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• Using Varnish (only) for DDoS mitigation

  - by Martin Kanters

  My VPS is suffering from a (D)DoS doing a SYN flood with spoofed IPs. I'm right now searching from ways how to be able to defend (at least a bit) against it. It's running a DirectAdmin apache2 webserver. Mainly used for serving PHP and MySQL. We are using CloudFlare, which are saying that they are able to mitigate (D)DoS at some level, now the attacker knows our real IP address, so CloudFlare isn't helping a bit. I've done some searching on the net and found out about enabling SYN cookies, to defend against it. I've checked my settings and it seems it was enabled all along. I've also read about that Varnish is able to defend against SYN flooding and Slowloris attacks, now I'm pretty interested in using that. The thing is that CloudFlare is already caching a lot from us, and I don't wish to spend too much resources on Varnish. Is it possible and smart to set up Varnish only for the better handling of requests? Are there perhaps better ways which I've missed? Thanks in advance, Martin

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• Java: micro-optimizing array manipulation

  - by Martin Wiboe

  Hello all, I am trying to make a Java port of a simple feed-forward neural network. This obviously involves lots of numeric calculations, so I am trying to optimize my central loop as much as possible. The results should be correct within the limits of the float data type. My current code looks as follows (error handling & initialization removed): /** * Simple implementation of a feedforward neural network. The network supports * including a bias neuron with a constant output of 1.0 and weighted synapses * to hidden and output layers. * * @author Martin Wiboe */ public class FeedForwardNetwork { private final int outputNeurons; // No of neurons in output layer private final int inputNeurons; // No of neurons in input layer private int largestLayerNeurons; // No of neurons in largest layer private final int numberLayers; // No of layers private final int[] neuronCounts; // Neuron count in each layer, 0 is input // layer. private final float[][][] fWeights; // Weights between neurons. // fWeight[fromLayer][fromNeuron][toNeuron] // is the weight from fromNeuron in // fromLayer to toNeuron in layer // fromLayer+1. private float[][] neuronOutput; // Temporary storage of output from previous layer public float[] compute(float[] input) { // Copy input values to input layer output for (int i = 0; i < inputNeurons; i++) { neuronOutput[0][i] = input[i]; } // Loop through layers for (int layer = 1; layer < numberLayers; layer++) { // Loop over neurons in the layer and determine weighted input sum for (int neuron = 0; neuron < neuronCounts[layer]; neuron++) { // Bias neuron is the last neuron in the previous layer int biasNeuron = neuronCounts[layer - 1]; // Get weighted input from bias neuron - output is always 1.0 float activation = 1.0F * fWeights[layer - 1][biasNeuron][neuron]; // Get weighted inputs from rest of neurons in previous layer for (int inputNeuron = 0; inputNeuron < biasNeuron; inputNeuron++) { activation += neuronOutput[layer-1][inputNeuron] * fWeights[layer - 1][inputNeuron][neuron]; } // Store neuron output for next round of computation neuronOutput[layer][neuron] = sigmoid(activation); } } // Return output from network = output from last layer float[] result = new float[outputNeurons]; for (int i = 0; i < outputNeurons; i++) result[i] = neuronOutput[numberLayers - 1][i]; return result; } private final static float sigmoid(final float input) { return (float) (1.0F / (1.0F + Math.exp(-1.0F * input))); } } I am running the JVM with the -server option, and as of now my code is between 25% and 50% slower than similar C code. What can I do to improve this situation? Thank you, Martin Wiboe

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• How can I make this Java code run faster?

  - by Martin Wiboe

  Hello all, I am trying to make a Java port of a simple feed-forward neural network. This obviously involves lots of numeric calculations, so I am trying to optimize my central loop as much as possible. The results should be correct within the limits of the float data type. My current code looks as follows (error handling & initialization removed): /** * Simple implementation of a feedforward neural network. The network supports * including a bias neuron with a constant output of 1.0 and weighted synapses * to hidden and output layers. * * @author Martin Wiboe */ public class FeedForwardNetwork { private final int outputNeurons; // No of neurons in output layer private final int inputNeurons; // No of neurons in input layer private int largestLayerNeurons; // No of neurons in largest layer private final int numberLayers; // No of layers private final int[] neuronCounts; // Neuron count in each layer, 0 is input // layer. private final float[][][] fWeights; // Weights between neurons. // fWeight[fromLayer][fromNeuron][toNeuron] // is the weight from fromNeuron in // fromLayer to toNeuron in layer // fromLayer+1. private float[][] neuronOutput; // Temporary storage of output from previous layer public float[] compute(float[] input) { // Copy input values to input layer output for (int i = 0; i < inputNeurons; i++) { neuronOutput[0][i] = input[i]; } // Loop through layers for (int layer = 1; layer < numberLayers; layer++) { // Loop over neurons in the layer and determine weighted input sum for (int neuron = 0; neuron < neuronCounts[layer]; neuron++) { // Bias neuron is the last neuron in the previous layer int biasNeuron = neuronCounts[layer - 1]; // Get weighted input from bias neuron - output is always 1.0 float activation = 1.0F * fWeights[layer - 1][biasNeuron][neuron]; // Get weighted inputs from rest of neurons in previous layer for (int inputNeuron = 0; inputNeuron < biasNeuron; inputNeuron++) { activation += neuronOutput[layer-1][inputNeuron] * fWeights[layer - 1][inputNeuron][neuron]; } // Store neuron output for next round of computation neuronOutput[layer][neuron] = sigmoid(activation); } } // Return output from network = output from last layer float[] result = new float[outputNeurons]; for (int i = 0; i < outputNeurons; i++) result[i] = neuronOutput[numberLayers - 1][i]; return result; } private final static float sigmoid(final float input) { return (float) (1.0F / (1.0F + Math.exp(-1.0F * input))); } } I am running the JVM with the -server option, and as of now my code is between 25% and 50% slower than similar C code. What can I do to improve this situation? Thank you, Martin Wiboe

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• UITableViewCell no userInteraction but on cell.accessoryView

  - by Simon

  hello genius and nerds I have a TableViewCell with a UISwitch in accessoryView. I don't want that blue background if someone selected it. There fore i used cell.userInteractionEnabled = NO; but then the whole cell isnt accessable so i tried that cell.userInteractionEnabled = NO; cell.accessoryView.userInteractionEnabled = YES; i think this wont work because cell is the parent of the accessoryView. but how can i manage this issue ? A hint in the right direction would be great. Simon Here is the complete cellForRowAtIndexPath method: cell.textLabel.text = @"dasda"; cell.userInteractionEnabled = NO; cell.accessoryType = UITableViewCellAccessoryNone; UISwitch *mySwitch = [[[UISwitch alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectZero] autorelease]; mySwitch.tag = row; [cell addSubview:mySwitch]; cell.accessoryView = mySwitch; cell.accessoryView.userInteractionEnabled = YES; [(UISwitch *)cell.accessoryView setOn: YES]; [(UISwitch *)cell.accessoryView addTarget:self action:@selector(someAction:) forControlEvents:UIControlEventValueChanged]; return cell;

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• cast value of a textbox to a textbox in another form

  - by simon

  I'm trying to paste the values from a textbox in form1 to textbox in form2. I did that, but while i upgraded my aplication it stopped to work. I allso need that couse i get an error(incorect data type in conditional statement) when i want to insert a value from a textbox (to a access database) that's not on the form that makes the insert statemen. the code: string textFromForm1; public Form2() { InitializeComponent(); } public void textBox1_TextChanged(object sender, EventArgs e) { } private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { using (Form3 obrok = new Form3()) obrok.ShowDialog(); } private void button3_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { this.Hide(); } private void button2_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { } private void textBox1_TextChanged_1(object sender, EventArgs e) { } Form1 bmr=new Form1(); int masa; private void Form2_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { textBox1.Text = bmr.masaTextBox.Text; } the code for insert statement: string conString = "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;" + "Data Source=C:\Users\Simon\Desktop\save.mdb"; OleDbConnection empConnection = new OleDbConnection(conString); string insertStatement = "INSERT INTO obroki_save " + "([ID_uporabnika],[ID_zivila],[skupaj_kalorij]) " + "VALUES (@ID_uporabnika,@ID_zivila,@skupaj_kalorij)"; OleDbCommand insertCommand = new OleDbCommand(insertStatement, empConnection); insertCommand.Parameters.Add("@ID_uporabnika", OleDbType.Char).Value = users.iDTextBox.Text; insertCommand.Parameters.Add("@ID_zivila", OleDbType.Char).Value = iDTextBox.Text; insertCommand.Parameters.Add("@skupaj_kalorij", OleDbType.Char).Value = textBox1.Text; empConnection.Open(); try { int count = insertCommand.ExecuteNonQuery(); } catch (OleDbException ex) { MessageBox.Show(ex.Message); } finally { empConnection.Close(); textBox1.Clear(); textBox2.Clear(); textBox3.Clear(); textBox4.Clear(); textBox5.Clear(); }

