual HRESULT Init(HINSTANCE hInstance,IXRApplication* app) { HRESULT retcode;   if (FAILED(retcode=TListPage<ListPage>::Init(hInstance,app))) return retcode;   CurrentDir->SetText(L"\\"); return S_OK; } The FillFileList function is used to enumerate subdirectories of the current dir and add entries for each one inside the list box that fills most of the client area of our main page: HRESULT FillFileList() { HRESULT retcode; IXRItemCollectionPtr items; IXRApplicationPtr app;   if (FAILED(retcode=GetXRApplicationInstance(&app))) return retcode; // retrieves the items contained in the listbox if (FAILED(retcode=FileList->GetItems(&items))) return retcode;   // clears the list if (FAILED(retcode=items->Clear())) return retcode;   // enumerates files and directory in the current path WCHAR filemask[_MAX_PATH+1];   wcscpy_s(filemask,curpath); wcscat_s(filemask,L"\\*.*");   WIN32_FIND_DATA finddata; HANDLE findhandle;   findhandle=FindFirstFile(filemask,&finddata);   // the directory is empty? if (findhandle==INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE) return S_OK;   do { if (finddata.dwFileAttributes&=FILE_ATTRIBUTE_DIRECTORY) { IXRListBoxItemPtr listboxitem;   // add a new item to the listbox if (FAILED(retcode=app->CreateObject(IID_IXRListBoxItem,&listboxitem))) { FindClose(findhandle); return retcode; }   if (FAILED(retcode=items->Add(listboxitem,NULL))) { FindClose(findhandle); return retcode; }   IDirectoryItemPtr directoryitem;   if (FAILED(retcode=app->CreateObject(IID_IDirectoryItem,&directoryitem))) { FindClose(findhandle); return retcode; }   WCHAR fullpath[_MAX_PATH+1];   wcscpy_s(fullpath,curpath); wcscat_s(fullpath,L"\\"); wcscat_s(fullpath,finddata.cFileName);   if (FAILED(retcode=directoryitem->SetFullPath(fullpath))) { FindClose(findhandle); return retcode; }   XAML2CPPXRValue value((IXRDependencyObject*)directoryitem);   if (FAILED(retcode=listboxitem->SetContent(&value))) { FindClose(findhandle); return retcode; } } } while (FindNextFile(findhandle,&finddata));   FindClose(findhandle); return S_OK; } This functions retrieve a pointer to the collection of the items contained in the directory listbox. The IXRItemCollection interface is used by listboxes and comboboxes and allow you to clear the list (using Clear(), as our function does at the beginning) and change its contents by adding and removing elements. This function uses the FindFirstFile/FindNextFile functions to enumerate all the objects inside our current directory and for each subdirectory creates a IXRListBoxItem object. You can insert any kind of control inside a list box, you don’t need a IXRListBoxItem, but using it will allow you to handle the selected state of an item, highlighting it inside the list. The function creates a list box item using the CreateObject function of XRApplication. The same function is then used to create an instance of our custom control. The function returns a pointer to the control IDirectoryItem interface and we can use it to store the directory full path inside the object and add it as content of the IXRListBox item object, adding it to the listbox contents. The listbox generates an event (SelectionChanged) each time the user clicks on one of the items contained in the listbox. We implement an event handler for that event and use it to change our current directory and repopulate the listbox. The current directory full path will be displayed in the TextBlock: HRESULT Filelist_SelectionChanged(IXRDependencyObject* source,XRSelectionChangedEventArgs* args) { HRESULT retcode;   IXRListBoxItemPtr listboxitem;   if (!args->pAddedItem) return S_OK;   if (FAILED(retcode=args->pAddedItem->QueryInterface(IID_IXRListBoxItem,(void**)&listboxitem))) return retcode;   XRValue content; if (FAILED(retcode=listboxitem->GetContent(&content))) return retcode;   if (content.vType!=VTYPE_OBJECT) return E_FAIL;   IDirectoryItemPtr directoryitem;   if (FAILED(retcode=content.pObjectVal->QueryInterface(IID_IDirectoryItem,(void**)&directoryitem))) return retcode;   content.pObjectVal->Release(); content.pObjectVal=NULL;   BSTR fullpath=NULL;   if (FAILED(retcode=directoryitem->GetFullPath(&fullpath))) return retcode;   CurrentDir->SetText(fullpath);   wcscpy_s(curpath,fullpath); FillFileList(); SysFreeString(fullpath);     return S_OK; } }; The function uses the pAddedItem member of the XRSelectionChangedEventArgs object to retrieve the currently selected item, converts it to a IXRListBoxItem interface using QueryInterface, and then retrives its contents (IDirectoryItem object). Using the GetFullPath method we can get the full path of our selected directory and assing it to the curdir member. A call to FillFileList will update the listbox contents, displaying the list of subdirectories of the selected folder. To build our sample we just need to add code to our WinMain function: int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance, LPTSTR lpCmdLine, int nCmdShow) { if (!XamlRuntimeInitialize()) return -1;   HRESULT retcode;   IXRApplicationPtr app; if (FAILED(retcode=GetXRApplicationInstance(&app))) return -1;   if (FAILED(retcode=DirectoryItem::RegisterUserControl(hInstance))) return retcode;   ListPage page;   if (FAILED(page.Init(hInstance,app))) return -1;   page.FillFileList();   UINT exitcode;   if (FAILED(page.GetVisualHost()->StartDialog(&exitcode))) return -1;   return 0; } This code is very similar to the one of the WinMains of our previous samples. The main differences are that we register our custom control (you should do that as soon as you have initialized the XAML runtime) and call FillFileList after the initialization of our ListPage object to load the contents of the root folder of our device inside the listbox. As usual you can download the full sample source code from here: http://cid-9b7b0aefe3514dc5.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/ListBoxTest.zip

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  • An Xml Serializable PropertyBag Dictionary Class for .NET

    - by Rick Strahl
    I don't know about you but I frequently need property bags in my applications to store and possibly cache arbitrary data. Dictionary<T,V> works well for this although I always seem to be hunting for a more specific generic type that provides a string key based dictionary. There's string dictionary, but it only works with strings. There's Hashset<T> but it uses the actual values as keys. In most key value pair situations for me string is key value to work off. Dictionary<T,V> works well enough, but there are some issues with serialization of dictionaries in .NET. The .NET framework doesn't do well serializing IDictionary objects out of the box. The XmlSerializer doesn't support serialization of IDictionary via it's default serialization, and while the DataContractSerializer does support IDictionary serialization it produces some pretty atrocious XML. What doesn't work? First off Dictionary serialization with the Xml Serializer doesn't work so the following fails: [TestMethod] public void DictionaryXmlSerializerTest() { var bag = new Dictionary<string, object>(); bag.Add("key", "Value"); bag.Add("Key2", 100.10M); bag.Add("Key3", Guid.NewGuid()); bag.Add("Key4", DateTime.Now); bag.Add("Key5", true); bag.Add("Key7", new byte[3] { 42, 45, 66 }); TestContext.WriteLine(this.ToXml(bag)); } public string ToXml(object obj) { if (obj == null) return null; StringWriter sw = new StringWriter(); XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(obj.GetType()); ser.Serialize(sw, obj); return sw.ToString(); } The error you get with this is: System.NotSupportedException: The type System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary`2[[System.String, mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089],[System.Object, mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089]] is not supported because it implements IDictionary. Got it! BTW, the same is true with binary serialization. Running the same code above against the DataContractSerializer does work: [TestMethod] public void DictionaryDataContextSerializerTest() { var bag = new Dictionary<string, object>(); bag.Add("key", "Value"); bag.Add("Key2", 100.10M); bag.Add("Key3", Guid.NewGuid()); bag.Add("Key4", DateTime.Now); bag.Add("Key5", true); bag.Add("Key7", new byte[3] { 42, 45, 66 }); TestContext.WriteLine(this.ToXmlDcs(bag)); } public string ToXmlDcs(object value, bool throwExceptions = false) { var ser = new DataContractSerializer(value.GetType(), null, int.MaxValue, true, false, null); MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(); ser.WriteObject(ms, value); return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(ms.ToArray(), 0, (int)ms.Length); } This DOES work but produces some pretty heinous XML (formatted with line breaks and indentation here): <ArrayOfKeyValueOfstringanyType xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/Arrays" xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>key</Key> <Value i:type="a:string" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">Value</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key2</Key> <Value i:type="a:decimal" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">100.10</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key3</Key> <Value i:type="a:guid" xmlns:a="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/">2cd46d2a-a636-4af4-979b-e834d39b6d37</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key4</Key> <Value i:type="a:dateTime" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">2011-09-19T17:17:05.4406999-07:00</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key5</Key> <Value i:type="a:boolean" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">true</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> <KeyValueOfstringanyType> <Key>Key7</Key> <Value i:type="a:base64Binary" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">Ki1C</Value> </KeyValueOfstringanyType> </ArrayOfKeyValueOfstringanyType> Ouch! That seriously hurts the eye! :-) Worse though it's extremely verbose with all those repetitive namespace declarations. It's good to know that it works in a pinch, but for a human readable/editable solution or something lightweight to store in a database it's not quite ideal. Why should I care? As a little background, in one of my applications I have a need for a flexible property bag that is used on a free form database field on an otherwise static entity. Basically what I have is a standard database record to which arbitrary properties can be added in an XML based string field. I intend to expose those arbitrary properties as a collection from field data stored in XML. The concept is pretty simple: When loading write the data to the collection, when the data is saved serialize the data into an XML string and store it into the database. When reading the data pick up the XML and if the collection on the entity is accessed automatically deserialize the XML into the Dictionary. (I'll talk more about this in another post). While the DataContext Serializer would work, it's verbosity is problematic both for size of the generated XML strings and the fact that users can manually edit this XML based property data in an advanced mode. A clean(er) layout certainly would be preferable and more user friendly. Custom XMLSerialization with a PropertyBag Class So… after a bunch of experimentation with different serialization formats I decided to create a custom PropertyBag class that provides for a serializable Dictionary. It's basically a custom Dictionary<TType,TValue> implementation with the keys always set as string keys. The result are PropertyBag<TValue> and PropertyBag (which defaults to the object type for values). The PropertyBag<TType> and PropertyBag classes provide these features: Subclassed from Dictionary<T,V> Implements IXmlSerializable with a cleanish XML format ToXml() and FromXml() methods to export and import to and from XML strings Static CreateFromXml() method to create an instance It's simple enough as it's merely a Dictionary<string,object> subclass but that supports serialization to a - what I think at least - cleaner XML format. The class is super simple to use: [TestMethod] public void PropertyBagTwoWayObjectSerializationTest() { var bag = new PropertyBag(); bag.Add("key", "Value"); bag.Add("Key2", 100.10M); bag.Add("Key3", Guid.NewGuid()); bag.Add("Key4", DateTime.Now); bag.Add("Key5", true); bag.Add("Key7", new byte[3] { 42,45,66 } ); bag.Add("Key8", null); bag.Add("Key9", new ComplexObject() { Name = "Rick", Entered = DateTime.Now, Count = 10 }); string xml = bag.ToXml(); TestContext.WriteLine(bag.ToXml()); bag.Clear(); bag.FromXml(xml); Assert.IsTrue(bag["key"] as string == "Value"); Assert.IsInstanceOfType( bag["Key3"], typeof(Guid)); Assert.IsNull(bag["Key8"]); //Assert.IsNull(bag["Key10"]); Assert.IsInstanceOfType(bag["Key9"], typeof(ComplexObject)); } This uses the PropertyBag class which uses a PropertyBag<string,object> - which means it returns untyped values of type object. I suspect for me this will be the most common scenario as I'd want to store arbitrary values in the PropertyBag rather than one specific type. The same code with a strongly typed PropertyBag<decimal> looks like this: [TestMethod] public void PropertyBagTwoWayValueTypeSerializationTest() { var bag = new PropertyBag<decimal>(); bag.Add("key", 10M); bag.Add("Key1", 100.10M); bag.Add("Key2", 200.10M); bag.Add("Key3", 300.10M); string xml = bag.ToXml(); TestContext.WriteLine(bag.ToXml()); bag.Clear(); bag.FromXml(xml); Assert.IsTrue(bag.Get("Key1") == 100.10M); Assert.IsTrue(bag.Get("Key3") == 300.10M); } and produces typed results of type decimal. The types can be either value or reference types the combination of which actually proved to be a little more tricky than anticipated due to null and specific string value checks required - getting the generic typing right required use of default(T) and Convert.ChangeType() to trick the compiler into playing nice. Of course the whole raison d'etre for this class is the XML serialization. You can see in the code above that we're doing a .ToXml() and .FromXml() to serialize to and from string. The XML produced for the first example looks like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <properties> <item> <key>key</key> <value>Value</value> </item> <item> <key>Key2</key> <value type="decimal">100.10</value> </item> <item> <key>Key3</key> <value type="___System.Guid"> <guid>f7a92032-0c6d-4e9d-9950-b15ff7cd207d</guid> </value> </item> <item> <key>Key4</key> <value type="datetime">2011-09-26T17:45:58.5789578-10:00</value> </item> <item> <key>Key5</key> <value type="boolean">true</value> </item> <item> <key>Key7</key> <value type="base64Binary">Ki1C</value> </item> <item> <key>Key8</key> <value type="nil" /> </item> <item> <key>Key9</key> <value type="___Westwind.Tools.Tests.PropertyBagTest+ComplexObject"> <ComplexObject> <Name>Rick</Name> <Entered>2011-09-26T17:45:58.5789578-10:00</Entered> <Count>10</Count> </ComplexObject> </value> </item> </properties>   The format is a bit cleaner than the DataContractSerializer. Each item is serialized into <key> <value> pairs. If the value is a string no type information is written. Since string tends to be the most common type this saves space and serialization processing. All other types are attributed. Simple types are mapped to XML types so things like decimal, datetime, boolean and base64Binary are encoded using their Xml type values. All other types are embedded with a hokey format that describes the .NET type preceded by a three underscores and then are encoded using the XmlSerializer. You can see this best above in the ComplexObject encoding. For custom types this isn't pretty either, but it's more concise than the DCS and it works as long as you're serializing back and forth between .NET clients at least. The XML generated from the second example that uses PropertyBag<decimal> looks like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <properties> <item> <key>key</key> <value type="decimal">10</value> </item> <item> <key>Key1</key> <value type="decimal">100.10</value> </item> <item> <key>Key2</key> <value type="decimal">200.10</value> </item> <item> <key>Key3</key> <value type="decimal">300.10</value> </item> </properties>   How does it work As I mentioned there's nothing fancy about this solution - it's little more than a subclass of Dictionary<T,V> that implements custom Xml Serialization and a couple of helper methods that facilitate getting the XML in and out of the class more easily. But it's proven very handy for a number of projects for me where dynamic data storage is required. Here's the code: /// <summary> /// Creates a serializable string/object dictionary that is XML serializable /// Encodes keys as element names and values as simple values with a type /// attribute that contains an XML type name. Complex names encode the type /// name with type='___namespace.classname' format followed by a standard xml /// serialized format. The latter serialization can be slow so it's not recommended /// to pass complex types if performance is critical. /// </summary> [XmlRoot("properties")] public class PropertyBag : PropertyBag<object> { /// <summary> /// Creates an instance of a propertybag from an Xml string /// </summary> /// <param name="xml">Serialize</param> /// <returns></returns> public static PropertyBag CreateFromXml(string xml) { var bag = new PropertyBag(); bag.FromXml(xml); return bag; } } /// <summary> /// Creates a serializable string for generic types that is XML serializable. /// /// Encodes keys as element names and values as simple values with a type /// attribute that contains an XML type name. Complex names encode the type /// name with type='___namespace.classname' format followed by a standard xml /// serialized format. The latter serialization can be slow so it's not recommended /// to pass complex types if performance is critical. /// </summary> /// <typeparam name="TValue">Must be a reference type. For value types use type object</typeparam> [XmlRoot("properties")] public class PropertyBag<TValue> : Dictionary<string, TValue>, IXmlSerializable { /// <summary> /// Not implemented - this means no schema information is passed /// so this won't work with ASMX/WCF services. /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchema GetSchema() { return null; } /// <summary> /// Serializes the dictionary to XML. Keys are /// serialized to element names and values as /// element values. An xml type attribute is embedded /// for each serialized element - a .NET type /// element is embedded for each complex type and /// prefixed with three underscores. /// </summary> /// <param name="writer"></param> public void WriteXml(System.Xml.XmlWriter writer) { foreach (string key in this.Keys) { TValue value = this[key]; Type type = null; if (value != null) type = value.GetType(); writer.WriteStartElement("item"); writer.WriteStartElement("key"); writer.WriteString(key as string); writer.WriteEndElement(); writer.WriteStartElement("value"); string xmlType = XmlUtils.MapTypeToXmlType(type); bool isCustom = false; // Type information attribute if not string if (value == null) { writer.WriteAttributeString("type", "nil"); } else if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(xmlType)) { if (xmlType != "string") { writer.WriteStartAttribute("type"); writer.WriteString(xmlType); writer.WriteEndAttribute(); } } else { isCustom = true; xmlType = "___" + value.GetType().FullName; writer.WriteStartAttribute("type"); writer.WriteString(xmlType); writer.WriteEndAttribute(); } // Actual deserialization if (!isCustom) { if (value != null) writer.WriteValue(value); } else { XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(value.GetType()); ser.Serialize(writer, value); } writer.WriteEndElement(); // value writer.WriteEndElement(); // item } } /// <summary> /// Reads the custom serialized format /// </summary> /// <param name="reader"></param> public void ReadXml(System.Xml.XmlReader reader) { this.Clear(); while (reader.Read()) { if (reader.NodeType == XmlNodeType.Element && reader.Name == "key") { string xmlType = null; string name = reader.ReadElementContentAsString(); // item element reader.ReadToNextSibling("value"); if (reader.MoveToNextAttribute()) xmlType = reader.Value; reader.MoveToContent(); TValue value; if (xmlType == "nil") value = default(TValue); // null else if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(xmlType)) { // value is a string or object and we can assign TValue to value string strval = reader.ReadElementContentAsString(); value = (TValue) Convert.ChangeType(strval, typeof(TValue)); } else if (xmlType.StartsWith("___")) { while (reader.Read() && reader.NodeType != XmlNodeType.Element) { } Type type = ReflectionUtils.GetTypeFromName(xmlType.Substring(3)); //value = reader.ReadElementContentAs(type,null); XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(type); value = (TValue)ser.Deserialize(reader); } else value = (TValue)reader.ReadElementContentAs(XmlUtils.MapXmlTypeToType(xmlType), null); this.Add(name, value); } } } /// <summary> /// Serializes this dictionary to an XML string /// </summary> /// <returns>XML String or Null if it fails</returns> public string ToXml() { string xml = null; SerializationUtils.SerializeObject(this, out xml); return xml; } /// <summary> /// Deserializes from an XML string /// </summary> /// <param name="xml"></param> /// <returns>true or false</returns> public bool FromXml(string xml) { this.Clear(); // if xml string is empty we return an empty dictionary if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(xml)) return true; var result = SerializationUtils.DeSerializeObject(xml, this.GetType()) as PropertyBag<TValue>; if (result != null) { foreach (var item in result) { this.Add(item.Key, item.Value); } } else // null is a failure return false; return true; } /// <summary> /// Creates an instance of a propertybag from an Xml string /// </summary> /// <param name="xml"></param> /// <returns></returns> public static PropertyBag<TValue> CreateFromXml(string xml) { var bag = new PropertyBag<TValue>(); bag.FromXml(xml); return bag; } } } The code uses a couple of small helper classes SerializationUtils and XmlUtils for mapping Xml types to and from .NET, both of which are from the WestWind,Utilities project (which is the same project where PropertyBag lives) from the West Wind Web Toolkit. The code implements ReadXml and WriteXml for the IXmlSerializable implementation using old school XmlReaders and XmlWriters (because it's pretty simple stuff - no need for XLinq here). Then there are two helper methods .ToXml() and .FromXml() that basically allow your code to easily convert between XML and a PropertyBag object. In my code that's what I use to actually to persist to and from the entity XML property during .Load() and .Save() operations. It's sweet to be able to have a string key dictionary and then be able to turn around with 1 line of code to persist the whole thing to XML and back. Hopefully some of you will find this class as useful as I've found it. It's a simple solution to a common requirement in my applications and I've used the hell out of it in the  short time since I created it. Resources You can find the complete code for the two classes plus the helpers in the Subversion repository for Westwind.Utilities. You can grab the source files from there or download the whole project. You can also grab the full Westwind.Utilities assembly from NuGet and add it to your project if that's easier for you. PropertyBag Source Code SerializationUtils and XmlUtils Westwind.Utilities Assembly on NuGet (add from Visual Studio) © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in .NET  CSharp   Tweet (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • OpenLDAP and SSL

    - by Stormshadow
    I am having trouble trying to connect to a secure OpenLDAP server which I have set up. On running my LDAP client code java -Djavax.net.debug=ssl LDAPConnector I get the following exception trace (java version 1.6.0_17) trigger seeding of SecureRandom done seeding SecureRandom %% No cached client session *** ClientHello, TLSv1 RandomCookie: GMT: 1256110124 bytes = { 224, 19, 193, 148, 45, 205, 108, 37, 101, 247, 112, 24, 157, 39, 111, 177, 43, 53, 206, 224, 68, 165, 55, 185, 54, 203, 43, 91 } Session ID: {} Cipher Suites: [SSL_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_MD5, SSL_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_SHA, TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA, TLS_DHE_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA, TLS_DHE_DSS_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA, SSL_RSA_W ITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA, SSL_DHE_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA, SSL_DHE_DSS_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA, SSL_RSA_WITH_DES_CBC_SHA, SSL_DHE_RSA_WITH_DES_CBC_SHA, SSL_DHE_DSS_WITH_DES_CBC_SH A, SSL_RSA_EXPORT_WITH_RC4_40_MD5, SSL_RSA_EXPORT_WITH_DES40_CBC_SHA, SSL_DHE_RSA_EXPORT_WITH_DES40_CBC_SHA, SSL_DHE_DSS_EXPORT_WITH_DES40_CBC_SHA] Compression Methods: { 0 } *** Thread-0, WRITE: TLSv1 Handshake, length = 73 Thread-0, WRITE: SSLv2 client hello message, length = 98 Thread-0, received EOFException: error Thread-0, handling exception: javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: Remote host closed connection during handshake Thread-0, SEND TLSv1 ALERT: fatal, description = handshake_failure Thread-0, WRITE: TLSv1 Alert, length = 2 Thread-0, called closeSocket() main, handling exception: javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: Remote host closed connection during handshake javax.naming.CommunicationException: simple bind failed: ldap.natraj.com:636 [Root exception is javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: Remote host closed connection during hands hake] at com.sun.jndi.ldap.LdapClient.authenticate(Unknown Source) at com.sun.jndi.ldap.LdapCtx.connect(Unknown Source) at com.sun.jndi.ldap.LdapCtx.<init>(Unknown Source) at com.sun.jndi.ldap.LdapCtxFactory.getUsingURL(Unknown Source) at com.sun.jndi.ldap.LdapCtxFactory.getUsingURLs(Unknown Source) at com.sun.jndi.ldap.LdapCtxFactory.getLdapCtxInstance(Unknown Source) at com.sun.jndi.ldap.LdapCtxFactory.getInitialContext(Unknown Source) at javax.naming.spi.NamingManager.getInitialContext(Unknown Source) at javax.naming.InitialContext.getDefaultInitCtx(Unknown Source) at javax.naming.InitialContext.init(Unknown Source) at javax.naming.InitialContext.<init>(Unknown Source) at javax.naming.directory.InitialDirContext.<init>(Unknown Source) at LDAPConnector.CallSecureLDAPServer(LDAPConnector.java:43) at LDAPConnector.main(LDAPConnector.java:237) Caused by: javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: Remote host closed connection during handshake at com.sun.net.ssl.internal.ssl.SSLSocketImpl.readRecord(Unknown Source) at com.sun.net.ssl.internal.ssl.SSLSocketImpl.performInitialHandshake(Unknown Source) at com.sun.net.ssl.internal.ssl.SSLSocketImpl.readDataRecord(Unknown Source) at com.sun.net.ssl.internal.ssl.AppInputStream.read(Unknown Source) at java.io.BufferedInputStream.fill(Unknown Source) at java.io.BufferedInputStream.read1(Unknown Source) at java.io.BufferedInputStream.read(Unknown Source) at com.sun.jndi.ldap.Connection.run(Unknown Source) at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source) Caused by: java.io.EOFException: SSL peer shut down incorrectly at com.sun.net.ssl.internal.ssl.InputRecord.read(Unknown Source) ... 9 more I am able to connect to the same secure LDAP server however if I use another version of java (1.6.0_14) I have created and installed the server certificates in the cacerts of both the JRE's as mentioned in this guide -- OpenLDAP with SSL When I run ldapsearch -x on the server I get # extended LDIF # # LDAPv3 # base <dc=localdomain> (default) with scope subtree # filter: (objectclass=*) # requesting: ALL # # localdomain dn: dc=localdomain objectClass: top objectClass: dcObject objectClass: organization o: localdomain dc: localdomain # admin, localdomain dn: cn=admin,dc=localdomain objectClass: simpleSecurityObject objectClass: organizationalRole cn: admin description: LDAP administrator # search result search: 2 result: 0 Success # numResponses: 3 # numEntries: 2 On running openssl s_client -connect ldap.natraj.com:636 -showcerts , I obtain the self signed certificate. My slapd.conf file is as follows ####################################################################### # Global Directives: # Features to permit #allow bind_v2 # Schema and objectClass definitions include /etc/ldap/schema/core.schema include /etc/ldap/schema/cosine.schema include /etc/ldap/schema/nis.schema include /etc/ldap/schema/inetorgperson.schema # Where the pid file is put. The init.d script # will not stop the server if you change this. pidfile /var/run/slapd/slapd.pid # List of arguments that were passed to the server argsfile /var/run/slapd/slapd.args # Read slapd.conf(5) for possible values loglevel none # Where the dynamically loaded modules are stored modulepath /usr/lib/ldap moduleload back_hdb # The maximum number of entries that is returned for a search operation sizelimit 500 # The tool-threads parameter sets the actual amount of cpu's that is used # for indexing. tool-threads 1 ####################################################################### # Specific Backend Directives for hdb: # Backend specific directives apply to this backend until another # 'backend' directive occurs backend hdb ####################################################################### # Specific Backend Directives for 'other': # Backend specific directives apply to this backend until another # 'backend' directive occurs #backend <other> ####################################################################### # Specific Directives for database #1, of type hdb: # Database specific directives apply to this databasse until another # 'database' directive occurs database hdb # The base of your directory in database #1 suffix "dc=localdomain" # rootdn directive for specifying a superuser on the database. This is needed # for syncrepl. rootdn "cn=admin,dc=localdomain" # Where the database file are physically stored for database #1 directory "/var/lib/ldap" # The dbconfig settings are used to generate a DB_CONFIG file the first # time slapd starts. They do NOT override existing an existing DB_CONFIG # file. You should therefore change these settings in DB_CONFIG directly # or remove DB_CONFIG and restart slapd for changes to take effect. # For the Debian package we use 2MB as default but be sure to update this # value if you have plenty of RAM dbconfig set_cachesize 0 2097152 0 # Sven Hartge reported that he had to set this value incredibly high # to get slapd running at all. See http://bugs.debian.org/303057 for more # information. # Number of objects that can be locked at the same time. dbconfig set_lk_max_objects 1500 # Number of locks (both requested and granted) dbconfig set_lk_max_locks 1500 # Number of lockers dbconfig set_lk_max_lockers 1500 # Indexing options for database #1 index objectClass eq # Save the time that the entry gets modified, for database #1 lastmod on # Checkpoint the BerkeleyDB database periodically in case of system # failure and to speed slapd shutdown. checkpoint 512 30 # Where to store the replica logs for database #1 # replogfile /var/lib/ldap/replog # The userPassword by default can be changed # by the entry owning it if they are authenticated. # Others should not be able to see it, except the # admin entry below # These access lines apply to database #1 only access to attrs=userPassword,shadowLastChange by dn="cn=admin,dc=localdomain" write by anonymous auth by self write by * none # Ensure read access to the base for things like # supportedSASLMechanisms. Without this you may # have problems with SASL not knowing what # mechanisms are available and the like. # Note that this is covered by the 'access to *' # ACL below too but if you change that as people # are wont to do you'll still need this if you # want SASL (and possible other things) to work # happily. access to dn.base="" by * read # The admin dn has full write access, everyone else # can read everything. access to * by dn="cn=admin,dc=localdomain" write by * read # For Netscape Roaming support, each user gets a roaming # profile for which they have write access to #access to dn=".*,ou=Roaming,o=morsnet" # by dn="cn=admin,dc=localdomain" write # by dnattr=owner write ####################################################################### # Specific Directives for database #2, of type 'other' (can be hdb too): # Database specific directives apply to this databasse until another # 'database' directive occurs #database <other> # The base of your directory for database #2 #suffix "dc=debian,dc=org" ####################################################################### # SSL: # Uncomment the following lines to enable SSL and use the default # snakeoil certificates. #TLSCertificateFile /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem #TLSCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key TLSCipherSuite TLS_RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA TLSCACertificateFile /etc/ldap/ssl/server.pem TLSCertificateFile /etc/ldap/ssl/server.pem TLSCertificateKeyFile /etc/ldap/ssl/server.pem My ldap.conf file is # # LDAP Defaults # # See ldap.conf(5) for details # This file should be world readable but not world writable. HOST ldap.natraj.com PORT 636 BASE dc=localdomain URI ldaps://ldap.natraj.com TLS_CACERT /etc/ldap/ssl/server.pem TLS_REQCERT allow #SIZELIMIT 12 #TIMELIMIT 15 #DEREF never

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  • Asset Pipeline acting up

