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• Different Flavors of Leases Back On

  - by Theresa Hickman

  Given the continued interest regarding the proposed changes to Lease Accounting, I decided to write another entry on this controversial topic with colorful commentary from our resident accounting expert, Seamus Moran. Background (A History Lesson) Back in 1976, the FASB issued FAS 13, “Accounting for Leases” that permitted leases to be either an operating lease or capital (finance) lease. In substance, operating leases are a form of off-balance sheet financing. According to Seamus, operating leases date back to the launch of the Boeing 707 in the 1950s.  Because the aircraft was so much more expensive than previous aircrafts, the industry came up with the operating lease concept to accommodate these jet liners that dominated air transport.  How it worked was the bank would buy the plane and lease it to the airline.  Because the bank never controlled or flew the plane, they never placed the asset on their balance sheet, and because the airline never owned the plane, they didn’t place it on their balance sheet either. They simply treated the monthly lease payments as rental expenses on the P&L.   August 2010 Original Lease Accounting Changes In August 2010, FASB and IASB decided to overhaul lease accounting as part of their joint commitment “to insure that investors and other users of financial statements are provided useful, transparent, and complete information about leasing transactions in the financial statements.”  Some say that the current lease accounting standards are broken because it keeps assets off the balance sheet, hidden from investors’ view. The original proposal abolished operating leases and only permitted capital leases where all leases would be recorded on the balance sheet as assets and liabilities. The asset side would reflect the right to use the asset for the leased term, and the liability side would reflect the obligation to make lease payments.   Why Companies Were Freaking Out According to the SEC, the financial impact of the aforementioned lease changes was estimated to add more than $1.3 trillion of operating lease obligations to corporate balance sheets. Many companies in various industries, especially retail, are concerned because the changes are significant and will impact existing leases with no grandfather clause for existing operating leases. Of course, the banks and airlines I mentioned earlier really hate this because neither wants to report the airplane (now costing around $60 M) as an asset. Regular companies were concerned that they would have to report routine short term leases of real estate or equipment as fixed assets, even though they were really just longer term rentals.  One company we spoke to leased roadside billboards, and really did not consider them to be fixed assets in any way. Obviously, these changes would have had a profound and lasting effect on a company’s financial and real estate strategies and significantly impact its financial statements.  Financial statements would show higher depreciation and interest expense with significantly higher total assets and debt. In terms of financial metrics, they’re negatively impacted. It would raise a company’s debt-to-capital ratio to reflect the higher debt compared to equity, it would negatively impact their return-on-assets because now companies will appear more asset intensive, and it will decrease EPS, lowering shareholder ROI. Feb. 2011 Recent Update The comment period on leases closed in December 2010. The FASB and the IASB have met several times since then and published their initial responses to the input they received from the various interested parties.  They are “redeliberating” the principles involved in Lease Accounting.  Some of the issues they are looking at include: The core definition of a lease.  This will articulate principles on what is a lease and what is “not-a-lease.” One theory or supposition is that they might define a lease as the transfer of certain but not all major ownership attributes for a certain period of time.  So a year’s lease of an aircraft might be a “lease,” but a year’s lease of half a floor in an office building would be “not-a-lease.”  The ownership attributes transferred from the core owner to the user are different; the airline must maintain, paint, and do whatever it needs to do on the aircraft. However, the office renter will have strictly limited rights in respect to the rented space. The differences between a lease contract and service contract.  Even if they call them “leases” for the purpose of commercial law, a service contract might not be accounted for as a lease. The accounting to be done by the lessee.  They would define when the bank or landlord would retain the asset on their balance sheet, and perhaps by implication, when the lessor would not need to include the asset on theirs.  So if the finance house keeps the airplane or office on their balance sheet, the tenant doesn’t need to.  I’m not sure that I can draw the opposite conclusion where the finance house doesn’t report but the tenant must. The difference, if any, between a financing lease and other leases, and the implications to the accounting. The present value calculation when renewable terms exist. They have reduced the circumstances in which one must look at the renewable terms of a lease in calculating the present value.  In most circumstances, you will use the lease term rather than the potential renewable term. Their latest discussion this past week with the contents of the discussion was not available at the time of me writing this entry.  For more details, the results of the discussions are posted on both the FASB and the IASB websites. Implied Software Changes Whatever the final rules turn out to be, all ERP systems, such as Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft Enterprise, JD Edwards, and Oracle Hyperion will need to change their software to accommodate the new rules. The following lists some changes that might have to be made to accounting software depending on what the final standards will be in June 2011: Lease tracking may require modifications with tracking of additional lease details that might require a centralized repository to maintain Accounting may need to be modified as there are many changes to how capital leases and the new “other than finance” leases are accounted for both on the lessee and lessor side.  For example, valuation, amortization, and disclosure will be considerably different requiring different types of data to be captured. Companies may need to modify their chart of accounts depending on how they want to track leases, which could then impact financial reporting and consolidation Business processes may require changes which could then impact internal controls Software applications may need to perform more advanced computations on leases Reports and KPIs may need to reflect new operating metrics Hold Onto Your Seats           Before you redo all your lease agreements and call your software vendors asking when the changes to the software will be made, remember that the rules are not finalized yet, and from appearances, will not reflect the proposals in the exposure draft.  Not only are there objections to putting the operating lease assets on anyone’s balance sheet, there are lots of objections to subjectivity and the data required for the valuation.  According to Seamus, there is huge opposition from New York bankers, the airlines, the EU, the Communist Party of China (since it impacts their exporting business), and Republicans (hearing complaints from small and large businesses). Even if everyone can agree on the proposed changes, 2013 might be the earliest that companies would need to change how they report leases. The Boards will finish their deliberations in April, May or June 2011.  As we’ve seen with other Exposure Drafts, if the changes are minor and the principles met the General Acceptance consensus criteria, the Standard could be finalized at that time.  However, if substantial changes are made, a fresh exposure draft, comment period, and review period might be involved, too. Seamus added an interesting perspective. Even if the proposed changes do pass, don’t you think our customers, such as Boeing, GE Capital, United Airlines, etc. will be clever enough to come up with a new kind of financing arrangement that complies with the new accounting? How about the large retail customers, such as Best Buy and Macerich? Don’t you think they might simply cut deals around retail locations with new contracts that prevent their leases from being capital leases? Instead of blindly adapting the software to meet the principles outlined in the final standard, our software needs to accommodate how businesses will respond to the new rules. We cannot know our customers’ responses until the rules are finalized. Oracle is aware of the potential changes and is staying abreast of the developments through our domain expertise staff, our relationship with customers, our market awareness, and, of course, our relationships with the Big 4. This is part of our normal process with respect to worldwide regulatory compliance. Oracle products have been IFRS and GAAP compliant for years and we will continue to maintain those standards going forward.

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• Developing a SQL Server Function in a Test-Harness.

  - by Phil Factor

  /* Many times, it is a lot quicker to take some pain up-front and make a proper development/test harness for a routine (function or procedure) rather than think ‘I’m feeling lucky today!’. Then, you keep code and harness together from then on. Every time you run the build script, it runs the test harness too.  The advantage is that, if the test harness persists, then it is much less likely that someone, probably ‘you-in-the-future’  unintentionally breaks the code. If you store the actual code for the procedure as well as the test harness, then it is likely that any bugs in functionality will break the build rather than to introduce subtle bugs later on that could even slip through testing and get into production.   This is just an example of what I mean.   Imagine we had a database that was storing addresses with embedded UK postcodes. We really wouldn’t want that. Instead, we might want the postcode in one column and the address in another. In effect, we’d want to extract the entire postcode string and place it in another column. This might be part of a table refactoring or int could easily be part of a process of importing addresses from another system. We could easily decide to do this with a function that takes in a table as its parameter, and produces a table as its output. This is all very well, but we’d need to work on it, and test it when you make an alteration. By its very nature, a routine like this either works very well or horribly, but there is every chance that you might introduce subtle errors by fidding with it, and if young Thomas, the rather cocky developer who has just joined touches it, it is bound to break.     right, we drop the function we’re developing and re-create it. This is so we avoid the problem of having to change CREATE to ALTER when working on it. */ IF EXISTS(SELECT * FROM sys.objects WHERE name LIKE ‘ExtractPostcode’                                      and schema_name(schema_ID)=‘Dbo’)     DROP FUNCTION dbo.ExtractPostcode GO   /* we drop the user-defined table type and recreate it */ IF EXISTS(SELECT * FROM sys.types WHERE name LIKE ‘AddressesWithPostCodes’                                    and schema_name(schema_ID)=‘Dbo’)   DROP TYPE dbo.AddressesWithPostCodes GO /* we drop the user defined table type and recreate it */ IF EXISTS(SELECT * FROM sys.types WHERE name LIKE ‘OutputFormat’                                    and schema_name(schema_ID)=‘Dbo’)   DROP TYPE dbo.OutputFormat GO   /* and now create the table type that we can use to pass the addresses to the function */ CREATE TYPE AddressesWithPostCodes AS TABLE ( AddressWithPostcode_ID INT IDENTITY PRIMARY KEY, –because they work better that way! Address_ID INT NOT NULL, –the address we are fixing TheAddress VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL –The actual address ) GO CREATE TYPE OutputFormat AS TABLE (   Address_ID INT PRIMARY KEY, –the address we are fixing   TheAddress VARCHAR(1000) NULL, –The actual address   ThePostCode VARCHAR(105) NOT NULL – The Postcode )   GO CREATE FUNCTION ExtractPostcode(@AddressesWithPostCodes AddressesWithPostCodes READONLY)  /** summary:   > This Table-valued function takes a table type as a parameter, containing a table of addresses along with their integer IDs. Each address has an embedded postcode somewhere in it but not consistently in a particular place. The routine takes out the postcode and puts it in its own column, passing back a table where theinteger key is accompanied by the address without the (first) postcode and the postcode. If no postcode, then the address is returned unchanged and the postcode will be a blank string Author: Phil Factor Revision: 1.3 date: 20 May 2014 example:      – code: returns:   > Table of  Address_ID, TheAddress and ThePostCode. **/     RETURNS @FixedAddresses TABLE   (   Address_ID INT, –the address we are fixing   TheAddress VARCHAR(1000) NULL, –The actual address   ThePostCode VARCHAR(105) NOT NULL – The Postcode   ) AS – body of the function BEGIN DECLARE @BlankRange VARCHAR(10) SELECT  @BlankRange = CHAR(0)+‘- ‘+CHAR(160) INSERT INTO @FixedAddresses(Address_ID, TheAddress, ThePostCode) SELECT Address_ID,          CASE WHEN start>0 THEN REPLACE(STUFF([Theaddress],start,matchlength,”),‘  ‘,‘ ‘)             ELSE TheAddress END            AS TheAddress,        CASE WHEN Start>0 THEN SUBSTRING([Theaddress],start,matchlength-1) ELSE ” END AS ThePostCode FROM (–we have a derived table with the results we need for the chopping SELECT MAX(PATINDEX([matched],‘ ‘+[Theaddress] collate SQL_Latin1_General_CP850_Bin)) AS start,         MAX( CASE WHEN PATINDEX([matched],‘ ‘+[Theaddress] collate SQL_Latin1_General_CP850_Bin)>0 THEN TheLength ELSE 0 END) AS matchlength,        MAX(TheAddress) AS TheAddress,        Address_ID FROM (SELECT –first the match, then the length. There are three possible valid matches         ‘%['+@BlankRange+'][A-Z][0-9] [0-9][A-Z][A-Z]%’, 7 –seven character postcode       UNION ALL SELECT ‘%['+@BlankRange+'][A-Z][A-Z0-9][A-Z0-9] [0-9][A-Z][A-Z]%’, 8       UNION ALL SELECT ‘%['+@BlankRange+'][A-Z][A-Z][A-Z0-9][A-Z0-9] [0-9][A-Z][A-Z]%’, 9)      AS f(Matched,TheLength) CROSS JOIN  @AddressesWithPostCodes GROUP BY [address_ID] ) WORK; RETURN END GO ——————————-end of the function————————   IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.objects WHERE name LIKE ‘ExtractPostcode’)   BEGIN   RAISERROR (‘There was an error creating the function.’,16,1)   RETURN   END   /* now the job is only half done because we need to make sure that it works. So we now load our sample data, making sure that for each Sample, we have what we actually think the output should be. */ DECLARE @InputTable AddressesWithPostCodes INSERT INTO  @InputTable(Address_ID,TheAddress) VALUES(1,’14 Mason mews, Awkward Hill, Bibury, Cirencester, GL7 5NH’), (2,’5 Binney St      Abbey Ward    Buckinghamshire      HP11 2AX UK’), (3,‘BH6 3BE 8 Moor street, East Southbourne and Tuckton W     Bournemouth UK’), (4,’505 Exeter Rd,   DN36 5RP Hawerby cum BeesbyLincolnshire UK’), (5,”), (6,’9472 Lind St,    Desborough    Northamptonshire NN14 2GH  NN14 3GH UK’), (7,’7457 Cowl St, #70      Bargate Ward  Southampton   SO14 3TY UK’), (8,”’The Pippins”, 20 Gloucester Pl, Chirton Ward,   Tyne & Wear   NE29 7AD UK’), (9,’929 Augustine lane,    Staple Hill Ward     South Gloucestershire      BS16 4LL UK’), (10,’45 Bradfield road, Parwich   Derbyshire    DE6 1QN UK’), (11,’63A Northampton St,   Wilmington    Kent   DA2 7PP UK’), (12,’5 Hygeia avenue,      Loundsley Green WardDerbyshire    S40 4LY UK’), (13,’2150 Morley St,Dee Ward      Dumfries and Galloway      DG8 7DE UK’), (14,’24 Bolton St,   Broxburn, Uphall and Winchburg    West Lothian  EH52 5TL UK’), (15,’4 Forrest St,   Weston-Super-Mare    North Somerset       BS23 3HG UK’), (16,’89 Noon St,     Carbrooke     Norfolk       IP25 6JQ UK’), (17,’99 Guthrie St,  New Milton    Hampshire     BH25 5DF UK’), (18,’7 Richmond St,  Parkham       Devon  EX39 5DJ UK’), (19,’9165 laburnum St,     Darnall Ward  Yorkshire, South     S4 7WN UK’)   Declare @OutputTable  OutputFormat  –the table of what we think the correct results should be Declare @IncorrectRows OutputFormat –done for error reporting   –here is the table of what we think the output should be, along with a few edge cases. INSERT INTO  @OutputTable(Address_ID,TheAddress, ThePostcode)     VALUES         (1, ’14 Mason mews, Awkward Hill, Bibury, Cirencester, ‘,‘GL7 5NH’),         (2, ’5 Binney St   Abbey Ward    Buckinghamshire      UK’,‘HP11 2AX’),         (3, ’8 Moor street, East Southbourne and Tuckton W    Bournemouth UK’,‘BH6 3BE’),         (4, ’505 Exeter Rd,Hawerby cum Beesby   Lincolnshire UK’,‘DN36 5RP’),         (5, ”,”),         (6, ’9472 Lind St,Desborough    Northamptonshire NN14 3GH UK’,‘NN14 2GH’),         (7, ’7457 Cowl St, #70    Bargate Ward  Southampton   UK’,‘SO14 3TY’),         (8, ”’The Pippins”, 20 Gloucester Pl, Chirton Ward,Tyne & Wear   UK’,‘NE29 7AD’),         (9, ’929 Augustine lane,  Staple Hill Ward     South Gloucestershire      UK’,‘BS16 4LL’),         (10, ’45 Bradfield road, ParwichDerbyshire    UK’,‘DE6 1QN’),         (11, ’63A Northampton St,Wilmington    Kent   UK’,‘DA2 7PP’),         (12, ’5 Hygeia avenue,    Loundsley Green WardDerbyshire    UK’,‘S40 4LY’),         (13, ’2150 Morley St,     Dee Ward      Dumfries and Galloway      UK’,‘DG8 7DE’),         (14, ’24 Bolton St,Broxburn, Uphall and Winchburg    West Lothian  UK’,‘EH52 5TL’),         (15, ’4 Forrest St,Weston-Super-Mare    North Somerset       UK’,‘BS23 3HG’),         (16, ’89 Noon St,  Carbrooke     Norfolk       UK’,‘IP25 6JQ’),         (17, ’99 Guthrie St,      New Milton    Hampshire     UK’,‘BH25 5DF’),         (18, ’7 Richmond St,      Parkham       Devon  UK’,‘EX39 5DJ’),         (19, ’9165 laburnum St,   Darnall Ward  Yorkshire, South     UK’,‘S4 7WN’)       insert into @IncorrectRows(Address_ID,TheAddress, ThePostcode)        SELECT Address_ID,TheAddress,ThePostCode FROM dbo.ExtractPostcode(@InputTable)       EXCEPT     SELECT Address_ID,TheAddress,ThePostCode FROM @outputTable; If @@RowCount>0        Begin        PRINT ‘The following rows gave ‘;     SELECT Address_ID,TheAddress,ThePostCode FROM @IncorrectRows        RAISERROR (‘These rows gave unexpected results.’,16,1);     end   /* For tear-down, we drop the user defined table type */ IF EXISTS(SELECT * FROM sys.types WHERE name LIKE ‘OutputFormat’                                    and schema_name(schema_ID)=‘Dbo’)   DROP TYPE dbo.OutputFormat GO /* once this is working, the development work turns from a chore into a delight and one ends up hitting execute so much more often to catch mistakes as soon as possible. It also prevents a wildly-broken routine getting into a build! */

