do your own homework - Page 599

Is there a way to measure wifi traffic on a network from a client?

- by millimoose

Is there some way (preferrably one that comes with an existing tool) to measure the traffic going through the whole WiFi network from a computer connected to it? (That is, not from the AP or something between the modem and AP.) My situation is this: a few months back, the internet connection at my parent's place got really sluggish and laggy. (Lag spikes that cause page loads to time out etc, connections plain getting lost and dropping packets forever.) It's impossible to get mom's husband to do anything about this because he brushes this off with something like "just tell your sister to turn off torrents". Unfortunately the WiFi router's firmware doesn't do traffic logging. I'm not going to risk bricking it to put WRT on it; nor am I keen on rewiring the network to add a proxy to analyse the traffic. (I'm one of those people that make computers break just by looking at them, except machines I own.) I'd like to be able to find out roughly how much data is going over the air here while all the LAN wires are out of the router, all the computers accused of torrenting are off, etc. The idea is to either show that: Even if everything but my macbook is turned off, something is congesting the network. The husband is a systems developer and has a whole lot of mysterious hardware that's not to be touched around, one of them might be culprit. There is barely any traffic on the network, but the internet is still sluggish. Meaning this is likely a problem the ISP should solve. (Some hardware of theirs being glitchy, someone on an aggregated line hogging it constantly...) The network is encrypted, but I can temporarily set it to open for the sake of finding this out. So, in conclusion? Can this be done? Or is there some alternative way I could try to diagnose the problem?

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BYOD (accessing files) on a domain without joining?

- by Philip White

I run a Samba 4 instance at a small private school. This makes a regular Linux server appear as a directory controller. There are two relevant benefits to this: I have a Samba share for people's documents, and I use the Redirected Folders feature to allow any employee to sit down at any PC, log in with their domain credentials, and their My Documents points to network storage. Everyone has a mapped drive (using Group Policy Preferences) to a share specific to their account type. Students can access one share (one share for all students), teachers have another, and office staff have another. However, I would like to allow BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). Some employees are already asking for it with their personal laptops, and I know eventually most everyone will want to. Is there any way to replicate the two features above without having to join PCs to the domain? Joining personal PCs is impractical if only because only professional editions of Windows support this. Ideally, any operating system (including mobile) could access the relevant shares, but of course Windows is key. Offline caching is optional. (I could set up OpenVPN for teachers who want to access their files from home.) The problem with simply giving SSH access to the relevant shares is primarily that Samba 4 relies on ext4 ACLs and ext4 extended attributes to maintain NTFS permissions. Writing files directly to the Linux server would bypass this and would (probably) not be interoperable with Samba4. Right now I am completely flexible. I am even fine with scrapping the whole domain and using some other software for the two features above. How can I allow school employees and students freedom to securely share files without requiring everyone to have specific editions of Windows?

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Perfmon % Processor Time vs. task manager's CPU usage

- by nat

I'm new to using Perfmon and performance monitoring in general (so go easy on me please ;) I know that Perfmon doesn't have anything exactly like Task Manager's CPU usage display, but I'm trying to figure out how to monitor user's CPU usage via Perfmon in a similar way, and trying to understand the measurements (or how to convert the numbers to get a similar understanding) For example, if in Task Manager, a particular user is consistently using more than 5% CPU, I would want to contact the user about it. I learn best by example, so here is exactly what I'm trying to do, with a specific example: This is for a 32-bit Dual Quad Core Windows 2003 web server (8 CPUs), there are many web sites on the server, each running within their own application pool/worker process ID. Through other research here I learned of a registry change that I made so that the PID shows up with the w3wp process so I can easily identify the site later by cross-referencing it. I set up a counter with the following settings: Process -> % Processor Time -> all instances Here is an example. Say I'm interested in "black line" user in this graph below, as his process is spiking quite high compared to all the other users: (I wasn't allowed to post the image as I'm a new user on this site.. I've uploaded the image to:) http://i35.tinypic.com/106yn8k.jpg So... using this as an example, I see that they have an AVERAGE % PROCESSOR TIME of 23.264 , and have spiked as high as 103.124 So what exactly does this 23.264 number mean to me? Is it similar to an average of Task Manager's CPU reading for this user? Or, since this server has 8 CPUs, should I divide this number by 8? (23.264/8 = 2.9% AVERAGE CPU LOAD?) Thanks in advance.

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Building applications with WPF, MVVM and Prism(aka CAG)

- by skjagini

In this article I am going to walk through an application using WPF and Prism (aka composite application guidance, CAG) which simulates engaging a taxi (cab). The rules are simple, the app would have3 screens A login screen to authenticate the user An information screen. A screen to engage the cab and roam around and calculating the total fare Metered Rate of Fare The meter is required to be engaged when a cab is occupied by anyone $3.00 upon entry $0.35 for each additional unit The unit fare is: one-fifth of a mile, when the cab is traveling at 6 miles an hour or more; or 60 seconds when not in motion or traveling at less than 12 miles per hour. Night surcharge of $.50 after 8:00 PM & before 6:00 AM Peak hour Weekday Surcharge of $1.00 Monday - Friday after 4:00 PM & before 8:00 PM New York State Tax Surcharge of $.50 per ride. Example: Friday (2010-10-08) 5:30pm Start at Lexington Ave & E 57th St End at Irving Pl & E 15th St Start = $3.00 Travels 2 miles at less than 6 mph for 15 minutes = $3.50 Travels at more than 12 mph for 5 minutes = $1.75 Peak hour Weekday Surcharge = $1.00 (ride started at 5:30 pm) New York State Tax Surcharge = $0.50 Before we dive into the app, I would like to give brief description about the framework. If you want to jump on to the source code, scroll all the way to the end of the post. MVVM MVVM pattern is in no way related to the usage of PRISM in your application and should be considered if you are using WPF irrespective of PRISM or not. Lets say you are not familiar with MVVM, your typical UI would involve adding some UI controls like text boxes, a button, double clicking on the button, generating event handler, calling a method from business layer and updating the user interface, it works most of the time for developing small scale applications. The problem with this approach is that there is some amount of code specific to business logic wrapped in UI specific code which is hard to unit test it, mock it and MVVM helps to solve the exact problem. MVVM stands for Model(M) – View(V) – ViewModel(VM), based on the interactions with in the three parties it should be called VVMM, MVVM sounds more like MVC (Model-View-Controller) so the name. Why it should be called VVMM: View – View Model - Model WPF allows to create user interfaces using XAML and MVVM takes it to the next level by allowing complete separation of user interface and business logic. In WPF each view will have a property, DataContext when set to an instance of a class (which happens to be your view model) provides the data the view is interested in, i.e., view interacts with view model and at the same time view model interacts with view through DataContext. Sujith, if view and view model are interacting directly with each other how does MVVM is helping me separation of concerns? Well, the catch is DataContext is of type Object, since it is of type object view doesn’t know exact type of view model allowing views and views models to be loosely coupled. View models aggregate data from models (data access layer, services, etc) and make it available for views through properties, methods etc, i.e., View Models interact with Models. PRISM Prism is provided by Microsoft Patterns and Practices team and it can be downloaded from codeplex for source code, samples and documentation on msdn. The name composite implies, to compose user interface from different modules (views) without direct dependencies on each other, again allowing loosely coupled development. Well Sujith, I can already do that with user controls, why shall I learn another framework? That’s correct, you can decouple using user controls, but you still have to manage some amount of coupling, like how to do you communicate between the controls, how do you subscribe/unsubscribe, loading/unloading views dynamically. Prism is not a replacement for user controls, provides the following features which greatly help in designing the composite applications. Dependency Injection (DI)/ Inversion of Control (IoC) Modules Regions Event Aggregator Commands Simply put, MVVM helps building a single view and Prism helps building an application using the views There are other open source alternatives to Prism, like MVVMLight, Cinch, take a look at them as well. Lets dig into the source code. 1. Solution The solution is made of the following projects Framework: Holds the common functionality in building applications using WPF and Prism TaxiClient: Start up project, boot strapping and app styling TaxiCommon: Helps with the business logic TaxiModules: Holds the meat of the application with views and view models TaxiTests: To test the application 2. DI / IoC Dependency Injection (DI) as the name implies refers to injecting dependencies and Inversion of Control (IoC) means the calling code has no direct control on the dependencies, opposite of normal way of programming where dependencies are passed by caller, i.e inversion; aside from some differences in terminology the concept is same in both the cases. The idea behind DI/IoC pattern is to reduce the amount of direct coupling between different components of the application, the higher the dependency the more tightly coupled the application resulting in code which is hard to modify, unit test and mock. Initializing Dependency Injection through BootStrapper TaxiClient is the starting project of the solution and App (App.xaml) is the starting class that gets called when you run the application. From the App’s OnStartup method we will invoke BootStrapper. namespace TaxiClient { /// <summary> /// Interaction logic for App.xaml /// </summary> public partial class App : Application { protected override void OnStartup(StartupEventArgs e) { base.OnStartup(e); (new BootStrapper()).Run(); } } } BootStrapper is your contact point for initializing the application including dependency injection, creating Shell and other frameworks. We are going to use Unity for DI and there are lot of open source DI frameworks like Spring.Net, StructureMap etc with different feature set and you can choose a framework based on your preferences. Note that Prism comes with in built support for Unity, for example we are deriving from UnityBootStrapper in our case and for any other DI framework you have to extend the Prism appropriately namespace TaxiClient { public class BootStrapper: UnityBootstrapper { protected override IModuleCatalog CreateModuleCatalog() { return new ConfigurationModuleCatalog(); } protected override DependencyObject CreateShell() { Framework.FrameworkBootStrapper.Run(Container, Application.Current.Dispatcher); Shell shell = new Shell(); shell.ResizeMode = ResizeMode.NoResize; shell.Show(); return shell; } } } Lets take a look into FrameworkBootStrapper to check out how to register with unity container. namespace Framework { public class FrameworkBootStrapper { public static void Run(IUnityContainer container, Dispatcher dispatcher) { UIDispatcher uiDispatcher = new UIDispatcher(dispatcher); container.RegisterInstance<IDispatcherService>(uiDispatcher); container.RegisterType<IInjectSingleViewService, InjectSingleViewService>( new ContainerControlledLifetimeManager()); . . . } } } In the above code we are registering two components with unity container. You shall observe that we are following two different approaches, RegisterInstance and RegisterType. With RegisterInstance we are registering an existing instance and the same instance will be returned for every request made for IDispatcherService and with RegisterType we are requesting unity container to create an instance for us when required, i.e., when I request for an instance for IInjectSingleViewService, unity will create/return an instance of InjectSingleViewService class and with RegisterType we can configure the life time of the instance being created. With ContaienrControllerLifetimeManager, the unity container caches the instance and reuses for any subsequent requests, without recreating a new instance. Lets take a look into FareViewModel.cs and it’s constructor. The constructor takes one parameter IEventAggregator and if you try to find all references in your solution for IEventAggregator, you will not find a single location where an instance of EventAggregator is passed directly to the constructor. The compiler still finds an instance and works fine because Prism is already configured when used with Unity container to return an instance of EventAggregator when requested for IEventAggregator and in this particular case it is called constructor injection. public class FareViewModel:ObservableBase, IDataErrorInfo { ... private IEventAggregator _eventAggregator; public FareViewModel(IEventAggregator eventAggregator) { _eventAggregator = eventAggregator; InitializePropertyNames(); InitializeModel(); PropertyChanged += OnPropertyChanged; } ... 3. Shell Shells are very similar in operation to Master Pages in asp.net or MDI in Windows Forms. And shells contain regions which display the views, you can have as many regions as you wish in a given view. You can also nest regions. i.e, one region can load a view which in itself may contain other regions. We have to create a shell at the start of the application and are doing it by overriding CreateShell method from BootStrapper From the following Shell.xaml you shall notice that we have two content controls with Region names as ‘MenuRegion’ and ‘MainRegion’. The idea here is that you can inject any user controls into the regions dynamically, i.e., a Menu User Control for MenuRegion and based on the user action you can load appropriate view into MainRegion. <Window x:Class="TaxiClient.Shell" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:Regions="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Practices.Prism.Regions;assembly=Microsoft.Practices.Prism" Title="Taxi" Height="370" Width="800"> <Grid Margin="2"> <ContentControl Regions:RegionManager.RegionName="MenuRegion" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" HorizontalContentAlignment="Stretch" VerticalContentAlignment="Stretch" /> <ContentControl Grid.Row="1" Regions:RegionManager.RegionName="MainRegion" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" HorizontalContentAlignment="Stretch" VerticalContentAlignment="Stretch" />  </Grid> </Window> 4. Modules Prism provides the ability to build composite applications and modules play an important role in it. For example if you are building a Mortgage Loan Processor application with 3 components, i.e. customer’s credit history, existing mortgages, new home/loan information; and consider that the customer’s credit history component involves gathering data about his/her address, background information, job details etc. The idea here using Prism modules is to separate the implementation of these 3 components into their own visual studio projects allowing to build components with no dependency on each other and independently. If we need to add another component to the application, the component can be developed by in house team or some other team in the organization by starting with a new Visual Studio project and adding to the solution at the run time with very little knowledge about the application. Prism modules are defined by implementing the IModule interface and each visual studio project to be considered as a module should implement the IModule interface. From the BootStrapper.cs you shall observe that we are overriding the method by returning a ConfiguratingModuleCatalog which returns the modules that are registered for the application using the app.config file and you can also add module using code. Lets take a look into configuration file. <?xml version="1.0"?> <configuration> <configSections> <section name="modules" type="Microsoft.Practices.Prism.Modularity.ModulesConfigurationSection, Microsoft.Practices.Prism"/> </configSections> <modules> <module assemblyFile="TaxiModules.dll" moduleType="TaxiModules.ModuleInitializer, TaxiModules" moduleName="TaxiModules"/> </modules> </configuration> Here we are adding TaxiModules project to our solution and TaxiModules.ModuleInitializer implements IModule interface 5. Module Mapper With Prism modules you can dynamically add or remove modules from the regions, apart from that Prism also provides API to control adding/removing the views from a region within the same module. Taxi Information Screen: Engage the Taxi Screen: The sample application has two screens, ‘Taxi Information’ and ‘Engage the Taxi’ and they both reside in same module, TaxiModules. ‘Engage the Taxi’ is again made of two user controls, FareView on the left and TotalView on the right. We have created a Shell with two regions, MenuRegion and MainRegion with menu loaded into MenuRegion. We can create a wrapper user control called EngageTheTaxi made of FareView and TotalView and load either TaxiInfo or EngageTheTaxi into MainRegion based on the user action. Though it will work it tightly binds the user controls and for every combination of user controls, we need to create a dummy wrapper control to contain them. Instead we can apply the principles we learned so far from Shell/regions and introduce another template (LeftAndRightRegionView.xaml) made of two regions Region1 (left) and Region2 (right) and load FareView and TotalView dynamically. To help with loading of the views dynamically I have introduce an helper an interface, IInjectSingleViewService, idea suggested by Mike Taulty, a must read blog for .Net developers. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.ComponentModel; namespace Framework.PresentationUtility.Navigation { public interface IInjectSingleViewService : INotifyPropertyChanged { IEnumerable<CommandViewDefinition> Commands { get; } IEnumerable<ModuleViewDefinition> Modules { get; } void RegisterViewForRegion(string commandName, string viewName, string regionName, Type viewType); void ClearViewFromRegion(string viewName, string regionName); void RegisterModule(string moduleName, IList<ModuleMapper> moduleMappers); } } The Interface declares three methods to work with views: RegisterViewForRegion: Registers a view with a particular region. You can register multiple views and their regions under one command. When this particular command is invoked all the views registered under it will be loaded into their regions. ClearViewFromRegion: To unload a specific view from a region. RegisterModule: The idea is when a command is invoked you can load the UI with set of controls in their default position and based on the user interaction, you can load different contols in to different regions on the fly. And it is supported ModuleViewDefinition and ModuleMappers as shown below. namespace Framework.PresentationUtility.Navigation { public class ModuleViewDefinition { public string ModuleName { get; set; } public IList<ModuleMapper> ModuleMappers; public ICommand Command { get; set; } } public class ModuleMapper { public string ViewName { get; set; } public string RegionName { get; set; } public Type ViewType { get; set; } } } 6. Event Aggregator Prism event aggregator enables messaging between components as in Observable pattern, Notifier notifies the Observer which receives notification it is interested in. When it comes to Observable pattern, Observer has to unsubscribes for notifications when it no longer interested in notifications, which allows the Notifier to remove the Observer’s reference from it’s local cache. Though .Net has managed garbage collection it cannot remove inactive the instances referenced by an active instance resulting in memory leak, keeping the Observers in memory as long as Notifier stays in memory. Developers have to be very careful to unsubscribe when necessary and it often gets overlooked, to overcome these problems Prism Event Aggregator uses weak references to cache the reference (Observer in this case) and releases the reference (memory) once the instance goes out of scope. Using event aggregator is very simple, declare a generic type of CompositePresenationEvent by inheriting from it. using Microsoft.Practices.Prism.Events; using TaxiCommon.BAO; namespace TaxiCommon.CompositeEvents { public class TaxiOnMoveEvent:CompositePresentationEvent<TaxiOnMove> { } } TaxiOnMove.cs includes the properties which we want to exchange between the parties, FareView and TotalView. using System; namespace TaxiCommon.BAO { public class TaxiOnMove { public TimeSpan MinutesAtTweleveMPH { get; set; } public double MilesAtSixMPH { get; set; } } } Lets take a look into FareViewodel (Notifier) and how it raises the event. Here we are raising the event by getting the event through GetEvent<..>() and publishing it with the payload private void OnAddMinutes(object obj) { TaxiOnMove payload = new TaxiOnMove(); if(MilesAtSixMPH != null) payload.MilesAtSixMPH = MilesAtSixMPH.Value; if(MinutesAtTweleveMPH != null) payload.MinutesAtTweleveMPH = new TimeSpan(0,0,MinutesAtTweleveMPH.Value,0); _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiOnMoveEvent>().Publish(payload); ResetMinutesAndMiles(); } And TotalViewModel(Observer) subscribes to notifications by getting the event through GetEvent<..>() namespace TaxiModules.ViewModels { public class TotalViewModel:ObservableBase { .... private IEventAggregator _eventAggregator; public TotalViewModel(IEventAggregator eventAggregator) { _eventAggregator = eventAggregator; ... } private void SubscribeToEvents() { _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiStartedEvent>() .Subscribe(OnTaxiStarted, ThreadOption.UIThread,false,(filter) => true); _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiOnMoveEvent>() .Subscribe(OnTaxiMove, ThreadOption.UIThread, false, (filter) => true); _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiResetEvent>() .Subscribe(OnTaxiReset, ThreadOption.UIThread, false, (filter) => true); } ... private void OnTaxiMove(TaxiOnMove taxiOnMove) { OnMoveFare fare = new OnMoveFare(taxiOnMove); Fares.Add(fare); SetTotalFare(new []{fare}); } .... 7. MVVM through example In this section we are going to look into MVVM implementation through example. I have all the modules declared in a single project, TaxiModules, again it is not necessary to have them into one project. Once the user logs into the application, will be greeted with the ‘Engage the Taxi’ screen which is made of two user controls, FareView.xaml and TotalView.Xaml. As you can see from the solution explorer, each of them have their own code behind files and ViewModel classes, FareViewMode.cs, TotalViewModel.cs Lets take a look in to the FareView and how it interacts with FareViewModel using MVVM implementation. FareView.xaml acts as a view and FareViewMode.cs is it’s view model. The FareView code behind class namespace TaxiModules.Views { /// <summary> /// Interaction logic for FareView.xaml /// </summary> public partial class FareView : UserControl { public FareView(FareViewModel viewModel) { InitializeComponent(); this.Loaded += (s, e) => { this.DataContext = viewModel; }; } } } The FareView is bound to FareViewModel through the data context and you shall observe that DataContext is of type Object, i.e. the FareView doesn’t really know the type of ViewModel (FareViewModel). This helps separation of View and ViewModel as View and ViewModel are independent of each other, you can bind FareView to FareViewModel2 as well and the application compiles just fine. Lets take a look into FareView xaml file <UserControl x:Class="TaxiModules.Views.FareView" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:Toolkit="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Windows.Controls;assembly=WPFToolkit" xmlns:Commands="clr-namespace:Microsoft.Practices.Prism.Commands;assembly=Microsoft.Practices.Prism"> <Grid Margin="10" > .... <Border Style="{DynamicResource innerBorder}" Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="0" Grid.RowSpan="11" Grid.ColumnSpan="2" Panel.ZIndex="1"/> <Label Grid.Row="0" Content="Engage the Taxi" Style="{DynamicResource innerHeader}"/> <Label Grid.Row="1" Content="Select the State"/> <ComboBox Grid.Row="1" Grid.Column="1" ItemsSource="{Binding States}" Height="auto"> <ComboBox.ItemTemplate> <DataTemplate> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Name}"/> </DataTemplate> </ComboBox.ItemTemplate> <ComboBox.SelectedItem> <Binding Path="SelectedState" Mode="TwoWay"/> </ComboBox.SelectedItem> </ComboBox> <Label Grid.Row="2" Content="Select the Date of Entry"/> <Toolkit:DatePicker Grid.Row="2" Grid.Column="1" SelectedDate="{Binding DateOfEntry, ValidatesOnDataErrors=true}" /> <Label Grid.Row="3" Content="Enter time 24hr format"/> <TextBox Grid.Row="3" Grid.Column="1" Text="{Binding TimeOfEntry, TargetNullValue=''}"/> <Button Grid.Row="4" Grid.Column="1" Content="Start the Meter" Commands:Click.Command="{Binding StartMeterCommand}" /> <Label Grid.Row="5" Content="Run the Taxi" Style="{DynamicResource innerHeader}"/> <Label Grid.Row="6" Content="Number of Miles <@6mph"/> <TextBox Grid.Row="6" Grid.Column="1" Text="{Binding MilesAtSixMPH, TargetNullValue='', ValidatesOnDataErrors=true}"/> <Label Grid.Row="7" Content="Number of Minutes @12mph"/> <TextBox Grid.Row="7" Grid.Column="1" Text="{Binding MinutesAtTweleveMPH, TargetNullValue=''}"/> <Button Grid.Row="8" Grid.Column="1" Content="Add Minutes and Miles " Commands:Click.Command="{Binding AddMinutesCommand}"/> <Label Grid.Row="9" Content="Other Operations" Style="{DynamicResource innerHeader}"/> <Button Grid.Row="10" Grid.Column="1" Content="Reset the Meter" Commands:Click.Command="{Binding ResetCommand}"/> </Grid> </UserControl> The highlighted code from the above code shows data binding, for example ComboBox which displays list of states has it’s ItemsSource bound to States property, with DataTemplate bound to Name and SelectedItem to SelectedState. You might be wondering what are all these properties and how it is able to bind to them. The answer lies in data context, i.e., when you bound a control, WPF looks for data context on the root object (Grid in this case) and if it can’t find data context it will look into root’s root, i.e. FareView UserControl and it is bound to FareViewModel. Each of those properties have be declared on the ViewModel for the View to bind correctly. To put simply, View is bound to ViewModel through data context of type object and every control that is bound on the View actually binds to the public property on the ViewModel. Lets look into the ViewModel code (the following code is not an exact copy of FareViewMode.cs, pasted relevant code for this section) namespace TaxiModules.ViewModels { public class FareViewModel:ObservableBase, IDataErrorInfo { public List<USState> States { get { return USStates.StateList; } } public USState SelectedState { get { return _selectedState; } set { _selectedState = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_selectedStatePropertyName); } } public DateTime? DateOfEntry { get { return _dateOfEntry; } set { _dateOfEntry = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_dateOfEntryPropertyName); } } public TimeSpan? TimeOfEntry { get { return _timeOfEntry; } set { _timeOfEntry = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_timeOfEntryPropertyName); } } public double? MilesAtSixMPH { get { return _milesAtSixMPH; } set { _milesAtSixMPH = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_distanceAtSixMPHPropertyName); } } public int? MinutesAtTweleveMPH { get { return _minutesAtTweleveMPH; } set { _minutesAtTweleveMPH = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_minutesAtTweleveMPHPropertyName); } } public ICommand StartMeterCommand { get { if(_startMeterCommand == null) { _startMeterCommand = new DelegateCommand<object>(OnStartMeter, CanStartMeter); } return _startMeterCommand; } } public ICommand AddMinutesCommand { get { if(_addMinutesCommand == null) { _addMinutesCommand = new DelegateCommand<object>(OnAddMinutes, CanAddMinutes); } return _addMinutesCommand; } } public ICommand ResetCommand { get { if(_resetCommand == null) { _resetCommand = new DelegateCommand<object>(OnResetCommand); } return _resetCommand; } } } private void OnStartMeter(object obj) { _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiStartedEvent>().Publish( new TaxiStarted() { EngagedOn = DateOfEntry.Value.Date + TimeOfEntry.Value, EngagedState = SelectedState.Value }); _isMeterStarted = true; OnPropertyChanged(this,null); } And views communicate user actions like button clicks, tree view item selections, etc using commands. When user clicks on ‘Start the Meter’ button it invokes the method StartMeterCommand, which calls the method OnStartMeter which publishes the event to TotalViewModel using event aggregator and TaxiStartedEvent. namespace TaxiModules.ViewModels { public class TotalViewModel:ObservableBase { ... private IEventAggregator _eventAggregator; public TotalViewModel(IEventAggregator eventAggregator) { _eventAggregator = eventAggregator; InitializePropertyNames(); InitializeModel(); SubscribeToEvents(); } public decimal? TotalFare { get { return _totalFare; } set { _totalFare = value; RaisePropertyChanged(_totalFarePropertyName); } } .... private void SubscribeToEvents() { _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiStartedEvent>().Subscribe(OnTaxiStarted, ThreadOption.UIThread,false,(filter) => true); _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiOnMoveEvent>().Subscribe(OnTaxiMove, ThreadOption.UIThread, false, (filter) => true); _eventAggregator.GetEvent<TaxiResetEvent>().Subscribe(OnTaxiReset, ThreadOption.UIThread, false, (filter) => true); } private void OnTaxiStarted(TaxiStarted taxiStarted) { Fares.Add(new EntryFare()); Fares.Add(new StateTaxFare(taxiStarted)); Fares.Add(new NightSurchargeFare(taxiStarted)); Fares.Add(new PeakHourWeekdayFare(taxiStarted)); SetTotalFare(Fares); } private void SetTotalFare(IEnumerable<IFare> fares) { TotalFare = (_totalFare ?? 0) + TaxiFareHelper.GetTotalFare(fares); } .... } } TotalViewModel subscribes to events, TaxiStartedEvent and rest. When TaxiStartedEvent gets invoked it calls the OnTaxiStarted method which sets the total fare which includes entry fee, state tax, nightly surcharge, peak hour weekday fare. Note that TotalViewModel derives from ObservableBase which implements the method RaisePropertyChanged which we are invoking in Set of TotalFare property, i.e, once we update the TotalFare property it raises an the event that allows the TotalFare text box to fetch the new value through the data context. ViewModel is communicating with View through data context and it has no knowledge about View, helping in loose coupling of ViewModel and View. I have attached the source code (.Net 4.0, Prism 4.0, VS 2010) , download and play with it and don’t forget to leave your comments.