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• Insert date to database

  - by simon

  I'm trying to insert the current date to the database and i allways get the massage(when i pres the button on the form to save to my access database), that the data type is incorect in the conditional expression. the code: string conString = "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;" + "Data Source=C:\Users\Simon\Desktop\save.mdb"; OleDbConnection empConnection = new OleDbConnection(conString); string insertStatement = "INSERT INTO obroki_save " + "([ID_uporabnika],[datum],[ID_zivila],[skupaj_kalorij]) " + "VALUES (@ID_uporabnika,@datum,@ID_zivila,@skupaj_kalorij)"; OleDbCommand insertCommand = new OleDbCommand(insertStatement, empConnection); insertCommand.Parameters.Add("@ID_uporabnika", OleDbType.Char).Value = users.iDTextBox.Text; insertCommand.Parameters.Add("@datum", OleDbType.Char).Value = DateTime.Now; insertCommand.Parameters.Add("@ID_zivila", OleDbType.Char).Value = iDTextBox.Text; insertCommand.Parameters.Add("@skupaj_kalorij", OleDbType.Char).Value = textBox1.Text; empConnection.Open(); try { int count = insertCommand.ExecuteNonQuery(); } catch (OleDbException ex) { MessageBox.Show(ex.Message); } finally { empConnection.Close(); textBox1.Clear(); textBox2.Clear(); textBox3.Clear(); textBox4.Clear(); textBox5.Clear(); } i tried to change the oleDbType.char to oleDbType.Dbdate and others but it doesnt work. I can save other stuff with that code but im stuck here when i wan't to save the date. Please help !

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• Preserving hierarchy when converting .csv file to xml or json

  - by Simon Levinson

  Hello I have a question concerning translating data from a CSV into XML or JSON where it is essential to preserve the heirarchy of the data. For example, if I have CSV data like this: type,brand,country,quantity apple,golden_delicious,english,1 apple,golden_delicious,french,2 apple,cox,,4 apple,braeburn,,1 banana,,carribean,6 banana,,central_america,7 clememtine,,,3 What I want is to preserve hierarchy in the XML so that I get something like: <fruit> <type = "apple"> <brand = "golden_delicious"> <country = "english" quantity = "1"> <country = "french" quantity = "2"> </brand> <brand = "cox"> <quantity = "4"> </brand> <brand = "braeburn"> <quantity = "1"> </brand> </type> <type = "banana"> <country = "carribean" quantity = "6"> <country = "central_america" quantity = "7"> </type> <type = "clementine"> <quantity = "3"> </type> <fruit /> Is it best to try to use JAXP or to convert the above into a table simply of parent, child and then writing the data to an array of strings for processing,? Like this: parent,child fruit,apple apple,golden_delicious golden_delicious,english golden_delicious,french english,1 french,2 apple,cox cox,4 apple,braeburn braeburn,1 And so on. Or is there a better way? Thanks Simon Levinson

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• Static variable not initialized

  - by Simon Linder

  Hi all, I've got a strange problem with a static variable that is obviously not initialized as it should be. I have a huge project that runs with Windows and Linux. As the Linux developer doesn't have this problem I would suggest that this is some kind of wired Visual Studio stuff. Header file class MyClass { // some other stuff here ... private: static AnotherClass* const Default_; }; CPP file AnotherClass* const Default_(new AnotherClass("")); MyClass(AnotherClass* const var) { assert(Default_); ... } Problem is that Default_is always NULL. I also tried a breakpoint at the initialization of that variable but I cannot catch it. There is a similar problem in another class. CPP file std::string const MyClass::MyString_ ("someText"); MyClass::MyClass() { assert(MyString_ != ""); ... } In this case MyString_is always empty. So again not initialized. Does anyone have an idea about that? Is this a Visual Studio settings problem? Cheers Simon

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• C#/.Net Error: MySql.Data Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

  - by Simon

  Hello, I get this exception on my Windows 7 64bit in application running in VS 2008 express. I am using Connector/Net 6.2.2.0: Message: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. Source: MySql.Data in MySql.Data.MySqlClient.NativeDriver.GetResult(Int32& affectedRow, Int32& insertedId) Stack trace: in MySql.Data.MySqlClient.Driver.GetResult(Int32 statementId, Int32& affectedRows, Int32& insertedId) in MySql.Data.MySqlClient.Driver.NextResult(Int32 statementId) in MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlDataReader.NextResult() in MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlDataReader.Close() in MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlConnection.Close() in MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlConnection.Dispose(Boolean disposing) in System.ComponentModel.Component.Finalize() No inner exception. This exception is unhalted and the debugger dont point on any code line. It just say "Object reference not set to an instance of an object. MySql.Data" This error is really hard to repeat. On my Windows XP 32bit is all ok. Could it be error in 64bit Windows 7? Thank you very much for your answers. Regards, simon

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• Python minidom and UTF-8 encoded XML with hash references

  - by Jakob Simon-Gaarde

  Hi I am experiencing some difficulty in my home project where I need to parse a SOAP request. The SOAP is generated with gSOAP and involves string parameters with special characters like the danish letters "æøå". gSOAP builds SOAP requests with UTF-8 encoding by default, but instead of sending the special chatacters in raw format (ie. bytes C3A6 for the special character "æ") it sends what I think is called character hash references (ie. &#195;&#166;). I don't completely understand why gSOAP does it this way as I can see that it has marked the incomming payload as being UTF-8 encoded anyway (Content-Type: text/xml; charset=utf-8), but this is besides the question (I think). Anyway I guess gSOAP probably is obeying transport rules, or what? When I parse the request from gSOAP in python with xml.dom.minidom.parseString() I get element values as unicode objects which is fine, but the character hash references are not decoded as UTF-8 character codes. It unescapes the character hash references, but does not decode the string afterwards. In the end I have a unicode string object with UTF-8 encoding: So if the string "æble" is contained in the XML, it comes like this in the request: "&#195;&#166;ble" After parsing the XML the unicode string in the DOM Text Node's data member looks like this: u'\xc3\xa6ble' I would expect it to look like this: u'\xe6ble' What am I doing wrong? Should I unescape the SOAP XML before parsing it, or is it somewhere else I should be looking for the solution, maybe gSOAP? Thanks in advance. Best regards Jakob Simon-Gaarde

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• Find actual value of PHP variable

  - by Simon S

  Hi all. I am having a real headache with reading in a tab delimited text file and inserting it into a MySQL Database. The tab delimited text file was generated (I think) from a MS SQL Database, and I have written a simple script to read in the file and insert it into an existing table in my MySQL database. However, there seems to be some problem with the data in the txt file. When my PHP script parses the file and I output the INSERT statements, the values in each of the fields are longer than they should be. For example, the first field should be a simple two character alphanumeric value. If I echo out the INSERT statements, using Firebug (in Firefox), between each of the characters is a question mark in a black diamond. If I var_dump the values, I get the following: string(5) "A1" Now, this clearly shows a two character string, but var_dump tells me it is five characters long!! If I trim() the value, all I get is the first character (in this case "A"). How can I get at the other characters, even if it is only to remove them? Additionally, this appears to be forcing MySQL to insert the value as a BLOB, not as a varchar as it should. Simon

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• How to call Twiter's Streaming/Filter Feed with urllib2/httplib?