    - by Abram
    Ok, so my asset pipeline has suddenly started acting up on my development machine. JS functions that previously worked are now throwing "not a function" errors.. I know I must be doing something wrong. A minute ago the datatables jquery function was working, then it was throwing an error, then it was working, and now it's not working or throwing an error. Here is my application.js //= require jquery //= require jquery-ui //= require jquery_ujs //= require_self //= require_tree . //= require dataTables/jquery.dataTables //= require dataTables/jquery.dataTables.bootstrap //= require bootstrap //= require bootstrap-tooltip //= require bootstrap-popover //= require bootstrap-tab //= require bootstrap-modal //= require bootstrap-alert //= require bootstrap-dropdown //= require jquery.ui.addresspicker //= require raty //= require jquery.alphanumeric //= require jquery.formrestrict //= require select2 //= require chosen/chosen.jquery //= require highcharts //= require jquery.lazyload Here is some of my layout header: <%= stylesheet_link_tag "application", media: "all" %> <%= yield(:scripthead) %> <%= javascript_include_tag "application" %> <%= csrf_meta_tags %> <%= yield(:head) %> Above I am using the yield to load up online scripts from google as they're only needed on some pages, and generally slow down the site if included in the application layout. I tried removing the yield but things were still broken, even after clearing the browser cache and running rake assets:clean (just to be on the safe side). Here's what shows up between CSS and metatags (for a page with nothin in the yield scripthead): <script src="/assets/jquery.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/jquery-ui.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/jquery_ujs.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/application.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/aidmodels.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/audio.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/bootstrap-alert.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/bootstrap-dropdown.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/bootstrap-modal.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/bootstrap-popover.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/bootstrap-tab.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/bootstrap-tooltip.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/branches.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/charts.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/chosen/backup_chosen.jquery.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/chosen/chosen.jquery.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/consumers.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/dispensers.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/favorites.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/features.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/generic_styles.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/gmaps4rails/gmaps4rails.base.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/gmaps4rails/gmaps4rails.bing.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/gmaps4rails/gmaps4rails.googlemaps.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/gmaps4rails/gmaps4rails.mapquest.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/gmaps4rails/gmaps4rails.openlayers.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/highcharts.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/jquery-ui-1.8.18.custom.min.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/jquery.alphanumeric.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/jquery.formrestrict.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/jquery.lazyload.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/jquery.ui.addresspicker.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/likes.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/messages.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/overalls.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/pages.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/questions.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/raty.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/reviews.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/sessions.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/styles.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/tickets.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/universities.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/users.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/dataTables/jquery.dataTables.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/dataTables/jquery.dataTables.bootstrap.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/bootstrap-transition.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/bootstrap-affix.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/bootstrap-button.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/bootstrap-carousel.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/bootstrap-collapse.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/bootstrap-scrollspy.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/bootstrap-typeahead.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/bootstrap.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="/assets/select2.js?body=1" type="text/javascript"></script> From application.rb: config.assets.initialize_on_precompile = false # Enable the asset pipeline config.assets.enabled = true config.action_controller.assets_dir = "#{File.dirname(File.dirname(__FILE__))}/public" # Version of your assets, change this if you want to expire all your assets config.assets.version = '1.0' I'm sorry, I'm not sure what else to include to help with this puzzle, but any advise would be appreciated. I was having no problems before I started trying to upload to heroku and now everything's gone haywire. EDIT: In the console at the moment I'm seeing Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'Constructor' of undefined bootstrap-popover.js:33 Uncaught ReferenceError: google is not defined jquery.ui.addresspicker.js:25 Uncaught TypeError: Object [object Object] has no method 'popover' overall:476

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  • Building applications with WCF - Intro

    - by skjagini
    I am going to write series of articles using Windows Communication Framework (WCF) to develop client and server applications and this is the first part of that series. What is WCF As Juwal puts in his Programming WCF book, WCF provides an SDK for developing and deploying services on Windows, provides runtime environment to expose CLR types as services and consume services as CLR types. Building services with WCF is incredibly easy and it’s implementation provides a set of industry standards and off the shelf plumbing including service hosting, instance management, reliability, transaction management, security etc such that it greatly increases productivity Scenario: Lets consider a typical bank customer trying to create an account, deposit amount and transfer funds between accounts, i.e. checking and savings. To make it interesting, we are going to divide the functionality into multiple services and each of them working with database directly. We will run test cases with and without transactional support across services. In this post we will build contracts, services, data access layer, unit tests to verify end to end communication etc, nothing big stuff here and we dig into other features of the WCF in subsequent posts with incremental changes. In any distributed architecture we have two pieces i.e. services and clients. Services as the name implies provide functionality to execute various pieces of business logic on the server, and clients providing interaction to the end user. Services can be built with Web Services or with WCF. Service built on WCF have the advantage of binding independent, i.e. can run against TCP and HTTP protocol without any significant changes to the code. Solution Services Profile: For creating a new bank customer, getting details about existing customer ProfileContract ProfileService Checking Account: To get checking account balance, deposit or withdraw amount CheckingAccountContract CheckingAccountService Savings Account: To get savings account balance, deposit or withdraw amount SavingsAccountContract SavingsAccountService ServiceHost: To host services, i.e. running the services at particular address, binding and contract where client can connect to Client: Helps end user to use services like creating account and amount transfer between the accounts BankDAL: Data access layer to work with database     BankDAL It’s no brainer not to use an ORM as many matured products are available currently in market including Linq2Sql, Entity Framework (EF), LLblGenPro etc. For this exercise I am going to use Entity Framework 4.0, CTP 5 with code first approach. There are two approaches when working with data, data driven and code driven. In data driven we start by designing tables and their constrains in database and generate entities in code while in code driven (code first) approach entities are defined in code and the metadata generated from the entities is used by the EF to create tables and table constrains. In previous versions the entity classes had  to derive from EF specific base classes. In EF 4 it  is not required to derive from any EF classes, the entities are not only persistence ignorant but also enable full test driven development using mock frameworks.  Application consists of 3 entities, Customer entity which contains Customer details; CheckingAccount and SavingsAccount to hold the respective account balance. We could have introduced an Account base class for CheckingAccount and SavingsAccount which is certainly possible with EF mappings but to keep it simple we are just going to follow 1 –1 mapping between entity and table mappings. Lets start out by defining a class called Customer which will be mapped to Customer table, observe that the class is simply a plain old clr object (POCO) and has no reference to EF at all. using System;   namespace BankDAL.Model { public class Customer { public int Id { get; set; } public string FullName { get; set; } public string Address { get; set; } public DateTime DateOfBirth { get; set; } } }   In order to inform EF about the Customer entity we have to define a database context with properties of type DbSet<> for every POCO which needs to be mapped to a table in database. EF uses convention over configuration to generate the metadata resulting in much less configuration. using System.Data.Entity;   namespace BankDAL.Model { public class BankDbContext: DbContext { public DbSet<Customer> Customers { get; set; } } }   Entity constrains can be defined through attributes on Customer class or using fluent syntax (no need to muscle with xml files), CustomerConfiguration class. By defining constrains in a separate class we can maintain clean POCOs without corrupting entity classes with database specific information.   using System; using System.Data.Entity.ModelConfiguration;   namespace BankDAL.Model { public class CustomerConfiguration: EntityTypeConfiguration<Customer> { public CustomerConfiguration() { Initialize(); }   private void Initialize() { //Setting the Primary Key this.HasKey(e => e.Id);   //Setting required fields this.HasRequired(e => e.FullName); this.HasRequired(e => e.Address); //Todo: Can't create required constraint as DateOfBirth is not reference type, research it //this.HasRequired(e => e.DateOfBirth); } } }   Any queries executed against Customers property in BankDbContext are executed against Cusomers table. By convention EF looks for connection string with key of BankDbContext when working with the context.   We are going to define a helper class to work with Customer entity with methods for querying, adding new entity etc and these are known as repository classes, i.e., CustomerRepository   using System; using System.Data.Entity; using System.Linq; using BankDAL.Model;   namespace BankDAL.Repositories { public class CustomerRepository { private readonly IDbSet<Customer> _customers;   public CustomerRepository(BankDbContext bankDbContext) { if (bankDbContext == null) throw new ArgumentNullException(); _customers = bankDbContext.Customers; }   public IQueryable<Customer> Query() { return _customers; }   public void Add(Customer customer) { _customers.Add(customer); } } }   From the above code it is observable that the Query methods returns customers as IQueryable i.e. customers are retrieved only when actually used i.e. iterated. Returning as IQueryable also allows to execute filtering and joining statements from business logic using lamba expressions without cluttering the data access layer with tens of methods.   Our CheckingAccountRepository and SavingsAccountRepository look very similar to each other using System; using System.Data.Entity; using System.Linq; using BankDAL.Model;   namespace BankDAL.Repositories { public class CheckingAccountRepository { private readonly IDbSet<CheckingAccount> _checkingAccounts;   public CheckingAccountRepository(BankDbContext bankDbContext) { if (bankDbContext == null) throw new ArgumentNullException(); _checkingAccounts = bankDbContext.CheckingAccounts; }   public IQueryable<CheckingAccount> Query() { return _checkingAccounts; }   public void Add(CheckingAccount account) { _checkingAccounts.Add(account); }   public IQueryable<CheckingAccount> GetAccount(int customerId) { return (from act in _checkingAccounts where act.CustomerId == customerId select act); }   } } The repository classes look very similar to each other for Query and Add methods, with the help of C# generics and implementing repository pattern (Martin Fowler) we can reduce the repeated code. Jarod from ElegantCode has posted an article on how to use repository pattern with EF which we will implement in the subsequent articles along with WCF Unity life time managers by Drew Contracts It is very easy to follow contract first approach with WCF, define the interface and append ServiceContract, OperationContract attributes. IProfile contract exposes functionality for creating customer and getting customer details.   using System; using System.ServiceModel; using BankDAL.Model;   namespace ProfileContract { [ServiceContract] public interface IProfile { [OperationContract] Customer CreateCustomer(string customerName, string address, DateTime dateOfBirth);   [OperationContract] Customer GetCustomer(int id);   } }   ICheckingAccount contract exposes functionality for working with checking account, i.e., getting balance, deposit and withdraw of amount. ISavingsAccount contract looks the same as checking account.   using System.ServiceModel;   namespace CheckingAccountContract { [ServiceContract] public interface ICheckingAccount { [OperationContract] decimal? GetCheckingAccountBalance(int customerId);   [OperationContract] void DepositAmount(int customerId,decimal amount);   [OperationContract] void WithdrawAmount(int customerId, decimal amount);   } }   Services   Having covered the data access layer and contracts so far and here comes the core of the business logic, i.e. services.   .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } ProfileService implements the IProfile contract for creating customer and getting customer detail using CustomerRepository. using System; using System.Linq; using System.ServiceModel; using BankDAL; using BankDAL.Model; using BankDAL.Repositories; using ProfileContract;   namespace ProfileService { [ServiceBehavior(IncludeExceptionDetailInFaults = true)] public class Profile: IProfile { public Customer CreateAccount( string customerName, string address, DateTime dateOfBirth) { Customer cust = new Customer { FullName = customerName, Address = address, DateOfBirth = dateOfBirth };   using (var bankDbContext = new BankDbContext()) { new CustomerRepository(bankDbContext).Add(cust); bankDbContext.SaveChanges(); } return cust; }   public Customer CreateCustomer(string customerName, string address, DateTime dateOfBirth) { return CreateAccount(customerName, address, dateOfBirth); } public Customer GetCustomer(int id) { return new CustomerRepository(new BankDbContext()).Query() .Where(i => i.Id == id).FirstOrDefault(); }   } } From the above code you shall observe that we are calling bankDBContext’s SaveChanges method and there is no save method specific to customer entity because EF manages all the changes centralized at the context level and all the pending changes so far are submitted in a batch and it is represented as Unit of Work. Similarly Checking service implements ICheckingAccount contract using CheckingAccountRepository, notice that we are throwing overdraft exception if the balance falls by zero. WCF has it’s own way of raising exceptions using fault contracts which will be explained in the subsequent articles. SavingsAccountService is similar to CheckingAccountService. using System; using System.Linq; using System.ServiceModel; using BankDAL.Model; using BankDAL.Repositories; using CheckingAccountContract;   namespace CheckingAccountService { [ServiceBehavior(IncludeExceptionDetailInFaults = true)] public class Checking:ICheckingAccount { public decimal? GetCheckingAccountBalance(int customerId) { using (var bankDbContext = new BankDbContext()) { CheckingAccount account = (new CheckingAccountRepository(bankDbContext) .GetAccount(customerId)).FirstOrDefault();   if (account != null) return account.Balance;   return null; } }   public void DepositAmount(int customerId, decimal amount) { using(var bankDbContext = new BankDbContext()) { var checkingAccountRepository = new CheckingAccountRepository(bankDbContext); CheckingAccount account = (checkingAccountRepository.GetAccount(customerId)) .FirstOrDefault();   if (account == null) { account = new CheckingAccount() { CustomerId = customerId }; checkingAccountRepository.Add(account); }   account.Balance = account.Balance + amount; if (account.Balance < 0) throw new ApplicationException("Overdraft not accepted");   bankDbContext.SaveChanges(); } } public void WithdrawAmount(int customerId, decimal amount) { DepositAmount(customerId, -1*amount); } } }   BankServiceHost The host acts as a glue binding contracts with it’s services, exposing the endpoints. The services can be exposed either through the code or configuration file, configuration file is preferred as it allows run time changes to service behavior even after deployment. We have 3 services and for each of the service you need to define name (the class that implements the service with fully qualified namespace) and endpoint known as ABC, i.e. address, binding and contract. We are using netTcpBinding and have defined the base address with for each of the contracts .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } <system.serviceModel> <services> <service name="ProfileService.Profile"> <endpoint binding="netTcpBinding" contract="ProfileContract.IProfile"/> <host> <baseAddresses> <add baseAddress="net.tcp://localhost:1000/Profile"/> </baseAddresses> </host> </service> <service name="CheckingAccountService.Checking"> <endpoint binding="netTcpBinding" contract="CheckingAccountContract.ICheckingAccount"/> <host> <baseAddresses> <add baseAddress="net.tcp://localhost:1000/Checking"/> </baseAddresses> </host> </service> <service name="SavingsAccountService.Savings"> <endpoint binding="netTcpBinding" contract="SavingsAccountContract.ISavingsAccount"/> <host> <baseAddresses> <add baseAddress="net.tcp://localhost:1000/Savings"/> </baseAddresses> </host> </service> </services> </system.serviceModel> Have to open the services by creating service host which will handle the incoming requests from clients.   using System;   namespace ServiceHost { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { CreateHosts(); Console.ReadLine(); }   private static void CreateHosts() { CreateHost(typeof(ProfileService.Profile),"Profile Service"); CreateHost(typeof(SavingsAccountService.Savings), "Savings Account Service"); CreateHost(typeof(CheckingAccountService.Checking), "Checking Account Service"); }   private static void CreateHost(Type type, string hostDescription) { System.ServiceModel.ServiceHost host = new System.ServiceModel.ServiceHost(type); host.Open();   if (host.ChannelDispatchers != null && host.ChannelDispatchers.Count != 0 && host.ChannelDispatchers[0].Listener != null) Console.WriteLine("Started: " + host.ChannelDispatchers[0].Listener.Uri); else Console.WriteLine("Failed to start:" + hostDescription); } } } BankClient    The client has no knowledge about service business logic other than the functionality it exposes through the contract, end points and a proxy to work against. The endpoint data and server proxy can be generated by right clicking on the project reference and choosing ‘Add Service Reference’ and entering the service end point address. Or if you have access to source, you can manually reference contract dlls and update clients configuration file to point to the service end point if the server and client happens to be being built using .Net framework. One of the pros with the manual approach is you don’t have to work against messy code generated files.   <system.serviceModel> <client> <endpoint name="tcpProfile" address="net.tcp://localhost:1000/Profile" binding="netTcpBinding" contract="ProfileContract.IProfile"/> <endpoint name="tcpCheckingAccount" address="net.tcp://localhost:1000/Checking" binding="netTcpBinding" contract="CheckingAccountContract.ICheckingAccount"/> <endpoint name="tcpSavingsAccount" address="net.tcp://localhost:1000/Savings" binding="netTcpBinding" contract="SavingsAccountContract.ISavingsAccount"/>   </client> </system.serviceModel> The client uses a façade to connect to the services   using System.ServiceModel; using CheckingAccountContract; using ProfileContract; using SavingsAccountContract;   namespace Client { public class ProxyFacade { public static IProfile ProfileProxy() { return (new ChannelFactory<IProfile>("tcpProfile")).CreateChannel(); }   public static ICheckingAccount CheckingAccountProxy() { return (new ChannelFactory<ICheckingAccount>("tcpCheckingAccount")) .CreateChannel(); }   public static ISavingsAccount SavingsAccountProxy() { return (new ChannelFactory<ISavingsAccount>("tcpSavingsAccount")) .CreateChannel(); }   } }   With that in place, lets get our unit tests going   using System; using System.Diagnostics; using BankDAL.Model; using NUnit.Framework; using ProfileContract;   namespace Client { [TestFixture] public class Tests { private void TransferFundsFromSavingsToCheckingAccount(int customerId, decimal amount) { ProxyFacade.CheckingAccountProxy().DepositAmount(customerId, amount); ProxyFacade.SavingsAccountProxy().WithdrawAmount(customerId, amount); }   private void TransferFundsFromCheckingToSavingsAccount(int customerId, decimal amount) { ProxyFacade.SavingsAccountProxy().DepositAmount(customerId, amount); ProxyFacade.CheckingAccountProxy().WithdrawAmount(customerId, amount); }     [Test] public void CreateAndGetProfileTest() { IProfile profile = ProxyFacade.ProfileProxy(); const string customerName = "Tom"; int customerId = profile.CreateCustomer(customerName, "NJ", new DateTime(1982, 1, 1)).Id; Customer customer = profile.GetCustomer(customerId); Assert.AreEqual(customerName,customer.FullName); }   [Test] public void DepositWithDrawAndTransferAmountTest() { IProfile profile = ProxyFacade.ProfileProxy(); string customerName = "Smith" + DateTime.Now.ToString("HH:mm:ss"); var customer = profile.CreateCustomer(customerName, "NJ", new DateTime(1982, 1, 1)); // Deposit to Savings ProxyFacade.SavingsAccountProxy().DepositAmount(customer.Id, 100); ProxyFacade.SavingsAccountProxy().DepositAmount(customer.Id, 25); Assert.AreEqual(125, ProxyFacade.SavingsAccountProxy().GetSavingsAccountBalance(customer.Id)); // Withdraw ProxyFacade.SavingsAccountProxy().WithdrawAmount(customer.Id, 30); Assert.AreEqual(95, ProxyFacade.SavingsAccountProxy().GetSavingsAccountBalance(customer.Id));   // Deposit to Checking ProxyFacade.CheckingAccountProxy().DepositAmount(customer.Id, 60); ProxyFacade.CheckingAccountProxy().DepositAmount(customer.Id, 40); Assert.AreEqual(100, ProxyFacade.CheckingAccountProxy().GetCheckingAccountBalance(customer.Id)); // Withdraw ProxyFacade.CheckingAccountProxy().WithdrawAmount(customer.Id, 30); Assert.AreEqual(70, ProxyFacade.CheckingAccountProxy().GetCheckingAccountBalance(customer.Id));   // Transfer from Savings to Checking TransferFundsFromSavingsToCheckingAccount(customer.Id,10); Assert.AreEqual(85, ProxyFacade.SavingsAccountProxy().GetSavingsAccountBalance(customer.Id)); Assert.AreEqual(80, ProxyFacade.CheckingAccountProxy().GetCheckingAccountBalance(customer.Id));   // Transfer from Checking to Savings TransferFundsFromCheckingToSavingsAccount(customer.Id, 50); Assert.AreEqual(135, ProxyFacade.SavingsAccountProxy().GetSavingsAccountBalance(customer.Id)); Assert.AreEqual(30, ProxyFacade.CheckingAccountProxy().GetCheckingAccountBalance(customer.Id)); }   [Test] public void FundTransfersWithOverDraftTest() { IProfile profile = ProxyFacade.ProfileProxy(); string customerName = "Angelina" + DateTime.Now.ToString("HH:mm:ss");   var customerId = profile.CreateCustomer(customerName, "NJ", new DateTime(1972, 1, 1)).Id;   ProxyFacade.SavingsAccountProxy().DepositAmount(customerId, 100); TransferFundsFromSavingsToCheckingAccount(customerId,80); Assert.AreEqual(20, ProxyFacade.SavingsAccountProxy().GetSavingsAccountBalance(customerId)); Assert.AreEqual(80, ProxyFacade.CheckingAccountProxy().GetCheckingAccountBalance(customerId));   try { TransferFundsFromSavingsToCheckingAccount(customerId,30); } catch (Exception e) { Debug.WriteLine(e.Message); }   Assert.AreEqual(110, ProxyFacade.CheckingAccountProxy().GetCheckingAccountBalance(customerId)); Assert.AreEqual(20, ProxyFacade.SavingsAccountProxy().GetSavingsAccountBalance(customerId)); } } }   We are creating a new instance of the channel for every operation, we will look into instance management and how creating a new instance of channel affects it in subsequent articles. The first two test cases deals with creation of Customer, deposit and withdraw of month between accounts. The last case, FundTransferWithOverDraftTest() is interesting. Customer starts with depositing $100 in SavingsAccount followed by transfer of $80 in to checking account resulting in $20 in savings account.  Customer then initiates $30 transfer from Savings to Checking resulting in overdraft exception on Savings with $30 being deposited to Checking. As we are not running both the requests in transactions the customer ends up with more amount than what he started with $100. In subsequent posts we will look into transactions handling.  Make sure the ServiceHost project is set as start up project and start the solution. Run the test cases either from NUnit client or TestDriven.Net/Resharper which ever is your favorite tool. Make sure you have updated the data base connection string in the ServiceHost config file to point to your local database

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  • add a from to backup routine

    - by Gerard Flynn
    hi how do you put a process bar and button onto this code i have class and want to add a gui on to the code using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Data; using System.Drawing; using System.Text; using System.Windows.Forms; using System.Data.SqlClient; using System.IO; using System.Threading; using Tamir.SharpSsh; using System.Security.Cryptography; using ICSharpCode.SharpZipLib.Checksums; using ICSharpCode.SharpZipLib.Zip; using ICSharpCode.SharpZipLib.GZip; namespace backup { public partial class Form1 : Form { public Form1() { InitializeComponent(); } /// <summary> /// Summary description for Class1. /// </summary> public class Backup { private string dbName; private string dbUsername; private string dbPassword; private static string baseDir; private string backupName; private static bool isBackup; private string keyString; private string ivString; private string[] backupDirs = new string[0]; private string[] excludeDirs = new string[0]; private ZipOutputStream zipOutputStream; private string backupFile; private string zipFile; private string encryptedFile; static void Main() { Backup.Log("BackupUtility loaded"); try { new Backup(); if (!isBackup) MessageBox.Show("Restore complete"); } catch (Exception e) { Backup.Log(e.ToString()); if (!isBackup) MessageBox.Show("Error restoring!\r\n" + e.Message); } } private void LoadAppSettings() { this.backupName = System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["BackupName"].ToString(); this.dbName = System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["DBName"].ToString(); this.dbUsername = System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["DBUsername"].ToString(); this.dbPassword = System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["DBPassword"].ToString(); //default to using where we are executing this assembly from Backup.baseDir = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location.Substring(0, System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location.LastIndexOf("\\")) + "\\"; Backup.isBackup = bool.Parse(System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["IsBackup"].ToString()); this.keyString = System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["KeyString"].ToString(); this.ivString = System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["IVString"].ToString(); this.backupDirs = GetSetting("BackupDirs", ','); this.excludeDirs = GetSetting("ExcludeDirs", ','); } private string[] GetSetting(string settingName, char delimiter) { if (System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings[settingName] != null) { string settingVal = System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings[settingName].ToString(); if (settingVal.Length > 0) return settingVal.Split(delimiter); } return new string[0]; } public Backup() { this.LoadAppSettings(); if (isBackup) this.DoBackup(); else this.DoRestore(); Log("Finished"); } private void DoRestore() { System.Windows.Forms.OpenFileDialog fileDialog = new System.Windows.Forms.OpenFileDialog(); fileDialog.Title = "Choose .encrypted file"; fileDialog.Filter = "Encrypted files (*.encrypted)|*.encrypted|All files (*.*)|*.*"; fileDialog.InitialDirectory = Backup.baseDir; if (fileDialog.ShowDialog() == System.Windows.Forms.DialogResult.OK) { //string encryptedFile = GetFileName("encrypted"); string encryptedFile = fileDialog.FileName; string decryptedFile = this.GetDecryptedFilename(encryptedFile); //string originalFile = GetFileName("original"); this.Decrypt(encryptedFile, decryptedFile); //this.UnzipFile(decryptedFile, originalFile); } } //use the same filename as the backup except replace ".encrypted" with ".decrypted.zip" private string GetDecryptedFilename(string encryptedFile) { string name = encryptedFile.Substring(0, encryptedFile.LastIndexOf(".")); name += ".decrypted.zip"; return name; } private void DoBackup() { this.backupFile = GetFileName("bak"); this.zipFile = GetFileName("zip"); this.encryptedFile = GetFileName("encrypted"); this.DeleteFiles(); this.zipOutputStream = new ZipOutputStream(File.Create(zipFile)); try { //backup database first if (this.dbName.Length > 0) { this.BackupDB(backupFile); this.ZipFile(backupFile, this.GetName(backupFile)); } //zip any directories specified in config file this.ZipUserSpecifiedFilesAndDirectories(this.backupDirs); } finally { this.zipOutputStream.Finish(); this.zipOutputStream.Close(); } this.Encrypt(zipFile, encryptedFile); this.SCPFile(encryptedFile); this.DeleteFiles(); } /// <summary> /// Deletes any files created by the backup process, namely the DB backup file, /// the zip of all files backuped up, and the encrypred zip file /// </summary> private void DeleteFiles() { File.Delete(this.backupFile); File.Delete(this.zipFile); ///File.Delete(this.encryptedFile); } private void ZipUserSpecifiedFilesAndDirectories(string[] fileNames) { foreach (string fileName in fileNames) { string name = fileName.Trim(); if (name.Length > 0) { Log("Zipping " + name); this.ZipFile(name, this.GetNameFromDir(name)); } } } private void SCPFile(string inputPath) { string sshServer = System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["SSHServer"].ToString(); string sshUsername = System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["SSHUsername"].ToString(); string sshPassword = System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["SSHPassword"].ToString(); if (sshServer.Length > 0 && sshUsername.Length > 0 && sshPassword.Length > 0) { Scp scp = new Scp(sshServer, sshUsername, sshPassword); //Copy a file from local machine to remote SSH server scp.Connect(); Log("Connected to " + sshServer); //scp.Put(inputPath, "/home/wal/temp.txt"); scp.Put(inputPath, GetName(inputPath)); scp.Close(); } else { Log("Not SCP as missing login details"); } } private string GetName(string inputPath) { FileInfo info = new FileInfo(inputPath); return info.Name; } private string GetNameFromDir(string inputPath) { DirectoryInfo info = new DirectoryInfo(inputPath); return info.Name; } private static void Log(string msg) { try { string toLog = DateTime.Now.ToString() + ": " + msg; System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(toLog); System.IO.FileStream fs = new System.IO.FileStream(baseDir + "app.log", System.IO.FileMode.OpenOrCreate, System.IO.FileAccess.ReadWrite); System.IO.StreamWriter m_streamWriter = new System.IO.StreamWriter(fs); m_streamWriter.BaseStream.Seek(0, System.IO.SeekOrigin.End); m_streamWriter.WriteLine(toLog); m_streamWriter.Flush(); m_streamWriter.Close(); fs.Close(); } catch (Exception e) { Console.WriteLine(e.ToString()); } } private byte[] GetFileBytes(string path) { FileStream stream = new FileStream(path, FileMode.Open); byte[] bytes = new byte[stream.Length]; stream.Read(bytes, 0, bytes.Length); stream.Close(); return bytes; } private void WriteFileBytes(byte[] bytes, string path) { FileStream stream = new FileStream(path, FileMode.Create); stream.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length); stream.Close(); } private void UnzipFile(string inputPath, string outputPath) { ZipInputStream zis = new ZipInputStream(File.OpenRead(inputPath)); ZipEntry theEntry = zis.GetNextEntry(); FileStream streamWriter = File.Create(outputPath); int size = 2048; byte[] data = new byte[2048]; while (true) { size = zis.Read(data, 0, data.Length); if (size > 0) { streamWriter.Write(data, 0, size); } else { break; } } streamWriter.Close(); zis.Close(); } private bool ExcludeDir(string dirName) { foreach (string excludeDir in this.excludeDirs) { if (dirName == excludeDir) return true; } return false; } private void ZipFile(string inputPath, string zipName) { FileAttributes fa = File.GetAttributes(inputPath); if ((fa & FileAttributes.Directory) != 0) { string dirName = zipName + "/"; ZipEntry entry1 = new ZipEntry(dirName); this.zipOutputStream.PutNextEntry(entry1); string[] subDirs = Directory.GetDirectories(inputPath); //create directories first foreach (string subDir in subDirs) { DirectoryInfo info = new DirectoryInfo(subDir); string name = info.Name; if (this.ExcludeDir(name)) Log("Excluding " + dirName + name); else this.ZipFile(subDir, dirName + name); } //then store files string[] fileNames = Directory.GetFiles(inputPath); foreach (string fileName in fileNames) { FileInfo info = new FileInfo(fileName); string name = info.Name; this.ZipFile(fileName, dirName + name); } } else { Crc32 crc = new Crc32(); this.zipOutputStream.SetLevel(6); // 0 - store only to 9 - means best compression FileStream fs = null; try { fs = File.OpenRead(inputPath); } catch (IOException ioEx) { Log("WARNING! " + ioEx.Message);//might be in use, skip file in this case } if (fs != null) { byte[] buffer = new byte[fs.Length]; fs.Read(buffer, 0, buffer.Length); ZipEntry entry = new ZipEntry(zipName); entry.DateTime = DateTime.Now; // set Size and the crc, because the information // about the size and crc should be stored in the header // if it is not set it is automatically written in the footer. // (in this case size == crc == -1 in the header) // Some ZIP programs have problems with zip files that don't store // the size and crc in the header. entry.Size = fs.Length; fs.Close(); crc.Reset(); crc.Update(buffer); entry.Crc = crc.Value; this.zipOutputStream.PutNextEntry(entry); this.zipOutputStream.Write(buffer, 0, buffer.Length); } } } private void Encrypt(string inputPath, string outputPath) { RijndaelManaged rijndaelManaged = new RijndaelManaged(); byte[] encrypted; byte[] toEncrypt; //Create a new key and initialization vector. //myRijndael.GenerateKey(); //myRijndael.GenerateIV(); /*des.GenerateKey(); des.GenerateIV(); string temp1 = Convert.ToBase64String(des.Key); string temp2 = Convert.ToBase64String(des.IV);*/ //Get the key and IV. byte[] key = Convert.FromBase64String(keyString); byte[] IV = Convert.FromBase64String(ivString); //Get an encryptor. ICryptoTransform encryptor = rijndaelManaged.CreateEncryptor(key, IV); //Encrypt the data. MemoryStream msEncrypt = new MemoryStream(); CryptoStream csEncrypt = new CryptoStream(msEncrypt, encryptor, CryptoStreamMode.Write); //Convert the data to a byte array. toEncrypt = this.GetFileBytes(inputPath); //Write all data to the crypto stream and flush it. csEncrypt.Write(toEncrypt, 0, toEncrypt.Length); csEncrypt.FlushFinalBlock(); //Get encrypted array of bytes. encrypted = msEncrypt.ToArray(); WriteFileBytes(encrypted, outputPath); } private void Decrypt(string inputPath, string outputPath) { RijndaelManaged myRijndael = new RijndaelManaged(); //DES des = new DESCryptoServiceProvider(); byte[] key = Convert.FromBase64String(keyString); byte[] IV = Convert.FromBase64String(ivString); byte[] encrypted = this.GetFileBytes(inputPath); byte[] fromEncrypt; //Get a decryptor that uses the same key and IV as the encryptor. ICryptoTransform decryptor = myRijndael.CreateDecryptor(key, IV); //Now decrypt the previously encrypted message using the decryptor // obtained in the above step. MemoryStream msDecrypt = new MemoryStream(encrypted); CryptoStream csDecrypt = new CryptoStream(msDecrypt, decryptor, CryptoStreamMode.Read); fromEncrypt = new byte[encrypted.Length]; //Read the data out of the crypto stream. int bytesRead = csDecrypt.Read(fromEncrypt, 0, fromEncrypt.Length); byte[] readBytes = new byte[bytesRead]; Array.Copy(fromEncrypt, 0, readBytes, 0, bytesRead); this.WriteFileBytes(readBytes, outputPath); } private string GetFileName(string extension) { return baseDir + backupName + "_" + DateTime.Now.ToString("yyyyMMdd") + "." + extension; } private void BackupDB(string backupPath) { string sql = @"DECLARE @Date VARCHAR(300), @Dir VARCHAR(4000) --Get today date SET @Date = CONVERT(VARCHAR, GETDATE(), 112) --Set the directory where the back up file is stored SET @Dir = '"; sql += backupPath; sql += @"' --create a 'device' to write to first EXEC sp_addumpdevice 'disk', 'temp_device', @Dir --now do the backup BACKUP DATABASE " + this.dbName; sql += @" TO temp_device WITH FORMAT --Drop the device EXEC sp_dropdevice 'temp_device' "; //Console.WriteLine("sql="+sql); Backup.Log("Starting backup of " + this.dbName); ExecuteSQL(sql); } /// <summary> /// Executes the specified SQL /// Returns true if no errors were encountered during execution /// </summary> /// <param name="procedureName"></param> private void ExecuteSQL(string sql) { SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(this.GetDBConnectString()); try { SqlCommand comm = new SqlCommand(sql, conn); conn.Open(); comm.ExecuteNonQuery(); } finally { conn.Close(); } } private string GetDBConnectString() { StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder(); builder.Append("Data Source=127.0.0.1; User ID="); builder.Append(this.dbUsername); builder.Append("; Password="); builder.Append(this.dbPassword); builder.Append("; Initial Catalog="); builder.Append(this.dbName); builder.Append(";Connect Timeout=30"); return builder.ToString(); } } } }