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SOA PARTNER COMMUNITY NEWSLETTER JULY 2012

- by mseika

SOA PARTNER COMMUNITY NEWSLETTER JULY 2012 Dear SOA partner community member To provide our community members the best of our knowledge, we want your feedback on our SOA Partner community. Thus we are organizing SOA Partner Community Survey 2012. We request you to participate in the survey and give your valuable feedback on various areas of marketing, sales and education. To continue our successful BPM Suite, Oracle is launching together with you Process Accelerators initiative. It’s your opportunity to co-develop and market predefined processes. Oracle Fusion Applications Design Patterns are a great tool to develop your SOA or BPM solution or process accelerators. To promote your SOA & BPM Specialization we continue to offer several benefits. This month we would like to highlight our Specialization Plaques - make sure you request one for your office! Our Fusion Middleware Summer Camps are booked out, if could not get a seat you can attend the SOA & BPM track @ Virtual Developer Day: Oracle Fusion Development Oracle demo systems offer´s two new demos: Business Driven Development based on BPM Suite & SOA Lifecycle Management. Jürgen KressOracle SOA & BPM Partner Adoption EMEA NEW CONTENT Community SurveyProcess Accelerators KitPlaques SOA & BPM SpecializedSOA & BPM at Virtual Developer Day News from our Partners & CommunityOverview of SOA Diagnostics in 11.1.1.6 Business driven development(BDD) demo now available! SOA Lifecycle Management Oracle Fusion applications design patterns Updated material by Oracle Connect and Network SOA Blogs SOA on Facebook SOA on LinkedIn SOA on Twitter Mix SOA Forum COMMUNITY SURVEY Like every year we would like to get your feedback in our SOA Partner Community Survey 2012. Make sure that You attend to further develop our community and support our planning! It is key for us to get your feedback to prepare for the next fiscal year. Back to top PROCESS ACCELERATORS KIT Oracle is very interested to co-develop and market with you, our partners, pre-defined processes for BPM Suite.I am very happy to announce a new program called “Oracle BPM Partner Solution Catalog”. This program will provide a one-stop shop for our customers looking for Oracle BPM partner solutions available in the market today.The Oracle BPM Solution Catalog will be hosted on our very popular Oracle Technology Network (OTN). To give you an idea of the scale of customer visibility, OTN today receives over 1Million hits per day from our business and developer community. We would like to invite you to list your Oracle BPM 11g solutions available today.In order to participate in this program, you need to do the following: Fill in the attached slide templates - #3 and #4 for each Oracle BPM 11g solution you would like to list on OTN.Please add links to whitepapers , videos, references to the specific solution in the template slide. We recommend that you create a landing page on your website for these linked artifacts and just point to the same from within the PowerPoint template. This will give you the flexibility to update the information as frequently as needed. If you have the particular solution in production or a reference available, please list them as well. Send the PowerPoint template slides (1 set of slides for each Oracle BPM solution) to [email protected]. In addition to having the opportunity to list your solutions on OTN for Oracle customers, you will have the chance to advertise your new wins/implementations/solutions in an Oracle Sponsored PM Webinar held every quarter. This program is targeted to go live by the end of summer 2012. At this point, we are targeting a soft launch in July end 2012 so send on your BPM solutions information as soon as possible. We would love to have your solution(s) listed in the “Oracle BPM Partner Solution Catalog” at the time of the launch. This will be a live repository so you can keep adding more solutions as they become available. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us [email protected], Product Strategy Director, Oracle BPM , Phone +1 650.506.5486.Thank you and look forward to hearing from you. Oracle BPM team Process Accelerators Overview.pdf ProcessAcceleratorsDataSheet.pdf Demos draUPK.zip & trmUPK.zip BPM Solution repository slides.ppt Additional BPM material BPM Process Development Lifecycle Document that describes recommended approach to collaborative process modeling across business and IT tools ADF 11g PS5 Application with Customized BPM Worklist Task Flow (MDS Seeded Customization) by Andrejus Baranovskis BPMN process editor problems in 11.1.1.6 by Mark Nelson BPM – Disable DBMS job to refresh B2B Materialized View by Mark Nelson For the complete kit please visit the BPM folder at our SOA Community Workspace (SOA Community membership required). For the complete presentation please visit our SOA Community Workspace (SOA Community membership required). Information is Oracle and Partner confidential! Back to top PLAQUES SOA & BPM SPECIALIZED We continue to offer you a nice SOA & BPM Specialization plaque with your logo to proof your success. If you are a SOA or BPM Specialized partner and would like to request the plaque please send Brigitte an e-mail with the following information: Partner Name Partner logo (preferred eps file) Partner Status gold or platinum Your shipping address Your Specialization: SOA or BPM We recommend to mount the plaque at your office reception in addition you can use the SOA Specialization logos at your website download Logo: Gold & Platinum or the BPM logos Gold & Platinum Back to top SOA & BPM AT VIRTUAL DEVELOPER DAY Register now for this FREE hands-on online workshop Get up to date and learn everything you wanted to know about Oracle ADF & Fusion Development plus live Q&A chats with Oracle technical staffOracle Application Development Framework (ADF) is the standards based, strategic framework for Oracle Fusion Applications and Oracle Fusion Middleware. Oracle ADF’s integration with the Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle WebCenter and Oracle BI creates a complete productive development platform for your custom applications.Join us at this FREE virtual event and learn the latest in Fusion Development including: Is Oracle ADF development faster and simpler than Forms, Apex or .Net? Mobile Application Development with ADF Mobile Oracle ADF development with Eclipse Oracle WebCenter Portal and ADF Development Application Lifecycle Management with ADF Building Process Centric Applications with ADF and BPM Oracle Business Intelligence and ADF Integration Live Q&A chats with Oracle technical staff Developer lead, manager or architect - this event has something for everyone. Don’t miss this opportunity.Tuesday, July 10, 2012. 9:00 a.m. PT -1:00 p.m. PT 11:00 a.m. CT - 3:00 p.m. CT 12:00 p.m. ET - 4:00 p.m. ET 1:00 p.m. BRT - 5:00 p.m. BRT Register online now! for this FREE event. Agenda: 09:00 am Opening 09:30 am Keynote: Oracle Fusion Development Track1Introduction to Fusion Development Track2What's New in Fusion Development Track3Fusion Development in the Enterprise 10:00 am Is Oracle ADF Development Faster and Simpler than Oracle Forms, APEX or .Net? Mobile Application Development with ADF Mobile Oracle WebCenter Portal and ADF Development 11:00 am Rich Web UI made simple - an ADF Faces Overview Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse - ADF Development Building Process Centric Applications with ADF and BPM 12:00 noon Next Generation Controller for JSF Application Lifecycle Management for ADF Oracle Business Intelligence and ADF Integration *Hands On Lab – WebCenter and ADF Lab w/ JDeveloper - Lab materials will be provided ahead of the event to give you ample time to work through the lab and increase the productivity of the live chat sessions the day of the event. Sessions abstractsRegister online now! for this FREE event Read more on Community Events and post your comment here. Back to top NEWS FROM OUR PARTNERS AND COMMUNITY Send your tweets @soacommunity #soacommunity and follow us at http://twitter.com/soacommunity JDeveloper & ADF?Troubleshooting BPMN process editor problems in 11.1.1.6http://dlvr.it/1p0FfS SOA Community?SOA & BPM @ Virtual Developer Day: Oracle Fusion Development - July 10th 2012https://soacommunity.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/soa-bpm-virtual-developer-day- oracle-fusion-developmentjuly-10th-2012/#soacommunity #soa #bom #education orclateamsoa ?A-Team Blog #ateam: BAM design pointers - In working recently with a large Oracle customer on SOA and BAM, I discove.http://ow.ly/1kYqES SOA CommunitySOA Community Newsletter June 2012http://wp.me/p10C8u-qw SOA CommunityBPMN process editor problems in 11.1.1.6 by Mark Nelsonhttp://redstack.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/ bpmn-process-editor-problems-in-11-1-1-6 #soacommunity #bpm OTNArchBeat ?SOA Learning Library: free short, topic-focused training on Oracle SOA & BPM products | @SOACommunity http://pub.vitrue.com/NE1G Andrejus Baranovskis ?ADF 11g PS5 Application with Customized BPM Worklist Task Flow (MDS Seeded Customization)http://fb.me/1coX4r1X1 SOA CommunitySOA Learning Library provides a comprehensive curriculum for the SOA and BPM product suites https://soacommunity.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/soa-learning-library #soacommunity #soa #bpm OTNArchBeat ?A Universal JMX Client for Weblogic - Part 1: Monitoring BPEL Thread Pools in SOA 11g | Stefan Koserhttp://pub.vitrue.com/mQVZ OTNArchBeat ?BPM - Disable DBMS job to refresh B2B Materialized View | Mark Nelson http://pub.vitrue.com/3PR0Oracle SOA ?Learn how Choice Hotels Implements Innovative Google Maps Solution with #OracleSOA http://bit.ly/MTwIJ3 SOA Communitytop Tweets SOA Partner Community - June 2012 Send your tweets @soacommunity #soacommunity https://soacommunity.wordpress.com/2012/06/25/top-tweets-soa-partner-community-june-2012 Torsten Winterberg#OPITZ is pushing Oracle commitment to the next level: New Specializations done: ADF, BPM, WLS, Exadatahttp://bit.ly/KX1WVS ServiceTechSymposium ?Only 8 more days left until Super Early Bird Registration Discount expires! http://www.servicetechsymposium.com OracleBlogsSOA Management in 3 minutes - Video explainerhttp://ow.ly/1kN5pn SOA Community ?SOA, Cloud & Service Technology Symposium 2012 London - Enter Promo Code: Djmxz370https://soacommunity.wordpress.com/2012/06/22/soa-cloud-service-technology-symposium-2012-london #soasymposium #soacommunity #soa Heidi BuelowGreat course! w David Read RT @soacommunity: product management ADF for BPM training 5 seats left https://soacommunity.wordpress.com/2012/06/12/fusion-middleware-summer-campsadvanced-partner-trainings/ #bpm #soacommunity SOA Community ?product management ADF for BPM training 5 seats lefthttps://soacommunity.wordpress.com/2012/06/12/fusion-middleware-summer-campsadvanced-partner-trainings/ #bpm #soacommunity OTNArchBeat ?Oacle Fusion Applications Design Patterns Now Available For Developers | Ultan O'Broinhttp://pub.vitrue.com/UEiF OTNArchBeat ?SOA, Cloud & Service Technology Symposium 2012London - Special Oracle Discounthttp://pub.vitrue.com/8E0J SOA CommunityBecome a facebook fan of soacommunity http://www.facebook.com/soacommunity #soacommunity SOA Community ?SOA Suite HealthCare Integration Architecture https://blogs.oracle.com/SOAForHealthcare/entry/soa_suite_healthcare_integration_architecture #soacommunity #soa Andrejus Baranovskis ?Running Pre-built Virtual Machine for SOA Suite and BPM Suite 11g PS5 on Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6http://fb.me/vB8nO0Vg OracleBlogsPrinciples of Service-Oriented Architecture by Douwe P. van den Bos http://ow.ly/1kIcOP OTNArchBeatOracle Public Cloud Architecture | @TylerJewell http://ow.ly/bHAcL The SOA Network ?Business Process Management, Service-Oriented Architecture, and Web 2.0: Business Transformation or.http://bit.ly/LBgREL #ITNews #SOA OracleBlogs ?Oracle SOA Foundation Practitioner Certificationhttp://ow.ly/1kGYYg Frank Nimphius ?Learn Advanced ADF. ORACLE Fusion Middleware Summer Camps in Lisbon - July 9th - 13thhttp://bit.ly/KGCl3i SOA CommunityTransform Your Application Integration with Best Practices from Oracle Customershttps://blogs.oracle.com/SOA/entry/transform_your_application_integration_with #soacommunity #soa #bpm Simone GeibWhat you always wanted to know about #oraclesoa diagnostics: Shawn Bailey, Overview of SOA Diagnostics in 11.1.1.6,http://ow.ly/bxK0M Oracle SOA ?Save the date: Jun 21 10AM, SOA & BPM Customer Insight Series. Hear how Choice Hotels went from legacy to #oraclesoa http://bit.ly/LsNDGl OTNArchBeat ?New VirtualBox images for Oracle SOA Suite & Oracle BPM Suite 11.1.1.6.0http://ow.ly/bwDAl OracleBlogs ?Process development lifecycle in Oracle BPM 11g http://ow.ly/1ktesY Daniel AmadeiNew post: Oracle BPEL 11g Message Delivery & Recovery.http://amadei.com.br/blog/index.php /oracle-bpel-11g-message-delivery SOA Community ?Sending out the June edition of the #soacommunity newsletter - read it or become a member http://www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa!#soa #bpm Arun Pareek ?For the past six months Ahmed Aboulnaga and me have been working on Oracle SOA Suite 11g Administrator's Handbook.http://lnkd.in/CAvpUQ SOA CommunitySun shine all day no clouds - solar eclipse is over... #sunshine #cloud http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Swarm-Computing Michel SchildmeijerWatch my blog Oracle Service Bus 11g: listing projects and services with WLST - part 1 http://lnkd.in/B7f3GQ @TITAN_GS @wlscommunity OTNArchBeatBook Review: Oracle Application Integration Architecture (AIA) Foundation Pack 11gR1: Essentials | Rajesh Rahejahttp://ow.ly/bn2cc OTNArchBeat ?Driving from Business Architecture to Business Process Services | @vghariharan http://ow.ly/bn5UB OTNArchBeat ?SOA Analysis within the Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF) 2.0 - Part II | Dawit Lessanu http://ow.ly/bn6sX Simone Geib ?Contact me directly for ideas how to improvehttp://bit.ly/advancedsoasuite and additional posts, presentations, white papers, ... #soasuite Simone Geib ?#soasuite advanced OTN page has become too cluttered. Broke it into separate pages to start with. http://bit.ly/advancedsoasuite OracleBlogs ?June Webcast: SOA Gateway Implementation and Troubleshooting (2 sessions) http://ow.ly/1kbRFA ServiceTechSymposium ?New session just posted to calendar: "NoSQL for Data Services, Data Virtualization & Big Data" by Guido Schmutz, Trivadis AG ://ow.ly/bjjOeDebra Lilley ?looks good - real proof people are using the apps ! RT @fteter: Very cool Fusion Applications Help site: http://bit.ly/L3nvOR #FusionApps demed ?rapid proliferation of cloud computing will drive convergence of SOA and cloud paradigms" http://ovum.com/2012/05/18/soa-paves-the-way-for-cloud/ SOA CommunityMiddleware Oracle Excellence Awards 2012-HAPPY NEW YEAR! https://soacommunity.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/middleware-oracle-excellence-awards-2012happy-new-year/ #soacommunity #opn #opnaward #specialization #oracle SOA CommunityHappy New Year #soacommunity thanks for the business! Time for a drink http://pic.twitter.com/zkK08KWB OTNArchBeat ?Who should ‘own’ the Enterprise Architecture? | Michael Glas http://bit.ly/K0ge0Q SOA Communitytop Tweets SOA Partner Community – May 2012 http://wp.me/p10C8u-pP ServiceTechSymposiumNew session just posted to Symposium calendar: "Elastic SOA in the Cloud" by Steve Millidge, C2B2 Consulting http://www.servicetechsymposium.com/agenda2012.php #elastic_soa_in_the_cloud orclateamsoa ?A-Team Blog #ateam: How to Set JVM Parameters in Oracle SOA 11Ghttp://ow.ly/1k2cnl ServiceTechSymposium ?New session just posted to Symposium calendar: "SOA Governance at EDP: A Global Energy Company" by Manuel Rosa, Linkhttp://www.servicetechsymposium.com/agenda2012.php#soa_governance_at_edp SOA Community ?VirtualBox image SOA Suite & BPM Suite 11.1.1.6.0–Your feedback?http://wp.me/p10C8u-qh Oracle MiddlewareSave the date: Jun 21 10AM, SOA & BPM Customer Insight Series. Hear how Choice Hotels went from legacy to#oraclesoa http://bit.ly/LU1y5N OTNArchBeat ?Goodbye, Silos. Hello SOA. | @stephanieoverbyhttp://pub.vitrue.com/NJJO SOA CommunityBPM Standard Edition - to start your BPM project http://wp.me/p10C8u-qj Please feel free to send us your news! And add your blog to our SOA blog wiki. Back to top OVERVIEW OF SOA DIAGNOSTICS IN 11.1.1.6 What tools are available for diagnosing SOA Suite issues? There are a variety of tools available to help you and Support diagnose SOA Suite issues in 11g but it can be confusing as to which tool is appropriate for a particular situation and what their relationships are. This blog post will introduce the various tools and attempt to clarify what each is for and how they are related. Let's first list the tools we'll be addressing: RDA: Remote Diagnostic Agent DFW: Diagnostic Framework Selective Tracing DMS: Dynamic Monitoring Service ODL: Oracle Diagnostic Logging ADR: Automatic Diagnostics Repository ADRCI: Automatic Diagnostics Repository Command Interpreter WLDF: WebLogic Diagnostic Framework This overview is not mean to be a comprehensive guide on using all of these tools, however, extensive reference materials are included that will provide many more details on their execution. Another point to note is that all of these tools are applicable for Fusion Middleware as a whole but specific products may or may not have implemented features to leverage them. A couple of the tools have a WebLogic Scripting Tool or 'WLST' interface. WLST is a command interface for executing pre-built functions and custom scripts against a domain. A detailed WLST tutorial is beyond the scope of this post but you can find general information here. There are more specific resources in the below sections.In this post when we refer to 'Enterprise Manager' or 'EM' we are referring to Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control. read the full blog post here. Read more on Oracle and post your comment here. Back to top BUSINESS DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT (BDD) DEMO NOW AVAILABLE! For access to the Oracle demo systems please visit OPN and talk to your Partner Expert DSS is pleased to announce the availability of the demo “Business Driven Development“. This innovative demonstration uses a case-study approach to show business users how they can easily streamline their Business Processes - delivering greater efficiency, agility, visibility and collaboration with Oracle BPM and WebCenter. The BDD demonstration uses a case study-based approach to highlight a business problem at a fictional company, Avitek Corporation, and uses Oracle BPM and Oracle WebCenter to solve the business problem. This holistic approach has specifically been used to appeal to a non-technical business analyst user. This demo is NOT focused on product features, but aims to guide users through a complete BPM lifecycle. The scenario is based on improving a simple order process (scenario details are in the demo script). Avitek Corporation is sufferinng from a manual email-driven ordering process. Sales reps don’t know where the customer orders are stuck (no visibility) and finance users are unable to manually approve every order (no automation). There are several areas where this process can be improved with Business Process Management technology. This demo shows how improving following areas will ignificantly help resolve the business problems Avitek Corporation is facing. Areas for improvement include: Utilizing BPM for process management, rather than an unregulated, email-based process. Utilizing automated services, rather than requiring a human to key into a system. For example, Finance checking the customer’s credit rating is something that could be automated. Centralizing business rules that can be integrated into a business process, rather than requiring a human to process them. For example, Finance must determine when orders can be automatically approved. Provide insight and visibility into the process. For example, Sales Rep needs to know the status of their customer’s orders. The BDD Demo uses the following products. Oracle BPM Suite 11g PS4FP Oracle WebCenter 11g PS4FP (for Process Spaces) Oracle Business Activity Monitoring 11g Oracle Database 11g Back to top SOA LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT For access to the Oracle demo systems please visit OPN and talk to your Partner Expert We are pleased to announce the availability of the SOA Management demo that showcases some of the key provisioning and lifecycle management capabilities of SOA Management Pack Enterprise Edition (EE). This demo specifically focuses on some of the lifecycle management solutions for Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle Service Bus (OSB). Demo Highlights The demo showcases the following capabilities. Provisioning of SOA Composites Provisioning of OSB Projects Provision SOA and OSB artifacts in a future maintenance window Back to top ORACLE FUSION APPLICATIONS DESIGN PATTERNS The Oracle Fusion Applications user experience design patterns are published! These new, reusable usability solutions and best-practices, which will join the Oracle dashboard patterns and guidelines that are already available online, are used by Oracle to artfully bring to life a new standard in the user experience, or UX, of enterprise applications. Now, the Oracle applications development community can benefit from the science behind the Oracle Fusion Applications user experience, too. These Oracle Fusion Applications UX Design Patterns, or blueprints, enable Oracle applications developers and system implementers everywhere to leverage professional usability insight when: tailoring an Oracle Fusion application, creating coexistence solutions that existing users will be delighted with, thus enabling graceful user transitions to Oracle Fusion Applications down the road, or designing exciting, new, highly usable applications in the cloud or on-premise. Based on the Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) components, the Oracle Fusion Applications patterns and guidelines are proven with real users and in the Applications UX usability labs, so you can get right to work coding productivity-enhancing designs that provide an advantage for your entire business. What’s the best way to get started? We’ve made that easy, too. The Design Filter Tool (DeFT) selects the best pattern for your user type and task. Simply adapt your selection for your own task flow and content, and you’re on your way to a really great applications user experience. More Oracle applications design patterns and training are coming your way in the future. To provide feedback on the sets that are currently available, let me know in the comments! Read more on Fusionapps and post your comment here. Back to top UPDATED ORACLE MATERIAL Integrated SOA Gateway Documentation - Implementation Guide | Developer’s Guide Webcast Series: Oracle’s SOA and Oracle Business Process Management Solutions (Choice Hotels, Eaton, Farmers Insurance) BAM design pointers By Kavitha Srinivasan Seeking Oracle Fusion Middleware Go Live StoriesOracle Fusion Middleware product management is looking for recent go live stories to share with the Oracle sales team, sales consulting, product management and other internal groups. Customer contact details may remain anonymous. Your successful implementation will be featured in a quarterly report. The chance to present on an internal webcast is also available. Contact Maria Forney ([email protected]) if you have a noteworthy implementation success story. This is a good opportunity for partners interested in showcasing Oracle Fusion Middleware implementations, and gaining more exposure within Oracle. Performance tuning resources. All in one: docs, blogs, WPs, ppts: http://bit.ly/soa_resources Back to top HAVE YOU MISSED OUR LAST SOA PARTNER COMMUNITY WEBCASTS? UPK Webcast Business Driven Application Management & BPM11g & Application Grid & GoldenGate & Fusion Middleware Pricing & OC4J to WebLogic & Next Generation SOA & Fusion Middleware in Utility & Fusion Middleware in Communications & Fusion Middleware in Public Services & Fusion Middleware in Financial Services Please check your local OPN trainings calendar for additional training dates and locations. Back to top SOA PARTNER COMMUNITY CALENDAR On-Demand Trainings Event Name Language Type SOA Virtual Developers Day English Tech In-Class Trainings Date Event name Location / Country Contact person Type 09-13.07.2012 BPM Suite 11g advanced training by David Read Lisbon, Portugal Jürgen Kress Tech 09-13.07.2012 ADF 11g advanced training by Grant Ronald and Frank Nimphius Lisbon, Portugal Jürgen Kress Tech 09-13.07.2012 WebCenter Portal advanced training by Stefan Krantz and Angelo Santagata Lisbon, Portugal Jürgen Kress Tech 10.07.2012 Fusion Middleware Virtual Developer Day Online OTN Tech 10- 12.07.2012 WebLogic 12c training by Cosmin Tudor Lisbon, Portugal Jürgen Kress Tech 16-18.07.2012 SOA Suite 11g advanced training by Niall Commiskey Munich, Germany Jürgen Kress Tech 16-18.07.2012 ADF for BPM Suite 11g advanced training by David Read Munich, Germany Jürgen Kress Tech 16-18.07.2012 WebCenter Sites 11g advanced training by Product Management Munich, Germany Jürgen Kress Tech 17-20.07.2012 Oracle BPM 11g Implementation Bootcamp Live Virtual Class Oracle University Tech 23-26.07.2012 Oracle BPM 11g Implementation Bootcamp Utrecht, Netherlands Oracle University Tech 29-31.08.2012 Oracle BPM 11g Implementation Bootcamp Live Virtual Class Oracle University Tech 02-05.10.2012 Oracle BPM 11g Implementation Bootcamp Utrecht, Netherlands Oracle University Tech 15-18.10.2012 Oracle BPM 11g Implementation Bootcamp Utrecht, Netherlands Oracle University Tech 28-30.11.2012 Oracle AIA 11g Implementation Bootcamp Live Virtual Class Oracle University Tech 11-14.12.2012 Oracle BPM 11g Implementation Bootcamp Live Virtual Class Oracle University Tech 20-22.2.2013 Oracle AIA 11g Implementation Bootcamp Utrecht, Netherlands Oracle University Tech 14-17.1.2013 Oracle BPM 11g Implementation Bootcamp Utrecht, Netherlands Oracle University Tech 15-18.3.2013 Oracle BPM 11g Implementation Bootcamp Utrecht, Netherlands Oracle University Tech Please check your local OPN Training Calendar for additional training and locations here. Back to top SOASCHOOL.COM - SOA CERTIFIED PROFESSIONAL(SOACP) PROGRAM The SOASchool.com - SOA Certified Professional (SOACP) program is dedicated to excellence in the field of SOA and service-oriented computing. Through a series of seasoned course modules and exams, IT professionals have the opportunity to obtain a number of different certifications to recognize their accomplishment of gaining "project ready" SOA proficiency. This comprehensive and strictly vendor-neutral program was developed in cooperation with best-selling SOA author Thomas Erl and several major SOA organizations and academic institutions. Through the involvement of the SOA Education Committee, course contents and certification requirements are constantly reviewed and revised to stay current with developments in the service-oriented computing industry. The program is currently comprised of 12 course modules and 5 certifications and is expanding to 18 course modules and 8 certifications throughout 2009. For more information, visit www.soaschool.com and www.soacp.com. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Back to top YOUR CONTENT ON THE NEWSLETTER AND ON THE SOA COMMUNITY PORTAL Publishing Your StoriesWe would like to invite our partners to publish information in the newsletter or on our SOA Community portal. Especially we are looking for your real life experience with our SOA technology. Please send your documents to Jürgen Kress. We look forward to getting your suggestions! Back to top SOA DISCUSSION FORUM BECOMES INTERACTIVE AT THE SOA COMMUNITY! Do you want to chat to experts, including partners and Oracle SOA Product Development? Do you want to get the latest information about our SOA solutions and events?Attend our private online SOA Discussion Forum at OTN. Please send your OTN forums user name to Brigitte Felisaz. You must be a registered user to access the SOA Discussion Forum. Back to top INVITE YOUR COLLEAGUES TO JOIN THE SOA COMMUNITY Please feel free to invite your colleagues to join the SOA Community and to participate in the SOA Assessment tests. For registration please login the Oracle PartnerNetwork and go to: www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa For any questions on the above or concerning SOA and Oracle in general please contact the Oracle EMEA Alliances & Channels SOA Team. Best regardsOracle EMEA SOA TeamJürgen Kress Jürgen KressSOA Partner Adoption EMEATel. +49 89 1430 1479E-Mail: [email protected]

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26 Days: Countdown to Oracle OpenWorld 2012