  - by Simon

  Update: I switched this back from answered as I tried the solution posed in cogent Nick's answer and switched to Google's urlfetch: logging.debug("starting urlfetch for http://%s%s" % (self.host, self.url)) result = urlfetch.fetch("http://%s%s" % (self.host, self.url), payload=self.body, method="POST", headers=self.headers, allow_truncated=True, deadline=5) logging.debug("finished urlfetch") but unfortunately finished urlfetch is never printed - I see the timeout happen in the logs (it returns 200 after 5 seconds), but execution doesn't seem tor return. Hi All- I'm attempting to play around with Twitter's Streaming (aka firehose) API with Google App Engine (I'm aware this probably isn't a great long term play as you can't keep the connection perpetually open with GAE), but so far I haven't had any luck getting my program to actually parse the results returned by Twitter. Some code: logging.debug("firing up urllib2") req = urllib2.Request(url="http://%s%s" % (self.host, self.url), data=self.body, headers=self.headers) logging.debug("called urlopen for %s %s, about to call urlopen" % (self.host, self.url)) fobj = urllib2.urlopen(req) logging.debug("called urlopen") When this executes, unfortunately, my debug output never shows the called urlopen line printed. I suspect what's happening is that Twitter keeps the connection open and urllib2 doesn't return because the server doesn't terminate the connection. Wireshark shows the request being sent properly and a response returned with results. I tried adding Connection: close to my request header, but that didn't yield a successful result. Any ideas on how to get this to work? thanks -Simon

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• Problems by inserting values from textboxes

  - by simon

  I'm trying to insert the current date to the database and i allways get the message(when i press the button on the form to save to my access database), that the data type is incorect in the conditional expression. the code: string conString = "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;" + "Data Source=C:\\Users\\Simon\\Desktop\\save.mdb"; OleDbConnection empConnection = new OleDbConnection(conString); string insertStatement = "INSERT INTO obroki_save " + "([ID_uporabnika],[ID_zivila],[skupaj_kalorij]) " + "VALUES (@ID_uporabnika,@ID_zivila,@skupaj_kalorij)"; OleDbCommand insertCommand = new OleDbCommand(insertStatement, empConnection); insertCommand.Parameters.Add("@ID_uporabnika", OleDbType.Char).Value = users.iDTextBox.Text; insertCommand.Parameters.Add("@ID_zivila", OleDbType.Char).Value = iDTextBox.Text; insertCommand.Parameters.Add("@skupaj_kalorij", OleDbType.Char).Value = textBox1.Text; empConnection.Open(); try { int count = insertCommand.ExecuteNonQuery(); } catch (OleDbException ex) { MessageBox.Show(ex.Message); } finally { empConnection.Close(); textBox1.Clear(); textBox2.Clear(); textBox3.Clear(); textBox4.Clear(); textBox5.Clear(); } I have now cut out the date,( i made access paste the date ), still there is the same problem. Is the first line ok? users.idtextbox.text? Please help !

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• Quick guide to Oracle IRM 11g: Configuring SSL

  - by Simon Thorpe

  Quick guide to Oracle IRM 11g index So far in this guide we have an IRM Server up and running, however I skipped over SSL configuration in the previous article because I wanted to focus in more detail now. You can, if you wish, not bother with setting up SSL, but considering this is a security technology it is worthwhile doing. Contents Setting up a one way, self signed SSL certificate in WebLogic Setting up an official SSL certificate in Apache 2.x Configuring Apache to proxy traffic to the IRM server There are two common scenarios in which an Oracle IRM server is configured. For a development or evaluation system, people usually communicate directly to the WebLogic Server running the IRM service. However in a production environment and for some proof of concept evaluations that require a setup reflecting a production system, the traffic to the IRM server travels via a web server proxy, commonly Apache. In this guide we are building an Oracle Enterprise Linux based IRM service and this article will go over the configuration of SSL in WebLogic and also in Apache. Like in the past articles, we are going to use two host names in the configuration below,irm.company.com will refer to the public Apache server irm.company.internal will refer to the internal WebLogic IRM server Setting up a one way, self signed SSL certificate in WebLogic First lets look at creating just a simple self signed SSL certificate to be used in WebLogic. This is a quick and easy way to get SSL working in your environment, however the downside is that no browsers are going to trust this certificate you create and you'll need to manually install the certificate onto any machine's communicating with the server. This is fine for development or when you have only a few users evaluating the system, but for any significant use it's usually better to have a fully trusted certificate in use and I explain that in the next section. But for now lets go through creating, installing and testing a self signed certificate. We use a library in Java to create the certificates, open a console and running the following commands. Note you should choose your own secure passwords whenever you see password below. [oracle@irm /] source /oracle/middleware/wlserver_10.3/server/bin/setWLSEnv.sh [oracle@irm /] cd /oracle/middleware/user_projects/domains/irm_domain/config/fmwconfig/ [oracle@irm /] java utils.CertGen -selfsigned -certfile MyOwnSelfCA.cer -keyfile MyOwnSelfKey.key -keyfilepass password -cn "irm.oracle.demo" [oracle@irm /] java utils.ImportPrivateKey -keystore MyOwnIdentityStore.jks -storepass password -keypass password -alias trustself -certfile MyOwnSelfCA.cer.pem -keyfile MyOwnSelfKey.key.pem -keyfilepass password [oracle@irm /] keytool -import -trustcacerts -alias trustself -keystore TrustMyOwnSelf.jks -file MyOwnSelfCA.cer.der -keyalg RSA We now have two Java Key Stores, MyOwnIdentityStore.jks and TrustMyOwnSelf.jks. These contain keys and certificates which we will use in WebLogic Server. Now we need to tell the IRM server to use these stores when setting up SSL connections for incoming requests. Make sure the Admin server is running and login into the WebLogic Console at http://irm.company.intranet:7001/console and do the following; In the menu on the left, select the + next to Environment to expose the submenu, then click on Servers. You will see two servers in the list, AdminServer(admin) and IRM_server1. If the IRM server is running, shut it down either by hitting CONTROL + C in the console window it was started from, or you can switch to the CONTROL tab, select IRM_server1 and then select the Shutdown menu and then Force Shutdown Now. In the Configuration tab select IRM_server1 and switch to the Keystores tab. By default WebLogic Server uses it's own demo identity and trust. We are now going to switch to the self signed one's we've just created. So select the Change button and switch to Custom Identity and Custom Trust and hit save. Now we have to complete the resulting fields, the setting's i've used in my evaluation server are below. IdentityCustom Identity Keystore: /oracle/middleware/user_projects/domains/irm_domain/config/fmwconfig/MyOwnIdentityStore.jks Custom Identity Keystore Type: JKS Custom Identity Keystore Passphrase: password Confirm Custom Identity Keystore Passphrase: password TrustCustom Trust Keystore: /oracle/middleware/user_projects/domains/irm_domain/config/fmwconfig/TrustMyOwnSelf.jks Custom Trust Keystore Type: JKS Custom Trust Keystore Passphrase: password Confirm Custom Trust Keystore Passphrase: password Now click on the SSL tab for the IRM_server1 and enter in the alias and passphrase, in my demo here the details are; IdentityPrivate Key Alias: trustself Private Key Passphrase: password Confirm Private Key Passphrase: password And hit save. Now lets test a connection to the IRM server over HTTPS using SSL. Go back to a console window and start the IRM server, a quick reminder on how to do this is... [oracle@irm /] cd /oracle/middleware/user_projects/domains/irm_domain/bin [oracle@irm /] ./startManagedWeblogic IRM_server1 Once running, open a browser and head to the SSL port of the server. By default the IRM server will be listening on the URL https://irm.company.intranet:16101/irm_rights. Note in the example image on the right the port is 7002 because it's a system that has the IRM services installed on the Admin server, this isn't typical (or advisable). Your system is going to have a separate managed server which will be listening on port 16101. Once you open this address you will notice that your browser is going to complain that the server certificate is untrusted. The images on the right show how Firefox displays this error. You are going to be prompted every time you create a new SSL session with the server, both from the browser and more annoyingly from the IRM Desktop. If you plan on always using a self signed certificate, it is worth adding it to the Windows certificate store so that when you are accessing sealed content you do not keep being informed this certificate is not trusted. Follow these instructions (which are for Internet Explorer 8, they may vary for your version of IE.) Start Internet Explorer and open the URL to your IRM server over SSL, e.g. https://irm.company.intranet:16101/irm_rights. IE will complain that about the certificate, click on Continue to this website (not recommended). From the IE Tools menu select Internet Options and from the resulting dialog select Security and then click on Trusted Sites and then the Sites button. Add to the list of trusted sites a URL which mates the server you are accessing, e.g. https://irm.company.intranet/ and select OK. Now refresh the page you were accessing and next to the URL you