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  • DirectShow: Video-Preview and Image (with working code)

    - by xsl
    Questions / Issues If someone can recommend me a good free hosting site I can provide the whole project file. As mentioned in the text below the TakePicture() method is not working properly on the HTC HD 2 device. It would be nice if someone could look at the code below and tell me if it is right or wrong what I'm doing. Introduction I recently asked a question about displaying a video preview, taking camera image and rotating a video stream with DirectShow. The tricky thing about the topic is, that it's very hard to find good examples and the documentation and the framework itself is very hard to understand for someone who is new to windows programming and C++ in general. Nevertheless I managed to create a class that implements most of this features and probably works with most mobile devices. Probably because the DirectShow implementation depends a lot on the device itself. I could only test it with the HTC HD and HTC HD2, which are known as quite incompatible. HTC HD Working: Video preview, writing photo to file Not working: Set video resolution (CRASH), set photo resolution (LOW quality) HTC HD 2 Working: Set video resolution, set photo resolution Problematic: Video Preview rotated Not working: Writing photo to file To make it easier for others by providing a working example, I decided to share everything I have got so far below. I removed all of the error handling for the sake of simplicity. As far as documentation goes, I can recommend you to read the MSDN documentation, after that the code below is pretty straight forward. void Camera::Init() { CreateComObjects(); _captureGraphBuilder->SetFiltergraph(_filterGraph); InitializeVideoFilter(); InitializeStillImageFilter(); } Dipslay a video preview (working with any tested handheld): void Camera::DisplayVideoPreview(HWND windowHandle) { IVideoWindow *_vidWin; _filterGraph->QueryInterface(IID_IMediaControl,(void **) &_mediaControl); _filterGraph->QueryInterface(IID_IVideoWindow, (void **) &_vidWin); _videoCaptureFilter->QueryInterface(IID_IAMVideoControl, (void**) &_videoControl); _captureGraphBuilder->RenderStream(&PIN_CATEGORY_PREVIEW, &MEDIATYPE_Video, _videoCaptureFilter, NULL, NULL); CRect rect; long width, height; GetClientRect(windowHandle, &rect); _vidWin->put_Owner((OAHWND)windowHandle); _vidWin->put_WindowStyle(WS_CHILD | WS_CLIPSIBLINGS); _vidWin->get_Width(&width); _vidWin->get_Height(&height); height = rect.Height(); _vidWin->put_Height(height); _vidWin->put_Width(rect.Width()); _vidWin->SetWindowPosition(0,0, rect.Width(), height); _mediaControl->Run(); } HTC HD2: If set SetPhotoResolution() is called FindPin will return E_FAIL. If not, it will create a file full of null bytes. HTC HD: Works void Camera::TakePicture(WCHAR *fileName) { CComPtr<IFileSinkFilter> fileSink; CComPtr<IPin> stillPin; CComPtr<IUnknown> unknownCaptureFilter; CComPtr<IAMVideoControl> videoControl; _imageSinkFilter.QueryInterface(&fileSink); fileSink->SetFileName(fileName, NULL); _videoCaptureFilter.QueryInterface(&unknownCaptureFilter); _captureGraphBuilder->FindPin(unknownCaptureFilter, PINDIR_OUTPUT, &PIN_CATEGORY_STILL, &MEDIATYPE_Video, FALSE, 0, &stillPin); _videoCaptureFilter.QueryInterface(&videoControl); videoControl->SetMode(stillPin, VideoControlFlag_Trigger); } Set resolution: Works great on HTC HD2. HTC HD won't allow SetVideoResolution() and only offers one low resolution photo resolution: void Camera::SetVideoResolution(int width, int height) { SetResolution(true, width, height); } void Camera::SetPhotoResolution(int width, int height) { SetResolution(false, width, height); } void Camera::SetResolution(bool video, int width, int height) { IAMStreamConfig *config; config = NULL; if (video) { _captureGraphBuilder->FindInterface(&PIN_CATEGORY_PREVIEW, &MEDIATYPE_Video, _videoCaptureFilter, IID_IAMStreamConfig, (void**) &config); } else { _captureGraphBuilder->FindInterface(&PIN_CATEGORY_STILL, &MEDIATYPE_Video, _videoCaptureFilter, IID_IAMStreamConfig, (void**) &config); } int resolutions, size; VIDEO_STREAM_CONFIG_CAPS caps; config->GetNumberOfCapabilities(&resolutions, &size); for (int i = 0; i < resolutions; i++) { AM_MEDIA_TYPE *mediaType; if (config->GetStreamCaps(i, &mediaType, reinterpret_cast<BYTE*>(&caps)) == S_OK ) { int maxWidth = caps.MaxOutputSize.cx; int maxHeigth = caps.MaxOutputSize.cy; if(maxWidth == width && maxHeigth == height) { VIDEOINFOHEADER *info = reinterpret_cast<VIDEOINFOHEADER*>(mediaType->pbFormat); info->bmiHeader.biWidth = maxWidth; info->bmiHeader.biHeight = maxHeigth; info->bmiHeader.biSizeImage = DIBSIZE(info->bmiHeader); config->SetFormat(mediaType); DeleteMediaType(mediaType); break; } DeleteMediaType(mediaType); } } } Other methods used to build the filter graph and create the COM objects: void Camera::CreateComObjects() { CoInitialize(NULL); CoCreateInstance(CLSID_CaptureGraphBuilder, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER, IID_ICaptureGraphBuilder2, (void **) &_captureGraphBuilder); CoCreateInstance(CLSID_FilterGraph, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER, IID_IGraphBuilder, (void **) &_filterGraph); CoCreateInstance(CLSID_VideoCapture, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC, IID_IBaseFilter, (void**) &_videoCaptureFilter); CoCreateInstance(CLSID_IMGSinkFilter, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC, IID_IBaseFilter, (void**) &_imageSinkFilter); } void Camera::InitializeVideoFilter() { _videoCaptureFilter->QueryInterface(&_propertyBag); wchar_t deviceName[MAX_PATH] = L"\0"; GetDeviceName(deviceName); CComVariant comName = deviceName; CPropertyBag propertyBag; propertyBag.Write(L"VCapName", &comName); _propertyBag->Load(&propertyBag, NULL); _filterGraph->AddFilter(_videoCaptureFilter, L"Video Capture Filter Source"); } void Camera::InitializeStillImageFilter() { _filterGraph->AddFilter(_imageSinkFilter, L"Still image filter"); _captureGraphBuilder->RenderStream(&PIN_CATEGORY_STILL, &MEDIATYPE_Video, _videoCaptureFilter, NULL, _imageSinkFilter); } void Camera::GetDeviceName(WCHAR *deviceName) { HRESULT hr = S_OK; HANDLE handle = NULL; DEVMGR_DEVICE_INFORMATION di; GUID guidCamera = { 0xCB998A05, 0x122C, 0x4166, 0x84, 0x6A, 0x93, 0x3E, 0x4D, 0x7E, 0x3C, 0x86 }; di.dwSize = sizeof(di); handle = FindFirstDevice(DeviceSearchByGuid, &guidCamera, &di); StringCchCopy(deviceName, MAX_PATH, di.szLegacyName); } Full header file: #ifndef __CAMERA_H__ #define __CAMERA_H__ class Camera { public: void Init(); void DisplayVideoPreview(HWND windowHandle); void TakePicture(WCHAR *fileName); void SetVideoResolution(int width, int height); void SetPhotoResolution(int width, int height); private: CComPtr<ICaptureGraphBuilder2> _captureGraphBuilder; CComPtr<IGraphBuilder> _filterGraph; CComPtr<IBaseFilter> _videoCaptureFilter; CComPtr<IPersistPropertyBag> _propertyBag; CComPtr<IMediaControl> _mediaControl; CComPtr<IAMVideoControl> _videoControl; CComPtr<IBaseFilter> _imageSinkFilter; void GetDeviceName(WCHAR *deviceName); void InitializeVideoFilter(); void InitializeStillImageFilter(); void CreateComObjects(); void SetResolution(bool video, int width, int height); }; #endif

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  • ORDER BY job failed in the Pig script while running EmbeddedPig using Java

    - by C.c. Huang
    I have this following pig script, which works perfectly using grunt shell (stored the results to HDFS without any issues); however, the last job (ORDER BY) failed if I ran the same script using Java EmbeddedPig. If I replace the ORDER BY job by others, such as GROUP or FOREACH GENERATE, the whole script then succeeded in Java EmbeddedPig. So I think it's the ORDER BY which causes the issue. Anyone has any experience with this? Any help would be appreciated! The Pig script: REGISTER pig-udf-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar; user_similarity = LOAD '/tmp/sample-sim-score-results-31/part-r-00000' USING PigStorage('\t') AS (user_id: chararray, sim_user_id: chararray, basic_sim_score: float, alt_sim_score: float); simplified_user_similarity = FOREACH user_similarity GENERATE $0 AS user_id, $1 AS sim_user_id, $2 AS sim_score; grouped_user_similarity = GROUP simplified_user_similarity BY user_id; ordered_user_similarity = FOREACH grouped_user_similarity { sorted = ORDER simplified_user_similarity BY sim_score DESC; top = LIMIT sorted 10; GENERATE group, top; }; top_influencers = FOREACH ordered_user_similarity GENERATE com.aol.grapevine.similarity.pig.udf.AssignPointsToTopInfluencer($1, 10); all_influence_scores = FOREACH top_influencers GENERATE FLATTEN($0); grouped_influence_scores = GROUP all_influence_scores BY bag_of_topSimUserTuples::user_id; influence_scores = FOREACH grouped_influence_scores GENERATE group AS user_id, SUM(all_influence_scores.bag_of_topSimUserTuples::points) AS influence_score; ordered_influence_scores = ORDER influence_scores BY influence_score DESC; STORE ordered_influence_scores INTO '/tmp/cc-test-results-1' USING PigStorage(); The error log from Pig: 12/04/05 10:00:56 INFO pigstats.ScriptState: Pig script settings are added to the job 12/04/05 10:00:56 INFO mapReduceLayer.JobControlCompiler: mapred.job.reduce.markreset.buffer.percent is not set, set to default 0.3 12/04/05 10:00:58 INFO mapReduceLayer.JobControlCompiler: Setting up single store job 12/04/05 10:00:58 INFO jvm.JvmMetrics: Cannot initialize JVM Metrics with processName=JobTracker, sessionId= - already initialized 12/04/05 10:00:58 INFO mapReduceLayer.MapReduceLauncher: 1 map-reduce job(s) waiting for submission. 12/04/05 10:00:58 WARN mapred.JobClient: Use GenericOptionsParser for parsing the arguments. Applications should implement Tool for the same. 12/04/05 10:00:58 INFO input.FileInputFormat: Total input paths to process : 1 12/04/05 10:00:58 INFO util.MapRedUtil: Total input paths to process : 1 12/04/05 10:00:58 INFO util.MapRedUtil: Total input paths (combined) to process : 1 12/04/05 10:00:58 INFO filecache.TrackerDistributedCacheManager: Creating tmp-1546565755 in /var/lib/hadoop-0.20/cache/cchuang/mapred/local/archive/4334795313006396107_361978491_57907159/localhost/tmp/temp1725960134-work-6955502337234509704 with rwxr-xr-x 12/04/05 10:00:58 INFO filecache.TrackerDistributedCacheManager: Cached hdfs://localhost/tmp/temp1725960134/tmp-1546565755#pigsample_854728855_1333645258470 as /var/lib/hadoop-0.20/cache/cchuang/mapred/local/archive/4334795313006396107_361978491_57907159/localhost/tmp/temp1725960134/tmp-1546565755 12/04/05 10:00:58 INFO filecache.TrackerDistributedCacheManager: Cached hdfs://localhost/tmp/temp1725960134/tmp-1546565755#pigsample_854728855_1333645258470 as /var/lib/hadoop-0.20/cache/cchuang/mapred/local/archive/4334795313006396107_361978491_57907159/localhost/tmp/temp1725960134/tmp-1546565755 12/04/05 10:00:58 WARN mapred.LocalJobRunner: LocalJobRunner does not support symlinking into current working dir. 12/04/05 10:00:58 INFO mapred.TaskRunner: Creating symlink: /var/lib/hadoop-0.20/cache/cchuang/mapred/local/archive/4334795313006396107_361978491_57907159/localhost/tmp/temp1725960134/tmp-1546565755 <- /var/lib/hadoop-0.20/cache/cchuang/mapred/local/localRunner/pigsample_854728855_1333645258470 12/04/05 10:00:58 INFO filecache.TrackerDistributedCacheManager: Creating symlink: /var/lib/hadoop-0.20/cache/cchuang/mapred/staging/cchuang402164468/.staging/job_local_0004/.job.jar.crc <- /var/lib/hadoop-0.20/cache/cchuang/mapred/local/localRunner/.job.jar.crc 12/04/05 10:00:58 INFO filecache.TrackerDistributedCacheManager: Creating symlink: /var/lib/hadoop-0.20/cache/cchuang/mapred/staging/cchuang402164468/.staging/job_local_0004/.job.split.crc <- /var/lib/hadoop-0.20/cache/cchuang/mapred/local/localRunner/.job.split.crc 12/04/05 10:00:59 INFO filecache.TrackerDistributedCacheManager: Creating symlink: /var/lib/hadoop-0.20/cache/cchuang/mapred/staging/cchuang402164468/.staging/job_local_0004/.job.splitmetainfo.crc <- /var/lib/hadoop-0.20/cache/cchuang/mapred/local/localRunner/.job.splitmetainfo.crc 12/04/05 10:00:59 INFO filecache.TrackerDistributedCacheManager: Creating symlink: /var/lib/hadoop-0.20/cache/cchuang/mapred/staging/cchuang402164468/.staging/job_local_0004/.job.xml.crc <- /var/lib/hadoop-0.20/cache/cchuang/mapred/local/localRunner/.job.xml.crc 12/04/05 10:00:59 INFO filecache.TrackerDistributedCacheManager: Creating symlink: /var/lib/hadoop-0.20/cache/cchuang/mapred/staging/cchuang402164468/.staging/job_local_0004/job.jar <- /var/lib/hadoop-0.20/cache/cchuang/mapred/local/localRunner/job.jar 12/04/05 10:00:59 INFO filecache.TrackerDistributedCacheManager: Creating symlink: /var/lib/hadoop-0.20/cache/cchuang/mapred/staging/cchuang402164468/.staging/job_local_0004/job.split <- /var/lib/hadoop-0.20/cache/cchuang/mapred/local/localRunner/job.split 12/04/05 10:00:59 INFO filecache.TrackerDistributedCacheManager: Creating symlink: /var/lib/hadoop-0.20/cache/cchuang/mapred/staging/cchuang402164468/.staging/job_local_0004/job.splitmetainfo <- /var/lib/hadoop-0.20/cache/cchuang/mapred/local/localRunner/job.splitmetainfo 12/04/05 10:00:59 INFO filecache.TrackerDistributedCacheManager: Creating symlink: /var/lib/hadoop-0.20/cache/cchuang/mapred/staging/cchuang402164468/.staging/job_local_0004/job.xml <- /var/lib/hadoop-0.20/cache/cchuang/mapred/local/localRunner/job.xml 12/04/05 10:00:59 INFO mapred.Task: Using ResourceCalculatorPlugin : null 12/04/05 10:00:59 INFO mapred.MapTask: io.sort.mb = 100 12/04/05 10:00:59 INFO mapred.MapTask: data buffer = 79691776/99614720 12/04/05 10:00:59 INFO mapred.MapTask: record buffer = 262144/327680 12/04/05 10:00:59 WARN mapred.LocalJobRunner: job_local_0004 java.lang.RuntimeException: org.apache.hadoop.mapreduce.lib.input.InvalidInputException: Input path does not exist: file:/Users/cchuang/workspace/grapevine-rec/pigsample_854728855_1333645258470 at org.apache.pig.backend.hadoop.executionengine.mapReduceLayer.partitioners.WeightedRangePartitioner.setConf(WeightedRangePartitioner.java:139) at org.apache.hadoop.util.ReflectionUtils.setConf(ReflectionUtils.java:62) at org.apache.hadoop.util.ReflectionUtils.newInstance(ReflectionUtils.java:117) at org.apache.hadoop.mapred.MapTask$NewOutputCollector.<init>(MapTask.java:560) at org.apache.hadoop.mapred.MapTask.runNewMapper(MapTask.java:639) at org.apache.hadoop.mapred.MapTask.run(MapTask.java:323) at org.apache.hadoop.mapred.LocalJobRunner$Job.run(LocalJobRunner.java:210) Caused by: org.apache.hadoop.mapreduce.lib.input.InvalidInputException: Input path does not exist: file:/Users/cchuang/workspace/grapevine-rec/pigsample_854728855_1333645258470 at org.apache.hadoop.mapreduce.lib.input.FileInputFormat.listStatus(FileInputFormat.java:231) at org.apache.pig.backend.hadoop.executionengine.mapReduceLayer.PigFileInputFormat.listStatus(PigFileInputFormat.java:37) at org.apache.hadoop.mapreduce.lib.input.FileInputFormat.getSplits(FileInputFormat.java:248) at org.apache.pig.impl.io.ReadToEndLoader.init(ReadToEndLoader.java:153) at org.apache.pig.impl.io.ReadToEndLoader.<init>(ReadToEndLoader.java:115) at org.apache.pig.backend.hadoop.executionengine.mapReduceLayer.partitioners.WeightedRangePartitioner.setConf(WeightedRangePartitioner.java:112) ... 6 more 12/04/05 10:00:59 INFO filecache.TrackerDistributedCacheManager: Deleted path /var/lib/hadoop-0.20/cache/cchuang/mapred/local/archive/4334795313006396107_361978491_57907159/localhost/tmp/temp1725960134/tmp-1546565755 12/04/05 10:00:59 INFO mapReduceLayer.MapReduceLauncher: HadoopJobId: job_local_0004 12/04/05 10:01:04 INFO mapReduceLayer.MapReduceLauncher: job job_local_0004 has failed! Stop running all dependent jobs 12/04/05 10:01:04 INFO mapReduceLayer.MapReduceLauncher: 100% complete 12/04/05 10:01:04 ERROR pigstats.PigStatsUtil: 1 map reduce job(s) failed! 12/04/05 10:01:04 INFO pigstats.PigStats: Script Statistics: HadoopVersion PigVersion UserId StartedAt FinishedAt Features 0.20.2-cdh3u3 0.8.1-cdh3u3 cchuang 2012-04-05 10:00:34 2012-04-05 10:01:04 GROUP_BY,ORDER_BY Some jobs have failed! Stop running all dependent jobs Job Stats (time in seconds): JobId Maps Reduces MaxMapTime MinMapTIme AvgMapTime MaxReduceTime MinReduceTime AvgReduceTime Alias Feature Outputs job_local_0001 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 all_influence_scores,grouped_user_similarity,simplified_user_similarity,user_similarity GROUP_BY job_local_0002 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 grouped_influence_scores,influence_scores GROUP_BY,COMBINER job_local_0003 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ordered_influence_scores SAMPLER Failed Jobs: JobId Alias Feature Message Outputs job_local_0004 ordered_influence_scores ORDER_BY Message: Job failed! Error - NA /tmp/cc-test-results-1, Input(s): Successfully read 0 records from: "/tmp/sample-sim-score-results-31/part-r-00000" Output(s): Failed to produce result in "/tmp/cc-test-results-1" Counters: Total records written : 0 Total bytes written : 0 Spillable Memory Manager spill count : 0 Total bags proactively spilled: 0 Total records proactively spilled: 0 Job DAG: job_local_0001 -> job_local_0002, job_local_0002 -> job_local_0003, job_local_0003 -> job_local_0004, job_local_0004 12/04/05 10:01:04 INFO mapReduceLayer.MapReduceLauncher: Some jobs have failed! Stop running all dependent jobs

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  • Passing XML markers to Google Map

    - by djmadscribbler
    I've been creating a V3 Google map based on this example from Mike Williams http://www.geocodezip.com/v3_MW_example_map3.html I've run into a bit of a problem though. If I have no parameters in my URL then I get the error "id is undefined idmarkers [id.toLowerCase()] = marker;" in Firebug and only one marker will show up. If I have a parameter (?id=105 for example) then all the sidebar links say 105 (or whatever the parameter in the URL was) instead of their respective label as listed in the XML file and a random infowindow will be opened instead of the window for the id in the URL. Here is my javascript: var map = null; var lastmarker = null; // ========== Read paramaters that have been passed in ========== // Before we go looking for the passed parameters, set some defaults // in case there are no parameters var id; var index = -1; // these set the initial center, zoom and maptype for the map // if it is not specified in the query string var lat = 42.194741; var lng = -121.700301; var zoom = 18; var maptype = google.maps.MapTypeId.HYBRID; function MapTypeId2UrlValue(maptype) { var urlValue = 'm'; switch (maptype) { case google.maps.MapTypeId.HYBRID: urlValue = 'h'; break; case google.maps.MapTypeId.SATELLITE: urlValue = 'k'; break; case google.maps.MapTypeId.TERRAIN: urlValue = 't'; break; default: case google.maps.MapTypeId.ROADMAP: urlValue = 'm'; break; } return urlValue; } // If there are any parameters at eh end of the URL, they will be in location.search // looking something like "?marker=3" // skip the first character, we are not interested in the "?" var query = location.search.substring(1); // split the rest at each "&" character to give a list of "argname=value" pairs var pairs = query.split("&"); for (var i = 0; i < pairs.length; i++) { // break each pair at the first "=" to obtain the argname and value var pos = pairs[i].indexOf("="); var argname = pairs[i].substring(0, pos).toLowerCase(); var value = pairs[i].substring(pos + 1).toLowerCase(); // process each possible argname - use unescape() if theres any chance of spaces if (argname == "id") { id = unescape(value); } if (argname == "marker") { index = parseFloat(value); } if (argname == "lat") { lat = parseFloat(value); } if (argname == "lng") { lng = parseFloat(value); } if (argname == "zoom") { zoom = parseInt(value); } if (argname == "type") { // from the v3 documentation 8/24/2010 // HYBRID This map type displays a transparent layer of major streets on satellite images. // ROADMAP This map type displays a normal street map. // SATELLITE This map type displays satellite images. // TERRAIN This map type displays maps with physical features such as terrain and vegetation. if (value == "m") { maptype = google.maps.MapTypeId.ROADMAP; } if (value == "k") { maptype = google.maps.MapTypeId.SATELLITE; } if (value == "h") { maptype = google.maps.MapTypeId.HYBRID; } if (value == "t") { maptype = google.maps.MapTypeId.TERRAIN; } } } // this variable will collect the html which will eventually be placed in the side_bar var side_bar_html = ""; // arrays to hold copies of the markers and html used by the side_bar // because the function closure trick doesnt work there var gmarkers = []; var idmarkers = []; // global "map" variable var map = null; // A function to create the marker and set up the event window function function createMarker(point, icon, label, html) { var contentString = html; var marker = new google.maps.Marker({ position: point, map: map, title: label, icon: icon, zIndex: Math.round(point.lat() * -100000) << 5 }); marker.id = id; marker.index = gmarkers.length; google.maps.event.addListener(marker, 'click', function () { lastmarker = new Object; lastmarker.id = marker.id; lastmarker.index = marker.index; infowindow.setContent(contentString); infowindow.open(map, marker); }); // save the info we need to use later for the side_bar gmarkers.push(marker); idmarkers[id.toLowerCase()] = marker; // add a line to the side_bar html side_bar_html += '<a href="javascript:myclick(' + (gmarkers.length - 1) + ')">' + id + '<\/a><br>'; } // This function picks up the click and opens the corresponding info window function myclick(i) { google.maps.event.trigger(gmarkers[i], "click"); } function makeLink() { var mapinfo = "lat=" + map.getCenter().lat().toFixed(6) + "&lng=" + map.getCenter().lng().toFixed(6) + "&zoom=" + map.getZoom() + "&type=" + MapTypeId2UrlValue(map.getMapTypeId()); if (lastmarker) { var a = "/about/map/default.aspx?id=" + lastmarker.id + "&" + mapinfo; var b = "/about/map/default.aspx?marker=" + lastmarker.index + "&" + mapinfo; } else { var a = "/about/map/default.aspx?" + mapinfo; var b = a; } document.getElementById("idlink").innerHTML = '<a href="' + a + '" id=url target=_new>- Link directly to this page by id</a> (id in xml file also entry &quot;name&quot; in sidebar menu)'; document.getElementById("indexlink").innerHTML = '<a href="' + b + '" id=url target=_new>- Link directly to this page by index</a> (position in gmarkers array)'; } function initialize() { // create the map var myOptions = { zoom: zoom, center: new google.maps.LatLng(lat, lng), mapTypeId: maptype, mapTypeControlOptions: { style: google.maps.MapTypeControlStyle.DROPDOWN_MENU }, navigationControl: true, mapTypeId: google.maps.MapTypeId.HYBRID }; map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById("map_canvas"), myOptions); var stylesarray = [ { featureType: "poi", elementType: "labels", stylers: [ { visibility: "off" } ] }, { featureType: "landscape.man_made", elementType: "labels", stylers: [ { visibility: "off" } ] } ]; var options = map.setOptions({ styles: stylesarray }); // Make the link the first time when the page opens makeLink(); // Make the link again whenever the map changes google.maps.event.addListener(map, 'maptypeid_changed', makeLink); google.maps.event.addListener(map, 'center_changed', makeLink); google.maps.event.addListener(map, 'bounds_changed', makeLink); google.maps.event.addListener(map, 'zoom_changed', makeLink); google.maps.event.addListener(map, 'click', function () { lastmarker = null; makeLink(); infowindow.close(); }); // Read the data from example.xml downloadUrl("example.xml", function (doc) { var xmlDoc = xmlParse(doc); var markers = xmlDoc.documentElement.getElementsByTagName("marker"); for (var i = 0; i < markers.length; i++) { // obtain the attribues of each marker var lat = parseFloat(markers[i].getAttribute("lat")); var lng = parseFloat(markers[i].getAttribute("lng")); var point = new google.maps.LatLng(lat, lng); var html = markers[i].getAttribute("html"); var label = markers[i].getAttribute("label"); var icon = markers[i].getAttribute("icon"); // create the marker var marker = createMarker(point, icon, label, html); } // put the assembled side_bar_html contents into the side_bar div document.getElementById("side_bar").innerHTML = side_bar_html; // ========= If a parameter was passed, open the info window ========== if (id) { if (idmarkers[id]) { google.maps.event.trigger(idmarkers[id], "click"); } else { alert("id " + id + " does not match any marker"); } } if (index > -1) { if (index < gmarkers.length) { google.maps.event.trigger(gmarkers[index], "click"); } else { alert("marker " + index + " does not exist"); } } }); } var infowindow = new google.maps.InfoWindow( { size: new google.maps.Size(150, 50) }); google.maps.event.addDomListener(window, "load", initialize); And here is an example of my XML formatting <marker lat="42.196175" lng="-121.699224" html="This is the information about 104" iconimage="/about/map/images/104.png" label="104" />

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  • Will these optimizations to my Ruby implementation of diff improve performance in a Rails app?

    - by grg-n-sox
    <tl;dr> In source version control diff patch generation, would it be worth it to use the optimizations listed at the very bottom of this writing (see <optimizations>) in my Ruby implementation of diff for making diff patches? </tl;dr> <introduction> I am programming something I have never done before and there might already be tools out there to do the exact thing I am programming but at this point I am having too much fun to care so I am still going to do it from scratch, even if there is a tool for this. So anyways, I am working on a Ruby on Rails app and need a certain feature. Basically I want each entry in a table of mine, let's say for example a table of video games, to have a stored chunk of text that represents a review or something of the sort for that table entry. However, I want this text to be both editable by any registered user and also keep track of different submissions in a version control system. The simplest solution I could think of is just implement a solution that keeps track of the text body and the diff patch history of different versions of the text body as objects in Ruby and then serialize it, preferably in human readable form (so I'll most likely use YAML for this) for editing if needed due to corruption by a software bug or a mistake is made by an admin doing some version editing. So at first I just tried to dive in head first into this feature to find that the problem of generating a diff patch is more difficult that I thought to do efficiently. So I did some research and came across some ideas. Some I have implemented already and some I have not. However, it all pretty much revolves around the longest common subsequence problem, as you would already know if you have already done anything with diff or diff-like features, and optimization the function that solves it. Currently I have it so it truncates the compared versions of the text body from the beginning and end until non-matching lines are found. Then it solves the problem using a comparison matrix, but instead of incrementing the value stored in a cell when it finds a matching line like in most longest common subsequence algorithms I have seen examples of, I increment when I have a non-matching line so as to calculate edit distance instead of longest common subsequence. Although as far as I can tell between the two approaches, they are essentially two sides of the same coin so either could be used to derive an answer. It then back-traces through the comparison matrix and notes when there was an incrementation and in which adjacent cell (West, Northwest, or North) to determine that line's diff entry and assumes all other lines to be unchanged. Normally I would leave it at that, but since this is going into a Rails environment and not just some stand-alone Ruby script, I started getting worried about needing to optimize at least enough so if a spammer that somehow knew how I implemented the version control system and knew my worst case scenario entry still wouldn't be able to hit the server that bad. After some searching and reading of research papers and articles through the internet, I've come across several that seem decent but all seem to have pros and cons and I am having a hard time deciding how well in this situation that the pros and cons balance out. So are the ones listed here worth it? I have listed them with known pros and cons. </introduction> <optimizations> Chop the compared sequences into multiple chucks of subsequences by splitting where lines are unchanged, and then truncating each section of unchanged lines at the beginning and end of each section. Then solve the edit distance of each subsequence. Pro: Changes the time increase as the changed area gets bigger from a quadratic increase to something more similar to a linear increase. Con: Figuring out where to split already seems like you have to solve edit distance except now you don't care how it is changed. Would be fine if this was solvable by a process closer to solving hamming distance but a single insertion would throw this off. Use a cryptographic hash function to both convert all sequence elements into integers and ensure uniqueness. Then solve the edit distance comparing the hash integers instead of the sequence elements themselves. Pro: The operation of comparing two integers is faster than the operation of comparing two strings, so a slight performance gain is received after every comparison, which can be a lot overall. Con: Using a cryptographic hash function takes time to convert all the sequence elements and may end up costing more time to do the conversion that you gain back from the integer comparisons. You could use the built in hash function for a string but that will not guarantee uniqueness. Use lazy evaluation to only calculate the three center-most diagonals of the comparison matrix and then only calculate additional diagonals as needed. And then also use this approach to possibly remove the need on some comparisons to compare all three adjacent cells as desribed here. Pro: Can turn an algorithm that always takes O(n * m) time and make it so only worst case scenario is that time, best case becomes practically linear, and average case is somewhere between the two. Con: It is an algorithm I've only seen implemented in functional programming languages and I am having a difficult time comprehending how to convert this into Ruby based on how it is described at the site linked to above. Make a C module and do the hard work at the native level in C and just make a Ruby wrapper for it so Ruby can make all the calls to it that it needs. Pro: I have to imagine that evaluating something like this in could be a LOT faster. Con: I have no idea how Rails handles apps with ruby code that has C extensions and it hurts the portability of the app. This is an optimization for after the solving of edit distance, but idea is to store additional combined diffs with the ones produced by each version to make a delta-tree data structure with the most recently made diff as the root node of the tree so getting to any version takes worst case time of O(log n) instead of O(n). Pro: Would make going back to an old version a lot faster. Con: It would mean every new commit, the delta-tree would get a new root node that will cost time to reorganize the delta-tree for an operation that will be carried out a lot more often than going back a version, not to mention the unlikelihood it will be an old version. </optimizations> So are these things worth the effort?