- by Michael Snow

Welcome to our countdown to Oracle OpenWorld! Oracle OpenWorld 2012 is just around the corner. In less than 26 days, San Francisco will be invaded by an expected 50,000 people from all over the world. Here on the Oracle WebCenter team, we’ve all been working to help make the experience a great one for all our WebCenter customers. For a sneak peak – we’ll be spending this week giving you a teaser of what to look forward to if you are joining us in San Francisco from September 30th through October 4th. We have Oracle WebCenter sessions covering all topics imaginable. Take a look and use the tools we provide to build out your schedule in advance and reserve your seats in your favorite sessions. That gives you plenty of time to plan for your week with us in San Francisco. If unfortunately, your boss denied your request to attend - there are still some ways that you can join in the experience virtually On-Demand. This year - we are expanding even more up North of Market Street and will be taking over Union Square as well. Check out this map of San Francisco to get a sense of how much of a footprint Oracle OpenWorld has grown to this year. With so much to see and so many sessions to learn from - its no wonder that people get excited. Add to that a good mix of fun and all of the possible WebCenter sessions you could attend - you won't want to sleep at all to take full advantage of such an opportunity. We'll also have our annual WebCenter Customer Appreciation reception - stay tuned this week for some more info on registration to make sure you'll be able to join us. If you've been following the America's Cup at all and believe in EXTREME PERFORMANCE you'll definitely want to take a look at this video from last year's OpenWorld Keynote. 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Important OpenWorld Links: Attendee / Presenters Toolkit Oracle Schedule Builder WebCenter Sessions (listed in the catalog under Fusion Middleware as "Portals, Sites, Content, and Collaboration" ) Oracle Music Festival - AMAZING Line up!! Oracle Customer Appreciation Night -LOOK HERE!! Oracle OpenWorld LIVE On-Demand Here are all the WebCenter sessions broken down by day for your viewing pleasure. Monday, October 1st CON8885 - Simplify CRM Engagement with Contextual Collaboration Are your sales teams disconnected and disengaged? Do you want a tool for easily connecting expertise across your organization and providing visibility into the complete sales process? Do you want a way to enhance and retain organization knowledge? Oracle Social Network is the answer. Attend this session to learn how to make CRM easy, effective, and efficient for use across virtual sales teams. Also learn how Oracle Social Network can drive sales force collaboration with natural conversations throughout the sales cycle, promote sales team productivity through purposeful social networking without the noise, and build cross-team knowledge by integrating conversations with CRM and other business applications. CON8268 - Oracle WebCenter Strategy: Engaging Your Customers. Empowering Your Business Oracle WebCenter is a user engagement platform for social business, connecting people and information. Attend this session to learn about the Oracle WebCenter strategy, and understand where Oracle is taking the platform to help companies engage customers, empower employees, and enable partners. Business success starts with ensuring that everyone is engaged with the right people and the right information and can access what they need through the channel of their choice—Web, mobile, or social. Are you giving customers, employees, and partners the best-possible experience? Come learn how you can! ¶ HOL10208 - Add Social Capabilities to Your Enterprise Applications Oracle Social Network enables you to add real-time collaboration capabilities into your enterprise applications, so that conversations can happen directly within your business systems. In this hands-on lab, you will try out the Oracle Social Network product to collaborate with other attendees, using real-time conversations with document sharing capabilities. Next you will embed social capabilities into a sample Web-based enterprise application, using embedded UI components. Experts will also write simple REST-based integrations, using the Oracle Social Network API to programmatically create social interactions. ¶ CON8893 - Improve Employee Productivity with Intuitive and Social Work Environments Social technologies have already transformed the ways customers, employees, partners, and suppliers communicate and stay informed. Forward-thinking organizations today need technologies and infrastructures to help them advance to the next level and integrate social activities with business applications to deliver a user experience that simplifies business processes and enterprise application engagement. Attend this session to hear from an innovative Oracle Social Network customer and learn how you can improve productivity with intuitive and social work environments and empower your employees with innovative social tools to enable contextual access to content and dynamic personalization of solutions. ¶ CON8270 - Oracle WebCenter Content Strategy and Vision Oracle WebCenter provides a strategic content infrastructure for managing documents, images, e-mails, and rich media files. With a single repository, organizations can address any content use case, such as accounts payable, HR onboarding, document management, compliance, records management, digital asset management, or Website management. In this session, learn about future plans for how Oracle WebCenter will address new use cases as well as new integrations with Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Applications, leveraging your investments by making your users more productive and error-free. ¶ CON8269 - Oracle WebCenter Sites Strategy and Vision Oracle’s Web experience management solution, Oracle WebCenter Sites, enables organizations to use the online channel to drive customer acquisition and brand loyalty. It helps marketers and business users easily create and manage contextually relevant, social, interactive online experiences across multiple channels on a global scale. In this session, learn about future plans for how Oracle WebCenter Sites will provide you with the tools, capabilities, and integrations you need in order to continue to address your customers’ evolving requirements for engaging online experiences and keep moving your business forward. ¶ CON8896 - Living with SharePoint SharePoint is a popular platform, but it’s not always the best fit for Oracle customers. In this session, you’ll discover the technical and nontechnical limitations and pitfalls of SharePoint and learn about Oracle alternatives for collaboration, portals, enterprise and Web content management, social computing, and application integration. The presentation shows you how to integrate with SharePoint when business or IT requirements dictate and covers cloud-based (Office 365) and on-premises versions of SharePoint. Presented by a former Microsoft director of SharePoint product management and backed by independent customer research, this session will prepare you to answer the question “Why don’t we just use SharePoint for that?’ the next time it comes up in your organization. ¶ CON7843 - Content-Enabling Enterprise Processes with Oracle WebCenter Organizations today continually strive to automate business processes, reduce costs, and improve efficiency. Many business processes are content-intensive and unstructured, requiring ad hoc collaboration, and distributed in nature, requiring many approvals and generating huge volumes of paper. In this session, learn how Oracle and SYSTIME have partnered to help a customer content-enable its enterprise with Oracle WebCenter Content and Oracle WebCenter Imaging 11g and integrate them with Oracle Applications. ¶ CON6114 - Tape Robotics’ Newest Superhero: Now Fueled by Oracle Software For small, midsize, and rapidly growing businesses that want the most energy-efficient, scalable storage infrastructure to meet their rapidly growing data demands, Oracle’s most recent addition to its award-winning tape portfolio leverages several pieces of Oracle software. With Oracle Linux, Oracle WebLogic, and Oracle Fusion Middleware tools, the library achieves a higher level of usability than previous products while offering customers a familiar interface for management, plus ease of use. This session examines the competitive advantages of the tape library and how Oracle software raises customer satisfaction. Learn how the combination of Oracle engineered systems, Oracle Secure Backup, and Oracle’s StorageTek tape libraries provide end-to-end coverage of your data. ¶ CON9437 - Mobile Access Management With more than five billion mobile devices on the planet and an increasing number of users using their own devices to access corporate data and applications, securely extending identity management to mobile devices has become a hot topic. This session focuses on how to extend your existing identity management infrastructure and policies to securely and seamlessly enable mobile user access. CON7815 - Customer Experience Online in Cloud: Oracle WebCenter Sites, Oracle ATG Apps, Oracle Exalogic Oracle WebCenter Sites and Oracle’s ATG product line together can provide a compelling marketing and e-commerce experience. When you couple them with the extreme performance of Oracle Exalogic, you’ll see unmatched scalability that provides you with a true cloud-based solution. In this session, you’ll learn how running Oracle WebCenter Sites and ATG applications on Oracle Exalogic delivers both a private and a public cloud experience. Find out what it takes to get these systems working together and delivering engaging Web experiences. Even if you aren’t considering Oracle Exalogic today, the rich Web experience of Oracle WebCenter, paired with the depth of the ATG product line, can provide your business full support, from merchandising through sale completion. ¶ CON8271 - Oracle WebCenter Portal Strategy and Vision To innovate and keep a competitive edge, organizations need to leverage the power of agile and responsive Web applications. Oracle WebCenter Portal enables you to do just that, by delivering intuitive user experiences for enterprise applications to drive innovation with composite applications and mashups. Attend this session to learn firsthand from customers how Oracle WebCenter Portal extends the value of existing enterprise applications, business processes, and content; delivers a superior business user experience; and maximizes limited IT resources. ¶ CON8880 - The Connected Customer Experience Begins with the Online Channel There’s a lot of talk these days about how to connect the customer journey across various touchpoints—from Websites and e-commerce to call centers and in-store—to provide experiences that are more relevant and engaging and ultimately gain competitive edge. Doing it all at once isn’t a realistic objective, so where do you start? Come to this session, and hear about three steps you can take that can help you begin your journey toward delivering the connected customer experience. You’ll hear how Oracle now has an integrated digital marketing platform for your corporate Website, your e-commerce site, your self-service portal, and your marketing and loyalty campaigns, and you’ll learn what you can do today to begin executing on your customer experience initiatives. ¶ GEN11451 - General Session: Building Mobile Applications with Oracle Cloud With the prevalence of smart mobile devices, companies are facing an increased demand to provide access to data and applications from new channels. However, developing applications for mobile devices poses some unique challenges. Come to this session to learn how Oracle addresses these challenges, offering a simpler way to develop and deploy cross-device mobile applications. See how Oracle Cloud enables you to access applications, data, and services from mobile channels in an easier way. CON8272 - Oracle Social Network Strategy and Vision One key way of increasing employee productivity is by bringing people, processes, and information together—providing new social capabilities to enable business users to quickly correspond and collaborate on business activities. Oracle WebCenter provides a user engagement platform with social and collaborative technologies to empower business users to focus on their key business processes, applications, and content in the context of their role and process. Attend this session to hear how the latest social capabilities in Oracle Social Network are enabling organizations to transform themselves into social businesses. --- Tuesday, October 2nd HOL10194 - Enterprise Content Management Simplified: Oracle WebCenter Content’s Next-Generation UI Regardless of the nature of your business, unstructured content underpins many of its daily functions. Whether you are working with traditional presentations, spreadsheets, or text documents—or even with digital assets such as images and multimedia files—your content needs to be accessible and manageable in convenient and intuitive ways to make working with the content easier. Additionally, you need the ability to easily share documents with coworkers to facilitate a collaborative working environment. Come to this session to see how Oracle WebCenter Content’s next-generation user interface helps modern knowledge workers easily manage personal and enterprise documents in a collaborative environment.¶ CON8877 - Develop a Mobile Strategy with Oracle WebCenter: Engage Customers, Employees, and Partners Mobile technology has gone from nice-to-have to a cornerstone of user engagement. Mobile access enables users to have information available at their fingertips, enabling them to take action the moment they make a decision, interact in the moment of convenience, and take advantage of new service offerings in their preferred channels. All your employees have your mobile applications in their pocket; now what are you going to do? It is a critical step for companies to think through what their employees, customers, and partners really need on their devices. Attend this session to see how Oracle WebCenter enables you to better engage your customers, employees, and partners by providing a unified experience across multiple channels. ¶ CON9447 - Enabling Access for Hundreds of Millions of Users How do you grow your business by identifying, authenticating, authorizing, and federating users on the Web, leveraging social identity and the open source OAuth protocol? How do you scale your access management solution to support hundreds of millions of users? With social identity support out of the box, Oracle’s access management solution is also benchmarked for 250-million-user deployment according to real-world customer scenarios. In this session, you will learn about the social identity capability and the 250-million-user benchmark testing of Oracle Access Manager and Oracle Adaptive Access Manager running on Oracle Exalogic and Oracle Exadata. ¶ HOL10207 - Build an Intranet Portal with Oracle WebCenter In this hands-on lab, you’ll work with Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle WebCenter Content to build out an enterprise portal that maximizes the productivity of teams and individual contributors. Using browser-based tools, you’ll manage site resources such as page styles, templates, and navigation. You’ll edit content stored in Oracle WebCenter Content directly from your portal. You’ll also experience the latest features that promote collaboration, social networking, and personal productivity. ¶ CON2906 - Get Proactive: Best Practices for Maintaining Oracle Fusion Middleware You chose Oracle Fusion Middleware products to help your organization deliver superior business results. Now learn how to take full advantage of your software with all the great tools, resources, and product updates you’re entitled to through Oracle Support. In this session, Oracle product experts provide proven best practices to help you work more efficiently, plan and prepare for upgrades and patching more effectively, and manage risk. Topics include configuration management tools, remote diagnostics, My Oracle Support Community, and My Oracle Support Lifecycle Advisors. New users and Oracle Fusion Middleware experts alike are guaranteed to leave with fresh ideas and practical, easy-to-implement next steps. ¶ CON8878 - Oracle WebCenter’s Cloud Strategy: From Social and Platform Services to Mashups Cloud computing represents a paradigm shift in how we build applications, automate processes, collaborate, and share and in how we secure our enterprise. Additionally, as you adopt cloud-based services in your organization, it’s likely that you will still have many critical on-premises applications running. With these mixed environments, multiple user interfaces, different security, and multiple datasources and content sources, how do you start evolving your strategy to account for these challenges? Oracle WebCenter offers a complete array of technologies enabling you to solve these challenges and prepare you for the cloud. Attend this session to learn how you can use Oracle WebCenter in the cloud as well as create on-premises and cloud application mash-ups. ¶ CON8901 - Optimize Enterprise Business Processes with Oracle WebCenter and Oracle BPM Do you have business processes that span multiple applications? Are you grappling with how to have visibility across these business processes; how to manage content that is associated with these processes; and, most importantly, how to model and optimize these business processes? Attend this session to hear how Oracle WebCenter and Oracle Business Process Management provide a unique set of integrated solutions to provide a composite application dashboard across these business processes and offer a solution for content-centric business processes. ¶ CON8883 - Deliver Engaging Interfaces to Oracle Applications with Oracle WebCenter Critical business processes live within enterprise applications, and application users need to manage and execute these processes as effectively as possible. Oracle provides a comprehensive user engagement platform to increase user productivity and optimize overall processes within Oracle Applications—Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle’s Siebel, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards product families—and third-party applications. Attend this session to learn how you can integrate these applications with Oracle WebCenter to deliver composite application dashboards to your end users—whether they are your customers, partners, or employees—for enhanced usability and Web 2.0–enabled enterprise portals.¶ Wednesday, October 3rd CON8895 - Future-Ready Intranets: How Aramark Re-engineered the Application Landscape There are essential techniques and technologies you can use to deliver employee portals that garner higher productivity, improve business efficiency, and increase user engagement. Attend this session to learn how you can leverage Oracle WebCenter Portal as a user engagement platform for bringing together business process management, enterprise content management, and business intelligence into a highly relevant and integrated experience. Hear how Aramark has leveraged Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle WebCenter Content to deliver a unified workspace providing simpler navigation and processing, consolidation of tools, easy access to information, integrated search, and single sign-on. ¶ CON8886 - Content Consolidation: Save Money, Increase Efficiency, and Eliminate Silos Organizations are looking for ways to save money and be more efficient. With content in many different places, it’s difficult to know where to look for a document and whether the document is the most current version. With Oracle WebCenter, content can be consolidated into one best-of-breed repository that is secure, scalable, and integrated with your business processes and applications. Users can find the content they need, where they need it, and ensure that it is the right content. This session covers content challenges that affect your business; content consolidation that can lead to savings in storage and administration costs and can lower risks; and how companies are realizing savings. ¶ CON8911 - Improve Online Experiences for Customers and Partners with Self-Service Portals Are you able to provide your customers and partners an easy-to-use online self-service experience? Are you processing high-volume transactions and struggling with call center bottlenecks or back-end systems that won’t integrate, causing order delays and customer frustration? Are you looking to target content such as product and service offerings to your end users? This session shares approaches to providing targeted delivery as well as strategies and best practices for transforming your business by providing an intuitive user experience for your customers and partners. ¶ CON6156 - Top 10 Ways to Integrate Oracle WebCenter Content This session covers 10 common ways to integrate Oracle WebCenter Content with other enterprise applications and middleware. It discusses out-of-the-box modules that provide expanded features in Oracle WebCenter Content—such as enterprise search, SOA, and BPEL—as well as developer tools you can use to create custom integrations. The presentation also gives guidance on which integration option may work best in your environment. ¶ HOL10207 - Build an Intranet Portal with Oracle WebCenter In this hands-on lab, you’ll work with Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle WebCenter Content to build out an enterprise portal that maximizes the productivity of teams and individual contributors. Using browser-based tools, you’ll manage site resources such as page styles, templates, and navigation. You’ll edit content stored in Oracle WebCenter Content directly from your portal. You’ll also experience the latest features that promote collaboration, social networking, and personal productivity. ¶ CON7817 - Migration to Oracle WebCenter Imaging 11g Customers today continually strive to automate business processes, reduce costs, and improve efficiency. The accounts payable process—which is often distributed in nature, requires many approvals, and generates huge volumes of paper invoices—is automated by many customers. In this session, learn how Oracle and SYSTIME have partnered to help a customer migrate its existing Oracle Imaging and Process Management Release 7.6 to the latest Oracle WebCenter Imaging 11g and integrate it with Oracle’s JD Edwards family of products. ¶ CON8910 - How to Engage Customers Across Web, Mobile, and Social Channels Whether on desktops at the office, on tablets at home, or on mobile phones when on the go, today’s customers are always connected. To engage today’s customers, you need to make the online customer experience connected and consistent across a host of devices and multiple channels, including Web, mobile, and social networks. Managing this multichannel environment can result in lots of headaches without the right tools. Attend this session to learn how Oracle WebCenter Sites solves the challenge of multichannel customer engagement. ¶ HOL10206 - Oracle WebCenter Sites 11g: Transforming the Content Contributor Experience Oracle WebCenter Sites 11g makes it easy for marketers and business users to contribute to and manage Websites with the new visual, contextual, and intuitive Web authoring interface. In this hands-on lab, you will create and manage content for a sports-themed Website, using many of the new and enhanced features of the 11g release. ¶ CON8900 - Building Next-Generation Portals: An Interactive Customer Panel Discussion Social and collaborative technologies have changed how people interact, learn, and collaborate, and providing a modern, social Web presence is imperative to remain competitive in today’s market. Can your business benefit from a more collaborative and interactive portal environment for employees, customers, and partners? Attend this session to hear from Oracle WebCenter Portal customers as they share their strategies and best practices for providing users with a modern experience that adapts to their needs and includes personalized access to content in context. The panel also addresses how customers have benefited from creating next-generation portals by migrating from older portal technologies to Oracle WebCenter Portal. ¶ CON9625 - Taking Control of Oracle WebCenter Security Organizations are increasingly looking to extend their Oracle WebCenter portal for social business, to serve external users and provide seamless access to the right information. In particular, many organizations are extending Oracle WebCenter in a business-to-business scenario requiring secure identification and authorization of business partners and their users. This session focuses on how customers are leveraging, securing, and providing access control to Oracle WebCenter portal and mobile solutions. You will learn best practices and hear real-world examples of how to provide flexible and granular access control for Oracle WebCenter deployments, using Oracle Platform Security Services and Oracle Access Management Suite product offerings. ¶ CON8891 - Extending Social into Enterprise Applications and Business Processes Oracle Social Network is an extensible social platform that enables contextual collaboration within enterprise applications and business processes, providing relevant data from across various enterprise systems in one place. Attend this session to see how an Oracle Social Network customer is integrating multiple applications—such as CRM, HCM, and business processes—into Oracle Social Network and Oracle WebCenter to enable individuals and teams to solve complex cross-organizational business problems more effectively by utilizing the social enterprise. ¶ Thursday, October 4th CON8899 - Becoming a Social Business: Stories from the Front Lines of Change What does it really mean to be a social business? How can you change our organization to embrace social approaches? What pitfalls do you need to avoid? In this lively panel discussion, customer and industry thought leaders in social business explore these topics and more as they share their stories of the good, the bad, and the ugly that can happen when embracing social methods and technologies to improve business success. Using moderated questions and open Q&A from the audience, the panel discusses vital topics such as the critical factors for success, the major issues to avoid, how to gain senior executive support for social efforts, how to handle undesired behavior, and how to measure business impact. It takes a thought-provoking look at becoming a social business from the inside. ¶ CON6851 - Oracle WebCenter and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition to Create Vendor Portals Large manufacturers of grocery items routinely find themselves depending on the inventory management expertise of their wholesalers and distributors. Inventory costs can be managed more efficiently by the manufacturers if they have better insight into the inventory levels of items carried by their distributors. This creates a unique opportunity for distributors and wholesalers to leverage this knowledge into a revenue-generating subscription service. Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition and Oracle WebCenter Portal play a key part in enabling creation of business-managed business intelligence portals for vendors. This session discusses one customer that implemented this by leveraging Oracle WebCenter and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. ¶ CON8879 - Provide a Personalized and Consistent Customer Experience in Your Websites and Portals Your customers engage with your company online in different ways throughout their journey—from prospecting by acquiring information on your corporate Website to transacting through self-service applications on your customer portal—and then the cycle begins again when they look for new products and services. Ensuring that the customer experience is consistent and personalized across online properties—from branding and content to interactions and transactions—can be a daunting task. Oracle WebCenter enables you to speak and interact with your customers with one voice across your Websites and portals by providing an integrated platform for delivery of self-service and engagement that unifies and personalizes the online experience. Learn more in this session. ¶ CON8898 - Land Mines, Potholes, and Dirt Roads: Navigating the Way to ECM Nirvana Ten years ago, people were predicting that by this time in history, we’d be some kind of utopian paperless society. As we all know, we’re not there yet, but are we getting closer? What is keeping companies from driving down the road to enterprise content management bliss? Most people understand that using ECM as a central platform enables organizations to expedite document-centric processes, but most business processes in organizations are still heavily paper-based. Many of these processes could be automated and improved with an ECM platform infrastructure. In this panel discussion, you’ll hear from Oracle WebCenter customers that have already solved some of these challenges as they share their strategies for success and roads to avoid along your journey. ¶ CON8908 - Oracle WebCenter Portal: Creating and Using Content Presenter Templates Oracle WebCenter Portal applications use task flows to display and integrate content stored in the Oracle WebCenter Content server. Among the most flexible task flows is Content Presenter, which renders various types of content on an Oracle WebCenter Portal page. Although Oracle WebCenter Portal comes with a set of predefined Content Presenter templates, developers can create their own templates for specific rendering needs. This session shows the lifecycle of developing Content Presenter task flows, including how to create, package, import, modify at runtime, and use such templates. In addition to simple examples with Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) UI elements to render the content, it shows how to use other UI technologies, CSS files, and JavaScript libraries. ¶ CON8897 - Using Web Experience Management to Drive Online Marketing Success Every year, the online channel becomes more imperative for driving organizational top-line revenue, but for many companies, mastering how to best market their products and services in a fast-evolving online world with high customer expectations for personalized experiences can be a complex proposition. Come to this panel discussion, and hear directly from online marketers how they are succeeding today by using Web experience management to drive marketing success, using capabilities such as targeting and optimization, user-generated content, mobile site publishing, and site visitor personalization to deliver engaging online experiences. ¶ CON8892 - Oracle’s Journey to Social Business Social business is a revolution, one that is causing rapidly accelerating change in how companies and customers engage with one another and how employees work together. Oracle’s goal in becoming a social business is to create a socially connected organization in which working collaboratively across geographical locations, lines of business, and management chains is second nature, enabling innovative solutions to business challenges. We can achieve this by connecting the right people, finding the right content, communicating with the right people, collaborating at the right time, and building the right communities in the right context—all ready in the CLOUD. Attend this session to see how Oracle is transforming itself into a social business. ¶ ------------ If you've read all the way to the end here - we are REALLY looking forward to seeing you in San Francisco.

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Using the West Wind Web Toolkit to set up AJAX and REST Services