should see a red cross and the words Certificate Error. Click on this button and select View Certificates. You will now see a dialog with the details of the self signed certificate and the Install Certificate... button should be enabled. Click on this to start the wizard. Click next and you'll be asked where you should install the certificate. Change the option to Place all certificates in the following store. Select browse and choose the Trusted Root Certification Authorities location and hit OK. You'll then be prompted to install the certificate and answer yes. You also need to import the root signed certificate into the same location, so once again select the red Certificate Error option and this time when viewing the certificate, switch to the Certification Path tab and you should see a CertGenCAB certificate. Select this and then click on View Certificate and go through the same process as above to import the certificate into the store. Finally close all instances of the IE browser and re-access the IRM server URL again, this time you should not receive any errors. Setting up an official SSL certificate in Apache 2.x At this point we now have an IRM server that you can communicate with over SSL. However this certificate isn't trusted by any browser because it's path of trust doesn't end in a recognized certificate authority (CA). Also you are communicating directly to the WebLogic Server over a non standard SSL port, 16101. In a production environment it is common to have another device handle the initial public internet traffic and then proxy this to the WebLogic server. The diagram below shows a very simplified view of this type of deployment. What i'm going to walk through next is configuring Apache to proxy traffic to a WebLogic server and also to use a real SSL certificate from an official CA. First step is to configure Apache to handle incoming requests over SSL. In this guide I am configuring the IRM service in Oracle Enterprise Linux 5 update 3 and Apache 2.2.3 which came with OpenSSL and mod_ssl components. Before I purchase an SSL certificate, I need to generate a certificate request from the server. Oracle.com uses Verisign and for my own personal needs I use cheaper certificates from GoDaddy. The following instructions are specific to Apache, but there are many references out there for other web servers. For Apache I have OpenSSL and the commands are; [oracle@irm /] cd /usr/bin [oracle@irm bin] openssl genrsa -des3 -out irm-apache-server.key 2048 Generating RSA private key, 2048 bit long modulus ............................+++ .........+++ e is 65537 (0x10001) Enter pass phrase for irm-apache-server.key: Verifying - Enter pass phrase for irm-apache-server.key: [oracle@irm bin] openssl req -new -key irm-apache-server.key -out irm-apache-server.csr Enter pass phrase for irm-apache-server.key: You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated into your certificate request. What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN. There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank For some fields there will be a default value, If you enter '.', the field will be left blank. ----- Country Name (2 letter code) [GB]:US State or Province Name (full name) [Berkshire]:CA Locality Name (eg, city) [Newbury]:San Francisco Organization Name (eg, company) [My Company Ltd]:Oracle Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:Security Common Name (eg, your name or your server's hostname) []:irm.company.com Email Address []:[email protected] Please enter the following 'extra' attributes to be sent with your certificate request A challenge password []:testing An optional company name []: You must make sure to remember the pass phrase you used in the initial key generation, you will need this when later configuring Apache. In the /usr/bin directory there are now two new files. The irm-apache-server.csr contains our certificate request and is what you cut and paste, or upload, to your certificate authority when you purchase and validate your SSL certificate. In response you will typically get two files. Your server certificate and another certificate file that will likely contain a set of certificates from your CA which validate your certificate's trust. Next we need to configure Apache to use these files. Typically there is an ssl.conf file which is where all the SSL configuration is done. On my Oracle Enterprise Linux server this file is located in /etc/httpd/conf.d/ssl.conf and i've added the following lines. <VirtualHost irm.company.com> # Setup SSL for irm.company.com ServerName irm.company.com SSLEngine On SSLCertificateFile /oracle/secure/irm.company.com.crt SSLCertificateKeyFile /oracle/secure/irm.company.com.key SSLCertificateChainFile /oracle/secure/gd_bundle.crt </VirtualHost> Restarting Apache (apachectl restart) and I can now attempt to connect to the Apache server in a web browser, https://irm.company.com/. If all is configured correctly I should now see an Apache test page delivered to me over HTTPS. Configuring Apache to proxy traffic to the IRM server Final piece in setting up SSL is to have Apache proxy requests for the IRM server but do so securely. So the requests to Apache will be over HTTPS using a legitimate certificate, but we can also configure Apache to proxy these requests internally across to the IRM server using SSL with the self signed certificate we generated at the start of this article. To do this proxying we use the WebLogic Web Server plugin for Apache which you can download here from Oracle. Download the zip file and extract onto the server. The file extraction reveals a set of zip files, each one specific to a supported web server. In my instance I am using Apache 2.2 32bit on an Oracle Enterprise Linux, 64 bit server. If you are not sure what version your Apache server is, run the command /usr/sbin/httpd -V and you'll see version and it its 32 or 64 bit. Mine is a 32bit server so I need to extract the file WLSPlugin1.1-Apache2.2-linux32-x86.zip. The from the resulting lib folder copy the file mod_wl.so into /usr/lib/httpd/modules/. First we want to test that the plug in will work for regular HTTP traffic. Edit the httpd.conf for Apache and add the following section at the bottom. LoadModule weblogic_module modules/mod_wl.so <IfModule mod_weblogic.c>    WebLogicHost irm.company.internal    WebLogicPort 16100    WLLogFile /tmp/wl-proxy.log </IfModule> <Location /irm_rights>    SetHandler weblogic-handler </Location> <Location /irm_desktop>    SetHandler weblogic-handler </Location> <Location /irm_sealing>    SetHandler weblogic-handler </Location> <Location /irm_services>    SetHandler weblogic-handler </Location> Now restart Apache again (apachectl restart) and now open a browser to http://irm.company.com/irm_rights. Apache will proxy the HTTP traffic from the port 80 of your Apache server to the IRM service listening on port 16100 of the WebLogic Managed server. Note above I have included all four of the Locations you might wish to proxy. http://irm.company.internalirm_rights is the URL to the management website, /irm_desktop is the URL used for the IRM Desktop to communicate. irm_sealing is for web services based document sealing and irm_services is for IRM server web services. The last two are typically only used when you have the IRM server integrated with another application and it is unlikely you'd be accessing these resources from the public facing Apache server. However, just in case, i've mentioned them above. Now let's enable SSL communication from Apache to WebLogic. In the ZIP file we extracted were some more modules we need to copy into the Apache folder. Looking back in the lib that we extracted, there are some more files. Copy the following into the /usr/lib/httpd/modules/ folder. libwlssl.so libnnz11.so libclntsh.so.11.1 Now the documentation states that should only need to do this, but I found that I also needed to create an environment variable called LD_LIBRARY_PATH and point this to the folder /usr/lib/httpd/modules/. If I didn't do this, starting Apache with the WebLogic module configured to SSL would throw the error. [crit] (20014)Internal error: WL SSL Init failed for server: (null) on 0 So I had to edit the file /etc/profile and add the following lines at the bottom. You may already have the LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable defined, therefore simply add this path to it. LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/httpd/modules/ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH Now the WebLogic plug in uses an Oracle Wallet to store the required certificates.You'll need to copy the self signed certificate from the IRM server over to the Apache server. Copy over the MyOwnSelfCA.cer.der into the same folder where you are storing your public certificates, in my example this is /oracle/secure. It's worth mentioning these files should ONLY be readable by root (the user Apache runs as). Now lets create an Oracle Wallet and import the self signed certificate from the IRM server. The file orapki was included in the bin folder of the Apache 1.1 plugin zip you extracted. orapki wallet create -wallet /oracle/secure/my-wallet -auto_login_only orapki wallet add -wallet /oracle/secure/my-wallet -trusted_cert -cert MyOwnSelfCA.cer.der -auto_login_only Finally change the httpd.conf to reflect that we want the WebLogic Apache plug-in to use HTTPS/SSL and not just plain HTTP. <IfModule mod_weblogic.c>    WebLogicHost irm.company.internal    WebLogicPort 16101    SecureProxy ON    WLSSLWallet /oracle/secure/my-wallet    WLLogFile /tmp/wl-proxy.log </IfModule> Then restart Apache once more and you can go back to the browser to test the communication. Opening the URL https://irm.company.com/irm_rights will proxy your request to the WebLogic server at https://irm.company.internal:16101/irm_rights. At this point you have a fully functional Oracle IRM service, the next step is to create a sealed document and test the entire system.

