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• Messaging Systems – Handshaking, Reconciliation and Tracking for Data Transparency

  - by Ahsan Alam

  As many corporations build business partnerships with other organizations, the need to share information becomes necessary. Large amount of data sharing using snail mail, email and/or fax are quickly becoming a thing of the past. More and more organizations are relying heavily on Ftp and/or Web Service to exchange data. Corporations apply wide range of technologies and techniques based on available resources and data transfer needs. Sometimes, it involves simple home-grown applications. Other times, large investments are made on products like BizTalk, TIBCO etc. Complexity of information management also varies significantly from one organizations to another. Some may deal with handful of simple steps to process and manage shared data; whereas others may rely on fairly complex processes with heavy interaction with internal and external systems in order to serve the business needs. It is not surprising that many of these systems end up becoming black boxes over a period of time. Consequently, people and business start to rely more and more on developers and support personnel just to extract simple information adding to the loss of productivity. One of the most important factor in any business is transparency to data irrespective of technology preferences and the complexity of business processes. Not knowing the state of data could become very costly to the business. Being involved in messaging systems for some time now, I have heard the same type of questions over and over again. Did we transmit messages successfully? Did we get responses back? What is the expected turn-around-time? Did the system experience any errors? When one company transmits data to one or more company, it may invoke a set of processes that could complete in matter of seconds, or it could days. As data travels from one organizations to another, the uncertainty grows, and the longer it takes to track uncertain state of the data the costlier it gets for the business, So, in every business scenario, it's extremely important to be aware of the state of the data.   Architects of messaging systems can take several steps to aid with data transparency. Some forms of data handshaking and reconciliation mechanism as well as extensive data tracking can be incorporated into the system to provide clear visibility to the data. What do I mean by handshaking and reconciliation? Some might consider these to be a single concept; however, I like to consider them in two unique categories. Handshaking serves as message receipts or acknowledgment. When one transmits messages to another, the receiver must acknowledge each message by sending immediate responses for each transaction. Whenever we use Web Services, handshaking is often achieved utilizing request/reply pattern. Similarly, if Ftp is used, a receiver can acknowledge by dropping messages for the sender as soon as the files are picked up. These forms of handshaking or acknowledgment informs the message sender and receiver that a successful transaction has occurred. I have mentioned earlier that it could take anywhere from a few seconds to a number of days before shared data is completely processed. In addition, whenever a batched transaction is used, processing time for each data element inside the batch could also vary significantly. So, in order to successfully manage data processing, reconciliation becomes extremely important; otherwise it may result into data loss or in some cases hefty penalty. Reconciliation can be done in many ways. Partner organizations can share and compare ad hoc reports to achieve reconciliation. On the other hand, partners can agree on some type of systematic reconciliation messages. Systems within responsible parties can trigger messages to partners as soon as the data process completes.   Next step in the data transparency is extensive data tracking. Some products such as BizTalk and TIBCO provide built-in functionality for data tracking; however, built-in functionality may not always be adequate. Sometimes additional tracking system (or databases) needs to be built in order monitor all types of data flow including, message transactions, handshaking, reconciliation, system errors and many more. If these types of data are captured, then these can be presented to business users in any forms or fashion. When business users are empowered with such information, then the reliance on developers and support teams decreases dramatically.   In today's collaborative world of information sharing, data transparency is key to the success of every business. The state of business data will constantly change. However, when people have easier access to various states of data, it allows them to make better and quicker decisions. Therefore, I feel that data handshaking, reconciliation and tracking is very important aspect of messaging systems.

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• The ugly evolution of running a background operation in the context of an ASP.NET app

  - by Jeff

  If you’re one of the two people who has followed my blog for many years, you know that I’ve been going at POP Forums now for over almost 15 years. Publishing it as an open source app has been a big help because it helps me understand how people want to use it, and having it translated to six languages is pretty sweet. Despite this warm and fuzzy group hug, there has been an ugly hack hiding in there for years. One of the things we find ourselves wanting to do is hide some kind of regular process inside of an ASP.NET application that runs periodically. The motivation for this has always been that a lot of people simply don’t have a choice, because they’re running the app on shared hosting, or don’t otherwise have access to a box that can run some kind of regular background service. In POP Forums, I “solved” this problem years ago by hiding some static timers in an HttpModule. Truthfully, this works well as long as you don’t run multiple instances of the app, which in the cloud world, is always a possibility. With the arrival of WebJobs in Azure, I’m going to solve this problem. This post isn’t about that. The other little hacky problem that I “solved” was spawning a background thread to queue emails to subscribed users of the forum. This evolved quite a bit over the years, starting with a long running page to mail users in real-time, when I had only a few hundred. By the time it got into the thousands, or tens of thousands, I needed a better way. What I did is launched a new thread that read all of the user data in, then wrote a queued email to the database (as in, the entire body of the email, every time), with the properly formatted opt-out link. It was super inefficient, but it worked. Then I moved my biggest site using it, CoasterBuzz, to an Azure Website, and it stopped working. So let’s start with the first stupid thing I was doing. The new thread was simply created with delegate code inline. As best I can tell, Azure Websites are more aggressive about garbage collection, because that thread didn’t queue even one message. When the calling server response went out of scope, so went the magic background thread. Duh, all I had to do was move the thread to a private static variable in the class. That’s the way I was able to keep stuff running from the HttpModule. (And yes, I know this is still prone to failure, particularly if the app recycles. For as infrequently as it’s used, I have not, however, experienced this.) It was still failing, but this time I wasn’t sure why. It would queue a few dozen messages, then die. Running in Azure, I had to turn on the application logging and FTP in to see what was going on. That led me to a helper method I was using as delegate to build the unsubscribe links. The idea here is that I didn’t want yet another config entry to describe the base URL, appended with the right path that would match the routing table. No, I wanted the app to figure it out for you, so I came up with this little thing: public static string FullUrlHelper(this Controller controller, string actionName, string controllerName, object routeValues = null) { var helper = new UrlHelper(controller.Request.RequestContext); var requestUrl = controller.Request.Url; if (requestUrl == null) return String.Empty; var url = requestUrl.Scheme + "://"; url += requestUrl.Host; url += (requestUrl.Port != 80 ? ":" + requestUrl.Port : ""); url += helper.Action(actionName, controllerName, routeValues); return url; } And yes, that should have been done with a string builder. This is useful for sending out the email verification messages, too. As clever as I thought I was with this, I was using a delegate in the admin controller to format these unsubscribe links for tens of thousands of users. I passed that delegate into a service class that did the email work: Func<User, string> unsubscribeLinkGenerator = user => this.FullUrlHelper("Unsubscribe", AccountController.Name, new { id = user.UserID, key = _profileService.GetUnsubscribeHash(user) }); _mailingListService.MailUsers(subject, body, htmlBody, unsubscribeLinkGenerator); Cool, right? Actually, not so much. If you look back at the helper, this delegate then will depend on the controller context to learn the routing and format for the URL. As you might have guessed, those things were turning null after a few dozen formatted links, when the original request to the admin controller went away. That this wasn’t already happening on my dedicated server is surprising, but again, I understand why the Azure environment might be eager to reclaim a thread after servicing the request. It’s already inefficient that I’m building the entire email for every user, but going back to check the routing table for the right link every time isn’t a win either. I put together a little hack to look up one generic URL, and use that as the basis for a string format. If you’re wondering why I didn’t just use the curly braces up front, it’s because they get URL formatted: var baseString = this.FullUrlHelper("Unsubscribe", AccountController.Name, new { id = "--id--", key = "--key--" }); baseString = baseString.Replace("--id--", "{0}").Replace("--key--", "{1}"); Func unsubscribeLinkGenerator = user => String.Format(baseString, user.UserID, _profileService.GetUnsubscribeHash(user)); _mailingListService.MailUsers(subject, body, htmlBody, unsubscribeLinkGenerator); And wouldn’t you know it, the new solution works just fine. It’s still kind of hacky and inefficient, but it will work until this somehow breaks too.

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• Chart Control in ASP.Net 4 – Second Part

  - by sreejukg

    Couple of weeks before, I have written an introduction about the chart control available in .Net framework. In that article, I explained the basic usage of the chart control with a simple example. You can read that article from the url http://weblogs.asp.net/sreejukg/archive/2010/12/31/getting-started-with-chart-control-in-asp-net-4-0.aspx. In this article I am going to demonstrate how one can generate various types of charts that can be generated easily using the ASP.Net chart control. Let us recollect the data sample we were working in the previous sample. The following is the data I used in the previous article. id SaleAmount SalesPerson SaleType SaleDate CompletionStatus (%) 1 1000 Jack Development 2010-01-01 100 2 300 Mills Consultancy 2010-04-14 90 3 4000 Mills Development 2010-05-15 80 4 2500 Mike eMarketting 2010-06-15 40 5 1080 Jack Development 2010-07-15 30 6 6500 Mills Consultancy 2010-08-24 65 In this article I am going to demonstrate various graphical reports generated from this data with the help of chart control. The following are the reports I am going to generate 1. Representation of share of Sales by each Sales person. 2. Representation of share of sales data according to sale type 3. Representation of sales progress over time period I am going to demonstrate how to bind the chart control programmatically. In order to facilitate this, I created an aspx page named “SalesAnalysis.Aspx” to my project. In the page I added the following controls 1. Dropdownlist control – with id ddlAnalysisType, user will use this to choose the type of chart they want to see. 2. A Button control – with id btnSubmit , by clicking this button, the chart based on the dropdownlist selection will be shown to the user 3. A label Control – with id lblMessage, to display the message to the user, initially this will ask the user to select an option and click on the button. 4. Chart control – with id chrtAnalysis, by default, I set visible = false so that during the page load the chart will be hidden to the users. The following is the initial output of the page. Generating chart for salesperson share Now from Visual Studio, I have double clicked on the button; it created the event handler btnSubmit_Click. In the button Submit event handler, I am using a switch case to execute the corresponding SQL statement and bind it to the chart control. The below is the code for generating the sales person share chart using a pie chart. The above code produces the following output The steps for creating the above chart can be summarized as follows. You specify a chart area, then a series and bind the chart to some x and y values. That is it. If you want to control the chart size and position, you can set the properties for the ChartArea.Position element. For e.g. in the previous code, after instantiating the chart area, setting the below code will give you a bigger pie chart. c.Position.Width = 100; c.Position.Height = 100; The width and height values are in percentage. In this case the chart will be generated by utilizing all the width and height of the chart object. See the output updated with the width and height set to 100% each. Generate Chart for sales type share Now for generating the chart according to the sales type, you just need to change the SQL query and x and y values of the chart. The Sql query used is “SELECT SUM(saleAmount) amount, SaleType from SalesData group by SaleType” and the X-Value is amount and Y-Values is SaleType. s.XValueMember = "SaleType"; s.YValueMembers = "amount"; After modifying the above code with these, the following output is generated. Generate Chart for sales progress over time period For generating the progress of sale chart against sales amount / period, line chart is the ideal tool. In order to facilitate the line chart, you can use Chart Type as System.Web.UI.DataVisualization.Charting.SeriesChartType.Line. Also we need to retrieve the amount and sales date from the data source. I have used the following query to facilitate this. “SELECT SaleAmount, SaleDate FROM SalesData” The output for the line chart is as follows Now you have seen how easily you can build various types of charts. Chart control is an excellent one that helps you to bring business intelligence to your applications. What I demonstrated in only a small part of what you can do with the chart control. Refer http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd456632.aspx for further reading. If you want to get the project files in zip format, post your email below. Hope you enjoyed reading this article.

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• Recent Innovations to ILOM

  - by B.Koch

  by Josh Rosen If you are wondering how Oracle can make some of the most advanced, reliable, and fault tolerant servers on the market, look no further than Oracle Integrated Lights Out Manager or ILOM.  We build ILOM into every server we create, from Oracle x86 Systems such as X3-2 to the SPARC T-Series family. Oracle ILOM is an embedded service processor, but it's really more than that.  It's a computer within a computer.  It's smart, it's tightly integrated into all aspects of the server's operation, and it's a big reason why Oracle servers are used for some of the most mission-critical workloads out there. To understand the value of ILOM, there is no better place to start than its fault management capability.  We have taken the sophisticated fault management architecture from Solaris, developed and refined over a decade, and built it into each and every ILOM. ILOM detects a potential issue at its earliest stage, watching low-level sensors.   If the root cause of a problem is not clear from a single error reading, ILOM will look for other clues and combine multiple pieces of information to correctly identify a failing component. ILOM provides peace of mind. We tailor our fault management for each new server platform that we produce.  You can rest assured that it's always actively keeping the server healthy.  And if there is a problem, you can be confident it will let you know by sending you a notification by e-mail or trap. We also heard IT managers tell us they needed a Ph.D. in computer engineering to manage today's servers. It doesn't have to be that way.  Thanks to the latest innovations to Oracle ILOM, we present hardware inventory and status in way that makes sense – to anyone.  Green means everything is healthy and red means something is wrong.  When a component needs to be replaced a clear message indicates where the problem is and points you at a knowledge article about that problem.  It's that simple. Simpler management and simple interfaces mean reduced complexity and lower costs to manage.  And we know that's really important. ILOM does all this while also providing advanced service processor features you depend on for managing enterprise class systems.  You can remotely control the server power, interact with a virtual video console for the server, and mount media on the server remotely.  There is no need to spend money on a KVM switch to get this functionality. And when people hear how advanced ILOM is, they can't believe ILOM is free.  All features are enabled and included with each Oracle server that you buy.  There are no advanced licenses you need to purchase or features to unlock. Configuring ILOM has also never been easier.  It is now possible to configure almost all aspects of the server directly from ILOM.  This includes changing BIOS settings, persistently modifying boot order, and optimizing power settings -- all directly from ILOM. But Oracle's innovation does not stop with ILOM.  Oracle has engineered Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center to integrate directly with ILOM, providing centralized management across all of our servers. Ops Center will discover each of your Oracle servers over the network by searching for ILOMs.  When it finds one, it knows how to communicate with ILOM to monitoring and configure that server from application to disk. Since every server that Oracle produces, from x86 Systems to SPARC T-Series up and down the line, comes with Oracle ILOM, you can manage all Oracle servers in the same way.  And while all of our servers may have different components on the inside, each with their specialized functions, the way you integrate them and the way you monitor and manage them is exactly the same. Oracle ILOM is state-of-art.  If you are looking for a server that make systems management simple and is easy to integrate and maintain, check out the latest advances to Oracle ILOM. Josh Rosen is a Principal Product Manager at Oracle and previously spent more than a decade as a developer and architect of system management software. Josh has worked on system management for many of Oracle's hardware products ranging from the earliest blade systems to the latest Oracle x86 servers.