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• BizTalk: History of one project architecture

  - by Leonid Ganeline

  "In the beginning God made heaven and earth. Then he started to integrate." At the very start was the requirement: integrate two working systems. Small digging up: It was one system. It was good but IT guys want to change it to the new one, much better, chipper, more flexible, and more progressive in technologies, more suitable for the future, for the faster world and hungry competitors. One thing. One small, little thing. We cannot turn off the old system (call it A, because it was the first), turn on the new one (call it B, because it is second but not the last one). The A has a hundreds users all across a country, they must study B. A still has a lot nice custom features, home-made features that cannot disappear. These features have to be moved to the B and it is a long process, months and months of redevelopment. So, the decision was simple. Let’s move not jump, let’s both systems working side-by-side several months. In this time we could teach the users and move all custom A’s special functionality to B. That automatically means both systems should work side-by-side all these months and use the same data. Data in A and B must be in sync. That’s how the integration projects get birth. Moreover, the specific of the user tasks requires the both systems must be in sync in real-time. Nightly synchronization is not working, absolutely.   First draft The first draft seems simple. Both systems keep data in SQL databases. When data changes, the Create, Update, Delete operations performed on the data, and the sync process could be started. The obvious decision is to use triggers on tables. When we are talking about data, we are talking about several entities. For example, Orders and Items [in Orders]. We decided to use the BizTalk Server to synchronize systems. Why it was chosen is another story. Second draft   Let’s take an example how it works in more details. 1.       User creates a new entity in the A system. This fires an insert trigger on the entity table. Trigger has to pass the message “Entity created”. This message includes all attributes of the new entity, but I focused on the Id of this entity in the A system. Notation for this message is id.A. System A sends id.A to the BizTalk Server. 2.       BizTalk transforms id.A to the format of the system B. This is easiest part and I will not focus on this kind of transformations in the following text. The message on the picture is still id.A but it is in slightly different format, that’s why it is changing in color. BizTalk sends id.A to the system B. 3.       The system B creates the entity on its side. But it uses different id-s for entities, these id-s are id.B. System B saves id.A+id.B. System B sends the message id.A+id.B back to the BizTalk. 4.       BizTalk sends the message id.A+id.B to the system A. 5.       System A saves id.A+id.B. Why both id-s should be saved on both systems? It was one of the next requirements. Users of both systems have to know the systems are in sync or not in sync. Users working with the entity on the system A can see the id.B and use it to switch to the system B and work there with the copy of the same entity. The decision was to store the pairs of entity id-s on both sides. If there is only one id, the entities are not in sync yet (for the Create operation). Third draft Next problem was the reliability of the synchronization. The synchronizing process can be interrupted on each step, when message goes through the wires. It can be communication problem, timeout, temporary shutdown one of the systems, the second system cannot be synchronized by some internal reason. There were several potential problems that prevented from enclosing the whole synchronization process in one transaction. Decision was to restart the whole sync process if it was not finished (in case of the error). For this purpose was created an additional service. Let’s call it the Resync service. We still keep the id pairs in both systems, but only for the fast access not for the synchronization process. For the synchronizing these id-s now are kept in one main place, in the Resync service database. The Resync service keeps record as: ·       Id.A ·       Id.B ·       Entity.Type ·       Operation (Create, Update, Delete) ·       IsSyncStarted (true/false) ·       IsSyncFinished (true/false0 The example now looks like: 1.       System A creates id.A. id.A is saved on the A. Id.A is sent to the BizTalk. 2.       BizTalk sends id.A to the Resync and to the B. id.A is saved on the Resync. 3.       System B creates id.B. id.A+id.B are saved on the B. id.A+id.B are sent to the BizTalk. 4.       BizTalk sends id.A+id.B to the Resync and to the A. id.A+id.B are saved on the Resync. 5.       id.A+id.B are saved on the B. Resync changes the IsSyncStarted and IsSyncFinished flags accordingly. The Resync service implements three main methods: ·       Save (id.A, Entity.Type, Operation) ·       Save (id.A, id.B, Entity.Type, Operation) ·       Resync () Two Save() are used to save id-s to the service storage. See in the above example, in 2 and 4 steps. What about the Resync()? It is the method that finishes the interrupted synchronization processes. If Save() is started by the trigger event, the Resync() is working as an independent process. It periodically scans the Resync storage to find out “unfinished” records. Then it restarts the synchronization processes. It tries to synchronize them several times then gives up.     One more thing, both systems A and B must tolerate duplicates of one synchronizing process. Say on the step 3 the system B was not able to send id.A+id.B back. The Resync service must restart the synchronization process that will send the id.A to B second time. In this case system B must just send back again also created id.A+id.B pair without errors. That means “tolerate duplicates”. Fourth draft Next draft was created only because of the aesthetics. As it always happens, aesthetics gave significant performance gain to the whole system. First was the stupid question. Why do we need this additional service with special database? Can we just master the BizTalk to do something like this Resync() does? So the Resync orchestration is doing the same thing as the Resync service. It is started by the Id.A and finished by the id.A+id.B message. The first works as a Start message, the second works as a Finish message.     Here is a diagram the whole process without errors. It is pretty straightforward. The Resync orchestration is waiting for the Finish message specific period of time then resubmits the Id.A message. It resubmits the Id.A message specific number of times then gives up and gets suspended. It can be resubmitted then it starts the whole process again: waiting [, resubmitting [, get suspended]], finishing. Tuning up The Resync orchestration resubmits the id.A message with special “Resubmitted” flag. The subscription filter on the Resync orchestration includes predicate as (Resubmit_Flag != “Resubmitted”). That means only the first Sync orchestration starts the Resync orchestration. Other Sync orchestration instantiated by the resubmitting can finish this Resync orchestration but cannot start another instance of the Resync   Here is a diagram where system B was inaccessible for some period of time. The Resync orchestration resubmitted the id.A two times. Then system B got the response the id.A+id.B and this finished the Resync service execution. What is interesting about this, there were submitted several identical id.A messages and only one id.A+id.B message. Because of this, the system B and the Resync must tolerate the duplicate messages. We also told about this requirement for the system B. Now the same requirement is for the Resunc. Let’s assume the system B was very slow in the first response and the Resync service had time to resubmit two id.A messages. System B responded not, as it was in previous case, with one id.A+id.B but with two id.A+id.B messages. First of them finished the Resync execution for the id.A. What about the second id.A+id.B? Where it goes? So, we have to add one more internal requirement. The whole solution must tolerate many identical id.A+id.B messages. It is easy task with the BizTalk. I added the “SinkExtraMessages” subscriber (orchestration with one receive shape), that just get these messages and do nothing. Real design Real architecture is much more complex and interesting. In reality each system can submit several id.A almost simultaneously and completely unordered. There are not only the “Create entity” operation but the Update and Delete operations. And these operations relate each other. Say the Update operation after Delete means not the same as Update after Create. In reality there are entities related each other. Say the Order and Order Items. Change on one of it could start the series of the operations on another. Moreover, the system internals are the “black boxes” and we cannot predict the exact content and order of the operation series. It worth to say, I had to spend a time to manage the zombie message problems. The zombies are still here, but this is not a problem now. And this is another story. What is interesting in the last design? One orchestration works to help another to be more reliable. Why two orchestration design is more reliable, isn’t it something strange? The Synch orchestration takes all the message exchange between systems, here is the area where most of the errors could happen. The Resync orchestration sends and receives messages only within the BizTalk server. Is there another design? Sure. All Resync functionality could be implemented inside the Sync orchestration. Hey guys, some other ideas?

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: Skip() and Take()