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• Quick guide to Oracle IRM 11g: Creating your first sealed document

  - by Simon Thorpe

  Quick guide to Oracle IRM 11g indexThe previous articles in this guide have detailed how to install, configure and secure your Oracle IRM 11g service. This article walks you through the process of now creating your first context and securing a document against it. I should mention that it would be worth reviewing the following to ensure your installation is ready for that all important first document. Ensure you have correctly configured the keystore for the IRM wrapper keys. If this is not correctly configured, creating the context below will fail. Make sure the IRM server URL correctly resolves and uses the right protocol (HTTP or HTTPS) ContentsCreate the first contextInstall the Oracle IRM Desktop Seal your first document Create the first contextIn Oracle 11g there is a built in classification and rights system called the "standard rights model" which is based on 10 years of customer use cases and innovation. It is a system which enables IRM to scale massively whilst retaining the ability to balance security and usability and also separate duties by allowing contacts in the business to own classifications. The final article in this guide goes into detail on this inbuilt classification model, but for the purposes of this current article all we need to do is create at least one context to test our system out.With a new IRM server there are a set of predefined context templates and roles which again are setup in a way which reflects the most common use we've learned from our customers. We will use these out of the box configurations as they are to create the first context against which we will seal some content.First login to your Oracle IRM Management Website located at https://irm.company.com/irm_rights/. Currently the system is only configured to use the built in LDAP for users, so use the only account we have at the moment, which by default is weblogic. Once logged in switch to the Contexts tab. Click on the New Context icon () in the menu bar on the left. In the resulting dialog select the Standard context template and enter in a name for the context. Then just hit finish, the weblogic account will automatically be made the manager. You'll now see your brand new context ready for users to be assigned. Now click on the Assign Role icon () in the menu bar and in the resulting dialog search for your only user account, weblogic, and add to the list on the right. Now select a role for this user. Because we need to create a document with this user we must select contributor, as this is the only role which allows for the ability to seal. Finally hit next and then finish. We now have a context with a user that has the rights to create a document. The next step is to configure the IRM Desktop to get these rights from the server. Install the Oracle IRM Desktop Before we can seal a document we need the client software installed. Oracle IRM has a very small, lightweight client called the Oracle IRM Desktop which can be freely downloaded in 27 languages from here. Double click on the installer and click on next... Next again... And finally on install... Very easy. You may get a warning about closing Outlook, Word or another application and most of the time no reboots are required. Once it is installed you will see the IRM Desktop icon running in your tool tray, bottom right of the desktop. Seal your first document Finally the prize is within reach, creating your first sealed document. The server is running, we've got a context ready, a user assigned a role in the context but there is the simple and obvious hoop left to jump through. To seal a document we need to have the users rights cached to the local machine. For this to take place, the IRM Desktop needs to know where the Oracle IRM server is on the network so we can synchronize these rights and then be able to seal a document. The usual way for the IRM Desktop to know about the IRM server is it learns automatically when you open an existing piece of content that someone has sent you... ack. Bit of a chicken or the egg dilemma. The solution is to manually tell the IRM Desktop the location of the IRM Server and then force a synchronization of rights. Right click on the Oracle IRM Desktop icon in the system tray and select Options.... Then switch to the Servers tab in the resulting dialog. There are no servers in the list because you've never opened any content. This list is usually populated automatically but we are going to add a server manually, so click on New.... Into the dialog enter in the full URL to the IRM server. Note that this time you use the path /irm_desktop/ and not /irm_rights/. You can see an example from the image below. Click on the validate button and you'll be asked to authenticate. Enter in your weblogic username and password and also check the Remember my password check box. Click OK and the IRM Desktop will confirm a successful connection to the server. OK all the dialogs and we are ready to Synchronize this users rights to the desktop. Right click once more on the Oracle IRM Desktop icon in the system tray. Now the Synchronize menu option is available. Select this and the IRM Desktop will now talk to the IRM server, authenticate using your weblogic account and get your rights to the context we created. Because this is the first time this users has communicated with the IRM server the IRM Desktop presents a privacy policy dialog. This is a chance for the business to ask users to agree to any policy about the use of IRM before opening secured documents. In our guide we've not bothered to setup this URL so just click on the check box and hit Accept. The IRM Desktop will then talk to the server, get your rights and display a success dialog. Lets protect a documentNow we are ready to seal a piece of content. In my guide i'm going to protect a Microsoft Word document. This mean's I have to have copy of Office installed, in this guide i'm using Microsoft Office 2007. You could also seal a PDF document, you'll need to download and install Adobe Acrobat Reader. A very simple test could be to seal a GIF/JPG/PNG or piece of HTML because this is rendered using Internet Explorer. But as I say, i'm going to protect a Word document. The following example demonstrates choosing a file in Windows Explorer, there are many ways to seal a file and you can watch a few in this video.Open a copy of Windows Explorer and locate the file you wish to seal. Right click on the document and select Seal To -> Context You are now presented with the Select Context dialog. You'll now have a sealed copy of the document sat in the same location. Double click on this document and it will open, again using the credentials you've already provided. That is it, now you just need to add more users, more documents, more classifications and start exploring the different roles and experiment with different offline periods etc. You may wish to setup the server against an existing LDAP or Active Directory environment instead of using the built in WebLogic LDAP store. You can read how to use your corporate directory here. But before we finish this guide, there is one more article and arguably the most important article of all. Next I discuss the all important decision making surrounding the actually implementation of Oracle IRM inside your business. Who has rights to what? How do you map contexts to your existing business practices? It is the next article which actually ensures you deploy a successful IRM solution by looking at the business and understanding how they use your sensitive information and then configuring Oracle IRM to reflect their use.

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• Google libère le système de build utilisé pour Chrome, « Ninja » serait dix fois plus rapide que GNU Make

  Google libère le système de build utilisé pour Chrome « Ninja » serait dix fois plus rapide que GNU Make Evan Martin, l'un des développeurs de Google Chrome, vient de passer sous licence open-source son système de Build baptisé « Ninja », actuellement utilisé pour porter le navigateur de Google sur plusieurs plateformes. Ninja serait considérablement plus rapide que les autres moteurs de production existants, d'où son nom. Martin affirme sur son site personnel que Ninja finit le Build de Chrome (environ 30 000 fichiers source, Webkit compris) en seulement une seconde après la modification d'un seul fichier (contre 10 pour GNU Make et 40 secondes préalables mêmes au ...

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• Subterranean IL: Pseudo custom attributes

  - by Simon Cooper

  Custom attributes were designed to make the .NET framework extensible; if a .NET language needs to store additional metadata on an item that isn't expressible in IL, then an attribute could be applied to the IL item to represent this metadata. For instance, the C# compiler uses DecimalConstantAttribute and DateTimeConstantAttribute to represent compile-time decimal or datetime constants, which aren't allowed in pure IL, and FixedBufferAttribute to represent fixed struct fields. How attributes are compiled Within a .NET assembly are a series of tables containing all the metadata for items within the assembly; for instance, the TypeDef table stores metadata on all the types in the assembly, and MethodDef does the same for all the methods and constructors. Custom attribute information is stored in the CustomAttribute table, which has references to the IL item the attribute is applied to, the constructor used (which implies the type of attribute applied), and a binary blob representing the arguments and name/value pairs used in the attribute application. For example, the following C# class: [Obsolete("Please use MyClass2", true)] public class MyClass { // ... } corresponds to the following IL class definition: .class public MyClass { .custom instance void [mscorlib]System.ObsoleteAttribute::.ctor(string, bool) = { string('Please use MyClass2' bool(true) } // ... } and results in the following entry in the CustomAttribute table: TypeDef(MyClass) MemberRef(ObsoleteAttribute::.ctor(string, bool)) blob -> {string('Please use MyClass2' bool(true)} However, there are some attributes that don't compile in this way. Pseudo custom attributes Just like there are some concepts in a language that can't be represented in IL, there are some concepts in IL that can't be represented in a language. This is where pseudo custom attributes come into play. The most obvious of these is SerializableAttribute. Although it looks like an attribute, it doesn't compile to a CustomAttribute table entry; it instead sets the serializable bit directly within the TypeDef entry for the type. This flag is fully expressible within IL; this C#: [Serializable] public class MySerializableClass {} compiles to this IL: .class public serializable MySerializableClass {} For those interested, a full list of pseudo custom attributes is available here. For the rest of this post, I'll be concentrating on the ones that deal with P/Invoke. P/Invoke attributes P/Invoke is built right into the CLR at quite a deep level; there are 2 metadata tables within an assembly dedicated solely to p/invoke interop, and many more that affect it. Furthermore, all the attributes used to specify p/invoke methods in C# or VB have their own keywords and syntax within IL. For example, the following C# method declaration: [DllImport("mscorsn.dll", SetLastError = true)] [return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U1)] private static extern bool StrongNameSignatureVerificationEx( [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)] string wszFilePath, [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U1)] bool fForceVerification, [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U1)] ref bool pfWasVerified); compiles to the following IL definition: .method private static pinvokeimpl("mscorsn.dll" lasterr winapi) bool marshal(unsigned int8) StrongNameSignatureVerificationEx( string marshal(lpwstr) wszFilePath, bool marshal(unsigned int8) fForceVerification, bool& marshal(unsigned int8) pfWasVerified) cil managed preservesig {} As you can see, all the p/invoke and marshal properties are specified directly in IL, rather than using attributes. And, rather than creating entries in CustomAttribute, a whole bunch of metadata is emitted to represent this information. This single method declaration results in the following metadata being output to the assembly: A MethodDef entry containing basic information on the method Four ParamDef entries for the 3 method parameters and return type An entry in ModuleRef to mscorsn.dll An entry in ImplMap linking ModuleRef and MethodDef, along with the name of the function to import and the pinvoke options (lasterr winapi) Four FieldMarshal entries containing the marshal information for each parameter. Phew! Applying attributes Most of the time, when you apply an attribute to an element, an entry in the CustomAttribute table will be created to represent that application. However, some attributes represent concepts in IL that aren't expressible in the language you're coding in, and can instead result in a single bit change (SerializableAttribute and NonSerializedAttribute), or many extra metadata table entries (the p/invoke attributes) being emitted to the output assembly.