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• Using the Static Code Analysis feature of Visual Studio (Premium/Ultimate) to find memory leakage problems

  - by terje

  Memory for managed code is handled by the garbage collector, but if you use any kind of unmanaged code, like native resources of any kind, open files, streams and window handles, your application may leak memory if these are not properly handled.  To handle such resources the classes that own these in your application should implement the IDisposable interface, and preferably implement it according to the pattern described for that interface. When you suspect a memory leak, the immediate impulse would be to start up a memory profiler and start digging into that.   However, before you follow that impulse, do a Static Code Analysis run with a ruleset tuned to finding possible memory leaks in your code.  If you get any warnings from this, fix them before you go on with the profiling. How to use a ruleset In Visual Studio 2010 (Premium and Ultimate editions) you can define your own rulesets containing a list of Static Code Analysis checks.   I have defined the memory checks as shown in the lists below as ruleset files, which can be downloaded – see bottom of this post.  When you get them, you can easily attach them to every project in your solution using the Solution Properties dialog. Right click the solution, and choose Properties at the bottom, or use the Analyze menu and choose “Configure Code Analysis for Solution”: In this dialog you can now choose the Memorycheck ruleset for every project you want to investigate.  Pressing Apply or Ok opens every project file and changes the projects code analysis ruleset to the one we have specified here. How to define your own ruleset  (skip this if you just download my predefined rulesets) If you want to define the ruleset yourself, open the properties on any project, choose Code Analysis tab near the bottom, choose any ruleset in the drop box and press Open Clear out all the rules by selecting “Source Rule Sets” in the Group By box, and unselect the box Change the Group By box to ID, and select the checks you want to include from the lists below. Note that you can change the action for each check to either warning, error or none, none being the same as unchecking the check.   Now go to the properties window and set a new name and description for your ruleset. Then save (File/Save as) the ruleset using the new name as its name, and use it for your projects as detailed above. It can also be wise to add the ruleset to your solution as a solution item. That way it’s there if you want to enable Code Analysis in some of your TFS builds.   Running the code analysis In Visual Studio 2010 you can either do your code analysis project by project using the context menu in the solution explorer and choose “Run Code Analysis”, you can define a new solution configuration, call it for example Debug (Code Analysis), in for each project here enable the Enable Code Analysis on Build   In Visual Studio Dev-11 it is all much simpler, just go to the Solution root in the Solution explorer, right click and choose “Run code analysis on solution”.     The ruleset checks The following list is the essential and critical memory checks.  CheckID Message Can be ignored ? Link to description with fix suggestions CA1001 Types that own disposable fields should be disposable No  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182172.aspx CA1049 Types that own native resources should be disposable Only if the pointers assumed to point to unmanaged resources point to something else  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182173.aspx CA1063 Implement IDisposable correctly No  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms244737.aspx CA2000 Dispose objects before losing scope No  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182289.aspx CA2115 1 Call GC.KeepAlive when using native resources See description  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182300.aspx CA2213 Disposable fields should be disposed If you are not responsible for release, of if Dispose occurs at deeper level  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182328.aspx CA2215 Dispose methods should call base class dispose Only if call to base happens at deeper calling level  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182330.aspx CA2216 Disposable types should declare a finalizer Only if type does not implement IDisposable for the purpose of releasing unmanaged resources  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182329.aspx CA2220 Finalizers should call base class finalizers No  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182341.aspx Notes: 1) Does not result in memory leak, but may cause the application to crash   The list below is a set of optional checks that may be enabled for your ruleset, because the issues these points too often happen as a result of attempting to fix up the warnings from the first set.   ID Message Type of fault Can be ignored ? Link to description with fix suggestions CA1060 Move P/invokes to NativeMethods class Security No http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182161.aspx CA1816 Call GC.SuppressFinalize correctly Performance Sometimes, see description http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182269.aspx CA1821 Remove empty finalizers Performance No http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb264476.aspx CA2004 Remove calls to GC.KeepAlive Performance and maintainability Only if not technically correct to convert to SafeHandle http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182293.aspx CA2006 Use SafeHandle to encapsulate native resources Security No http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182294.aspx CA2202 Do not dispose of objects multiple times Exception (System.ObjectDisposedException) No http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182334.aspx CA2205 Use managed equivalents of Win32 API Maintainability and complexity Only if the replace doesn’t provide needed functionality http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182365.aspx CA2221 Finalizers should be protected Incorrect implementation, only possible in MSIL coding No http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182340.aspx   Downloadable ruleset definitions I have defined three rulesets, one called Inmeta.Memorycheck with the rules in the first list above, and Inmeta.Memorycheck.Optionals containing the rules in the second list, and the last one called Inmeta.Memorycheck.All containing the sum of the two first ones.  All three rulesets can be found in the  zip archive  “Inmeta.Memorycheck” downloadable from here.   Links to some other resources relevant to Static Code Analysis MSDN Magazine Article by Mickey Gousset on Static Code Analysis in VS2010 MSDN :  Analyzing Managed Code Quality by Using Code Analysis, root of the documentation for this Preventing generated code from being analyzed using attributes Online training course on Using Code Analysis with VS2010 Blogpost by Tatham Oddie on custom code analysis rules How to write custom rules, from Microsoft Code Analysis Team Blog Microsoft Code Analysis Team Blog

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• SQL SERVER – An Efficiency Tool to Compare and Synchronize SQL Server Databases

  - by Pinal Dave

  There is no need to reinvent the wheel if it is already invented and if the wheel is already available at ease, there is no need to wait to grab it. Here is the similar situation. I came across a very interesting situation and I had to look for an efficient tool which can make my life easier and solve my business problem. Here is the scenario. One of the developers had deleted few rows from the very important mapping table of our development server (thankfully, it was not the production server). Though it was a development server, the entire development team had to stop working as the application started to crash on every page. Think about the lost of manpower and efficiency which we started to loose.  Pretty much every department had to stop working as our internal development application stopped working. Thankfully, we even take a backup of our development server and we had access to full backup of the entire database at 6 AM morning. We do not take as a frequent backup of development server as production server (naturally!). Even though we had a full backup, the solution was not to restore the database. Think about it, there were plenty of the other operations since the last good full backup and if we restore a full backup, we will pretty much overwrite on the top of the work done by developers since morning. Now, as restoring the full backup was not an option we decided to restore the same database on another server. Once we had restored our database to another server, the challenge was to compare the table from where the database was deleted. The mapping table from where the data were deleted contained over 5000 rows and it was humanly impossible to compare both the tables manually. Finally we decided to use efficiency tool dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server from DevArt. dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server is a powerful, fast and easy to use SQL compare tool, capable of using native SQL Server backups as metadata source. (FYI we Downloaded dbForge Data Compare) Once we discovered the product, we immediately downloaded the product and installed on our development server. After we installed the product, we were greeted with the following screen. We clicked on the New Data Comparision to start our new comparison project. It brought up following screen. Here is the best part of the product, we just had to enter our database connection username and password along with source and destination details and we are done. The entire process is very simple and self intuiting. The best part was that for the source, we can either select database or even backup. This was indeed fantastic feature. Think about this, if you have a very big database, it will take long time to restore on the server. Once it is restored, you will be able to work with it. However, when you are working with dbForge Data Compare it will accept database backup as your source or destination. Once I click on the execute it brought up following screen where it displayed an excellent summary of the data compare. It has dedicated tabs for the what is changing in what table as well had details of the changed data. The best part is that, once we had reviewed the change. We click on the Synchronize button in the menu bar and it brought up following screen. You can see that the screen has very simple straight forward but very powerful features. You can generate a script to synchronize from target to source or even from source to target. Additionally, the database is a very complicated world and there are extensive options to configure various database options on the next screen. We also have the option to either generate script or directly execute the script to target server. I like to play on the safe side and I generated the script for my synchronization and later on after review I deployed the scripts on the server. Well, my team and we were able to get going from our disaster in less than 10 minutes. There were few people in our team were indeed disappointed as they were thinking of going home early that day but in less than 10 minutes they had to get back to work. There are so many other features in  dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server, I am already planning to make this product company wide recommended product for Data Compare tool. Hats off to the team who have build this product. Here are few of the features salient features of the dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server Perform SQL Server database comparison to detect changes Compare SQL Server backups with live databases Analyze data differences between two databases Synchronize two databases that went out of sync Restore data of a particular table from the backup Generate data comparison reports in Excel and HTML formats Copy look-up data from development database to production Automate routine data synchronization tasks with command-line interface Go Ahead and Download the dbForge Data Compare for SQL Server right away. It is always a good idea to get familiar with the important tools before hand instead of learning it under pressure of disaster. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, T SQL, Technology

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• top tweets WebLogic Partner Community – March 2012