  - by James Michael Hare

  Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. I’ve covered many valuable methods from System.Linq class library before, so you already know it’s packed with extension-method goodness.  Today I’d like to cover two small families I’ve neglected to mention before: Skip() and Take().  While these methods seem so simple, they are an easy way to create sub-sequences for IEnumerable<T>, much the way GetRange() creates sub-lists for List<T>. Skip() and SkipWhile() The Skip() family of methods is used to ignore items in a sequence until either a certain number are passed, or until a certain condition becomes false.  This makes the methods great for starting a sequence at a point possibly other than the first item of the original sequence.   The Skip() family of methods contains the following methods (shown below in extension method syntax): Skip(int count) Ignores the specified number of items and returns a sequence starting at the item after the last skipped item (if any).  SkipWhile(Func<T, bool> predicate) Ignores items as long as the predicate returns true and returns a sequence starting with the first item to invalidate the predicate (if any).  SkipWhile(Func<T, int, bool> predicate) Same as above, but passes not only the item itself to the predicate, but also the index of the item.  For example: 1: var list = new[] { 3.14, 2.72, 42.0, 9.9, 13.0, 101.0 }; 2:  3: // sequence contains { 2.72, 42.0, 9.9, 13.0, 101.0 } 4: var afterSecond = list.Skip(1); 5: Console.WriteLine(string.Join(", ", afterSecond)); 6:  7: // sequence contains { 42.0, 9.9, 13.0, 101.0 } 8: var afterFirstDoubleDigit = list.SkipWhile(v => v < 10.0); 9: Console.WriteLine(string.Join(", ", afterFirstDoubleDigit)); Note that the SkipWhile() stops skipping at the first item that returns false and returns from there to the rest of the sequence, even if further items in that sequence also would satisfy the predicate (otherwise, you’d probably be using Where() instead, of course). If you do use the form of SkipWhile() which also passes an index into the predicate, then you should keep in mind that this is the index of the item in the sequence you are calling SkipWhile() from, not the index in the original collection.  That is, consider the following: 1: var list = new[] { 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 }; 2:  3: // Get all items < 10, then 4: var whatAmI = list 5: .Skip(2) 6: .SkipWhile((i, x) => i > x); For this example the result above is 2.4, and not 1.2, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 as some might expect.  The key is knowing what the index is that’s passed to the predicate in SkipWhile().  In the code above, because Skip(2) skips 1.0 and 1.1, the sequence passed to SkipWhile() begins at 1.2 and thus it considers the “index” of 1.2 to be 0 and not 2.  This same logic applies when using any of the extension methods that have an overload that allows you to pass an index into the delegate, such as SkipWhile(), TakeWhile(), Select(), Where(), etc.  It should also be noted, that it’s fine to Skip() more items than exist in the sequence (an empty sequence is the result), or even to Skip(0) which results in the full sequence.  So why would it ever be useful to return Skip(0) deliberately?  One reason might be to return a List<T> as an immutable sequence.  Consider this class: 1: public class MyClass 2: { 3: private List<int> _myList = new List<int>(); 4:  5: // works on surface, but one can cast back to List<int> and mutate the original... 6: public IEnumerable<int> OneWay 7: { 8: get { return _myList; } 9: } 10:  11: // works, but still has Add() etc which throw at runtime if accidentally called 12: public ReadOnlyCollection<int> AnotherWay 13: { 14: get { return new ReadOnlyCollection<int>(_myList); } 15: } 16:  17: // immutable, can't be cast back to List<int>, doesn't have methods that throw at runtime 18: public IEnumerable<int> YetAnotherWay 19: { 20: get { return _myList.Skip(0); } 21: } 22: } This code snippet shows three (among many) ways to return an internal sequence in varying levels of immutability.  Obviously if you just try to return as IEnumerable<T> without doing anything more, there’s always the danger the caller could cast back to List<T> and mutate your internal structure.  You could also return a ReadOnlyCollection<T>, but this still has the mutating methods, they just throw at runtime when called instead of giving compiler errors.  Finally, you can return the internal list as a sequence using Skip(0) which skips no items and just runs an iterator through the list.  The result is an iterator, which cannot be cast back to List<T>.  Of course, there’s many ways to do this (including just cloning the list, etc.) but the point is it illustrates a potential use of using an explicit Skip(0). Take() and TakeWhile() The Take() and TakeWhile() methods can be though of as somewhat of the inverse of Skip() and SkipWhile().  That is, while Skip() ignores the first X items and returns the rest, Take() returns a sequence of the first X items and ignores the rest.  Since they are somewhat of an inverse of each other, it makes sense that their calling signatures are identical (beyond the method name obviously): Take(int count) Returns a sequence containing up to the specified number of items. Anything after the count is ignored. TakeWhile(Func<T, bool> predicate) Returns a sequence containing items as long as the predicate returns true.  Anything from the point the predicate returns false and beyond is ignored. TakeWhile(Func<T, int, bool> predicate) Same as above, but passes not only the item itself to the predicate, but also the index of the item. So, for example, we could do the following: 1: var list = new[] { 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 }; 2:  3: // sequence contains 1.0 and 1.1 4: var firstTwo = list.Take(2); 5:  6: // sequence contains 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 7: var underTwo = list.TakeWhile(i => i < 2.0); The same considerations for SkipWhile() with index apply to TakeWhile() with index, of course.  Using Skip() and Take() for sub-sequences A few weeks back, I talked about The List<T> Range Methods and showed how they could be used to get a sub-list of a List<T>.  This works well if you’re dealing with List<T>, or don’t mind converting to List<T>.  But if you have a simple IEnumerable<T> sequence and want to get a sub-sequence, you can also use Skip() and Take() to much the same effect: 1: var list = new List<double> { 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 }; 2:  3: // results in List<T> containing { 1.2, 2.2, 2.3 } 4: var subList = list.GetRange(2, 3); 5:  6: // results in sequence containing { 1.2, 2.2, 2.3 } 7: var subSequence = list.Skip(2).Take(3); I say “much the same effect” because there are some differences.  First of all GetRange() will throw if the starting index or the count are greater than the number of items in the list, but Skip() and Take() do not.  Also GetRange() is a method off of List<T>, thus it can use direct indexing to get to the items much more efficiently, whereas Skip() and Take() operate on sequences and may actually have to walk through the items they skip to create the resulting sequence.  So each has their pros and cons.  My general rule of thumb is if I’m already working with a List<T> I’ll use GetRange(), but for any plain IEnumerable<T> sequence I’ll tend to prefer Skip() and Take() instead. Summary The Skip() and Take() families of LINQ extension methods are handy for producing sub-sequences from any IEnumerable<T> sequence.  Skip() will ignore the specified number of items and return the rest of the sequence, whereas Take() will return the specified number of items and ignore the rest of the sequence.  Similarly, the SkipWhile() and TakeWhile() methods can be used to skip or take items, respectively, until a given predicate returns false.    Technorati Tags: C#, CSharp, .NET, LINQ, IEnumerable<T>, Skip, Take, SkipWhile, TakeWhile

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• How to get rid of grub menu after boot?

  - by umpirsky

  Here is my /etc/default/grub: # If you change this file, run 'update-grub' afterwards to update # /boot/grub/grub.cfg. GRUB_DEFAULT=0 GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0 GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true GRUB_TIMEOUT=10 GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian` GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="" # Uncomment to disable graphical terminal (grub-pc only) #GRUB_TERMINAL=console # The resolution used on graphical terminal # note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE # you can see them in real GRUB with the command `vbeinfo' #GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480 # Uncomment if you don't want GRUB to pass "root=UUID=xxx" parameter to Linux #GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true # Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries #GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_RECOVERY="true" # Uncomment to get a beep at grub start #GRUB_INIT_TUNE="480 440 1" I tried various things including: How do I hide the GRUB menu showing up in the beginning of boot? How to disable Grub's menu from showing up after failed boot http://www.itworld.com/software/306238/disable-grub-boot-menu-ubuntu-1210 But I still get grub menu each time I boot. My generated /boot/grub/grub.cfg: # # DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE # # It is automatically generated by grub-mkconfig using templates # from /etc/grub.d and settings from /etc/default/grub # ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/00_header ### if [ -s $prefix/grubenv ]; then set have_grubenv=true load_env fi if [ "${next_entry}" ] ; then set default="${next_entry}" set next_entry= save_env next_entry set boot_once=true else set default="0" fi if [ x"${feature_menuentry_id}" = xy ]; then menuentry_id_option="--id" else menuentry_id_option="" fi export menuentry_id_option if [ "${prev_saved_entry}" ]; then set saved_entry="${prev_saved_entry}" save_env saved_entry set prev_saved_entry= save_env prev_saved_entry set boot_once=true fi function savedefault { if [ -z "${boot_once}" ]; then saved_entry="${chosen}" save_env saved_entry fi } function recordfail { set recordfail=1 if [ -n "${have_grubenv}" ]; then if [ -z "${boot_once}" ]; then save_env recordfail; fi; fi } function load_video { if [ x$feature_all_video_module = xy ]; then insmod all_video else insmod efi_gop insmod efi_uga insmod ieee1275_fb insmod vbe insmod vga insmod video_bochs insmod video_cirrus fi } if [ x$feature_default_font_path = xy ] ; then font=unicode else insmod part_gpt insmod ext2 if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 else search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 fi font="/usr/share/grub/unicode.pf2" fi if loadfont $font ; then set gfxmode=auto load_video insmod gfxterm set locale_dir=$prefix/locale set lang=en_US insmod gettext fi terminal_output gfxterm if [ "${recordfail}" = 1 ] ; then set timeout=-1 else if [ x$feature_timeout_style = xy ] ; then set timeout_style=hidden set timeout=0 # Fallback hidden-timeout code in case the timeout_style feature is # unavailable. elif sleep --interruptible 0 ; then set timeout=0 fi fi ### END /etc/grub.d/00_header ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme ### set menu_color_normal=white/black set menu_color_highlight=black/light-gray if background_color 45,51,53; then clear fi ### END /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux ### function gfxmode { set gfxpayload="${1}" if [ "${1}" = "keep" ]; then set vt_handoff=vt.handoff=7 else set vt_handoff= fi } if [ "${recordfail}" != 1 ]; then if [ -e ${prefix}/gfxblacklist.txt ]; then if hwmatch ${prefix}/gfxblacklist.txt 3; then if [ ${match} = 0 ]; then set linux_gfx_mode=keep else set linux_gfx_mode=text fi else set linux_gfx_mode=text fi else set linux_gfx_mode=keep fi else set linux_gfx_mode=text fi export linux_gfx_mode menuentry 'Ubuntu' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'gnulinux-simple-ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460' { recordfail load_video gfxmode $linux_gfx_mode insmod gzio insmod part_gpt insmod ext2 if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 else search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 fi linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-29-generic.efi.signed root=UUID=ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 ro quiet splash $vt_handoff initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-29-generic } submenu 'Advanced options for Ubuntu' $menuentry_id_option 'gnulinux-advanced-ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460' { menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 3.13.0-29-generic' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'gnulinux-3.13.0-29-generic-advanced-ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460' { recordfail load_video gfxmode $linux_gfx_mode insmod gzio insmod part_gpt insmod ext2 if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 else search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 fi echo 'Loading Linux 3.13.0-29-generic ...' linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-29-generic.efi.signed root=UUID=ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 ro quiet splash $vt_handoff echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...' initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-29-generic } menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 3.13.0-29-generic (recovery mode)' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'gnulinux-3.13.0-29-generic-recovery-ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460' { recordfail load_video insmod gzio insmod part_gpt insmod ext2 if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 else search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 fi echo 'Loading Linux 3.13.0-29-generic ...' linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-29-generic.efi.signed root=UUID=ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 ro recovery nomodeset echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...' initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-29-generic } menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 3.13.0-24-generic' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'gnulinux-3.13.0-24-generic-advanced-ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460' { recordfail load_video gfxmode $linux_gfx_mode insmod gzio insmod part_gpt insmod ext2 if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 else search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 fi echo 'Loading Linux 3.13.0-24-generic ...' linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-24-generic.efi.signed root=UUID=ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 ro quiet splash $vt_handoff echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...' initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-24-generic } menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 3.13.0-24-generic (recovery mode)' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'gnulinux-3.13.0-24-generic-recovery-ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460' { recordfail load_video insmod gzio insmod part_gpt insmod ext2 if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 else search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 fi echo 'Loading Linux 3.13.0-24-generic ...' linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-24-generic.efi.signed root=UUID=ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 ro recovery nomodeset echo 'Loading initial ramdisk ...' initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-24-generic } } ### END /etc/grub.d/10_linux ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ### ### END /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ ### ### END /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ### menuentry 'Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (14.04) (on /dev/mapper/isw_beaaegcdjh_ASUS_OS2)' --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'osprober-gnulinux-simple-ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460' { insmod part_gpt insmod ext2 if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 else search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 fi linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-29-generic.efi.signed root=UUID=ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 ro splash quiet quiet splash $vt_handoff initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-29-generic } submenu 'Advanced options for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (14.04) (on /dev/mapper/isw_beaaegcdjh_ASUS_OS2)' $menuentry_id_option 'osprober-gnulinux-advanced-ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460' { menuentry 'Ubuntu (on /dev/mapper/isw_beaaegcdjh_ASUS_OS2)' --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'osprober-gnulinux-/boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-29-generic.efi.signed--ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460' { insmod part_gpt insmod ext2 if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 else search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 fi linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-29-generic.efi.signed root=UUID=ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 ro splash quiet quiet splash $vt_handoff initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-29-generic } menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 3.13.0-29-generic (on /dev/mapper/isw_beaaegcdjh_ASUS_OS2)' --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'osprober-gnulinux-/boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-29-generic.efi.signed--ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460' { insmod part_gpt insmod ext2 if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 else search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 fi linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-29-generic.efi.signed root=UUID=ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 ro splash quiet quiet splash $vt_handoff initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-29-generic } menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 3.13.0-29-generic (recovery mode) (on /dev/mapper/isw_beaaegcdjh_ASUS_OS2)' --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'osprober-gnulinux-/boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-29-generic.efi.signed-root=UUID=ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 ro recovery nomodeset splash quiet-ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460' { insmod part_gpt insmod ext2 if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 else search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 fi linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-29-generic.efi.signed root=UUID=ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 ro recovery nomodeset splash quiet initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-29-generic } menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 3.13.0-24-generic (on /dev/mapper/isw_beaaegcdjh_ASUS_OS2)' --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'osprober-gnulinux-/boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-24-generic.efi.signed--ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460' { insmod part_gpt insmod ext2 if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 else search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 fi linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-24-generic.efi.signed root=UUID=ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 ro splash quiet quiet splash $vt_handoff initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-24-generic } menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 3.13.0-24-generic (recovery mode) (on /dev/mapper/isw_beaaegcdjh_ASUS_OS2)' --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'osprober-gnulinux-/boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-24-generic.efi.signed-root=UUID=ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 ro recovery nomodeset splash quiet-ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460' { insmod part_gpt insmod ext2 if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 else search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 fi linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-24-generic.efi.signed root=UUID=ed6b32bc-ec1d-444c-a000-282fddd6d460 ro recovery nomodeset splash quiet initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-24-generic } } set timeout_style=menu if [ "${timeout}" = 0 ]; then set timeout=10 fi ### END /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/30_uefi-firmware ### menuentry 'System setup' $menuentry_id_option 'uefi-firmware' { fwsetup } ### END /etc/grub.d/30_uefi-firmware ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/40_custom ### # This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries. Simply type the # menu entries you want to add after this comment. Be careful not to change # the 'exec tail' line above. ### END /etc/grub.d/40_custom ### ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/41_custom ### if [ -f ${config_directory}/custom.cfg ]; then source ${config_directory}/custom.cfg elif [ -z "${config_directory}" -a -f $prefix/custom.cfg ]; then source $prefix/custom.cfg; fi ### END /etc/grub.d/41_custom ###