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• Oracle Database Security Protecting the Oracle IRM Schema

  - by Simon Thorpe

  Acquiring the Information Rights Management technology in 2006 was part of Oracle's strategic security vision and IRM compliments nicely the overall Oracle security set of solutions. A year ago I spoke about how Oracle has solutions that can help companies protect information throughout its entire life cycle. With our acquisition of Sun this set of solutions has solidified and has even extended down to the operating system and hardware level. Oracle can now offer customers technology that protects their data from the disk, through the database to documents on the desktop! With the recent release of Oracle IRM 11g I was tasked to configure demonstration and evaluation environments and I thought it would make a nice story to leverage some of the security features in the latest release of the Oracle Database. After building these environments I thought I would put together a simple video demonstrating how both Database Advanced Security and Information Rights Management combined can provide a very secure platform for protecting your information. Have a look at the following which highlights these database security options.Transparent Data Encryption protecting the communication from the Oracle IRM server to the Database server. Encryption techniques provide confidentiality and integrity of the data passing to and from the IRM service on the back end. Transparent Data Encryption protecting the Oracle IRM database schema. Encryption is used to provide confidentiality of the IRM data whilst it resides at rest in the database table space. Database Vault is used to ensure only the Oracle IRM service has access to query and update the information that resides in the database. This is an excellent method of ensuring that database administrators cannot look at or make changes to the Oracle IRM database whilst retaining their ability to administrate the database. The last thing you want after deploying an IRM solution is for a curious or unhappy DBA to run a query that grants them rights to your company financial data or documents pertaining to a merger or acquisition.

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• Quick guide to Oracle IRM 11g: Server installation

  - by Simon Thorpe

  Quick guide to Oracle IRM 11g index This is the first of a set of articles designed to assist with the successful installation, configuration and deployment of a document security solution using Oracle IRM. This article goes through a set of simple instructions which detail how to download, install and configure the IRM server, the starting point for building a document security solution. This article contains a subset of information from the official documentation and is focused on installing the server on Oracle Enterprise Linux. If you are planning to deploy on a non-Linux platform, you will need to reference the documentation for platform specific information. Contents Introduction Downloading the software Preparing a database Creating the schema WebLogic Server installation Installing Oracle IRM Introduction Because we are using Oracle Enterprise Linux in this guide, and before we get into the detail of IRM, i'd like to share some tips with Linux to make life a bit easier.Use a 64bit platform, IRM 11g runs just fine on a 32bit server but with 64bit you will build a more future proof service. Download and install the latest Java JDK package. Make sure you get the 64bit version if you are on a 64bit server. Configure Linux to use a good Yum server to simplify installing packages. For Oracle Enterprise Linux we maintain a great public Yum here. Have at least 20GB of free disk space on the partition you intend to install the IRM server. The downloads are big, then you extract them and then install. This quickly consumes disk space which you can easily recover by deleting the downloaded and extracted files after wards. But it's nice to have the disk space spare to keep these around in case you need to restart any part of the installation process again. Downloading the software OK, so before you can do anything, you need the software install kits. Luckily Oracle allows you to freely download every technology we create. You'll need to get the following; Oracle WebLogic Server Oracle Database Oracle Repository Creation Utility (rcu) Oracle IRM server You can use Microsoft SQL server 2005 or 2008, in this guide i've used Oracle RDBMS 11gR2 for Linux. Preparing the database I'm not going to go through the finer points of installing the database. There are many very good guides on installing the Oracle Database. However one thing I would suggest you think about is enabling TDE, network encryption and using Database Vault. These Oracle database security technologies are excellent for creating a complete end to end security solution. No point in going to all the effort to secure document access with IRM when someone can go directly to the database and assign themselves rights to documents. To understand this further, you can see a video of the IRM service using these database security technologies here. With a database up and running we need to create a schema to hold the IRM data. This schema contains the rights model, cryptographic keys, user account id's and associated rights etc. Creating the IRM database schema Oracle uses the Repository Creation Tool which builds your schema, extract the files from the rcu zip. Then in a terminal window; cd /oracle/install/rcu/bin ./rcu This will launch the Repository Creation Tool and you will be presented with the image to the right. Hit next and continue onto the next dialog. You are asked if you are going to be creating a new schema or wish to drop an existing one, you obviously just need to click next at this point to create a new schema. The RCU next needs to know where your database is so you'll need the following details of your database instance. Below, for reference, is the information for my installation. Hostname: irm.oracle.demo Port: 1521 (This is the default TCP port for the Oracle Database) Service Name: irm.oracle.demo. Note this is not the SID, but the service name. Username: sys Password: ******** Role: SYSDBA And then select next. Because the RCU contains schemas for many of the Oracle Technologies, you now need to select to just deploy the Oracle IRM schema. Open the section under "Enterprise Content Management" and tick the "Oracle Information Rights Management" component. Note that you also get the chance to select a prefix which defaults to "DEV" (for development). I usually change this to something that reflects my own install. PROD for a production system, INT for internal only etc. The next step asks for the passwords for the schema users. We are only creating one schema here so you just enter one password. Some brave souls store this password in an Excel spreadsheet which is then secure against the IRM server you're about to install in this guide. Nearing the end of the schema creation is the mapping of the tablespaces to the schema. Note I had setup a table space already that was encrypted using TDE and at this point I was able to select that tablespace by clicking in the "Default Tablespace" column. The next dialog confirms your actions and clicking on next causes it to create the schema and default data. After this you are presented with the completion summary. WebLogic Server installation The database is now ready and the next step is to install the application server. Oracle IRM 11g is a JEE application and currently only supported in Oracle WebLogic Server. So the next step is get WebLogic Server installed, which is pretty easy. Depending on the version you download, you either run the binary or for a 64 bit platform (like mine) run the following command. java -d64 -jar wls1033_generic.jar And in the resulting dialog hit next to start walking through the install. Next choose a directory into which you will install WebLogic Server. I like to change from the default and install into /oracle/. Then all my software goes into this one folder, all owned by the "oracle" user. The next dialog asks for your Oracle support information to ensure you are kept up to date. If you have an Oracle support account, enter your details but for most evaluation systems I leave these fields blank. Again, for evaluation or development systems, I usually stick with the "Typical" install type which you are next asked for. Next you are asked for the JDK which will be used for the server. When installing from the generic jar on a 64bit platform like in this guide, no JDK is bundled with the installer. But as you can see in the image on the right, that it does a good job of detecting the one you've got installed. Defaults for the install directories are usually taken, no changes here, just click next. And finally we are ready to install, hit next, sit back and relax. Typically this takes about 10 minutes. After the install, do not run the quick start, we need to deploy the IRM install itself from which we will create a new WebLogic domain. For now just hit done and lets move to the final step of the installation process. Installing Oracle IRM The last piece of the puzzle to getting your environment ready is to deploy the IRM files themselves. Unzip the Oracle Enterprise Content Management 11g zip file and it will create a Disk1 directory. Switch to this folder and in the console run ./runInstaller. This will launch the installer which will also ask for the location of the JDK. Look at the image on the right for the detail. You should now see the first stage of the IRM installation. The dialog warns you need to have a WebLogic server installed and have created the schema's, but you've just done all that above (I hope) so we are ready to go. The installer now checks that you have all the required libraries installed and other system parameters are correct. Because nearly all of my development and evaluation installations have the database server on the same system, the installer passes these checks without issue... Next... Now chose where to install the IRM files, you must install into the same Middleware Home as the WebLogic Server installation you just performed. Usually the installer already defaults to this location anyway. I also tend to change the Oracle Home Directory to Oracle_IRM so it's clear this is just an IRM install. The summary page tells you about space needed to deploy the files. Unfortunately the IRM install comes with all of the other Oracle ECM software, you can't just select the IRM files, everything gets deployed to disk and uses 1.6GB of space! Not fun, but Oracle has to package up similar technologies otherwise we would have a very large number of installers to QA and manage, again, not fun. Hit Install, time for another drink, maybe a piece of cake or a donut... on a half decent system this part of the install took under 10 minutes. Finally the installation of your IRM server is complete, click on finish and the next phase is to create the WebLogic domain and start configuring your server. Now move onto the next article in this guide... configuring your IRM server ready to seal your first document.