  - by JuergenKress

  Send us your tweets @wlscommunity #WebLogicCommunity and follow us on twitter http://twitter.com/wlscommunity PeterPaul ? RT @JDeveloper: EJB 3 Deployment guide for WebLogic Server Version: 10.3.4.0 dlvr.it/1J5VcV Andrejus Baranovskis ?Open ADF PopUp on Page Load fb.me/1Rx9LP3oW Sten Vesterli ? RT @OracleBlogs: Using the Oracle E-Business Suite SDK for Java on ADF Applications ow.ly/1hVKbB <- Neat! No more WS calls Java Buddy ?JavaFX 2.0: Example of MediaPlay java-buddy.blogspot.com/2012/03/javafx… Georges Saab Build improvements coming to #openJDK for #jdk8 mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/buil… NetBeans Team Share your #Java experience! JavaOne 2012 India call for papers: ow.ly/9xYg0 GlassFish ? GlassFish 3.1.2 Screencasts & Videos – bit.ly/zmQjn2 chriscmuir ?G+: New blog post: ADF Runtimes vs WLS versions as of JDeveloper 11.1.1.6.0 – bit.ly/y8tkgJ Michael Heinrichs New article: Creating a Sprite Animation with JavaFX blog.netopyr.com/2012/03/09/cre… Oracle WebLogic ? #WebLogic Devcast Webinar Series for March: Enterprise Java Scale Out, JPA, Distributed Grid Data Cache bit.ly/zeUXEV #Coherence Andrejus Baranovskis ?Extending Application Module for ADF BC Proxy User DB Connection fb.me/Bj1hLUqm OTNArchBeat ? Oracle Fusion Middleware on JDK 7 | Mark Nelson bit.ly/w7IroZ OTNArchBeat ? Java Champion Jonas Bonér Explains the Akka Platform bit.ly/x2GbXm Adam Bien ? (Java) FX Experience Tools–Feels Like Native Mac App: FX Experience Tools application comes with a native Mac O… bit.ly/waHF3H GlassFish ? GlassFish new recruit and Eclipse integration progress – bit.ly/y5eEkk JDeveloper & ADF Prototyping ADF Libraries dlvr.it/1Hhnw0 Eric Elzinga ?Oracle Fusion Middleware on JDK 7, bit.ly/xkphFQ ADF EMG ? Working with ADF in Arabic, Hebrew or other right-to-left-written language? Oracle UX asks for your help. groups.google.com/forum/?fromgro… Java ? A simple #JavaFX Login Form with a TRON like effect ow.ly/9n9AG JDeveloper & ADF ? Logging in Oracle ADF Applications dlvr.it/1HZhcX OTNArchBeat ? Oracle Cloud Conference: dates and locations worldwide bit.ly/ywXydR UK Oracle User Group ? Simon Haslam, ACE Director present on #WebLogic for DBAs at #oug_ire2012 j.mp/zG6vz3 @oraclewebcenter @oracleace #dublin Steven Davelaar ? Working with ADF and not a member of ADF EMG? You miss lots of valuable info, join now! sites.google.com/site/oracleemg… Simon Haslam @MaciejGruszka: Oracle plans to provide Forms & Reports plug-in for OVAB next year to help deployment. #ukoug MW SIG GlassFish ? Introducing JSR 357: Social Media API – bit.ly/yC8vez JAX London ? Are you coming to Java EE workshops by @AdamBien at JAX Days? Save £100 by registering today. #jaxdays #javaee jaxdays.com WebLogic Community ?Welcome to our Munich WebLogic 12c Bootcamp in Munich! If you also want to attend a training register for the Community oracle.com/partners/goto/… chriscmuir ? My first webcast for Oracle! (be kind) Basing ADF Business Component View Objects on More that one Entity Object bit.ly/ArKija OTNArchBeat ? Oracle Weblogic Server 12c is available on Oracle Solaris 11 (SPARC and x86) bit.ly/xE3TLg JDeveloper & ADF ? Basing ADF Business Component View Objects on More that one Entity Object – YouTube dlvr.it/1H93Qr OTNArchBeat ? Application-Driven Virtualization with Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder | Ronen Kofman bit.ly/wF1C1N Oracle WebLogic ? Steve Button’s blog: WebLogic Server Singleton Services ow.ly/1hOu4U Barbara Ann May ?@oracledevtools: New update: #NetBeans IDE 7.1.1, with support for #GlassFish 3.1.2 bit.ly/mOLcQd #java #developer OTNArchBeat ? Using Coherence with JDeveloper: bit.ly/AkoEQb WebLogic Community ? WebLogic Partner Community Newsletter February 2012 wp.me/p1LMIb-f3 GlassFish ? GlassFish 3.1.2 – new Podcast episode : bit.ly/wc6oBE Frank Nimphius ?Cool! Open JDeveloper 11.1.1.5, go help–>check for updates. First thing shown is that 11.1.1.6 is available. Never miss a new release Adam Bien ?5 Minutes (Video) With Java EE …Or With NetBeans + GlassFish: This screencast covers a 5-minute development of a… bit.ly/xkOJMf WebLogic Community ? Free Oracle WebLogic Certification Application Grid Implementation Specialist wp.me/p1LMIb-eT OTNArchBeat ?Oracle Coherence: First Steps Using Clusters and Basic API Usage | Ricardo Ferreira bit.ly/yYQ3Wz GlassFish ? JMS 2.0 Early Draft is here – bit.ly/ygT1VN OTNArchBeat ? Exalogic Networking Part 2 | The Old Toxophilist bit.ly/xuYMIi OTNArchBeat ?New Release: GlassFish Server 3.1.2. Read All About It! | Paul Davies bit.ly/AtlGxo Oracle WebLogic ?OTN Virtual Developer Day: #WebLogic 12c & #Coherence ost-conference on-demand page live with bonus #Virtualbox lab – bit.ly/xUy6BJ Oracle WebLogic ? Steve Button’s blog: WebLogic Server 11g (10.3.6) Documentation ow.ly/1hJgUB Lucas Jellema ? Just published an article on the AMIS blog: technology.amis.nl/2012/03/adf-11… ADF 11g – programmatically sorting rich table columns. Java Certification ? New Course! Learn how to create mobile applications using Java ME: bit.ly/xZj1Jh Simon Haslam ? @MaciejGruszka WebLogic 12c can run against 11g domain config without changes …and can rollback to 11. #ukoug MW SIG Justin Kestelyn ? Learn Advanced ADF, free and online bit.ly/wEKSRc WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: twitter,WebLogic,WebLogic Community,OPN,Oracle,Jürgen Kress,WebLogic 12c

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• A C# implementation of the CallStream pattern

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  Dusan published this interesting post a couple of weeks ago about a novel JavaScript chaining pattern: http://dbj.org/dbj/?p=514 It’s similar to many existing patterns, but the syntax is extraordinarily terse and it provides a new form of friction-free, plugin-less extensibility mechanism. Here’s a JavaScript example from Dusan’s post: CallStream("#container") (find, "div") (attr, "A", 1) (css, "color", "#fff") (logger); The interesting thing here is that the functions that are being passed as the first argument are arbitrary, they don’t need to be declared as plug-ins. Compare that with a rough jQuery equivalent that could look something like this: $.fn.logger = function () { /* ... */ } $("selector") .find("div") .attr("A", 1) .css("color", "#fff") .logger(); There is also the “each” method in jQuery that achieves something similar, but its syntax is a little more verbose. Of course, that this pattern can be expressed so easily in JavaScript owes everything to the extraordinary way functions are treated in that language, something Douglas Crockford called “the very best part of JavaScript”. One of the first things I thought while reading Dusan’s post was how I could adapt that to C#. After all, with Lambdas and delegates, C# also has its first-class functions. And sure enough, it works really really well. After about ten minutes, I was able to write this: CallStreamFactory.CallStream (p => Console.WriteLine("Yay!")) (Dump, DateTime.Now) (DumpFooAndBar, new { Foo = 42, Bar = "the answer" }) (p => Console.ReadKey()); Where the Dump function is: public static void Dump(object options) { Console.WriteLine(options.ToString()); } And DumpFooAndBar is: public static void DumpFooAndBar(dynamic options) { Console.WriteLine("Foo is {0} and bar is {1}.", options.Foo, options.Bar); } So how does this work? Well, it really is very simple. And not. Let’s say it’s not a lot of code, but if you’re like me you might need an Advil after that. First, I defined the signature of the CallStream method as follows: public delegate CallStream CallStream (Action<object> action, object options = null); The delegate define a call stream as something that takes an action (a function of the options) and an optional options object and that returns a delegate of its own type. Tricky, but that actually works, a delegate can return its own type. Then I wrote an implementation of that delegate that calls the action and returns itself: public static CallStream CallStream (Action<object> action, object options = null) { action(options); return CallStream; } Pretty nice, eh? Well, yes and no. What we are doing here is to execute a sequence of actions using an interesting novel syntax. But for this to be actually useful, you’d need to build a more specialized call stream factory that comes with some sort of context (like Dusan did in JavaScript). For example, you could write the following alternate delegate signature that takes a string and returns itself: public delegate StringCallStream StringCallStream(string message); And then write the following call stream (notice the currying): public static StringCallStream CreateDumpCallStream(string dumpPath) { StringCallStream str = null; var dump = File.AppendText(dumpPath); dump.AutoFlush = true; str = s => { dump.WriteLine(s); return str; }; return str; } (I know, I’m not closing that stream; sure; bad, bad Bertrand) Finally, here’s how you use it: CallStreamFactory.CreateDumpCallStream(@".\dump.txt") ("Wow, this really works.") (DateTime.Now.ToLongTimeString()) ("And that is all."); Next step would be to combine this contextual implementation with the one that takes an action parameter and do some really fun stuff. I’m only scratching the surface here. This pattern could reveal itself to be nothing more than a gratuitous mind-bender or there could be applications that we hardly suspect at this point. In any case, it’s a fun new construct. Or is this nothing new? You tell me… Comments are open :)

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• HTML5 and Visual Studio 2010

  - by Harish Ranganathan

  All of us work with Visual Studio (or the free Visual Web Developer Express Edition) for developing web applications targeting ASP.NET / ASP.NET MVC or Silverlight etc.,  Over the years, Visual Studio has grown to a great extent.  From being a simple limited functionality tool in VS.NET 2002 to the multi-faceted, MEF driven Visual Studio 2010, it has come a long way.  And as much as Visual Studio supports rapid web development by generating HTML mark up, it also added intellisense for some of the HTML specifications that one has otherwise monotonously type every time.  Ex.- In Visual Studio 2010, one can just type the angular bracket “<” and then the first keyword “h” or “x” for html or xhtml respectively and then press tab twice and it would render the entire markup required for XHTML or HTML 1.0/1.1 strict/transitional and the fully qualified W3C URL. The same holds good for specifying HTML type declaration.  Now, the difference between HTML and XHTML has been discussed in detail already, though, if you are interested to know, you can read it from http://www.w3schools.com/xhtml/xhtml_html.asp But, the industry trend or the buzz around is HTML5.  With browsers like IE9 Beta, Google Chrome, Firefox 4 etc., supporting HTML5 standards big time, everyone wants to start developing HTML5 based websites. VS developers (like me) often get the question around when would VS start supporting HTML5.  VS 2010 was released last year and HTML5 is still specifications under development.  Clearly, with the timelines we started developing Visual Studio (way back in 2008), HTML5 specs were almost non-existent.  Even today, the HTML5 body recommends not to fully depend on the entire mark up set as they are still under development specs and might change in the future. However, with Visual Studio 2010 SP1 beta, there is quite a bit of support for HTML5 based web development.  In fact, one of my colleagues pointed out that SP1 beta’s major enhancement is its ability to support HTML5 tags and even add server mode to them. Lets look at the existing validation schema available in Visual Studio (Tools – Options – Validation) This is before installing Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Beta.  Clearly, the validation options are restricted to HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.1 transitional and below. Also, lets consider using some of the new HTML5 input type elements.  (I found out this, just today from my friend, also an, ASP.NET team member) <input type=”email”> is one of the new input type elements according to the HTML5 specification.  Now, this works well if you type it as is  in Visual Studio and the page renders without any issue (since the default behaviour is, if there is an “undefined” type specified to input tag, it would fall back on the default mode, which is text. The moment you add <input type=”email” runat=”server” >, you get an error Naturally you don’t get intellisense support as well for these new tags.  Once you install Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 Beta from here (it takes a while so you need to be patient for the installation to complete), you will start getting additional Validation templates for HTML5, as below:- Once you set this, you can start using HTML5 elements in your web page without getting errors/warnings.  Look at the screen shot below, for the new “video” tag which is showing up in intellisense (video is a part of the new HTML5 specifications)     note that, you still need to hook up the <!DOCTYPE html /> on the top manually as it doesn’t change automatically  (from the default XHTML 1.0 strict) when you create a new page. Also, the new input type tags in HTML5 are also supported One, can also use the <asp:TextBox type=”email” which would in turn generate the <input type=”email”> markup when the page is rendered.  In fact, as of SP1 beta, this is the only way to put the new input type tags with the runat=”server” attribute (otherwise you will get the parser error mentioned above.  This issue would be fixed by the final release of SP1 beta) Going further, there may be more support for having server tags for some of the common HTML5 elements, but this is work in progress currently. So, other than not having runat=”server” support for the new HTML5  input tags, you can pretty much build and target HTML5 websites with Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Beta, today.  For those who are running Visual Studio 2008, you also have the “HTML5 intellisense for Visual Studio 2010 and 2008” available for download, from http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/d771cbc8-d60a-40b0-a1d8-f19fc393127d/ Note that, if you are running Visual Studio 2010, the recommended approach is to install the SP1 beta which would be the way forward for HTML5 support in Visual Studio. Of course, you need to test these on a browser supporting HTML5 such as IE9 Beta or Chrome or FireFox 4.  You can download IE9 Beta from here You can also follow the Visual Web Developer Team Blog for more updates on the stuff they are building. Cheers !!!

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• F# for the C# Programmer

  - by mbcrump

  Are you a C# Programmer and can’t make it past a day without seeing or hearing someone mention F#?  Today, I’m going to walk you through your first F# application and give you a brief introduction to the language. Sit back this will only take about 20 minutes. Introduction Microsoft's F# programming language is a functional language for the .NET framework that was originally developed at Microsoft Research Cambridge by Don Syme. In October 2007, the senior vice president of the developer division at Microsoft announced that F# was being officially productized to become a fully supported .NET language and professional developers were hired to create a team of around ten people to build the product version. In September 2008, Microsoft released the first Community Technology Preview (CTP), an official beta release, of the F# distribution . In December 2008, Microsoft announced that the success of this CTP had encouraged them to escalate F# and it is now will now be shipped as one of the core languages in Visual Studio 2010 , alongside C++, C# 4.0 and VB. The F# programming language incorporates many state-of-the-art features from programming language research and ossifies them in an industrial strength implementation that promises to revolutionize interactive, parallel and concurrent programming. Advantages of F# F# is the world's first language to combine all of the following features: Type inference: types are inferred by the compiler and generic definitions are created automatically. Algebraic data types: a succinct way to represent trees. Pattern matching: a comprehensible and efficient way to dissect data structures. Active patterns: pattern matching over foreign data structures. Interactive sessions: as easy to use as Python and Mathematica. High performance JIT compilation to native code: as fast as C#. Rich data structures: lists and arrays built into the language with syntactic support. Functional programming: first-class functions and tail calls. Expressive static type system: finds bugs during compilation and provides machine-verified documentation. Sequence expressions: interrogate huge data sets efficiently. Asynchronous workflows: syntactic support for monadic style concurrent programming with cancellations. Industrial-strength IDE support: multithreaded debugging, and graphical throwback of inferred types and documentation. Commerce friendly design and a viable commercial market. Lets try a short program in C# then F# to understand the differences. Using C#: Create a variable and output the value to the console window: Sample Program. using System;   namespace ConsoleApplication9 {     class Program     {         static void Main(string[] args)         {             var a = 2;             Console.WriteLine(a);             Console.ReadLine();         }     } } A breeze right? 14 Lines of code. We could have condensed it a bit by removing the “using” statment and tossing the namespace. But this is the typical C# program. Using F#: Create a variable and output the value to the console window: To start, open Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Studio 2008. Note: If using VS2008, then please download the SDK first before getting started. If you are using VS2010 then you are already setup and ready to go. So, click File-> New Project –> Other Languages –> Visual F# –> Windows –> F# Application. You will get the screen below. Go ahead and enter a name and click OK. Now, you will notice that the Solution Explorer contains the following: Double click the Program.fs and enter the following information. Hit F5 and it should run successfully. Sample Program. open System let a = 2        Console.WriteLine a As Shown below: Hmm, what? F# did the same thing in 3 lines of code. Show me the interactive evaluation that I keep hearing about. The F# development environment for Visual Studio 2010 provides two different modes of execution for F# code: Batch compilation to a .NET executable or DLL. (This was accomplished above). Interactive evaluation. (Demo is below) The interactive session provides a > prompt, requires a double semicolon ;; identifier at the end of a code snippet to force evaluation, and returns the names (if any) and types of resulting definitions and values. To access the F# prompt, in VS2010 Goto View –> Other Window then F# Interactive. Once you have the interactive window type in the following expression: 2+3;; as shown in the screenshot below: I hope this guide helps you get started with the language, please check out the following books for further information. F# Books for further reading   Foundations of F# Author: Robert Pickering An introduction to functional programming with F#. Including many samples, this book walks through the features of the F# language and libraries, and covers many of the .NET Framework features which can be leveraged with F#.       Functional Programming for the Real World: With Examples in F# and C# Authors: Tomas Petricek and Jon Skeet An introduction to functional programming for existing C# developers written by Tomas Petricek and Jon Skeet. This book explains the core principles using both C# and F#, shows how to use functional ideas when designing .NET applications and presents practical examples such as design of domain specific language, development of multi-core applications and programming of reactive applications.