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  • Array sorting efficiency... Beginner need advice

    - by SoleSoft
    I'll start by saying I am very much a beginner programmer, this is essentially my first real project outside of using learning material. I've been making a 'Simon Says' style game (the game where you repeat the pattern generated by the computer) using C# and XNA, the actual game is complete and working fine but while creating it, I wanted to also create a 'top 10' scoreboard. The scoreboard would record player name, level (how many 'rounds' they've completed) and combo (how many buttons presses they got correct), the scoreboard would then be sorted by combo score. This led me to XML, the first time using it, and I eventually got to the point of having an XML file that recorded the top 10 scores. The XML file is managed within a scoreboard class, which is also responsible for adding new scores and sorting scores. Which gets me to the point... I'd like some feedback on the way I've gone about sorting the score list and how I could have done it better, I have no other way to gain feedback =(. I know .NET features Array.Sort() but I wasn't too sure of how to use it as it's not just a single array that needs to be sorted. When a new score needs to be entered into the scoreboard, the player name and level also have to be added. These are stored within an 'array of arrays' (10 = for 'top 10' scores) scoreboardComboData = new int[10]; // Combo scoreboardTextData = new string[2][]; scoreboardTextData[0] = new string[10]; // Name scoreboardTextData[1] = new string[10]; // Level as string The scoreboard class works as follows: - Checks to see if 'scoreboard.xml' exists, if not it creates it - Initialises above arrays and adds any player data from scoreboard.xml, from previous run - when AddScore(name, level, combo) is called the sort begins - Another method can also be called that populates the XML file with above array data The sort checks to see if the new score (combo) is less than or equal to any recorded scores within the scoreboardComboData array (if it's greater than a score, it moves onto the next element). If so, it moves all scores below the score it is less than or equal to down one element, essentially removing the last score and then places the new score within the element below the score it is less than or equal to. If the score is greater than all recorded scores, it moves all scores down one and inserts the new score within the first element. If it's the only score, it simply adds it to the first element. When a new score is added, the Name and Level data is also added to their relevant arrays, in the same way. What a tongue twister. Below is the AddScore method, I've added comments in the hope that it makes things clearer O_o. You can get the actual source file HERE. Below the method is an example of the quickest way to add a score to follow through with a debugger. public static void AddScore(string name, string level, int combo) { // If the scoreboard has not yet been filled, this adds another 'active' // array element each time a new score is added. The actual array size is // defined within PopulateScoreBoard() (set to 10 - for 'top 10' if (totalScores < scoreboardComboData.Length) totalScores++; // Does the scoreboard even need sorting? if (totalScores > 1) { for (int i = totalScores - 1; i > - 1; i--) { // Check to see if score (combo) is greater than score stored in // array if (combo > scoreboardComboData[i] && i != 0) { // If so continue to next element continue; } // Check to see if score (combo) is less or equal to element 'i' // score && that the element is not the last in the // array, if so the score does not need to be added to the scoreboard else if (combo <= scoreboardComboData[i] && i != scoreboardComboData.Length - 1) { // If the score is lower than element 'i' and greater than the last // element within the array, it needs to be added to the scoreboard. This is achieved // by moving each element under element 'i' down an element. The new score is then inserted // into the array under element 'i' for (int j = totalScores - 1; j > i; j--) { // Name and level data are moved down in their relevant arrays scoreboardTextData[0][j] = scoreboardTextData[0][j - 1]; scoreboardTextData[1][j] = scoreboardTextData[1][j - 1]; // Score (combo) data is moved down in relevant array scoreboardComboData[j] = scoreboardComboData[j - 1]; } // The new Name, level and score (combo) data is inserted into the relevant array under element 'i' scoreboardTextData[0][i + 1] = name; scoreboardTextData[1][i + 1] = level; scoreboardComboData[i + 1] = combo; break; } // If the method gets the this point, it means that the score is greater than all scores within // the array and therefore cannot be added in the above way. As it is not less than any score within // the array. else if (i == 0) { // All Names, levels and scores are moved down within their relevant arrays for (int j = totalScores - 1; j != 0; j--) { scoreboardTextData[0][j] = scoreboardTextData[0][j - 1]; scoreboardTextData[1][j] = scoreboardTextData[1][j - 1]; scoreboardComboData[j] = scoreboardComboData[j - 1]; } // The new number 1 top name, level and score, are added into the first element // within each of their relevant arrays. scoreboardTextData[0][0] = name; scoreboardTextData[1][0] = level; scoreboardComboData[0] = combo; break; } // If the methods get to this point, the combo score is not high enough // to be on the top10 score list and therefore needs to break break; } } // As totalScores < 1, the current score is the first to be added. Therefore no checks need to be made // and the Name, Level and combo data can be entered directly into the first element of their relevant // array. else { scoreboardTextData[0][0] = name; scoreboardTextData[1][0] = level; scoreboardComboData[0] = combo; } } } Example for adding score: private static void Initialize() { scoreboardDoc = new XmlDocument(); if (!File.Exists("Scoreboard.xml")) GenerateXML("Scoreboard.xml"); PopulateScoreBoard("Scoreboard.xml"); // ADD TEST SCORES HERE! AddScore("EXAMPLE", "10", 100); AddScore("EXAMPLE2", "24", 999); PopulateXML("Scoreboard.xml"); } In it's current state the source file is just used for testing, initialize is called within main and PopulateScoreBoard handles the majority of other initialising, so nothing else is needed, except to add a test score. I thank you for your time!

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  • Solaris OpenStack Horizon customizations

    - by GirishMoodalbail-Oracle
    In Oracle Solaris OpenStack Havana, we have customized the Horizon BUI by modifying existing dashboard and panels to reflect only those features that we support. The modification mostly involves:  --  disabling an widget (checkbox, button, textarea, and so on) --  removal of a tab from a panel --  removal of options from pull-down menus The following table lists the customizations that we have made. |-----------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------| | Where                       | What                                                | |-----------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------| | Project => Instances =>     | Post-Creation tab is removed.                       | | Launch Instance             |                                                     | |                             |                                                     | | Project => Instances =>     | Security Groups tab is removed.                     | | Actions => Edit Instance    |                                                     | |                             |                                                     | | Project => Instances =>     | Console tab is removed.                             | | Instance Name               |                                                     | |                             |                                                     | | Project => Instances =>     | Following actions Console, Edit Security Groups,    | | Actions                     | Pause Instance, Suspend Instance, Resize Instance,  | |                             | Rebuild Instance, and Migrate Instance are removed. | |                             |                                                     | | Project =>                  | Security Groups tab is removed.                     | | Access and Security         |                                                     | |                             |                                                     | | Project =>                  | Create Volume action is removed.                    | | Images and Snapshots =>     |                                                     | | Images => Actions           |                                                     | |                             |                                                     | | Project => Networks =>      | Admin State is disabled and its value is always     | | Create Network              | true.                                               | |                             |                                                     | | Project => Networks =>      | Disable Gateway checkbox is disabled, and its       | | Create Network =>           | value is always false.                              | | Subnet                      |                                                     | |                             |                                                     | | Project => Networks =>      | Allocation Pools and Host Routes text area are      | | Create Network =>           | disabled.                                      | | Subnet Detail               |                                                     | |                             |                                                     | | Project => Networks =>      | Edit Subnet action is removed.                      | | Network Name => Subnet =>   |                                                     | | Actions                     |                                                     | |                             |                                                     | | Project => Networks =>      | Edit Port action is removed.                        | | Network Name => Ports =>    |                                                     | | Actions                     |                                                     | |                             |                                                     | | Admin => Instnaces =>       | Following actions Console, Pause Instance,          | | Actions                     | Suspend Instance, and Migrate Instance are removed. | |                             |                                                     | | Admin => Networks =>        | Edit Network action is removed                      | | Actions                     |                                                     | |                             |                                                     | | Admin => Networks =>         | Edit Subnet action is removed                       | | Subnets => Actions          |                                                     | |                             |                                                     | | Admin => Networks =>         | Edit Port action is removed                         | | Ports => Actions            |                                                     | |                             |                                                     | | Admin => Networks =>         | Admin State and Shared check box are disabled.      | | Create Network              | Network's Admin State is always true, and Shared is | |                             | always false.                                       | |                             |                                                     | | Admin => Networks =>        | Admin State check box is disabled and its value     | | Network Name => Create Port | is always true.                                     | |-----------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------|

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  • ?Exadata??????DBFS

    - by Liu Maclean(???)
    ?Exadata???DBFS ??????? 1. ??fuse RPM  [root@dm01db01 ~]# yum install fuse Loaded plugins: rhnplugin, security This system is not registered with ULN. ULN support will be disabled. Setting up Install Process Resolving Dependencies --> Running transaction check ---> Package fuse.x86_64 0:2.7.4-8.0.1.el5 set to be updated --> Finished Dependency Resolution Dependencies Resolved ========================================================================================================================================================================  Package                            Arch                                 Version                                         Repository                                Size ======================================================================================================================================================================== Installing:  fuse                               x86_64                               2.7.4-8.0.1.el5                                 el5_latest                                85 k Transaction Summary ======================================================================================================================================================================== Install       1 Package(s) Upgrade       0 Package(s) Total download size: 85 k Is this ok [y/N]: y Downloading Packages: fuse-2.7.4-8.0.1.el5.x86_64.rpm                                                                                                                  |  85 kB     00:00      Running rpm_check_debug Running Transaction Test Finished Transaction Test Transaction Test Succeeded Running Transaction   Installing     : fuse                                                                                                                                             1/1  Installed:   fuse.x86_64 0:2.7.4-8.0.1.el5                                                                                                                                          [root@dm01db01 ~]# yum install fuse-libs Loaded plugins: rhnplugin, security This system is not registered with ULN. ULN support will be disabled. Setting up Install Process Resolving Dependencies --> Running transaction check ---> Package fuse-libs.i386 0:2.7.4-8.0.1.el5 set to be updated ---> Package fuse-libs.x86_64 0:2.7.4-8.0.1.el5 set to be updated --> Finished Dependency Resolution Dependencies Resolved ========================================================================================================================================================================  Package                                Arch                                Version                                       Repository                               Size ======================================================================================================================================================================== Installing:  fuse-libs                              i386                                2.7.4-8.0.1.el5                               el5_latest                               71 k  fuse-libs                              x86_64                              2.7.4-8.0.1.el5                               el5_latest                               70 k Transaction Summary ======================================================================================================================================================================== Install       2 Package(s) Upgrade       0 Package(s) Total download size: 141 k Is this ok [y/N]: y Downloading Packages: (1/2): fuse-libs-2.7.4-8.0.1.el5.x86_64.rpm                                                                                                      |  70 kB     00:00      (2/2): fuse-libs-2.7.4-8.0.1.el5.i386.rpm                                                                                                        |  71 kB     00:00      ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Total                                                                                                                                    71 kB/s | 141 kB     00:01      Running rpm_check_debug Running Transaction Test Finished Transaction Test Transaction Test Succeeded Running Transaction   Installing     : fuse-libs                                                                                                                                        1/2    Installing     : fuse-libs                                                                                                                                        2/2  Installed:   fuse-libs.i386 0:2.7.4-8.0.1.el5                                                  fuse-libs.x86_64 0:2.7.4-8.0.1.el5                                                  Complete! [root@dm01db01 ~]# yum install fuse-devel Loaded plugins: rhnplugin, security This system is not registered with ULN. ULN support will be disabled. Setting up Install Process Resolving Dependencies --> Running transaction check ---> Package fuse-devel.i386 0:2.7.4-8.0.1.el5 set to be updated ---> Package fuse-devel.x86_64 0:2.7.4-8.0.1.el5 set to be updated --> Finished Dependency Resolution Dependencies Resolved ========================================================================================================================================================================  Package                                 Arch                                Version                                      Repository                               Size ======================================================================================================================================================================== Installing:  fuse-devel                              i386                                2.7.4-8.0.1.el5                              el5_latest                               28 k  fuse-devel                              x86_64                              2.7.4-8.0.1.el5                              el5_latest                               28 k Transaction Summary ======================================================================================================================================================================== Install       2 Package(s) Upgrade       0 Package(s) Total download size: 57 k Is this ok [y/N]: y Downloading Packages: (1/2): fuse-devel-2.7.4-8.0.1.el5.x86_64.rpm                                                                                                     |  28 kB     00:00      (2/2): fuse-devel-2.7.4-8.0.1.el5.i386.rpm                                                                                                       |  28 kB     00:00      ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Total                                                                                                                                    21 kB/s |  57 kB     00:02      Running rpm_check_debug Running Transaction Test Finished Transaction Test Transaction Test Succeeded Running Transaction   Installing     : fuse-devel                                                                                                                                       1/2    Installing     : fuse-devel                                                                                                                                       2/2  Installed:   fuse-devel.i386 0:2.7.4-8.0.1.el5                                                 fuse-devel.x86_64 0:2.7.4-8.0.1.el5                                                 Complete! 2. ?? DBFS??? ?????? cd $ORACLE_HOME/rdbms/admin sqlplus / as sysdba Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition Release 11.2.0.3.0 - 64bit Production With the Partitioning, Real Application Clusters, Automatic Storage Management, OLAP, Data Mining and Real Application Testing options SQL> @prvtfspi.plb Package body created. No errors. Package body created. No errors. ?????dbms_dbfs_sfs package  SQL> create tablespace dbfstbs datafile size 20g; Tablespace created. SQL> create user maclean_dbfs identified by oracle; User created. SQL> grant dba to maclean_dbfs; Grant succeeded. @@!!! SQL> grant  dbfs_role to maclean_dbfs; Grant succeeded. 3. ??DBFS SQL> conn maclean_dbfs/oracle Connected. SQL> @?/rdbms/admin/dbfs_create_filesystem.sql  dbfstbs mac_dbfs   No errors. -------- CREATE STORE: begin dbms_dbfs_sfs.createFilesystem(store_name => 'FS_MAC_DBFS', tbl_name => 'T_MAC_DBFS', tbl_tbs => 'dbfstbs', lob_tbs => 'dbfstbs', do_partition => false, partition_key => 1, do_compress => false, compression => '', do_dedup => false, do_encrypt => false); end; -------- REGISTER STORE: begin dbms_dbfs_content.registerStore(store_name=> 'FS_MAC_DBFS', provider_name => 'sample1', provider_package => 'dbms_dbfs_sfs'); end; -------- MOUNT STORE: begin dbms_dbfs_content.mountStore(store_name=>'FS_MAC_DBFS', store_mount=>'mac_dbfs'); end; -------- CHMOD STORE: declare m integer; begin m := dbms_fuse.fs_chmod('/mac_dbfs', 16895); end; No errors. 4.  ??mount point  [root@dm01db01 ~]# mkdir /dbfs [root@dm01db01 ~]# chown oracle:oinstall /dbfs 5. ??library path ?OS  # echo "/usr/local/lib" >> /etc/ld.so.conf.d/usr_local_lib.conf 6. ?????? export ORACLE_HOME=/s01/orabase/product/11.2.0/dbhome_1 [root@dm01db01 ~]# ln -s $ORACLE_HOME/lib/libclntsh.so.11.1 /usr/local/lib/libclntsh.so.11.1 [root@dm01db01 ~]#  ln -s $ORACLE_HOME/lib/libnnz11.so /usr/local/lib/libnnz11.so [root@dm01db01 ~]#  ln -s /lib64/libfuse.so.2 /usr/local/lib/libfuse.so.2 7. ??ldconfig  [root@dm01db01 ~]# ldconfig [root@dm01db01 ~]#  8. ??fusermount??????? [root@dm01db01 ~]#  chmod +x /usr/bin/fusermount [root@dm01db01 ~]#  ls -l /usr/bin/fusermount lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Sep  7 03:06 /usr/bin/fusermount -> /bin/fusermount [root@dm01db01 ~]#  ls -l /bin/fusermount -rwsr-x--x 1 root fuse 27072 Oct 17  2011 /bin/fusermount 9. ???????OS  dbfs_client maclean_dbfs@dm01db01:1521/orcl  /dbfs 10. ????nohup + &?????mount DBFS,???????????? [oracle@dm01db01 ~]$ echo "oracle"  >> dbfs_pw [oracle@dm01db01 ~]$ nohup dbfs_client maclean_dbfs@dm01db01:1521/orcl /dbfs < dbfs_pw & [oracle@dm01db01 ~]$ df -h Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/VGExaDb-LVDbSys1                        30G   15G   14G  53% / /dev/sda1             502M   30M  447M   7% /boot /dev/mapper/VGExaDb-LVDbOra1                        99G   20G   75G  21% /u01 tmpfs                  81G     0   81G   0% /dev/shm dbfs-maclean_dbfs@orcl:/                        20G  120K   20G   1% /dbfs [oracle@dm01db01 ~]$ mount /dev/mapper/VGExaDb-LVDbSys1 on / type ext3 (rw) proc on /proc type proc (rw) sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw) devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620) /dev/sda1 on /boot type ext3 (rw,nodev) /dev/mapper/VGExaDb-LVDbOra1 on /u01 type ext3 (rw,nodev) tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,size=82052m) none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw) dbfs-maclean_dbfs@orcl:/ on /dbfs type fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,max_read=1048576,default_permissions,user=oracle) [oracle@dm01db01 ~]$ ls -l /dbfs/ total 0 drwxrwxrwx 3 root root 0 Sep 14 05:11 mac_dbfs [oracle@nas ~]$ dbfs_client  --------MOUNT mode: usage: dbfs_client <db_user>@<db_server> [options] <mountpoint>   db_user:              Name of Database user that owns DBFS content repository filesystem(s)   db_server:            A valid connect string for Oracle database server                         (for example, hrdb_host:1521/hrservice)   mountpoint:           Path to mount Database File System(s)                         All the file systems owned by the database user will be seen at the mountpoint. DBFS options:   -o direct_io          Bypass the Linux page cache. Gives much better performance for large files.                         Programs in the file system cannot be executed with this option.                         This option is recommended when DBFS is used as an ETL staging area.   -o wallet             Run dbfs_client in background.                         Wallet must be configured to get credentials.   -o failover           dbfs_client fails over to surviving database instance with no data loss.                         Some performance cost on writes, especially for small files.   -o allow_root         Allows root access to the filesystem.                         This option requires setting 'user_allow_other' parameter in '/etc/fuse.conf'.   -o allow_other        Allows other users access to the file system.                         This option requires setting 'user_allow_other' parameter in '/etc/fuse.conf'.   -o rw                 Mount the filesystem read-write. [Default]   -o ro                 Mount the filesystem read-only. Files cannot be modified.   -o trace_file=STR     Tracing <filename> | 'syslog'   -o trace_level=N      Trace Level: 1->DEBUG, 2->INFO, 3->WARNING, 4->ERROR, 5->CRITICAL [Default: 4]   -h                    help   -V                    version --------COMMAND mode: Usage:     dbfs_client <db_user>@<db_server> --command command [switches] [arguments]             command:          Command to be executed, e.g., ls, cp, mkdir, rm            switches:         Switches are described below for each command.            arguments:        File names or directory names NOTE:      All database pathnames must be absolute and preceded by dbfs:/ Commands   ls            dbfs_client <db_user>@<db_server> --command ls [switches] target      Switches:              -a         Show all files including those starting with '.'            -l         Use a long listing format. In addition to the name of each file                       print the file type, permissions, size, user and group information            -R         List subdirectories recursively cp                     dbfs_client <db_user>@<db_server> --command cp [switches] source destination      Switches:              -r, -R      Copy a directory and its contents recursively into the destination directory rm                     dbfs_client <db_user>@<db_server> --command rm [switches] target      Switches:              -r, -R      Removes a directory and its contents recursively mkdir                  dbfs_client <db_user>@<db_server> --command mkdir directory_name Examples                     dbfs_client ETLUser@DBConnectString --command ls -l -a dbfs:/staging_area/directory1            dbfs_client ETLUser@DBConnectString --command cp -R  /tmp/1-Jan-2009-dump dbfs:/staging_area            dbfs_client ETLUser@DBConnectString --command rm dbfs:/staging_area/hello.txt            dbfs_client ETLUser@DBConnectString --command mkdir dbfs:/staging_area/directory2 [oracle@dm01db01 ~]$ ls -lh /tmp/largefile -rw-r--r-- 1 oracle oinstall 2.0G Sep 14 08:50 /tmp/largefile [oracle@dm01db01 ~]$ time dbfs_client  maclean_dbfs@dm01db01:1521/orcl --command cp /tmp/largefile dbfs:/mac_dbfs Password: /tmp/largefile -> dbfs:/mac_dbfs/largefile real    0m11.802s user    0m0.580s sys     0m2.375s ?Exadata?????2G?????? DBFS???11s => 200MB/s 

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  • Can't add client machine to windows server 2008 domain controller

    - by Patrick J Collins
    A bit of background before I dive into the gritty details: I have a single server running Windows 2003 Server where I host my ASP.net website and SQL Server + Reports. I've been creating ordinary windows user accounts to authenticate my users, and I enabled integrated windows authentication with impersonation. I've set up a bunch of user groups which correspond to certain roles (admin, power user, normal user, etc) and I test membership to enable or disable certain features. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the solution, it was quick to setup and I don't have to worry about messing around storing passwords and whatnot. Well, what I'm trying to do now is set up a new environment with 3 servers (Web, SQL, Reports) and I'd like these three servers to share common user accounts. I understand that I could add these three machines to a domain, which means installing Active Directory on one of the machines. I am barking up the wrong tree here? Would you suggest an alternative configuration? Assuming that I stick with AD, I have a couple of questions regarding DNS. To be honest, I'd rather not fiddle around with the DNS settings because my ISP already has their own DNS server which works just fine. It would appear however that DNS and AD are intertwined. Firstly, if I am to create a new domain in called mycompany.net, do I actually need to be the registered owner of that domain name and ensure the DNS entry points to the IP address of the machine hosting AD? Secondly, for the two other machines that I am trying to add to the domain, do I need to fiddle with their DNS settings? I've tried setting the preferred DNS Server IP address to that of my newly installed AD, but no luck. At this point, I can't add the two other machines to the domain. Here are some diagnostics that I have run based on a few suggestions I read on forums (sorry they're in French, although I could translate if needed). I ran nltest, which seems to indicate that the client can discover the domain controller. When I run dcdiag, the call to DsGetDcName fails with error 1722, not really sure what that means. Any suggestions? Thanks! C:\Users\Administrator>nltest /dsgetdc:mycompany.net Contrôleur de domaine : \\REPORTS.mycompany.net Adresse : \\111.111.111.111 GUID dom : 3333a4ec-ca56-4f02-bb9e-76c29c6c3832 Nom dom : mycompany.net Nom de la forêt : mycompany.net Nom de site du contrôleur de domaine : Default-First-Site-Name Nom de notre site : Default-First-Site-Name Indicateurs : PDC GC DS LDAP KDC TIMESERV WRITABLE DNS_DC DNS_DOMAIN DNS _FOREST CLOSE_SITE FULL_SECRET La commande a été correctement exécutée C:\Users\Administrator>dcdiag /s:mycompany.net /u: mycompany.net \pcollins /p:somepass Diagnostic du serveur d'annuaire Exécution de l'installation initiale : * Forêt AD identifiée. Collecte des informations initiales terminée. Exécution des tests initiaux nécessaires Test du serveur : Default-First-Site-Name\REPORTS Démarrage du test : Connectivity ......................... Le test Connectivity de REPORTS a réussi Exécution des tests principaux Test du serveur : Default-First-Site-Name\REPORTS Démarrage du test : Advertising Erreur irrécupérable : l'appel DsGetDcName (REPORTS) a échoué ; erreur 1722 Le localisateur n'a pas pu trouver le serveur. ......................... Le test Advertising de REPORTS a échoué Démarrage du test : FrsEvent Impossible d'interroger le journal des événements File Replication Service sur le serveur REPORTS.mycompany.net. Erreur 0x6ba « Le serveur RPC n'est pas disponible. » ......................... Le test FrsEvent de REPORTS a échoué Démarrage du test : DFSREvent Impossible d'interroger le journal des événements DFS Replication sur le serveur REPORTS.mycompany.net. Erreur 0x6ba « Le serveur RPC n'est pas disponible. » ......................... Le test DFSREvent de REPORTS a échoué Démarrage du test : SysVolCheck [REPORTS] Une opération net use ou LsaPolicy a échoué avec l'erreur 53, Le chemin réseau n'a pas été trouvé.. ......................... Le test SysVolCheck de REPORTS a échoué Démarrage du test : KccEvent Impossible d'interroger le journal des événements Directory Service sur le serveur REPORTS.mycompany.net. Erreur 0x6ba « Le serveur RPC n'est pas disponible. » ......................... Le test KccEvent de REPORTS a échoué Démarrage du test : KnowsOfRoleHolders ......................... Le test KnowsOfRoleHolders de REPORTS a réussi Démarrage du test : MachineAccount Impossible d'ouvrir le canal avec [REPORTS] : échec avec l'erreur 53 : Le chemin réseau n'a pas été trouvé. Impossible d'obtenir le nom de domaine NetBIOS Échec : impossible de tester le nom principal de service (SPN) HOST Échec : impossible de tester le nom principal de service (SPN) HOST ......................... Le test MachineAccount de REPORTS a réussi Démarrage du test : NCSecDesc ......................... Le test NCSecDesc de REPORTS a réussi Démarrage du test : NetLogons [REPORTS] Une opération net use ou LsaPolicy a échoué avec l'erreur 53, Le chemin réseau n'a pas été trouvé.. ......................... Le test NetLogons de REPORTS a échoué Démarrage du test : ObjectsReplicated ......................... Le test ObjectsReplicated de REPORTS a réussi Démarrage du test : Replications ......................... Le test Replications de REPORTS a réussi Démarrage du test : RidManager ......................... Le test RidManager de REPORTS a réussi Démarrage du test : Services Impossible d'ouvrir IPC distant à [REPORTS.mycompany.net] : erreur 0x35 « Le chemin réseau n'a pas été trouvé. » ......................... Le test Services de REPORTS a échoué Démarrage du test : SystemLog Impossible d'interroger le journal des événements System sur le serveur REPORTS.mycompany.net. Erreur 0x6ba « Le serveur RPC n'est pas disponible. » ......................... Le test SystemLog de REPORTS a échoué Démarrage du test : VerifyReferences ......................... Le test VerifyReferences de REPORTS a réussi Exécution de tests de partitions sur ForestDnsZones Démarrage du test : CheckSDRefDom ......................... Le test CheckSDRefDom de ForestDnsZones a réussi Démarrage du test : CrossRefValidation ......................... Le test CrossRefValidation de ForestDnsZones a réussi Exécution de tests de partitions sur DomainDnsZones Démarrage du test : CheckSDRefDom ......................... Le test CheckSDRefDom de DomainDnsZones a réussi Démarrage du test : CrossRefValidation ......................... Le test CrossRefValidation de DomainDnsZones a réussi Exécution de tests de partitions sur Schema Démarrage du test : CheckSDRefDom ......................... Le test CheckSDRefDom de Schema a réussi Démarrage du test : CrossRefValidation ......................... Le test CrossRefValidation de Schema a réussi Exécution de tests de partitions sur Configuration Démarrage du test : CheckSDRefDom ......................... Le test CheckSDRefDom de Configuration a réussi Démarrage du test : CrossRefValidation ......................... Le test CrossRefValidation de Configuration a réussi Exécution de tests de partitions sur mycompany Démarrage du test : CheckSDRefDom ......................... Le test CheckSDRefDom de mycompany a réussi Démarrage du test : CrossRefValidation ......................... Le test CrossRefValidation de mycompany a réussi Exécution de tests d'entreprise sur mycompany.net Démarrage du test : LocatorCheck Avertissement : l'appel DcGetDcName(GC_SERVER_REQUIRED) a échoué ; erreur 1722 Serveur de catalogue global introuvable - Les catalogues globaux ne fonctionnent pas. Avertissement : l'appel DcGetDcName(PDC_REQUIRED) a échoué ; erreur 1722 Contrôleur principal de domaine introuvable. Le serveur contenant le rôle PDC ne fonctionne pas. Avertissement : l'appel DcGetDcName(TIME_SERVER) a échoué ; erreur 1722 Serveur de temps introuvable. Le serveur contenant le rôle PDC ne fonctionne pas. Avertissement : l'appel DcGetDcName(GOOD_TIME_SERVER_PREFERRED) a échoué ; erreur 1722 Serveur de temps introuvable. Avertissement : l'appel DcGetDcName(KDC_REQUIRED) a échoué ; erreur 1722 Centre de distribution de clés introuvable : les centres de distribution de clés ne fonctionnent pas. ......................... Le test LocatorCheck de mycompany.net a échoué Démarrage du test : Intersite ......................... Le test Intersite de mycompany.net a réussi Update 1 : I am under the distinct impression that the problem is caused by some security settings. I have read elsewhere that the client needs to be able to access the fileshare sysvol. I had to enable Client for Microsoft Windows and File and Printer Sharing which were previously disabled. When I now run dcdiag the Advertising test works, which I suppose is forward progress. It currently chokes on the Services step (unable to open remote IPC). Démarrage du test : Services Impossible d'ouvrir IPC distant à [REPORTS.locbus.net] : erreur 0x35 « Le chemin réseau n'a pas été trouvé. » ......................... Le test Services de REPORTS a échoué The original English version of that error message : Could not open Remote ipc to [server] Update 2 : I attach some more diagnostics : Netsetup.log (client): 09/24/2009 13:27:09:773 ----------------------------------------------------------------- 09/24/2009 13:27:09:773 NetpValidateName: checking to see if 'WEB' is valid as type 1 name 09/24/2009 13:27:12:773 NetpCheckNetBiosNameNotInUse for 'WEB' [MACHINE] returned 0x0 09/24/2009 13:27:12:773 NetpValidateName: name 'WEB' is valid for type 1 09/24/2009 13:27:12:805 ----------------------------------------------------------------- 09/24/2009 13:27:12:805 NetpValidateName: checking to see if 'WEB' is valid as type 5 name 09/24/2009 13:27:12:805 NetpValidateName: name 'WEB' is valid for type 5 09/24/2009 13:27:12:852 ----------------------------------------------------------------- 09/24/2009 13:27:12:852 NetpValidateName: checking to see if 'MYCOMPANY.NET' is valid as type 3 name 09/24/2009 13:27:12:992 NetpCheckDomainNameIsValid [ Exists ] for 'MYCOMPANY.NET' returned 0x0 09/24/2009 13:27:12:992 NetpValidateName: name 'MYCOMPANY.NET' is valid for type 3 09/24/2009 13:27:21:320 ----------------------------------------------------------------- 09/24/2009 13:27:21:320 NetpDoDomainJoin 09/24/2009 13:27:21:320 NetpMachineValidToJoin: 'WEB' 09/24/2009 13:27:21:320 OS Version: 6.0 09/24/2009 13:27:21:320 Build number: 6002 09/24/2009 13:27:21:320 ServicePack: Service Pack 2 09/24/2009 13:27:21:414 SKU: Windows Server® 2008 Standard 09/24/2009 13:27:21:414 NetpDomainJoinLicensingCheck: ulLicenseValue=1, Status: 0x0 09/24/2009 13:27:21:414 NetpGetLsaPrimaryDomain: status: 0x0 09/24/2009 13:27:21:414 NetpMachineValidToJoin: status: 0x0 09/24/2009 13:27:21:414 NetpJoinDomain 09/24/2009 13:27:21:414 Machine: WEB 09/24/2009 13:27:21:414 Domain: MYCOMPANY.NET 09/24/2009 13:27:21:414 MachineAccountOU: (NULL) 09/24/2009 13:27:21:414 Account: MYCOMPANY.NET\pcollins 09/24/2009 13:27:21:414 Options: 0x25 09/24/2009 13:27:21:414 NetpLoadParameters: loading registry parameters... 09/24/2009 13:27:21:414 NetpLoadParameters: DNSNameResolutionRequired not found, defaulting to '1' 0x2 09/24/2009 13:27:21:414 NetpLoadParameters: status: 0x2 09/24/2009 13:27:21:414 NetpValidateName: checking to see if 'MYCOMPANY.NET' is valid as type 3 name 09/24/2009 13:27:21:523 NetpCheckDomainNameIsValid [ Exists ] for 'MYCOMPANY.NET' returned 0x0 09/24/2009 13:27:21:523 NetpValidateName: name 'MYCOMPANY.NET' is valid for type 3 09/24/2009 13:27:21:523 NetpDsGetDcName: trying to find DC in domain 'MYCOMPANY.NET', flags: 0x40001010 09/24/2009 13:27:22:039 NetpDsGetDcName: failed to find a DC having account 'WEB$': 0x525, last error is 0x79 09/24/2009 13:27:22:039 NetpDsGetDcName: status of verifying DNS A record name resolution for 'KING.MYCOMPANY.NET': 0x0 09/24/2009 13:27:22:039 NetpDsGetDcName: found DC '\\KING.MYCOMPANY.NET' in the specified domain 09/24/2009 13:27:30:039 NetUseAdd to \\KING.MYCOMPANY.NET\IPC$ returned 53 09/24/2009 13:27:30:039 NetpJoinDomain: status of connecting to dc '\\KING.MYCOMPANY.NET': 0x35 09/24/2009 13:27:30:039 NetpDoDomainJoin: status: 0x35 09/24/2009 13:27:30:148 ----------------------------------------------------------------- ipconfig /all (on client): Configuration IP de Windows Nom de l'hôte . . . . . . . . . . : WEB Suffixe DNS principal . . . . . . : Type de noeud. . . . . . . . . . : Hybride Routage IP activé . . . . . . . . : Non Proxy WINS activé . . . . . . . . : Non Carte Ethernet Connexion au réseau local : Suffixe DNS propre à la connexion. . . : Description. . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel 21140-Based PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter (Emulated) Adresse physique . . . . . . . . . . . : **-15-5D-A1-17-** DHCP activé. . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Non Configuration automatique activée. . . : Oui Adresse IPv4. . . . . . . . . . . : **.***.163.122(préféré) Masque de sous-réseau. . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0 Passerelle par défaut. . . . . . . . . : **.***.163.2 Serveurs DNS. . . . . . . . . . . . . : **.***.163.123 NetBIOS sur Tcpip. . . . . . . . . . . : Activé ipconfig /all (on server): Configuration IP de Windows Nom de l'hôte . . . . . . . . . . : KING Suffixe DNS principal . . . . . . : mycompany.net Type de noeud. . . . . . . . . . : Hybride Routage IP activé . . . . . . . . : Non Proxy WINS activé . . . . . . . . : Non Liste de recherche du suffixe DNS.: locbus.net Carte Ethernet Connexion au réseau local : Suffixe DNS propre à la connexion. . . : Description. . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel 21140-Based PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter (Emulated) Adresse physique . . . . . . . . . . . : **-15-5D-A1-1E-** DHCP activé. . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Non Configuration automatique activée. . . : Oui Adresse IPv4. . . . . . . . . . . : **.***.163.123(préféré) Masque de sous-réseau. . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0 Passerelle par défaut. . . . . . . . . : **.***.163.2 Serveurs DNS. . . . . . . . . . . . . : 127.0.0.1 NetBIOS sur Tcpip. . . . . . . . . . . : Activé nslookup (on client): Serveur : *******.***.com Address: **.***.163.123 Nom : mycompany.net Addresses: ****:****:a37b::****:a37b **.****.163.123