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• Inside Red Gate - Exercises in Leanness

  - by Simon Cooper

  There's a new movement rumbling around Red Gate Towers - the Lean Startup. At its core is the idea that you don't have to be in a company with single-digit employees to be an entrepreneur; you simply have to (being blunt) not know what you should be doing. Specifically, you accept that you don't know everything you need to know in order to create a useful, successful & profitable product. This is something that Red Gate has had problems with in the past; we've created products that weren't aimed at the correct market, or didn't solve the problem the user had (although they solved the problem we thought the users had, or the problem the users thought they had). As a result, these products weren't as successful as they could have been. The ideas at the core of the Lean Startup help to combat this tendency to build large, well-engineered products that solve the wrong problem. You need to actually test your hypotheses about what the users and the market needs, rather than just running a project based on those untested assumptions. Furthermore, these tests need to be done as fast as possible (on the order of a week) so that, if necessary, you can change the direction of the project without wasting effort going down a dead end. Over time, as more tests are done and more hypotheses are confirmed or refuted, the project moves towards something that solves users' actual problems. However, re-aligning the development teams that operate within Red Gate along these lines does itself have some issues; we've got very good at doing large, monolithic releases, with a feature set decided well in advance. Currently it takes about 2 weeks to do install & release testing before a release; this is clearly not practicable for a team doing weekly, or even daily releases. There's also many infrastructure issues to be solved; in our source control, build system, release mechanism, support pages & documentation, licensing system, update system, and download pages. All these need modifications to allow the fast releases necessary for each experiment. Not only do we have to change our infrastructure, we have to change our mindset. Doing daily releases means each release won't get nearly as much testing as 'standard' releases. As a team, we have to be prepared that there will be releases that have bugs and issues with them; not only do we have to be prepared to change direction with every experiment we do, but we have to be ready to fix any bugs that are reported very quickly as well. The SmartAssembly team is spearheading this move towards leanness within the company, using Feature Usage Reporting (FUR). We think this is a cracking feature that will really help developers learn how people use their products, but we need to confirm this hypothesis. So, over the next few weeks, we'll be running a variety of experiments on SmartAssembly to either confirm or refute our hypotheses concerning how people use SmartAssembly and apply FUR to their own products. In the rest of this series, I'll be documenting how the experiments we perform get on, and our experiences with applying the Lean Startup model to a mature product like SmartAssembly.

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• Silverlight Cream for March 15, 2011 -- #1061

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Peter Kuhn, Emil Stoychev, Viktor Larsson(-2-), Kevin Hoffman, Rudi Grobler, WindowsPhoneGeek, Jesse Liberty(-2-), and Martin Krüger. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Image comparison using a GridSplitter" Martin Krüger WP7: "Using WP7 accent color effectively" Viktor Larsson XNA: "XNA for Silverlight developers: Part 7 - Collision detection" Peter Kuhn From SilverlightCream.com: XNA for Silverlight developers: Part 7 - Collision detection Peter Kuhn has part 7 of his XNA for Silverlight devs tutorial series up at SilverlightShow... discussing Collision detection... something you need to get your head around if you're going to do a game. Interview with John Papa about the upcoming MIX11 event and the Open Source Fest Emil Stoychev of SilverlightShow reverses the roles with John Papa and interviews John on this MIX11 and Open Source Fest discussion they had at the MVP Summit Debugging Videos or Camera in WP7 Viktor Larsson has a quick post up on the 3 ways of debugging a WP7 app and why and under what circumstances you should change debug method. Using WP7 accent color effectively Viktor Larsson's next post is about the 10 accent colors available on WP7 devices. He shows how to make best use of that capability in XAML and runtime code. WP7 for iPhone and Android Developers - Hardware and Device Services Kevin Hoffman's part 4 of a 12-part tutorial series at SilverlightShow on WP7 for iPhone/Android devs is up ... this oe concentrates on Hardware and Device Services... Launchers/Choosers/Sensors. How to publish WP7 applications if you live in the Middle-east & Africa region Rudi Grobler has a short post up on a legit way to publish WP7 apps if you are in the MEA region. Creating WP7 Custom Theme – Sample Theme Implementation WindowsPhoneGeek has a new post up and he's starting a series of 3 articles on Creating Wp7 Custom Themes... first up is this tutorial on Basic Theme Implementation... and use it as well. From Android to Windows Phone For "Windows Phone from Scratch #43", Jesse Liberty begins a series on moving apps from Android to WP7, beginning with a tip calculating program. Yet Another Podcast #28–Jeremy Likness Jesse Liberty's next post is his "Yet Another Podcast #28" with Jeremy Likness this time around... the list of all things fun that Jeremy's involved in is getting long... should be a good podcast! Image comparison using a GridSplitter Martin Krüger posted a cool 'Clip Splitter' for comparing images, and what a great set of example images he's using... pretty darn cool lining them up with a grid-splitter. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Inside the Concurrent Collections: ConcurrentBag

  - by Simon Cooper

  Unlike the other concurrent collections, ConcurrentBag does not really have a non-concurrent analogy. As stated in the MSDN documentation, ConcurrentBag is optimised for the situation where the same thread is both producing and consuming items from the collection. We'll see how this is the case as we take a closer look. Again, I recommend you have ConcurrentBag open in a decompiler for reference. Thread Statics ConcurrentBag makes heavy use of thread statics - static variables marked with ThreadStaticAttribute. This is a special attribute that instructs the CLR to scope any values assigned to or read from the variable to the executing thread, not globally within the AppDomain. This means that if two different threads assign two different values to the same thread static variable, one value will not overwrite the other, and each thread will see the value they assigned to the variable, separately to any other thread. This is a very useful function that allows for ConcurrentBag's concurrency properties. You can think of a thread static variable: [ThreadStatic] private static int m_Value; as doing the same as: private static Dictionary<Thread, int> m_Values; where the executing thread's identity is used to automatically set and retrieve the corresponding value in the dictionary. In .NET 4, this usage of ThreadStaticAttribute is encapsulated in the ThreadLocal class. Lists of lists ConcurrentBag, at its core, operates as a linked list of linked lists: Each outer list node is an instance of ThreadLocalList, and each inner list node is an instance of Node. Each outer ThreadLocalList is owned by a particular thread, accessible through the thread local m_locals variable: private ThreadLocal<ThreadLocalList<T>> m_locals It is important to note that, although the m_locals variable is thread-local, that only applies to accesses through that variable. The objects referenced by the thread (each instance of the ThreadLocalList object) are normal heap objects that are not specific to any thread. Thinking back to the Dictionary analogy above, if each value stored in the dictionary could be accessed by other means, then any thread could access the value belonging to other threads using that mechanism. Only reads and writes to the variable defined as thread-local are re-routed by the CLR according to the executing thread's identity. So, although m_locals is defined as thread-local, the m_headList, m_nextList and m_tailList variables aren't. This means that any thread can access all the thread local lists in the collection by doing a linear search through the outer linked list defined by these variables. Adding items So, onto the collection operations. First, adding items. This one's pretty simple. If the current thread doesn't already own an instance of ThreadLocalList, then one is created (or, if there are lists owned by threads that have stopped, it takes control of one of those). Then the item is added to the head of that thread's list. That's it. Don't worry, it'll get more complicated when we account for the other operations on the list! Taking & Peeking items This is where it gets tricky. If the current thread's list has items in it, then it peeks or removes the head item (not the tail item) from the local list and returns that. However, if the local list is empty, it has to go and steal another item from another list, belonging to a different thread. It iterates through all the thread local lists in the collection using the m_headList and m_nextList variables until it finds one that has items in it, and it steals one item from that list. Up to this point, the two threads had been operating completely independently. To steal an item from another thread's list, the stealing thread has to do it in such a way as to not step on the owning thread's toes. Recall how adding and removing items both operate on the head of the thread's linked list? That gives us an easy way out - a thread trying to steal items from another thread can pop in round the back of another thread's list using the m_tail variable, and steal an item from the back without the owning thread knowing anything about it. The owning thread can carry on completely independently, unaware that one of its items has been nicked. However, this only works when there are at least 3 items in the list, as that guarantees there will be at least one node between the owning thread performing operations on the list head and the thread stealing items from the tail - there's no chance of the two threads operating on the same node at the same time and causing a race condition. If there's less than three items in the list, then there does need to be some synchronization between the two threads. In this case, the lock on the ThreadLocalList object is used to mediate access to a thread's list when there's the possibility of contention. Thread synchronization In ConcurrentBag, this is done using several mechanisms: Operations performed by the owner thread only take out the lock when there are less than three items in the collection. With three or greater items, there won't be any conflict with a stealing thread operating on the tail of the list. If a lock isn't taken out, the owning thread sets the list's m_currentOp variable to a non-zero value for the duration of the operation. This indicates to all other threads that there is a non-locked operation currently occuring on that list. The stealing thread always takes out the lock, to prevent two threads trying to steal from the same list at the same time. After taking out the lock, the stealing thread spinwaits until m_currentOp has been set to zero before actually performing the steal. This ensures there won't be a conflict with the owning thread when the number of items in the list is on the 2-3 item borderline. If any add or remove operations are started in the meantime, and the list is below 3 items, those operations try to take out the list's lock and are blocked until the stealing thread has finished. This allows a thread to steal an item from another thread's list without corrupting it. What about synchronization in the collection as a whole? Collection synchronization Any thread that operates on the collection's global structure (accessing anything outside the thread local lists) has to take out the collection's global lock - m_globalListsLock. This single lock is sufficient when adding a new thread local list, as the items inside each thread's list are unaffected. However, what about operations (such as Count or ToArray) that need to access every item in the collection? In order to ensure a consistent view, all operations on the collection are stopped while the count or ToArray is performed. This is done by freezing the bag at the start, performing the global operation, and unfreezing at the end: The global lock is taken out, to prevent structural alterations to the collection. m_needSync is set to true. This notifies all the threads that they need to take out their list's lock irregardless of what operation they're doing. All the list locks are taken out in order. This blocks all locking operations on the lists. The freezing thread waits for all current lockless operations to finish by spinwaiting on each m_currentOp field. The global operation can then be performed while the bag is frozen, but no other operations can take place at the same time, as all other threads are blocked on a list's lock. Then, once the global operation has finished, the locks are released, m_needSync is unset, and normal concurrent operation resumes. Concurrent principles That's the essence of how ConcurrentBag operates. Each thread operates independently on its own local list, except when they have to steal items from another list. When stealing, only the stealing thread is forced to take out the lock; the owning thread only has to when there is the possibility of contention. And a global lock controls accesses to the structure of the collection outside the thread lists. Operations affecting the entire collection take out all locks in the collection to freeze the contents at a single point in time. So, what principles can we extract here? Threads operate independently Thread-static variables and ThreadLocal makes this easy. Threads operate entirely concurrently on their own structures; only when they need to grab data from another thread is there any thread contention. Minimised lock-taking Even when two threads need to operate on the same data structures (one thread stealing from another), they do so in such a way such that the probability of actually blocking on a lock is minimised; the owning thread always operates on the head of the list, and the stealing thread always operates on the tail. Management of lockless operations Any operations that don't take out a lock still have a 'hook' to force them to lock when necessary. This allows all operations on the collection to be stopped temporarily while a global snapshot is taken. Hopefully, such operations will be short-lived and infrequent. That's all the concurrent collections covered. I hope you've found it as informative and interesting as I have. Next, I'll be taking a closer look at ThreadLocal, which I came across while analyzing ConcurrentBag. As you'll see, the operation of this class deserves a much closer look.