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• WebLogic 12.1.2 launch webcast on-demand & WebLogic Community feedback

  - by JuergenKress

  You missed the WebLogic & Coherence & JDeveloper 12.1.2 launch Webcast? Watch it on-demand: View On-Demand Version Read the Q&A from this Webcast Special thanks for Frank Munz and Simon Haslams our WebLogic Community experts on the phone!Thanks for the community for the great twitter feedback send us your tweets @wlscommunity #WebLogicCommunity WebLogic Community Join the #WebLogic Partner Community for the latest WebLogic 12.1.2 details and upcoming trainings http://www.WeblogicCommunity.com #OracleCAF Oracle WebLogic ?Unified update, patch, install process is a key component in reducing Ops cost in #WebLogic 12c #OracleCAF WebLogic Community Demo time #WebLogic cluster creation in seconds #OracleCAF by @mike_lehmann & Will Lyons #WebLogicCommunity pic.twitter.com/gyb8YqnKco Oracle WebLogic ?Dynamic server clusters to scale apps - coming up in #WebLogic 12c launch. #OracleCAF http://pub.vitrue.com/lBmE Oracle WebLogic ?Key feature of #WebLogic 12.1.2 release: @Oracle Database 12c integration. #OracleCAF #OracleDB OTNArchBeat ?Many tech posts on #weblogic available on #oracleace Rene van Wijk's blog. #OracleCAF http://pub.vitrue.com/O9Cn Frank Munz ?Correct me if I am wrong, but this could be the first WebLogic 12.1.2 training ever: http://www.ausoug.org.au/insync13/insync13-frank-munz.html … Cloud Foundation ?.#WebLogic 12.1.2 deep dive starts NOW during #OracleCAF launch. #Coherence up next in a few minutes. http://pub.vitrue.com/HPHM Maciej Gruszka ?Watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiCoO_QGBsU&feature=c4-overview&list=UUrEIV9YO17leE9aJWamKEPw … at #WebLogic channel with @dave_cabelus about Elastic JMS Oracle WebLogic ?Pick up the new book by @frankmunz on WLS 12c http://amzn.to/1ceppgZ #WebLogic #OracleCAF OTNArchBeat ?@OTNArchBeat 31 Jul @frankmunz 's #WebLogic YouTube channel >> watch and learn #OracleCAF http://pub.vitrue.com/B4IM WebLogic Community ?@frankmunz WebLogic expert build elastic clouds with #WebLogic http://www.munzandmore.com/blog #OracleCAF #WebLogicCommunity pic.twitter.com/UK5UKjXUVl OTNArchBeat @frankmunz 's blog, covering #weblog #cloud and more #OracleCAF http://pub.vitrue.com/N8ST OTNArchBeat ?oracladmin: @simon_haslam 's Oracle Fusion Middleware blog #OracleCAF #oracleace http://pub.vitrue.com/cwGx Yuri Grinshteyn ?Coherence uses WLS tooling, including deployment, and can be part of the WLS cluster. Well done there. #OracleCAF Maciej Gruszka ?#Coherence 12.1.2 auto updates data grid on changes inside DB thru #GoldenGate HotCache - another cool feature of #OracleCAF Oracle WebLogic ?From #OracleCAF launch: Tight integration tween WLS, #Coherence and #OracleDB. Dynamic clusters, OSS support & more http://pub.vitrue.com/3NL9 OTNArchBeat ?25 recent no-fluff technical articles on Oracle WebLogic #OracleCAF http://pub.vitrue.com/FEG5 Maciej Gruszka ?@dave_cabelus Elastic JMS is my favourite capability of #WebLogic 12.1.2 WebLogic Community ?Dynamic WebLogic Clustering COOL - what is Wour favorite 12.1.2 feature? #OracleCAF #WebLogicCommunity pic.twitter.com/T8lvDMJ1U0 WebLogic Community ?What is the coolest #WebLogic 12.1.2 feature? Let us know @wlscommunity http://weblogiccommunity.com/2013/07/30/launch-webcast-weblogic-coherence-jdeveloper-adf-12-1-2-00-july-31st-2013/ … #WebLogicCommunity Simon Haslam ?I'm speaking(!) on the panel session with @frankmunz & Matt Rosen on the CAF/WebLogic 12.1.2 launch: 6pm UK today https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=registration.jsp&eventid=651242&partnerref=CAF_Launch_OCOM_07312013&sourcepage=register … Markus Eisele ?#WebLogic 12.1.2 - an Important New Release for Middleware Admins http://bit.ly/1cmtqhX by @simon_haslam OracleEnterpriseMgr ?The JVM diagnostics features of #EM12c are now shown in a demo by @hawkinsg1 at the #OracleCAF launch http://bit.ly/caflaunch Shaun Smith ?Curious about the new #Coherence 12.1.2 GoldenGate HotCache feature? I explain all on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0TIG3hgbg0&feature=share&list=PLxqhEJ4CA3JtQwuPS8Qmd88lGX-gsIbHV … #OracleCAF Maciej Gruszka ?Try for Yourself -- Download the products Oracle WebLogic 12.1.2: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/fusion-middleware/downloads/index.html … Oracle Coherence 12c: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/coherence/downloads/index.htm … WebLogic Community ?What is Your favorite feature in #WebLogic 12.1.2 ? cool stuff! #OracleCAF #WebLogicCommunity http://WeblogicCommunity.com pic.twitter.com/xjR05tiaQj We encourage you to learn more about all the products by reviewing the following resources: Try for Yourself -- Download the products Oracle WebLogic 12.1.2 Oracle Coherence 12c Enterprise Manager Developer Tools WebLogic Community blog Learn more Read the Oracle WebLogic Business Whitepaper Read the Oracle Coherence Business Whitepaper Read the Oracle WebLogic and Oracle Database Integration Whitepaper Get Training from Oracle University Check out the Oracle WebLogic YouTube Channel Check out the Oracle Coherence YouTube Channel WebLogic Partner Community Registration The Webcast is available on-demand Watch Webcast Now WebLogic Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: Weblogic 12.1.2,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• SQL Server devs–what source control system do you use, if any? (answer and maybe win free stuff)

  - by jamiet

  Recently I noticed a tweet from notable SQL Server author and community dude-at-large Steve Jones in which he asked how many SQL Server developers were putting their SQL Server source code (i.e. DDL) under source control (I’m paraphrasing because I can’t remember the exact tweet and Twitter’s search functionality is useless). The question surprised me slightly as I thought a more pertinent question would be “how many SQL Server developers are not using source control?” because I have been doing just that for many years now and I simply assumed that use of source control is a given in this day and age. Then I started thinking about it. “Perhaps I’m wrong” I pondered, “perhaps the SQL Server folks that do use source control in their day-to-day jobs are in the minority”. So, dear reader, I’m interested to know a little bit more about your use of source control. Are you putting your SQL Server code into a source control system? If so, what source control server software (e.g. TFS, Git, SVN, Mercurial, SourceSafe, Perforce) are you using? What source control client software are you using (e.g. TFS Team Explorer, Tortoise, Red Gate SQL Source Control, Red Gate SQL Connect, Git Bash, etc…)? Why did you make those particular software choices? Any interesting anecdotes to share in regard to your use of source control and SQL Server? To encourage you to contribute I have five pairs of licenses for Red Gate SQL Source Control and Red Gate SQL Connect to give away to what I consider to be the five best replies (“best” is totally subjective of course but this is my blog so my decision is final ), if you want to be considered don’t forget to leave contact details; email address, Twitter handle or similar will do. To start you off and to perhaps get the brain cells whirring, here are my answers to the questions above: Are you putting your SQL Server code into a source control system? As I think I’ve already said…yes. Always. If so, what source control server software (e.g. TFS, Git, SVN, Mercurial, SourceSafe, Perforce) are you using? I move around a lot between many clients so it changes on a fairly regular basis; my current client uses Team Foundation Server (aka TFS) and as part of a separate project is trialing the use of Team Foundation Service. I have used SVN extensively in the past which I am a fan of (I generally prefer it to TFS) and am trying to get my head around Git by using it for ObjectStorageHelper. What source control client software are you using (e.g. TFS Team Explorer, Tortoise, Red Gate SQL Source Control, Red Gate SQL Connect, Git Bash, etc…)? On my current project, Team Explorer. In the past I have used Tortoise to connect to SVN. Why did you make those particular software choices? I generally use whatever the client uses and given that I work with SQL Server I find that the majority of my clients use TFS, I guess simply because they are Microsoft development shops. Any interesting anecdotes to share in regard to your use of source control and SQL Server? Not an anecdote as such but I am going to share some frustrations about TFS. In many ways TFS is a great product because it integrates many separate functions (source control, work item tracking, build agents) into one whole and I’m firmly of the opinion that that is a good thing if for no reason other than being able to associate your check-ins with a work-item. However, like many people there are aspects to TFS source control that annoy me day-in, day-out. Chief among them has to be the fact that it uses a file’s read-only property to determine if a file should be checked-out or not and, if it determines that it should, it will happily do that check-out on your behalf without you even asking it to. I didn’t realise how ridiculous this was until I first used SVN about three years ago – with SVN you make any changes you wish and then use your source control client to determine which files have changed and thus be checked-in; the notion of “check-out” doesn’t even exist. That sounds like a small thing but you don’t realise how liberating it is until you actually start working that way. Hoping to hear some more anecdotes and opinions in the comments. Remember….free software is up for grabs! @jamiet 

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• SQL SERVER – SQL in Sixty Seconds – 5 Videos from Joes 2 Pros Series – SQL Exam Prep Series 70-433