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  • Can ping device from one computer and not the other

    - by Sean Duggan
    I've recently been assigned to work on a diagnostic program done in C++ which communicates with a piece of electronic equipment. Our normal scenario involves communicating via an RS232 interface, but I've been asked to make our program work over ethernet, source code having been done in Visual Basic. After much thrashing about trying to get the code to work and continuing to get 10049 Winsock errors when I tried to connect, I tried pinging the switch. From the computer the VB program is running on, I can see the switch via ping, nslookup, tracert, and pathping (I was going down the list of programs) and I can do this via URI or IP address. From my laptop, sending the same commands fails every time. They're both using the same network cable and the same USB-to-Ethernet device (I've been swapping them between tests) but one can see the switch and the other cannot. I'm working on the programming end, but the ping results makes me think that there might be a network issue stymieing me. wry grin I'm not much of a network guy, so I'm appealing to expert assistance. Both computers are running Windows XP if that helps. The connection is to an "IP-RS8" device which then connects to our VCU-C units. Each unit is accessible via URI or IP address on the desktop computer we usually have connected to the units (it's running the older VB program that I was asked to lift the networking code from). The connection is made via a USB-to-Ethernet adapter so as to leave the regular Ethernet port available for connecting to the company network. Hmm... come to think of it, I've probably been confusing the issue, talking about pinging "the switch" rather than indicating that it's the devices. My apologies. Communication is generally done with a DLL that uses Winsock functions to make queries for data from the VCU and then to receive. I'm failing when connecting. I haven't found anything on the firewall which should block these commands, but I'll keep poking. I don't know if it's potentially relevant, but on the desktop, the adapter maps to Local Area Connection 3 while on the laptop, it consistently maps to Local Area Connection 2. Currently reading up on DHCP. IPConfig /all results: Desktop Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : AMERDAEXXXXXX Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . : amer.example.com Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : COMPANY.com amer.example.com atle.example.com cone.example.com apac.example.com scan.example.com bYX.example.com Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection X: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : amer.example.com Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Broadcom NetXtreme XYxx Gigabit Controller Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : YY-XX-YB-XX-XX-XX Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : XYY.XXX.XY.XXX Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : XXX.XXX.XXY.Y Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : XYY.XXX.XY.X DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : XY.XXX.XXY.XX DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : XY.XXX.XXY.XX XY.XXY.XXY.XX Primary WINS Server . . . . . . . : XY.XXX.XXY.X Secondary WINS Server . . . . . . : XY.XXY.XXY.X Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Thursday, July XX, XYXX XY:XX:XX AM Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Sunday, July XX, XYXX XY:XX:XX AM Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection X: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Description . . . . . . . . . . . : ASIX axYYYYX USBX.Y to Fast Ethernet Adapter Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : YY-XY-BY-YX-XY-AY Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : XY.Y.Y.X Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : XXX.XXX.XXY.Y Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : XY.Y.Y.X DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : XY.Y.Y.XY DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : XY.Y.Y.X Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Thursday, July XX, XYXX XY:XX:XY AM Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Tuesday, August YX, XYXX XX:XY:XY AM Laptop Windows IP Configuration Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : AMERLAFYYXXYX Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . : amer.example.com Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : COMPANY.com amer.example.com atle.example.com cone.example.com apac.example.com scan.example.com bYX.example.com Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : amer.example.com Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) 82567LM Gigabit Network Connection Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : YY-XY-BY-DY-XB-YX Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : XYY.XXX.XY.XY Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : XXX.XXX.XXY.Y Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : XYY.XXX.XY.X DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : XY.XXX.XXY.XX DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : XY.XXX.XXY.XX XY.XXY.XXY.XX Primary WINS Server . . . . . . . : XY.XXX.XXY.X Secondary WINS Server . . . . . . : XY.XXY.XXY.X Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Thursday, July XX, XYXX XX:XX:XX AM Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Sunday, July XX, XYXX XX:XX:XX AM Ethernet adapter {XYXAAYXX-YEDY-XXYX-YYEX-BYXYXXYEEYEX}: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Nortel IPSECSHM Adapter - Packet Scheduler iniport Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : XX-XX-XX-XX-XX-YY Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : Y.Y.Y.Y Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : Y.Y.Y.Y Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : Ethernet adapter Leaf Networks Adapter: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Leaf Networks Adapter Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : YY-FF-FA-BC-YF-AY Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : X.XYY.XY.XX Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : XXX.Y.Y.Y Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection 3: Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Bluetooth LAN Access Server Driver Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : YY-FX-AX-YA-BY-CA Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection 2: Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) WiFi Link 5300 AGN Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : YY-XX-YA-CX-FC-YE Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection 2: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Description . . . . . . . . . . . : ASIX ax88772 USB2.0 to Fast Ethernet Adapter Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : YY-XY-BY-YX-XY-AY Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : XYX.XYY.X.X Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : XXX.XXX.XXX.Y Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :

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  • Address book with C programming; cannot compile my code.

    - by osabri
    I've divided my code into small programs so it can be easy to excute /* ab_error.c : in case of errors following messages will be displayed */ #include "adressbook.h" static char *errormsg[] = { "", "\nNot enough space on disk", "\nCannot open file", "\nCannot read file", "\nCannot write file" }; void check(int error) { switch(error) { case 0: return; case 1: write_file(); case 2: case 3: case 4: system("cls"); fputs(errormsg[error], stderr); exit(error); } } 2nd /* ab_fileio.c : functions for file input/output */ #include "adressbook.h" static char ab_file[] = "ADRESSBOOK.DAT"; //file to save the entries int read_file(void) { int error = 0; FILE *fp; ELEMENT *new_e, *last_e = NULL; DATA buffer; if( (fp = fopen(ab_file, "rb")) == NULL) return -1; //no file found while (fread(&buffer, sizeof(DATA), 1, fp) == 1) //reads one list element after another { if( (new_e = make_element()) == NULL) { error = 1; break; //not enough space } new_e->person = buffer; //copy data to new element new_e->next = NULL; if(hol.first == NULL) //list is empty? hol.first = new_e; //yes else last_e->next = new_e; //no last_e = new_e; ++hol.amount; } if( !error && !feof(fp) ) error = 3; //cannot read file fclose(fp); return error; } /*-------------------------------*/ int write_file(void) { int error = 0; FILE *fp; ELEMENT *p; if( (p = hol.first) == NULL) return 0; //list is empty if( (fp = fopen(ab_file, "wb")) == NULL) return 2; //cannot open while( p!= NULL) { if( fwrite(&p->person, sizeof(DATA), 1, fp) < 1) { error = 4; break; //cannot write } p = p->next; } fclose(fp); return error; } 3rd /* ab_list.c : functions to manipulate the list */ #include "adressbook.h" HOL hol = {0, NULL}; //global definition for head of list /* -------------------- */ ELEMENT *make_element(void) { return (ELEMENT *)malloc( sizeof(ELEMENT) ); } /* -------------------- */ int ins_element( DATA *newdata) { ELEMENT *new_e, *pre_p; if((new_e = make_element()) == NULL) return 1; new_e ->person = *newdata; // copy data to new element pre_p = search(new_e->person.family_name); if(pre_p == NULL) //no person in list { new_e->next = hol.first; //put it to the begin hol.first = new_e; } else { new_e->next = pre_p->next; pre_p->next = new_e; } ++hol.amount; return 0; } int erase_element( char name, char surname ) { return 0; } /* ---------------------*/ ELEMENT *search(char *name) { ELEMENT *sp, *retp; //searchpointer, returnpointer retp = NULL; sp = hol.first; while(sp != NULL && sp->person.family_name != name) { retp = sp; sp = sp->next; } return(retp); } 4th /* ab_screen.c : functions for printing information on screen */ #include "adressbook.h" #include <conio.h> #include <ctype.h> /* standard prompts for in- and output */ static char pgmname[] = "---- Oussama's Adressbook made in splendid C ----"; static char options[] = "\ 1: Enter new adress\n\n\ 2: Delete entry\n\n\ 3: Change entry\n\n\ 4: Print adress\n\n\ Esc: Exit\n\n\n\ Your choice . . .: "; static char prompt[] = "\ Name . . . .:\n\ Surname . . :\n\n\ Street . . .:\n\n\ House number:\n\n\ Postal code :\n\n\ Phone number:"; static char buttons[] = "\ <Esc> = cancel input <Backspace> = correct input\ <Return> = assume"; static char headline[] = "\ Name Surname Street House Postal code Phone number \n\ ------------------------------------------------------------------------"; static char further[] = "\ -------- continue with any key --------"; /* ---------------------------------- */ int menu(void) //show menu and read user input { int c; system ("cls"); set_cur(0,20); puts(pgmname); set_cur(6,0); printf("%s", options); while( (c = getch()) != ESC && (c < '1' || c > '4')) putch('\a'); return c; } /* ---------------------------------- */ int print_adr_book(void) //display adressbook { int line = 1; ELEMENT *p = hol.first; system("cls"); set_cur(0,20); puts(pgmname); set_cur(2,0); puts(headline); set_cur(5,0); while(p != NULL) //run through list and show entries { printf("%5d %-15s ",line, p->person.family_name); printf("%-12s %-15s ", p->person.given_name, p->person.street); printf("%-4d %-5d %-12d\n",p->person.house_number, p->person.postal_code, p->person.phone); p = p->next; if( p == NULL || ++line %16 == 1) //end of list or screen is full { set_cur(24,0); printf("%s",further); if( getch() == ESC) return 0; set_cur(5,0); scroll_up(0,5,24);//puts(headline); } } return 0; } /* -------------------------------------------*/ int make_entry(void) { char cache[50]; DATA newperson; ELEMENT *p; while(1) { system("cls"); set_cur(0,20); puts(pgmname); set_cur(6,0); puts("Please enter new data:"); set_cur(10,0); puts(prompt); set_cur(24,0); printf("%s",buttons); balken(10, 25, MAXL, ' ',0x70); //input name if(input(newperson.family_name, MAXL, ESC, CR) == ESC) return 0; balken(12,25, MAXL, ' ', 0x70); //surname if(input(newperson.given_name, MAXL, ESC, CR) == ESC) return 0; balken(14,25, 30, ' ', 0x70); //street if(input(newperson.street, 30, ESC, CR) == ESC) return 0; balken(16,25, 4, ' ',0x70); //housenumber if(input(cache, 4, ESC, CR) == ESC) return 0; newperson.house_number = atol(cache); //to string balken(18,25, 5, ' ',0x70); //postal code if(input(cache, 5, ESC, CR) == ESC) return 0; newperson.postal_code = atol(cache); //to string balken(20,25, 20, ' ',0x70); //phone number if(input(cache, 20, ESC, CR) == ESC) return 0; newperson.phone = atol(cache); //to string p = search(newperson.phone); if( p!= NULL && p->person.phone == newperson.phone) { set_cur(22,25); puts("phonenumber already exists!"); set_cur(24,0); printf("%s, further"); getch(); continue; } } } 5th /* adress_book_project.c : main program to create an adressbook */ /* copyrights by Oussama Sabri, June 2010 */ #include "adressbook.h" //project header file int main() { int rv, cmd; //return value, user command if ( (rv = read_file() ) == -1) // no data saved yet rv = make_entry(); check(rv); //prompts an error and quits program on disfunction do { switch (cmd = menu())//calls menu and gets user input back { case '1': rv = make_entry(); break; case '2': //delete entry case '3': //changes entry rv = change_entry(cmd); break; case '4': //prints adressbook on screen rv = print_adr_book(); break; case ESC: //end of program system ("cls"); rv = 0; break; } }while(cmd!= ESC); check ( write_file() ); //save adressbook return 0; } 6th /* Getcb.c --> Die Funktion getcb() liefert die naechste * * Tastatureingabe (ruft den BIOS-INT 0x16 auf). * * Return-Wert: * * ASCII-Code bzw. erweiterter Code + 256 */ /* Hinweis: Es muss ein DOS-Compiler verwendet werden. * * (z.B. der GNU-Compiler fuer DOS auf der CD) */ #include <dos.h> int getcb(void) { union REGS intregs; intregs.h.ah = 0; // Subfunktion 0: ein Zeichen // von der Tastatur lesen. int86( 0x16, &intregs, &intregs); if( intregs.h.al != 0) // Falls ASCII-Zeichen, return (intregs.h.al); // dieses zurueckgeben. else // Sonst den erweiterten return (intregs.h.ah + 0x100); // Code + 256 } 7th /* PUTCB.C --> enthaelt die Funktionen * * - putcb() * * - putcb9() * * - balken() * * - input() * * * * Es werden die Funktionen 9 und 14 des Video-Interrupts * * (ROM-BIOS-Interrupt 0x10) verwendet. * * * * Die Prototypen dieser Funktionen stehen in BIO.H */ /* Hinweis: Es muss ein DOS-Compiler verwendet werden. * * (z.B. der GNU-Compiler fuer DOS auf der CD) */ #include <dos.h> #define VIDEO_INT 0x10 /*---------------------------------------------------------------- * putcb(c) gibt das Zeichen auf der aktuellen Cursor-Position * am Bildschirm aus. Der Cursor wird versetzt. * Steuerzeichen Back-Space, CR, LF und BELL werden * ausgefuehrt. * Return-Wert: keiner */ void putcb(unsigned char c) /* Gibt das Zeichen in c auf */ { /* den Bildschirm aus. */ union REGS intregs; intregs.h.ah = 14; /* Subfunktion 14 ("Teletype") */ intregs.h.al = c; intregs.h.bl = 0xf; /* Vordergrund-Farbe im */ /* Grafik-Modus. */ int86(VIDEO_INT, &intregs, &intregs); } /*---------------------------------------------------------------- * putcb9(c,count,mode) gibt das Zeichen in c count-mal im * angegebenen Modus auf der aktuellen * Cursor-Position am Bildschirm aus. * Der Cursor wird nicht versetzt. * * Return-Wert: keiner */ void putcb9( unsigned char c, /* das Zeichen */ unsigned count, /* die Anzahl */ unsigned mode ) /* Low-Byte: das Atrribut */ { /* High-Byte: die Bildschirmseite*/ union REGS intregs; intregs.h.ah = 9; /* Subfunktion 9 des Int 0x10 */ intregs.h.al = c; intregs.x.bx = mode; intregs.x.cx = count; int86( VIDEO_INT, &intregs, &intregs); } /*---------------------------------------------------------------- * balken() positioniert den Cursor und zeichnet einen Balken, * wobei Position, L„nge, Fllzeichen und Attribut * als Argumente bergeben werden. * Der Cursor bleibt auf der ersten Position im Balken. */ void balken( unsigned int zeile, /* Start-Position */ unsigned int spalte, unsigned int laenge, /* Laenge des Balkens */ unsigned char c, /* Fuellzeichen */ unsigned int modus) /* Low-Byte: Attribut */ /* High-Byte: Bildschirmseite */ { union REGS intregs; intregs.h.ah = 2; /* Cursor auf der angegebenen */ intregs.h.dh = zeile; /* Bildschirmseite versetzen. */ intregs.h.dl = spalte; intregs.h.bh = (modus >> 8); int86(VIDEO_INT, &intregs, &intregs); putcb9(c, laenge, modus); /* Balken ausgeben. */ } /*---------------------------------------------------------------- * input() liest Zeichen von der Tastatur ein und haengt '\0' an. * Mit Backspace kann die Eingabe geloescht werden. * Das Attribut am Bildschirm bleibt erhalten. * * Argumente: 1. Zeiger auf den Eingabepuffer. * 2. Anzahl maximal einzulesender Zeichen. * 3. Die optionalen Argumente: Zeichen, mit denen die * Eingabe abgebrochen werden kann. * Diese Liste muá mit CR = '\r' enden! * Return-Wert: Das Zeichen, mit dem die Eingabe abgebrochen wurde. */ #include <stdarg.h> int getcb( void); /* Zum Lesen der Tastatur */ int input(char *puffer, int max,... ) { int c; /* aktuelles Zeichen */ int breakc; /* Abruchzeichen */ int nc = 0; /* Anzahl eingelesener Zeichen */ va_list argp; /* Zeiger auf die weiteren Arumente */ while(1) { *puffer = '\0'; va_start(argp, max); /* argp initialisieren */ c = getcb(); do /* Mit Zeichen der Abbruchliste vergleichen */ if(c == (breakc = va_arg(argp,int)) ) return(breakc); while( breakc != '\r' ); va_end( argp); if( c == '\b' && nc > 0) /* Backspace? */ { --nc; --puffer; putcb(c); putcb(' '); putcb(c); } else if( c >= 32 && c <= 255 && nc < max ) { ++nc; *puffer++ = c; putcb(c); } else if( nc == max) putcb('\7'); /* Ton ausgeben */ } } 8th /* Video.c --> Enthaelt die Funktionen * cls(), * scroll_up(), scroll_down(), * set_cur(), get_cur(), * set_screen_page(), get_screen_page() * * Die Prototypen dieser Funktionen befinden sich in BIO.H */ /* Hinweis: Es muss ein DOS-Compiler verwendet werden. * * (z.B. der GNU-Compiler fuer DOS auf der CD) */ #include <dos.h> #include "bio.h" #define VIDEO_INT 0x10 typedef unsigned char BYTE; void scroll_up( int anzahl, int anf_zeile, int end_zeile) { /* Fenster hoch rollen. */ union REGS intregs; intregs.x.ax = 0x600 + anzahl; /* Subfunktion AH = 6, */ /* AL = Anzahl Zeilen. */ intregs.x.cx = anf_zeile << 8; /* CH=anf_zeile, cl=0 */ intregs.x.dx = (end_zeile <<8) | 79; /* DH=end_zeile,DL=79 */ intregs.h.bh = 7; /* normales Attribut */ int86(VIDEO_INT, &intregs, &intregs); } void scroll_down( int anzahl, int anf_zeile, int end_zeile) { /* Fenster runter rollen. */ union REGS intregs; intregs.x.ax = 0x700 + anzahl; /* Subfunktion AH = 7, */ /* AL = Anzahl Zeilen. */ intregs.x.cx = anf_zeile << 8; /* CH=anf_zeile, cl=0 */ intregs.x.dx = (end_zeile <<8) | 79; /* DH=end_zeile,DL=79 */ intregs.h.bh = 7; /* normales Attribut */ int86(VIDEO_INT, &intregs, &intregs); } void set_cur( int zeile, int spalte) /* versetzt den Cursor */ { /* der aktuellen Bildschirmseite.*/ union REGS intregs; intregs.h.ah = 2; intregs.h.dh = (BYTE)zeile; intregs.h.dl = (BYTE)spalte; intregs.h.bh = (BYTE)get_screen_page(); int86(VIDEO_INT, &intregs, &intregs); } void get_cur(int *zeile, int *spalte) /* holt die Cursor- */ { /* Position der aktuellen Bildschirmseite.*/ union REGS intregs; intregs.h.ah = 3; intregs.h.bh = (BYTE)get_screen_page(); int86(VIDEO_INT, &intregs, &intregs); *zeile = (unsigned)intregs.h.dh; *spalte = (unsigned)intregs.h.dl; } void cls(void) { scroll_up(0,0,24); /* Gesamten Bildschirm loeschen. */ set_cur(0,0); /* Cursor in Home-Position. */ } int get_screen_page(void) /* Aktuelle Bildschirmseite holen.*/ { union REGS intregs; intregs.h.ah = 15; /* Subfunktion AH = 15: */ /* Bildschirm-Modus feststellen. */ int86(VIDEO_INT, &intregs, &intregs); return (intregs.h.bh); } void set_screen_page(int seite) /* setzt die aktive Seite des */ { /* Bildschirmpuffers auf die */ /* angegebene Seite. */ union REGS intregs; intregs.x.ax = 0x500 + seite; /* Subfunktion AH = 5 */ int86(VIDEO_INT, &intregs, &intregs); } /* ------------------------------------------------------------- Ein kleines Testprogramm : */ /* #include <stdio.h> int main() { cls(); set_cur(23, 0); printf("Weiter mit <Return>\n"); set_cur(12, 20); printf("Ein Test!\n"); getchar(); scroll_up(3, 5, 20); getchar(); scroll_down(6, 5, 20); getchar(); set_screen_page(1); printf("\nAuf der 2. Seite !\n"); getchar(); set_screen_page(0); set_cur(0,0); printf("\nWieder auf der 1. Seite !\n"); getchar(); cls(); return 0; } */ /* Video.c --> Enthaelt die Funktionen * cls(), * scroll_up(), scroll_down(), * set_cur(), get_cur(), * set_screen_page(), get_screen_page() * * Die Prototypen dieser Funktionen befinden sich in BIO.H */ /* Hinweis: Es muss ein DOS-Compiler verwendet werden. * * (z.B. der GNU-Compiler fuer DOS auf der CD) */ #include <dos.h> #include "bio.h" #define VIDEO_INT 0x10 typedef unsigned char BYTE; void scroll_up( int anzahl, int anf_zeile, int end_zeile) { /* Fenster hoch rollen. */ union REGS intregs; intregs.x.ax = 0x600 + anzahl; /* Subfunktion AH = 6, */ /* AL = Anzahl Zeilen. */ intregs.x.cx = anf_zeile << 8; /* CH=anf_zeile, cl=0 */ intregs.x.dx = (end_zeile <<8) | 79; /* DH=end_zeile,DL=79 */ intregs.h.bh = 7; /* normales Attribut */ int86(VIDEO_INT, &intregs, &intregs); } void scroll_down( int anzahl, int anf_zeile, int end_zeile) { /* Fenster runter rollen. */ union REGS intregs; intregs.x.ax = 0x700 + anzahl; /* Subfunktion AH = 7, */ /* AL = Anzahl Zeilen. */ intregs.x.cx = anf_zeile << 8; /* CH=anf_zeile, cl=0 */ intregs.x.dx = (end_zeile <<8) | 79; /* DH=end_zeile,DL=79 */ intregs.h.bh = 7; /* normales Attribut */ int86(VIDEO_INT, &intregs, &intregs); } void set_cur( int zeile, int spalte) /* versetzt den Cursor */ { /* der aktuellen Bildschirmseite.*/ union REGS intregs; intregs.h.ah = 2; intregs.h.dh = (BYTE)zeile; intregs.h.dl = (BYTE)spalte; intregs.h.bh = (BYTE)get_screen_page(); int86(VIDEO_INT, &intregs, &intregs); } void get_cur(int *zeile, int *spalte) /* holt die Cursor- */ { /* Position der aktuellen Bildschirmseite.*/ union REGS intregs; intregs.h.ah = 3; intregs.h.bh = (BYTE)get_screen_page(); int86(VIDEO_INT, &intregs, &intregs); *zeile = (unsigned)intregs.h.dh; *spalte = (unsigned)intregs.h.dl; } void cls(void) { scroll_up(0,0,24); /* Gesamten Bildschirm loeschen. */ set_cur(0,0); /* Cursor in Home-Position. */ } int get_screen_page(void) /* Aktuelle Bildschirmseite holen.*/ { union REGS intregs; intregs.h.ah = 15; /* Subfunktion AH = 15: */ /* Bildschirm-Modus feststellen. */ int86(VIDEO_INT, &intregs, &intregs); return (intregs.h.bh); } void set_screen_page(int seite) /* setzt die aktive Seite des */ { /* Bildschirmpuffers auf die */ /* angegebene Seite. */ union REGS intregs; intregs.x.ax = 0x500 + seite; /* Subfunktion AH = 5 */ int86(VIDEO_INT, &intregs, &intregs); } /* ------------------------------------------------------------- Ein kleines Testprogramm : */ /* #include <stdio.h> int main() { cls(); set_cur(23, 0); printf("Weiter mit <Return>\n"); set_cur(12, 20); printf("Ein Test!\n"); getchar(); scroll_up(3, 5, 20); getchar(); scroll_down(6, 5, 20); getchar(); set_screen_page(1); printf("\nAuf der 2. Seite !\n"); getchar(); set_screen_page(0); set_cur(0,0); printf("\nWieder auf der 1. Seite !\n"); getchar(); cls(); return 0; } */ /* BIO.H --> Enthaelt die Prototypen der BIOS-Funktionen. */ /* --- Funktionen in VIDEO.C --- */ extern void scroll_up(int anzahl, int anf_zeile,int end_zeile); extern void scroll_down(int anzahl, int anf_zeile, int end_zeile); extern void set_cur(int zeile, int spalte); extern void get_cur(int *zeile, int *spalte); extern void cls(void); extern int get_screen_page(void); extern void set_screen_page(int page); /* --- Funktionen in GETCB.C / PUTCB.C --- */ extern int getcb(void); extern void putcb(int c); extern void putcb9(int c, unsigned count, unsigned modus); extern void balken(int zeile, int spalte, int laenge, int c, unsigned modus); extern int input(char *puffer, int max,... ); need your help, can't find my mistakes:((

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  • Is there a Telecommunications Reference Architecture?