- by Rick Strahl

I frequently get questions about which option to use for creating AJAX and REST backends for ASP.NET applications. There are many solutions out there to do this actually, but when I have a choice - not surprisingly - I fall back to my own tools in the West Wind West Wind Web Toolkit. I've talked a bunch about the 'in-the-box' solutions in the past so for a change in this post I'll talk about the tools that I use in my own and customer applications to handle AJAX and REST based access to service resources using the West Wind West Wind Web Toolkit. Let me preface this by saying that I like things to be easy. Yes flexible is very important as well but not at the expense of over-complexity. The goal I've had with my tools is make it drop dead easy, with good performance while providing the core features that I'm after, which are: Easy AJAX/JSON Callbacks Ability to return any kind of non JSON content (string, stream, byte[], images) Ability to work with both XML and JSON interchangeably for input/output Access endpoints via POST data, RPC JSON calls, GET QueryString values or Routing interface Easy to use generic JavaScript client to make RPC calls (same syntax, just what you need) Ability to create clean URLS with Routing Ability to use standard ASP.NET HTTP Stack for HTTP semantics It's all about options! In this post I'll demonstrate most of these features (except XML) in a few simple and short samples which you can download. So let's take a look and see how you can build an AJAX callback solution with the West Wind Web Toolkit. Installing the Toolkit Assemblies The easiest and leanest way of using the Toolkit in your Web project is to grab it via NuGet: West Wind Web and AJAX Utilities (Westwind.Web) and drop it into the project by right clicking in your Project and choosing Manage NuGet Packages from anywhere in the Project. When done you end up with your project looking like this: What just happened? Nuget added two assemblies - Westwind.Web and Westwind.Utilities and the client ww.jquery.js library. It also added a couple of references into web.config: The default namespaces so they can be accessed in pages/views and a ScriptCompressionModule that the toolkit optionally uses to compress script resources served from within the assembly (namely ww.jquery.js and optionally jquery.js). Creating a new Service The West Wind Web Toolkit supports several ways of creating and accessing AJAX services, but for this post I'll stick to the lower level approach that works from any plain HTML page or of course MVC, WebForms, WebPages. There's also a WebForms specific control that makes this even easier but I'll leave that for another post. So, to create a new standalone AJAX/REST service we can create a new HttpHandler in the new project either as a pure class based handler or as a generic .ASHX handler. Both work equally well, but generic handlers don't require any web.config configuration so I'll use that here. In the root of the project add a Generic Handler. I'm going to call this one StockService.ashx. Once the handler has been created, edit the code and remove all of the handler body code. Then change the base class to CallbackHandler and add methods that have a [CallbackMethod] attribute. Here's the modified base handler implementation now looks like with an added HelloWorld method: using System; using Westwind.Web; namespace WestWindWebAjax { /// <summary> /// Handler implements CallbackHandler to provide REST/AJAX services /// </summary> public class SampleService : CallbackHandler { [CallbackMethod] public string HelloWorld(string name) { return "Hello " + name + ". Time is: " + DateTime.Now.ToString(); } } } Notice that the class inherits from CallbackHandler and that the HelloWorld service method is marked up with [CallbackMethod]. We're done here. Services Urlbased Syntax Once you compile, the 'service' is live can respond to requests. All CallbackHandlers support input in GET and POST formats, and can return results as JSON or XML. To check our fancy HelloWorld method we can now access the service like this: http://localhost/WestWindWebAjax/StockService.ashx?Method=HelloWorld&name=Rick which produces a default JSON response - in this case a string (wrapped in quotes as it's JSON): (note by default JSON will be downloaded by most browsers not displayed - various options are available to view JSON right in the browser) If I want to return the same data as XML I can tack on a &format=xml at the end of the querystring which produces: <string>Hello Rick. Time is: 11/1/2011 12:11:13 PM</string> Cleaner URLs with Routing Syntax If you want cleaner URLs for each operation you can also configure custom routes on a per URL basis similar to the way that WCF REST does. To do this you need to add a new RouteHandler to your application's startup code in global.asax.cs one for each CallbackHandler based service you create: protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e) { CallbackHandlerRouteHandler.RegisterRoutes<StockService>(RouteTable.Routes); } With this code in place you can now add RouteUrl properties to any of your service methods. For the HelloWorld method that doesn't make a ton of sense but here is what a routed clean URL might look like in definition: [CallbackMethod(RouteUrl="stocks/HelloWorld/{name}")] public string HelloWorld(string name) { return "Hello " + name + ". Time is: " + DateTime.Now.ToString(); } The same URL I previously used now becomes a bit shorter and more readable with: http://localhost/WestWindWebAjax/HelloWorld/Rick It's an easy way to create cleaner URLs and still get the same functionality. Calling the Service with $.getJSON() Since the result produced is JSON you can now easily consume this data using jQuery's getJSON method. First we need a couple of scripts - jquery.js and ww.jquery.js in the page: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <link href="Css/Westwind.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> <script src="scripts/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="scripts/ww.jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> </head> <body> Next let's add a small HelloWorld example form (what else) that has a single textbox to type a name, a button and a div tag to receive the result: <fieldset> <legend>Hello World</legend> Please enter a name: <input type="text" name="txtHello" id="txtHello" value="" /> <input type="button" id="btnSayHello" value="Say Hello (POST)" /> <input type="button" id="btnSayHelloGet" value="Say Hello (GET)" /> <div id="divHelloMessage" class="errordisplay" style="display:none;width: 450px;" > </div> </fieldset> Then to call the HelloWorld method a little jQuery is used to hook the document startup and the button click followed by the $.getJSON call to retrieve the data from the server. <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function () { $("#btnSayHelloGet").click(function () { $.getJSON("SampleService.ashx", { Method: "HelloWorld", name: $("#txtHello").val() }, function (result) { $("#divHelloMessage") .text(result) .fadeIn(1000); }); });</script> .getJSON() expects a full URL to the endpoint of our service, which is the ASHX file. We can either provide a full URL (SampleService.ashx?Method=HelloWorld&name=Rick) or we can just provide the base URL and an object that encodes the query string parameters for us using an object map that has a property that matches each parameter for the server method. We can also use the clean URL routing syntax, but using the object parameter encoding actually is safer as the parameters will get properly encoded by jQuery. The result returned is whatever the result on the server method is - in this case a string. The string is applied to the divHelloMessage element and we're done. Obviously this is a trivial example, but it demonstrates the basics of getting a JSON response back to the browser. AJAX Post Syntax - using ajaxCallMethod() The previous example allows you basic control over the data that you send to the server via querystring parameters. This works OK for simple values like short strings, numbers and boolean values, but doesn't really work if you need to pass something more complex like an object or an array back up to the server. To handle traditional RPC type messaging where the idea is to map server side functions and results to a client side invokation, POST operations can be used. The easiest way to use this functionality is to use ww.jquery.js and the ajaxCallMethod() function. ww.jquery wraps jQuery's AJAX functions and knows implicitly how to call a CallbackServer method with parameters and parse the result. Let's look at another simple example that posts a simple value but returns something more interesting. Let's start with the service method: [CallbackMethod(RouteUrl="stocks/{symbol}")] public StockQuote GetStockQuote(string symbol) { Response.Cache.SetExpires(DateTime.UtcNow.Add(new TimeSpan(0, 2, 0))); StockServer server = new StockServer(); var quote = server.GetStockQuote(symbol); if (quote == null) throw new ApplicationException("Invalid Symbol passed."); return quote; } This sample utilizes a small StockServer helper class (included in the sample) that downloads a stock quote from Yahoo's financial site via plain HTTP GET requests and formats it into a StockQuote object. Lets create a small HTML block that lets us query for the quote and display it: <fieldset> <legend>Single Stock Quote</legend> Please enter a stock symbol: <input type="text" name="txtSymbol" id="txtSymbol" value="msft" /> <input type="button" id="btnStockQuote" value="Get Quote" /> <div id="divStockDisplay" class="errordisplay" style="display:none; width: 450px;"> <div class="label-left">Company:</div> <div id="stockCompany"></div> <div class="label-left">Last Price:</div> <div id="stockLastPrice"></div> <div class="label-left">Quote Time:</div> <div id="stockQuoteTime"></div> </div> </fieldset> The final result looks something like this: Let's hook up the button handler to fire the request and fill in the data as shown: $("#btnStockQuote").click(function () { ajaxCallMethod("SampleService.ashx", "GetStockQuote", [$("#txtSymbol").val()], function (quote) { $("#divStockDisplay").show().fadeIn(1000); $("#stockCompany").text(quote.Company + " (" + quote.Symbol + ")"); $("#stockLastPrice").text(quote.LastPrice); $("#stockQuoteTime").text(quote.LastQuoteTime.formatDate("MMM dd, HH:mm EST")); }, onPageError); }); So we point at SampleService.ashx and the GetStockQuote method, passing a single parameter of the input symbol value. Then there are two handlers for success and failure callbacks. The success handler is the interesting part - it receives the stock quote as a result and assigns its values to various 'holes' in the stock display elements. The data that comes back over the wire is JSON and it looks like this: { "Symbol":"MSFT", "Company":"Microsoft Corpora", "OpenPrice":26.11, "LastPrice":26.01, "NetChange":0.02, "LastQuoteTime":"2011-11-03T02:00:00Z", "LastQuoteTimeString":"Nov. 11, 2011 4:20pm" } which is an object representation of the data. JavaScript can evaluate this JSON string back into an object easily and that's the reslut that gets passed to the success function. The quote data is then applied to existing page content by manually selecting items and applying them. There are other ways to do this more elegantly like using templates, but here we're only interested in seeing how the data is returned. The data in the object is typed - LastPrice is a number and QuoteTime is a date. Note about the date value: JavaScript doesn't have a date literal although the JSON embedded ISO string format used above ("2011-11-03T02:00:00Z") is becoming fairly standard for JSON serializers. However, JSON parsers don't deserialize dates by default and return them by string. This is why the StockQuote actually returns a string value of LastQuoteTimeString for the same date. ajaxMethodCallback always converts dates properly into 'real' dates and the example above uses the real date value along with a .formatDate() data extension (also in ww.jquery.js) to display the raw date properly. Errors and Exceptions So what happens if your code fails? For example if I pass an invalid stock symbol to the GetStockQuote() method you notice that the code does this: if (quote == null) throw new ApplicationException("Invalid Symbol passed."); CallbackHandler automatically pushes the exception message back to the client so it's easy to pick up the error message. Regardless of what kind of error occurs: Server side, client side, protocol errors - any error will fire the failure handler with an error object parameter. The error is returned to the client via a JSON response in the error callback. In the previous examples I called onPageError which is a generic routine in ww.jquery that displays a status message on the bottom of the screen. But of course you can also take over the error handling yourself: $("#btnStockQuote").click(function () { ajaxCallMethod("SampleService.ashx", "GetStockQuote", [$("#txtSymbol").val()], function (quote) { $("#divStockDisplay").fadeIn(1000); $("#stockCompany").text(quote.Company + " (" + quote.Symbol + ")"); $("#stockLastPrice").text(quote.LastPrice); $("#stockQuoteTime").text(quote.LastQuoteTime.formatDate("MMM dd, hh:mmt")); }, function (error, xhr) { $("#divErrorDisplay").text(error.message).fadeIn(1000); }); }); The error object has a isCallbackError, message and stackTrace properties, the latter of which is only populated when running in Debug mode, and this object is returned for all errors: Client side, transport and server side errors. Regardless of which type of error you get the same object passed (as well as the XHR instance optionally) which makes for a consistent error retrieval mechanism. Specifying HttpVerbs You can also specify HTTP Verbs that are allowed using the AllowedHttpVerbs option on the CallbackMethod attribute: [CallbackMethod(AllowedHttpVerbs=HttpVerbs.GET | HttpVerbs.POST)] public string HelloWorld(string name) { … } If you're building REST style API's this might be useful to force certain request semantics onto the client calling. For the above if call with a non-allowed HttpVerb the request returns a 405 error response along with a JSON (or XML) error object result. The default behavior is to allow all verbs access (HttpVerbs.All). Passing in object Parameters Up to now the parameters I passed were very simple. But what if you need to send something more complex like an object or an array? Let's look at another example now that passes an object from the client to the server. Keeping with the Stock theme here lets add a method called BuyOrder that lets us buy some shares for a stock. Consider the following service method that receives an StockBuyOrder object as a parameter: [CallbackMethod] public string BuyStock(StockBuyOrder buyOrder) { var server = new StockServer(); var quote = server.GetStockQuote(buyOrder.Symbol); if (quote == null) throw new ApplicationException("Invalid or missing stock symbol."); return string.Format("You're buying {0} shares of {1} ({2}) stock at {3} for a total of {4} on {5}.", buyOrder.Quantity, quote.Company, quote.Symbol, quote.LastPrice.ToString("c"), (quote.LastPrice * buyOrder.Quantity).ToString("c"), buyOrder.BuyOn.ToString("MMM d")); } public class StockBuyOrder { public string Symbol { get; set; } public int Quantity { get; set; } public DateTime BuyOn { get; set; } public StockBuyOrder() { BuyOn = DateTime.Now; } } This is a contrived do-nothing example that simply echoes back what was passed in, but it demonstrates how you can pass complex data to a callback method. On the client side we now have a very simple form that captures the three values on a form: <fieldset> <legend>Post a Stock Buy Order</legend> Enter a symbol: <input type="text" name="txtBuySymbol" id="txtBuySymbol" value="GLD" />   Qty: <input type="text" name="txtBuyQty" id="txtBuyQty" value="10" style="width: 50px" />   Buy on: <input type="text" name="txtBuyOn" id="txtBuyOn" value="<%= DateTime.Now.ToString("d") %>" style="width: 70px;" /> <input type="button" id="btnBuyStock" value="Buy Stock" /> <div id="divStockBuyMessage" class="errordisplay" style="display:none"></div> </fieldset> The completed form and demo then looks something like this: The client side code that picks up the input values and assigns them to object properties and sends the AJAX request looks like this: $("#btnBuyStock").click(function () { // create an object map that matches StockBuyOrder signature var buyOrder = { Symbol: $("#txtBuySymbol").val(), Quantity: $("#txtBuyQty").val() * 1, // number Entered: new Date() } ajaxCallMethod("SampleService.ashx", "BuyStock", [buyOrder], function (result) { $("#divStockBuyMessage").text(result).fadeIn(1000); }, onPageError); }); The code creates an object and attaches the properties that match the server side object passed to the BuyStock method. Each property that you want to update needs to be included and the type must match (ie. string, number, date in this case). Any missing properties will not be set but also not cause any errors. Pass POST data instead of Objects In the last example I collected a bunch of values from form variables and stuffed them into object variables in JavaScript code. While that works, often times this isn't really helping - I end up converting my types on the client and then doing another conversion on the server. If lots of input controls are on a page and you just want to pick up the values on the server via plain POST variables - that can be done too - and it makes sense especially if you're creating and filling the client side object only to push data to the server. Let's add another method to the server that once again lets us buy a stock. But this time let's not accept a parameter but rather send POST data to the server. Here's the server method receiving POST data: [CallbackMethod] public string BuyStockPost() { StockBuyOrder buyOrder = new StockBuyOrder(); buyOrder.Symbol = Request.Form["txtBuySymbol"]; ; int qty; int.TryParse(Request.Form["txtBuyQuantity"], out qty); buyOrder.Quantity = qty; DateTime time; DateTime.TryParse(Request.Form["txtBuyBuyOn"], out time); buyOrder.BuyOn = time; // Or easier way yet //FormVariableBinder.Unbind(buyOrder,null,"txtBuy"); var server = new StockServer(); var quote = server.GetStockQuote(buyOrder.Symbol); if (quote == null) throw new ApplicationException("Invalid or missing stock symbol."); return string.Format("You're buying {0} shares of {1} ({2}) stock at {3} for a total of {4} on {5}.", buyOrder.Quantity, quote.Company, quote.Symbol, quote.LastPrice.ToString("c"), (quote.LastPrice * buyOrder.Quantity).ToString("c"), buyOrder.BuyOn.ToString("MMM d")); } Clearly we've made this server method take more code than it did with the object parameter. We've basically moved the parameter assignment logic from the client to the server. As a result the client code to call this method is now a bit shorter since there's no client side shuffling of values from the controls to an object. $("#btnBuyStockPost").click(function () { ajaxCallMethod("SampleService.ashx", "BuyStockPost", [], // Note: No parameters - function (result) { $("#divStockBuyMessage").text(result).fadeIn(1000); }, onPageError, // Force all page Form Variables to be posted { postbackMode: "Post" }); }); The client simply calls the BuyStockQuote method and pushes all the form variables from the page up to the server which parses them instead. The feature that makes this work is one of the options you can pass to the ajaxCallMethod() function: { postbackMode: "Post" }); which directs the function to include form variable POST data when making the service call. Other options include PostNoViewState (for WebForms to strip out WebForms crap vars), PostParametersOnly (default), None. If you pass parameters those are always posted to the server except when None is set. The above code can be simplified a bit by using the FormVariableBinder helper, which can unbind form variables directly into an object: FormVariableBinder.Unbind(buyOrder,null,"txtBuy"); which replaces the manual Request.Form[] reading code. It receives the object to unbind into, a string of properties to skip, and an optional prefix which is stripped off form variables to match property names. The component is similar to the MVC model binder but it's independent of MVC. Returning non-JSON Data CallbackHandler also supports returning non-JSON/XML data via special return types. You can return raw non-JSON encoded strings like this: [CallbackMethod(ReturnAsRawString=true,ContentType="text/plain")] public string HelloWorldNoJSON(string name) { return "Hello " + name + ". Time is: " + DateTime.Now.ToString(); } Calling this method results in just a plain string - no JSON encoding with quotes around the result. This can be useful if your server handling code needs to return a string or HTML result that doesn't fit well for a page or other UI component. Any string output can be returned. You can also return binary data. Stream, byte[] and Bitmap/Image results are automatically streamed back to the client. Notice that you should set the ContentType of the request either on the CallbackMethod attribute or using Response.ContentType. This ensures the Web Server knows how to display your binary response. Using a stream response makes it possible to return any of data. Streamed data can be pretty handy to return bitmap data from a method. The following is a method that returns a stock history graph for a particular stock over a provided number of years: [CallbackMethod(ContentType="image/png",RouteUrl="stocks/history/graph/{symbol}/{years}")] public Stream GetStockHistoryGraph(string symbol, int years = 2,int width = 500, int height=350) { if (width == 0) width = 500; if (height == 0) height = 350; StockServer server = new StockServer(); return server.GetStockHistoryGraph(symbol,"Stock History for " + symbol,width,height,years); } I can now hook this up into the JavaScript code when I get a stock quote. At the end of the process I can assign the URL to the service that returns the image into the src property and so force the image to display. Here's the changed code: $("#btnStockQuote").click(function () { var symbol = $("#txtSymbol").val(); ajaxCallMethod("SampleService.ashx", "GetStockQuote", [symbol], function (quote) { $("#divStockDisplay").fadeIn(1000); $("#stockCompany").text(quote.Company + " (" + quote.Symbol + ")"); $("#stockLastPrice").text(quote.LastPrice); $("#stockQuoteTime").text(quote.LastQuoteTime.formatDate("MMM dd, hh:mmt")); // display a stock chart $("#imgStockHistory").attr("src", "stocks/history/graph/" + symbol + "/2"); },onPageError); }); The resulting output then looks like this: The charting code uses the new ASP.NET 4.0 Chart components via code to display a bar chart of the 2 year stock data as part of the StockServer class which you can find in the sample download. The ability to return arbitrary data from a service is useful as you can see - in this case the chart is clearly associated with the service and it's nice that the graph generation can happen off a handler rather than through a page. Images are common resources, but output can also be PDF reports, zip files for downloads etc. which is becoming increasingly more common to be returned from REST endpoints and other applications. Why reinvent? Obviously the examples I've shown here are pretty basic in terms of functionality. But I hope they demonstrate the core features of AJAX callbacks that you need to work through in most applications which is simple: return data, send back data and potentially retrieve data in various formats. While there are other solutions when it comes down to making AJAX callbacks and servicing REST like requests, I like the flexibility my home grown solution provides. Simply put it's still the easiest solution that I've found that addresses my common use cases: AJAX JSON RPC style callbacks Url based access XML and JSON Output from single method endpoint XML and JSON POST support, querystring input, routing parameter mapping UrlEncoded POST data support on callbacks Ability to return stream/raw string data Essentially ability to return ANYTHING from Service and pass anything All these features are available in various solutions but not together in one place. I've been using this code base for over 4 years now in a number of projects both for myself and commercial work and it's served me extremely well. Besides the AJAX functionality CallbackHandler provides, it's also an easy way to create any kind of output endpoint I need to create. Need to create a few simple routines that spit back some data, but don't want to create a Page or View or full blown handler for it? Create a CallbackHandler and add a method or multiple methods and you have your generic endpoints. It's a quick and easy way to add small code pieces that are pretty efficient as they're running through a pretty small handler implementation. I can have this up and running in a couple of minutes literally without any setup and returning just about any kind of data. Resources Download the Sample NuGet: Westwind Web and AJAX Utilities (Westwind.Web) ajaxCallMethod() Documentation Using the AjaxMethodCallback WebForms Control West Wind Web Toolkit Home Page West Wind Web Toolkit Source Code © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in ASP.NET jQuery AJAX 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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Service Discovery in WCF 4.0 – 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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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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Windows Azure: Import/Export Hard Drives, VM ACLs, Web Sockets, Remote Debugging, Continuous Delivery, New Relic, Billing Alerts and More

- by ScottGu

Two weeks ago we released a giant set of improvements to Windows Azure, as well as a significant update of the Windows Azure SDK. This morning we released another massive set of enhancements to Windows Azure. Today’s new capabilities include: Storage: Import/Export Hard Disk Drives to your Storage Accounts HDInsight: General Availability of our Hadoop Service in the cloud Virtual Machines: New VM Gallery, ACL support for VIPs Web Sites: WebSocket and Remote Debugging Support Notification Hubs: Segmented customer push notification support with tag expressions TFS & GIT: Continuous Delivery Support for Web Sites + Cloud Services Developer Analytics: New Relic support for Web Sites + Mobile Services Service Bus: Support for partitioned queues and topics Billing: New Billing Alert Service that sends emails notifications when your bill hits a threshold you define All of these improvements are now available to use immediately (note that some features are still in preview). Below are more details about them. Storage: Import/Export Hard Disk Drives to Windows Azure I am excited to announce the preview of our new Windows Azure Import/Export Service! The Windows Azure Import/Export Service enables you to move large amounts of on-premises data into and out of your Windows Azure Storage accounts. It does this by enabling you to securely ship hard disk drives directly to our Windows Azure data centers. Once we receive the drives we’ll automatically transfer the data to or from your Windows Azure Storage account. This enables you to import or export massive amounts of data more quickly and cost effectively (and not be constrained by available network bandwidth). Encrypted Transport Our Import/Export service provides built-in support for BitLocker disk encryption – which enables you to securely encrypt data on the hard drives before you send it, and not have to worry about it being compromised even if the disk is lost/stolen in transit (since the content on the transported hard drives is completely encrypted and you are the only one who has the key to it). The drive preparation tool we are shipping today makes setting up bitlocker encryption on these hard drives easy. How to Import/Export your first Hard Drive of Data You can read our Getting Started Guide to learn more about how to begin using the import/export service. You can create import and export jobs via the Windows Azure Management Portal as well as programmatically using our Server Management APIs. It is really easy to create a new import or export job using the Windows Azure Management Portal. Simply navigate to a Windows Azure storage account, and then click the new Import/Export tab now available within it (note: if you don’t have this tab make sure to sign-up for the Import/Export preview): Then click the “Create Import Job” or “Create Export Job” commands at the bottom of it. This will launch a wizard that easily walks you through the steps required: For more comprehensive information about Import/Export, refer to Windows Azure Storage team blog. You can also send questions and comments to the [email protected] email address. We think you’ll find this new service makes it much easier to move data into and out of Windows Azure, and it will dramatically cut down the network bandwidth required when working on large data migration projects. We hope you like it. HDInsight: 100% Compatible Hadoop Service in the Cloud Last week we announced the general availability release of Windows Azure HDInsight. HDInsight is a 100% compatible Hadoop service that allows you to easily provision and manage Hadoop clusters for big data processing in Windows Azure. This release is now live in production, backed by an enterprise SLA, supported 24x7 by Microsoft Support, and is ready to use for production scenarios. HDInsight allows you to use Apache Hadoop tools, such as Pig and Hive, to process large amounts of data in Windows Azure Blob Storage. Because data is stored in Windows Azure Blob Storage, you can choose to dynamically create Hadoop clusters only when you need them, and then shut them down when they are no longer required (since you pay only for the time the Hadoop cluster instances are running this provides a super cost effective way to use them). You can create Hadoop clusters using either the Windows Azure Management Portal (see below) or using our PowerShell and Cross Platform Command line tools: The import/export hard drive support that came out today is a perfect companion service to use with HDInsight – the combination allows you to easily ingest, process and optionally export a limitless amount of data. We’ve also integrated HDInsight with our Business Intelligence tools, so users can leverage familiar tools like Excel in order to analyze the output of jobs. You can find out more about how to get started with HDInsight here. Virtual Machines: VM Gallery Enhancements Today’s update of Windows Azure brings with it a new Virtual Machine gallery that you can use to create new VMs in the cloud. You can launch the gallery by doing New->Compute->Virtual Machine->From Gallery within the Windows Azure Management Portal: The new Virtual Machine Gallery includes some nice enhancements that make it even easier to use: Search: You can now easily search and filter images using the search box in the top-right of the dialog. For example, simply type “SQL” and we’ll filter to show those images in the gallery that contain that substring. Category Tree-view: Each month we add more built-in VM images to the gallery. You can continue to browse these using the “All” view within the VM Gallery – or now quickly filter them using the category tree-view on the left-hand side of the dialog. For example, by selecting “Oracle” in the tree-view you can now quickly filter to see the official Oracle supplied images. MSDN and Supported checkboxes: With today’s update we are also introducing filters that makes it easy to filter out types of images that you may not be interested in. The first checkbox is MSDN: using this filter you can exclude any image that is not part of the Windows Azure benefits for MSDN subscribers (which have highly discounted pricing - you can learn more about the MSDN pricing here). The second checkbox is Supported: this filter will exclude any image that contains prerelease software, so you can feel confident that the software you choose to deploy is fully supported by Windows Azure and our partners. Sort options: We sort gallery images by what we think customers are most interested in, but sometimes you might want to sort using different views. So we’re providing some additional sort options, like “Newest,” to customize the image list for what suits you best. Pricing information: We now provide additional pricing information about images and options on how to cost effectively run them directly within the VM Gallery. The above improvements make it even easier to use the VM Gallery and quickly create launch and run Virtual Machines in the cloud. Virtual Machines: ACL Support for VIPs A few months ago we exposed the ability to configure Access Control Lists (ACLs) for Virtual Machines using Windows PowerShell cmdlets and our Service Management API. With today’s release, you can now configure VM ACLs using the Windows Azure Management Portal as well. You can now do this by clicking the new Manage ACL command in the Endpoints tab of a virtual machine instance: This will enable you to configure an ordered list of permit and deny rules to scope the traffic that can access your VM’s network endpoints. For example, if you were on a virtual network, you could limit RDP access to a Windows Azure virtual machine to only a few computers attached to your enterprise. Or if you weren’t on a virtual network you could alternatively limit traffic from public IPs that can access your workloads: Here is the default behaviors for ACLs in Windows Azure: By default (i.e. no rules specified), all traffic is permitted. When using only Permit rules, all other traffic is denied. When using only Deny rules, all other traffic is permitted. When there is a combination of Permit and Deny rules, all other traffic is denied. Lastly, remember that configuring endpoints does not automatically configure them within the VM if it also has firewall rules enabled at the OS level. So if you create an endpoint using the Windows Azure Management Portal, Windows PowerShell, or REST API, be sure to also configure your guest VM firewall appropriately as well. Web Sites: Web Sockets Support With today’s release you can now use Web Sockets with Windows Azure Web Sites. This feature enables you to easily integrate real-time communication scenarios within your web based applications, and is available at no extra charge (it even works with the free tier). Higher level programming libraries like SignalR and socket.io are also now supported with it. You can enable Web Sockets support on a web site by navigating to the Configure tab of a Web Site, and by toggling Web Sockets support to “on”: Once Web Sockets is enabled you can start to integrate some really cool scenarios into your web applications. Check out the new SignalR documentation hub on www.asp.net to learn more about some of the awesome scenarios you can do with it. Web Sites: Remote Debugging Support The Windows Azure SDK 2.2 we released two weeks ago introduced remote debugging support for Windows Azure Cloud Services. With today’s Windows Azure release we are extending this remote debugging support to also work with Windows Azure Web Sites. With live, remote debugging support inside of Visual Studio, you are able to have more visibility than ever before into how your code is operating live in Windows Azure. It is now super easy to attach the debugger and quickly see what is going on with your application in the cloud. Remote Debugging of a Windows Azure Web Site using VS 2013 Enabling the remote debugging of a Windows Azure Web Site using VS 2013 is really easy. Start by opening up your web application’s project within Visual Studio. Then navigate to the “Server Explorer” tab within Visual Studio, and click on the deployed web-site you want to debug that is running within Windows Azure using the Windows Azure->Web Sites node in the Server Explorer. Then right-click and choose the “Attach Debugger” option on it: When you do this Visual Studio will remotely attach the debugger to the Web Site running within Windows Azure. The debugger will then stop the web site’s execution when it hits any break points that you have set within your web application’s project inside Visual Studio. For example, below I set a breakpoint on the “ViewBag.Message” assignment statement within the HomeController of the standard ASP.NET MVC project template. When I hit refresh on the “About” page of the web site within the browser, the breakpoint was triggered and I am now able to debug the app remotely using Visual Studio: Note above how we can debug variables (including autos/watchlist/etc), as well as use the Immediate and Command Windows. In the debug session above I used the Immediate Window to explore some of the request object state, as well as to dynamically change the ViewBag.Message property. When we click the the “Continue” button (or press F5) the app will continue execution and the Web Site will render the content back to the browser. This makes it super easy to debug web apps remotely. Tips for Better Debugging To get the best experience while debugging, we recommend publishing your site using the Debug configuration within Visual Studio’s Web Publish dialog. This will ensure that debug symbol information is uploaded to the Web Site which will enable a richer debug experience within Visual Studio. You can find this option on the Web Publish dialog on the Settings tab: When you ultimately deploy/run the application in production we recommend using the “Release” configuration setting – the release configuration is memory optimized and will provide the best production performance. To learn more about diagnosing and debugging Windows Azure Web Sites read our new Troubleshooting Windows Azure Web Sites in Visual Studio guide. Notification Hubs: Segmented Push Notification support with tag expressions In August we announced the General Availability of Windows Azure Notification Hubs - a powerful Mobile Push Notifications service that makes it easy to send high volume push notifications with low latency from any mobile app back-end. Notification hubs can be used with any mobile app back-end (including ones built using our Mobile Services capability) and can also be used with back-ends that run in the cloud as well as on-premises. Beginning with the initial release, Notification Hubs allowed developers to send personalized push notifications to both individual users as well as groups of users by interest, by associating their devices with tags representing the logical target of the notification. For example, by registering all devices of customers interested in a favorite MLB team with a corresponding tag, it is possible to broadcast one message to millions of Boston Red Sox fans and another message to millions of St. Louis Cardinals fans with a single API call respectively. New support for using tag expressions to enable advanced customer segmentation With today’s release we are adding support for even more advanced customer targeting. You can now identify customers that you want to send push notifications to by defining rich tag expressions. With tag expressions, you can now not only broadcast notifications to Boston Red Sox fans, but take that segmenting a step farther and reach more granular segments. This opens up a variety of scenarios, for example: Offers based on multiple preferences—e.g. send a game day vegetarian special to users tagged as both a Boston Red Sox fan AND a vegetarian Push content to multiple segments in a single message—e.g. rain delay information only to users who are tagged as either a Boston Red Sox fan OR a St. Louis Cardinal fan Avoid presenting subsets of a segment with irrelevant content—e.g. season ticket availability reminder to users who are tagged as a Boston Red Sox fan but NOT also a season ticket holder To illustrate with code, consider a restaurant chain app that sends an offer related to a Red Sox vs Cardinals game for users in Boston. Devices can be tagged by your app with location tags (e.g. “Loc:Boston”) and interest tags (e.g. “Follows:RedSox”, “Follows:Cardinals”), and then a notification can be sent by your back-end to “(Follows:RedSox || Follows:Cardinals) && Loc:Boston” in order to deliver an offer to all devices in Boston that follow either the RedSox or the Cardinals. This can be done directly in your server backend send logic using the code below: var notification = new WindowsNotification(messagePayload); hub.SendNotificationAsync(notification, "(Follows:RedSox || Follows:Cardinals) && Loc:Boston"); In your expressions you can use all Boolean operators: AND (&&), OR (||), and NOT (!). Some other cool use cases for tag expressions that are now supported include: Social: To “all my group except me” - group:id && !user:id Events: Touchdown event is sent to everybody following either team or any of the players involved in the action: Followteam:A || Followteam:B || followplayer:1 || followplayer:2 … Hours: Send notifications at specific times. E.g. Tag devices with time zone and when it is 12pm in Seattle send to: GMT8 && follows:thaifood Versions and platforms: Send a reminder to people still using your first version for Android - version:1.0 && platform:Android For help on getting started with Notification Hubs, visit the Notification Hub documentation center. Then download the latest NuGet package (or use the Notification Hubs REST APIs directly) to start sending push notifications using tag expressions. They are really powerful and enable a bunch of great new scenarios. TFS & GIT: Continuous Delivery Support for Web Sites + Cloud Services With today’s Windows Azure release we are making it really easy to enable continuous delivery support with Windows Azure and Team Foundation Services. Team Foundation Services is a cloud based offering from Microsoft that provides integrated source control (with both TFS and Git support), build server, test execution, collaboration tools, and agile planning support. It makes it really easy to setup a team project (complete with automated builds and test runners) in the cloud, and it has really rich integration with Visual Studio. With today’s Windows Azure release it is now really easy to enable continuous delivery support with both TFS and Git based repositories hosted using Team Foundation Services. This enables a workflow where when code is checked in, built successfully on an automated build server, and all tests pass on it – I can automatically have the app deployed on Windows Azure with zero manual intervention or work required. The below screen-shots demonstrate how to quickly setup a continuous delivery workflow to Windows Azure with a Git-based ASP.NET MVC project hosted using Team Foundation Services. Enabling Continuous Delivery to Windows Azure with Team Foundation Services The project I’m going to enable continuous delivery with is a simple ASP.NET MVC project whose source code I’m hosting using Team Foundation Services. I did this by creating a “SimpleContinuousDeploymentTest” repository there using Git – and then used the new built-in Git tooling support within Visual Studio 2013 to push the source code to it. Below is a screen-shot of the Git repository hosted within Team Foundation Services: I can access the repository within Visual Studio 2013 and easily make commits with it (as well as branch, merge and do other tasks). Using VS 2013 I can also setup automated builds to take place in the cloud using Team Foundation Services every time someone checks in code to the repository: The cool thing about this is that I don’t have to buy or rent my own build server – Team Foundation Services automatically maintains its own build server farm and can automatically queue up a build for me (for free) every time someone checks in code using the above settings. This build server (and automated testing) support now works with both TFS and Git based source control repositories. Connecting a Team Foundation Services project to Windows Azure Once I have a source repository hosted in Team Foundation Services with Automated Builds and Testing set up, I can then go even further and set it up so that it will be automatically deployed to Windows Azure when a source code commit is made to the repository (assuming the Build + Tests pass). Enabling this is now really easy. To set this up with a Windows Azure Web Site simply use the New->Compute->Web Site->Custom Create command inside the Windows Azure Management Portal. This will create a dialog like below. I gave the web site a name and then made sure the “Publish from source control” checkbox was selected: When we click next we’ll be prompted for the location of the source repository. We’ll select “Team Foundation Services”: Once we do this we’ll be prompted for our Team Foundation Services account that our source repository is hosted under (in this case my TFS account is “scottguthrie”): When we click the “Authorize Now” button we’ll be prompted to give Windows Azure permissions to connect to the Team Foundation Services account. Once we do this we’ll be prompted to pick the source repository we want to connect to. Starting with today’s Windows Azure release you can now connect to both TFS and Git based source repositories. This new support allows me to connect to the “SimpleContinuousDeploymentTest” respository we created earlier: Clicking the finish button will then create the Web Site with the continuous delivery hooks setup with Team Foundation Services. Now every time someone pushes source control to the repository in Team Foundation Services, it will kick off an automated build, run all of the unit tests in the solution , and if they pass the app will be automatically deployed to our Web Site in Windows Azure. You can monitor the history and status of these automated deployments using the Deployments tab within the Web Site: This enables a really slick continuous delivery workflow, and enables you to build and deploy apps in a really nice way. Developer Analytics: New Relic support for Web Sites + Mobile Services With today’s Windows Azure release we are making it really easy to enable Developer Analytics and Monitoring support with both Windows Azure Web Site and Windows Azure Mobile Services. We are partnering with New Relic, who provide a great dev analytics and app performance monitoring offering, to enable this - and we have updated the Windows Azure Management Portal to make it really easy to configure. Enabling New Relic with a Windows Azure Web Site Enabling New Relic support with a Windows Azure Web Site is now really easy. Simply navigate to the Configure tab of a Web Site and scroll down to the “developer analytics” section that is now within it: Clicking the “add-on” button will display some additional UI. If you don’t already have a New Relic subscription, you can click the “view windows azure store” button to obtain a subscription (note: New Relic has a perpetually free tier so you can enable it even without paying anything): Clicking the “view windows azure store” button will launch the integrated Windows Azure Store experience we have within the Windows Azure Management Portal. You can use this to browse from a variety of great add-on services – including New Relic: Select “New Relic” within the dialog above, then click the next button, and you’ll be able to choose which type of New Relic subscription you wish to purchase. For this demo we’ll simply select the “Free Standard Version” – which does not cost anything and can be used forever: Once we’ve signed-up for our New Relic subscription and added it to our Windows Azure account, we can go back to the Web Site’s configuration tab and choose to use the New Relic add-on with our Windows Azure Web Site. We can do this by simply selecting it from the “add-on” dropdown (it is automatically populated within it once we have a New Relic subscription in our account): Clicking the “Save” button will then cause the Windows Azure Management Portal to automatically populate all of the needed New Relic configuration settings to our Web Site: Deploying the New Relic Agent as part of a Web Site The final step to enable developer analytics using New Relic is to add the New Relic runtime agent to our web app. We can do this within Visual Studio by right-clicking on our web project and selecting the “Manage NuGet Packages” context menu: This will bring up the NuGet package manager. You can search for “New Relic” within it to find the New Relic agent. Note that there is both a 32-bit and 64-bit edition of it – make sure to install the version that matches how your Web Site is running within Windows Azure (note: you can configure your Web Site to run in either 32-bit or 64-bit mode using the Web Site’s “Configuration” tab within the Windows Azure Management Portal): Once we install the NuGet package we are all set to go. We’ll simply re-publish the web site again to Windows Azure and New Relic will now automatically start monitoring the application Monitoring a Web Site using New Relic Now that the application has developer analytics support with New Relic enabled, we can launch the New Relic monitoring portal to start monitoring the health of it. We can do this by clicking on the “Add Ons” tab in the left-hand side of the Windows Azure Management Portal. Then select the New Relic add-on we signed-up for within it. The Windows Azure Management Portal will provide some default information about the add-on when we do this. Clicking the “Manage” button in the tray at the bottom will launch a new browser tab and single-sign us into the New Relic monitoring portal associated with our account: When we do this a new browser tab will launch with the New Relic admin tool loaded within it: We can now see insights into how our app is performing – without having to have written a single line of monitoring code. The New Relic service provides a ton of great built-in monitoring features allowing us to quickly see: Performance times (including browser rendering speed) for the overall site and individual pages. You can optionally set alert thresholds to trigger if the speed does not meet a threshold you specify. Information about where in the world your customers are hitting the site from (and how performance varies by region) Details on the latency performance of external services your web apps are using (for example: SQL, Storage, Twitter, etc) Error information including call stack details for exceptions that have occurred at runtime SQL Server profiling information – including which queries executed against your database and what their performance was And a whole bunch more… The cool thing about New Relic is that you don’t need to write monitoring code within your application to get all of the above reports (plus a lot more). The New Relic agent automatically enables the CLR profiler within applications and automatically captures the information necessary to identify these. This makes it super easy to get started and immediately have a rich developer analytics view for your solutions with very little effort. If you haven’t tried New Relic out yet with Windows Azure I recommend you do so – I think you’ll find it helps you build even better cloud applications. Following the above steps will help you get started and deliver you a really good application monitoring solution in only minutes. Service Bus: Support for partitioned queues and topics With today’s release, we are enabling support within Service Bus for partitioned queues and topics. Enabling partitioning enables you to achieve a higher message throughput and better availability from your queues and topics. Higher message throughput is achieved by implementing multiple message brokers for each partitioned queue and topic. The multiple messaging stores will also provide higher availability. You can create a partitioned queue or topic by simply checking the Enable Partitioning option in the custom create wizard for a Queue or Topic: Read this article to learn more about partitioned queues and topics and how to take advantage of them today. Billing: New Billing Alert Service Today’s Windows Azure update enables a new Billing Alert Service Preview that enables you to get proactive email notifications when your Windows Azure bill goes above a certain monetary threshold that you configure. This makes it easier to manage your bill and avoid potential surprises at the end of the month. With the Billing Alert Service Preview, you can now create email alerts to monitor and manage your monetary credits or your current bill total. To set up an alert first sign-up for the free Billing Alert Service Preview. Then visit the account management page, click on a subscription you have setup, and then navigate to the new Alerts tab that is available: The alerts tab allows you to setup email alerts that will be sent automatically once a certain threshold is hit. For example, by clicking the “add alert” button above I can setup a rule to send myself email anytime my Windows Azure bill goes above $100 for the month: The Billing Alert Service will evolve to support additional aspects of your bill as well as support multiple forms of alerts such as SMS. Try out the new Billing Alert Service Preview today and give us feedback. Summary Today’s Windows Azure release enables a ton of great new scenarios, and makes building applications hosted in the cloud even easier. If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today. Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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Java Cloud Service Integration to REST Service