  - by pinaldave

  Joes 2 Pros SQL Server Learning series is indeed fun. Joes 2 Pros series is written for beginners and who wants to build expertise for SQL Server programming and development from fundamental. In the beginning of the series author Rick Morelan is not shy to explain the simplest concept of how to open SQL Server Management Studio. Honestly the book starts with that much basic but as it progresses further Rick discussing about various advanced concepts from query tuning to Core Architecture. This five part series is written with keeping SQL Server Exam 70-433. Instead of just focusing on what will be there in exam, this series is focusing on learning the important concepts thoroughly. This book no way take short cut to explain any concepts and at times, will go beyond the topic at length. The best part is that all the books has many companion videos explaining the concepts and videos. Every Wednesday I like to post a video which explains something in quick few seconds. Today we will go over five videos which I posted in my earlier posts related to Joes 2 Pros series. Introduction to XML Data Type Methods – SQL in Sixty Seconds #015 The XML data type was first introduced with SQL Server 2005. This data type continues with SQL Server 2008 where expanded XML features are available, most notably is the power of the XQuery language to analyze and query the values contained in your XML instance. There are five XML data type methods available in SQL Server 2008: query() – Used to extract XML fragments from an XML data type. value() – Used to extract a single value from an XML document. exist() – Used to determine if a specified node exists. Returns 1 if yes and 0 if no. modify() – Updates XML data in an XML data type. node() – Shreds XML data into multiple rows (not covered in this blog post). [Detailed Blog Post] | [Quiz with Answer] Introduction to SQL Error Actions – SQL in Sixty Seconds #014 Most people believe that when SQL Server encounters an error severity level 11 or higher the remaining SQL statements will not get executed. In addition, people also believe that if any error severity level of 11 or higher is hit inside an explicit transaction, then the whole statement will fail as a unit. While both of these beliefs are true 99% of the time, they are not true in all cases. It is these outlying cases that frequently cause unexpected results in your SQL code. To understand how to achieve consistent results you need to know the four ways SQL Error Actions can react to error severity levels 11-16: Statement Termination – The statement with the procedure fails but the code keeps on running to the next statement. Transactions are not affected. Scope Abortion – The current procedure, function or batch is aborted and the next calling scope keeps running. That is, if Stored Procedure A calls B and C, and B fails, then nothing in B runs but A continues to call C. @@Error is set but the procedure does not have a return value. Batch Termination – The entire client call is terminated. XACT_ABORT – (ON = The entire client call is terminated.) or (OFF = SQL Server will choose how to handle all errors.) [Detailed Blog Post] | [Quiz with Answer] Introduction to Basics of a Query Hint – SQL in Sixty Seconds #013 Query hints specify that the indicated hints should be used throughout the query. Query hints affect all operators in the statement and are implemented using the OPTION clause. Cautionary Note: Because the SQL Server Query Optimizer typically selects the best execution plan for a query, it is highly recommended that hints be used as a last resort for experienced developers and database administrators to achieve the desired results. [Detailed Blog Post] | [Quiz with Answer] Introduction to Hierarchical Query – SQL in Sixty Seconds #012 A CTE can be thought of as a temporary result set and are similar to a derived table in that it is not stored as an object and lasts only for the duration of the query. A CTE is generally considered to be more readable than a derived table and does not require the extra effort of declaring a Temp Table while providing the same benefits to the user. However; a CTE is more powerful than a derived table as it can also be self-referencing, or even referenced multiple times in the same query. A recursive CTE requires four elements in order to work properly: Anchor query (runs once and the results ‘seed’ the Recursive query) Recursive query (runs multiple times and is the criteria for the remaining results) UNION ALL statement to bind the Anchor and Recursive queries together. INNER JOIN statement to bind the Recursive query to the results of the CTE. [Detailed Blog Post] | [Quiz with Answer] Introduction to SQL Server Security – SQL in Sixty Seconds #011 Let’s get some basic definitions down first. Take the workplace example where “Tom” needs “Read” access to the “Financial Folder”. What are the Securable, Principal, and Permissions from that last sentence? A Securable is a resource that someone might want to access (like the Financial Folder). A Principal is anything that might want to gain access to the securable (like Tom). A Permission is the level of access a principal has to a securable (like Read). [Detailed Blog Post] | [Quiz with Answer] Please leave a comment explain which one was your favorite video as that will help me understand what works and what needs improvement. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology, Video

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• Create a Social Community of Trust Along With Your Federal Digital Services Governance

  - by TedMcLaughlan

  The Digital Services Governance Recommendations were recently released, supporting the US Federal Government's Digital Government Strategy Milestone Action #4.2 to establish agency-wide governance structures for developing and delivering digital services. Figure 1 - From: "Digital Services Governance Recommendations" While extremely important from a policy and procedure perspective within an Agency's information management and communications enterprise, these recommendations only very lightly reference perhaps the most important success enabler - the "Trusted Community" required for ultimate usefulness of the services delivered. By "ultimate usefulness", I mean the collection of public, transparent properties around government information and digital services that include social trust and validation, social reach, expert respect, and comparative, standard measures of relative value. In other words, do the digital services meet expectations of the public, social media ecosystem (people AND machines)? A rigid governance framework, controlling by rules, policies and roles the creation and dissemination of digital services may meet the expectations of direct end-users and most stakeholders - including the agency information stewards and security officers. All others who may share comments about the services, write about them, swap or review extracts, repackage, visualize or otherwise repurpose the output for use in entirely unanticipated, social ways - these "stakeholders" will not be governed, but may observe guidance generated by a "Trusted Community". As recognized members of the trusted community, these stakeholders may ultimately define the right scope and detail of governance that all other users might observe, promoting and refining the usefulness of the government product as the social ecosystem expects. So, as part of an agency-centric governance framework, it's advised that a flexible governance model be created for stewarding a "Community of Trust" around the digital services. The first steps follow the approach outlined in the Recommendations: Step 1: Gather a Core Team In addition to the roles and responsibilities described, perhaps a set of characteristics and responsibilities can be developed for the "Trusted Community Steward/Advocate" - i.e. a person or team who (a) are entirely cognizant of and respected within the external social media communities, and (b) are trusted both within the agency and outside as practical, responsible, non-partisan communicators of useful information. The may seem like a standard Agency PR/Outreach team role - but often an agency or stakeholder subject matter expert with a public, active social persona works even better. Step 2: Assess What You Have In addition to existing, agency or stakeholder decision-making bodies and assets, it's important to take a PR/Marketing view of the social ecosystem. How visible are the services across the social channels utilized by current or desired constituents of your agency? What's the online reputation of your agency and perhaps the service(s)? Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) a facet of external communications/publishing lifecycles? Who are the public champions, instigators, value-adders for the digital services, or perhaps just influential "communicators" (i.e. with no stake in the game)? You're essentially assessing your market and social presence, and identifying the actors (including your own agency employees) in the existing community of trust. Step 3: Determine What You Want The evolving Community of Trust will most readily absorb, support and provide feedback regarding "Core Principles" (Element B of the "six essential elements of a digital services governance structure") shared by your Agency, and obviously play a large, though probably very unstructured part in Element D "Stakeholder Input and Participation". Plan for this, and seek input from the social media community with respect to performance metrics - these should be geared around the outcome and growth of the trusted communities actions. How big and active is this community? What's the influential reach of this community with respect to particular messaging or campaigns generated by the Agency? What's the referral rate TO your digital services, FROM channels owned or operated by members of this community? (this requires governance with respect to content generation inclusive of "markers" or "tags"). At this point, while your Agency proceeds with steps 4 ("Build/Validate the Governance Structure") and 5 ("Share, Review, Upgrade"), the Community of Trust might as well just get going, and start adding value and usefulness to the existing conversations, existing data services - loosely though directionally-stewarded by your trusted advocate(s). Why is this an "Enterprise Architecture" topic? Because it's increasingly apparent that a Public Service "Enterprise" is not wholly contained within Agency facilities, firewalls and job titles - it's also manifested in actual, perceived or representative forms outside the walls, on the social Internet. An Agency's EA model and resulting investments both facilitate and are impacted by the "Social Enterprise". At Oracle, we're very active both within our Enterprise and outside, helping foster social architectures that enable truly useful public services, digital or otherwise.

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• Code Structure / Level Design: Plants vs Zombies game level dissection

  - by lalan

  Hi Friends, I am interested in learning the class structure of Plants vs Zombies, particularly level design; for those who haven't played it - this video contains nice play-through: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89DfdOIJ4xw. How would I go ahead and design the code, mostly structure & classes, which allows for maximum flexibility & clean development? I am familiar with data driven design concepts, and would use events to handle most of dynamic behavior. Dissection at macro level: (Once every Level) Load tilemap, props, etc -- basically build the map (Once every Level) Camera Movement - might consider it as short cut-scene (Once every Level) Show Enemies you'll face during present level (Once every Level) Unit Selection Window/Panel - selection of defensive plants (Once every Level) Camera Movement - might consider it as short cut-scene (Once every Level) HUD Creation - based on unit selection (Level Loop) Enemy creation - based on types of zombies allowed (Level Loop) Sun/Resource generation (Level Loop) Show messages like 'huge wave of zombies coming', 'final wave' (Level Loop) Other unique events - Spawn gifts, money, tombstones, etc (Once every Level) Unlock new plant Potential game scripts: a) Level definitions: Level_1_1.xml, Level_1_2.xml, etc. Level_1_1.xml :: Sample script <map> <tilemap>tilemapFrontLawn</tilemap> <SpawnPoints> tiles where particular type of zombies (land vs water) may spawn</spawnPoints> <props> position, entity array -- lawnmower, </props> </map> <zombies> <... list of zombies who gonna attack by ids...> </zombies> <plants> <... list by plants which are available for defense by ids...> </plants> <progression> <ZombieWave name='first wave' spawnScript='zombieLightWave.lua' unlock='null'> <startMessages time=1.5>Ready</startMessages> <endMessages time=1.5>Huge wave of zombies incoming</endMessages> </ZombieWave> </progression> b) Entities definitions: .xmls containing zombies, plants, sun, lawnmower, coins, etc description. Potential classes: //LevelManager - Based on the level under play, it will load level script. Few of the // functions it may have: class LevelManager { public: bool load(string levelFileName); bool enter(); bool update(float deltatime); bool exit(); private: LevelData* mLevelData; } // LevelData - Contains the details of level loaded by LevelManager. class LevelData { private: string file; // array of camera,dialog,attackwaves, etc in active level LevelCutSceneCamera** mArrayCutSceneCamera; LevelCutSceneDialog** mArrayCutSceneDialog; LevelAttackWave** mArrayAttackWave; .... // which camera,dialog,attackwave is active in level uint mCursorCutSceneCamera; uint mCursorCutSceneDialog; uint mCursorAttackWave; public: // based on cursor, get the next camera,dialog,attackwave,etc in active level // return false/true based on failure/success bool nextCutSceneCamera(LevelCutSceneCamera**); bool nextCutSceneDialog(LevelCutSceneDialog**); } // LevelUnderPlay- LevelManager class LevelUnderPlay { private: LevelCutSceneCamera* mCutSceneCamera; LevelCutSceneDialog* mCutSceneDialog; LevelAttackWave* mAttackWave; Entities** mSelectedPlants; Entities** mAllowedZombies; bool isCutSceneCameraActive; public: bool enter(); bool update(float deltatime); bool exit(); } I am totally confused.. :( Does it make sense of using class composition (have flat class hierarchy) for managing levels. Is it a good idea to just add/remove/update sprites (or any drawable stuff) to current scene from LevelManager or LevelUnderPlay? If I want to make non-linear level design, how should I go ahead? Perhaps I would need a LevelProgression class, which would decide what to do based on decision tree. Any suggestions would be appreciated very much. Thank for your time, lalan

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• DVD not detected?

  - by Benjamin

  As i insert a DVD in my drive (on a laptop) using Kubuntu 12.04, the DVD is not detected. The drive takes the DVD, I can hear it munching on it for a while, and then nothing. Even ejecting the DVD becomes a hassle, I need to do that at boot time otherwise the OS won't allow me to eject. Kubuntu 12.04 used to read and mount the same DVDs just fine a week ago. Edit: since I am able to boot from CD, can I safely assume the issue is not a hardware issue? How can I fix this? wodim --devices returns: wodim: Overview of accessible drives (1 found) : ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 0 dev='/dev/sg1' rwrw-- : 'Optiarc' 'DVD+-RW AD-7640A' ------------------------------------------------------------------------- sudo lshw -class disk returns: *-cdrom description: DVD-RAM writer product: DVD+-RW AD-7640A vendor: Optiarc physical id: 0.0.0 bus info: scsi@3:0.0.0 logical name: /dev/cdrom2 logical name: /dev/cdrw2 logical name: /dev/dvd2 logical name: /dev/dvdrw2 logical name: /dev/sr0 version: JD06 capabilities: removable audio cd-r cd-rw dvd dvd-r dvd-ram configuration: ansiversion=5 status=open lspci returns: 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 0c) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (primary) (rev 0c) 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (secondary) (rev 0c) 00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03) 00:1a.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03) 00:1a.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 03) 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 03) 00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 03) 00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03) 00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03) 00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03) 00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f3) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HM (ICH8M) LPC Interface Controller (rev 03) 00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE Controller (rev 03) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801HM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 03) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03) 06:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01) 07:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 02) 08:05.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): O2 Micro, Inc. Firewire (IEEE 1394) (rev 02) 08:05.2 SD Host controller: O2 Micro, Inc. Integrated MMC/SD Controller (rev 02) 08:05.3 Mass storage controller: O2 Micro, Inc. Integrated MS/xD Controller (rev 01) and lsusb: Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0c45:63e0 Microdia Sonix Integrated Webcam Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0483:2016 SGS Thomson Microelectronics Fingerprint Reader The /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf contains: # This file lists those modules which we don't want to be loaded by # alias expansion, usually so some other driver will be loaded for the # device instead. # evbug is a debug tool that should be loaded explicitly blacklist evbug # these drivers are very simple, the HID drivers are usually preferred blacklist usbmouse blacklist usbkbd # replaced by e100 blacklist eepro100 # replaced by tulip blacklist de4x5 # causes no end of confusion by creating unexpected network interfaces blacklist eth1394 # snd_intel8x0m can interfere with snd_intel8x0, doesn't seem to support much # hardware on its own (Ubuntu bug #2011, #6810) blacklist snd_intel8x0m # Conflicts with dvb driver (which is better for handling this device) blacklist snd_aw2 # causes failure to suspend on HP compaq nc6000 (Ubuntu: #10306) blacklist i2c_i801 # replaced by p54pci blacklist prism54 # replaced by b43 and ssb. blacklist bcm43xx # most apps now use garmin usb driver directly (Ubuntu: #114565) blacklist garmin_gps # replaced by asus-laptop (Ubuntu: #184721) blacklist asus_acpi # low-quality, just noise when being used for sound playback, causes # hangs at desktop session start (Ubuntu: #246969) blacklist snd_pcsp # ugly and loud noise, getting on everyone's nerves; this should be done by a # nice pulseaudio bing (Ubuntu: #77010) blacklist pcspkr # EDAC driver for amd76x clashes with the agp driver preventing the aperture # from being initialised (Ubuntu: #297750). Blacklist so that the driver # continues to build and is installable for the few cases where its # really needed. blacklist amd76x_edac