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: Constraining Generics with Where Clause

  - by James Michael Hare

  Back when I was primarily a C++ developer, I loved C++ templates.  The power of writing very reusable generic classes brought the art of programming to a brand new level.  Unfortunately, when .NET 1.0 came about, they didn’t have a template equivalent.  With .NET 2.0 however, we finally got generics, which once again let us spread our wings and program more generically in the world of .NET However, C# generics behave in some ways very differently from their C++ template cousins.  There is a handy clause, however, that helps you navigate these waters to make your generics more powerful. The Problem – C# Assumes Lowest Common Denominator In C++, you can create a template and do nearly anything syntactically possible on the template parameter, and C++ will not check if the method/fields/operations invoked are valid until you declare a realization of the type.  Let me illustrate with a C++ example: 1: // compiles fine, C++ makes no assumptions as to T 2: template <typename T> 3: class ReverseComparer 4: { 5: public: 6: int Compare(const T& lhs, const T& rhs) 7: { 8: return rhs.CompareTo(lhs); 9: } 10: }; Notice that we are invoking a method CompareTo() off of template type T.  Because we don’t know at this point what type T is, C++ makes no assumptions and there are no errors. C++ tends to take the path of not checking the template type usage until the method is actually invoked with a specific type, which differs from the behavior of C#: 1: // this will NOT compile! C# assumes lowest common denominator. 2: public class ReverseComparer<T> 3: { 4: public int Compare(T lhs, T rhs) 5: { 6: return lhs.CompareTo(rhs); 7: } 8: } So why does C# give us a compiler error even when we don’t yet know what type T is?  This is because C# took a different path in how they made generics.  Unless you specify otherwise, for the purposes of the code inside the generic method, T is basically treated like an object (notice I didn’t say T is an object). That means that any operations, fields, methods, properties, etc that you attempt to use of type T must be available at the lowest common denominator type: object.  Now, while object has the broadest applicability, it also has the fewest specific.  So how do we allow our generic type placeholder to do things more than just what object can do? Solution: Constraint the Type With Where Clause So how do we get around this in C#?  The answer is to constrain the generic type placeholder with the where clause.  Basically, the where clause allows you to specify additional constraints on what the actual type used to fill the generic type placeholder must support. You might think that narrowing the scope of a generic means a weaker generic.  In reality, though it limits the number of types that can be used with the generic, it also gives the generic more power to deal with those types.  In effect these constraints says that if the type meets the given constraint, you can perform the activities that pertain to that constraint with the generic placeholders. Constraining Generic Type to Interface or Superclass One of the handiest where clause constraints is the ability to specify the type generic type must implement a certain interface or be inherited from a certain base class. For example, you can’t call CompareTo() in our first C# generic without constraints, but if we constrain T to IComparable<T>, we can: 1: public class ReverseComparer<T> 2: where T : IComparable<T> 3: { 4: public int Compare(T lhs, T rhs) 5: { 6: return lhs.CompareTo(rhs); 7: } 8: } Now that we’ve constrained T to an implementation of IComparable<T>, this means that our variables of generic type T may now call any members specified in IComparable<T> as well.  This means that the call to CompareTo() is now legal. If you constrain your type, also, you will get compiler warnings if you attempt to use a type that doesn’t meet the constraint.  This is much better than the syntax error you would get within C++ template code itself when you used a type not supported by a C++ template. Constraining Generic Type to Only Reference Types Sometimes, you want to assign an instance of a generic type to null, but you can’t do this without constraints, because you have no guarantee that the type used to realize the generic is not a value type, where null is meaningless. Well, we can fix this by specifying the class constraint in the where clause.  By declaring that a generic type must be a class, we are saying that it is a reference type, and this allows us to assign null to instances of that type: 1: public static class ObjectExtensions 2: { 3: public static TOut Maybe<TIn, TOut>(this TIn value, Func<TIn, TOut> accessor) 4: where TOut : class 5: where TIn : class 6: { 7: return (value != null) ? accessor(value) : null; 8: } 9: } In the example above, we want to be able to access a property off of a reference, and if that reference is null, pass the null on down the line.  To do this, both the input type and the output type must be reference types (yes, nullable value types could also be considered applicable at a logical level, but there’s not a direct constraint for those). Constraining Generic Type to only Value Types Similarly to constraining a generic type to be a reference type, you can also constrain a generic type to be a value type.  To do this you use the struct constraint which specifies that the generic type must be a value type (primitive, struct, enum, etc). Consider the following method, that will convert anything that is IConvertible (int, double, string, etc) to the value type you specify, or null if the instance is null. 1: public static T? ConvertToNullable<T>(IConvertible value) 2: where T : struct 3: { 4: T? result = null; 5:  6: if (value != null) 7: { 8: result = (T)Convert.ChangeType(value, typeof(T)); 9: } 10:  11: return result; 12: } Because T was constrained to be a value type, we can use T? (System.Nullable<T>) where we could not do this if T was a reference type. Constraining Generic Type to Require Default Constructor You can also constrain a type to require existence of a default constructor.  Because by default C# doesn’t know what constructors a generic type placeholder does or does not have available, it can’t typically allow you to call one.  That said, if you give it the new() constraint, it will mean that the type used to realize the generic type must have a default (no argument) constructor. Let’s assume you have a generic adapter class that, given some mappings, will adapt an item from type TFrom to type TTo.  Because it must create a new instance of type TTo in the process, we need to specify that TTo has a default constructor: 1: // Given a set of Action<TFrom,TTo> mappings will map TFrom to TTo 2: public class Adapter<TFrom, TTo> : IEnumerable<Action<TFrom, TTo>> 3: where TTo : class, new() 4: { 5: // The list of translations from TFrom to TTo 6: public List<Action<TFrom, TTo>> Translations { get; private set; } 7:  8: // Construct with empty translation and reverse translation sets. 9: public Adapter() 10: { 11: // did this instead of auto-properties to allow simple use of initializers 12: Translations = new List<Action<TFrom, TTo>>(); 13: } 14:  15: // Add a translator to the collection, useful for initializer list 16: public void Add(Action<TFrom, TTo> translation) 17: { 18: Translations.Add(translation); 19: } 20:  21: // Add a translator that first checks a predicate to determine if the translation 22: // should be performed, then translates if the predicate returns true 23: public void Add(Predicate<TFrom> conditional, Action<TFrom, TTo> translation) 24: { 25: Translations.Add((from, to) => 26: { 27: if (conditional(from)) 28: { 29: translation(from, to); 30: } 31: }); 32: } 33:  34: // Translates an object forward from TFrom object to TTo object. 35: public TTo Adapt(TFrom sourceObject) 36: { 37: var resultObject = new TTo(); 38:  39: // Process each translation 40: Translations.ForEach(t => t(sourceObject, resultObject)); 41:  42: return resultObject; 43: } 44:  45: // Returns an enumerator that iterates through the collection. 46: public IEnumerator<Action<TFrom, TTo>> GetEnumerator() 47: { 48: return Translations.GetEnumerator(); 49: } 50:  51: // Returns an enumerator that iterates through a collection. 52: IEnumerator IEnumerable.GetEnumerator() 53: { 54: return GetEnumerator(); 55: } 56: } Notice, however, you can’t specify any other constructor, you can only specify that the type has a default (no argument) constructor. Summary The where clause is an excellent tool that gives your .NET generics even more power to perform tasks higher than just the base "object level" behavior.  There are a few things you cannot specify with constraints (currently) though: Cannot specify the generic type must be an enum. Cannot specify the generic type must have a certain property or method without specifying a base class or interface – that is, you can’t say that the generic must have a Start() method. Cannot specify that the generic type allows arithmetic operations. Cannot specify that the generic type requires a specific non-default constructor. In addition, you cannot overload a template definition with different, opposing constraints.  For example you can’t define a Adapter<T> where T : struct and Adapter<T> where T : class.  Hopefully, in the future we will get some of these things to make the where clause even more useful, but until then what we have is extremely valuable in making our generics more user friendly and more powerful!   Technorati Tags: C#,.NET,Little Wonders,BlackRabbitCoder,where,generics

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• Combined Likelihood Models

  - by Lukas Vermeer

  In a series of posts on this blog we have already described a flexible approach to recording events, a technique to create analytical models for reporting, a method that uses the same principles to generate extremely powerful facet based predictions and a waterfall strategy that can be used to blend multiple (possibly facet based) models for increased accuracy. This latest, and also last, addition to this sequence of increasing modeling complexity will illustrate an advanced approach to amalgamate models, taking us to a whole new level of predictive modeling and analytical insights; combination models predicting likelihoods using multiple child models. The method described here is far from trivial. We therefore would not recommend you apply these techniques in an initial implementation of Oracle Real-Time Decisions. In most cases, basic RTD models or the approaches described before will provide more than enough predictive accuracy and analytical insight. The following is intended as an example of how more advanced models could be constructed if implementation results warrant the increased implementation and design effort. Keep implemented statistics simple! Combining likelihoods Because facet based predictions are based on metadata attributes of the choices selected, it is possible to generate such predictions for more than one attribute of a choice. We can predict the likelihood of acceptance for a particular product based on the product category (e.g. ‘toys’), as well as based on the color of the product (e.g. ‘pink’). Of course, these two predictions may be completely different (the customer may well prefer toys, but dislike pink products) and we will have to somehow combine these two separate predictions to determine an overall likelihood of acceptance for the choice. Perhaps the simplest way to combine multiple predicted likelihoods into one is to calculate the average (or perhaps maximum or minimum) likelihood. However, this would completely forgo the fact that some facets may have a far more pronounced effect on the overall likelihood than others (e.g. customers may consider the product category more important than its color). We could opt for calculating some sort of weighted average, but this would require us to specify up front the relative importance of the different facets involved. This approach would also be unresponsive to changing consumer behavior in these preferences (e.g. product price bracket may become more important to consumers as a result of economic shifts). Preferably, we would want Oracle Real-Time Decisions to learn, act upon and tell us about, the correlations between the different facet models and the overall likelihood of acceptance. This additional level of predictive modeling, where a single supermodel (no pun intended) combines the output of several (facet based) models into a single prediction, is what we call a combined likelihood model. Facet Based Scores As an example, we have implemented three different facet based models (as described earlier) in a simple RTD inline service. These models will allow us to generate predictions for likelihood of acceptance for each product based on three different metadata fields: Category, Price Bracket and Product Color. We will use an Analytical Scores entity to store these different scores so we can easily pass them between different functions. A simple function, creatively named Compute Analytical Scores, will compute for each choice the different facet scores and return an Analytical Scores entity that is stored on the choice itself. For each score, a choice attribute referring to this entity is also added to be returned to the client to facilitate testing. One Offer To Predict Them All In order to combine the different facet based predictions into one single likelihood for each product, we will need a supermodel which can predict the likelihood of acceptance, based on the outcomes of the facet models. This model will not need to consider any of the attributes of the session, because they are already represented in the outcomes of the underlying facet models. For the same reason, the supermodel will not need to learn separately for each product, because the specific combination of facets for this product are also already represented in the output of the underlying models. In other words, instead of learning how session attributes influence acceptance of a particular product, we will learn how the outcomes of facet based models for a particular product influence acceptance at a higher level. We will therefore be using a single All Offers choice to represent all offers in our combined likelihood predictions. This choice has no attribute values configured, no scores and not a single eligibility rule; nor is it ever intended to be returned to a client. The All Offers choice is to be used exclusively by the Combined Likelihood Acceptance model to predict the likelihood of acceptance for all choices; based solely on the output of the facet based models defined earlier. The Switcheroo In Oracle Real-Time Decisions, models can only learn based on attributes stored on the session. Therefore, just before generating a combined prediction for a given choice, we will temporarily copy the facet based scores—stored on the choice earlier as an Analytical Scores entity—to the session. The code for the Predict Combined Likelihood Event function is outlined below. // set session attribute to contain facet based scores. // (this is the only input for the combined model) session().setAnalyticalScores(choice.getAnalyticalScores); // predict likelihood of acceptance for All Offers choice. CombinedLikelihoodChoice c = CombinedLikelihood.getChoice("AllOffers"); Double la = CombinedLikelihoodAcceptance.getChoiceEventLikelihoods(c, "Accepted"); // clear session attribute of facet based scores. session().setAnalyticalScores(null); // return likelihood. return la; This sleight of hand will allow the Combined Likelihood Acceptance model to predict the likelihood of acceptance for the All Offers choice using these choice specific scores. After the prediction is made, we will clear the Analytical Scores session attribute to ensure it does not pollute any of the other (facet) models. To guarantee our combined likelihood model will learn based on the facet based scores—and is not distracted by the other session attributes—we will configure the model to exclude any other inputs, save for the instance of the Analytical Scores session attribute, on the model attributes tab. Recording Events In order for the combined likelihood model to learn correctly, we must ensure that the Analytical Scores session attribute is set correctly at the moment RTD records any events related to a particular choice. We apply essentially the same switching technique as before in a Record Combined Likelihood Event function. // set session attribute to contain facet based scores // (this is the only input for the combined model). session().setAnalyticalScores(choice.getAnalyticalScores); // record input event against All Offers choice. CombinedLikelihood.getChoice("AllOffers").recordEvent(event); // force learn at this moment using the Internal Dock entry point. Application.getPredictor().learn(InternalLearn.modelArray, session(), session(), Application.currentTimeMillis()); // clear session attribute of facet based scores. session().setAnalyticalScores(null); In this example, Internal Learn is a special informant configured as the learn location for the combined likelihood model. The informant itself has no particular configuration and does nothing in itself; it is used only to force the model to learn at the exact instant we have set the Analytical Scores session attribute to the correct values. Reporting Results After running a few thousand (artificially skewed) simulated sessions on our ILS, the Decision Center reporting shows some interesting results. In this case, these results reflect perfectly the bias we ourselves had introduced in our tests. In practice, we would obviously use a wider range of customer attributes and expect to see some more unexpected outcomes. The facetted model for categories has clearly picked up on the that fact our simulated youngsters have little interest in purchasing the one red-hot vehicle our ILS had on offer. Also, it would seem that customer age is an excellent predictor for the acceptance of pink products. Looking at the key drivers for the All Offers choice we can see the relative importance of the different facets to the prediction of overall likelihood. The comparative importance of the category facet for overall prediction might, in part, be explained by the clear preference of younger customers for toys over other product types; as evident from the report on the predictiveness of customer age for offer category acceptance. Conclusion Oracle Real-Time Decisions' flexible decisioning framework allows for the construction of exceptionally elaborate prediction models that facilitate powerful targeting, but nonetheless provide insightful reporting. Although few customers will have a direct need for such a sophisticated solution architecture, it is encouraging to see that this lies within the realm of the possible with RTD; and this with limited configuration and customization required. There are obviously numerous other ways in which the predictive and reporting capabilities of Oracle Real-Time Decisions can be expanded upon to tailor to individual customers needs. We will not be able to elaborate on them all on this blog; and finding the right approach for any given problem is often more difficult than implementing the solution. Nevertheless, we hope that these last few posts have given you enough of an understanding of the power of the RTD framework and its models; so that you can take some of these ideas and improve upon your own strategy. As always, if you have any questions about the above—or any Oracle Real-Time Decisions design challenges you might face—please do not hesitate to contact us; via the comments below, social media or directly at Oracle. We are completely multi-channel and would be more than glad to help. :-)