    - by raul.goycoolea
    @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Abstract   Reference architecture provides needed architectural information that can be provided in advance to an enterprise to enable consistent architectural best practices. Enterprise Reference Architecture helps business owners to actualize their strategies, vision, objectives, and principles. It evaluates the IT systems, based on Reference Architecture goals, principles, and standards. It helps to reduce IT costs by increasing functionality, availability, scalability, etc. Telecom Reference Architecture provides customers with the flexibility to view bundled service bills online with the provision of multiple services. It provides real-time, flexible billing and charging systems, to handle complex promotions, discounts, and settlements with multiple parties. This paper attempts to describe the Reference Architecture for the Telecom Enterprises. It lays the foundation for a Telecom Reference Architecture by articulating the requirements, drivers, and pitfalls for telecom service providers. It describes generic reference architecture for telecom enterprises and moves on to explain how to achieve Enterprise Reference Architecture by using SOA.   Introduction   A Reference Architecture provides a methodology, set of practices, template, and standards based on a set of successful solutions implemented earlier. These solutions have been generalized and structured for the depiction of both a logical and a physical architecture, based on the harvesting of a set of patterns that describe observations in a number of successful implementations. It helps as a reference for the various architectures that an enterprise can implement to solve various problems. It can be used as the starting point or the point of comparisons for various departments/business entities of a company, or for the various companies for an enterprise. It provides multiple views for multiple stakeholders.   Major artifacts of the Enterprise Reference Architecture are methodologies, standards, metadata, documents, design patterns, etc.   Purpose of Reference Architecture   In most cases, architects spend a lot of time researching, investigating, defining, and re-arguing architectural decisions. It is like reinventing the wheel as their peers in other organizations or even the same organization have already spent a lot of time and effort defining their own architectural practices. This prevents an organization from learning from its own experiences and applying that knowledge for increased effectiveness.   Reference architecture provides missing architectural information that can be provided in advance to project team members to enable consistent architectural best practices.   Enterprise Reference Architecture helps an enterprise to achieve the following at the abstract level:   ·       Reference architecture is more of a communication channel to an enterprise ·       Helps the business owners to accommodate to their strategies, vision, objectives, and principles. ·       Evaluates the IT systems based on Reference Architecture Principles ·       Reduces IT spending through increasing functionality, availability, scalability, etc ·       A Real-time Integration Model helps to reduce the latency of the data updates Is used to define a single source of Information ·       Provides a clear view on how to manage information and security ·       Defines the policy around the data ownership, product boundaries, etc. ·       Helps with cost optimization across project and solution portfolios by eliminating unused or duplicate investments and assets ·       Has a shorter implementation time and cost   Once the reference architecture is in place, the set of architectural principles, standards, reference models, and best practices ensure that the aligned investments have the greatest possible likelihood of success in both the near term and the long term (TCO).     Common pitfalls for Telecom Service Providers   Telecom Reference Architecture serves as the first step towards maturity for a telecom service provider. During the course of our assignments/experiences with telecom players, we have come across the following observations – Some of these indicate a lack of maturity of the telecom service provider:   ·       In markets that are growing and not so mature, it has been observed that telcos have a significant amount of in-house or home-grown applications. In some of these markets, the growth has been so rapid that IT has been unable to cope with business demands. Telcos have shown a tendency to come up with workarounds in their IT applications so as to meet business needs. ·       Even for core functions like provisioning or mediation, some telcos have tried to manage with home-grown applications. ·       Most of the applications do not have the required scalability or maintainability to sustain growth in volumes or functionality. ·       Applications face interoperability issues with other applications in the operator's landscape. Integrating a new application or network element requires considerable effort on the part of the other applications. ·       Application boundaries are not clear, and functionality that is not in the initial scope of that application gets pushed onto it. This results in the development of the multiple, small applications without proper boundaries. ·       Usage of Legacy OSS/BSS systems, poor Integration across Multiple COTS Products and Internal Systems. Most of the Integrations are developed on ad-hoc basis and Point-to-Point Integration. ·       Redundancy of the business functions in different applications • Fragmented data across the different applications and no integrated view of the strategic data • Lot of performance Issues due to the usage of the complex integration across OSS and BSS systems   However, this is where the maturity of the telecom industry as a whole can be of help. The collaborative efforts of telcos to overcome some of these problems have resulted in bodies like the TM Forum. They have come up with frameworks for business processes, data, applications, and technology for telecom service providers. These could be a good starting point for telcos to clean up their enterprise landscape.   Industry Trends in Telecom Reference Architecture   Telecom reference architectures are evolving rapidly because telcos are facing business and IT challenges.   “The reality is that there probably is no killer application, no silver bullet that the telcos can latch onto to carry them into a 21st Century.... Instead, there are probably hundreds – perhaps thousands – of niche applications.... And the only way to find which of these works for you is to try out lots of them, ramp up the ones that work, and discontinue the ones that fail.” – Martin Creaner President & CTO TM Forum.   The following trends have been observed in telecom reference architecture:   ·       Transformation of business structures to align with customer requirements ·       Adoption of more Internet-like technical architectures. The Web 2.0 concept is increasingly being used. ·       Virtualization of the traditional operations support system (OSS) ·       Adoption of SOA to support development of IP-based services ·       Adoption of frameworks like Service Delivery Platforms (SDPs) and IP Multimedia Subsystem ·       (IMS) to enable seamless deployment of various services over fixed and mobile networks ·       Replacement of in-house, customized, and stove-piped OSS/BSS with standards-based COTS products ·       Compliance with industry standards and frameworks like eTOM, SID, and TAM to enable seamless integration with other standards-based products   Drivers of Reference Architecture   The drivers of the Reference Architecture are Reference Architecture Goals, Principles, and Enterprise Vision and Telecom Transformation. The details are depicted below diagram. @font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } Figure 1. Drivers for Reference Architecture @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Today’s telecom reference architectures should seamlessly integrate traditional legacy-based applications and transition to next-generation network technologies (e.g., IP multimedia subsystems). This has resulted in new requirements for flexible, real-time billing and OSS/BSS systems and implications on the service provider’s organizational requirements and structure.   Telecom reference architectures are today expected to:   ·       Integrate voice, messaging, email and other VAS over fixed and mobile networks, back end systems ·       Be able to provision multiple services and service bundles • Deliver converged voice, video and data services ·       Leverage the existing Network Infrastructure ·       Provide real-time, flexible billing and charging systems to handle complex promotions, discounts, and settlements with multiple parties. ·       Support charging of advanced data services such as VoIP, On-Demand, Services (e.g.  Video), IMS/SIP Services, Mobile Money, Content Services and IPTV. ·       Help in faster deployment of new services • Serve as an effective platform for collaboration between network IT and business organizations ·       Harness the potential of converging technology, networks, devices and content to develop multimedia services and solutions of ever-increasing sophistication on a single Internet Protocol (IP) ·       Ensure better service delivery and zero revenue leakage through real-time balance and credit management ·       Lower operating costs to drive profitability   Enterprise Reference Architecture   The Enterprise Reference Architecture (RA) fills the gap between the concepts and vocabulary defined by the reference model and the implementation. Reference architecture provides detailed architectural information in a common format such that solutions can be repeatedly designed and deployed in a consistent, high-quality, supportable fashion. This paper attempts to describe the Reference Architecture for the Telecom Application Usage and how to achieve the Enterprise Level Reference Architecture using SOA.   • Telecom Reference Architecture • Enterprise SOA based Reference Architecture   Telecom Reference Architecture   Tele Management Forum’s New Generation Operations Systems and Software (NGOSS) is an architectural framework for organizing, integrating, and implementing telecom systems. NGOSS is a component-based framework consisting of the following elements:   ·       The enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM) is a business process framework. ·       The Shared Information Data (SID) model provides a comprehensive information framework that may be specialized for the needs of a particular organization. ·       The Telecom Application Map (TAM) is an application framework to depict the functional footprint of applications, relative to the horizontal processes within eTOM. ·       The Technology Neutral Architecture (TNA) is an integrated framework. TNA is an architecture that is sustainable through technology changes.   NGOSS Architecture Standards are:   ·       Centralized data ·       Loosely coupled distributed systems ·       Application components/re-use  ·       A technology-neutral system framework with technology specific implementations ·       Interoperability to service provider data/processes ·       Allows more re-use of business components across multiple business scenarios ·       Workflow automation   The traditional operator systems architecture consists of four layers,   ·       Business Support System (BSS) layer, with focus toward customers and business partners. Manages order, subscriber, pricing, rating, and billing information. ·       Operations Support System (OSS) layer, built around product, service, and resource inventories. ·       Networks layer – consists of Network elements and 3rd Party Systems. ·       Integration Layer – to maximize application communication and overall solution flexibility.   Reference architecture for telecom enterprises is depicted below. @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Figure 2. Telecom Reference Architecture   The major building blocks of any Telecom Service Provider architecture are as follows:   1. Customer Relationship Management   CRM encompasses the end-to-end lifecycle of the customer: customer initiation/acquisition, sales, ordering, and service activation, customer care and support, proactive campaigns, cross sell/up sell, and retention/loyalty.   CRM also includes the collection of customer information and its application to personalize, customize, and integrate delivery of service to a customer, as well as to identify opportunities for increasing the value of the customer to the enterprise.   The key functionalities related to Customer Relationship Management are   ·       Manage the end-to-end lifecycle of a customer request for products. ·       Create and manage customer profiles. ·       Manage all interactions with customers – inquiries, requests, and responses. ·       Provide updates to Billing and other south bound systems on customer/account related updates such as customer/ account creation, deletion, modification, request bills, final bill, duplicate bills, credit limits through Middleware. ·       Work with Order Management System, Product, and Service Management components within CRM. ·       Manage customer preferences – Involve all the touch points and channels to the customer, including contact center, retail stores, dealers, self service, and field service, as well as via any media (phone, face to face, web, mobile device, chat, email, SMS, mail, the customer's bill, etc.). ·       Support single interface for customer contact details, preferences, account details, offers, customer premise equipment, bill details, bill cycle details, and customer interactions.   CRM applications interact with customers through customer touch points like portals, point-of-sale terminals, interactive voice response systems, etc. The requests by customers are sent via fulfillment/provisioning to billing system for ordering processing.   2. Billing and Revenue Management   Billing and Revenue Management handles the collection of appropriate usage records and production of timely and accurate bills – for providing pre-bill usage information and billing to customers; for processing their payments; and for performing payment collections. In addition, it handles customer inquiries about bills, provides billing inquiry status, and is responsible for resolving billing problems to the customer's satisfaction in a timely manner. This process grouping also supports prepayment for services.   The key functionalities provided by these applications are   ·       To ensure that enterprise revenue is billed and invoices delivered appropriately to customers. ·       To manage customers’ billing accounts, process their payments, perform payment collections, and monitor the status of the account balance. ·       To ensure the timely and effective fulfillment of all customer bill inquiries and complaints. ·       Collect the usage records from mediation and ensure appropriate rating and discounting of all usage and pricing. ·       Support revenue sharing; split charging where usage is guided to an account different from the service consumer. ·       Support prepaid and post-paid rating. ·       Send notification on approach / exceeding the usage thresholds as enforced by the subscribed offer, and / or as setup by the customer. ·       Support prepaid, post paid, and hybrid (where some services are prepaid and the rest of the services post paid) customers and conversion from post paid to prepaid, and vice versa. ·       Support different billing function requirements like charge prorating, promotion, discount, adjustment, waiver, write-off, account receivable, GL Interface, late payment fee, credit control, dunning, account or service suspension, re-activation, expiry, termination, contract violation penalty, etc. ·       Initiate direct debit to collect payment against an invoice outstanding. ·       Send notification to Middleware on different events; for example, payment receipt, pre-suspension, threshold exceed, etc.   Billing systems typically get usage data from mediation systems for rating and billing. They get provisioning requests from order management systems and inquiries from CRM systems. Convergent and real-time billing systems can directly get usage details from network elements.   3. Mediation   Mediation systems transform/translate the Raw or Native Usage Data Records into a general format that is acceptable to billing for their rating purposes.   The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Mediation system in the end-to-end solution.   ·       Collect Usage Data Records from different data sources – like network elements, routers, servers – via different protocol and interfaces. ·       Process Usage Data Records – Mediation will process Usage Data Records as per the source format. ·       Validate Usage Data Records from each source. ·       Segregates Usage Data Records coming from each source to multiple, based on the segregation requirement of end Application. ·       Aggregates Usage Data Records based on the aggregation rule if any from different sources. ·       Consolidates multiple Usage Data Records from each source. ·       Delivers formatted Usage Data Records to different end application like Billing, Interconnect, Fraud Management, etc. ·       Generates audit trail for incoming Usage Data Records and keeps track of all the Usage Data Records at various stages of mediation process. ·       Checks duplicate Usage Data Records across files for a given time window.   4. Fulfillment   This area is responsible for providing customers with their requested products in a timely and correct manner. It translates the customer's business or personal need into a solution that can be delivered using the specific products in the enterprise's portfolio. This process informs the customers of the status of their purchase order, and ensures completion on time, as well as ensuring a delighted customer. These processes are responsible for accepting and issuing orders. They deal with pre-order feasibility determination, credit authorization, order issuance, order status and tracking, customer update on customer order activities, and customer notification on order completion. Order management and provisioning applications fall into this category.   The key functionalities provided by these applications are   ·       Issuing new customer orders, modifying open customer orders, or canceling open customer orders; ·       Verifying whether specific non-standard offerings sought by customers are feasible and supportable; ·       Checking the credit worthiness of customers as part of the customer order process; ·       Testing the completed offering to ensure it is working correctly; ·       Updating of the Customer Inventory Database to reflect that the specific product offering has been allocated, modified, or cancelled; ·       Assigning and tracking customer provisioning activities; ·       Managing customer provisioning jeopardy conditions; and ·       Reporting progress on customer orders and other processes to customer.   These applications typically get orders from CRM systems. They interact with network elements and billing systems for fulfillment of orders.   5. Enterprise Management   This process area includes those processes that manage enterprise-wide activities and needs, or have application within the enterprise as a whole. They encompass all business management processes that   ·       Are necessary to support the whole of the enterprise, including processes for financial management, legal management, regulatory management, process, cost, and quality management, etc.;   ·       Are responsible for setting corporate policies, strategies, and directions, and for providing guidelines and targets for the whole of the business, including strategy development and planning for areas, such as Enterprise Architecture, that are integral to the direction and development of the business;   ·       Occur throughout the enterprise, including processes for project management, performance assessments, cost assessments, etc.     (i) Enterprise Risk Management:   Enterprise Risk Management focuses on assuring that risks and threats to the enterprise value and/or reputation are identified, and appropriate controls are in place to minimize or eliminate the identified risks. The identified risks may be physical or logical/virtual. Successful risk management ensures that the enterprise can support its mission critical operations, processes, applications, and communications in the face of serious incidents such as security threats/violations and fraud attempts. Two key areas covered in Risk Management by telecom operators are:   ·       Revenue Assurance: Revenue assurance system will be responsible for identifying revenue loss scenarios across components/systems, and will help in rectifying the problems. The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Revenue Assurance system in the end-to-end solution. o   Identify all usage information dropped when networks are being upgraded. o   Interconnect bill verification. o   Identify where services are routinely provisioned but never billed. o   Identify poor sales policies that are intensifying collections problems. o   Find leakage where usage is sent to error bucket and never billed for. o   Find leakage where field service, CRM, and network build-out are not optimized.   ·       Fraud Management: Involves collecting data from different systems to identify abnormalities in traffic patterns, usage patterns, and subscription patterns to report suspicious activity that might suggest fraudulent usage of resources, resulting in revenue losses to the operator.   The key roles and responsibilities of the system component are as follows:   o   Fraud management system will capture and monitor high usage (over a certain threshold) in terms of duration, value, and number of calls for each subscriber. The threshold for each subscriber is decided by the system and fixed automatically. o   Fraud management will be able to detect the unauthorized access to services for certain subscribers. These subscribers may have been provided unauthorized services by employees. The component will raise the alert to the operator the very first time of such illegal calls or calls which are not billed. o   The solution will be to have an alarm management system that will deliver alarms to the operator/provider whenever it detects a fraud, thus minimizing fraud by catching it the first time it occurs. o   The Fraud Management system will be capable of interfacing with switches, mediation systems, and billing systems   (ii) Knowledge Management   This process focuses on knowledge management, technology research within the enterprise, and the evaluation of potential technology acquisitions.   Key responsibilities of knowledge base management are to   ·       Maintain knowledge base – Creation and updating of knowledge base on ongoing basis. ·       Search knowledge base – Search of knowledge base on keywords or category browse ·       Maintain metadata – Management of metadata on knowledge base to ensure effective management and search. ·       Run report generator. ·       Provide content – Add content to the knowledge base, e.g., user guides, operational manual, etc.   (iii) Document Management   It focuses on maintaining a repository of all electronic documents or images of paper documents relevant to the enterprise using a system.   (iv) Data Management   It manages data as a valuable resource for any enterprise. For telecom enterprises, the typical areas covered are Master Data Management, Data Warehousing, and Business Intelligence. It is also responsible for data governance, security, quality, and database management.   Key responsibilities of Data Management are   ·       Using ETL, extract the data from CRM, Billing, web content, ERP, campaign management, financial, network operations, asset management info, customer contact data, customer measures, benchmarks, process data, e.g., process inputs, outputs, and measures, into Enterprise Data Warehouse. ·       Management of data traceability with source, data related business rules/decisions, data quality, data cleansing data reconciliation, competitors data – storage for all the enterprise data (customer profiles, products, offers, revenues, etc.) ·       Get online update through night time replication or physical backup process at regular frequency. ·       Provide the data access to business intelligence and other systems for their analysis, report generation, and use.   (v) Business Intelligence   It uses the Enterprise Data to provide the various analysis and reports that contain prospects and analytics for customer retention, acquisition of new customers due to the offers, and SLAs. It will generate right and optimized plans – bolt-ons for the customers.   The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Business Intelligence system at the Enterprise Level:   ·       It will do Pattern analysis and reports problem. ·       It will do Data Analysis – Statistical analysis, data profiling, affinity analysis of data, customer segment wise usage patterns on offers, products, service and revenue generation against services and customer segments. ·       It will do Performance (business, system, and forecast) analysis, churn propensity, response time, and SLAs analysis. ·       It will support for online and offline analysis, and report drill down capability. ·       It will collect, store, and report various SLA data. ·       It will provide the necessary intelligence for marketing and working on campaigns, etc., with cost benefit analysis and predictions.   It will advise on customer promotions with additional services based on loyalty and credit history of customer   ·       It will Interface with Enterprise Data Management system for data to run reports and analysis tasks. It will interface with the campaign schedules, based on historical success evidence.   (vi) Stakeholder and External Relations Management   It manages the enterprise's relationship with stakeholders and outside entities. Stakeholders include shareholders, employee organizations, etc. Outside entities include regulators, local community, and unions. Some of the processes within this grouping are Shareholder Relations, External Affairs, Labor Relations, and Public Relations.   (vii) Enterprise Resource Planning   It is used to manage internal and external resources, including tangible assets, financial resources, materials, and human resources. Its purpose is to facilitate the flow of information between all business functions inside the boundaries of the enterprise and manage the connections to outside stakeholders. ERP systems consolidate all business operations into a uniform and enterprise wide system environment.   The key roles and responsibilities for Enterprise System are given below:   ·        It will handle responsibilities such as core accounting, financial, and management reporting. ·       It will interface with CRM for capturing customer account and details. ·       It will interface with billing to capture the billing revenue and other financial data. ·       It will be responsible for executing the dunning process. Billing will send the required feed to ERP for execution of dunning. ·       It will interface with the CRM and Billing through batch interfaces. Enterprise management systems are like horizontals in the enterprise and typically interact with all major telecom systems. E.g., an ERP system interacts with CRM, Fulfillment, and Billing systems for different kinds of data exchanges.   6. External Interfaces/Touch Points   The typical external parties are customers, suppliers/partners, employees, shareholders, and other stakeholders. External interactions from/to a Service Provider to other parties can be achieved by a variety of mechanisms, including:   ·       Exchange of emails or faxes ·       Call Centers ·       Web Portals ·       Business-to-Business (B2B) automated transactions   These applications provide an Internet technology driven interface to external parties to undertake a variety of business functions directly for themselves. These can provide fully or partially automated service to external parties through various touch points.   Typical characteristics of these touch points are   ·       Pre-integrated self-service system, including stand-alone web framework or integration front end with a portal engine ·       Self services layer exposing atomic web services/APIs for reuse by multiple systems across the architectural environment ·       Portlets driven connectivity exposing data and services interoperability through a portal engine or web application   These touch points mostly interact with the CRM systems for requests, inquiries, and responses.   7. Middleware   The component will be primarily responsible for integrating the different systems components under a common platform. It should provide a Standards-Based Platform for building Service Oriented Architecture and Composite Applications. The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Middleware component in the end-to-end solution.   ·       As an integration framework, covering to and fro interfaces ·       Provide a web service framework with service registry. ·       Support SOA framework with SOA service registry. ·       Each of the interfaces from / to Middleware to other components would handle data transformation, translation, and mapping of data points. ·       Receive data from the caller / activate and/or forward the data to the recipient system in XML format. ·       Use standard XML for data exchange. ·       Provide the response back to the service/call initiator. ·       Provide a tracking until the response completion. ·       Keep a store transitional data against each call/transaction. ·       Interface through Middleware to get any information that is possible and allowed from the existing systems to enterprise systems; e.g., customer profile and customer history, etc. ·       Provide the data in a common unified format to the SOA calls across systems, and follow the Enterprise Architecture directive. ·       Provide an audit trail for all transactions being handled by the component.   8. Network Elements   The term Network Element means a facility or equipment used in the provision of a telecommunications service. Such terms also includes features, functions, and capabilities that are provided by means of such facility or equipment, including subscriber numbers, databases, signaling systems, and information sufficient for billing and collection or used in the transmission, routing, or other provision of a telecommunications service.   Typical network elements in a GSM network are Home Location Register (HLR), Intelligent Network (IN), Mobile Switching Center (MSC), SMS Center (SMSC), and network elements for other value added services like Push-to-talk (PTT), Ring Back Tone (RBT), etc.   Network elements are invoked when subscribers use their telecom devices for any kind of usage. These elements generate usage data and pass it on to downstream systems like mediation and billing system for rating and billing. They also integrate with provisioning systems for order/service fulfillment.   9. 3rd Party Applications   3rd Party systems are applications like content providers, payment gateways, point of sale terminals, and databases/applications maintained by the Government.   Depending on applicability and the type of functionality provided by 3rd party applications, the integration with different telecom systems like CRM, provisioning, and billing will be done.   10. Service Delivery Platform   A service delivery platform (SDP) provides the architecture for the rapid deployment, provisioning, execution, management, and billing of value added telecom services. SDPs are based on the concept of SOA and layered architecture. They support the delivery of voice, data services, and content in network and device-independent fashion. They allow application developers to aggregate network capabilities, services, and sources of content. SDPs typically contain layers for web services exposure, service application development, and network abstraction.   SOA Reference Architecture   SOA concept is based on the principle of developing reusable business service and building applications by composing those services, instead of building monolithic applications in silos. It’s about bridging the gap between business and IT through a set of business-aligned IT services, using a set of design principles, patterns, and techniques.   In an SOA, resources are made available to participants in a value net, enterprise, line of business (typically spanning multiple applications within an enterprise or across multiple enterprises). It consists of a set of business-aligned IT services that collectively fulfill an organization’s business processes and goals. We can choreograph these services into composite applications and invoke them through standard protocols. SOA, apart from agility and reusability, enables:   ·       The business to specify processes as orchestrations of reusable services ·       Technology agnostic business design, with technology hidden behind service interface ·       A contractual-like interaction between business and IT, based on service SLAs ·       Accountability and governance, better aligned to business services ·       Applications interconnections untangling by allowing access only through service interfaces, reducing the daunting side effects of change ·       Reduced pressure to replace legacy and extended lifetime for legacy applications, through encapsulation in services   ·       A Cloud Computing paradigm, using web services technologies, that makes possible service outsourcing on an on-demand, utility-like, pay-per-usage basis   The following section represents the Reference Architecture of logical view for the Telecom Solution. The new custom built application needs to align with this logical architecture in the long run to achieve EA benefits.   Packaged implementation applications, such as ERP billing applications, need to expose their functions as service providers (as other applications consume) and interact with other applications as service consumers.   COT applications need to expose services through wrappers such as adapters to utilize existing resources and at the same time achieve Enterprise Architecture goal and objectives.   The following are the various layers for Enterprise level deployment of SOA. This diagram captures the abstract view of Enterprise SOA layers and important components of each layer. Layered architecture means decomposition of services such that most interactions occur between adjacent layers. However, there is no strict rule that top layers should not directly communicate with bottom layers.   The diagram below represents the important logical pieces that would result from overall SOA transformation. @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Figure 3. Enterprise SOA Reference Architecture 1.          Operational System Layer: This layer consists of all packaged applications like CRM, ERP, custom built applications, COTS based applications like Billing, Revenue Management, Fulfilment, and the Enterprise databases that are essential and contribute directly or indirectly to the Enterprise OSS/BSS Transformation.   ERP holds the data of Asset Lifecycle Management, Supply Chain, and Advanced Procurement and Human Capital Management, etc.   CRM holds the data related to Order, Sales, and Marketing, Customer Care, Partner Relationship Management, Loyalty, etc.   Content Management handles Enterprise Search and Query. Billing application consists of the following components:   ·       Collections Management, Customer Billing Management, Invoices, Real-Time Rating, Discounting, and Applying of Charges ·       Enterprise databases will hold both the application and service data, whether structured or unstructured.   MDM - Master data majorly consists of Customer, Order, Product, and Service Data.     2.          Enterprise Component Layer:   This layer consists of the Application Services and Common Services that are responsible for realizing the functionality and maintaining the QoS of the exposed services. This layer uses container-based technologies such as application servers to implement the components, workload management, high availability, and load balancing.   Application Services: This Service Layer enables application, technology, and database abstraction so that the complex accessing logic is hidden from the other service layers. This is a basic service layer, which exposes application functionalities and data as reusable services. The three types of the Application access services are:   ·       Application Access Service: This Service Layer exposes application level functionalities as a reusable service between BSS to BSS and BSS to OSS integration. This layer is enabled using disparate technology such as Web Service, Integration Servers, and Adaptors, etc.   ·       Data Access Service: This Service Layer exposes application data services as a reusable reference data service. This is done via direct interaction with application data. and provides the federated query.   ·       Network Access Service: This Service Layer exposes provisioning layer as a reusable service from OSS to OSS integration. This integration service emphasizes the need for high performance, stateless process flows, and distributed design.   Common Services encompasses management of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data such as information services, portal services, interaction services, infrastructure services, and security services, etc.   3.          Integration Layer:   This consists of service infrastructure components like service bus, service gateway for partner integration, service registry, service repository, and BPEL processor. Service bus will carry the service invocation payloads/messages between consumers and providers. The other important functions expected from it are itinerary based routing, distributed caching of routing information, transformations, and all qualities of service for messaging-like reliability, scalability, and availability, etc. Service registry will hold all contracts (wsdl) of services, and it helps developers to locate or discover service during design time or runtime.   • BPEL processor would be useful in orchestrating the services to compose a complex business scenario or process. • Workflow and business rules management are also required to support manual triggering of certain activities within business process. based on the rules setup and also the state machine information. Application, data, and service mediation layer typically forms the overall composite application development framework or SOA Framework.   4.          Business Process Layer: These are typically the intermediate services layer and represent Shared Business Process Services. At Enterprise Level, these services are from Customer Management, Order Management, Billing, Finance, and Asset Management application domains.   5.          Access Layer: This layer consists of portals for Enterprise and provides a single view of Enterprise information management and dashboard services.   6.          Channel Layer: This consists of various devices; applications that form part of extended enterprise; browsers through which users access the applications.   7.          Client Layer: This designates the different types of users accessing the enterprise applications. The type of user typically would be an important factor in determining the level of access to applications.   8.          Vertical pieces like management, monitoring, security, and development cut across all horizontal layers Management and monitoring involves all aspects of SOA-like services, SLAs, and other QoS lifecycle processes for both applications and services surrounding SOA governance.     9.          EA Governance, Reference Architecture, Roadmap, Principles, and Best Practices:   EA Governance is important in terms of providing the overall direction to SOA implementation within the enterprise. This involves board-level involvement, in addition to business and IT executives. At a high level, this involves managing the SOA projects implementation, managing SOA infrastructure, and controlling the entire effort through all fine-tuned IT processes in accordance with COBIT (Control Objectives for Information Technology).   Devising tools and techniques to promote reuse culture, and the SOA way of doing things needs competency centers to be established in addition to training the workforce to take up new roles that are suited to SOA journey.   Conclusions   Reference Architectures can serve as the basis for disparate architecture efforts throughout the organization, even if they use different tools and technologies. Reference architectures provide best practices and approaches in the independent way a vendor deals with technology and standards. Reference Architectures model the abstract architectural elements for an enterprise independent of the technologies, protocols, and products that are used to implement an SOA. Telecom enterprises today are facing significant business and technology challenges due to growing competition, a multitude of services, and convergence. Adopting architectural best practices could go a long way in meeting these challenges. The use of SOA-based architecture for communication to each of the external systems like Billing, CRM, etc., in OSS/BSS system has made the architecture very loosely coupled, with greater flexibility. Any change in the external systems would be absorbed at the Integration Layer without affecting the rest of the ecosystem. The use of a Business Process Management (BPM) tool makes the management and maintenance of the business processes easy, with better performance in terms of lead time, quality, and cost. Since the Architecture is based on standards, it will lower the cost of deploying and managing OSS/BSS applications over their lifecycles.