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• XNA Notes 002

  - by George Clingerman

  This past week (much like every week in the XNA community) was filled with things happening and people doing cool things (and getting noticed for doing cool things!). You can definitely tell there are some Xbox LIVE Indie game developers starting to make some names for themselves. Can’t wait to name drop them at bars. Me- “Oh you played Game X? Yeah, I know the guy that made that. Pretty cool guy.” Yeah, I’ll be THAT guy.   Time Critical XNA News 30 days left to submit XBLIGs made in XNA Game Studio 3.1 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/xna/archive/2011/01/08/30-days-left-to-submit-xna-gs-3-1-games-to-app-hub.aspx Jeromy Walsh wants you to know his XNA 4.0 Winter Workshop starting soon, go get signed up! And the forum is now LIVE on GameDev.net http://gamedevelopedia.com/ http://tinyurl.com/4gg2cfv The XNA Team Per Nick Gravelyn, Aaron Stebner’s blog post is a must read for icons on Windows Phone http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/72022/439597.aspx#439597 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/astebner/archive/2010/10/01/10070507.aspx Shawn Hargreaves writes about Sprite Billboards in a 3D world http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2011/01/12/spritebatch-billboards-in-a-3d-world.aspx XNA MVPs Andy “The ZMan” Dunn wants YOU to come to the MVP Summit and run a 5K http://www.indiegameguy.com/blogs/zman/archive/2010/12/26/come-to-the-mvp-summit-and-run-a-5k-yes-you.aspx Jim Perry updates his forum signature just to make it clear that he’s not speaking for Microsoft or giving official information (LOL, thanks Jim, now if only people will take the time to read that...) XNA MVP | Please use the Forum Search and read the Forum FAQs | My posts are not official info http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/70849/439613.aspx#439613 XNA Developers Robert Boyd (@werezombie) working hard at converting his RPG engine used to make Breath of Death VII and Chtulu Saves the World to XNA 4.0. If you haven’t done the upgrade yet yourself, might be useful to read back through his tweets and recent forum posts to see the problems/solutions he’s encountered. http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/71834/438099.aspx#438099 http://www.twitter.com/werezompire SpynDoctorGames is in the final phase before the release of Your Doodles are Bugged for the PC! Going to be interesting to watch as more XNA game developers explore the PC game market for their games. http://twitter.com/SpynDoctorGames/statuses/24503173217521664 http://www.spyn-doctor.de @DrMistry shares some details of his next title YoYoYo http://www.mstargames.co.uk/mistryblogmain/35-genblog/177-a-new-year-a-new-game-and-maybe-a-new-approach.html Travis Woodward (@RabidLionGames) has a blog post coming this weekend on Farseer and Mario-like platformer movement. http://twitter.com/RabidLionGames/statuses/24992762021548032 http://www.rabidlion.com/ S4G Interview with Radiangames http://n4g.com/news/679492/s4g-interview-with-radiangames XBLAratings.com interviews Steve Flores (@DragonDivide) developer of Alpha Squad http://www.xblaratings.com/developer-qaa/3621-alpha-squad-developer-interview XBox LIVE Indie Games If you haven’t been reading the roundups on IndieGames by NaviFairy on GayGamer, you’ve been missing out! http://gaygamer.net/2011/01/xbox_indie_review_roundup_1112.html Armless Octopus posts the Top 20 Games of 2010 Part 1 http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/01/10/top-20-xbox-live-indie-games-of-2010-part-1/ Armless Octopus posts the Top 20 Games of 2010 Part 2 http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/01/12/top-20-xbox-live-indie-games-of-2010-%E2%80%93-part-2/ Xbox LIVE Indie Game Reviews http://www.gamemarx.com/ Don’t forget to be following @XboxHornet . That’s a great way to snag free copies of Xbox LIVE Indie Games http://twitter.com/XboxHornet/statuses/24471103808208896 http://www.xboxhornet.com/wordpress/ Xbox LIVE Indie Game Review posts the top 20 Xbox 360 LIVE Indie Games of 2010 http://www.xbox-360-community-games-reviews.com/top-20-best-xbox-360-live-indie-games-of-2010/ VVGtv to Stream #XBLIG Again! Help out if you can. http://vvgtv.com/2011/01/07/vvgtv-to-stream-xblig-again/ Indie Gamer Magazine Issue 14 has a look at the Xbox LIVE Winter Indie Game Uprisiing http://www.indiegamemag.com/issue14/ XNA Game Development Andrew Russell announced and asked for help in his development of ExEn: XNA for iPhone, Android and Silverlight http://rockethub.com/projects/752-exen-xna-for-iphone-android-and-silverlight App Hub forums letting you down? Don’t forget about StackOverflow and the game development specific version gamedev.stackexchange http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/xna http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/xna Transmute gets an update from Aaron Foley (@slyprid) and you can now add and visually edit parallax layers to your 2D tile game. http://twitpic.com/3nudj0 http://twitter.com/slyprid/statuses/23418379574448128 http://forgottenstarstudios.com/Transmute/default.html Webcomics Weekly #75 touches on some feelings I’ve seen people try to express (myself included) when talking about game development and what types of games should be released for XBLIG http://www.pvponline.com/2011/01/05/webcomics-weekly-75-sour-oats/ Setting up a new PC for XNA development? Here’s a site that helps you quickly build a installer for all the most common applications developers use. http://ninite.com/ Fun wew thread on the XNA forums asking XBLIG/XNA developers just what their Top 10 favorite video games of all time are. http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/107.aspx Christopher Hill (@Xalterax) stumbled across an entire community that does nothing but create box art. This is a great potential resource for Xbox LIVE Indie Game developers to get some awesome box art for their games. http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/46582/441451.aspx#441451 http://www.vgboxart.com/browse/plat/360/ Don’t forget about the XNA Wiki, fantastic community resource (and roll up those sleeves and contribute already!) http://xnawiki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

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• Switching the layout in Orchard CMS

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  The UI composition in Orchard is extremely flexible, thanks in no small part to the usage of dynamic Clay shapes. Every notable UI construct in Orchard is built as a shape that other parts of the system can then party on and modify any way they want. Case in point today: modifying the layout (which is a shape) on the fly to provide custom page structures for different parts of the site. This might actually end up being built-in Orchard 1.0 but for the moment it’s not in there. Plus, it’s quite interesting to see how it’s done. We are going to build a little extension that allows for specialized layouts in addition to the default layout.cshtml that Orchard understands out of the box. The extension will add the possibility to add the module name (or, in MVC terms, area name) to the template name, or module and controller names, or module, controller and action names. For example, the home page is served by the HomePage module, so with this extension you’ll be able to add an optional layout-homepage.cshtml file to your theme to specialize the look of the home page while leaving all other pages using the regular layout.cshtml. I decided to implement this sample as a theme with code. This way, the new overrides are only enabled as the theme is activated, which makes a lot of sense as this is going to be where you’ll be creating those additional layouts. The first thing I did was to create my own theme, derived from the default TheThemeMachine with this command: codegen theme CustomLayoutMachine /CreateProject:true /IncludeInSolution:true /BasedOn:TheThemeMachine .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: 12px; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Once that was done, I worked around a known bug and moved the new project from the Modules solution folder into Themes (the code was already physically in the right place, this is just about Visual Studio editing). The CreateProject flag in the command-line created a project file for us in the theme’s folder. This is only necessary if you want to run code outside of views from that theme. The code that we want to add is the following LayoutFilter.cs: using System.Linq; using System.Web.Mvc; using System.Web.Routing; using Orchard; using Orchard.Mvc.Filters; namespace CustomLayoutMachine.Filters { public class LayoutFilter : FilterProvider, IResultFilter { private readonly IWorkContextAccessor _wca; public LayoutFilter(IWorkContextAccessor wca) { _wca = wca; } public void OnResultExecuting(ResultExecutingContext filterContext) { var workContext = _wca.GetContext(); var routeValues = filterContext.RouteData.Values; workContext.Layout.Metadata.Alternates.Add( BuildShapeName(routeValues, "area")); workContext.Layout.Metadata.Alternates.Add( BuildShapeName(routeValues, "area", "controller")); workContext.Layout.Metadata.Alternates.Add( BuildShapeName(routeValues, "area", "controller", "action")); } public void OnResultExecuted(ResultExecutedContext filterContext) { } private static string BuildShapeName( RouteValueDictionary values, params string[] names) { return "Layout__" + string.Join("__", names.Select(s => ((string)values[s] ?? "").Replace(".", "_"))); } } } This filter is intercepting ResultExecuting, which is going to provide a context object out of which we can extract the route data. We are also injecting an IWorkContextAccessor dependency that will give us access to the current Layout object, so that we can add alternate shape names to its metadata. We are adding three possible shape names to the default, with different combinations of area, controller and action names. For example, a request to a blog post is going to be routed to the “Orchard.Blogs” module’s “BlogPost” controller’s “Item” action. Our filters will then add the following shape names to the default “Layout”: Layout__Orchard_Blogs Layout__Orchard_Blogs__BlogPost Layout__Orchard_Blogs__BlogPost__Item Those template names get mapped into the following file names by the system (assuming the Razor view engine): Layout-Orchard_Blogs.cshtml Layout-Orchard_Blogs-BlogPost.cshtml Layout-Orchard_Blogs-BlogPost-Item.cshtml This works for any module/controller/action of course, but in the sample I created Layout-HomePage.cshtml (a specific layout for the home page), Layout-Orchard_Blogs.cshtml (a layout for all the blog views) and Layout-Orchard_Blogs-BlogPost-Item.cshtml (a layout that is specific to blog posts). Of course, this is just an example, and this kind of dynamic extension of shapes that you didn’t even create in the first place is highly encouraged in Orchard. You don’t have to do it from a filter, we only did it this way because that was a good place where we could get the context that we needed. And of course, you can base your alternate shape names on something completely different from route values if you want. For example, you might want to create your own part that modifies the layout for a specific content item, or you might want to do it based on the raw URL (like it’s done in widget rules) or who knows what crazy custom rule. The point of all this is to show that extending or modifying shapes is easy, and the layout just happens to be a shape. In other words, you can do whatever you want. Ain’t that nice? The custom theme can be found here: Orchard.Theme.CustomLayoutMachine.1.0.nupkg Many thanks to Louis, who showed me how to do this.

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• ACORD LOMA Session Highlights Policy Administration Trends

  - by [email protected]