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• Common Live Upgrade problems

  - by user12611829

  As I have worked with customers deploying Live Upgrade in their environments, several problems seem to surface over and over. With this blog article, I will try to collect these troubles, as well as suggest some workarounds. If this sounds like the beginnings of a Wiki, you would be right. At present, there is not enough material for one, so we will use this blog for the time being. I do expect new material to be posted on occasion, so if you wish to bookmark it for future reference, a permanent link can be found here. Live Upgrade copies over ZFS root clone This was introduced in Solaris 10 10/09 (u8) and the root of the problem is a duplicate entry in the source boot environments ICF configuration file. Prior to u8, a ZFS root file system was not included in /etc/vfstab, since the mount is implicit at boot time. Starting with u8, the root file system is included in /etc/vfstab, and when the boot environment is scanned to create the ICF file, a duplicate entry is recorded. Here's what the error looks like. # lucreate -n s10u9-baseline Checking GRUB menu... System has findroot enabled GRUB Analyzing system configuration. Comparing source boot environment file systems with the file system(s) you specified for the new boot environment. Determining which file systems should be in the new boot environment. Updating boot environment description database on all BEs. Updating system configuration files. Creating configuration for boot environment . Source boot environment is . Creating boot environment . Creating file systems on boot environment . Creating file system for in zone on . The error indicator ----- /usr/lib/lu/lumkfs: test: unknown operator zfs Populating file systems on boot environment . Checking selection integrity. Integrity check OK. Populating contents of mount point . This should not happen ------ Copying. Ctrl-C and cleanup If you weren't paying close attention, you might not even know this is an error. The symptoms are lucreate times that are way too long due to the extraneous copy, or the one that alerted me to the problem, the root file system is filling up - again thanks to a redundant copy. This problem has already been identified and corrected, and a patch (121431-58 or later for x86, 121430-57 for SPARC) is available. Unfortunately, this patch has not yet made it into the Solaris 10 Recommended Patch Cluster. Applying the prerequisite patches from the latest cluster is a recommendation from the Live Upgrade Survival Guide blog, so an additional step will be required until the patch is included. Let's see how this works. # patchadd -p | grep 121431 Patch: 121429-13 Obsoletes: Requires: 120236-01 121431-16 Incompatibles: Packages: SUNWluzone Patch: 121431-54 Obsoletes: 121436-05 121438-02 Requires: Incompatibles: Packages: SUNWlucfg SUNWluu SUNWlur # unzip 121431-58 # patchadd 121431-58 Validating patches... Loading patches installed on the system... Done! Loading patches requested to install. Done! Checking patches that you specified for installation. Done! Approved patches will be installed in this order: 121431-58 Checking installed patches... Executing prepatch script... Installing patch packages... Patch 121431-58 has been successfully installed. See /var/sadm/patch/121431-58/log for details Executing postpatch script... Patch packages installed: SUNWlucfg SUNWlur SUNWluu # lucreate -n s10u9-baseline Checking GRUB menu... System has findroot enabled GRUB Analyzing system configuration. INFORMATION: Unable to determine size or capacity of slice . Comparing source boot environment file systems with the file system(s) you specified for the new boot environment. Determining which file systems should be in the new boot environment. INFORMATION: Unable to determine size or capacity of slice . Updating boot environment description database on all BEs. Updating system configuration files. Creating configuration for boot environment . Source boot environment is . Creating boot environment . Cloning file systems from boot environment to create boot environment . Creating snapshot for on . Creating clone for on . Setting canmount=noauto for in zone on . Saving existing file in top level dataset for BE as //boot/grub/menu.lst.prev. Saving existing file in top level dataset for BE as //boot/grub/menu.lst.prev. Saving existing file in top level dataset for BE as //boot/grub/menu.lst.prev. File propagation successful Copied GRUB menu from PBE to ABE No entry for BE in GRUB menu Population of boot environment successful. Creation of boot environment successful. This time it took just a few seconds. A cursory examination of the offending ICF file (/etc/lu/ICF.3 in this case) shows that the duplicate root file system entry is now gone. # cat /etc/lu/ICF.3 s10u8-baseline:-:/dev/zvol/dsk/panroot/swap:swap:8388608 s10u8-baseline:/:panroot/ROOT/s10u8-baseline:zfs:0 s10u8-baseline:/vbox:pandora/vbox:zfs:0 s10u8-baseline:/setup:pandora/setup:zfs:0 s10u8-baseline:/export:pandora/export:zfs:0 s10u8-baseline:/pandora:pandora:zfs:0 s10u8-baseline:/panroot:panroot:zfs:0 s10u8-baseline:/workshop:pandora/workshop:zfs:0 s10u8-baseline:/export/iso:pandora/iso:zfs:0 s10u8-baseline:/export/home:pandora/home:zfs:0 s10u8-baseline:/vbox/HardDisks:pandora/vbox/HardDisks:zfs:0 s10u8-baseline:/vbox/HardDisks/WinXP:pandora/vbox/HardDisks/WinXP:zfs:0 Solaris 10 9/10 introduces new autoregistration file This one is actually mentioned in the Oracle Solaris 9/10 release notes. I know, I hate it when that happens too. Here's what the "error" looks like. # luupgrade -u -s /mnt -n s10u9-baseline System has findroot enabled GRUB No entry for BE in GRUB menu Copying failsafe kernel from media. 61364 blocks miniroot filesystem is Mounting miniroot at ERROR: The auto registration file does not exist or incomplete. The auto registration file is mandatory for this upgrade. Use -k argument along with luupgrade command. autoreg_file is path to auto registration information file. See sysidcfg(4) for a list of valid keywords for use in this file. The format of the file is as follows. oracle_user=xxxx oracle_pw=xxxx http_proxy_host=xxxx http_proxy_port=xxxx http_proxy_user=xxxx http_proxy_pw=xxxx For more details refer "Oracle Solaris 10 9/10 Installation Guide: Planning for Installation and Upgrade". As with the previous problem, this is also easy to work around. Assuming that you don't want to use the auto-registration feature at upgrade time, create a file that contains just autoreg=disable and pass the filename on to luupgrade. Here is an example. # echo "autoreg=disable" /var/tmp/no-autoreg # luupgrade -u -s /mnt -k /var/tmp/no-autoreg -n s10u9-baseline System has findroot enabled GRUB No entry for BE in GRUB menu Copying failsafe kernel from media. 61364 blocks miniroot filesystem is Mounting miniroot at ####################################################################### NOTE: To improve products and services, Oracle Solaris communicates configuration data to Oracle after rebooting. You can register your version of Oracle Solaris to capture this data for your use, or the data is sent anonymously. For information about what configuration data is communicated and how to control this facility, see the Release Notes or www.oracle.com/goto/solarisautoreg. INFORMATION: After activated and booted into new BE , Auto Registration happens automatically with the following Information autoreg=disable ####################################################################### Validating the contents of the media . The media is a standard Solaris media. The media contains an operating system upgrade image. The media contains version . Constructing upgrade profile to use. Locating the operating system upgrade program. Checking for existence of previously scheduled Live Upgrade requests. Creating upgrade profile for BE . Checking for GRUB menu on ABE . Saving GRUB menu on ABE . Checking for x86 boot partition on ABE. Determining packages to install or upgrade for BE . Performing the operating system upgrade of the BE . CAUTION: Interrupting this process may leave the boot environment unstable or unbootable. The Live Upgrade operation now proceeds as expected. Once the system upgrade is complete, we can manually register the system. If you want to do a hands off registration during the upgrade, see the Oracle Solaris Auto Registration section of the Oracle Solaris Release Notes for instructions on how to do that. Technocrati Tags: Oracle Solaris Patching Live Upgrade var sc_project=1193495; var sc_invisible=1; var sc_security="a46f6831";

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• Make Your Menu Item Highlighted