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  • Tip/Trick: Fix Common SEO Problems Using the URL Rewrite Extension

    - by ScottGu
    Search engine optimization (SEO) is important for any publically facing web-site.  A large % of traffic to sites now comes directly from search engines, and improving your site’s search relevancy will lead to more users visiting your site from search engine queries.  This can directly or indirectly increase the money you make through your site. This blog post covers how you can use the free Microsoft URL Rewrite Extension to fix a bunch of common SEO problems that your site might have.  It takes less than 15 minutes (and no code changes) to apply 4 simple URL Rewrite rules to your site, and in doing so cause search engines to drive more visitors and traffic to your site.  The techniques below work equally well with both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC based sites.  They also works with all versions of ASP.NET (and even work with non-ASP.NET content). [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] Measuring the SEO of your website with the Microsoft SEO Toolkit A few months ago I blogged about the free SEO Toolkit that we’ve shipped.  This useful tool enables you to automatically crawl/scan your site for SEO correctness, and it then flags any SEO issues it finds.  I highly recommend downloading and using the tool against any public site you work on.  It makes it easy to spot SEO issues you might have in your site, and pinpoint ways to optimize it further. Below is a simple example of a report I ran against one of my sites (www.scottgu.com) prior to applying the URL Rewrite rules I’ll cover later in this blog post:   Search Relevancy and URL Splitting Two of the important things that search engines evaluate when assessing your site’s “search relevancy” are: How many other sites link to your content.  Search engines assume that if a lot of people around the web are linking to your content, then it is likely useful and so weight it higher in relevancy. The uniqueness of the content it finds on your site.  If search engines find that the content is duplicated in multiple places around the Internet (or on multiple URLs on your site) then it is likely to drop the relevancy of the content. One of the things you want to be very careful to avoid when building public facing sites is to not allow different URLs to retrieve the same content within your site.  Doing so will hurt with both of the situations above.  In particular, allowing external sites to link to the same content with multiple URLs will cause your link-count and page-ranking to be split up across those different URLs (and so give you a smaller page rank than what it would otherwise be if it was just one URL).  Not allowing external sites to link to you in different ways sounds easy in theory – but you might wonder what exactly this means in practice and how you avoid it. 4 Really Common SEO Problems Your Sites Might Have Below are 4 really common scenarios that can cause your site to inadvertently expose multiple URLs for the same content.  When this happens external sites linking to yours will end up splitting their page links across multiple URLs - and as a result cause you to have a lower page ranking with search engines than you deserve. SEO Problem #1: Default Document IIS (and other web servers) supports the concept of a “default document”.  This allows you to avoid having to explicitly specify the page you want to serve at either the root of the web-site/application, or within a sub-directory.  This is convenient – but means that by default this content is available via two different publically exposed URLs (which is bad).  For example: http://scottgu.com/ http://scottgu.com/default.aspx SEO Problem #2: Different URL Casings Web developers often don’t realize URLs are case sensitive to search engines on the web.  This means that search engines will treat the following links as two completely different URLs: http://scottgu.com/Albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx SEO Problem #3: Trailing Slashes Consider the below two URLs – they might look the same at first, but they are subtly different. The trailing slash creates yet another situation that causes search engines to treat the URLs as different and so split search rankings: http://scottgu.com http://scottgu.com/ SEO Problem #4: Canonical Host Names Sometimes sites support scenarios where they support a web-site with both a leading “www” hostname prefix as well as just the hostname itself.  This causes search engines to treat the URLs as different and split search rankling: http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx/ http://www.scottgu.com/albums.aspx/ How to Easily Fix these SEO Problems in 10 minutes (or less) using IIS Rewrite If you haven’t been careful when coding your sites, chances are you are suffering from one (or more) of the above SEO problems.  Addressing these issues will improve your search engine relevancy ranking and drive more traffic to your site. The “good news” is that fixing the above 4 issues is really easy using the URL Rewrite Extension.  This is a completely free Microsoft extension available for IIS 7.x (on Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7 and Windows Vista).  The great thing about using the IIS Rewrite extension is that it allows you to fix the above problems *without* having to change any code within your applications.  You can easily install the URL Rewrite Extension in under 3 minutes using the Microsoft Web Platform Installer (a free tool we ship that automates setting up web servers and development machines).  Just click the green “Install Now” button on the URL Rewrite Spotlight page to install it on your Windows Server 2008, Windows 7 or Windows Vista machine: Once installed you’ll find that a new “URL Rewrite” icon is available within the IIS 7 Admin Tool: Double-clicking the icon will open up the URL Rewrite admin panel – which will display the list of URL Rewrite rules configured for a particular application or site: Notice that our rewrite rule list above is currently empty (which is the default when you first install the extension).  We can click the “Add Rule…” link button in the top-right of the panel to add and enable new URL Rewriting logic for our site.  Scenario 1: Handling Default Document Scenarios One of the SEO problems I discussed earlier in this post was the scenario where the “default document” feature of IIS causes you to inadvertently expose two URLs for the same content on your site.  For example: http://scottgu.com/ http://scottgu.com/default.aspx We can fix this by adding a new IIS Rewrite rule that automatically redirects anyone who navigates to the second URL to instead go to the first one.  We will setup the HTTP redirect to be a “permanent redirect” – which will indicate to search engines that they should follow the redirect and use the new URL they are redirected to as the identifier of the content they retrieve.  Let’s look at how we can create such a rule.  We’ll begin by clicking the “Add Rule” link in the screenshot above.  This will cause the below dialog to display: We’ll select the “Blank Rule” template within the “Inbound rules” section to create a new custom URL Rewriting rule.  This will display an empty pane like below: Don’t worry – setting up the above rule is easy.  The following 4 steps explain how to do so: Step 1: Name the Rule Our first step will be to name the rule we are creating.  Naming it with a descriptive name will make it easier to find and understand later.  Let’s name this rule our “Default Document URL Rewrite” rule: Step 2: Setup the Regular Expression that Matches this Rule Our second step will be to specify a regular expression filter that will cause this rule to execute when an incoming URL matches the regex pattern.   Don’t worry if you aren’t good with regular expressions - I suck at them too. The trick is to know someone who is good at them or copy/paste them from a web-site.  Below we are going to specify the following regular expression as our pattern rule: (.*?)/?Default\.aspx$ This pattern will match any URL string that ends with Default.aspx. The "(.*?)" matches any preceding character zero or more times. The "/?" part says to match the slash symbol zero or one times. The "$" symbol at the end will ensure that the pattern will only match strings that end with Default.aspx.  Combining all these regex elements allows this rule to work not only for the root of your web site (e.g. http://scottgu.com/default.aspx) but also for any application or subdirectory within the site (e.g. http://scottgu.com/photos/default.aspx.  Because the “ignore case” checkbox is selected it will match both “Default.aspx” as well as “default.aspx” within the URL.   One nice feature built-into the rule editor is a “Test pattern” button that you can click to bring up a dialog that allows you to test out a few URLs with the rule you are configuring: Above I've added a “products/default.aspx” URL and clicked the “Test” button.  This will give me immediate feedback on whether the rule will execute for it.  Step 3: Setup a Permanent Redirect Action We’ll then setup an action to occur when our regular expression pattern matches the incoming URL: In the dialog above I’ve changed the “Action Type” drop down to be a “Redirect” action.  The “Redirect Type” will be a HTTP 301 Permanent redirect – which means search engines will follow it. I’ve also set the “Redirect URL” property to be: {R:1}/ This indicates that we want to redirect the web client requesting the original URL to a new URL that has the originally requested URL path - minus the "Default.aspx" in it.  For example, requests for http://scottgu.com/default.aspx will be redirected to http://scottgu.com/, and requests for http://scottgu.com/photos/default.aspx will be redirected to http://scottgu.com/photos/ The "{R:N}" regex construct, where N >= 0, is called a back-reference and N is the back-reference index. In the case of our pattern "(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$", if the input URL is "products/Default.aspx" then {R:0} will contain "products/Default.aspx" and {R:1} will contain "products".  We are going to use this {R:1}/ value to be the URL we redirect users to.  Step 4: Apply and Save the Rule Our final step is to click the “Apply” button in the top right hand of the IIS admin tool – which will cause the tool to persist the URL Rewrite rule into our application’s root web.config file (under a <system.webServer/rewrite> configuration section): <configuration>     <system.webServer>         <rewrite>             <rules>                 <rule name="Default Document" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$" />                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>             </rules>         </rewrite>     </system.webServer> </configuration> Because IIS 7.x and ASP.NET share the same web.config files, you can actually just copy/paste the above code into your web.config files using Visual Studio and skip the need to run the admin tool entirely.  This also makes adding/deploying URL Rewrite rules with your ASP.NET applications really easy. Step 5: Try the Rule Out Now that we’ve saved the rule, let’s try it out on our site.  Try the following two URLs on my site: http://scottgu.com/ http://scottgu.com/default.aspx Notice that the second URL automatically redirects to the first one.  Because it is a permanent redirect, search engines will follow the URL and should update the page ranking of http://scottgu.com to include links to http://scottgu.com/default.aspx as well. Scenario 2: Different URL Casing Another common SEO problem I discussed earlier in this post is that URLs are case sensitive to search engines on the web.  This means that search engines will treat the following links as two completely different URLs: http://scottgu.com/Albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx We can fix this by adding a new IIS Rewrite rule that automatically redirects anyone who navigates to the first URL to instead go to the second (all lower-case) one.  Like before, we will setup the HTTP redirect to be a “permanent redirect” – which will indicate to search engines that they should follow the redirect and use the new URL they are redirected to as the identifier of the content they retrieve. To create such a rule we’ll click the “Add Rule” link in the URL Rewrite admin tool again.  This will cause the “Add Rule” dialog to appear again: Unlike the previous scenario (where we created a “Blank Rule”), with this scenario we can take advantage of a built-in “Enforce lowercase URLs” rule template.  When we click the “ok” button we’ll see the following dialog which asks us if we want to create a rule that enforces the use of lowercase letters in URLs: When we click the “Yes” button we’ll get a pre-written rule that automatically performs a permanent redirect if an incoming URL has upper-case characters in it – and automatically send users to a lower-case version of the URL: We can click the “Apply” button to use this rule “as-is” and have it apply to all incoming URLs to our site.  Because my www.scottgu.com site uses ASP.NET Web Forms, I’m going to make one small change to the rule we generated above – which is to add a condition that will ensure that URLs to ASP.NET’s built-in “WebResource.axd” handler are excluded from our case-sensitivity URL Rewrite logic.  URLs to the WebResource.axd handler will only come from server-controls emitted from my pages – and will never be linked to from external sites.  While my site will continue to function fine if we redirect these URLs to automatically be lower-case – doing so isn’t necessary and will add an extra HTTP redirect to many of my pages.  The good news is that adding a condition that prevents my URL Rewriting rule from happening with certain URLs is easy.  We simply need to expand the “Conditions” section of the form above We can then click the “Add” button to add a condition clause.  This will bring up the “Add Condition” dialog: Above I’ve entered {URL} as the Condition input – and said that this rule should only execute if the URL does not match a regex pattern which contains the string “WebResource.axd”.  This will ensure that WebResource.axd URLs to my site will be allowed to execute just fine without having the URL be re-written to be all lower-case. Note: If you have static resources (like references to .jpg, .css, and .js files) within your site that currently use upper-case characters you’ll probably want to add additional condition filter clauses so that URLs to them also don’t get redirected to be lower-case (just add rules for patterns like .jpg, .gif, .js, etc).  Your site will continue to work fine if these URLs get redirected to be lower case (meaning the site won’t break) – but it will cause an extra HTTP redirect to happen on your site for URLs that don’t need to be redirected for SEO reasons.  So setting up a condition clause makes sense to add. When I click the “ok” button above and apply our lower-case rewriting rule the admin tool will save the following additional rule to our web.config file: <configuration>     <system.webServer>         <rewrite>             <rules>                 <rule name="Default Document" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$" />                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Lower Case URLs" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="[A-Z]" ignoreCase="false" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="{ToLower:{URL}}" />                 </rule>             </rules>         </rewrite>     </system.webServer> </configuration> Try the Rule Out Now that we’ve saved the rule, let’s try it out on our site.  Try the following two URLs on my site: http://scottgu.com/Albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx Notice that the first URL (which has a capital “A”) automatically does a redirect to a lower-case version of the URL.  Scenario 3: Trailing Slashes Another common SEO problem I discussed earlier in this post is the scenario of trailing slashes within URLs.  The trailing slash creates yet another situation that causes search engines to treat the URLs as different and so split search rankings: http://scottgu.com http://scottgu.com/ We can fix this by adding a new IIS Rewrite rule that automatically redirects anyone who navigates to the first URL (that does not have a trailing slash) to instead go to the second one that does.  Like before, we will setup the HTTP redirect to be a “permanent redirect” – which will indicate to search engines that they should follow the redirect and use the new URL they are redirected to as the identifier of the content they retrieve.  To create such a rule we’ll click the “Add Rule” link in the URL Rewrite admin tool again.  This will cause the “Add Rule” dialog to appear again: The URL Rewrite admin tool has a built-in “Append or remove the trailing slash symbol” rule template.  When we select it and click the “ok” button we’ll see the following dialog which asks us if we want to create a rule that automatically redirects users to a URL with a trailing slash if one isn’t present: Like within our previous lower-casing rewrite rule we’ll add one additional condition clause that will exclude WebResource.axd URLs from being processed by this rule.  This will avoid an unnecessary redirect for happening for those URLs. When we click the “OK” button we’ll get a pre-written rule that automatically performs a permanent redirect if the URL doesn’t have a trailing slash – and if the URL is not processed by either a directory or a file.  This will save the following additional rule to our web.config file: <configuration>     <system.webServer>         <rewrite>             <rules>                 <rule name="Default Document" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$" />                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Lower Case URLs" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="[A-Z]" ignoreCase="false" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="{ToLower:{URL}}" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Trailing Slash" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*[^/])$" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" />                         <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" />                         <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>             </rules>         </rewrite>     </system.webServer> </configuration> Try the Rule Out Now that we’ve saved the rule, let’s try it out on our site.  Try the following two URLs on my site: http://scottgu.com http://scottgu.com/ Notice that the first URL (which has no trailing slash) automatically does a redirect to a URL with the trailing slash.  Because it is a permanent redirect, search engines will follow the URL and update the page ranking. Scenario 4: Canonical Host Names The final SEO problem I discussed earlier are scenarios where a site works with both a leading “www” hostname prefix as well as just the hostname itself.  This causes search engines to treat the URLs as different and split search rankling: http://www.scottgu.com/albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx We can fix this by adding a new IIS Rewrite rule that automatically redirects anyone who navigates to the first URL (that has a www prefix) to instead go to the second URL.  Like before, we will setup the HTTP redirect to be a “permanent redirect” – which will indicate to search engines that they should follow the redirect and use the new URL they are redirected to as the identifier of the content they retrieve.  To create such a rule we’ll click the “Add Rule” link in the URL Rewrite admin tool again.  This will cause the “Add Rule” dialog to appear again: The URL Rewrite admin tool has a built-in “Canonical domain name” rule template.  When we select it and click the “ok” button we’ll see the following dialog which asks us if we want to create a redirect rule that automatically redirects users to a primary host name URL: Above I’m entering the primary URL address I want to expose to the web: scottgu.com.  When we click the “OK” button we’ll get a pre-written rule that automatically performs a permanent redirect if the URL has another leading domain name prefix.  This will save the following additional rule to our web.config file: <configuration>     <system.webServer>         <rewrite>             <rules>                 <rule name="Cannonical Hostname">                     <match url="(.*)" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^scottgu\.com$" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="http://scottgu.com/{R:1}" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Default Document" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$" />                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Lower Case URLs" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="[A-Z]" ignoreCase="false" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="{ToLower:{URL}}" />                 </rule>                 <rule name="Trailing Slash" stopProcessing="true">                     <match url="(.*[^/])$" />                     <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false">                         <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" />                         <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" />                         <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" />                     </conditions>                     <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" />                 </rule>             </rules>         </rewrite>     </system.webServer> </configuration> Try the Rule Out Now that we’ve saved the rule, let’s try it out on our site.  Try the following two URLs on my site: http://www.scottgu.com/albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx Notice that the first URL (which has the “www” prefix) now automatically does a redirect to the second URL which does not have the www prefix.  Because it is a permanent redirect, search engines will follow the URL and update the page ranking. 4 Simple Rules for Improved SEO The above 4 rules are pretty easy to setup and should take less than 15 minutes to configure on existing sites you already have.  The beauty of using a solution like the URL Rewrite Extension is that you can take advantage of it without having to change code within your web-site – and without having to break any existing links already pointing at your site.  Users who follow existing links will be automatically redirected to the new URLs you wish to publish.  And search engines will start to give your site a higher search relevancy ranking – which will list your site higher in search results and drive more traffic to it. Customizing your URL Rewriting rules further is easy to-do either by editing the web.config file directly, or alternatively, just double click the URL Rewrite icon within the IIS 7.x admin tool and it will list all the active rules for your web-site or application: Clicking any of the rules above will open the rules editor back up and allow you to tweak/customize/save them further. Summary Measuring and improving SEO is something every developer building a public-facing web-site needs to think about and focus on.  If you haven’t already, download and use the SEO Toolkit to analyze the SEO of your sites today. New URL Routing features in ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Web Forms 4 make it much easier to build applications that have more control over the URLs that are published.  Tools like the URL Rewrite Extension that I’ve talked about in this blog post make it much easier to improve the URLs that are published from sites you already have built today – without requiring you to change a lot of code. The URL Rewrite Extension provides a bunch of additional great capabilities – far beyond just SEO - as well.  I’ll be covering these additional capabilities more in future blog posts. Hope this helps, Scott

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  • Windows CE Chat Transcript (March 30, 2010)

    - by Bruce Eitman
    For those of you who missed the chat today, here is the raw transcript.   By raw, I mean that I copied and pasted the discussion without any edits. This is divided into two parts, the top part is the answers from the Microsoft Experts and the bottom part is the questions from the audience. Answers from Microsoft:   Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:2]: Hi everyone, my name is Karel Danihelka and I am developer in partner response team. Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:2]: Hi, I'm Sing Wee, part of the CoreOS/BSP Test Team. GLanger_MS (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:2]: Hi, I'm Glen Langer, program manager on the Core Team. Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:3]: Q: I need to implement hardware timers on my windows CE 6.0 device to trigger events at microsecond intervals. Where should i start? A: Until you are using CPU with GHz frequency your only chance is use interrupt handler and implement all funcionality there. But it will be really tricky and may reduce system performance. If period will be near to millisecond timeframe you can use normal thread wait for event pattern. Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:5]: Q: I want to partition my NAND Flash device. One partition to use for hive ragistry and the other for the apps and data. The only way to do it is programmatically or setting some registry values ? A: It need to be set in registry - generally you need mark this partition as boot partition. Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:7]: Q: My CPU is Intel celeron M processor 1Ghz. A: In this case you can try use normal approach - in interrupt handler return SYSINTR and start thread in device driver which will spin thread waiting on event attached to this SYSINTR. Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:7]: Q: If i need to implement it using interrupt handlers, What are all the files that I should look at? A: Good quesiton - I would recommend documentation and there was BSP development book to download for free. mikehall_ms (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:8]: Q: Hi guys, what's the formal way to report bugs back to the core team / product team? The mechanism of calling the support phone number every time is really onerous and time-consuming. Is there another mechanism? A: Using product support is the formal way to report bugs/issues - Product support can then create an issue that can be tracked. Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:9]: Q: But the operation for creating the partitions ? A: This is tricky - if you will make it autopartition & autoformat it will be created by filesystem. But generally it depends on your boot loader. mikehall_ms (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:10]: Q: Is Windows Phone 7 related to Windows CE? If so, can you tell me what version of Windows CE is the basis? Is it in fact the new version of Windows Mobile? A: At MIX 2010 Charlie Kindel presented a session that described some of the core technologies that make up Windows Phone 7 Series, including the underlying operating system (Windows CE) and the new ISV programming model based on Silverlight and .NET - check out the Mix Online Videos to get more information. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:10]: Q: Is Windows Phone 7 related to Windows CE? If so, can you tell me what version of Windows CE is the basis? Is it in fact the new version of Windows Mobile? A: This forum is to discussed released products in the industry. Windows Mobile & Windows CE are based on the same Windows CE Kernel/system. Windows CE is focused on deliverying the OS for embedded customers in the market where Windows Mobile is focused on deliverying compelling Windows Phone platform. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:11]: Q: Is Windows Phone 7 related to Windows CE? If so, can you tell me what version of Windows CE is the basis? Is it in fact the new version of Windows Mobile? A: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_CE Wikipedia gives a good breakdown of the version history. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:13]: Q: I created a OS design with KITL and kernel debugger enabled. But I am unable to connect to the target for debugging. I am getting the following error when i try to connect with the device. PB Debugger Cannot initialize the Kernel Debugger. PB Debugger Debugger could not initialize connection. PB Debugger The Kernel Debugger is waiting to connect with target. PB Debugger The Kernel Debugger has been disconnected successfully. A: One possibility is that a rogue cesvchost.exe has co-opted the debugger. I am assuming this is CE 6.0? Can you try exiting visual studio and manually killing the cesvchost.exe process from the Task Manager? davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:14]: Q: Hi guys, what's the formal way to report bugs back to the core team / product team? The mechanism of calling the support phone number every time is really onerous and time-consuming. Is there another mechanism? A: For info on contacting Microsoft support refer to the support page on the Embedded website: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsembedded/dd897633.aspx Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:16]: Q: Do u mean ISR/IST implementation? How can i register an interrupt? What kind of interrupt should i register? A: A good introduction to interrupts in WinCE 6.0 can be found here (aside from the documentation on MSDN): http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/c/f/9cffaa58-4000-48d6-a4b2-5fed9e4e6410/Chapter%206%20-%20Developing%20Device%20Drivers.pdf mikehall_ms (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:16]: Q: What will be different in Windows Compact 7 from CE 6.0? A: Unfortunately we cannot discuss unreleased products on this chat - keep an eye on the Windows Embedded web site and blogs to keep up to date with product announcements. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:16]: Q: I am using CE 6.0. There is no cesvchost process running in my system. A: What operating system are you using? Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:16]: Q: So...I have to modify file system code to create 2 partition at system startup ?!! I haven't understood.... A: You don't need to modify code, there are registry settings to achive this (look to documentation). But you may need to create partition table in boot loader. Unfortunatelly there isn't simple way how to do it. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:18]: Q: I would like to get a handle to a Silverlight screen section, is that possiable? A: Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 includes Sliverlight for Windows Embedded. Refer to New Features overview on the embedded web site. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/en-us/products/windowsce/default.mspx. Silverlight - The power of Silverlight brought to Windows Embedded CE to create rich applications and user interfaces is new part of Windows CE Embedded. mikehall_ms (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:20]: Q: The link for developing device drivers is not working. can u please check that? A: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms923714.aspx davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:20]: Q: I would like to get a handle to a Silverlight screen section, is that possiable? A: Sorry misunderstood the question I thought you were asking if embedded CE could handle Silverlight. Please repost so that the question goes back into the active queue because once answered no way to put the status back to open. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:21]: Q: sorry! Windows XP SP3 A: Can you try exiting VS2005 and confirming cesvchost.exe is not running, then renaming C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\CoreCon\1.0 to 1.0_backup, then restarting VS2005? Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:24]: Q: Can I have the book's name please? A: I believe the downloadable version is related to the last link I sent. If you go to the following website, I believe you can download the whole thing: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsembedded/ce/cc294468.aspx davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:24]: Q: If one has an image on a Silverlight page, it seems to be cached. How would one refresh that cache after changing the underlying image? A: change the URI of the image or use a writeable bitmap if they want to manually toggle the pixels Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:25]: A: Whoops, hit [ENTER] too early. On the right side, you'll see there an "Exam Preparation Kit" link that can be downloaded in several different languages. Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:25]: Q: Can I have the book's name please? A: Whoops, hit [ENTER] too early. On the right side, you'll see there an "Exam Preparation Kit" link that can be downloaded in several different languages. Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:26]: Q: I have a NAND Flash on my target device. On this flash I have the hive registry and an application.I have observed that when the NAND flash is fully, the system startup time is longer....is there a degradation of NAND use that influences the startup time ? Why ? A: Yes - on boot flash abstraction library (old one) read metadata from all sectors to rebuild physical - logical mapping table. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:27]: Q: I would like to get a handle to a Silverlight screen section, is that possiable? A: Need addition info on this question. Can you provide more details on what you are trying to do in Silverlight? davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:27]: Q: If one has an image on a Silverlight page, it seems to be cached. How would one refresh that cache after changing the underlying image? A: Additonal Info: if you want to manually touch the pixels use WriteableBitmap if you want to use the underlying HWND then use IXRVisualHost::GetHWND() davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:28]: Q: Writable bitmap, is there an example of the syntax? A: if you want to manually touch the pixels use WriteableBitmap if you want to use the underlying HWND then use IXRVisualHost::GetHWND() davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:29]: Q: I would like to get a handle to a Silverlight screen section, is that possiable? A: Can I get more information about this question about what you are trying to accomplish in Silverlight? davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:31]: Q: IXRVisualHost::GetHWND() exactly what I needed Thanks, A: Your welcome Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:31]: Q: ok. thanks for the book's link A: No problem. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:32]: Q: Typically for SoC devices you name your hardware specific libraries in the form "SOCDIRNAME_LIBNAME". In our platform "OMAP35XX_TPS659XX_TI_V1" if you do this we cause the catalog parser to die... For example if we have a library "Musbfn_OMAP35XX_TPS659XX_TI_V1.dll" entering this in the catalogs pbcxml file in a <module> section causes the XML parser to fail with : Error 3 The 'urn:Microsoft.PlatformBuilder/Catalog:Module' element is        invalid - The value '012345678901234567890123456789.dll' is invalid         according to its datatype         'urn:Microsoft.PlatformBuilder/Catalog:CatalogFileName' - The actual         length is greater than the MaxLength value. A: There are a couple workarounds I can think of. I believe the Module element is only used when doing SYSGEN parsing to make sure dependent SYSGENs are present when the item is selected, so I believe it is optional to the catalog. The other obvious workaround is to shorten the soc name. I realize neither of these solutions is ideal. This is not something we anticipated when we tested CE6.0, sorry. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:33]: Q: I am getting this error only when I select the KdStub as the debugger in Target device connectivity. A: Right, but KdStub is the debugger that you should use. Have you tried the steps I suggested? Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:36]: Q: If I select Active KTIL, My OS doesn't boots. It says "loading NK.EXE at 0x<xxxxx> location" after that nothing comes in the debug log. A: Can you look at the serial debug output and see what is happening there? Often it can give you a clue to the KITL driver malfunctioning. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:38]: Q: I have tried that and I am getting the same error. A: I am assuming you have a device created in Target -> Connectivity Options in Platform Builder. What are the Kernel download / Kernel transport for your device? Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:40]: Q: KITL: *** Device Name CEPC56059 *** WARN: KITL will run in polling mode VBridge:: built on [Jul 10 2009] time [10:20:14] VBridgeInit()...TX = [16384] bytes -- Rx = [16384] bytes Tx buffer [0xA1B84860] to [0xA1B88860]. Rx buffer [0xA1B88880] to [0xA1B8C880]. VBridge:: NK add MAC: [0-60-65-2-DA-FB] Connecting to Desktop KITL: Connected host IP: 1 Port: 1086 .. this is the output of the serial debug A: This looks reasonable and does not give clues as to why boot would halt at that point. If you capture a network trace or turn on KITL debug zones via dpCurSettings in kitl.dll, do you see KITL active after this? Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:41]: Q: Both is happening via Ethernet. A: Only thing I have left to suggest is a Platform Builder installation Repair, then. Karel Danihelka [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:42]: Q: Hi, I saw that the ATADISK is quite generic and des not have any optimizations. Do you have any advice to consider while tryin to improve the performance of it? A: If I remember correctly sample code has support for some specific hardware controllers (little obsolete now). This should be good start point (if you will not decide take existing driver as sample and write you own). Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:44]: Q: I didn't do that. I have to try. A: I think that's the next valid step. You need to figure out whether KITL is hanging or the device - use instrumented serial debug messages and network trace to determine this. Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:46]: Q: KITL: *** Device Name CEPC56059 *** WARN: KITL will run in polling mode VBridge:: built on [Jul 10 2009] time [10:20:14] VBridgeInit()...TX = [16384] bytes -- Rx = [16384] bytes Tx buffer [0xA1B84860] to [0xA1B88860]. Rx buffer [0xA1B88880] to [0xA1B8C880]. VBridge:: NK add MAC: [0-60-65-2-DA-FB] Connecting to Desktop KITL: Connected host IP: 1 Port: 1086 .. this is the output of the serial debug A: Neo, have you by any chance tried looking into your firewall to see if it might be blocking traffic on any particular ports? Wireshark/netmon might be able to help you here if that's the issue. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:48]: Q: I lost spell check, how can i get it back A: Hello - can you give additional details about your question? Is this related to a Windows CE Embedded application? masatos_MSFT (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:51]: Q: When attempting to run the CETK cellcore tests the documentation states the pre-requisites include "stinger.ini", "ltk.ini" but windows CE doesn't provide these or document what they fully need to contain. Implicitly you also need "datatrans.xml" which isn't supplied. If you get around this error and steal these from Windows Mobile instead, when you try and run the CETK tests you get a data abort in radiometricsdll.dll. How should we invoke the cellcore parts of CETK? A: Hi Pev, what version of Windows CE and CETK are you using? I do not have the expertise to answer this question, but can find somebody who can. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:52]: Q: I don't see a kitlcore.dll in my OS. is my debug image fails to load because of that? A: kitl.dll should be all that's needed, kitlcore.lib is linked into that. Travis Hobrla [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:55]: Q: I've got a platform (not developed by myself) where I2C bus support has to be provided through the OAL as the kernel needs to talk to devices such as the power management IC and gas gauge so a 'proper' I2C driver hanging off device manager isn't possible. This happens to be a polled driver, so obviously it hits the system hard when either under lots of traffic or an error condition occurs and the driver constantly polls. I originally thought that there was no straightforward way to make such code interrupt driven in the kernel (as it's a cludge) but I realised that that's exactly what ETHDBG drivers do. Is there any reason why I shouldn't have a go at implementing a similar mechanism for our kernel resident I2C driver? If not, are there any obvious pitfalls - I've not seen any other BSP's do this in the past... A: You can make a 'proper' driver that calls down into the OAL to do the actual I2C transactions. Alternatively you can build an interrupt-based version in the OAL where you handle everything in the ISR. There is nothing wrong with that so long as the rest of your drivers and app threads can handle longer times with interrupts off while you are servicing I2C interrupts. Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:55]: Q: I am having trouble with my mouse, I have the microsoft wireless mobile mouse 3000, when I push the scroll button I am suppose to have autoscroll instead it shows other web pages,Can you help me out tell me what to do!!! A: Sorry, this current chat is about Windows Embedded Compact. Hope you're able to find an answer to your question elsewhere. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:56]: Q: Is the Silverlight Animation "Spline" a BezierSpline? A: Spline - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee501495.aspx<BR< a>>   masatos_MSFT (Expert)[2010-3-30 12:57]: Thanks for the info Pev. I will follow up with the CETK experts here and get back to you. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:59]: Q: Spline- bad link A: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee501495.aspx davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 13:0]: Q: Sorry, got to tirm the ">" A: No Worries http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee501495.aspx davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 13:0]: Hello everyone, we are just about out of time. Thank you for joining us for our Windows Embedded CE 6.0 chat today! <http://www.Microsoft.com/Embedded>; A special thank you to the product group members for coming out. The transcript of today’s chat will be posted online as soon as possible, to <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats>;. We’ll see you again for another chat next month. Please check <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats>; for the list of upcoming chats. If you still have unanswered questions, let me suggest that you post them on one of our newsgroups on <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsembedded/ce/default.aspx> -Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 Now Available! <http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/ce/dd630616.aspx>; davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 13:1]: Q: hi everybody. I would like to know if there is something know about a bug in RTC API (VOIP), especially when using SIP. According the to the analysis with application verifyier there is a heap link in rtcdllmedia.dll. All of the unreleased chunks seem to have a size of 6560 bytes. A: I will follow up with the Networking Team for a response. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 13:1]: Q: Hi, we've problems with debugging of applications (= breakpoints in Platform Builder will be ignored) over KITL on Windows CE 5.0, if the PDB files are large (over 60MB). Are there any limitations to size of the PDB files? A: I will follow up with the tools team for a response and post with the transcript. Sing Wee [MS] (Expert)[2010-3-30 13:1]: Q: I am unable to use the target control in my development environment. any ideas? A: Make sure you have SYSGEN_SHELL=1 set in your build environment. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 13:3]: Q: what are the main differences between Object Store and RAM disk ? They are both in RAM...are there performance differences ? access differences ? A: I will follow up with the Core Team and get a response posted with the transcript to MSDN  The Questions   [2010-3-30 12:57]: Thanks for the info Pev. I will follow up with the CETK experts here and get back to you. [2010-3-30 12:59]:   [2010-3-30 13:0]:   [2010-3-30 13:0]: Hello everyone, we are just about out of time. Thank you for joining us for our Windows Embedded CE 6.0 chat today! <http://www.Microsoft.com/Embedded>; A special thank you to the product group members for coming out. The transcript of today’s chat will be posted online as soon as possible, to <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats>;. We’ll see you again for another chat next month. Please check <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats>; for the list of upcoming chats. If you still have unanswered questions, let me suggest that you post them on one of our newsgroups on <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsembedded/ce/default.aspx> -Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 Now Available! <http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/ce/dd630616.aspx>; [2010-3-30 13:1]: [2010-3-30 13:1]: [2010-3-30 13:1]: [2010-3-30 13:3]: neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:37]: Hi all KellyG (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:37]: Hi KellyG (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:37]: I have a question unrelated to windows Ce embedded, can you please help me?? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:38]: I need to implement hardware timers on my windows CE 6.0 device to trigger events at microsecond intervals! c neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:38]: yes. post it. May be i cud give a try KellyG (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:38]: My Product key listed on my tower is not the product key I need for microsoft office, but that is the only product key listed. neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:39]: I hope this is a chat for windows embedded. please post ur queries in office forums KellyG (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:39]: it is but i could not find a forum for office neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:40]: I think moderators will help u out. @ davbo-msft: can u help this guy? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:41]: Q: I need to implement hardware timers on my windows CE 6.0 device to trigger events at microsecond intervals. Where should i start? davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 11:50]: Our chat today covers the topic of Windows Embedded CE! 1. This chat will last for one hour. During this hour, our Experts will respond to as many questions as they can. Please understand that there may be some questions we cannot respond to due to lack of information or because the information is not yet public. 2. We encourage you to submit questions for our Experts. To do so, type your questions in the send box, select the “ask the Experts” box and click SEND. Questions sent directly to the Guest Chat room will not be answered by the Experts, but we encourage other community members to assist. 3. We ask that you stay on topic for the duration of the chat. This helps the Guests and Experts follow the conversation more easily. We invite you to ask off topic questions after this chat is over, but not during. 4. Please abide by the Chat Code of Conduct. Chat code of conduct: <http://msdn.microsoft.com/chats/chatroom.aspx?ctl=hlp#Conduct>; Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:54]: Evening! davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 11:54]: Hello everyone this is Dave Boyce - I worked in the Multimedia area for Windows CE. neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:55]: hello dave neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:55]: The chat code of conduct link is not working! Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:56]: Best be polite just in case then ;-) neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 11:56]: davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 11:57]: I'll check out the issue w/ the link paolopat (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:0]: Hello davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 12:0]: We are pleased to welcome our Experts for today’s chat. I will have them introduce themselves now. Chat will begin in a couple of minutes. <http://www.Microsoft.com/Embedded>; paolopat (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:3]: Hello Experts ! neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:3]: Welcome all! paolopat (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:3]: Q: I want to partition my NAND Flash device. One partition to use for hive ragistry and the other for the apps and data. The only way to do it is programmatically or setting some registry values ? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:3]: Q: I need to implement hardware timers on my windows CE 6.0 device to trigger events at microsecond intervals. Where should i start? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:5]: Q: My CPU is Intel celeron M processor 1Ghz. Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:5]: neo: if your silicon has multiple general purpose timers, pick one that's not in use for the system timer / profiler and set it up to trigger irqs for your purpose. You can't guarantee hard realtime type responses though... GarySwalling (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:5]: Q: Is Windows Phone 7 related to Windows CE? If so, can you tell me what version of Windows CE is the basis? Is it in fact the new version of Windows Mobile? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:6]: Q: Hi guys, what's the formal way to report bugs back to the core team / product team? The mechanism of calling the support phone number every time is really onerous and time-consuming. Is there another mechanism? paolopat (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:6]: Q: But the operation for creating the partitions ? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:6]: Q: If i need to implement it using interrupt handlers, What are all the files that I should look at? GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:6]: Q: I would like to get a handle to a Silverlight screen section, is that possiable? Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:7]: Q: I created a OS design with KITL and kernel debugger enabled. But I am unable to connect to the target for debugging. I am getting the following error when i try to connect with the device. PB Debugger Cannot initialize the Kernel Debugger. PB Debugger Debugger could not initialize connection. PB Debugger The Kernel Debugger is waiting to connect with target. PB Debugger The Kernel Debugger has been disconnected successfully. Charles (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:7]: What will be different in Windows Compact 7 from CE 6.0? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:8]: Can I have the book's name please? kiefs_dev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:8]: Q: hi everybody. I would like to know if there is something know about a bug in RTC API (VOIP), especially when using SIP. According the to the analysis with application verifyier there is a heap link in rtcdllmedia.dll. All of the unreleased chunks seem to have a size of 6560 bytes. paolopat (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:10]: Q: So...I have to modify file system code to create 2 partition at system startup ?!! I haven't understood.... neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:10]: Q: Do u mean ISR/IST implementation? How can i register an interrupt? What kind of interrupt should i register? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:11]: Q: Can I have the book's name please? Charles (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:11]: Q: What will be different in Windows Compact 7 from CE 6.0? PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:11]: neo: I'd say that you really need the docs for YOUR BSP, not generic documents for BSPs in general. Each BSP may be architected differently. If you're using the CEPC BSP, then the documentation that comes with Platform Builder is a reasonable place to look. GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:11]: Q: If one has an image on a Silverlight page, it seems to be cached. How would one refresh that cache after changing the underlying image? Elektrobit (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:12]: Q: Hi, we've problems with debugging of applications (= breakpoints in Platform Builder will be ignored) over KITL on Windows CE 5.0, if the PDB files are large (over 60MB). Are there any limitations to size of the PDB files? Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:15]: Q: I am using CE 6.0. There is no cesvchost process running in my system. alexquisi (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:15]: Q: Hi, I saw that the ATADISK is quite generic and des not have any optimizations. Do you have any advice to consider while tryin to improve the performance of it? Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:17]: Windows XP service pack 1 Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:17]: Q: sorry! Windows XP SP3 neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:19]: Q: The link for developing device drivers is not working. can u please check that? paolopat (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:20]: Q: I have a NAND Flash on my target device. On this flash I have the hive registry and an application.I have observed that when the NAND flash is fully, the system startup time is longer....is there a degradation of NAND use that influences the startup time ? Why ? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:20]: Q: When attempting to run the CETK cellcore tests the documentation states the pre-requisites include "stinger.ini", "ltk.ini" but windows CE doesn't provide these or document what they fully need to contain. Implicitly you also need "datatrans.xml" which isn't supplied. If you get around this error and steal these from Windows Mobile instead, when you try and run the CETK tests you get a data abort in radiometricsdll.dll. How should we invoke the cellcore parts of CETK? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:21]: Hi all, Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:21]: oops Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:21]: :-D Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:24]: Typically for SoC devices you name your hardware specific libraries in the form "SOCDIRNAME_LIBNAME". In our platform "OMAP35XX_TPS659XX_TI_V1" if you do this we cause the catalog parser to die... For example if we have a library "Musbfn_OMAP35XX_TPS659XX_TI_V1.dll" entering this in the catalogs pbcxml file in a <module> section causes the XML parser to fail with : Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:25]: Q: Error 3 The 'urn:Microsoft.PlatformBuilder/Catalog:Module' element is        invalid - The value '012345678901234567890123456789.dll' is invalid         according to its datatype         'urn:Microsoft.PlatformBuilder/Catalog:CatalogFileName' - The actual         length is greater than the MaxLength value. GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:25]: Q: Writable bitmap, is there an example of the syntax? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:25]: Q: Typically for SoC devices you name your hardware specific libraries in the form "SOCDIRNAME_LIBNAME". In our platform "OMAP35XX_TPS659XX_TI_V1" if you do this we cause the catalog parser to die... For example if we have a library "Musbfn_OMAP35XX_TPS659XX_TI_V1.dll" entering this in the catalogs pbcxml file in a <module> section causes the XML parser to fail with : Error 3 The 'urn:Microsoft.PlatformBuilder/Catalog:Module' element is        invalid - The value '012345678901234567890123456789.dll' is invalid         according to its datatype         'urn:Microsoft.PlatformBuilder/Catalog:CatalogFileName' - The actual         length is greater than the MaxLength value. Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:25]: sorry, messed up submission there! GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:26]: Q: I would like to get a handle to a Silverlight screen section, is that possiable? GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:28]: Q: IXRVisualHost::GetHWND() exactly what I needed Thanks, PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:29]: GPM: You don't have to keep submitting the questions. The chat experts have an application that they're using to follow the chat and all Ask the Experts questions are logged. Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:29]: Q: I am getting this error only when I select the KdStub as the debugger in Target device connectivity. neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:30]: Q: ok. thanks for the book's link Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:31]: Hm, did those two I submitted get picked up by anyone? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:33]: Q: If I select Active KTIL, My OS doesn't boots. It says "loading NK.EXE at 0x<xxxxx> location" after that nothing comes in the debug log. PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:34]: Pev: PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:35]: Pev: I'm sure they did. The guys who are actually on the chat may not be experts in that part of things. That's usually the explanation when you don't get an answer in 10 minutes or so. Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:36]: Ah, fair enough Susie (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:36]: My Outlook Express incoming mail is corrput. No ONE has been able to fix the problem, Dell or Norton. I have dial up I'm in a rural area Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:37]: Q: I have tried that and I am getting the same error. Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:37]: Susie : Use Thunderbird instead :-D PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:37]: Susie: Sorry, but this chat is not about Windows, but Embedded (like what runs on a phone). Your best chance is to find a local expert or talk to your ISP. paolopat (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:37]: Q: what are the main differences between Object Store and RAM disk ? They are both in RAM...are there performance differences ? access differences ? Susie (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:38]: My computer knowlege is very limited, what is Thunderbird? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:38]: A different email client :-D neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:39]: Q: KITL: *** Device Name CEPC56059 *** WARN: KITL will run in polling mode VBridge:: built on [Jul 10 2009] time [10:20:14] VBridgeInit()...TX = [16384] bytes -- Rx = [16384] bytes Tx buffer [0xA1B84860] to [0xA1B88860]. Rx buffer [0xA1B88880] to [0xA1B8C880]. VBridge:: NK add MAC: [0-60-65-2-DA-FB] Connecting to Desktop KITL: Connected host IP: 1 Port: 1086 .. this is the output of the serial debug Susie (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:39]: Do I need to uninstall Outlook Express youngboyzie (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:39]: I need to start battery calibration for my new battery for my dell inspiron 1525 laptop and should be able to reach the BIOS screen by hitting f2 but this isnt working... help? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:39]: Nah, you can run it instead - you'll still need help from your ISP to configure it I expect Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:39]: Q: Both is happening via Ethernet. PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:40]: youngboyzie: You're off-topic. This is not a general chat for Windows and certainly not for Dell. You'll have to ask Dell how to get to setup; it's their machine. bill (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:41]: I lost spell check, how can i get et back neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:42]: Q: I didn't do that. I have to try. Jhony (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:43]: Q: Ok. I will do it then. bill (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:43]: Q: I lost spell check, how can i get it back PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:44]: bill: This isn't a general Windows chat. There are some Web forums that you might try. GarySwalling (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:45]: Q: Thanks, I found the Phone 7 presentation at http://live.visitmix.com/MIX10/Sessions/CL13 GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:45]: Q: Is the Silverlight Animation "Spline" a BezierSpline? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:46]: Q: ok. I'll do it. thanks Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:46]: Whowever was asking about KITL connection : I've had this loads in the past. I think I started debugging last time by using wireshark to see what was happening on the network then setting up the OAL_ETHER and OAL_FUNC and OAL_VERBOSE as well as OAL_KITL flags to see what was actually happening in the driver.... Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:47]: I'd generally make sure that you're testing though a 10baseT hub (instead of anything faster) and forcing Active KITL in polled mode too... neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:48]: Q: I disabled the firewall in my PC. Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:50]: Q: I've got a platform (not developed by myself) where I2C bus support has to be provided through the OAL as the kernel needs to talk to devices such as the power management IC and gas gauge so a 'proper' I2C driver hanging off device manager isn't possible. This happens to be a polled driver, so obviously it hits the system hard when either under lots of traffic or an error condition occurs and the driver constantly polls. I originally thought that there was no straightforward way to make such code interrupt driven in the kernel (as it's a cludge) but I realised that that's exactly what ETHDBG drivers do. Is there any reason why I shouldn't have a go at implementing a similar mechanism for our kernel resident I2C driver? If not, are there any obvious pitfalls - I've not seen any other BSP's do this in the past... neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:51]: Q: I don't see a kitlcore.dll in my OS. is my debug image fails to load because of that? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:52]: Q: Hi masatos, I'm using Windows Embedded CE 6.0 with R3 and patched to feb 2010's QFE's (with it's associated CETK version) this is a machine with only CE 6.0 on (no conflicts with earlier CE or WM...) neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:54]: ok. Got it neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:54]: Q: ok. Got it Roundman (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:55]: Q: I am having trouble with my mouse, I have the microsoft wireless mobile mouse 3000, when I push the scroll button I am suppose to have autoscroll instead it shows other web pages,Can you help me out tell me what to do!!! Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:55]: Hey neo, debugging kitl issues is really frustrating but dont lose heart :-) neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:55]: @ pev : u fixed the problem of KITL after that? neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:56]: I am getting the same error again and again. I even cleaned my environment and tried in a fresh PC. But didn't succeed yet Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:56]: Well, eventually - my experiences probably won't help you as different platforms have different reasons for doing that neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:56]: I think so PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:58]: neo: Have you searched the old messages in microsoft.public.windowsce.platbuilder? It seems to me that there was a packet size situation where it was possible to have problems with KITL connections based on a setting on the PC. Google Groups, groups.google.com, Advanced Groups Search will allow you to search a single newsgroup or a set of newsgroups easily. GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:58]: Q: Spline- bad link PaulT (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:58]: GPM: without the > at the end does it work? It seems to for me... neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:58]: But some times if i try to connect to the device again. The Image information is seen in the serial debug. what does that mean?Download BIN file information: ----------------------------------------------------- [0]: Base Address=0x220000 Length=0x18DAADC Received a broadcast message !CheckUDP: Not UDP (proto = 0x00000001) after this i am getting the old errors. PB debugger cannot initialize ... GPM (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:59]: Q: Sorry, got to tirm the ">" neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 12:59]: ok paul. I ll look into that. davbo-msft (Moderator)[2010-3-30 13:0]: Hello everyone, we are just about out of time. Thank you for joining us for our Windows Embedded CE 6.0 chat today! <http://www.Microsoft.com/Embedded>; A special thank you to the product group members for coming out. The transcript of today’s chat will be posted online as soon as possible, to <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats>;. We’ll see you again for another chat next month. Please check <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/chats>; for the list of upcoming chats. If you still have unanswered questions, let me suggest that you post them on one of our newsgroups on <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsembedded/ce/default.aspx> -Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3 Now Available! <http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/ce/dd630616.aspx>; neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 13:1]: Q: I am unable to use the target control in my development environment. any ideas? Pev (Guest)[2010-3-30 13:1]: Sure, if KITL isn't connected target control won't work as it runs over kitl... neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 13:1]: ok .thanks pev neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 13:2]: yes. sysgen_shell is set to 1 neo (Guest)[2010-3-30 13:2]: Q: yes. sysgen_shell is set to 1 Marcelovk (Guest)[2010-3-30 13:2]: Q: Is there any way to extract the default command lines of the tests in CETK? I want to have it running unconnected from the desktop.   Copyright © 2010 – Bruce Eitman All Rights Reserved