  Helen Pitts, senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance, attended and is blogging from the ACORD LOMA Insurance Forum this week. Above: Paul Vancheri, Chief Information Officer, Fidelity Investments Life Insurance Company. Vancheri gave a presentation during the ACORD LOMA Insurance Systems Forum about the key elements of modern policy administration systems and how insurers can mitigate risk during legacy system migrations to safely introduce new technologies. When I had a few particularly challenging honors courses in college my father, a long-time technology industry veteran, used to say, "If you don't know how to do something go ask the experts. Find someone who has been there and done that, don't be afraid to ask the tough questions, and apply and build upon what you learn." (Actually he still offers this same advice today.) That's probably why my favorite sessions at industry events, like the ACORD LOMA Insurance Forum this week, are those that include insight on industry trends and case studies from carriers who share their experiences and offer best practices based upon their own lessons learned. I had the opportunity to attend a particularly insightful session Wednesday as Craig Weber, senior vice president of Celent's Insurance practice, and Paul Vancheri, CIO of Fidelity Life Investments, presented, "Managing the Dynamic Insurance Landscape: Enabling Growth and Profitability with a Modern Policy Administration System." Policy Administration Trends Growing the business is the top issue when it comes to IT among both life and annuity and property and casualty carriers according to Weber. To drive growth and capture market share from competitors, carriers are looking to modernize their core insurance systems, with 65 percent of those CIOs participating in recent Celent research citing plans to replace their policy administration systems. Weber noted that there has been continued focus and investment, particularly in the last three years, by software and technology vendors to offer modern, rules-based, configurable policy administration solutions. He added that these solutions are continuing to evolve with the ongoing aim of helping carriers rapidly meet shifting business needs--whether it is to launch new products to market faster than the competition, adapt existing products to meet shifting consumer and /or regulatory demands, or to exit unprofitable markets. He closed by noting the top four trends for policy administration either in the process of being adopted today or on the not-so-distant horizon for the future: Underwriting and service desktops New business automation Convergence of ultra-configurable and domain content-rich systems Better usability and screen design Mitigating the Risk When Making the Decision to Modernize Third-party analyst research from advisory firms like Celent was a key part of the due diligence process for Fidelity as it sought a replacement for its legacy policy administration system back in 2005, according to Vancheri. The company's business opportunities were outrunning system capability. Its legacy system had not been upgraded in several years and was deficient from a functionality and currency standpoint. This was constraining the carrier's ability to rapidly configure and bring new and complex products to market. The company sought a new, modern policy administration system, one that would enable it to keep pace with rapid and often unexpected industry changes and ahead of the competition. A cross-functional team that included representatives from finance, actuarial, operations, client services and IT conducted an extensive selection process. This process included deep documentation review, pilot evaluations, demonstrations of required functionality and complex problem-solving, infrastructure integration capability, and the ability to meet the company's desired cost model. The company ultimately selected an adaptive policy administration system that met its requirements to: Deliver ease of use - eliminating paper and rework, while easing the burden on representatives to sell and service annuities Provide customer parity - offering Web-based capabilities in alignment with the company's focus on delivering a consistent customer experience across its business Deliver scalability, efficiency - enabling automation, while simplifying and standardizing systems across its technology stack Offer desired functionality - supporting Fidelity's product configuration / rules management philosophy, focus on customer service and technology upgrade requirements Meet cost requirements - including implementation, professional services and licenses fees and ongoing maintenance Deliver upon business requirements - enabling the ability to drive time to market for new products and flexibility to make changes Best Practices for Addressing Implementation Challenges Based upon lessons learned during the company's implementation, Vancheri advised carriers to evaluate staffing capabilities and cultural impacts, review business requirements to avoid rebuilding legacy processes, factor in dependent systems, and review policies and practices to secure customer data. His formula for success: upfront planning + clear requirements = precision execution. Achieving a Return on Investment Vancheri said the decision to replace their legacy policy administration system and deploy a modern, rules-based system--before the economic downturn occurred--has been integral in helping the company adapt to shifting market conditions, while enabling growth in its direct channel sales of variable annuities. Since deploying its new policy admin system, the company has reduced its average time to market for new products from 12-15 months to 4.5 months. The company has since migrated its other products to the new system and retired its legacy system, significantly decreasing its overall product development cycle. From a processing standpoint Vancheri noted the company has achieved gains in automation, information, and ease of use, resulting in improved real-time data edits, controls for better quality, and tax handling capability. Plus, with by having only one platform to manage, the company has simplified its IT environment and is well positioned to deliver system enhancements for greater efficiencies. Commitment to Continuing the Investment In the short and longer term future Vancheri said the company plans to enhance business functionality to support money movement, wire automation, divorce processing on payout contracts and cost-based tracking improvements. It also plans to continue system upgrades to remain current as well as focus on further reducing cycle time, driving down maintenance costs, and integrating with other products. Helen Pitts is senior product marketing manager for Oracle Insurance focused on life/annuities and enterprise document automation.

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• JQuery and the multiple date selector

  - by David Carter

  Overview I recently needed to build a web page that would allow a user to capture some information and most importantly select multiple dates. This functionality was core to the application and hence had to be easy and quick to do. This is a public facing website so it had to be intuitive and very responsive. On the face of it it didn't seem too hard, I know enough juery to know what it is capable of and I was pretty sure that there would be some plugins that would help speed things along the way. I'm using ASP.Net MVC for this project as I really like the control that it gives you over the generated html and javascript. After years of Web Forms development it makes me feel like a web developer again and puts a smile on my face, that can only be a good thing!   The Calendar The first item that I needed on this page was a calender and I wanted the ability to: have the calendar be always visible select/deselect multiple dates at the same time bind to the select/deselect event so that I could update a seperate listing of the selected dates allow the user to move to another month and still have the calender remember any dates in the previous month I was hoping that there was a jQuery plugin that would meet my requirements and luckily there was! The jQuery datepicker does everything I want and there is quite a bit of documentation on how to use it. It makes use of a javascript date library date.js which I had not come across before but has a number of very useful date utilities that I have used elsewhere in the project. As you can see from the image there still needs to be some styling done! But there will be plenty of time for that later. The calendar clearly shows which dates the user has selected in red and i also make use of an unordered list to show the the selected dates so the user can always clearly see what has been selected even if they move to another month on the calendar. The javascript code that is responsible for listening to events on the calendar and synchronising the list look as follows: <script type="text/javascript">     $(function () {         $('.datepicker').datePicker({ inline: true, selectMultiple: true })         .bind(             'dateSelected',             function (e, selectedDate, $td, state) {                                 var dateInMillisecs = selectedDate.valueOf();                 if (state) { //adding a date                     var newDate = new Date(selectedDate);                     //insert the new item into the correct place in the list                     var listitems = $('#dateList').children('li').get();                     var liToAdd = "<li id='" + dateInMillisecs + "' >" + newDate.toString('ddd dd MMM yyyy') + "</li>";                     var targetIndex = -1;                     for (var i = 0; i < listitems.length; i++) {                         if (dateInMillisecs <= listitems[i].id) {                             targetIndex = i;                             break;                         }                     }                     if (targetIndex < 0) {                         $('#dateList').append(liToAdd);                     }                     else {                         $($('#dateList').children("li")[targetIndex]).before(liToAdd);                     }                 }                 else {//removing a date                     $('ul #' + dateInMillisecs).remove();                 }             }         )     }); When a date is selected on the calendar a function is called with a number of parameters passed to it. The ones I am particularly interested in are selectedDate and state. State tells me whether the user has selected or deselected the date passed in the selectedDate parameter. The <ul> that I am using to show the date has an id of dateList and this is what I will be adding and removing <li> items from. To make things a little more logical for the user I decided that the date should be sorted in chronological order, this means that each time a new date is selected it need to be placed in the correct position in the list. One way to do this would be just to append a new <li> to the list and then sort the whole list. However the approach I took was to get an array of all the items in the list var listitems = ('#dateList').children('li').get(); and then check the value of each item in the array against my new date and as soon as I found the case where the new date was less than the current item remember that position in the list as this is where I would insert it later. To make this work easily I decided to store a numeric representation of each date in the list in the id attribute of each <li> element. Fortunately javascript natively stores dates as the number of milliseconds since 1 Jan 1970. var dateInMillisecs = selectedDate.valueOf(); Please note that this is the value of the date in UTC! I always like to store dates in UTC as I learnt a long time ago that it saves a lot of refactoring at a later date... When I convert the dates back to their original back on the server I will need the UTC offset that was used when calculating the dates, this and how to actually serialise the dates and get them posted back will be the subject of another post.

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• Mocking successive calls of similar type via sequential mocking

  - by mehfuzh

  In this post , i show how you can benefit from  sequential mocking feature[In JustMock] for setting up expectations with successive calls of same type.  To start let’s first consider the following dummy database and entity class. public class Person {     public virtual string Name { get; set; }     public virtual int Age { get; set; } }   public interface IDataBase {     T Get<T>(); } Now, our test goal is to return different entity for successive calls on IDataBase.Get<T>(). By default, the behavior in JustMock is override , which is similar to other popular mocking tools. By override it means that the tool will consider always the latest user setup. Therefore, the first example will return the latest entity every-time and will fail in line #12: Person person1 = new Person { Age = 30, Name = "Kosev" }; Person person2 = new Person { Age = 80, Name = "Mihail" };   var database = Mock.Create<IDataBase>();   Queue<Person> queue = new Queue<Person>();   Mock.Arrange(() => database.Get<Person>()).Returns(() => queue.Dequeue()); Mock.Arrange(() => database.Get<Person>()).Returns(person2);   // this will fail Assert.Equal(person1.GetHashCode(), database.Get<Person>().GetHashCode());   Assert.Equal(person2.GetHashCode(), database.Get<Person>().GetHashCode()); We can solve it the following way using a Queue and that removes the item from bottom on each call: Person person1 = new Person { Age = 30, Name = "Kosev" }; Person person2 = new Person { Age = 80, Name = "Mihail" };   var database = Mock.Create<IDataBase>();   Queue<Person> queue = new Queue<Person>();   queue.Enqueue(person1); queue.Enqueue(person2);   Mock.Arrange(() => database.Get<Person>()).Returns(queue.Dequeue());   Assert.Equal(person1.GetHashCode(), database.Get<Person>().GetHashCode()); Assert.Equal(person2.GetHashCode(), database.Get<Person>().GetHashCode()); This will ensure that right entity is returned but this is not an elegant solution. So, in JustMock we introduced a  new option that lets you set up your expectations sequentially. Like: Person person1 = new Person { Age = 30, Name = "Kosev" }; Person person2 = new Person { Age = 80, Name = "Mihail" };   var database = Mock.Create<IDataBase>();   Mock.Arrange(() => database.Get<Person>()).Returns(person1).InSequence(); Mock.Arrange(() => database.Get<Person>()).Returns(person2).InSequence();   Assert.Equal(person1.GetHashCode(), database.Get<Person>().GetHashCode()); Assert.Equal(person2.GetHashCode(), database.Get<Person>().GetHashCode()); The  “InSequence” modifier will tell the mocking tool to return the expected result as in the order it is specified by user. The solution though pretty simple and but neat(to me) and way too simpler than using a collection to solve this type of cases. Hope that helps P.S. The example shown in my blog is using interface don’t require a profiler  and you can even use a notepad and build it referencing Telerik.JustMock.dll, run it with GUI tools and it will work. But this feature also applies to concrete methods that includes JM profiler and can be implemented for more complex scenarios.

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• SQLAuthority News – #SQLPASS 2012 Seattle Update – Memorylane 2009, 2010, 2011

  - by pinaldave

  Today is the first day of the SQLPASS 2012 and I will be soon posting SQL Server 2012 experience over here. Today when I landed in Seattle, I got the nostalgia feeling. I used to stay in the USA. I stayed here for more than 7 years – I studied here and I worked in USA. I had lots of friends in Seattle when I used to stay in the USA. I always wanted to visit Seattle because it is THE place. I remember once I purchased a ticket to travel to Seattle through Priceline (well it was the cheapest option and I was a student) but could not fly because of an interesting issue. I used to be Teaching Assistant of an advanced course and the professor asked me to build a pop-quiz for the course. I unfortunately had to cancel the trip. Before I returned to India – I pretty much covered every city existed in my list to must visit, except one – Seattle. It was so interesting that I never made it to Seattle even though I wanted to visit, when I was in USA. After that one time I never got a chance to travel to Seattle. After a few years I also returned to India for good. Once on Television I saw “Sleepless in Seattle” movie playing and I immediately changed the channel as it reminded me that I never made it to Seattle before. However, destiny has its own way to handle decisions. After I returned to India – I visited Seattle total of 5 times and this is my 6th visit to Seattle in less than 3 years. I was here for 3 previous SQLPASS events – 2009, 2010, and 2011 as well two Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Summit in 2009 and 2010. During these five trips I tried to catch up with all of my all friends but I realize that time has its own way of doing things. Many moved out of Seattle and many were too busy revive the old friendship but there were few who always make a point to meet me when I travel to the city. During the course of my visits I have made few fantastic new friends – Rick Morelan (Joes 2 Pros) and Greg Lynch. Every time I meet them I feel that I know them for years. I think city of Seattle has played very important part in our relationship that I got these fantastic friends. SQLPASS is the event where I find all of my SQL Friends and I look for this event for an entire year. This year’s my goal is to meet as many as new friends I can meet. If you are going to be at SQLPASS – FIND ME. I want to have a photo with you. I want to remember each name as I believe this is very important part of our life – making new friends and sustaining new friendship. Here are few of the pointers where you can find me. All Keynotes – Blogger’s Table Exhibition Booth Joes 2 Pros Booth #117 – Do not forget to stop by at the booth – I might have goodies for you – limited editions. Book Signing Events – Check details in tomorrow’s blog or stop by Booth #117 Evening Parties 6th Nov – Welcome Reception Evening Parties 7th Nov - Exhibitor Reception – Do not miss Booth #117 Evening Parties 8th Nov - Community Appreciation Party Additionally at few other locations – Embarcadero Booth In Coffee shops in Convention Center If you are SQLPASS – make sure that I find an opportunity to meet you at the event. Reserve a little time and lets have a coffee together. I will be continuously tweeting about my where about on twitter so let us stay connected on twitter. Here is my experience of my earlier experience of attending SQLPASS. SQLAuthority News – Book Signing Event – SQLPASS 2011 Event Log SQLAuthority News – Meeting SQL Friends – SQLPASS 2011 Event Log SQLAuthority News – Story of Seattle – SQLPASS 2011 Event Log SQLAuthority News – SQLPASS Nov 8-11, 2010-Seattle – An Alternative Look at Experience SQLAuthority News – Notes of Excellent Experience at SQL PASS 2009 Summit, Seattle Let us meet! Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)   Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL PASS, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

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• Scripting out Contained Database Users