  - by Shaun

  When I was working on the TalentOn project (Promotion in MSDN Chinese) I was asked to implement a functionality that makes the top menu items highlighted when the currently viewing page was in that section. This might be a common scenario in the web application development I think.   Simple Example When thinking about the solution of the highlighted menu items the biggest problem would be how to define the sections (menu item) and the pages it belongs to rather than making the menu highlighted. With the ASP.NET MVC framework we can use the controller – action infrastructure for us to achieve it. Each controllers would have a related menu item on the master page normally. The menu item would be highlighted if any of the views under this controller are being shown. Some specific menu items would be highlighted of that action was invoked, for example the home page, the about page, etc. The check rule can be specified on-demand. For example I can define the action LogOn and Register of Account controller should make the Account menu item highlighted while the ChangePassword should make the Profile menu item highlighted. I’m going to use the HtmlHelper to render the highlight-able menu item. The key point is that I need to pass the predication to check whether the current view belongs to this menu item which means this menu item should be highlighted or not. Hence I need a delegate as its parameter. The simplest code would be like this. 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Linq; 4: using System.Web; 5: using System.Web.Mvc; 6: using System.Web.Mvc.Html; 7:  8: namespace ShaunXu.Blogs.HighlighMenuItem 9: { 10: public static class HighlightMenuItemHelper 11: { 12: public static MvcHtmlString HighlightMenuItem(this HtmlHelper helper, 13: string text, string controllerName, string actionName, object routeData, object htmlAttributes, 14: string highlightText, object highlightHtmlAttributes, 15: Func<HtmlHelper, bool> highlightPredicate) 16: { 17: var shouldHighlight = highlightPredicate.Invoke(helper); 18: if (shouldHighlight) 19: { 20: return helper.ActionLink(string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(highlightText) ? text : highlightText, 21: actionName, controllerName, routeData, highlightHtmlAttributes == null ? htmlAttributes : highlightHtmlAttributes); 22: } 23: else 24: { 25: return helper.ActionLink(text, actionName, controllerName, routeData, htmlAttributes); 26: } 27: } 28: } 29: } There are 3 groups of the parameters: the first group would be the same as the in-build ActionLink method parameters. It has the link text, controller name and action name, etc passed in so that I can render a valid linkage for the menu item. The second group would be more focus on the highlight link text and Html attributes. I will use them to render the highlight menu item. The third group, which contains one parameter, would be a predicate that tells me whether this menu item should be highlighted or not based on the user’s definition. And then I changed my master page of the sample MVC application. I let the Home and About menu highlighted only when the Index and About action are invoked. And I added a new menu named Account which should be highlighted for all actions/views under its Account controller. So my master would be like this. 1: <div id="menucontainer"> 2:  3: <ul id="menu"> 4: <li><% 1: : Html.HighlightMenuItem( 2: "Home", "Home", "Index", null, null, 3: "[Home]", null, 4: helper => helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString() == "Home" 5: && helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"].ToString() == "Index")%></li> 5:  6: <li><% 1: : Html.HighlightMenuItem( 2: "About", "Home", "About", null, null, 3: "[About]", null, 4: helper => helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString() == "Home" 5: && helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"].ToString() == "About")%></li> 7:  8: <li><% 1: : Html.HighlightMenuItem( 2: "Account", "Account", "LogOn", null, null, 3: "[Account]", null, 4: helper => helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString() == "Account")%></li> 9: 10: </ul> 11:  12: </div> Note: You need to add the import section for the namespace “ShaunXu.Blogs.HighlighMenuItem” to make the extension method I created below available. So let’s see the result. When the home page was shown the Home menu was highlighted since at this moment it was controller = Home and action = Index. And if I clicked the About menu you can see it turned highlighted as now the action was About. And if I navigated to the register page the Account menu was highlighted since it should be like that when any actions under the Account controller was invoked.   Fluently Language Till now it’s a fully example for the highlight menu item but not perfect yet. Since the most common scenario would be: highlighted when the action invoked, or highlighted when any action was invoked under this controller, we can created 2 shortcut method so for them so that normally the developer will be no need to specify the delegation. Another place we can improve would be, to make the method more user-friendly, or I should say developer-friendly. As you can see when we want to add a highlight menu item we need to specify 8 parameters and we need to remember what they mean. In fact we can make the method more “fluently” so that the developer can have the hints when using it by the Visual Studio IntelliSense. Below is the full code for it. 1: using System; 2: using System.Collections.Generic; 3: using System.Linq; 4: using System.Web; 5: using System.Web.Mvc; 6: using System.Web.Mvc.Html; 7:  8: namespace Ethos.Xrm.HR 9: { 10: #region Helper 11:  12: public static class HighlightActionMenuHelper 13: { 14: public static IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterCreated HighlightActionMenu(this HtmlHelper helper) 15: { 16: return new HighlightActionMenuProvider(helper); 17: } 18: } 19:  20: #endregion 21:  22: #region Interfaces 23:  24: public interface IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterCreated 25: { 26: IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterOn On(string actionName, string controllerName); 27: } 28:  29: public interface IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterOn 30: { 31: IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterWith With(string text, object routeData, object htmlAttributes); 32: } 33:  34: public interface IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterWith 35: { 36: IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterHighlightWhen HighlightWhen(Func<HtmlHelper, bool> predicate); 37: IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterHighlightWhen HighlightWhenControllerMatch(); 38: IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterHighlightWhen HighlightWhenControllerAndActionMatch(); 39: } 40:  41: public interface IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterHighlightWhen 42: { 43: IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterApplyHighlightStyle ApplyHighlighStyle(object highlightHtmlAttributes, string highlightText); 44: IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterApplyHighlightStyle ApplyHighlighStyle(object highlightHtmlAttributes); 45: IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterApplyHighlightStyle ApplyHighlighStyle(string cssClass, string highlightText); 46: IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterApplyHighlightStyle ApplyHighlighStyle(string cssClass); 47: } 48:  49: public interface IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterApplyHighlightStyle 50: { 51: MvcHtmlString ToActionLink(); 52: } 53:  54: #endregion 55:  56: public class HighlightActionMenuProvider : 57: IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterCreated, 58: IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterOn, IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterWith, 59: IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterHighlightWhen, IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterApplyHighlightStyle 60: { 61: private HtmlHelper _helper; 62:  63: private string _controllerName; 64: private string _actionName; 65: private string _text; 66: private object _routeData; 67: private object _htmlAttributes; 68:  69: private Func<HtmlHelper, bool> _highlightPredicate; 70:  71: private string _highlightText; 72: private object _highlightHtmlAttributes; 73:  74: public HighlightActionMenuProvider(HtmlHelper helper) 75: { 76: _helper = helper; 77: } 78:  79: public IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterOn On(string actionName, string controllerName) 80: { 81: _actionName = actionName; 82: _controllerName = controllerName; 83: return this; 84: } 85:  86: public IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterWith With(string text, object routeData, object htmlAttributes) 87: { 88: _text = text; 89: _routeData = routeData; 90: _htmlAttributes = htmlAttributes; 91: return this; 92: } 93:  94: public IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterHighlightWhen HighlightWhen(Func<HtmlHelper, bool> predicate) 95: { 96: _highlightPredicate = predicate; 97: return this; 98: } 99:  100: public IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterHighlightWhen HighlightWhenControllerMatch() 101: { 102: return HighlightWhen((helper) => 103: { 104: return helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString().ToLower() == _controllerName.ToLower(); 105: }); 106: } 107:  108: public IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterHighlightWhen HighlightWhenControllerAndActionMatch() 109: { 110: return HighlightWhen((helper) => 111: { 112: return helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString().ToLower() == _controllerName.ToLower() && 113: helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"].ToString().ToLower() == _actionName.ToLower(); 114: }); 115: } 116:  117: public IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterApplyHighlightStyle ApplyHighlighStyle(object highlightHtmlAttributes, string highlightText) 118: { 119: _highlightText = highlightText; 120: _highlightHtmlAttributes = highlightHtmlAttributes; 121: return this; 122: } 123:  124: public IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterApplyHighlightStyle ApplyHighlighStyle(object highlightHtmlAttributes) 125: { 126: return ApplyHighlighStyle(highlightHtmlAttributes, _text); 127: } 128:  129: public IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterApplyHighlightStyle ApplyHighlighStyle(string cssClass, string highlightText) 130: { 131: return ApplyHighlighStyle(new { @class = cssClass }, highlightText); 132: } 133:  134: public IHighlightActionMenuProviderAfterApplyHighlightStyle ApplyHighlighStyle(string cssClass) 135: { 136: return ApplyHighlighStyle(new { @class = cssClass }, _text); 137: } 138:  139: public MvcHtmlString ToActionLink() 140: { 141: if (_highlightPredicate.Invoke(_helper)) 142: { 143: // should be highlight 144: return _helper.ActionLink(_highlightText, _actionName, _controllerName, _routeData, _highlightHtmlAttributes); 145: } 146: else 147: { 148: // should not be highlight 149: return _helper.ActionLink(_text, _actionName, _controllerName, _routeData, _htmlAttributes); 150: } 151: } 152: } 153: } So in the master page when I need the highlight menu item I can “tell” the helper how it should be, just like this. 1: <li> 2: <% 1: : Html.HighlightActionMenu() 2: .On("Index", "Home") 3: .With(SiteMasterStrings.Home, null, null) 4: .HighlightWhenControllerMatch() 5: .ApplyHighlighStyle(new { style = "background:url(../../Content/Images/topmenu_bg.gif) repeat-x;text-decoration:none;color:#feffff;" }) 6: .ToActionLink() %> 3: </li> While I’m typing the code the IntelliSense will advise me that I need a highlight action menu, on the Index action of the Home controller, with the “Home” as its link text and no need the additional route data and Html attributes, and it should be highlighted when the controller was “Home”, and if it’s highlighted the style should be like this and finally render it to me. This is something we call “Fluently Language”. If you had been using Moq you will see that’s very development-friendly, document-ly and easy to read.   Summary In this post I demonstrated how to implement a highlight menu item in ASP.NET MVC by using its controller – action infrastructure. We can see the ASP.NET MVC helps us to organize our web application better. And then I also told a little bit more on the “Fluently Language” and showed how it will make our code better and easy to be used.   Hope this helps, Shaun   All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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• Using SPServices &amp; jQuery to Find My Stuff from Multi-Select Person/Group Field

  - by Mark Rackley

  Okay… quick blog post for all you SPServices fans out there. I needed to quickly write a script that would return all the tasks currently assigned to me.  I also wanted it to return any task that was assigned to a group I belong to. This can actually be done with a CAML query, so no big deal, right?  The rub is that the “assigned to” field is a multi-select person or group field. As far as I know (and I actually know so little) you cannot just write a CAML query to return this information. If you can, please leave a comment below and disregard the rest of this blog post… So… what’s a hacker to do? As always, I break things down to their most simple components (I really love the KISS principle and would get it tattooed on my back if people wouldn’t think it meant “Knights In Satan’s Service”. You really gotta be an old far to get that reference).  Here’s what we’re going to do: Get currently logged in user’s name as it is stored in a person field Find all the SharePoint groups the current user belongs to Retrieve a set of assigned tasks from the task list and then find those that are assigned to current  user or group current user belongs to Nothing too hairy… So let’s get started Some Caveats before I continue There are some obvious performance implications with this solution as I make a total of four SPServices calls and there’s a lot of looping going on. Also, the CAML query in this blog has NOT been optimized. If you move forward with this code, tweak it so that it returns a further subset of data or you will see horrible performance if you have a few hundred entries in your task list. Add a date range to the CAML or something. Find some way to limit the results as much as possible. Lastly, if you DO have a better solution, I would like you to share. Iron sharpens iron and all…   Alright, let’s really get started. Get currently logged in user’s name as it is stored in a person field First thing we need to do is understand how a person group looks when you look at the XML returned from a SharePoint Web Service call. It turns out it’s stored like any other multi select item in SharePoint which is <id>;#<value> and when you assign a person to that field the <value> equals the person’s name “Mark Rackley” in my case. This is for Windows Authentication, I would expect this to be different in FBA, but I’m not using FBA. If you want to know what it looks like with FBA you can use the code in this blog and strategically place an alert to see the value.  Anyway… I need to find the name of the user who is currently logged in as it is stored in the person field. This turns out to be one SPServices call: var userName = $().SPServices.SPGetCurrentUser({                     fieldName: "Title",                     debug: false                     }); As you can see, the “Title” field has the information we need. I suspect (although again, I haven’t tried) that the Title field also contains the user’s name as we need it if I was using FBA. Okay… last thing we need to do is store our users name in an array for processing later: myGroups = new Array(); myGroups.push(userName); Find all the SharePoint groups the current user belongs to Now for the groups. How are groups returned in that XML stream?  Same as the person <ID>;#<Group Name>, and if it’s a mutli select it’s all returned in one big long string “<ID>;#<Group Name>;#<ID>;#<Group Name>;#<ID>;#<Group Name>;#<ID>;#<Group Name>;#<ID>;#<Group Name>”.  So, how do we find all the groups the current user belongs to? This is also a simple SPServices call. Using the “GetGroupCollectionFromUser” operation we can find all the groups a user belongs to. So, let’s execute this method and store all our groups. $().SPServices({       operation: "GetGroupCollectionFromUser",       userLoginName: $().SPServices.SPGetCurrentUser(),       async: false,       completefunc: function(xData, Status) {          $(xData.responseXML).find("[nodeName=Group]").each(function() {                 myGroups.push($(this).attr("Name"));          });         }     }); So, all we did in the above code was execute the “GetGroupCollectionFromUser” operation and look for the each “Group” node (row) and store the name for each group in our array that we put the user’s name in previously (myGroups). Now we have an array that contains the current user’s name as it will appear in the person field XML and  all the groups the current user belongs to. The Rest Now comes the easy part for all of you familiar with SPServices. We are going to retrieve our tasks from the Task list using “GetListItems” and look at each entry to see if it belongs to this person. If it does belong to this person we are going to store it for later processing. That code looks something like this: // get list of assigned tasks that aren't closed... *modify the CAML to perform better!*             $().SPServices({                   operation: "GetListItems",                   async: false,                   listName: "Tasks",                   CAMLViewFields: "<ViewFields>" +                             "<FieldRef Name='AssignedTo' />" +                             "<FieldRef Name='Title' />" +                             "<FieldRef Name='StartDate' />" +                             "<FieldRef Name='EndDate' />" +                             "<FieldRef Name='Status' />" +                             "</ViewFields>",                   CAMLQuery: "<Query><Where><And><IsNotNull><FieldRef Name='AssignedTo'/></IsNotNull><Neq><FieldRef Name='Status'/><Value Type='Text'>Completed</Value></Neq></And></Where></Query>",                     completefunc: function (xData, Status) {                         var aDataSet = new Array();                        //loop through each returned Task                         $(xData.responseXML).find("[nodeName=z:row]").each(function() {                             //store the multi-select string of who task is assigned to                             var assignedToString = $(this).attr("ows_AssignedTo");                             found = false;                            //loop through the persons name and all the groups they belong to                             for(var i=0; i<myGroups.length; i++) {                                 //if the person's name or group exists in the assigned To string                                 //then the task is assigned to them                                 if (assignedToString.indexOf(myGroups[i]) >= 0){                                     found = true;                                     break;                                 }                             }                             //if the Task belongs to this person then store or display it                             //(I'm storing it in an array)                             if (found){                                 var thisName = $(this).attr("ows_Title");                                 var thisStartDate = $(this).attr("ows_StartDate");                                 var thisEndDate = $(this).attr("ows_EndDate");                                 var thisStatus = $(this).attr("ows_Status");                                                                  var aDataRow=new Array(                                     thisName,                                     thisStartDate,                                     thisEndDate,                                     thisStatus);                                 aDataSet.push(aDataRow);                             }                          });                          SomeFunctionToDisplayData(aDataSet);                     }                 }); Some notes on why I did certain things and additional caveats. You will notice in my code that I’m doing an AssignedToString.indexOf(GroupName) to see if the task belongs to the person. This could possibly return bad results if you have SharePoint Group names that are named in such a way that the “IndexOf” returns a false positive.  For example if you have a Group called “My Users” and a group called “My Users – SuperUsers” then if a user belonged to “My Users” it would return a false positive on executing “My Users – SuperUsers”.IndexOf(“My Users”). Make sense? Just be aware of this when naming groups, we don’t have this problem. This is where also some fine-tuning can probably be done by those smarter than me. This is a pretty inefficient method to determine if a task belongs to a user, I mean what if a user belongs to 20 groups? That’s a LOT of looping.  See all the opportunities I give you guys to do something fun?? Also, why am I storing my values in an array instead of just writing them out to a Div? Well.. I want to pass my data to a jQuery library to format it all nice and pretty and an Array is a great way to do that. When all is said and done and we put all the code together it looks like:   $(document).ready(function() {         var userName = $().SPServices.SPGetCurrentUser({                     fieldName: "Title",                     debug: false                     });         myGroups = new Array();     myGroups.push(userName );       $().SPServices({       operation: "GetGroupCollectionFromUser",       userLoginName: $().SPServices.SPGetCurrentUser(),       async: false,       completefunc: function(xData, Status) {          $(xData.responseXML).find("[nodeName=Group]").each(function() {                 myGroups.push($(this).attr("Name"));          });                      // get list of assigned tasks that aren't closed... *modify this CAML to perform better!*             $().SPServices({                   operation: "GetListItems",                   async: false,                   listName: "Tasks",                   CAMLViewFields: "<ViewFields>" +                             "<FieldRef Name='AssignedTo' />" +                             "<FieldRef Name='Title' />" +                             "<FieldRef Name='StartDate' />" +                             "<FieldRef Name='EndDate' />" +                             "<FieldRef Name='Status' />" +                             "</ViewFields>",                   CAMLQuery: "<Query><Where><And><IsNotNull><FieldRef Name='AssignedTo'/></IsNotNull><Neq><FieldRef Name='Status'/><Value Type='Text'>Completed</Value></Neq></And></Where></Query>",                     completefunc: function (xData, Status) {                         var aDataSet = new Array();                         //loop through each returned Task                         $(xData.responseXML).find("[nodeName=z:row]").each(function() {                             //store the multi-select string of who task is assigned to                             var assignedToString = $(this).attr("ows_AssignedTo");                             found = false;                            //loop through the persons name and all the groups they belong to                             for(var i=0; i<myGroups.length; i++) {                                 //if the person's name or group exists in the assigned To string                                 //then the task is assigned to them                                 if (assignedToString.indexOf(myGroups[i]) >= 0){                                     found = true;                                     break;                                 }                             }                            //if the Task belongs to this person then store or display it                             //(I'm storing it in an array)                             if (found){                                 var thisName = $(this).attr("ows_Title");                                 var thisStartDate = $(this).attr("ows_StartDate");                                 var thisEndDate = $(this).attr("ows_EndDate");                                 var thisStatus = $(this).attr("ows_Status");                                                                  var aDataRow=new Array(                                     thisName,                                     thisStartDate,                                     thisEndDate,                                     thisStatus);                                 aDataSet.push(aDataRow);                             }                          });                          SomeFunctionToDisplayData(aDataSet);                     }                 });       }    });  }); Final Thoughts So, there you have it. Take it and run with it. Make it something cool (and tell me how you did it). Another possible way to improve performance in this scenario is to use a DVWP to display the tasks and use jQuery and the “myGroups” array from this blog post to hide all those rows that don’t belong to the current user. I haven’t tried it, but it does move some of the processing off to the server (generating the view) so it may perform better.  As always, thanks for stopping by… hope you have a Merry Christmas…