- by Jani Rautiainen

Service (JCS) provides a platform to develop and deploy business applications in the cloud. In Fusion Applications Cloud deployments customers do not have the option to deploy custom applications developed with JDeveloper to ensure the integrity and supportability of the hosted application service. Instead the custom applications can be deployed to the JCS and integrated to the Fusion Application Cloud instance. This series of articles will go through the features of JCS, provide end-to-end examples on how to develop and deploy applications on JCS and how to integrate them with the Fusion Applications instance. In this article a custom application integrating with REST service will be implemented. We will use REST services provided by Taleo as an example; however the same approach will work with any REST service. In this example the data from the REST service is used to populate a dynamic table. Pre-requisites Access to Cloud instance In order to deploy the application access to a JCS instance is needed, a free trial JCS instance can be obtained from Oracle Cloud site. To register you will need a credit card even if the credit card will not be charged. To register simply click "Try it" and choose the "Java" option. The confirmation email will contain the connection details. See this video for example of the registration.Once the request is processed you will be assigned 2 service instances; Java and Database. Applications deployed to the JCS must use Oracle Database Cloud Service as their underlying database. So when JCS instance is created a database instance is associated with it using a JDBC data source.The cloud services can be monitored and managed through the web UI. For details refer to Getting Started with Oracle Cloud. JDeveloper JDeveloper contains Cloud specific features related to e.g. connection and deployment. To use these features download the JDeveloper from JDeveloper download site by clicking the "Download JDeveloper 11.1.1.7.1 for ADF deployment on Oracle Cloud" link, this version of JDeveloper will have the JCS integration features that will be used in this article. For versions that do not include the Cloud integration features the Oracle Java Cloud Service SDK or the JCS Java Console can be used for deployment. For details on installing and configuring the JDeveloper refer to the installation guideFor details on SDK refer to Using the Command-Line Interface to Monitor Oracle Java Cloud Service and Using the Command-Line Interface to Manage Oracle Java Cloud Service. Access to a local database The database associated with the JCS instance cannot be connected to with JDBC. Since creating ADFbc business component requires a JDBC connection we will need access to a local database. 3rd party libraries This example will use some 3rd party libraries for implementing the REST service call and processing the input / output content. Other libraries may also be used, however these are tested to work. Jersey 1.x Jersey library will be used as a client to make the call to the REST service. JCS documentation for supported specifications states: Java API for RESTful Web Services (JAX-RS) 1.1 So Jersey 1.x will be used. Download the single-JAR Jersey bundle; in this example Jersey 1.18 JAR bundle is used. Json-simple Jjson-simple library will be used to process the json objects. Download the JAR file; in this example json-simple-1.1.1.jar is used. Accessing data in Taleo Before implementing the application it is beneficial to familiarize oneself with the data in Taleo. Easiest way to do this is by using a RESTClient on your browser. Once added to the browser you can access the UI: The client can be used to call the REST services to test the URLs and data before adding them into the application. First derive the base URL for the service this can be done with: Method: GET URL: https://tbe.taleo.net/MANAGER/dispatcher/api/v1/serviceUrl/<company name> The response will contain the base URL to be used for the service calls for the company. Next obtain authentication token with: Method: POST URL: https://ch.tbe.taleo.net/CH07/ats/api/v1/login?orgCode=<company>&userName=<user name>&password=<password> The response includes an authentication token that can be used for few hours to authenticate with the service: { "response": { "authToken": "webapi26419680747505890557" }, "status": { "detail": {}, "success": true } } To authenticate the service calls navigate to "Headers -> Custom Header": And add a new request header with: Name: Cookie Value: authToken=webapi26419680747505890557 Once authentication token is defined the tool can be used to invoke REST services; for example: Method: GET URL: https://ch.tbe.taleo.net/CH07/ats/api/v1/object/candidate/search.xml?status=16 This data will be used on the application to be created. For details on the Taleo REST services refer to the Taleo Business Edition REST API Guide. Create Application First Fusion Web Application is created and configured. Start JDeveloper and click "New Application": Application Name: JcsRestDemo Application Package Prefix: oracle.apps.jcs.test Application Template: Fusion Web Application (ADF) Configure Local Cloud Connection Follow the steps documented in the "Java Cloud Service ADF Web Application" article to configure a local database connection needed to create the ADFbc objects. Configure Libraries Add the 3rd party libraries into the class path. Create the following directory and copy the jar files into it: <JDEV_USER_HOME>/JcsRestDemo/lib Select the "Model" project, navigate "Application -> Project Properties -> Libraries and Classpath -> Add JAR / Directory" and add the 2 3rd party libraries: Accessing Data from Taleo To access data from Taleo using the REST service the 3rd party libraries will be used. 2 Java classes are implemented, one representing the Candidate object and another for accessing the Taleo repository Candidate Candidate object is a POJO object used to represent the candidate data obtained from the Taleo repository. The data obtained will be used to populate the ADFbc object used to display the data on the UI. The candidate object contains simply the variables we obtain using the REST services and the getters / setters for them: Navigate "New -> General -> Java -> Java Class", enter "Candidate" as the name and create it in the package "oracle.apps.jcs.test.model". Copy / paste the following as the content: import oracle.jbo.domain.Number; public class Candidate { private Number candId; private String firstName; private String lastName; public Candidate() { super(); } public Candidate(Number candId, String firstName, String lastName) { super(); this.candId = candId; this.firstName = firstName; this.lastName = lastName; } public void setCandId(Number candId) { this.candId = candId; } public Number getCandId() { return candId; } public void setFirstName(String firstName) { this.firstName = firstName; } public String getFirstName() { return firstName; } public void setLastName(String lastName) { this.lastName = lastName; } public String getLastName() { return lastName; } } Taleo Repository Taleo repository class will interact with the Taleo REST services. The logic will query data from Taleo and populate Candidate objects with the data. The Candidate object will then be used to populate the ADFbc object used to display data on the UI. Navigate "New -> General -> Java -> Java Class", enter "TaleoRepository" as the name and create it in the package "oracle.apps.jcs.test.model". Copy / paste the following as the content (for details of the implementation refer to the documentation in the code): import com.sun.jersey.api.client.Client; import com.sun.jersey.api.client.ClientResponse; import com.sun.jersey.api.client.WebResource; import com.sun.jersey.core.util.MultivaluedMapImpl; import java.io.StringReader; import java.util.ArrayList; import java.util.Iterator; import java.util.List; import java.util.Map; import javax.ws.rs.core.MediaType; import javax.ws.rs.core.MultivaluedMap; import oracle.jbo.domain.Number; import org.json.simple.JSONArray; import org.json.simple.JSONObject; import org.json.simple.parser.JSONParser; /** * This class interacts with the Taleo REST services */ public class TaleoRepository { /** * Connection information needed to access the Taleo services */ String _company = null; String _userName = null; String _password = null; /** * Jersey client used to access the REST services */ Client _client = null; /** * Parser for processing the JSON objects used as * input / output for the services */ JSONParser _parser = null; /** * The base url for constructing the REST URLs. This is obtained * from Taleo with a service call */ String _baseUrl = null; /** * Authentication token obtained from Taleo using a service call. * The token can be used to authenticate on subsequent * service calls. The token will expire in 4 hours */ String _authToken = null; /** * Static url that can be used to obtain the url used to construct * service calls for a given company */ private static String _taleoUrl = "https://tbe.taleo.net/MANAGER/dispatcher/api/v1/serviceUrl/"; /** * Default constructor for the repository * Authentication details are passed as parameters and used to generate * authentication token. Note that each service call will * generate its own token. This is done to avoid dealing with the expiry * of the token. Also only 20 tokens are allowed per user simultaneously. * So instead for each call there is login / logout. * * @param company the company for which the service calls are made * @param userName the user name to authenticate with * @param password the password to authenticate with. */ public TaleoRepository(String company, String userName, String password) { super(); _company = company; _userName = userName; _password = password; _client = Client.create(); _parser = new JSONParser(); _baseUrl = getBaseUrl(); } /** * This obtains the base url for a company to be used * to construct the urls for service calls * @return base url for the service calls */ private String getBaseUrl() { String result = null; if (null != _baseUrl) { result = _baseUrl; } else { try { String company = _company; WebResource resource = _client.resource(_taleoUrl + company); ClientResponse response = resource.type(MediaType.APPLICATION_FORM_URLENCODED_TYPE).get(ClientResponse.class); String entity = response.getEntity(String.class); JSONObject jsonObject = (JSONObject)_parser.parse(new StringReader(entity)); JSONObject jsonResponse = (JSONObject)jsonObject.get("response"); result = (String)jsonResponse.get("URL"); } catch (Exception ex) { ex.printStackTrace(); } } return result; } /** * Generates authentication token, that can be used to authenticate on * subsequent service calls. Note that each service call will * generate its own token. This is done to avoid dealing with the expiry * of the token. Also only 20 tokens are allowed per user simultaneously. * So instead for each call there is login / logout. * @return authentication token that can be used to authenticate on * subsequent service calls */ private String login() { String result = null; try { MultivaluedMap<String, String> formData = new MultivaluedMapImpl(); formData.add("orgCode", _company); formData.add("userName", _userName); formData.add("password", _password); WebResource resource = _client.resource(_baseUrl + "login"); ClientResponse response = resource.type(MediaType.APPLICATION_FORM_URLENCODED_TYPE).post(ClientResponse.class, formData); String entity = response.getEntity(String.class); JSONObject jsonObject = (JSONObject)_parser.parse(new StringReader(entity)); JSONObject jsonResponse = (JSONObject)jsonObject.get("response"); result = (String)jsonResponse.get("authToken"); } catch (Exception ex) { throw new RuntimeException("Unable to login ", ex); } if (null == result) throw new RuntimeException("Unable to login "); return result; } /** * Releases a authentication token. Each call to login must be followed * by call to logout after the processing is done. This is required as * the tokens are limited to 20 per user and if not released the tokens * will only expire after 4 hours. * @param authToken */ private void logout(String authToken) { WebResource resource = _client.resource(_baseUrl + "logout"); resource.header("cookie", "authToken=" + authToken).post(ClientResponse.class); } /** * This method is used to obtain a list of candidates using a REST * service call. At this example the query is hard coded to query * based on status. The url constructed to access the service is: * <_baseUrl>/object/candidate/search.xml?status=16 * @return List of candidates obtained with the service call */ public List<Candidate> getCandidates() { List<Candidate> result = new ArrayList<Candidate>(); try { // First login, note that in finally block we must have logout _authToken = "authToken=" + login(); /** * Construct the URL, the resulting url will be: * <_baseUrl>/object/candidate/search.xml?status=16 */ MultivaluedMap<String, String> formData = new MultivaluedMapImpl(); formData.add("status", "16"); JSONArray searchResults = (JSONArray)getTaleoResource("object/candidate/search", "searchResults", formData); /** * Process the results, the resulting JSON object is something like * this (simplified for readability): * * { * "response": * { * "searchResults": * [ * { * "candidate": * { * "candId": 211, * "firstName": "Mary", * "lastName": "Stochi", * logic here will find the candidate object(s), obtain the desired * data from them, construct a Candidate object based on the data * and add it to the results. */ for (Object object : searchResults) { JSONObject temp = (JSONObject)object; JSONObject candidate = (JSONObject)findObject(temp, "candidate"); Long candIdTemp = (Long)candidate.get("candId"); Number candId = (null == candIdTemp ? null : new Number(candIdTemp)); String firstName = (String)candidate.get("firstName"); String lastName = (String)candidate.get("lastName"); result.add(new Candidate(candId, firstName, lastName)); } } catch (Exception ex) { ex.printStackTrace(); } finally { if (null != _authToken) logout(_authToken); } return result; } /** * Convenience method to construct url for the service call, invoke the * service and obtain a resource from the response * @param path the path for the service to be invoked. This is combined * with the base url to construct a url for the service * @param resource the key for the object in the response that will be * obtained * @param parameters any parameters used for the service call. The call * is slightly different depending whether parameters exist or not. * @return the resource from the response for the service call */ private Object getTaleoResource(String path, String resource, MultivaluedMap<String, String> parameters) { Object result = null; try { WebResource webResource = _client.resource(_baseUrl + path); ClientResponse response = null; if (null == parameters) response = webResource.header("cookie", _authToken).get(ClientResponse.class); else response = webResource.queryParams(parameters).header("cookie", _authToken).get(ClientResponse.class); String entity = response.getEntity(String.class); JSONObject jsonObject = (JSONObject)_parser.parse(new StringReader(entity)); result = findObject(jsonObject, resource); } catch (Exception ex) { ex.printStackTrace(); } return result; } /** * Convenience method to recursively find a object with an key * traversing down from a given root object. This will traverse a * JSONObject / JSONArray recursively to find a matching key, if found * the object with the key is returned. * @param root root object which contains the key searched for * @param key the key for the object to search for * @return the object matching the key */ private Object findObject(Object root, String key) { Object result = null; if (root instanceof JSONObject) { JSONObject rootJSON = (JSONObject)root; if (rootJSON.containsKey(key)) { result = rootJSON.get(key); } else { Iterator children = rootJSON.entrySet().iterator(); while (children.hasNext()) { Map.Entry entry = (Map.Entry)children.next(); Object child = entry.getValue(); if (child instanceof JSONObject || child instanceof JSONArray) { result = findObject(child, key); if (null != result) break; } } } } else if (root instanceof JSONArray) { JSONArray rootJSON = (JSONArray)root; for (Object child : rootJSON) { if (child instanceof JSONObject || child instanceof JSONArray) { result = findObject(child, key); if (null != result) break; } } } return result; } } Creating Business Objects While JCS application can be created without a local database, the local database is required when using ADFbc objects even if database objects are not referred. For this example we will create a "Transient" view object that will be programmatically populated based the data obtained from Taleo REST services. Creating ADFbc objects Choose the "Model" project and navigate "New -> Business Tier : ADF Business Components : View Object". On the "Initialize Business Components Project" choose the local database connection created in previous step. On Step 1 enter "JcsRestDemoVO" on the "Name" and choose "Rows populated programmatically, not based on query": On step 2 create the following attributes: CandId Type: Number Updatable: Always Key Attribute: checked Name Type: String Updatable: Always On steps 3 and 4 accept defaults and click "Next". On step 5 check the "Application Module" checkbox and enter "JcsRestDemoAM" as the name: Click "Finish" to generate the objects. Populating the VO To display the data on the UI the "transient VO" is populated programmatically based on the data obtained from the Taleo REST services. Open the "JcsRestDemoVOImpl.java". Copy / paste the following as the content (for details of the implementation refer to the documentation in the code): import java.sql.ResultSet; import java.util.List; import java.util.ListIterator; import oracle.jbo.server.ViewObjectImpl; import oracle.jbo.server.ViewRowImpl; import oracle.jbo.server.ViewRowSetImpl; // --------------------------------------------------------------------- // --- File generated by Oracle ADF Business Components Design Time. // --- Tue Feb 18 09:40:25 PST 2014 // --- Custom code may be added to this class. // --- Warning: Do not modify method signatures of generated methods. // --------------------------------------------------------------------- public class JcsRestDemoVOImpl extends ViewObjectImpl { /** * This is the default constructor (do not remove). */ public JcsRestDemoVOImpl() { } @Override public void executeQuery() { /** * For some reason we need to reset everything, otherwise * 2nd entry to the UI screen may fail with * "java.util.NoSuchElementException" in createRowFromResultSet * call to "candidates.next()". I am not sure why this is happening * as the Iterator is new and "hasNext" is true at the point * of the execution. My theory is that since the iterator object is * exactly the same the VO cache somehow reuses the iterator including * the pointer that has already exhausted the iterable elements on the * previous run. Working around the issue * here by cleaning out everything on the VO every time before query * is executed on the VO. */ getViewDef().setQuery(null); getViewDef().setSelectClause(null); setQuery(null); this.reset(); this.clearCache(); super.executeQuery(); } /** * executeQueryForCollection - overridden for custom java data source support. */ protected void executeQueryForCollection(Object qc, Object[] params, int noUserParams) { /** * Integrate with the Taleo REST services using TaleoRepository class. * A list of candidates matching a hard coded query is obtained. */ TaleoRepository repository = new TaleoRepository(<company>, <username>, <password>); List<Candidate> candidates = repository.getCandidates(); /** * Store iterator for the candidates as user data on the collection. * This will be used in createRowFromResultSet to create rows based on * the custom iterator. */ ListIterator<Candidate> candidatescIterator = candidates.listIterator(); setUserDataForCollection(qc, candidatescIterator); super.executeQueryForCollection(qc, params, noUserParams); } /** * hasNextForCollection - overridden for custom java data source support. */ protected boolean hasNextForCollection(Object qc) { boolean result = false; /** * Determines whether there are candidates for which to create a row */ ListIterator<Candidate> candidates = (ListIterator<Candidate>)getUserDataForCollection(qc); result = candidates.hasNext(); /** * If all candidates to be created indicate that processing is done */ if (!result) { setFetchCompleteForCollection(qc, true); } return result; } /** * createRowFromResultSet - overridden for custom java data source support. */ protected ViewRowImpl createRowFromResultSet(Object qc, ResultSet resultSet) { /** * Obtain the next candidate from the collection and create a row * for it. */ ListIterator<Candidate> candidates = (ListIterator<Candidate>)getUserDataForCollection(qc); ViewRowImpl row = createNewRowForCollection(qc); try { Candidate candidate = candidates.next(); row.setAttribute("CandId", candidate.getCandId()); row.setAttribute("Name", candidate.getFirstName() + " " + candidate.getLastName()); } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); } return row; } /** * getQueryHitCount - overridden for custom java data source support. */ public long getQueryHitCount(ViewRowSetImpl viewRowSet) { /** * For this example this is not implemented rather we always return 0. */ return 0; } } Creating UI Choose the "ViewController" project and navigate "New -> Web Tier : JSF : JSF Page". On the "Create JSF Page" enter "JcsRestDemo" as name and ensure that the "Create as XML document (*.jspx)" is checked. Open "JcsRestDemo.jspx" and navigate to "Data Controls -> JcsRestDemoAMDataControl -> JcsRestDemoVO1" and drag & drop the VO to the "<af:form> " as a "ADF Read-only Table": Accept the defaults in "Edit Table Columns". To execute the query navigate to to "Data Controls -> JcsRestDemoAMDataControl -> JcsRestDemoVO1 -> Operations -> Execute" and drag & drop the operation to the "<af:form> " as a "Button": Deploying to JCS Follow the same steps as documented in previous article"Java Cloud Service ADF Web Application". Once deployed the application can be accessed with URL: https://java-[identity domain].java.[data center].oraclecloudapps.com/JcsRestDemo-ViewController-context-root/faces/JcsRestDemo.jspx The UI displays a list of candidates obtained from the Taleo REST Services: Summary In this article we learned how to integrate with REST services using Jersey library in JCS. In future articles various other integration techniques will be covered.

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Know More About Oracle Row Lock

- by Liu Maclean(???)