  - by Argenis

    Today’s blog post comes from a Twitter thread on which @SQLSoldier, @sqlstudent144 and @SQLTaiob were discussing the internals of contained database users. Unless you have been living under a rock, you’ve heard about the concept of contained users within a SQL Server database (hit the link if you have not). In this article I’d like to show you that you can, indeed, script out contained database users and recreate them on another database, as either contained users or as good old fashioned logins/server principals as well. Why would this be useful? Well, because you would not need to know the password for the user in order to recreate it on another instance. I know there is a limited number of scenarios where this would be necessary, but nonetheless I figured I’d throw this blog post to show how it can be done. A more obscure use case: with the password hash (which I’m about to show you how to obtain) you could also crack the password using a utility like hashcat, as highlighted on this SQLServerCentral article. The Investigation SQL Server uses System Base Tables to save the password hashes of logins and contained database users. For logins it uses sys.sysxlgns, whereas for contained database users it leverages sys.sysowners. I’ll show you what I do to figure this stuff out: I create a login/contained user, and then I immediately browse the transaction log with, for example, fn_dblog. It’s pretty obvious that only two base tables touched by the operation are sys.sysxlgns, and also sys.sysprivs – the latter is used to track permissions. If I connect to the DAC on my instance, I can query for the password hash of this login I’ve just created. A few interesting things about this hash. This was taken on my laptop, and I happen to be running SQL Server 2014 RTM CU2, which is the latest public build of SQL Server 2014 as of time of writing. In 2008 R2 and prior versions (back to 2000), the password hashes would start with 0x0100. The reason why this changed is because starting with SQL Server 2012 password hashes are kept using a SHA512 algorithm, as opposed to SHA-1 (used since 2000) or Snefru (used in 6.5 and 7.0). SHA-1 is nowadays deemed unsafe and is very easy to crack. For regular SQL logins, this information is exposed through the sys.sql_logins catalog view, so there is really no need to connect to the DAC to grab an SID/password hash pair. For contained database users, there is (currently) no method of obtaining SID or password hashes without connecting to the DAC. If we create a contained database user, this is what we get from the transaction log: Note that the System Base Table used in this case is sys.sysowners. sys.sysprivs is used as well, and again this is to track permissions. To query sys.sysowners, you would have to connect to the DAC, as I mentioned previously. And this is what you would get: There are other ways to figure out what SQL Server uses under the hood to store contained database user password hashes, like looking at the execution plan for a query to sys.dm_db_uncontained_entities (Thanks, Robert Davis!) SIDs, Logins, Contained Users, and Why You Care…Or Not. One of the reasons behind the existence of Contained Users was the concept of portability of databases: it is really painful to maintain Server Principals (Logins) synced across most shared-nothing SQL Server HA/DR technologies (Mirroring, Availability Groups, and Log Shipping). Often times you would need the Security Identifier (SID) of these logins to match across instances, and that meant that you had to fetch whatever SID was assigned to the login on the principal instance so you could recreate it on a secondary. With contained users you normally wouldn’t care about SIDs, as the users are always available (and synced, as long as synchronization takes place) across instances. Now you might be presented some particular requirement that might specify that SIDs synced between logins on certain instances and contained database users on other databases. How would you go about creating a contained database user with a specific SID? The answer is that you can’t do it directly, but there’s a little trick that would allow you to do it. Create a login with a specified SID and password hash, create a user for that server principal on a partially contained database, then migrate that user to contained using the system stored procedure sp_user_migrate_to_contained, then drop the login. CREATE LOGIN <login_name> WITH PASSWORD = <password_hash> HASHED, SID = <sid> ; GO USE <partially_contained_db>; GO CREATE USER <user_name> FROM LOGIN <login_name>; GO EXEC sp_migrate_user_to_contained @username = <user_name>, @rename = N’keep_name’, @disablelogin = N‘disable_login’; GO DROP LOGIN <login_name>; GO Here’s how this skeleton would look like in action: And now I have a contained user with a specified SID and password hash. In my example above, I renamed the user after migrated it to contained so that it is, hopefully, easier to understand. Enjoy!

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• Responsible BI for Excel, Even for Older Versions

  - by andrewbrust

  On Wednesday, I will have the honor of co-presenting, for both The Data Warehouse Institute (TDWI) and the New York Technology Council. on the subject of Excel and BI. My co-presenter will be none other than Bill Baker, who was a Microsoft Distinguished Engineer and, essentially, the father of BI at that company.  Details on the events are here and here. We'll be talking about PowerPivot, of course, but that's not all. Probably even more important than any one product, will be our discussion of whether the usual characterization of Excel as the nemesis of IT, the guilty pleasure of business users and the antithesis of formal BI is really valid and/or hopelessly intractable. Without giving away our punchline, I'll tell you that we are much more optimistic than that. There are huge upsides to Excel and while there are real dangers to using it in the BI space, there are standards and practices you can employ to ensure Excel is used responsibly. And when those practices are followed, Excel becomes quite powerful indeed. One of the keys to this is using Excel as a data consumer rather than data storage mechanism. Caching data in Excel is OK, but only if that data is (a) not modified and (b) configured for automated periodic refresh. PowerPivot meets both criteria -- it stores a read-only copy of your data in the form of a model, and once workbook containing a PowerPivot model is published to SharePoint, it can be configured for scheduled data refresh, on the server, requiring no user intervention whatsoever. Data refresh is a bit like hard drive backup: it will only happen reliably if it's automated, and super-easy to configure. PowerPivot hits a real home run here (as does Windows Home Server for PC backup, but I digress). The thing about PowerPivot is that it's an add-in for Excel 2010. What if you're not planning to go to that new version for quite a while? What if you’ve just deployed Office 2007 in your organization? What if you're still on Office 2003, or an even earlier version? What can you do immediately to share data responsibly and easily? As it turns out, there's a feature in Excel that's been around for quite a while, that can help: Web Queries.  The Web Query feature was introduced, ostensibly, to allow Excel to pull data in from Internet Web pages…for example, data in a stock quote history table will come in nicely, as will any data in a Web page that is displayed in an HTML table.  To use the feature In Excel 2007 or 2010, click the Data Tab or the ribbon and click the “From Web” button towards the left; in older versions use the corresponding option in  the menu or  toolbars.  Next, paste a URL into the resulting dialog box and tap Enter or click the Go button.  A preview of the Web page will come up, and the dialog will allow you to select the specific table within the page whose data you’d like to import.  Here’s an example: Now just click the table, click the Import button, and the Import Data dialog appears.  You can simply click OK to bring in your data or you can first click the Properties… button and configure the data import to be refreshed at an interval in minutes that you select.  Now your data’s in the spreadsheet and ready to worked with: Your data may be vulnerable to modification, but if you’ve set up the data refresh, any accidental or malicious changes will be corrected in time anyway. The thing about this feature is that it’s most useful not for public Web pages, but for pages behind the firewall.  In effect, the Web Query feature provides an incredibly easy way to consume data in Excel that’s “published” from an application.  Users just need a URL.  They don’t need to know server and database names and since the data is read-only, providing credentials may be unnecessary, or can be handled using integrated security.  If that’s not good enough, the Web Query can be saved to a special .iqy file, which can be edited to provide POST parameter data. The only requirement is that the data must be provided in an HTML table, with the first row providing the column names.  From an ASP.NET project, it couldn’t be easier: a simple bound GridView control is totally compatible.  Use a data source control with it, and you don’t even have to write any code.  Users can link to pages that are part of an application’s UI, or developers can create pages that are specially designed for the purpose of providing an interface to the Web Query import feature.  And none of this is Microsoft- or .NET-specific.  You can create pages in any language you want (PHP comes to mind) that output the result set of a query in HTML table format, and then consume that data in a Web Query.  Then build PivotTables and charts on the data, and in Excel 2007 or 2010 you can use conditional formatting to create scorecards and dashboards. This strategy allows you to create pages that function quite similarly to the OData XML feeds rendered when .NET developers create an “Astoria” WCF Data Service.  And while it’s cool that PowerPivot and Excel 2010 can import such OData feeds, it’s good to know that older versions of Excel can function in a similar fashion, and can consume data produced by virtually any Web development platform. As a final matter, instead of just telling you that “older versions” of Excel support this feature, I’ll be more specific.  To discover what the first version of Excel was to support Web queries, go to http://bit.ly/OldSchoolXL.

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• Performing a clean database creation using msbuild

  - by Robert May

  So I’m taking a break from writing about other Agile stuff for a post. :)  I’m still going to get back to the other subjects, but this is fun too. Something I’ve done quite a bit of is MSBuild and CI work.  I’m experimenting with ways to improve what I’ve done in the past, particularly around database CI. Today, I developed a mechanism for starting from scratch with your database.  By scratch, I mean blowing away the existing database and creating it again from a single command line call.  I’m a firm believer that developers should be able to get to a known clean state at the database level with a single command and that they should be operating off of their own isolated database to improve productivity.  These scripts will help that. Here’s how I did it.  First, we have to disconnect users.  I did so using the help of a script from sql server central.  Note that I’m using sqlcmd variable replacement. -- kills all the users in a particular database -- dlhatheway/3M, 11-Jun-2000 declare @arg_dbname sysname declare @a_spid smallint declare @msg varchar(255) declare @a_dbid int set @arg_dbname = '$(DatabaseName)' select @a_dbid = sdb.dbid from master..sysdatabases sdb where sdb.name = @arg_dbname declare db_users insensitive cursor for select sp.spid from master..sysprocesses sp where sp.dbid = @a_dbid open db_users fetch next from db_users into @a_spid while @@fetch_status = 0 begin select @msg = 'kill '+convert(char(5),@a_spid) print @msg execute (@msg) fetch next from db_users into @a_spid end close db_users deallocate db_users GO Once all users are booted from the database, we can commence with recreating the database.  I generated the script that is used to create a database from SQL Server management studio, so I’m only going to show the bits that weren’t generated that are important.  There are a bunch of Alter Database statements that aren’t shown. First, I had to find the default location of the database files in the install, since they can be in many different locations.  I used Method 1 from a technet blog and then modified it a bit to do what I needed to do.  I ended up using dynamic SQL because for the life of me, I couldn’t get the “Filename” property to not return an error when I used anything besides a string.  I’m dropping the database first, if it exists.  Here’s the code:   IF EXISTS(SELECT 1 FROM [master].[sys].[databases] WHERE [name] = N'$(DatabaseName)') BEGIN drop database $(DatabaseName) END; go IF EXISTS(SELECT 1 FROM [master].[sys].[databases] WHERE [name] = 'zzTempDBForDefaultPath') BEGIN DROP DATABASE zzTempDBForDefaultPath END; -- Create temp database. Because no options are given, the default data and --- log path locations are used CREATE DATABASE zzTempDBForDefaultPath; DECLARE @Default_Data_Path VARCHAR(512), @Default_Log_Path VARCHAR(512); --Get the default data path SELECT @Default_Data_Path = ( SELECT LEFT(physical_name,LEN(physical_name)-CHARINDEX('\',REVERSE(physical_name))+1) FROM sys.master_files mf INNER JOIN sys.[databases] d ON mf.[database_id] = d.[database_id] WHERE d.[name] = 'zzTempDBForDefaultPath' AND type = 0); --Get the default Log path SELECT @Default_Log_Path = ( SELECT LEFT(physical_name,LEN(physical_name)-CHARINDEX('\',REVERSE(physical_name))+1) FROM sys.master_files mf INNER JOIN sys.[databases] d ON mf.[database_id] = d.[database_id] WHERE d.[name] = 'zzTempDBForDefaultPath' AND type = 1); --Clean up. IF EXISTS(SELECT 1 FROM [master].[sys].[databases] WHERE [name] = 'zzTempDBForDefaultPath') BEGIN DROP DATABASE zzTempDBForDefaultPath END; DECLARE @SQL nvarchar(max) SET @SQL= 'CREATE DATABASE $(DatabaseName) ON PRIMARY ( NAME = N''$(DatabaseName)'', FILENAME = N''' + @Default_Data_Path + N'$(DatabaseName)' + '.mdf' + ''', SIZE = 2048KB , FILEGROWTH = 1024KB ) LOG ON ( NAME = N''$(DatabaseName)Log'', FILENAME = N''' + @Default_Log_Path + N'$(DatabaseName)' + '.ldf' + ''', SIZE = 1024KB , FILEGROWTH = 10%) ' exec (@SQL) GO And with that, your database is created.  You can run these scripts on any server and on any database name.  To do that, I created an MSBuild script that looks like this: <Project xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003" ToolsVersion="4.0"> <PropertyGroup> <DatabaseName>MyDatabase</DatabaseName> <Server>localhost</Server> <SqlCmd>sqlcmd -v DatabaseName=$(DatabaseName) -S $(Server) -i </SqlCmd> <ScriptDirectory>.\Scripts</ScriptDirectory> </PropertyGroup> <Target Name ="Rebuild"> <ItemGroup> <ScriptFiles Include="$(ScriptDirectory)\*.sql"/> </ItemGroup> <Exec Command="$(SqlCmd) &quot;%(ScriptFiles.Identity)&quot;" ContinueOnError="false"/> </Target> </Project> Note that the Scripts directory is underneath the directory where I’m running the msbuild command and is relative to that directory.  Note also that the target is using batching to run each script in the scripts subdirectory, one after the other.  Each script is passed to the sqlcmd command line execution using the .Identity property on the itemgroup that is created.  This target file is saved in the file “Database.target”. To make this work, you’ll need msbuild in your path, and then run the following command: msbuild database.target /target:Rebuild Once you’ve got your virgin database setup, you’d then need to use a tool like dbdeploy.net to determine that it was a virgin database, build a change script based on the change scripts, and then you’d want another sqlcmd call to update the database with the appropriate scripts.  I’m doing that next, so I’ll post a blog update when I’ve got it working. Technorati Tags: MSBuild,Agile,CI,Database

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