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• Software development is (mostly) a trade, and what to do about it

  - by Jeff

  (This is another cross-post from my personal blog. I don’t even remember when I first started to write it, but I feel like my opinion is well enough baked to share.) I've been sitting on this for a long time, particularly as my opinion has changed dramatically over the last few years. That I've encountered more crappy code than maintainable, quality code in my career as a software developer only reinforces what I'm about to say. Software development is just a trade for most, and not a huge academic endeavor. For those of you with computer science degrees readying your pitchforks and collecting your algorithm interview questions, let me explain. This is not an assault on your way of life, and if you've been around, you know I'm right about the quality problem. You also know the HR problem is very real, or we wouldn't be paying top dollar for mediocre developers and importing people from all over the world to fill the jobs we can't fill. I'm going to try and outline what I see as some of the problems, and hopefully offer my views on how to address them. The recruiting problem I think a lot of companies are doing it wrong. Over the years, I've had two kinds of interview experiences. The first, and right, kind of experience involves talking about real life achievements, followed by some variation on white boarding in pseudo-code, drafting some basic system architecture, or even sitting down at a comprooder and pecking out some basic code to tackle a real problem. I can honestly say that I've had a job offer for every interview like this, save for one, because the task was to debug something and they didn't like me asking where to look ("everyone else in the company died in a plane crash"). The other interview experience, the wrong one, involves the classic torture test designed to make the candidate feel stupid and do things they never have, and never will do in their job. First they will question you about obscure academic material you've never seen, or don't care to remember. Then they'll ask you to white board some ridiculous algorithm involving prime numbers or some kind of string manipulation no one would ever do. In fact, if you had to do something like this, you'd Google for a solution instead of waste time on a solved problem. Some will tell you that the academic gauntlet interview is useful to see how people respond to pressure, how they engage in complex logic, etc. That might be true, unless of course you have someone who brushed up on the solutions to the silly puzzles, and they're playing you. But here's the real reason why the second experience is wrong: You're evaluating for things that aren't the job. These might have been useful tactics when you had to hire people to write machine language or C++, but in a world dominated by managed code in C#, or Java, people aren't managing memory or trying to be smarter than the compilers. They're using well known design patterns and techniques to deliver software. More to the point, these puzzle gauntlets don't evaluate things that really matter. They don't get into code design, issues of loose coupling and testability, knowledge of the basics around HTTP, or anything else that relates to building supportable and maintainable software. The first situation, involving real life problems, gives you an immediate idea of how the candidate will work out. One of my favorite experiences as an interviewee was with a guy who literally brought his work from that day and asked me how to deal with his problem. I had to demonstrate how I would design a class, make sure the unit testing coverage was solid, etc. I worked at that company for two years. So stop looking for algorithm puzzle crunchers, because a guy who can crush a Fibonacci sequence might also be a guy who writes a class with 5,000 lines of untestable code. Fashion your interview process on ways to reveal a developer who can write supportable and maintainable code. I would even go so far as to let them use the Google. If they want to cut-and-paste code, pass on them, but if they're looking for context or straight class references, hire them, because they're going to be life-long learners. The contractor problem I doubt anyone has ever worked in a place where contractors weren't used. The use of contractors seems like an obvious way to control costs. You can hire someone for just as long as you need them and then let them go. You can even give them the work that no one else wants to do. In practice, most places I've worked have retained and budgeted for the contractor year-round, meaning that the $90+ per hour they're paying (of which half goes to the person) would have been better spent on a full-time person with a $100k salary and benefits. But it's not even the cost that is an issue. It's the quality of work delivered. The accountability of a contractor is totally transient. They only need to deliver for as long as you keep them around, and chances are they'll never again touch the code. There's no incentive for them to get things right, there's little incentive to understand your system or learn anything. At the risk of making an unfair generalization, craftsmanship doesn't matter to most contractors. The education problem I don't know what they teach in college CS courses. I've believed for most of my adult life that a college degree was an essential part of being successful. Of course I would hold that bias, since I did it, and have the paper to show for it in a box somewhere in the basement. My first clue that maybe this wasn't a fully qualified opinion comes from the fact that I double-majored in journalism and radio/TV, not computer science. Eventually I worked with people who skipped college entirely, many of them at Microsoft. Then I worked with people who had a masters degree who sucked at writing code, next to the high school diploma types that rock it every day. I still think there's a lot to be said for the social development of someone who has the on-campus experience, but for software developers, college might not matter. As I mentioned before, most of us are not writing compilers, and we never will. It's actually surprising to find how many people are self-taught in the art of software development, and that should reveal some interesting truths about how we learn. The first truth is that we learn largely out of necessity. There's something that we want to achieve, so we do what I call just-in-time learning to meet those goals. We acquire knowledge when we need it. So what about the gaps in our knowledge? That's where the most valuable education occurs, via our mentors. They're the people we work next to and the people who write blogs. They are critical to our professional development. They don't need to be an encyclopedia of jargon, but they understand the craft. Even at this stage of my career, I probably can't tell you what SOLID stands for, but you can bet that I practice the principles behind that acronym every day. That comes from experience, augmented by my peers. I'm hell bent on passing that experience to others. Process issues If you're a manager type and don't do much in the way of writing code these days (shame on you for not messing around at least), then your job is to isolate your tradespeople from nonsense, while bringing your business into the realm of modern software development. That doesn't mean you slap up a white board with sticky notes and start calling yourself agile, it means getting all of your stakeholders to understand that frequent delivery of quality software is the best way to deal with change and evolving expectations. It also means that you have to play technical overlord to make sure the education and quality issues are dealt with. That's why I make the crack about sticky notes, because without the right technique being practiced among your code monkeys, you're just a guy with sticky notes. You're asking your business to accept frequent and iterative delivery, now make sure that the folks writing the code can handle the same thing. This means unit testing, the right instrumentation, integration tests, automated builds and deployments... all of the stuff that makes it easy to see when change breaks stuff. The prognosis I strongly believe that education is the most important part of what we do. I'm encouraged by things like The Starter League, and it's the kind of thing I'd love to see more of. I would go as far as to say I'd love to start something like this internally at an existing company. Most of all though, I can't emphasize enough how important it is that we mentor each other and share our knowledge. If you have people on your staff who don't want to learn, fire them. Seriously, get rid of them. A few months working with someone really good, who understands the craftsmanship required to build supportable and maintainable code, will change that person forever and increase their value immeasurably.

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• Code Behaviour via Unit Tests

  - by Dewald Galjaard

  Normal 0 false false false EN-ZA X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Some four months ago my car started acting up. Symptoms included a sputtering as my car’s computer switched between gears intermittently. Imagine building up speed, then when you reach 80km/h the car magically and mysteriously decide to switch back to third or even second gear. Clearly it was confused! I managed to track down a technician, an expert in his field to help me out. As he fitted his handheld computer to some hidden port under the dash, he started to explain “These cars are quite intelligent, you know. When they sense something is wrong they run in a restrictive program which probably account for how you managed to drive here in the first place...”  I was surprised and thought this was certainly going to be an interesting test drive. The car ran smoothly down the first couple of stretches as the technician ran through routine checks. Then he said “Ok, all looking good. We need to start testing aspects of the gearbox. Inside the gearbox there are a couple of sensors. One of them is a speed sensor which talks to the computer, which in turn will decide which gear to switch to. The restrictive program avoid these sensors altogether and allow the computer to obtain its input from other [non-affected] sources”. Then, as soon as he forced the speed sensor to come back online the symptoms and ill behaviour re-emerged... What an incredible analogy for getting into a discussion on unit testing software? Besides I should probably put my ill fortune to some good use, right? This example provide a lot of insight into how and why we should conduct unit tests when writing code. More importantly, it captures what is easily and unfortunately often the most overlooked goal of writing unit tests by those new to the art and those who oppose it alike - The goal of writing unit tests is to test the behaviour of our code under predefined conditions. Although it is very possible to test the intrinsic workings of each and every component in your code, writing several tests for each method in practise will soon prove to be an exhausting and ultimately fruitless exercise given the certain and ever changing nature of business requirements. Consequently it is true and quite possible whilst conducting proper unit tests, to call any single method several times as you examine and contemplate different scenarios. Let’s write some code to demonstrate what I mean. In my example I make use of the Moq framework and NUnit to create my tests. Truly you can use whatever you’re comfortable with. First we’ll create an ISpeedSensor interface. This is to represent the speed sensor located in the gearbox.  Then we’ll create a Gearbox class which we’ll pass to a constructor when we instantiate an object of type Computer. All three are described below.   ISpeedSensor.cs namespace AutomaticVehicle {     public interface ISpeedSensor     {         int ReportCurrentSpeed();     } }   Gearbox.cs namespace AutomaticVehicle {      public class Gearbox     {         private ISpeedSensor _speedSensor;           public Gearbox( ISpeedSensor gearboxSpeedSensor )         {             _speedSensor = gearboxSpeedSensor;         }         /// <summary>         /// This method obtain it's reading from the speed sensor.         /// </summary>         /// <returns></returns>         public int ReportCurrentSpeed()         {             return _speedSensor.ReportCurrentSpeed();         }     } } Computer.cs namespace AutomaticVehicle {     public class Computer     {         private Gearbox _gearbox;         public Computer( Gearbox gearbox )         {                     }          public int GetCurrentSpeed()         {             return _gearbox.ReportCurrentSpeed( );         }     } } Since this post is about Unit testing, that is exactly what we’ll create next. Create a second project in your solution. I called mine AutomaticVehicleTests and I immediately referenced the respective nunit, moq and AutomaticVehicle dll’s. We’re going to write a test to examine what happens inside the Computer class. ComputerTests.cs namespace AutomaticVehicleTests {     [TestFixture]     public class ComputerTests     {         [Test]         public void Computer_Gearbox_SpeedSensor_DoesThrow()         {             // Mock ISpeedSensor in gearbox             Mock< ISpeedSensor > speedSensor = new Mock< ISpeedSensor >( );             speedSensor.Setup( n => n.ReportCurrentSpeed() ).Throws<Exception>();             Gearbox gearbox = new Gearbox( speedSensor.Object );               // Create Computer instance to test it's behaviour  towards an exception in gearbox             Computer carComputer = new Computer( gearbox );             // For simplicity let’s assume for now the car only travels at 60 km/h.             Assert.AreEqual( 60, carComputer.GetCurrentSpeed( ) );          }     } }   What is happening in this test? We have created a mocked object using the ISpeedsensor interface which we've passed to our Gearbox object. Notice that I created the mocked object using an interface, not the implementation. I’ll talk more about this in future posts but in short I do this to accentuate the fact that I'm not not really concerned with how SpeedSensor work internally at this particular point in time. Next I’ve gone ahead and created a scenario where I’ve declared the speed sensor in Gearbox to be faulty by forcing it to throw an exception should we ask Gearbox to report on its current speed. Sneaky, sneaky. This test is a simulation of how things may behave in the real world. Inevitability things break, whether it’s caused by mechanical failure, some logical error on your part or a fellow developer which didn’t consult the documentation (or the lack thereof ) - whether you’re calling a speed sensor, making a call to a database, calling a web service or just trying to write a file to disk. It’s a scenario I’ve created and this test is about how the code within the Computer instance will behave towards any such error as I’ve depicted. Now, if you’ve followed closely in my final assert method you would have noticed I did something quite unexpected. I might be getting ahead of myself now but I’m testing to see if the value returned is equal to what I expect it to be under perfect conditions – I’m not testing to see if an error has been thrown! Why is that? Well, in short this is TDD. Test Driven Development is about first writing your test to define the result we want, then to go back and change the implementation within your class to obtain the desired output (I need to make sure I can drive back to the repair shop. Remember? ) So let’s go ahead and run our test as is. It’s fails miserably... Good! Let’s go back to our Computer class and make a small change to the GetCurrentSpeed method.   Computer.cs public int GetCurrentSpeed() {   try   {     return _gearbox.ReportCurrentSpeed( );   }   catch   {     RunRestrictiveProgram( );   } }     This is a simple solution, I know, but it does provide a way to allow for different behaviour. You’re more than welcome to provide an implementation for RunRestrictiveProgram should you feel the need to. It's not within the scope of this post or related to the point I'm trying to make. What is important is to notice how the focus has shifted in our approach from how things can break - to how things behave when broken.   Happy coding!