??????Oracle??????????row lock,??ORACLE????????????????????,row lock???????????????????????????????,??Server Process?pin????block buffer????????? ????????,?process A ??update???????? Z?????????, ???????rollback???commit;??Process B??????DML??, ???????rowid???? Z???, ???????????process A????????ITL???,????????cleanout??,????????row???????????commit, ???????Process B????”enq: TX – row lock contention”??????? ????Process B????????????? ?????????Process A???????row,??Process B???????”enq: TX – row lock contention”???? ???????? ????????: SESSION A: SQL> select * from v$version; BANNER ---------------------------------------------------------------- Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.5.0 - 64bi PL/SQL Release 10.2.0.5.0 - Production CORE 10.2.0.5.0 Production TNS for Linux: Version 10.2.0.5.0 - Production NLSRTL Version 10.2.0.5.0 - Production SQL> select * from global_name; GLOBAL_NAME -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- www.oracledatabase12g.com SQL> create table maclean_lock(t1 int); Table created. SQL> insert into maclean_lock values (1); 1 row created. SQL> commit; Commit complete. SQL> select dbms_rowid.rowid_block_number(rowid),dbms_rowid.rowid_relative_fno(rowid) from maclean_lock; DBMS_ROWID.ROWID_BLOCK_NUMBER(ROWID) DBMS_ROWID.ROWID_RELATIVE_FNO(ROWID) ------------------------------------ ------------------------------------ 67642 1 SQL> select distinct sid from v$mystat; SID ---------- 142 SQL> select pid,spid from v$process where addr = ( select paddr from v$session where sid=(select distinct sid from v$mystat)); PID SPID ---------- ------------ 17 15636 ??SESSION A ????savepoint ,?update ????????? SQL> savepoint NONLOCK; Savepoint created. SQL> select * From v$Lock where sid=142; no rows selected SQL> set linesize 140 pagesize 1400 SQL> update maclean_lock set t1=t1+2; 1 row updated. SQL> select * From v$Lock where sid=142; ADDR KADDR SID TY ID1 ID2 LMODE REQUEST CTIME BLOCK ---------------- ---------------- ---------- -- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- 0000000091FC69F0 0000000091FC6A18 142 TM 55829 0 3 0 6 0 00000000914B4008 00000000914B4040 142 TX 393232 609 6 0 6 0 SQL> select dump(3,16) from dual; DUMP(3,16) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Typ=2 Len=2: c1,4 ALTER SYSTEM DUMP DATAFILE 1 BLOCK 67642; Object id on Block? Y seg/obj: 0xda16 csc: 0x00.234718 itc: 2 flg: O typ: 1 - DATA fsl: 0 fnx: 0x0 ver: 0x01 Itl Xid Uba Flag Lck Scn/Fsc 0x01 0x000a.00f.000001e0 0x00800075.02a6.29 C--- 0 scn 0x0000.00234711 0x02 0x0007.018.000001fe 0x0080065c.017a.02 ---- 1 fsc 0x0000.00000000 data_block_dump,data header at 0x81d185c =============== tsiz: 0x1fa0 hsiz: 0x14 pbl: 0x081d185c bdba: 0x0041083a 76543210 flag=-------- ntab=1 nrow=1 frre=-1 fsbo=0x14 fseo=0x1f9a avsp=0x1f83 tosp=0x1f83 0xe:pti[0] nrow=1 offs=0 0x12:pri[0] offs=0x1f9a block_row_dump: tab 0, row 0, @0x1f9a tl: 6 fb: --H-FL-- lb: 0x2 cc: 1 col 0: [ 2] c1 04 end_of_block_dump ?? BLOCK DUMP ???? ??????XID=0x0007.018.000001fe ?transaction?? lb:0x1 ??SESSION B ,?????UPDATE?? ???enq: TX - row lock contention ?? SQL> select distinct sid from v$mystat; SID ---------- 140 SQL> select pid,spid from v$process where addr = ( select paddr from v$session where sid=(select distinct sid from v$mystat)); PID SPID ---------- ------------ 24 15652 SQL> alter system set "_trace_events"='10000-10999:255:24'; System altered. SQL> update maclean_lock set t1=t1+2; select * From v$Lock where sid=142 or sid=140 order by sid; SESSION C: SQL> select * From v$Lock where sid=142 or sid=140 order by sid; ADDR KADDR SID TY ID1 ID2 LMODE REQUEST CTIME BLOCK ---------------- ---------------- ---------- -- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- 0000000091FC6B10 0000000091FC6B38 140 TM 55829 0 3 0 84 0 00000000924F4A58 00000000924F4A78 140 TX 458776 510 0 6 84 0 00000000914B51E8 00000000914B5220 142 TX 458776 510 6 0 312 1 0000000091FC69F0 0000000091FC6A18 142 TM 55829 0 3 0 312 0 ???? SESSION B SID=140 ?SESSION A ?TX ENQUEUE ?X mode?REQUEST SQL> oradebug dump systemstate 266; Statement processed. SESSION B waiter's enqueue lock SO: 0x924f4a58, type: 5, owner: 0x92bb8dc8, flag: INIT/-/-/0x00 (enqueue) TX-00070018-000001FE DID: 0001-0018-00000022 lv: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 res_flag: 0x6 req: X, lock_flag: 0x0, lock: 0x924f4a78, res: 0x925617c0 own: 0x92b76be0, sess: 0x92b76be0, proc: 0x92a737a0, prv: 0x925617e0 TX-00070018-000001FE=> TX 458776 510 SESSION A owner's enqueue lock SO: 0x914b51e8, type: 40, owner: 0x92b796d0, flag: INIT/-/-/0x00 (trans) flg = 0x1e03, flg2 = 0xc0000, prx = 0x0, ros = 2147483647 bsn = 0xed5 bndsn = 0xee7 spn = 0xef7 efd = 3 file:xct.c lineno:1179 DID: 0001-0011-000000C2 parent xid: 0x0000.000.00000000 env: (scn: 0x0000.00234718 xid: 0x0007.018.000001fe uba: 0x0080065c.017a.02 statement num=0 parent xid: xid: 0x0000.000.00000000 scn: 0x00 00.00234718 0sch: scn: 0x0000.00000000) cev: (spc = 7818 arsp = 914e8310 ubk tsn: 1 rdba: 0x0080065c useg tsn: 1 rdba: 0x00800069 hwm uba: 0x0080065c.017a.02 col uba: 0x00000000.0000.00 num bl: 1 bk list: 0x91435070) cr opc: 0x0 spc: 7818 uba: 0x0080065c.017a.02 (enqueue) TX-00070018-000001FE DID: 0001-0011-000000C2 lv: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 res_flag: 0x6 mode: X, lock_flag: 0x0, lock: 0x914b5220, res: 0x925617c0 own: 0x92b796d0, sess: 0x92b796d0, proc: 0x92a6ffd8, prv: 0x925617d0 xga: 0x8b7c6d40, heap: UGA Trans IMU st: 2 Pool index 65535, Redo pool 0x914b58d0, Undo pool 0x914b59b8 Redo pool range [0x86de640 0x86de640 0x86e0e40] Undo pool range [0x86dbe40 0x86dbe40 0x86de640] ---------------------------------------- SO: 0x91435070, type: 39, owner: 0x914b51e8, flag: -/-/-/0x00 (List of Blocks) next index = 1 index itli buffer hint rdba savepoint ----------------------------------------------------------- 0 2 0x647f1fc8 0x41083a 0xee7 ?SESSION A? ROLLBACK ?savepoint: SQL> rollback to NONLOCK; Rollback complete. ????savepoint ??update??????? ??UPDATE???????? ROLLBACK: SQL> select * From v$Lock where sid=142 or sid=140; ADDR KADDR SID TY ID1 ID2 LMODE REQUEST CTIME BLOCK ---------------- ---------------- ---------- -- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- 00000000924F4A58 00000000924F4A78 140 TX 458776 510 0 6 822 0 0000000091FC6B10 0000000091FC6B38 140 TM 55829 0 3 0 822 0 00000000914B51E8 00000000914B5220 142 TX 458776 510 6 0 1050 1 ???? SESSION A 142 ???SAVEPOINT ???????TM LOCK ????? ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT?????SESSION???TX LOCK!!!! ??????SESSION 142???TX ID1=458776 ID2=510, ????ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT?????????ABORT TRANSACTION ?? SESSION B SID=140?? SESSION A ?? , ?????????SESSION B? update???HANG?? ?????????CACHE?????: Object id on Block? Y seg/obj: 0xda16 csc: 0x00.2347b7 itc: 2 flg: O typ: 1 - DATA fsl: 0 fnx: 0x0 ver: 0x01 Itl Xid Uba Flag Lck Scn/Fsc 0x01 0x000a.00f.000001e0 0x00800075.02a6.29 C--- 0 scn 0x0000.00234711 0x02 0x0000.000.00000000 0x00000000.0000.00 ---- 0 fsc 0x0000.00000000 data_block_dump,data header at 0x745d85c =============== tsiz: 0x1fa0 hsiz: 0x14 pbl: 0x0745d85c bdba: 0x0041083a 76543210 flag=-------- ntab=1 nrow=1 frre=-1 fsbo=0x14 fseo=0x1f9a avsp=0x1f83 tosp=0x1f83 0xe:pti[0] nrow=1 offs=0 0x12:pri[0] offs=0x1f9a block_row_dump: tab 0, row 0, @0x1f9a tl: 6 fb: --H-FL-- lb: 0x0 cc: 1 col 0: [ 2] c1 02 end_of_block_dump ???? ITL=0x02? ?????????,col 0: [ 2] c1 02 ????????? ?????????SESSION D ,??????row lock?? ?UPDATE???????? SESSION D: SQL> update maclean_lock set t1=t1+2; 1 row updated. SQL> rollback; Rollback complete. ??SESSION B ??????????? ?????ORACLE????????, ??????????? TX lock?? row lock , ????????2??? row lock?????????, ?TX lock????????ENQUEUE LOCK???? ?????????PROCESS K?DML???????????????????????,??????????TX LOCK, ????PROCESS Z?????????????????????????ROW LOCK????????, ???????OLTP?????????????????????? ??ROW LOCK?Release ??????TX?ENQUEUE LOCK,?????????Process J ????????????, Process K??????????? ,Process K?????????,???row piece?lb??0x0 ,?????ITL, Process Z???ITL???????Process J????XID,?????Process J?????TX lock, PROCESS K ???TX resource?Enqueue Waiter Linked List?????X mode(exclusive)?enqueue lock? ???Process J??TX lock?,Process J?????TX resource?Enqueue Waiter Linked List ???Process K??????,??POST?????Process K? TX lock??????, ???????row lock???????,????????? ?????????? ?????: SESSION A ???PID =17 ?????????????????? SESSION B ???PID =24 ??????? "_trace_events"='10000-10999:255:24'; KST trace ??????? Server Process??? SESSION A PID=17 ?? acqure?SX mode???TM Lock ,?? ????Transaction?????UNDO SEGMENT 7,???XID 7.24.510, ?acquire ?X mode? TX-00070018-000001fe ? ?????? 00070018-000001fe ???? 7- 24 - 510? XID ? 781F4B8A:007A569C 17 142 10704 83 ksqgtl: acquire TM-0000da15-00000000 mode=SX flags=GLOBAL|XACT why="contention" 781F4B92:007A569D 17 142 10704 19 ksqgtl: SUCCESS 781F4BB3:007A569E 17 142 10812 2 0x000000000041083A 0x0000000000000000 0x0000000000234717 781F4BBA:007A569F 17 142 10812 3 0x0000000000000000 0x0000000000000000 0x0000000000000000 781F4BC0:007A56A0 17 142 10812 4 0x0000000000000000 0x0000000000000000 0x0000000000000000 781F4BD3:007A56A1 17 142 10812 5 0x000000000041083A 0x0000000000000000 0x0000000000000000 781F4BFE:007A56A2 17 142 10811 1 0x000000000041083A 0x0000000000000000 0x0000000000234711 0x0000000000000002 781F4C06:007A56A3 17 142 10811 2 0x000000000041083A 0x0000000000000000 0x0000000000234718 0x00007FA074EDA560 781F4C26:007A56A4 17 142 10813 1 ktubnd: Bind usn 7 nax 1 nbx 0 lng 0 par 0 781F4C43:007A56A5 17 142 10813 2 ktubnd: Txn Bound xid: 7.24.510 781F4C4A:007A56A6 17 142 10704 83 ksqgtl: acquire TX-00070018-000001fe mode=X flags=GLOBAL|XACT why="contention" 781F4C51:007A56A7 17 142 10704 19 ksqgtl: SUCCESS ?????????? ???????? 781F4CBF:007A56A8 17 142 10005 1 KSL WAIT BEG [SQL*Net message to client] 1650815232/0x62657100 1/0x1 0/0x0 781F4CCC:007A56A9 17 142 10005 2 KSL WAIT END [SQL*Net message to client] 1650815232/0x62657100 1/0x1 0/0x0 time=13 781F4CDE:007A56AA 17 142 10005 1 KSL WAIT BEG [SQL*Net message from client] 1650815232/0x62657100 1/0x1 0/0x0 786BD85D:007A57E0 17 142 10005 2 KSL WAIT END [SQL*Net message from client] 1650815232/0x62657100 1/0x1 0/0x0 time=5016447 786BD966:007A57E1 17 142 10005 1 KSL WAIT BEG [SQL*Net message to client] 1650815232/0x62657100 1/0x1 0/0x0 786BD96E:007A57E2 17 142 10005 2 KSL WAIT END [SQL*Net message to client] 1650815232/0x62657100 1/0x1 0/0x0 time=8 SESSION B ???PID =24 ,??????? SX mode? TM lock,??row lock? acquire X mode?TX-00070018-000001fe ksqgtl: acquire TM-0000da15-00000000 mode=SX flags=GLOBAL|XACT why="contention" ksqgtl: SUCCESS 0x000000000041083A 0x0000000000000000 0x00000000002354F8 0x0000000000000000 0x0000000000000000 0x0000000000000000 0x0000000000000000 0x0000000000000000 0x0000000000000000 0x000000000041083A 0x0000000000000000 0x00000000002354F8 0x0000000000000001 0x000000000041083A 0x0000000000000000 0x00000000002354F8 0x0000000008A63780 0x0000000000000001 0x0000000000800861 0x0000000000000241 0x0000000000000001 0x000000000041083A 0x0000000000000001 0x0000000000000001 0x000000000041083A 0x0000000000000000 0x00000000002354F9 0x0000000000000002 ksqgtl: acquire TX-00070018-000001fe mode=X flags=GLOBAL|LONG why="row lock contention" C4048EBD:007F52B6 24 140 10005 2 KSL WAIT END [enq: TX - row lock contention] 1415053318/0x54580006 458776/0x70018 510/0x1fe time=2929879 C4048ED4:007F52B7 24 140 10005 1 KSL WAIT BEG [enq: TX - row lock contention] 1415053318/0x54580006 458776/0x70018 510/0x1fe C43146CA:007F535E 24 140 10005 2 KSL WAIT END [enq: TX - row lock contention] 1415053318/0x54580006 458776/0x70018 510/0x1fe time=2930676 ????????? ,PID=24 ??????ksqcmi???????? deadlock C43146D9:007F535F 24 140 10704 134 ksqcmi: performing local deadlock detection on TX-00070018-000001fe C43146F8:007F5360 24 140 10704 150 ksqcmi: deadlock not detected on TX-00070018-000001fe ?? ??? PID 17 ??ROLLBACK ???? ,????????: PID 17 ROLLBACK; D7A495BB:007F9D3E 17 142 10005 4 KSL POST SENT postee=24 loc='ksqrcl' id1=0 id2=0 name= type=0 D7A495D8:007F9D3F 17 142 10444 12 ABORT TRANSACTION - xid: 0x0007.018.000001fe ?? PID 17 ??? TX resource?Enqueue Waiter linked List ???PID 24???,????KSL POST SENT ?? PID 24, ???ksqrcl???ENQUEUE LOCK ?PID 24??????KSL POST (KSL POST RCVD poster=17), ?ksqgtl???? TX-00070018-000001fe ?? ksqrcl??, ??PID 24???????? TX lock?USN ,??????? USN 3 XID 3.11.582 ,???acquire TX-0003000b-00000246 D7A49616:007F9D41 24 140 10005 3 KSL POST RCVD poster=17 loc='ksqrcl' id1=0 id2=0 name= type=0 fac#=0 facpost=1 D7A4961C:007F9D42 24 140 10704 19 ksqgtl: SUCCESS D7A4967D:007F9D43 24 140 10704 117 ksqrcl: release TX-00070018-000001fe mode=X D7A496A5:007F9D44 24 140 10813 1 ktubnd: Bind usn 3 nax 1 nbx 0 lng 0 par 0 D7A496C2:007F9D45 24 140 10813 2 ktubnd: Txn Bound xid: 3.11.582 D7A496C7:007F9D46 24 140 10704 83 ksqgtl: acquire TX-0003000b-00000246 mode=X flags=GLOBAL|XACT why="contention" D7A496E4:007F9D47 24 140 10704 19 ksqgtl: SUCCESS ROW LOCK?Release ??????TX?ENQUEUE LOCK,?????????Process J ????????????, Process K??????????? ,Process K?????????,???row piece?lb??0×0 ,?????ITL,Process Z???ITL???????Process J????XID,?????Process J?????TX lock,PROCESS K ???TX resource?Enqueue Waiter Linked List?????X mode(exclusive)?enqueue lock? ???Process J??TX lock?,Process J?????TX resource?Enqueue Waiter Linked List ???Process K??????,??POST?????Process K? TX lock??????,???????row lock???????,?????????

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Understanding and Implementing a Force based graph layout algorithm

- by zcourts

I'm trying to implement a force base graph layout algorithm, based on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force-based_algorithms_(graph_drawing) My first attempt didn't work so I looked at http://blog.ivank.net/force-based-graph-drawing-in-javascript.html and https://github.com/dhotson/springy I changed my implementation based on what I thought I understood from those two but I haven't managed to get it right and I'm hoping someone can help? JavaScript isn't my strong point so be gentle... If you're wondering why write my own. In reality I have no real reason to write my own I'm just trying to understand how the algorithm is implemented. Especially in my first link, that demo is brilliant. This is what I've come up with //support function.bind - https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Function/bind#Compatibility if (!Function.prototype.bind) { Function.prototype.bind = function (oThis) { if (typeof this !== "function") { // closest thing possible to the ECMAScript 5 internal IsCallable function throw new TypeError("Function.prototype.bind - what is trying to be bound is not callable"); } var aArgs = Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments, 1), fToBind = this, fNOP = function () {}, fBound = function () { return fToBind.apply(this instanceof fNOP ? this : oThis || window, aArgs.concat(Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments))); }; fNOP.prototype = this.prototype; fBound.prototype = new fNOP(); return fBound; }; } (function() { var lastTime = 0; var vendors = ['ms', 'moz', 'webkit', 'o']; for(var x = 0; x < vendors.length && !window.requestAnimationFrame; ++x) { window.requestAnimationFrame = window[vendors[x]+'RequestAnimationFrame']; window.cancelAnimationFrame = window[vendors[x]+'CancelAnimationFrame'] || window[vendors[x]+'CancelRequestAnimationFrame']; } if (!window.requestAnimationFrame) window.requestAnimationFrame = function(callback, element) { var currTime = new Date().getTime(); var timeToCall = Math.max(0, 16 - (currTime - lastTime)); var id = window.setTimeout(function() { callback(currTime + timeToCall); }, timeToCall); lastTime = currTime + timeToCall; return id; }; if (!window.cancelAnimationFrame) window.cancelAnimationFrame = function(id) { clearTimeout(id); }; }()); function Graph(o){ this.options=o; this.vertices={}; this.edges={};//form {vertexID:{edgeID:edge}} } /** *Adds an edge to the graph. If the verticies in this edge are not already in the *graph then they are added */ Graph.prototype.addEdge=function(e){ //if vertex1 and vertex2 doesn't exist in this.vertices add them if(typeof(this.vertices[e.vertex1])==='undefined') this.vertices[e.vertex1]=new Vertex(e.vertex1); if(typeof(this.vertices[e.vertex2])==='undefined') this.vertices[e.vertex2]=new Vertex(e.vertex2); //add the edge if(typeof(this.edges[e.vertex1])==='undefined') this.edges[e.vertex1]={}; this.edges[e.vertex1][e.id]=e; } /** * Add a vertex to the graph. If a vertex with the same ID already exists then * the existing vertex's .data property is replaced with the @param v.data */ Graph.prototype.addVertex=function(v){ if(typeof(this.vertices[v.id])==='undefined') this.vertices[v.id]=v; else this.vertices[v.id].data=v.data; } function Vertex(id,data){ this.id=id; this.data=data?data:{}; //initialize to data.[x|y|z] or generate random number for each this.x = this.data.x?this.data.x:-100 + Math.random()*200; this.y = this.data.y?this.data.y:-100 + Math.random()*200; this.z = this.data.y?this.data.y:-100 + Math.random()*200; //set initial velocity to 0 this.velocity = new Point(0, 0, 0); this.mass=this.data.mass?this.data.mass:Math.random(); this.force=new Point(0,0,0); } function Edge(vertex1ID,vertex2ID){ vertex1ID=vertex1ID?vertex1ID:Math.random() vertex2ID=vertex2ID?vertex2ID:Math.random() this.id=vertex1ID+"->"+vertex2ID; this.vertex1=vertex1ID; this.vertex2=vertex2ID; } function Point(x, y, z) { this.x = x; this.y = y; this.z = z; } Point.prototype.plus=function(p){ this.x +=p.x this.y +=p.y this.z +=p.z } function ForceLayout(o){ this.repulsion = o.repulsion?o.repulsion:200; this.attraction = o.attraction?o.attraction:0.06; this.damping = o.damping?o.damping:0.9; this.graph = o.graph?o.graph:new Graph(); this.total_kinetic_energy =0; this.animationID=-1; } ForceLayout.prototype.draw=function(){ //vertex velocities initialized to (0,0,0) when a vertex is created //vertex positions initialized to random position when created cc=0; do{ this.total_kinetic_energy =0; //for each vertex for(var i in this.graph.vertices){ var thisNode=this.graph.vertices[i]; // running sum of total force on this particular node var netForce=new Point(0,0,0) //for each other node for(var j in this.graph.vertices){ if(thisNode!=this.graph.vertices[j]){ //net-force := net-force + Coulomb_repulsion( this_node, other_node ) netForce.plus(this.CoulombRepulsion( thisNode,this.graph.vertices[j])) } } //for each spring connected to this node for(var k in this.graph.edges[thisNode.id]){ //(this node, node its connected to) //pass id of this node and the node its connected to so hookesattraction //can update the force on both vertices and return that force to be //added to the net force this.HookesAttraction(thisNode.id, this.graph.edges[thisNode.id][k].vertex2 ) } // without damping, it moves forever // this_node.velocity := (this_node.velocity + timestep * net-force) * damping thisNode.velocity.x=(thisNode.velocity.x+thisNode.force.x)*this.damping; thisNode.velocity.y=(thisNode.velocity.y+thisNode.force.y)*this.damping; thisNode.velocity.z=(thisNode.velocity.z+thisNode.force.z)*this.damping; //this_node.position := this_node.position + timestep * this_node.velocity thisNode.x=thisNode.velocity.x; thisNode.y=thisNode.velocity.y; thisNode.z=thisNode.velocity.z; //normalize x,y,z??? //total_kinetic_energy := total_kinetic_energy + this_node.mass * (this_node.velocity)^2 this.total_kinetic_energy +=thisNode.mass*((thisNode.velocity.x+thisNode.velocity.y+thisNode.velocity.z)* (thisNode.velocity.x+thisNode.velocity.y+thisNode.velocity.z)) } cc+=1; }while(this.total_kinetic_energy >0.5) console.log(cc,this.total_kinetic_energy,this.graph) this.cancelAnimation(); } ForceLayout.prototype.HookesAttraction=function(v1ID,v2ID){ var a=this.graph.vertices[v1ID] var b=this.graph.vertices[v2ID] var force=new Point(this.attraction*(b.x - a.x),this.attraction*(b.y - a.y),this.attraction*(b.z - a.z)) // hook's attraction a.force.x += force.x; a.force.y += force.y; a.force.z += force.z; b.force.x += this.attraction*(a.x - b.x); b.force.y += this.attraction*(a.y - b.y); b.force.z += this.attraction*(a.z - b.z); return force; } ForceLayout.prototype.CoulombRepulsion=function(vertex1,vertex2){ //http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coulomb's_law // distance squared = ((x1-x2)*(x1-x2)) + ((y1-y2)*(y1-y2)) + ((z1-z2)*(z1-z2)) var distanceSquared = ( (vertex1.x-vertex2.x)*(vertex1.x-vertex2.x)+ (vertex1.y-vertex2.y)*(vertex1.y-vertex2.y)+ (vertex1.z-vertex2.z)*(vertex1.z-vertex2.z) ); if(distanceSquared==0) distanceSquared = 0.001; var coul = this.repulsion / distanceSquared; return new Point(coul * (vertex1.x-vertex2.x),coul * (vertex1.y-vertex2.y), coul * (vertex1.z-vertex2.z)); } ForceLayout.prototype.animate=function(){ if(this.animating) this.animationID=requestAnimationFrame(this.animate.bind(this)); this.draw(); } ForceLayout.prototype.cancelAnimation=function(){ cancelAnimationFrame(this.animationID); this.animating=false; } ForceLayout.prototype.redraw=function(){ this.animating=true; this.animate(); } $(document).ready(function(){ var g= new Graph(); for(var i=0;i<=100;i++){ var v1=new Vertex(Math.random(), {}) var v2=new Vertex(Math.random(), {}) var e1= new Edge(v1.id,v2.id); g.addEdge(e1); } console.log(g); var l=new ForceLayout({ graph:g }); l.redraw(); });

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ASP.NET Creating a Rich Repeater, DataBind wiping out custom added controls...

- by tonyellard

So...I had this clever idea that I'd create my own Repeater control that implements paging and sorting by inheriting from Repeater and extending it's capabilities. I found some information and bits and pieces on how to go about this and everything seemed ok... I created a WebControlLibrary to house my custom controls. Along with the enriched repeater, I created a composite control that would act as the "pager bar", having forward, back and page selection. My pager bar works 100% on it's own, properly firing a paged changed event when the user interacts with it. The rich repeater databinds without issue, but when the databind fires (when I call base.databind()), the control collection is cleared out and my pager bars are removed. This screws up the viewstate for the pager bars making them unable to fire their events properly or maintain their state. I've tried adding the controls back to the collection after base.databind() fires, but that doesn't solve the issue. I start to get very strange results including problems with altering the hierarchy of the control tree (resolved by adding [ViewStateModeById]). Before I go back to the drawing board and create a second composite control which contains a repeater and the pager bars (so that the repeater isn't responsible for the pager bars viewstate) are there any thoughts about how to resolve the issue? In the interest of share and share alike, the code for the repeater itself is below, the pagerbars aren't as significant as the issue is really the maintaining of state for any additional child controls. (forgive the roughness of some of the code...it's still a work in progress) using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Text; using System.Data; using System.Web; using System.Web.UI; using System.Web.UI.WebControls; [ViewStateModeById] public class SortablePagedRepeater : Repeater, INamingContainer { private SuperRepeaterPagerBar topBar = new SuperRepeaterPagerBar(); private SuperRepeaterPagerBar btmBar = new SuperRepeaterPagerBar(); protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e) { Page.RegisterRequiresControlState(this); InitializeControls(); base.OnInit(e); EnsureChildControls(); } protected void InitializeControls() { topBar.ID = this.ID + "__topPagerBar"; topBar.NumberOfPages = this._currentProperties.numOfPages; topBar.CurrentPage = this.CurrentPageNumber; topBar.PageChanged += new SuperRepeaterPagerBar.PageChangedEventHandler(PageChanged); btmBar.ID = this.ID + "__btmPagerBar"; btmBar.NumberOfPages = this._currentProperties.numOfPages; btmBar.CurrentPage = this.CurrentPageNumber; btmBar.PageChanged += new SuperRepeaterPagerBar.PageChangedEventHandler(PageChanged); } protected override void CreateChildControls() { EnsureDataBound(); this.Controls.Add(topBar); this.Controls.Add(btmBar); //base.CreateChildControls(); } private void PageChanged(object sender, int newPage) { this.CurrentPageNumber = newPage; } public override void DataBind() { //pageDataSource(); //DataBind removes all controls from control collection... base.DataBind(); Controls.Add(topBar); Controls.Add(btmBar); } private void pageDataSource() { //Create paged data source PagedDataSource pds = new PagedDataSource(); pds.PageSize = this.ItemsPerPage; pds.AllowPaging = true; // first get a PagedDataSource going and perform sort if possible... if (base.DataSource is System.Collections.IEnumerable) { pds.DataSource = (System.Collections.IEnumerable)base.DataSource; } else if (base.DataSource is System.Data.DataView) { DataView data = (DataView)DataSource; if (this.SortBy != null && data.Table.Columns.Contains(this.SortBy)) { data.Sort = this.SortBy; } pds.DataSource = data.Table.Rows; } else if (base.DataSource is System.Data.DataTable) { DataTable data = (DataTable)DataSource; if (this.SortBy != null && data.Columns.Contains(this.SortBy)) { data.DefaultView.Sort = this.SortBy; } pds.DataSource = data.DefaultView; } else if (base.DataSource is System.Data.DataSet) { DataSet data = (DataSet)DataSource; if (base.DataMember != null && data.Tables.Contains(base.DataMember)) { if (this.SortBy != null && data.Tables[base.DataMember].Columns.Contains(this.SortBy)) { data.Tables[base.DataMember].DefaultView.Sort = this.SortBy; } pds.DataSource = data.Tables[base.DataMember].DefaultView; } else if (data.Tables.Count > 0) { if (this.SortBy != null && data.Tables[0].Columns.Contains(this.SortBy)) { data.Tables[0].DefaultView.Sort = this.SortBy; } pds.DataSource = data.Tables[0].DefaultView; } else { throw new Exception("DataSet doesn't have any tables."); } } else if (base.DataSource == null) { // don't do anything? } else { throw new Exception("DataSource must be of type System.Collections.IEnumerable. The DataSource you provided is of type " + base.DataSource.GetType().ToString()); } if (pds != null && base.DataSource != null) { //Make sure that the page doesn't exceed the maximum number of pages //available if (this.CurrentPageNumber >= pds.PageCount) { this.CurrentPageNumber = pds.PageCount - 1; } //Set up paging values... btmBar.CurrentPage = topBar.CurrentPage = pds.CurrentPageIndex = this.CurrentPageNumber; this._currentProperties.numOfPages = btmBar.NumberOfPages = topBar.NumberOfPages = pds.PageCount; base.DataSource = pds; } } public override object DataSource { get { return base.DataSource; } set { //init(); //reset paging/sorting values since we've potentially changed data sources. base.DataSource = value; pageDataSource(); } } protected override void Render(HtmlTextWriter writer) { topBar.RenderControl(writer); base.Render(writer); btmBar.RenderControl(writer); } [Serializable] protected struct CurrentProperties { public int pageNum; public int itemsPerPage; public int numOfPages; public string sortBy; public bool sortDir; } protected CurrentProperties _currentProperties = new CurrentProperties(); protected override object SaveControlState() { return this._currentProperties; } protected override void LoadControlState(object savedState) { this._currentProperties = (CurrentProperties)savedState; } [Category("Status")] [Browsable(true)] [NotifyParentProperty(true)] [DefaultValue("")] [Localizable(false)] public string SortBy { get { return this._currentProperties.sortBy; } set { //If sorting by the same column, swap the sort direction. if (this._currentProperties.sortBy == value) { this.SortAscending = !this.SortAscending; } else { this.SortAscending = true; } this._currentProperties.sortBy = value; } } [Category("Status")] [Browsable(true)] [NotifyParentProperty(true)] [DefaultValue(true)] [Localizable(false)] public bool SortAscending { get { return this._currentProperties.sortDir; } set { this._currentProperties.sortDir = value; } } [Category("Status")] [Browsable(true)] [NotifyParentProperty(true)] [DefaultValue(25)] [Localizable(false)] public int ItemsPerPage { get { return this._currentProperties.itemsPerPage; } set { this._currentProperties.itemsPerPage = value; } } [Category("Status")] [Browsable(true)] [NotifyParentProperty(true)] [DefaultValue(1)] [Localizable(false)] public int CurrentPageNumber { get { return this._currentProperties.pageNum; } set { this._currentProperties.pageNum = value; pageDataSource(); } } }

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Need guidance on a Google Map application that has to show 250 000 polylines.

- by lucian.jp

I am looking for advice for an application I am developing that uses Google Map. Summary: A user has a list of criteria for searching a street segment that fulfills the criteria. The street segments will be colored with 3 colors for showing those below average, average and over average. Then the user clicks on the street segment to see an information window showing the properties of that specific segment hiding those not selected until he/she closes the window and other polyline becomes visible again. This looks quite like the Monopoly City Streets game Hasbro made some month ago the difference being I do not use Flash, I can’t use Open Street Map because it doesn’t list street segment (if it does the IDs won’t be the same anyway) and I do not have to show Google sketch building over. Information: I have a database of street segments with IDs, polyline points and centroid. The database has 6,000,000 street segment records in it. To narrow the generated data a bit we focus on city. The largest city we must show has 250,000 street segments. This means 250,000 line segment polyline to show. Our longest polyline uses 9600 characters which is stored in two 8000 varchar columns in SQL Server 2008. We need to use the API v3 because it is faster than the API v2 and the application will be ported to iPhone. For now it's an ASP.NET 3.5 with SQl Server 2008 application. Performance is a priority. Problems: Most of the demo projects that do this are made with API v2. So besides tutorial on the Google API v3 reference page I have nothing to compare performance or technology use to achieve my goal. There is no available .NET wrapper for the API v3 yet. Generating a 250,000 line segment polyline creates a heavy file which takes time to transfer and parse. (I have found a demo of one polyline of 390,000 points. I think the encoder would be far less efficient with more polylines with less points since there will be less rounding.) Since streets segments are shown based on criteria, polylines must be dynamically created and cache can't be used. Some thoughts: KML/KMZ: Pros: Since it is a standard we can easily load Bing maps, Yahoo! maps, Google maps, Google Earth, with the same KML file. The data generation would be the same. Cons: LineString in KML cannot be encoded polyline like the Google map API can handle. So it would probably be bigger and slower to display. Zipping the file at the size it will take more processing time and require the client side to uncompress the data and I am not quite sure with 250,000 data how an iPhone would handle this and how a server would handle 40 users browsing at the same time. JavaScript file: Pros: JavaScript file can have encoded polyline and would significantly reduce the file to transfer. Cons: Have to create my own stripped version of API v3 to add overlays, create polyline, etc. It is more complex than just create a KML file and point to the source. GeoRSS: This option isn't adapted for my needs I think, but I could be wrong. MapServer: I saw some post suggesting using MapServer to generate overlays. Not quite sure for the connection with our database and the performance it would give. Plus it requires a plugin for generating KML. It seems to me that it wouldn't allow me to do better than creating my own KML or JavaScript file. Maintenance would be simpler without. Monopoly City Streets: The game is now over, but for those who know what I am talking about Monopoly City Streets was showing at max zoom level only the streets that the centroid was inside the Bounds of the window. Moving the map was sending request to the server for the new streets to show. While I think this was ingenious, I have no idea how to implement something similar. The only thing I thought about was to compare if the long was inside the bound of map area X and same with Y. While this could improve performance significantly at high zoom level, this would give nothing when showing a whole city. Clustering: While cluster is awesome for marker, it seems we cannot cluster polylines. I would have liked something like MarkerClusterer for polylines and be able to cluster by my 3 polyline colors. This will probably stay as a “would have been freaking awesome but forget it”. Arrow: I will have in a future version to show a direction for the polyline and will have to show an arrow at the centroid. Loading an image or marker will only double my data so creating a custom overlay will probably be my only option. I have found that demo for something similar I would like to achieve. Unfortunately, the demo is very slow, but I only wish to show 1 arrow per polyline and not multiple like the demo. This functionality will depend on the format of data since I don't think KML support custom overlays. Criteria: While the application is done with ASP.NET 3.5, the port to the iPhone won't use the web to show the application and be limited in screen size for selecting the criteria. This is why I was more orienting on a service or page generating the file based on criteria passed in parameters. The service would than generate the file I need to display the polylines on the map. I could also create an aspx page that does this. The aspx page is more documented than the service way. There should be a reason. Questions: Should I create a web service to returns the street segments file or create an aspx page that return the file? Should I create a JavaScript file with encoded polyline or a KML with longitude/latitude based on the fact that maximum longitude/latitude polyline have 9600 characters and I have to render maximum 250,000 line segment polyline. Or should I go with a MapServer that generate the overlay? Will I be able to display simple arrow on the polyline on the next version. In case of KML generation is it faster to create the file with XDocument, XmlDocument, XmlWriter and this manually or just serialize the street segment in the stream? This is more a brainstorming Stack Overflow question than an actual code problem. Any answer helping narrow the possibilities is as good as someone having all the knowledge to point me out a better choice.

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What is the fastest cyclic synchronization in Java (ExecutorService vs. CyclicBarrier vs. X)?