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  • Pure Server-Side Filtering with RadGridView and WCF RIA Services

    Those of you who are familiar with WCF RIA Services know that the DomainDataSource control provides a FilterDescriptors collection that enables you to filter data returned by the query on the server. We have been using this DomainDataSource feature in our RIA Services with DomainDataSource online example for almost an year now. In the example, we are listening for RadGridViews Filtering event in order to intercept any filtering that is performed on the client and translate it to something that the DomainDataSource will understand, in this case a System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor being added or removed from its FilterDescriptors collection. Think of RadGridView.FilterDescriptors as client-side filtering and of DomainDataSource.FilterDescriptors as server-side filtering. We no longer need the client-side one. With the introduction of the Custom Filtering Controls feature many new possibilities have opened. With these custom controls we no longer need to do any filtering on the client. I have prepared a very small project that demonstrates how to filter solely on the server by using a custom filtering control. As I have already mentioned filtering on the server is done through the FilterDescriptors collection of the DomainDataSource control. This collection holds instances of type System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor. The FilterDescriptor has three important properties: PropertyPath: Specifies the name of the property that we want to filter on (the left operand). Operator: Specifies the type of comparison to use when filtering. An instance of FilterOperator Enumeration. Value: The value to compare with (the right operand). An instance of the Parameter Class. By adding filters, you can specify that only entities which meet the condition in the filter are loaded from the domain context. In case you are not familiar with these concepts you might find Brad Abrams blog interesting. Now, our requirements are to create some kind of UI that will manipulate the DomainDataSource.FilterDescriptors collection. When it comes to collections, my first choice of course would be RadGridView. If you are not familiar with the Custom Filtering Controls concept I would strongly recommend getting acquainted with my step-by-step tutorial Custom Filtering with RadGridView for Silverlight and checking the online example out. I have created a simple custom filtering control that contains a RadGridView and several buttons. This control is aware of the DomainDataSource instance, since it is operating on its FilterDescriptors collection. In fact, the RadGridView that is inside it is bound to this collection. In order to display filters that are relevant for the current column only, I have applied a filter to the grid. This filter is a Telerik.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor and is used to filter the little grid inside the custom control. It should not be confused with the DomainDataSource.FilterDescriptors collection that RadGridView is actually bound to. These are the RIA filters. Additionally, I have added several other features. For example, if you have specified a DataFormatString on your original column, the Value column inside the custom control will pick it up and format the filter values accordingly. Also, I have transferred the data type of the column that you are filtering to the Value column of the custom control. This will help the little RadGridView determine what kind of editor to show up when you begin edit, for example a date picker for DateTime columns. Finally, I have added four buttons two of them can be used to add or remove filters and the other two will communicate the changes you have made to the server. Here is the full source code of the DomainDataSourceFilteringControl. The XAML: <UserControl x:Class="PureServerSideFiltering.DomainDataSourceFilteringControl"    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"     xmlns:telerikGrid="clr-namespace:Telerik.Windows.Controls;assembly=Telerik.Windows.Controls.GridView"     xmlns:telerik="clr-namespace:Telerik.Windows.Controls;assembly=Telerik.Windows.Controls"     Width="300">     <Border x:Name="LayoutRoot"             BorderThickness="1"             BorderBrush="#FF8A929E"             Padding="5"             Background="#FFDFE2E5">           <Grid>             <Grid.RowDefinitions>                 <RowDefinition Height="Auto"/>                 <RowDefinition Height="150"/>                 <RowDefinition Height="Auto"/>             </Grid.RowDefinitions>               <StackPanel Grid.Row="0"                         Margin="2"                         Orientation="Horizontal"                         HorizontalAlignment="Center">                 <telerik:RadButton Name="addFilterButton"                                   Click="OnAddFilterButtonClick"                                   Content="Add Filter"                                   Margin="2"                                   Width="96"/>                 <telerik:RadButton Name="removeFilterButton"                                   Click="OnRemoveFilterButtonClick"                                   Content="Remove Filter"                                   Margin="2"                                   Width="96"/>             </StackPanel>               <telerikGrid:RadGridView Name="filtersGrid"                                     Grid.Row="1"                                     Margin="2"                                     ItemsSource="{Binding FilterDescriptors}"                                     AddingNewDataItem="OnFilterGridAddingNewDataItem"                                     ColumnWidth="*"                                     ShowGroupPanel="False"                                     AutoGenerateColumns="False"                                     CanUserResizeColumns="False"                                     CanUserReorderColumns="False"                                     CanUserFreezeColumns="False"                                     RowIndicatorVisibility="Collapsed"                                     IsFilteringAllowed="False"                                     CanUserSortColumns="False">                 <telerikGrid:RadGridView.Columns>                     <telerikGrid:GridViewComboBoxColumn DataMemberBinding="{Binding Operator}"                                                         UniqueName="Operator"/>                     <telerikGrid:GridViewDataColumn Header="Value"                                                     DataMemberBinding="{Binding Value.Value}"                                                     UniqueName="Value"/>                 </telerikGrid:RadGridView.Columns>             </telerikGrid:RadGridView>               <StackPanel Grid.Row="2"                         Margin="2"                         Orientation="Horizontal"                         HorizontalAlignment="Center">                 <telerik:RadButton Name="filterButton"                                   Click="OnApplyFiltersButtonClick"                                   Content="Apply Filters"                                   Margin="2"                                   Width="96"/>                 <telerik:RadButton Name="clearButton"                                   Click="OnClearFiltersButtonClick"                                   Content="Clear Filters"                                   Margin="2"                                   Width="96"/>             </StackPanel>           </Grid>       </Border> </UserControl>   And the code-behind: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Net; using System.Windows; using System.Windows.Controls; using System.Windows.Documents; using System.Windows.Input; using System.Windows.Media; using System.Windows.Media.Animation; using System.Windows.Shapes; using Telerik.Windows.Controls.GridView; using System.Windows.Data; using Telerik.Windows.Controls; using Telerik.Windows.Data;   namespace PureServerSideFiltering {     /// <summary>     /// A custom filtering control capable of filtering purely server-side.     /// </summary>     public partial class DomainDataSourceFilteringControl : UserControl, IFilteringControl     {         // The main player here.         DomainDataSource domainDataSource;           // This is the name of the property that this column displays.         private string dataMemberName;           // This is the type of the property that this column displays.         private Type dataMemberType;           /// <summary>         /// Identifies the <see cref="IsActive"/> dependency property.         /// </summary>         /// <remarks>         /// The state of the filtering funnel (i.e. full or empty) is bound to this property.         /// </remarks>         public static readonly DependencyProperty IsActiveProperty =             DependencyProperty.Register(                 "IsActive",                 typeof(bool),                 typeof(DomainDataSourceFilteringControl),                 new PropertyMetadata(false));           /// <summary>         /// Gets or sets a value indicating whether the filtering is active.         /// </summary>         /// <remarks>         /// Set this to true if you want to lit-up the filtering funnel.         /// </remarks>         public bool IsActive         {             get { return (bool)GetValue(IsActiveProperty); }             set { SetValue(IsActiveProperty, value); }         }           /// <summary>         /// Gets or sets the domain data source.         /// We need this in order to work on its FilterDescriptors collection.         /// </summary>         /// <value>The domain data source.</value>         public DomainDataSource DomainDataSource         {             get { return this.domainDataSource; }             set { this.domainDataSource = value; }         }           public System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptorCollection FilterDescriptors         {             get { return this.DomainDataSource.FilterDescriptors; }         }           public DomainDataSourceFilteringControl()         {             InitializeComponent();         }           public void Prepare(GridViewBoundColumnBase column)         {             this.LayoutRoot.DataContext = this;               if (this.DomainDataSource == null)             {                 // Sorry, but we need a DomainDataSource. Can't do anything without it.                 return;             }               // This is the name of the property that this column displays.             this.dataMemberName = column.GetDataMemberName();               // This is the type of the property that this column displays.             // We need this in order to see which FilterOperators to feed to the combo-box column.             this.dataMemberType = column.DataType;               // We will use our magic Type extension method to see which operators are applicable for             // this data type. You can go to the extension method body and see what it does.             ((GridViewComboBoxColumn)this.filtersGrid.Columns["Operator"]).ItemsSource                 = this.dataMemberType.ApplicableFilterOperators();               // This is very nice as well. We will tell the Value column its data type. In this way             // RadGridView will pick up the best editor according to the data type. For example,             // if the data type of the value is DateTime, you will be editing it with a DatePicker.             // Nice!             ((GridViewDataColumn)this.filtersGrid.Columns["Value"]).DataType = this.dataMemberType;               // Yet another nice feature. We will transfer the original DataFormatString (if any) to             // the Value column. In this way if you have specified a DataFormatString for the original             // column, you will see all filter values formatted accordingly.             ((GridViewDataColumn)this.filtersGrid.Columns["Value"]).DataFormatString = column.DataFormatString;               // This is important. Since our little filtersGrid will be bound to the entire collection             // of this.domainDataSource.FilterDescriptors, we need to set a Telerik filter on the             // grid so that it will display FilterDescriptor which are relevane to this column ONLY!             Telerik.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor columnFilter = new Telerik.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor("PropertyPath"                 , Telerik.Windows.Data.FilterOperator.IsEqualTo                 , this.dataMemberName);             this.filtersGrid.FilterDescriptors.Add(columnFilter);               // We want to listen for this in order to activate and de-activate the UI funnel.             this.filtersGrid.Items.CollectionChanged += this.OnFilterGridItemsCollectionChanged;         }           /// <summary>         // Since the DomainDataSource is a little bit picky about adding uninitialized FilterDescriptors         // to its collection, we will prepare each new instance with some default values and then         // the user can change them later. Go to the event handler to see how we do this.         /// </summary>         void OnFilterGridAddingNewDataItem(object sender, GridViewAddingNewEventArgs e)         {             // We need to initialize the new instance with some values and let the user go on from here.             System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor newFilter = new System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor();               // This is a must. It should know what member it is filtering on.             newFilter.PropertyPath = this.dataMemberName;               // Initialize it with one of the allowed operators.             // TypeExtensions.ApplicableFilterOperators method for more info.             newFilter.Operator = this.dataMemberType.ApplicableFilterOperators().First();               if (this.dataMemberType == typeof(DateTime))             {                 newFilter.Value.Value = DateTime.Now;             }             else if (this.dataMemberType == typeof(string))             {                 newFilter.Value.Value = "<enter text>";             }             else if (this.dataMemberType.IsValueType)             {                 // We need something non-null for all value types.                 newFilter.Value.Value = Activator.CreateInstance(this.dataMemberType);             }               // Let the user edit the new filter any way he/she likes.             e.NewObject = newFilter;         }           void OnFilterGridItemsCollectionChanged(object sender, System.Collections.Specialized.NotifyCollectionChangedEventArgs e)         {             // We are active only if we have any filters define. In this case the filtering funnel will lit-up.             this.IsActive = this.filtersGrid.Items.Count > 0;         }           private void OnApplyFiltersButtonClick(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)         {             if (this.DomainDataSource.IsLoadingData)             {                 return;             }               // Comment this if you want the popup to stay open after the button is clicked.             this.ClosePopup();               // Since this.domainDataSource.AutoLoad is false, this will take into             // account all filtering changes that the user has made since the last             // Load() and pull the new data to the client.             this.DomainDataSource.Load();         }           private void OnClearFiltersButtonClick(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)         {             if (this.DomainDataSource.IsLoadingData)             {                 return;             }               // We want to remove ONLY those filters from the DomainDataSource             // that this control is responsible for.             this.DomainDataSource.FilterDescriptors                 .Where(fd => fd.PropertyPath == this.dataMemberName) // Only "our" filters.                 .ToList()                 .ForEach(fd => this.DomainDataSource.FilterDescriptors.Remove(fd)); // Bye-bye!               // Comment this if you want the popup to stay open after the button is clicked.             this.ClosePopup();               // After we did our housekeeping, get the new data to the client.             this.DomainDataSource.Load();         }           private void OnAddFilterButtonClick(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)         {             if (this.DomainDataSource.IsLoadingData)             {                 return;             }               // Let the user enter his/or her requirements for a new filter.             this.filtersGrid.BeginInsert();             this.filtersGrid.UpdateLayout();         }           private void OnRemoveFilterButtonClick(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)         {             if (this.DomainDataSource.IsLoadingData)             {                 return;             }               // Find the currently selected filter and destroy it.             System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor filterToRemove = this.filtersGrid.SelectedItem as System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor;             if (filterToRemove != null                 && this.DomainDataSource.FilterDescriptors.Contains(filterToRemove))             {                 this.DomainDataSource.FilterDescriptors.Remove(filterToRemove);             }         }           private void ClosePopup()         {             System.Windows.Controls.Primitives.Popup popup = this.ParentOfType<System.Windows.Controls.Primitives.Popup>();             if (popup != null)             {                 popup.IsOpen = false;             }         }     } }   Finally, we need to tell RadGridViews Columns to use this custom control instead of the default one. Here is how to do it: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Net; using System.Windows; using System.Windows.Controls; using System.Windows.Documents; using System.Windows.Input; using System.Windows.Media; using System.Windows.Media.Animation; using System.Windows.Shapes; using System.Windows.Data; using Telerik.Windows.Data; using Telerik.Windows.Controls; using Telerik.Windows.Controls.GridView;   namespace PureServerSideFiltering {     public partial class MainPage : UserControl     {         public MainPage()         {             InitializeComponent();             this.grid.AutoGeneratingColumn += this.OnGridAutoGeneratingColumn;               // Uncomment this if you want the DomainDataSource to start pre-filtered.             // You will notice how our custom filtering controls will correctly read this information,             // populate their UI with the respective filters and lit-up the funnel to indicate that             // filtering is active. Go ahead and try it.             this.employeesDataSource.FilterDescriptors.Add(new System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor("Title", System.Windows.Data.FilterOperator.Contains, "Assistant"));             this.employeesDataSource.FilterDescriptors.Add(new System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor("HireDate", System.Windows.Data.FilterOperator.IsGreaterThan, new DateTime(1998, 12, 31)));             this.employeesDataSource.FilterDescriptors.Add(new System.Windows.Data.FilterDescriptor("HireDate", System.Windows.Data.FilterOperator.IsLessThanOrEqualTo, new DateTime(1999, 12, 31)));               this.employeesDataSource.Load();         }           /// <summary>         /// First of all, we will need to replace the default filtering control         /// of each column with out custom filtering control DomainDataSourceFilteringControl         /// </summary>         private void OnGridAutoGeneratingColumn(object sender, GridViewAutoGeneratingColumnEventArgs e)         {             GridViewBoundColumnBase dataColumn = e.Column as GridViewBoundColumnBase;             if (dataColumn != null)             {                 // We do not like ugly dates.                 if (dataColumn.DataType == typeof(DateTime))                 {                     dataColumn.DataFormatString = "{0:d}"; // Short date pattern.                       // Notice how this format will be later transferred to the Value column                     // of the grid that we have inside the DomainDataSourceFilteringControl.                 }                   // Replace the default filtering control with our.                 dataColumn.FilteringControl = new DomainDataSourceFilteringControl()                 {                     // Let the control know about the DDS, after all it will work directly on it.                     DomainDataSource = this.employeesDataSource                 };                   // Finally, lit-up the filtering funnel through the IsActive dependency property                 // in case there are some filters on the DDS that match our column member.                 string dataMemberName = dataColumn.GetDataMemberName();                 dataColumn.FilteringControl.IsActive =                     this.employeesDataSource.FilterDescriptors                     .Where(fd => fd.PropertyPath == dataMemberName)                     .Count() > 0;             }         }     } } The best part is that we are not only writing filters for the DomainDataSource we can read and load them. If the DomainDataSource has some pre-existing filters (like I have created in the code above), our control will read them and will populate its UI accordingly. Even the filtering funnel will light-up! Remember, the funnel is controlled by the IsActive property of our control. While this is just a basic implementation, the source code is absolutely yours and you can take it from here and extend it to match your specific business requirements. Below the main grid there is another debug grid. With its help you can monitor what filter descriptors are added and removed to the domain data source. Download Source Code. (You will have to have the AdventureWorks sample database installed on the default SQLExpress instance in order to run it.) Enjoy!Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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