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• .NET vs Windows 8

  - by Simon Cooper

  So, day 1 of DevWeek. Lots and lots of Windows 8 and WinRT, as you would expect. The keynote had some actual content in it, fleshed out some of the details of how your apps linked into the Metro infrastructure, and confirmed that there would indeed be an enterprise version of the app store available for Metro apps.) However, that's, not what I want to focus this post on. What I do want to focus on is this: Windows 8 does not make .NET developers obsolete. Phew! .NET in the New Ecosystem In all the hype around Windows 8 the past few months, a lot of developers have got the impression that .NET has been sidelined in Windows 8; C++ and COM is back in vogue, and HTML5 + JavaScript is the New Way of writing applications. You know .NET? It's yesterday's tech. Enter the 21st Century and write <div>! However, after speaking to people at the conference, and after a couple of talks by Dave Wheeler on the innards of WinRT and how .NET interacts with it, my views on the coming operating system have changed somewhat. To summarize what I've picked up, in no particular order (none of this is official, just my sense of what's been said by various people): Metro apps do not replace desktop apps. That is, Windows 8 fully supports .NET desktop applications written for every other previous version of Windows, and will continue to do so in the forseeable future. There are some apps that simply do not fit into Metro. They do not fit into the touch-based paradigm, and never will. Traditional desktop support is not going away anytime soon. The reason Silverlight has been hidden in all the Metro hype is that Metro is essentially based on Silverlight design principles. Silverlight developers will have a much easier time writing Metro apps than desktop developers, as they would already be used to all the principles of sandboxing and separation introduced with Silverlight. It's desktop developers who are going to have to adapt how they work. .NET + XAML is equal to HTML5 + JS in importance. Although the underlying WinRT system is built on C++ & COM, most application development will be done either using .NET or HTML5. Both systems have their own wrapper around the underlying WinRT infrastructure, hiding the implementation details. The CLR is unchanged; it's still the .NET 4 CLR, running IL in .NET assemblies. The thing that changes between desktop and Metro is the class libraries, which have more in common with the Silverlight libraries than the desktop libraries. In Metro, although all the types look and behave the same to callers, some of the core BCL types are now wrappers around their WinRT equivalents. These wrappers are then enhanced using standard .NET types and code to produce the Metro .NET class libraries. You can't simply port a desktop app into Metro. The underlying file IO, network, timing and database access is either completely different or simply missing. Similarly, although the UI is programmed using XAML, the behaviour of the Metro XAML is different to WPF or Silverlight XAML. Furthermore, the new design principles and touch-based interface for Metro applications demand a completely new UI. You will be able to re-use sections of your app encapsulating pure program logic, but everything else will need to be written from scratch. Microsoft has taken the opportunity to remove a whole raft of types and methods from the Metro framework that are obsolete (non-generic collections) or break the sandbox (synchronous APIs); if you use these, you will have to rewrite to use the alternatives, if they exist at all, to move your apps to Metro. If you want to write public WinRT components in .NET, there are some quite strict rules you have to adhere to. But the compilers know about these rules; you can write them in C# or VB, and the compilers will tell you when you do something that isn't allowed and deal with the translation to WinRT metadata rather than .NET assemblies. It is possible to write a class library that can be used in Metro and desktop applications. However, you need to be very careful not to use types that are available in one but not the other. One can imagine developers writing their own abstraction around file IO and UIs (MVVM anyone?) that can be implemented differently in Metro and desktop, but look the same within your shared library. So, if you're a .NET developer, you have a lot less to worry about. .NET is a viable platform on Metro, and traditional desktop apps are not going away. You don't have to learn HTML5 and JavaScript if you don't want to. Hurray!

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• Big Data: Size isn’t everything

  - by Simon Elliston Ball

  Big Data has a big problem; it’s the word “Big”. These days, a quick Google search will uncover terabytes of negative opinion about the futility of relying on huge volumes of data to produce magical, meaningful insight. There are also many clichéd but correct assertions about the difficulties of correlation versus causation, in massive data sets. In reading some of these pieces, I begin to understand how climatologists must feel when people complain ironically about “global warming” during snowfall. Big Data has a name problem. There is a lot more to it than size. Shape, Speed, and…err…Veracity are also key elements (now I understand why Gartner and the gang went with V’s instead of S’s). The need to handle data of different shapes (Variety) is not new. Data developers have always had to mold strange-shaped data into our reporting systems, integrating with semi-structured sources, and even straying into full-text searching. However, what we lacked was an easy way to add semi-structured and unstructured data to our arsenal. New “Big Data” tools such as MongoDB, and other NoSQL (Not Only SQL) databases, or a graph database like Neo4J, fill this gap. Still, to many, they simply introduce noise to the clean signal that is their sensibly normalized data structures. What about speed (Velocity)? It’s not just high frequency trading that generates data faster than a single system can handle. Many other applications need to make trade-offs that traditional databases won’t, in order to cope with high data insert speeds, or to extract quickly the required information from data streams. Unfortunately, many people equate Big Data with the Hadoop platform, whose batch driven queries and job processing queues have little to do with “velocity”. StreamInsight, Esper and Tibco BusinessEvents are examples of Big Data tools designed to handle high-velocity data streams. Again, the name doesn’t do the discipline of Big Data any favors. Ultimately, though, does analyzing fast moving data produce insights as useful as the ones we get through a more considered approach, enabled by traditional BI? Finally, we have Veracity and Value. In many ways, these additions to the classic Volume, Velocity and Variety trio acknowledge the criticism that without high-quality data and genuinely valuable outputs then data, big or otherwise, is worthless. As a discipline, Big Data has recognized this, and data quality and cleaning tools are starting to appear to support it. Rather than simply decrying the irrelevance of Volume, we need as a profession to focus how to improve Veracity and Value. Perhaps we should just declare the ‘Big’ silent, embrace these new data tools and help develop better practices for their use, just as we did the good old RDBMS? What does Big Data mean to you? Which V gives your business the most pain, or the most value? Do you see these new tools as a useful addition to the BI toolbox, or are they just enabling a dangerous trend to find ghosts in the noise?

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• Decompilers - Myth or Fact ?

  - by Simon

  Lately I have been thinking of application security and binaries and decompilers. (FYI- Decompilers is just an anti-complier, the purpose is to get the source back from the binary) Is there such thing as "Perfect Decompiler"? or are binaries safe from reverse engineering? (For clarity sake, by "Perfect" I mean the original source files with all the variable names/macros/functions/classes/if possible comments in the respective headers and source files used to get the binary) What are some of the best practices used to prevent reverse engineering of software? Is it a major concern? Also is obfuscation/file permissions the only way to prevent unauthorized hacks on scripts? (call me a script-junky if you should)

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