- by Alex Dunlop

Which Java synchronization construct is likely to provide the best performance for a concurrent, iterative processing scenario with a fixed number of threads like the one outlined below? After experimenting on my own for a while (using ExecutorService and CyclicBarrier) and being somewhat surprised by the results, I would be grateful for some expert advice and maybe some new ideas. Existing questions here do not seem to focus primarily on performance, hence this new one. Thanks in advance! The core of the app is a simple iterative data processing algorithm, parallelized to the spread the computational load across 8 cores on a Mac Pro, running OS X 10.6 and Java 1.6.0_07. The data to be processed is split into 8 blocks and each block is fed to a Runnable to be executed by one of a fixed number of threads. Parallelizing the algorithm was fairly straightforward, and it functionally works as desired, but its performance is not yet what I think it could be. The app seems to spend a lot of time in system calls synchronizing, so after some profiling I wonder whether I selected the most appropriate synchronization mechanism(s). A key requirement of the algorithm is that it needs to proceed in stages, so the threads need to sync up at the end of each stage. The main thread prepares the work (very low overhead), passes it to the threads, lets them work on it, then proceeds when all threads are done, rearranges the work (again very low overhead) and repeats the cycle. The machine is dedicated to this task, Garbage Collection is minimized by using per-thread pools of pre-allocated items, and the number of threads can be fixed (no incoming requests or the like, just one thread per CPU core). V1 - ExecutorService My first implementation used an ExecutorService with 8 worker threads. The program creates 8 tasks holding the work and then lets them work on it, roughly like this: // create one thread per CPU executorService = Executors.newFixedThreadPool( 8 ); ... // now process data in cycles while( ...) { // package data into 8 work items ... // create one Callable task per work item ... // submit the Callables to the worker threads executorService.invokeAll( taskList ); } This works well functionally (it does what it should), and for very large work items indeed all 8 CPUs become highly loaded, as much as the processing algorithm would be expected to allow (some work items will finish faster than others, then idle). However, as the work items become smaller (and this is not really under the program's control), the user CPU load shrinks dramatically: blocksize | system | user | cycles/sec 256k 1.8% 85% 1.30 64k 2.5% 77% 5.6 16k 4% 64% 22.5 4096 8% 56% 86 1024 13% 38% 227 256 17% 19% 420 64 19% 17% 948 16 19% 13% 1626 Legend: - block size = size of the work item (= computational steps) - system = system load, as shown in OS X Activity Monitor (red bar) - user = user load, as shown in OS X Activity Monitor (green bar) - cycles/sec = iterations through the main while loop, more is better The primary area of concern here is the high percentage of time spent in the system, which appears to be driven by thread synchronization calls. As expected, for smaller work items, ExecutorService.invokeAll() will require relatively more effort to sync up the threads versus the amount of work being performed in each thread. But since ExecutorService is more generic than it would need to be for this use case (it can queue tasks for threads if there are more tasks than cores), I though maybe there would be a leaner synchronization construct. V2 - CyclicBarrier The next implementation used a CyclicBarrier to sync up the threads before receiving work and after completing it, roughly as follows: main() { // create the barrier barrier = new CyclicBarrier( 8 + 1 ); // create Runable for thread, tell it about the barrier Runnable task = new WorkerThreadRunnable( barrier ); // start the threads for( int i = 0; i < 8; i++ ) { // create one thread per core new Thread( task ).start(); } while( ... ) { // tell threads about the work ... // N threads + this will call await(), then system proceeds barrier.await(); // ... now worker threads work on the work... // wait for worker threads to finish barrier.await(); } } class WorkerThreadRunnable implements Runnable { CyclicBarrier barrier; WorkerThreadRunnable( CyclicBarrier barrier ) { this.barrier = barrier; } public void run() { while( true ) { // wait for work barrier.await(); // do the work ... // wait for everyone else to finish barrier.await(); } } } Again, this works well functionally (it does what it should), and for very large work items indeed all 8 CPUs become highly loaded, as before. However, as the work items become smaller, the load still shrinks dramatically: blocksize | system | user | cycles/sec 256k 1.9% 85% 1.30 64k 2.7% 78% 6.1 16k 5.5% 52% 25 4096 9% 29% 64 1024 11% 15% 117 256 12% 8% 169 64 12% 6.5% 285 16 12% 6% 377 For large work items, synchronization is negligible and the performance is identical to V1. But unexpectedly, the results of the (highly specialized) CyclicBarrier seem MUCH WORSE than those for the (generic) ExecutorService: throughput (cycles/sec) is only about 1/4th of V1. A preliminary conclusion would be that even though this seems to be the advertised ideal use case for CyclicBarrier, it performs much worse than the generic ExecutorService. V3 - Wait/Notify + CyclicBarrier It seemed worth a try to replace the first cyclic barrier await() with a simple wait/notify mechanism: main() { // create the barrier // create Runable for thread, tell it about the barrier // start the threads while( ... ) { // tell threads about the work // for each: workerThreadRunnable.setWorkItem( ... ); // ... now worker threads work on the work... // wait for worker threads to finish barrier.await(); } } class WorkerThreadRunnable implements Runnable { CyclicBarrier barrier; @NotNull volatile private Callable<Integer> workItem; WorkerThreadRunnable( CyclicBarrier barrier ) { this.barrier = barrier; this.workItem = NO_WORK; } final protected void setWorkItem( @NotNull final Callable<Integer> callable ) { synchronized( this ) { workItem = callable; notify(); } } public void run() { while( true ) { // wait for work while( true ) { synchronized( this ) { if( workItem != NO_WORK ) break; try { wait(); } catch( InterruptedException e ) { e.printStackTrace(); } } } // do the work ... // wait for everyone else to finish barrier.await(); } } } Again, this works well functionally (it does what it should). blocksize | system | user | cycles/sec 256k 1.9% 85% 1.30 64k 2.4% 80% 6.3 16k 4.6% 60% 30.1 4096 8.6% 41% 98.5 1024 12% 23% 202 256 14% 11.6% 299 64 14% 10.0% 518 16 14.8% 8.7% 679 The throughput for small work items is still much worse than that of the ExecutorService, but about 2x that of the CyclicBarrier. Eliminating one CyclicBarrier eliminates half of the gap. V4 - Busy wait instead of wait/notify Since this app is the primary one running on the system and the cores idle anyway if they're not busy with a work item, why not try a busy wait for work items in each thread, even if that spins the CPU needlessly. The worker thread code changes as follows: class WorkerThreadRunnable implements Runnable { // as before final protected void setWorkItem( @NotNull final Callable<Integer> callable ) { workItem = callable; } public void run() { while( true ) { // busy-wait for work while( true ) { if( workItem != NO_WORK ) break; } // do the work ... // wait for everyone else to finish barrier.await(); } } } Also works well functionally (it does what it should). blocksize | system | user | cycles/sec 256k 1.9% 85% 1.30 64k 2.2% 81% 6.3 16k 4.2% 62% 33 4096 7.5% 40% 107 1024 10.4% 23% 210 256 12.0% 12.0% 310 64 11.9% 10.2% 550 16 12.2% 8.6% 741 For small work items, this increases throughput by a further 10% over the CyclicBarrier + wait/notify variant, which is not insignificant. But it is still much lower-throughput than V1 with the ExecutorService. V5 - ? So what is the best synchronization mechanism for such a (presumably not uncommon) problem? I am weary of writing my own sync mechanism to completely replace ExecutorService (assuming that it is too generic and there has to be something that can still be taken out to make it more efficient). It is not my area of expertise and I'm concerned that I'd spend a lot of time debugging it (since I'm not even sure my wait/notify and busy wait variants are correct) for uncertain gain. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

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vertical accordion from horizontal

- by Sify Juhy

//# jQuery - Horizontal Accordion //# Version 2.00.00 Alpha 1 //# //# portalZINE(R) - New Media Network //# http://www.portalzine.de //# //# Alexander Graef //# [email protected] //# //# Copyright 2007-2009 (function($) { $.hrzAccordion = { setOnEvent: function(i, container, finalWidth, settings){ $("#"+container+"Handle"+i).bind(settings.eventTrigger,function() { var status = $('[rel='+container+'ContainerSelected]').data('status'); if(status ==1 && settings.eventWaitForAnim === true){ return false; } if( $("#"+container+"Handle"+i).attr("rel") != container+"HandleSelected"){ settings.eventAction; $('[id*='+container+'Handle]').attr("rel",""); $('[id*='+container+'Handle]').attr("class",settings.handleClass); $("#"+container+"Handle"+i).addClass(settings.handleClassSelected); $("."+settings.contentWrapper).css({width: finalWidth+"px" }); switch(settings.closeOpenAnimation) { case 1: if($('[rel='+container+'ContainerSelected]').get(0) ){ $('[rel='+container+'ContainerSelected]').data('status',1); //current_width = $('[rel='+container+'ContainerSelected]').width(); $('[rel='+container+'ContainerSelected]').animate({width: "0px",opacity:"0"}, { queue:true, duration:settings.closeSpeed ,easing:settings.closeEaseAction,complete: function(){ $('[rel='+container+'ContainerSelected]').data('status',0); } ,step: function(now){ width = $(this).width(); //new_width = finalWidth- (finalWidth * (width/current_width)); new_width = finalWidth - width; $('#'+container+'Content'+i).width(Math.ceil(new_width)).css("opacity","1"); }}); }else{ $('[rel='+container+'ContainerSelected]').data('status',1); $('#'+container+'Content'+i).animate({width: finalWidth,opacity:"1"}, { queue:false, duration:settings.closeSpeed ,easing:settings.closeEaseAction,complete: function(){ $('[rel='+container+'ContainerSelected]').data('status',0); }}); } break; case 2: $('[id*='+container+'Content]').css({width: "0px"}); $('#'+container+'Content'+i).animate({width: finalWidth+"px",opacity:"1"}, { queue:false, duration:settings.openSpeed ,easing:settings.openEaseAction, complete: settings.completeAction }); break; } $('[id*='+container+'Content]').attr("rel",""); $("#"+container+"Handle"+i).attr("rel",container+"HandleSelected"); $("#"+container+"Content"+i).attr("rel",container+"ContainerSelected"); } }); } }; $.fn.extend({ hrzAccordionLoop: function(options) { return this.each(function(a){ var container = $(this).attr("id") || $(this).attr("class"); var elementCount = $('#'+container+' > li, .'+container+' > li').size(); var settings = $(this).data('settings'); variable_holder="interval"+container ; var i =0; var loopStatus = "start"; variable_holder = window.setInterval(function(){ $("#"+container+"Handle"+i).trigger(settings.eventTrigger); if(loopStatus =="start"){ i = i + 1; }else{ i = i-1; } if(i==elementCount && loopStatus == "start"){ loopStatus = "end"; i=elementCount-1; } if(i==0 && loopStatus == "end"){ loopStatus = "start"; i=0; } },settings.cycleInterval); }); }, hrzAccordion: function(options) { this.settings = { eventTrigger : "click", containerClass : "container", listItemClass : "listItem", contentContainerClass : "contentContainer", contentWrapper : "contentWrapper", contentInnerWrapper : "contentInnerWrapper", handleClass : "handle", handleClassOver : "handleOver", handleClassSelected : "handleSelected", handlePosition : "right", handlePositionArray : "", // left,left,right,right,right closeEaseAction : "swing", closeSpeed : 500, openEaseAction : "swing", openSpeed : 500, openOnLoad : 2, hashPrefix : "tab", eventAction : function(){ //add your own extra clickAction function here }, completeAction : function(){ //add your own onComplete function here }, closeOpenAnimation : 1,// 1 - open and close at the same time / 2- close all and than open next cycle : false, // not integrated yet, will allow to cycle through tabs by interval cycleInterval : 10000, fixedWidth : "", eventWaitForAnim : true }; if(options){ $.extend(this.settings, options); } var settings = this.settings; return this.each(function(a){ var container = $(this).attr("id") || $(this).attr("class"); $(this).data('settings', settings); $(this).wrap("<div class='"+settings.containerClass+"'></div>"); var elementCount = $('#'+container+' > li, .'+container+' > li').size(); var containerWidth = $("."+settings.containerClass).width(); var handleWidth = $("."+settings.handleClass).css("width"); handleWidth = handleWidth.replace(/px/,""); var finalWidth; var handle; if(settings.fixedWidth){ finalWidth = settings.fixedWidth; }else{ finalWidth = containerWidth-(elementCount*handleWidth)-handleWidth; } $('#'+container+' > li, .'+container+' > li').each(function(i) { $(this).attr('id', container+"ListItem"+i); $(this).attr('class',settings.listItemClass); $(this).html("<div class='"+settings.contentContainerClass+"' id='"+container+"Content"+i+"'>" +"<div class=\""+settings.contentWrapper+"\">" +"<div class=\""+settings.contentInnerWrapper+"\">" +$(this).html() +"</div></div></div>"); if($("div",this).hasClass(settings.handleClass)){ var html = $("div."+settings.handleClass,this).attr("id",""+container+"Handle"+i+"").html(); $("div."+settings.handleClass,this).remove(); handle = "<div class=\""+settings.handleClass+"\" id='"+container+"Handle"+i+"'>"+html+"</div>"; }else{ handle = "<div class=\""+settings.handleClass+"\" id='"+container+"Handle"+i+"'></div>"; } if(settings.handlePositionArray){ splitthis = settings.handlePositionArray.split(","); settings.handlePosition = splitthis[i]; } switch(settings.handlePosition ){ case "left": $(this).prepend( handle ); break; case "right": $(this).append( handle ); break; case "top": $("."+container+"Top").append( handle ); break; case "bottom": $("."+container+"Bottom").append( handle ); break; } $("#"+container+"Handle"+i).bind("mouseover", function(){ $("#"+container+"Handle"+i).addClass(settings.handleClassOver); }); $("#"+container+"Handle"+i).bind("mouseout", function(){ if( $("#"+container+"Handle"+i).attr("rel") != "selected"){ $("#"+container+"Handle"+i).removeClass(settings.handleClassOver); } }); $.hrzAccordion.setOnEvent(i, container, finalWidth, settings); if(i == elementCount-1){ $('#'+container+",."+container).show(); } if(settings.openOnLoad !== false && i == elementCount-1){ var location_hash = location.hash; location_hash = location_hash.replace("#", ""); if(location_hash.search(settings.hashPrefix) != '-1' ){ var tab = 1; location_hash = location_hash.replace(settings.hashPrefix, ""); } if(location_hash && tab ==1){ $("#"+container+"Handle"+(location_hash)).attr("rel",container+"HandleSelected"); $("#"+container+"Content"+(location_hash)).attr("rel",container+"ContainerSelected"); $("#"+container+"Handle"+(location_hash-1)).trigger(settings.eventTrigger); }else{ $("#"+container+"Handle"+(settings.openOnLoad)).attr("rel",container+"HandleSelected"); $("#"+container+"Content"+(settings.openOnLoad)).attr("rel",container+"ContainerSelected"); $("#"+container+"Handle"+(settings.openOnLoad-1)).trigger(settings.eventTrigger); } } }); if(settings.cycle === true){ $(this).hrzAccordionLoop(); } }); } }); })(jQuery); **Given is the code used for the accordion...please check out this Accordion Link. in the link there are four examples of accordions. i want the last accordion i.e example 4 to be vertical ...kindly help me.

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What is correct HTTP status code when redirecting to a login page?

- by PHP_Jedi

When a user is not logged in and tries to access an page that requires login, what is the correct HTTP status code for a redirect to the login page? I don't feel that any of the 3xx fit that description. 10.3.1 300 Multiple Choices The requested resource corresponds to any one of a set of representations, each with its own specific location, and agent- driven negotiation information (section 12) is being provided so that the user (or user agent) can select a preferred representation and redirect its request to that location. Unless it was a HEAD request, the response SHOULD include an entity containing a list of resource characteristics and location(s) from which the user or user agent can choose the one most appropriate. The entity format is specified by the media type given in the Content- Type header field. Depending upon the format and the capabilities of the user agent, selection of the most appropriate choice MAY be performed automatically. However, this specification does not define any standard for such automatic selection. If the server has a preferred choice of representation, it SHOULD include the specific URI for that representation in the Location field; user agents MAY use the Location field value for automatic redirection. This response is cacheable unless indicated otherwise. 10.3.2 301 Moved Permanently The requested resource has been assigned a new permanent URI and any future references to this resource SHOULD use one of the returned URIs. Clients with link editing capabilities ought to automatically re-link references to the Request-URI to one or more of the new references returned by the server, where possible. This response is cacheable unless indicated otherwise. The new permanent URI SHOULD be given by the Location field in the response. Unless the request method was HEAD, the entity of the response SHOULD contain a short hypertext note with a hyperlink to the new URI(s). If the 301 status code is received in response to a request other than GET or HEAD, the user agent MUST NOT automatically redirect the request unless it can be confirmed by the user, since this might change the conditions under which the request was issued. Note: When automatically redirecting a POST request after receiving a 301 status code, some existing HTTP/1.0 user agents will erroneously change it into a GET request. 10.3.3 302 Found The requested resource resides temporarily under a different URI. Since the redirection might be altered on occasion, the client SHOULD continue to use the Request-URI for future requests. This response is only cacheable if indicated by a Cache-Control or Expires header field. The temporary URI SHOULD be given by the Location field in the response. Unless the request method was HEAD, the entity of the response SHOULD contain a short hypertext note with a hyperlink to the new URI(s). If the 302 status code is received in response to a request other than GET or HEAD, the user agent MUST NOT automatically redirect the request unless it can be confirmed by the user, since this might change the conditions under which the request was issued. Note: RFC 1945 and RFC 2068 specify that the client is not allowed to change the method on the redirected request. However, most existing user agent implementations treat 302 as if it were a 303 response, performing a GET on the Location field-value regardless of the original request method. The status codes 303 and 307 have been added for servers that wish to make unambiguously clear which kind of reaction is expected of the client. 10.3.4 303 See Other The response to the request can be found under a different URI and SHOULD be retrieved using a GET method on that resource. This method exists primarily to allow the output of a POST-activated script to redirect the user agent to a selected resource. The new URI is not a substitute reference for the originally requested resource. The 303 response MUST NOT be cached, but the response to the second (redirected) request might be cacheable. The different URI SHOULD be given by the Location field in the response. Unless the request method was HEAD, the entity of the response SHOULD contain a short hypertext note with a hyperlink to the new URI(s). Note: Many pre-HTTP/1.1 user agents do not understand the 303 status. When interoperability with such clients is a concern, the 302 status code may be used instead, since most user agents react to a 302 response as described here for 303. 10.3.5 304 Not Modified If the client has performed a conditional GET request and access is allowed, but the document has not been modified, the server SHOULD respond with this status code. The 304 response MUST NOT contain a message-body, and thus is always terminated by the first empty line after the header fields. The response MUST include the following header fields: - Date, unless its omission is required by section 14.18.1 If a clockless origin server obeys these rules, and proxies and clients add their own Date to any response received without one (as already specified by [RFC 2068], section 14.19), caches will operate correctly. - ETag and/or Content-Location, if the header would have been sent in a 200 response to the same request - Expires, Cache-Control, and/or Vary, if the field-value might differ from that sent in any previous response for the same variant If the conditional GET used a strong cache validator (see section 13.3.3), the response SHOULD NOT include other entity-headers. Otherwise (i.e., the conditional GET used a weak validator), the response MUST NOT include other entity-headers; this prevents inconsistencies between cached entity-bodies and updated headers. If a 304 response indicates an entity not currently cached, then the cache MUST disregard the response and repeat the request without the conditional. If a cache uses a received 304 response to update a cache entry, the cache MUST update the entry to reflect any new field values given in the response. 10.3.6 305 Use Proxy The requested resource MUST be accessed through the proxy given by the Location field. The Location field gives the URI of the proxy. The recipient is expected to repeat this single request via the proxy. 305 responses MUST only be generated by origin servers. Note: RFC 2068 was not clear that 305 was intended to redirect a single request, and to be generated by origin servers only. Not observing these limitations has significant security consequences. 10.3.7 306 (Unused) The 306 status code was used in a previous version of the specification, is no longer used, and the code is reserved. 10.3.8 307 Temporary Redirect The requested resource resides temporarily under a different URI. Since the redirection MAY be altered on occasion, the client SHOULD continue to use the Request-URI for future requests. This response is only cacheable if indicated by a Cache-Control or Expires header field. The temporary URI SHOULD be given by the Location field in the response. Unless the request method was HEAD, the entity of the response SHOULD contain a short hypertext note with a hyperlink to the new URI(s) , since many pre-HTTP/1.1 user agents do not understand the 307 status. Therefore, the note SHOULD contain the information necessary for a user to repeat the original request on the new URI. If the 307 status code is received in response to a request other than GET or HEAD, the user agent MUST NOT automatically redirect the request unless it can be confirmed by the user, since this might change the conditions under which the request was issued. I'm using 302 for now, until I find THE correct answer.

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Dealing with external processes

- by Jesse Aldridge

I've been working on a gui app that needs to manage external processes. Working with external processes leads to a lot of issues that can make a programmer's life difficult. I feel like maintenence on this app is taking an unacceptably long time. I've been trying to list the things that make working with external processes difficult so that I can come up with ways of mitigating the pain. This kind of turned into a rant which I thought I'd post here in order to get some feedback and to provide some guidance to anybody thinking about sailing into these very murky waters. Here's what I've got so far: Output from the child can get mixed up with output from the parent. This can make both outputs misleading and hard to read. It can be hard to tell what came from where. It becomes harder to figure out what's going on when things are asynchronous. Here's a contrived example: import textwrap, os, time from subprocess import Popen test_path = 'test_file.py' with open(test_path, 'w') as file: file.write(textwrap.dedent(''' import time for i in range(3): print 'Hello %i' % i time.sleep(1)''')) proc = Popen('python -B "%s"' % test_path) for i in range(3): print 'Hello %i' % i time.sleep(1) os.remove(test_path) I guess I could have the child process write its output to a file. But it can be annoying to have to open up a file every time I want to see the result of a print statement. If I have code for the child process I could add a label, something like print 'child: Hello %i', but it can be annoying to do that for every print. And it adds some noise to the output. And of course I can't do it if I don't have access to the code. I could manually manage the process output. But then you open up a huge can of worms with threads and polling and stuff like that. A simple solution is to treat processes like synchronous functions, that is, no further code executes until the process completes. In other words, make the process block. But that doesn't work if you're building a gui app. Which brings me to the next problem... Blocking processes cause the gui to become unresponsive. import textwrap, sys, os from subprocess import Popen from PyQt4.QtGui import * from PyQt4.QtCore import * test_path = 'test_file.py' with open(test_path, 'w') as file: file.write(textwrap.dedent(''' import time for i in range(3): print 'Hello %i' % i time.sleep(1)''')) app = QApplication(sys.argv) button = QPushButton('Launch process') def launch_proc(): # Can't move the window until process completes proc = Popen('python -B "%s"' % test_path) proc.communicate() button.connect(button, SIGNAL('clicked()'), launch_proc) button.show() app.exec_() os.remove(test_path) Qt provides a process wrapper of its own called QProcess which can help with this. You can connect functions to signals to capture output relatively easily. This is what I'm currently using. But I'm finding that all these signals behave suspiciously like goto statements and can lead to spaghetti code. I think I want to get sort-of blocking behavior by having the 'finished' signal from QProcess call a function containing all the code that comes after the process call. I think that should work but I'm still a bit fuzzy on the details... Stack traces get interrupted when you go from the child process back to the parent process. If a normal function screws up, you get a nice complete stack trace with filenames and line numbers. If a subprocess screws up, you'll be lucky if you get any output at all. You end up having to do a lot more detective work everytime something goes wrong. Speaking of which, output has a way of disappearing when dealing external processes. Like if you run something via the windows 'cmd' command, the console will pop up, execute the code, and then disappear before you have a chance to see the output. You have to pass the /k flag to make it stick around. Similar issues seem to crop up all the time. I suppose both problems 3 and 4 have the same root cause: no exception handling. Exception handling is meant to be used with functions, it doesn't work with processes. Maybe there's some way to get something like exception handling for processes? I guess that's what stderr is for? But dealing with two different streams can be annoying in itself. Maybe I should look into this more... Processes can hang and stick around in the background without you realizing it. So you end up yelling at your computer cuz it's going so slow until you finally bring up your task manager and see 30 instances of the same process hanging out in the background. Also, hanging background processes can interefere with other instances of the process in various fun ways, such as causing permissions errors by holding a handle to a file or someting like that. It seems like an easy solution to this would be to have the parent process kill the child process on exit if the child process didn't close itself. But if the parent process crashes, cleanup code might not get called and the child can be left hanging. Also, if the parent waits for the child to complete, and the child is in an infinite loop or something, you can end up with two hanging processes. This problem can tie in to problem 2 for extra fun, causing your gui to stop responding entirely and force you to kill everything with the task manager. F***ing quotes Parameters often need to be passed to processes. This is a headache in itself. Especially if you're dealing with file paths. Say... 'C:/My Documents/whatever/'. If you don't have quotes, the string will often be split at the space and interpreted as two arguments. If you need nested quotes you can use ' and ". But if you need to use more than two layers of quotes, you have to do some nasty escaping, for example: "cmd /k 'python \'path 1\' \'path 2\''". A good solution to this problem is passing parameters as a list rather than as a single string. Subprocess allows you to do this. Can't easily return data from a subprocess. You can use stdout of course. But what if you want to throw a print in there for debugging purposes? That's gonna screw up the parent if it's expecting output formatted a certain way. In functions you can print one string and return another and everything works just fine. Obscure command-line flags and a crappy terminal based help system. These are problems I often run into when using os level apps. Like the /k flag I mentioned, for holding a cmd window open, who's idea was that? Unix apps don't tend to be much friendlier in this regard. Hopefully you can use google or StackOverflow to find the answer you need. But if not, you've got a lot of boring reading and frusterating trial and error to do. External factors. This one's kind of fuzzy. But when you leave the relatively sheltered harbor of your own scripts to deal with external processes you find yourself having to deal with the "outside world" to a much greater extent. And that's a scary place. All sorts of things can go wrong. Just to give a random example: the cwd in which a process is run can modify it's behavior. There are probably other issues, but those are the ones I've written down so far. Any other snags you'd like to add? Any suggestions for dealing with these problems?

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How to retrive message list from p2p

- by cre-johnny07

Hello friends I have a messaging system that uses p2p. Each peer has a incoming message list and a outgoing message list. What I need to do is whenever a new peer will join the mesh he will get the all the incoming messages from other peers and add those into it's own incoming message list. Now I know when I get the other peer info from I can ask them to give their own list to me. But I'm not finding the way how..? Any suggestion on this or help would be highly appreciated. I'm giving my code below. Thanking in Advance Johnny #region Instance Fields private string strOrigin = ""; //the chat member name private string m_Member; //the channel instance where we execute our service methods against private IServerChannel m_participant; //the instance context which in this case is our window since it is the service host private InstanceContext m_site; //our binding transport for the p2p mesh private NetPeerTcpBinding m_binding; //the factory to create our chat channel private ChannelFactory<IServerChannel> m_channelFactory; //an interface provided by the channel exposing events to indicate //when we have connected or disconnected from the mesh private IOnlineStatus o_statusHandler; //a generic delegate to execute a thread against that accepts no args private delegate void NoArgDelegate(); //an object to hold user details private IUserService userService; //an Observable Collection of object to get all the Application Instance Details in databas ObservableCollection<AppLoginInstance> appLoginInstances; // an Observable Collection of object to get all Incoming Messages types ObservableCollection<MessageType> inComingMessageTypes; // an Observable Collection of object to get all Outgoing Messages ObservableCollection<PDCL.ERP.DataModels.Message> outGoingMessages; // an Observable Collection of object to get all Incoming Messages ObservableCollection<PDCL.ERP.DataModels.Message> inComingMessages; //an Event Aggregator to publish event for other modules to subscribe private readonly IEventAggregator eventAggregator; /// <summary> /// an IUnityCOntainer to get the container /// </summary> private IUnityContainer container; private RefreshConnectionStatus refreshConnectionStatus; private RefreshConnectionStatusEventArgs args; private ReplyRequestMessage replyMessageRequest; private ReplyRequestMessageEventArgs eventsArgs; #endregion public P2pMessageService(IUserService UserService, IEventAggregator EventAggregator, IUnityContainer container) { userService = UserService; this.container = container; appLoginInstances = new ObservableCollection<AppLoginInstance>(); inComingMessageTypes = new ObservableCollection<MessageType>(); inComingMessages = new ObservableCollection<PDCL.ERP.DataModels.Message>(); outGoingMessages = new ObservableCollection<PDCL.ERP.DataModels.Message>(); this.args = new RefreshConnectionStatusEventArgs(); this.eventsArgs = new ReplyRequestMessageEventArgs(); this.eventAggregator = EventAggregator; this.refreshConnectionStatus = this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<RefreshConnectionStatus>(); this.replyMessageRequest = this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<ReplyRequestMessage>(); } #region IOnlineStatus Event Handlers void ostat_Offline(object sender, EventArgs e) { // we could update a status bar or animate an icon to //indicate to the user they have disconnected from the mesh //currently i don't have a "disconnect" button but adding it //should be trivial if you understand the rest of this code } void ostat_Online(object sender, EventArgs e) { try { m_participant.Join(userService.AppInstance); } catch (Exception Ex) { Logger.Exception(Ex, Ex.TargetSite.Name + ": " + Ex.TargetSite + ": " + Ex.Message); } } #endregion #region IServer Members //this method gets called from a background thread to //connect the service client to the p2p mesh specified //by the binding info in the app.config public void ConnectToMesh() { try { m_site = new InstanceContext(this); //use the binding from the app.config with default settings m_binding = new NetPeerTcpBinding("P2PMessageBinding"); m_channelFactory = new DuplexChannelFactory<IServerChannel>(m_site, "P2PMessageEndPoint"); m_participant = m_channelFactory.CreateChannel(); o_statusHandler = m_participant.GetProperty<IOnlineStatus>(); o_statusHandler.Online += new EventHandler(ostat_Online); o_statusHandler.Offline += new EventHandler(ostat_Offline); //m_participant.InitializeMesh(); //this.appLoginInstances.Add(this.userService.AppInstance); BackgroundWorkerHelper.DoWork<object>(() => { //this is an empty unhandled method on the service interface. //why? because for some reason p2p clients don't try to connect to the mesh //until the first service method call. so to facilitate connecting i call this method //to get the ball rolling. m_participant.InitializeMesh(); //SynchronizeMessage(this.inComingMessages); return new object(); }, arg => { }); this.appLoginInstances.Add(this.userService.AppInstance); } catch (Exception Ex) { Logger.Exception(Ex, Ex.TargetSite.Name + ": " + Ex.TargetSite + ": " + Ex.Message); } } public void Join(AppLoginInstance obj) { try { // Adding Instance to the PeerList if (appLoginInstances.SingleOrDefault(a => a.InstanceId == obj.InstanceId)==null) { appLoginInstances.Add(obj); this.refreshConnectionStatus.Publish(new RefreshConnectionStatusEventArgs() { Status = m_channelFactory.State }); } //this will retrieve any new members that have joined before the current user m_participant.SynchronizeMemberList(userService.AppInstance); } catch(Exception Ex) { Logger.Exception(Ex,Ex.TargetSite.Name + ": " + Ex.TargetSite + ": " + Ex.Message); } } /// <summary> /// Synchronizes member list /// </summary> /// <param name="obj">The AppLoginInstance Param</param> public void SynchronizeMemberList(AppLoginInstance obj) { //as member names come in we simply disregard duplicates and //add them to the member list, this way we can retrieve a list //of members already in the chatroom when we enter at any time. //again, since this is just an example this is the simplified //way to do things. the correct way would be to retrieve a list //of peernames and retrieve the metadata from each one which would //tell us what the member name is and add it. we would want to check //this list when we join the mesh to make sure our member name doesn't //conflict with someone else try { if (appLoginInstances.SingleOrDefault(a => a.InstanceId == obj.InstanceId) == null) { appLoginInstances.Add(obj); } } catch (Exception Ex) { Logger.Exception(Ex, Ex.TargetSite.Name + ": " + Ex.TargetSite + ": " + Ex.Message); } } /// <summary> /// This methos broadcasts the mesasge to all peers. /// </summary> /// <param name="msg">The whole message which is to be broadcasted</param> /// <param name="securityLevels"> Level of security</param> public void BroadCastMsg(PDCL.ERP.DataModels.Message msg, List<string> securityLevels) { try { foreach (string s in securityLevels) { if (this.userService.IsInRole(s)) { if (this.inComingMessages.Count == 0 && msg.CreatedByApp != this.userService.AppInstanceId) { this.inComingMessages.Add(msg); } else if (this.inComingMessages.SingleOrDefault(a => a.MessageId == msg.MessageId) == null && msg.CreatedByApp != this.userService.AppInstanceId) { this.inComingMessages.Add(msg); } } } } catch (Exception Ex) { Logger.Exception(Ex, Ex.TargetSite.Name + ": " + Ex.TargetSite + ": " + Ex.Message); } } /// <summary> /// /// </summary> /// <param name="msg">The Message to denyed</param> public void BroadCastReplyMsg(PDCL.ERP.DataModels.Message msg) { try { //if (this.inComingMessages.SingleOrDefault(a => a.MessageId == msg.MessageId) != null) //{ this.replyMessageRequest.Publish(new ReplyRequestMessageEventArgs() { Message = msg }); this.inComingMessages.Remove(this.inComingMessages.SingleOrDefault(o => o.MessageId == msg.MessageId)); //} } catch (Exception ex) { Logger.Exception(ex, ex.TargetSite.Name + ": " + ex.TargetSite + ": " + ex.Message); } } //again we need to sync the worker thread with the UI thread via Dispatcher public void Whisper(string Member, string MemberTo, string Message) { } public void InitializeMesh() { //do nothing } public void Leave(AppLoginInstance obj) { if (this.appLoginInstances.SingleOrDefault(a => a.InstanceId == obj.InstanceId) != null) { this.appLoginInstances.Remove(this.appLoginInstances.Single(a => a.InstanceId == obj.InstanceId)); } } //public void SynchronizeRemoveMemberList(AppLoginInstance obj) //{ // if (appLoginInstances.SingleOrDefault(a => a.InstanceId == obj.InstanceId) != null) // { // appLoginInstances.Remove(obj); // } //} #endregion

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how to display user name in login name control

- by user569285

I have a master page that holds the loginview content that appears on all subsequent pages based on the master page. i have a username control also nested in the loginview to display the name of the user when they are logged in. the code for the loginview from the master page is displayed as follows: <div class="loginView"> <asp:LoginView ID="MasterLoginView" runat="server"> <LoggedInTemplate> Welcome <span class="bold"><asp:LoginName ID="HeadLoginName" runat="server" /> <asp:Label ID="userNameLabel" runat="server" Text="Label"></asp:Label></span>! [ <asp:LoginStatus ID="HeadLoginStatus" runat="server" LogoutAction="Redirect" LogoutText="Log Out" LogoutPageUrl="~/Logout.aspx"/> ] <%--Welcome: <span class="bold"><asp:LoginName ID="MasterLoginName" runat="server" /> </span>!--%> </LoggedInTemplate> <AnonymousTemplate> Welcome: Guest [ <a href="~/Account/Login.aspx" ID="HeadLoginStatus" runat="server">Log In</a> ] </AnonymousTemplate> </asp:LoginView> <%--   [ <asp:LoginStatus ID="MasterLoginStatus" runat="server" LogoutAction="Redirect" LogoutPageUrl="~/Logout.aspx" /> ]  --%> </div> Since VS2010 launches with a default login page in the accounts folder, i didnt think it necessary to create a separate log in page, so i just used the same log in page. please find the code for the login control below: <asp:Login ID="LoginUser" runat="server" EnableViewState="false" RenderOuterTable="false"> <LayoutTemplate> <span class="failureNotification"> <asp:Literal ID="FailureText" runat="server"></asp:Literal> </span> <asp:ValidationSummary ID="LoginUserValidationSummary" runat="server" CssClass="failureNotification" ValidationGroup="LoginUserValidationGroup"/> <div class="accountInfo"> <fieldset class="login"> <legend style="text-align:left; font-size:1.2em; color:White;">Account Information</legend> <p style="text-align:left; font-size:1.2em; color:White;"> <asp:Label ID="UserNameLabel" runat="server" AssociatedControlID="UserName">User ID:</asp:Label> <asp:TextBox ID="UserName" runat="server" CssClass="textEntry"></asp:TextBox> <asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="UserNameRequired" runat="server" ControlToValidate="UserName" CssClass="failureNotification" ErrorMessage="User ID is required." ToolTip="User ID field is required." ValidationGroup="LoginUserValidationGroup">*</asp:RequiredFieldValidator> </p> <p style="text-align:left; font-size:1.2em; color:White;"> <asp:Label ID="PasswordLabel" runat="server" AssociatedControlID="Password">Password:</asp:Label> <asp:TextBox ID="Password" runat="server" CssClass="passwordEntry" TextMode="Password"></asp:TextBox> <asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="PasswordRequired" runat="server" ControlToValidate="Password" CssClass="failureNotification" ErrorMessage="Password is required." ToolTip="Password is required." ValidationGroup="LoginUserValidationGroup">*</asp:RequiredFieldValidator> </p> <p style="text-align:left; font-size:1.2em; color:White;"> <asp:CheckBox ID="RememberMe" runat="server"/> <asp:Label ID="RememberMeLabel" runat="server" AssociatedControlID="RememberMe" CssClass="inline">Keep me logged in</asp:Label> </p> </fieldset> <p class="submitButton"> <asp:Button ID="LoginButton" runat="server" CommandName="Login" Text="Log In" ValidationGroup="LoginUserValidationGroup" onclick="LoginButton_Click"/> </p> </div> </LayoutTemplate> </asp:Login> I then wrote my own code for authentication since i had my own database. the following displays the code in the login buttons click event.: public partial class Login : System.Web.UI.Page { //create string objects string userIDStr, pwrdStr; protected void LoginButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { //assign textbox items to string objects userIDStr = LoginUser.UserName.ToString(); pwrdStr = LoginUser.Password.ToString(); //SQL connection string string strConn; strConn = WebConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["CMSSQL3ConnectionString"].ConnectionString; SqlConnection Conn = new SqlConnection(strConn); //SqlDataSource CSMDataSource = new SqlDataSource(); // CSMDataSource.ConnectionString = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["CMSSQL3ConnectionString"].ToString(); //SQL select statement for comparison string sqlUserData; sqlUserData = "SELECT StaffID, StaffPassword, StaffFName, StaffLName, StaffType FROM Staffs"; sqlUserData += " WHERE (StaffID ='" + userIDStr + "')"; sqlUserData += " AND (StaffPassword ='" + pwrdStr + "')"; SqlCommand com = new SqlCommand(sqlUserData, Conn); SqlDataReader rdr; string usrdesc; string lname; string fname; string staffname; try { //string CurrentData; //CurrentData = (string)com.ExecuteScalar(); Conn.Open(); rdr = com.ExecuteReader(); rdr.Read(); usrdesc = (string)rdr["StaffType"]; fname = (string)rdr["StaffFName"]; lname = (string)rdr["StaffLName"]; staffname = lname.ToString() + " " + fname.ToString(); LoginUser.UserName = staffname.ToString(); rdr.Close(); if (usrdesc.ToLower() == "administrator") { Response.Redirect("~/CaseAdmin.aspx", false); } else if (usrdesc.ToLower() == "manager") { Response.Redirect("~/CaseManager.aspx", false); } else if (usrdesc.ToLower() == "investigator") { Response.Redirect("~/Investigator.aspx", false); } else { Response.Redirect("~/Default.aspx", false); } } catch(Exception ex) { string script = "<script>alert('" + ex.Message + "');</script>"; } finally { Conn.Close(); } } My authentication works perfectly and the page gets redirected to the designated destination. However, the login view does not display the users name. i actually cant figure out how to pass the users name that i had picked from the database to the login name control to be displayed. taking a close look i also noticed the logout text that should be displayed after successful log in does not show. that leaves me wondering if the loggedin template control on the masterpage even fires at all or its still the anonymous template control that keeps displaying.? How do i get this to work as expected? Please help....

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need prefuse graph edges like arrows

- by merve

Hello, I did my homework and searched both google for a sample and a topic that is answered before on stackoverflow. But nothing has been found. My problem is ordinary edges who does not have a view like arrows. Here is what i do to hope there is forward arrows from target to destination: LabelRenderer nameLabel = new LabelRenderer("name"); nameLabel.setRoundedCorner(8, 8); DefaultRendererFactory rendererFactory = new DefaultRendererFactory(nameLabel); EdgeRenderer edgeRenderer; edgeRenderer = new EdgeRenderer(prefuse.Constants.EDGE_TYPE_LINE, prefuse.Constants.EDGE_ARROW_FORWARD); rendererFactory.setDefaultEdgeRenderer(edgeRenderer); vis.setRendererFactory(rendererFactory); Here is what i see about colour of edges, hoping these must not be transparent: int[] palette = new int[]{ColorLib.rgb(255, 180, 180), ColorLib.rgb(190, 190, 255)}; DataColorAction fill = new DataColorAction("socialnet.nodes", "gender", Constants.NOMINAL, VisualItem.FILLCOLOR, palette); ColorAction text = new ColorAction("socialnet.nodes", VisualItem.TEXTCOLOR, ColorLib.gray(0)); ColorAction edges = new ColorAction("socialnet.edges", VisualItem.STROKECOLOR, ColorLib.gray(200)); ColorAction arrow = new ColorAction("socialnet.edges", VisualItem.FILLCOLOR, ColorLib.gray(200)); ActionList colour = new ActionList(); colour.add(fill); colour.add(text); colour.add(edges); colour.add(arrow); vis.putAction("colour", colour); Thus, i wonder where am i wrong? Why my edges do not seem like arrows? Thanks for any idea. For more detail, i want to paste all of the code: /* * To change this template, choose Tools | Templates * and open the template in the editor. */ package prefusedeneme; import javax.swing.JFrame; import prefuse.data.*; import prefuse.data.io.*; import prefuse.Display; import prefuse.Visualization; import prefuse.render.*; import prefuse.util.*; import prefuse.action.assignment.*; import prefuse.Constants; import prefuse.visual.*; import prefuse.action.*; import prefuse.activity.*; import prefuse.action.layout.graph.*; import prefuse.controls.*; import prefuse.data.expression.Predicate; import prefuse.data.expression.parser.ExpressionParser; public class SocialNetworkVis { public static void main(String argv[]) { // 1. Load the data Graph graph = null; /* graph will contain the core data */ try { graph = new GraphMLReader().readGraph("socialnet.xml"); /* load the data from an XML file */ } catch (DataIOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); System.err.println("Error loading graph. Exiting..."); System.exit(1); } // 2. prepare the visualization Visualization vis = new Visualization(); /* vis is the main object that will run the visualization */ vis.add("socialnet", graph); /* add our data to the visualization */ // 3. setup the renderers and the render factory // labels for name LabelRenderer nameLabel = new LabelRenderer("name"); nameLabel.setRoundedCorner(8, 8); /* nameLabel decribes how to draw the data elements labeled as "name" */ // create the render factory DefaultRendererFactory rendererFactory = new DefaultRendererFactory(nameLabel); EdgeRenderer edgeRenderer; edgeRenderer = new EdgeRenderer(prefuse.Constants.EDGE_TYPE_LINE, prefuse.Constants.EDGE_ARROW_FORWARD); rendererFactory.setDefaultEdgeRenderer(edgeRenderer); vis.setRendererFactory(rendererFactory); // 4. process the actions // colour palette for nominal data type int[] palette = new int[]{ColorLib.rgb(255, 180, 180), ColorLib.rgb(190, 190, 255)}; /* ColorLib.rgb converts the colour values to integers */ // map data to colours in the palette DataColorAction fill = new DataColorAction("socialnet.nodes", "gender", Constants.NOMINAL, VisualItem.FILLCOLOR, palette); /* fill describes what colour to draw the graph based on a portion of the data */ // node text ColorAction text = new ColorAction("socialnet.nodes", VisualItem.TEXTCOLOR, ColorLib.gray(0)); /* text describes what colour to draw the text */ // edge ColorAction edges = new ColorAction("socialnet.edges", VisualItem.STROKECOLOR, ColorLib.gray(200)); ColorAction arrow = new ColorAction("socialnet.edges", VisualItem.FILLCOLOR, ColorLib.gray(200)); /* edge describes what colour to draw the edges */ // combine the colour assignments into an action list ActionList colour = new ActionList(); colour.add(fill); colour.add(text); colour.add(edges); colour.add(arrow); vis.putAction("colour", colour); /* add the colour actions to the visualization */ // create a separate action list for the layout ActionList layout = new ActionList(Activity.INFINITY); layout.add(new ForceDirectedLayout("socialnet")); /* use a force-directed graph layout with default parameters */ layout.add(new RepaintAction()); /* repaint after each movement of the graph nodes */ vis.putAction("layout", layout); /* add the laout actions to the visualization */ // 5. add interactive controls for visualization Display display = new Display(vis); display.setSize(700, 700); display.pan(350, 350); // pan to the middle display.addControlListener(new DragControl()); /* allow items to be dragged around */ display.addControlListener(new PanControl()); /* allow the display to be panned (moved left/right, up/down) (left-drag)*/ display.addControlListener(new ZoomControl()); /* allow the display to be zoomed (right-drag) */ // 6. launch the visualizer in a JFrame JFrame frame = new JFrame("prefuse tutorial: socialnet"); /* frame is the main window */ frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE); frame.add(display); /* add the display (which holds the visualization) to the window */ frame.pack(); frame.setVisible(true); /* start the visualization working */ vis.run("colour"); vis.run("layout"); } }

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questions regarding the use of A* with the 15-square puzzle

- by Cheeso

I'm trying to build an A* solver for a 15-square puzzle. The goal is to re-arrange the tiles so that they appear in their natural positions. You can only slide one tile at a time. Each possible state of the puzzle is a node in the search graph. For the h(x) function, I am using an aggregate sum, across all tiles, of the tile's dislocation from the goal state. In the above image, the 5 is at location 0,0, and it belongs at location 1,0, therefore it contributes 1 to the h(x) function. The next tile is the 11, located at 0,1, and belongs at 2,2, therefore it contributes 3 to h(x). And so on. EDIT: I now understand this is what they call "Manhattan distance", or "taxicab distance". I have been using a step count for g(x). In my implementation, for any node in the state graph, g is just +1 from the prior node's g. To find successive nodes, I just examine where I can possibly move the "hole" in the puzzle. There are 3 neighbors for the puzzle state (aka node) that is displayed: the hole can move north, west, or east. My A* search sometimes converges to a solution in 20s, sometimes 180s, and sometimes doesn't converge at all (waited 10 mins or more). I think h is reasonable. I'm wondering if I've modeled g properly. In other words, is it possible that my A* function is reaching a node in the graph via a path that is not the shortest path? Maybe have I not waited long enough? Maybe 10 minutes is not long enough? For a fully random arrangement, (assuming no parity problems), What is the average number of permutations an A* solution will examine? (please show the math) I'm going to look for logic errors in my code, but in the meantime, Any tips? (ps: it's done in Javascript). Also, no, this isn't CompSci homework. It's just a personal exploration thing. I'm just trying to learn Javascript. EDIT: I've found that the run-time is highly depend upon the heuristic. I saw the 10x factor applied to the heuristic from the article someone mentioned, and it made me wonder - why 10x? Why linear? Because this is done in javascript, I could modify the code to dynamically update an html table with the node currently being considered. This allowd me to peek at the algorithm as it was progressing. With a regular taxicab distance heuristic, I watched as it failed to converge. There were 5's and 12's in the top row, and they kept hanging around. I'd see 1,2,3,4 creep into the top row, but then they'd drop out, and other numbers would move up there. What I was hoping to see was 1,2,3,4 sort of creeping up to the top, and then staying there. I thought to myself - this is not the way I solve this personally. Doing this manually, I solve the top row, then the 2ne row, then the 3rd and 4th rows sort of concurrently. So I tweaked the h(x) function to more heavily weight the higher rows and the "lefter" columns. The result was that the A* converged much more quickly. It now runs in 3 minutes instead of "indefinitely". With the "peek" I talked about, I can see the smaller numbers creep up to the higher rows and stay there. Not only does this seem like the right thing, it runs much faster. I'm in the process of trying a bunch of variations. It seems pretty clear that A* runtime is very sensitive to the heuristic. Currently the best heuristic I've found uses the summation of dislocation * ((4-i) + (4-j)) where i and j are the row and column, and dislocation is the taxicab distance. One interesting part of the result I got: with a particular heuristic I find a path very quickly, but it is obviously not the shortest path. I think this is because I am weighting the heuristic. In one case I got a path of 178 steps in 10s. My own manual effort produce a solution in 87 moves. (much more than 10s). More investigation warranted. So the result is I am seeing it converge must faster, and the path is definitely not the shortest. I have to think about this more. Code: var stop = false; function Astar(start, goal, callback) { // start and goal are nodes in the graph, represented by // an array of 16 ints. The goal is: [1,2,3,...14,15,0] // Zero represents the hole. // callback is a method to call when finished. This runs a long time, // therefore we need to use setTimeout() to break it up, to avoid // the browser warning like "Stop running this script?" // g is the actual distance traveled from initial node to current node. // h is the heuristic estimate of distance from current to goal. stop = false; start.g = start.dontgo = 0; // calcHeuristic inserts an .h member into the array calcHeuristicDistance(start); // start the stack with one element var closed = []; // set of nodes already evaluated. var open = [ start ]; // set of nodes to evaluate (start with initial node) var iteration = function() { if (open.length==0) { // no more nodes. Fail. callback(null); return; } var current = open.shift(); // get highest priority node // update the browser with a table representation of the // node being evaluated $("#solution").html(stateToString(current)); // check solution returns true if current == goal if (checkSolution(current,goal)) { // reconstructPath just records the position of the hole // through each node var path= reconstructPath(start,current); callback(path); return; } closed.push(current); // get the set of neighbors. This is 3 or fewer nodes. // (nextStates is optimized to NOT turn directly back on itself) var neighbors = nextStates(current, goal); for (var i=0; i<neighbors.length; i++) { var n = neighbors[i]; // skip this one if we've already visited it if (closed.containsNode(n)) continue; // .g, .h, and .previous get assigned implicitly when // calculating neighbors. n.g is nothing more than // current.g+1 ; // add to the open list if (!open.containsNode(n)) { // slot into the list, in priority order (minimum f first) open.priorityPush(n); n.previous = current; } } if (stop) { callback(null); return; } setTimeout(iteration, 1); }; // kick off the first iteration iteration(); return null; }

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How Should I Generate Trade Statistics For CouchDB/Rails3 Application?

- by James

My Problem: I am trying to developing a web application for currency traders. The application allows traders to enter or upload information about their trades and I want to calculate a wide variety of statistics based on what the user entered. Now, normally I would use a relational database for this, but I have two requirements that don't fit well with a relational database so I am attempting to use couchdb. Those two problems are: 1) Primarily, I have a companion desktop application that users will be able to work with and replicate to the site using couchdb's awesome replication feature and 2) I would like to allow users to be able to define their own custom things to track about trades and generate results based off of what they enter. The schema less nature of couch seems perfect here, but it may end up being harder than it sounds. (I already know couch requires you to define views in advance and such so I was just planning on sticking all the custom attributes in an array and then emitting the array in the view and further processing from there.) What I Am Doing: Right now I am just emitting each trade in couch keyed by each user's system and querying with the key of the system to get an array of trades per system. Simple. I am not using a reduce function currently to calculate any stats because I couldn't figure out how to get everything I need without getting a reduce overflow error. Here is an example of rows that are getting emitted from couch: {"total_rows":134,"offset":0,"rows":[ {"id":"5b1dcd47221e160d8721feee4ccc64be", "key":["80e40ba2fa43589d57ec3f1d19db41e6","2010/05/14 04:32:37 +0000"], null, "doc":{ "_id":"5b1dcd47221e160d8721feee4ccc64be", "_rev":"1-bc9fe763e2637694df47d6f5efb58e5b", "couchrest-type":"Trade", "system":"80e40ba2fa43589d57ec3f1d19db41e6", "pair":"EUR/USD", "direction":"Buy", "entry":12600, "exit":12700, "stop_loss":12500, "profit_target":12700, "status":"Closed", "slug":"101332132375", "custom_tracking": [{"name":"signal", "value":"Pin Bar"}] "updated_at":"2010/05/14 04:32:37 +0000", "created_at":"2010/05/14 04:32:37 +0000", "result":100}} ]} In my rails 3 controller I am basically just populating an array of trades such as the one above and then extracting out the relevant data into smaller arrays that I can compute my statistics on. Here is my show action for the page that I want to display the stats and all the trades: def show @trades = Trade.by_system(:startkey => [@system.id], :endkey => [@system.id, Time.now ]) @trades.each do |trade| if trade.result > 0 @winning_trades << trade.result elsif trade.result < 0 @losing_trades << trade.result else @breakeven_trades << trade.result end if trade.direction == "Buy" @long_trades << trade.result else @short_trades << trade.result end if trade["custom_tracking"] != nil @custom_tracking << {"result" => trade.result, "variables" => trade["custom_tracking"]} end end end I am omitting some other stuff that is going on, but that is the gist of what I am doing. Then I am calculating stuff in the view layer to produce some results: <% winning_long_trades = @long_trades.reject {|trade| trade <= 0 } %> <% winning_short_trades = @short_trades.reject {|trade| trade <= 0 } %> <ul> <li>Total Trades: <%= @trades.count %></li> <li>Winners: <%= @winning_trades.size %></li> <li>Biggest Winner (Pips): <%= @winning_trades.max %></li> <li>Average Win(Pips): <%= @winning_trades.sum/@winning_trades.size %></li> <li>Losers: <%= @losing_trades.size %></li> <li>Biggest Loser (Pips): <%= @losing_trades.min %></li> <li>Average Loss(Pips): <%= @losing_trades.sum/@losing_trades.size %></li> <li>Breakeven Trades: <%= @breakeven_trades.size %></li> <li>Long Trades: <%= @long_trades.size %></li> <li>Winning Long Trades: <%= winning_long_trades.size %></li> <li>Short Trades: <%= @short_trades.size %></li> <li>Winning Short Trades: <%= winning_short_trades.size %></li> <li>Total Pips: <%= @winning_trades.sum + @losing_trades.sum %></li> <li>Win Rate (%): <%= @winning_trades.size/@trades.count.to_f * 100 %></li> </ul> This produces the following results, which aside from a few things is exactly what I want: Total Trades: 134 Winners: 70 Biggest Winner (Pips): 1488 Average Win(Pips): 440 Losers: 58 Biggest Loser (Pips): -516 Average Loss(Pips): -225 Breakeven Trades: 6 Long Trades: 125 Winning Long Trades: 67 Short Trades: 9 Winning Short Trades: 3 Total Pips: 17819 Win Rate (%): 52.23880597014925 What I Am Wondering- Finally The Actual Questions: I am starting to get really skeptical of how well this method will work when a user has 5,000 trades instead of just 134 like in this example. I anticipate most users will only have somewhere under 200 per year, but some users may have a couple thousand trades per year. Probably no more than 5,000 per year. It seems to work ok now, but the page load times are already getting a tad high for my tastes. (About 800ms to generate the page according to rails logs with about a 250ms of that spent in the view layer.) I will end up caching this page I am sure, but I still need the regenerate the page each time a trade is updated and I can't afford to have this be too slow. Sooo..... Is doing something similar here possible with a straight couchdb reduce function? I am assuming handing this off to couch would possibly help with larger data sets. I couldn't figure out how, but I suppose that doesn't mean it isn't possible. If possible, any hints will be helpful. Could I use a list function if a reduce was not available due to reduce constraints? Are couchdb list functions suitable for this type of calculations? Anyone have any idea of whether or not list functions perform well? Any hints what one would look like for the type of calculations I am trying to achieve? I thought about other options such as running the calculations at the time each trade was saved or nightly if I had to and saving the results to a statistics doc that I could then query so that all the processing was done ahead of time. I would like this to be the last resort because then I can't really filter out trades by time periods dynamically like I would really like to. (I want to have a slider that a user can slide to only show trades from that time period using the startkey and endkey in couchdb if I can.) If I should continue running the calculations inside the rails app at the time of the page view, what can I do to improve my current implementation. I am new to rails, couch and programming in general. I am sure that I could be doing something better here. Do I need to create an array for each stat or is there a better way to do that. I guess I just would really like some advice on how to tackle this problem. I want to keep the page generation time minimal since I anticipate these being some of the highest trafficked pages. My gut is that I will need to offload the statistics calculation to either couch or run the stats in advance of when they are called, but I am not sure. Lastly: Like I mentioned above, one of the primary reasons for using couch is to allow users to define their own things to track per trade. Getting the data into couch is no problem, but how would I be able to take the custom_tracking array and find how many winning trades for each named tracking attribute. If anyone can give me any hints to the possibility of doing this that would be great. Thanks a bunch. Would really appreciate any help. Willing to fork out some $$$ if someone wants to take on the problem for me. (Don't know if that is allowed on stack overflow or not.)

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SQL Server - Physical connection is not usable Error Code: 19

- by Harry

Having trouble working out this SqlException: A transport-level error has occurred when sending the request to the server. (provider: Session Provider, error: 19 - Physical connection is not usable) Any ideas what this is about? Couldn't get any hits on google or msdn on this one. The connection is MARS and Asynchronous in my own SQL pool. But don't get all excited about that - that is old code that has been stable for a long time! Exception details pasted below: System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException occurred Message=A transport-level error has occurred when sending the request to the server. (provider: Session Provider, error: 19 - Physical connection is not usable) Source=.Net SqlClient Data Provider ErrorCode=-2146232060 Class=20 LineNumber=0 Number=-1 Server=SERVER State=0 StackTrace: at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection.OnError(SqlException exception, Boolean breakConnection) at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlInternalConnection.OnError(SqlException exception, Boolean breakConnection) at System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParser.ThrowExceptionAndWarning() at System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParserStateObject.SNIWriteAsync(SNIHandle handle, SNIPacket packet, DbAsyncResult asyncResult) at System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParserStateObject.WriteSni() at System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParserStateObject.WritePacket(Byte flushMode) at System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParserStateObject.ExecuteFlush() at System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParser.TdsExecuteRPC(_SqlRPC[] rpcArray, Int32 timeout, Boolean inSchema, SqlNotificationRequest notificationRequest, TdsParserStateObject stateObj, Boolean isCommandProc) at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.RunExecuteReaderTds(CommandBehavior cmdBehavior, RunBehavior runBehavior, Boolean returnStream, Boolean async) at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.RunExecuteReader(CommandBehavior cmdBehavior, RunBehavior runBehavior, Boolean returnStream, String method, DbAsyncResult result) at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.InternalExecuteNonQuery(DbAsyncResult result, String methodName, Boolean sendToPipe) at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand.BeginExecuteNonQuery(AsyncCallback callback, Object stateObject) at CrawlAbout.Library.SQL.SQLAdapter.<ExecuteNonQueryTask>d__12.MoveNext() in D:\Work\Projects\CrawlAbout.com 2.0\CrawlAbout.Library.SQL\SQLAdapter.cs:line 149 InnerException:

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