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 08, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, June 08, 2014Popular ReleasesGFramework: GFramework V1.0: GFramework V1.0SFDL.NET: SFDL.NET (2.2.9.3): Changelog: Retry Bugfix (Error Counter wurde nicht korrekt zurückgesetzt) Neue Einstellung: Retry Wartezeit ist nun EinstellbarAspose for Apache POI: Aspose.Words vs Apache POI WP - v 1.1: Release contain the Code Comparison for Features in Apache POI WP SDK and Aspose.Words What's New ?Following Examples: Working with Headers Working with Footers Access Ranges in Document Delete Ranges in Document Insert Before and After Ranges Feedback and Suggestions Many more examples are yet to come here. Keep visiting us. Raise your queries and suggest more examples via Aspose Forums or via this social coding site.babelua: 1.5.7.0: V1.5.7.0 - 2014.6.6Stability improvement: use "lua scripts folder" as lua search path when debugging;MyBB: MyBB 1.6.13 Türkçe Kurulum Paketi: MyBB 1.6.13 - Resmi Tam Türkçe UTF-8 Sifir Kurulum Paketi Rar Pass - Sifresi: mybb.com.tr Yayinci site: http://www.mybb.com.tr Orjinal indirme adresi: http://download.mybb.com.tr Destek 1: http://destek.mybb.com.tr/showthread.php?tid=12326 Destek 2: http://tr.mybbdepo.com/mybb-1-6-13-turkce-sifir-kurulum-paketi-konusu.html Dosya: MyBB1613KurulumPaketiTR.rar MD5: d2745b79aa8cc5f8cc09e8a91b50d3cc SHA-1: 6fbb8e611e6d78f8cd3d88d7a773edc67ecc2a3e Ekleyen: XpSerkan MCTR TEAM - Gururla Sunar.SEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.033.007 Release 1: Fixed breaking changes in Space Engineers in latest update. Installation of this version will replace older version.PlaySly: GetDirectLink 1.0.1.0: ConfiguraciónNuevo sistema de configuración Nuevo formulario de configuración Añadidas configuraciones visuales Fuente principal, fuente secundaria, fuente menus, fuente botones grandes, fuente botones pequeños Color fondo, color fondo menus, color fondo botones y colores de fuentes Ahora las fuentes soportan estilo (irregular, negrita, tachado y subrayado) Añadidas configuraciones de reproductor Pausar al iniciar para que el vídeo cargue (buffering) Añadidas configuraciones sobre...Virto Commerce Enterprise Open Source eCommerce Platform (asp.net mvc): Virto Commerce 1.10: Virto Commerce Community Edition version 1.10. To install the SDK package, please refer to SDK getting started documentation To configure source code package, please refer to Source code getting started documentation This release includes bug fixes and improvements (including Commerce Manager localization and https support). More details about this release can be found on our blog at http://blog.virtocommerce.com.NPOI: NPOI 2.1: Assembly Version: 2.1.0 New Features a. XSSFSheet.CopySheet b. Excel2Html for XSSF c. insert picture in word 2007 d. Implement IfError function in formula engine Bug Fixes a. fix conditional formatting issue b. fix ctFont order issue c. fix vertical alignment issue in XSSF d. add IndexedColors to NPOI.SS.UserModel e. fix decimal point issue in non-English culture f. fix SetMargin issue in XSSF g.fix multiple images insert issue in XSSF h.fix rich text style missing issue in XSSF i. fix cell...Media Player (Technology Area): Media Player 0.3 (Codname Kalo): Themes are included, along with a picture viewer. This does not require 0.2 to be installed51Degrees - Device Detection and Redirection: 3.1.2.3: Version 3.1 HighlightsDevice detection algorithm is over 100 times faster. Regular expressions and levenshtein distance calculations are no longer used. The device detection algorithm performance is no longer limited by the number of device combinations contained in the dataset. Two modes of operation are available: Memory – the detection data set is loaded into memory and there is no continuous connection to the source data file. Slower initialisation time but faster detection performanc...CS-Script for Notepad++ (C# intellisense and code execution): Release v1.0.27.0: CodeMap now indicates the type name for all members Implemented running scripts 'as administrator'. Just add '//css_npp asadmin' to the script and run it as usual. 'Prepare script for distribution' now aggregates script dependency assemblies. Various improvements in CodeSnipptet, Autcompletion and MethodInfo interactions with each other. Added printing line number for the entries in CodeMap (subject of configuration value) Improved debugging step indication for classless scripts ...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.72.3: 70426e13c415 ClosedXML for .Net 4.0 now uses Open XML SDK 2.5 b9ef53a6654f Merge branch 'master' of https://git01.codeplex.com/forks/vbjay/closedxml 727714e86416 Fix range.Merge(Boolean) for .Net 3.5 eb1ed478e50e Make public range.Merge(Boolean checkIntersects) 6284cf3c3991 More performance improvements when saving.DNN Blog: 06.00.07: Highlights: Enhancement: Option to show management panel on child modules Fix: Changed SPROC and code to ensure the right people are notified of pending comments. (CP-24018) Fix: Fix to have notification actions authentication assume the right module id so these will work from the messaging center (CP-24019) Fix: Fix to issue in categories in a post that will not save when no categories and no tags selectedTEncoder: 4.0.0: --4.0.0 -Added: Video downloader -Added: Total progress will be updated more smoothly -Added: MP4Box progress will be shown -Added: A tool to create gif image from video -Added: An option to disable trimming -Added: Audio track option won't be used for mpeg sources as default -Fixed: Subtitle position wasn't used -Fixed: Duration info in the file list wasn't updated after trimming -Updated: FFMpegVeraCrypt: VeraCrypt version 1.0d: Changes between 1.0c and 1.0d (03 June 2014) : Correct issue while creating hidden operating system. Minor fixes (look at git history for more details).Z SqlBulkCopy Extensions: SqlBulkCopy Extensions 1.0.0: SqlBulkCopy Extensions provide MUST-HAVE methods with outstanding performance missing from the SqlBulkCopy class like Delete, Update, Merge, Upsert. Compatible with .NET 2.0, SQL Server 2000, SQL Azure and more! Bulk MethodsBulkDelete BulkInsert BulkMerge BulkUpdate BulkUpsert Utility MethodsGetSqlConnection GetSqlTransaction You like this library? Find out how and why you should support Z Project Become a Memberhttp://zzzproject.com/resources/images/all/become-a-member.png|ht...Tweetinvi a friendly Twitter C# API: Tweetinvi 0.9.3.x: Timelines- Added all the parameters available from the Timeline Endpoints in Tweetinvi. - This is available for HomeTimeline, UserTimeline, MentionsTimeline // Simple query var tweets = Timeline.GetHomeTimeline(); // Create a parameter for queries with specific parameters var timelineParameter = Timeline.CreateHomeTimelineRequestParameter(); timelineParameter.ExcludeReplies = true; timelineParameter.TrimUser = true; var tweets = Timeline.GetHomeTimeline(timelineParameter); Tweetinvi 0.9.3.1...Pong: Pong_v1.0: Folder Content + the exe file.MudRoom: Parser Test 0.01a: Binary build of proof of concept code that supports a few verbs and can act on a few objects. Shows the basics of compound verb actions, adjective support, and the ignoring of filler words.New Projects2112110162: 2112110162 nguyen do datASP.NET Identity 2.0 AWS DynamoDb: This project provides a high performance cloud solution for ASP.NET Identity 2.0 using AWS DynamoDb replacing the Entity Framework / MSSQL provider.Eye tracking | Accessibility version.: Este projeto tem o objetivo de oferecer de forma barata uma ferramenta para se comunicar com pessoas que só podem mexer os olhos.HCRM: House CRMhuynhtanphat1995: cfzxJJ94_HelloWorld: Hello World Hello World C++ Hello World Ckbvault-mysql: KBVault MySQL is a free knowledge base web application.Khue's project: helloNDataTable: Similar to the DataSet and DataTable Class. using XML to support cross platform data transmission. Suitable for network data transmission. Net Slate: An app that learns users interest and becomes smarter, by providing news according to your interest. NR comes with highly customizable User interface, with dynaPA kece: Edugra is one of android-based applicationPowerCLI Navigator: PowerCLI Navigator is a PowerShell host application meant to improve system administrators' experience with VMware PowerCLI and vSphere management automation.project1: sdczxproject1-kimquyendang: chuoiproject1-vannghia: jghjghjRandom Katas: Random Code Kata implementations in a variety of languages. For personal edification, but if others are interested, have at it.TestWeb: TestWebTimelapse Camera Archive: An ASP.NET web application that organizes, archives, and makes available photos from FTP-capable IP cameras.Ubnt Discovery: This tool allows you to discovery Ubiquiti devices in your network.Website Practice: The aim of this project is to learn team foundation service using codeplex on a website project.Z3_SMC: testzDocumentationHelper: Custom Documentation Helper

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• Thematic map contd.

  - by jsharma

  The previous post (creating a thematic map) described the use of an advanced style (color ranged-bucket style). The bucket style definition object has an attribute ('classification') which specifies the data classification scheme to use. It's values can be one of {'equal', 'quantile', 'logarithmic', 'custom'}. We use logarithmic in the previous example. Here we'll describe how to use a custom algorithm for classification. Specifically the Jenks Natural Breaks algorithm. We'll use the Javascript implementation in geostats.js The sample code above needs a few changes which are listed below. Include the geostats.js file after or before including oraclemapsv2.js <script src="geostats.js"></script> Modify the bucket style definition to use custom classification Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}    bucketStyleDef = {       numClasses : colorSeries[colorName].classes,       classification: 'custom', //'logarithmic',  // use a logarithmic scale       algorithm: jenksFromGeostats,       styles: theStyles,       gradient:  useGradient? 'linear' : 'off'     }; The function, which implements the custom classification scheme, is specified as the algorithm attribute value. It must accept two input parameters, an array of OM.feature and the name of the feature attribute (e.g. TOTPOP) to use in the classification, and must return an array of buckets (i.e. an array of or OM.style.Bucket  or OM.style.RangedBucket in this case). However the algorithm also needs to know the number of classes (i.e. the number of buckets to create). So we use a global to pass that info in. (Note: This bug/oversight will be fixed and the custom algorithm will be passed 3 parameters: the features array, attribute name, and number of classes). So createBucketColorStyle() has the following changes Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} var numClasses ; function createBucketColorStyle( colorName, colorSeries, rangeName, useGradient) {    var theBucketStyle;    var bucketStyleDef;    var theStyles = [];    //var numClasses ; numClasses = colorSeries[colorName].classes; ... and the function jenksFromGeostats is defined as Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} function jenksFromGeostats(featureArray, columnName) {    var items = [] ; // array of attribute values to be classified    $.each(featureArray, function(i, feature) {         items.push(parseFloat(feature.getAttributeValue(columnName)));    });    // create the geostats object    var theSeries = new geostats(items);    // call getJenks which returns an array of bounds    var theClasses = theSeries.getJenks(numClasses);    if(theClasses)    {     theClasses[theClasses.length-1]=parseFloat(theClasses[theClasses.length-1])+1;    }    else    {     alert(' empty result from getJenks');    }    var theBuckets = [], aBucket=null ;    for(var k=0; k<numClasses; k++)    {             aBucket = new OM.style.RangedBucket(             {low:parseFloat(theClasses[k]),               high:parseFloat(theClasses[k+1])             });             theBuckets.push(aBucket);     }     return theBuckets; } A screenshot of the resulting map with 5 classes is shown below. It is also possible to simply create the buckets and supply them when defining the Bucket style instead of specifying the function (algorithm). In that case the bucket style definition object would be    bucketStyleDef = {      numClasses : colorSeries[colorName].classes,      classification: 'custom',        buckets: theBuckets, //since we are supplying all the buckets      styles: theStyles,      gradient:  useGradient? 'linear' : 'off'    };

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• Towards Ultra-Reusability for ADF - Adaptive Bindings

  - by Duncan Mills

  The task flow mechanism embodies one of the key value propositions of the ADF Framework, it's primary contribution being the componentization of your applications and implicitly the introduction of a re-use culture, particularly in large applications. However, what if we could do more? How could we make task flows even more re-usable than they are today? Well one great technique is to take advantage of a feature that is already present in the framework, a feature which I will call, for want of a better name, "adaptive bindings". What's an adaptive binding? well consider a simple use case.  I have several screens within my application which display tabular data which are all essentially identical, the only difference is that they happen to be based on different data collections (View Objects, Bean collections, whatever) , and have a different set of columns. Apart from that, however, they happen to be identical; same toolbar, same key functions and so on. So wouldn't it be nice if I could have a single parametrized task flow to represent that type of UI and reuse it? Hold on you say, great idea, however, to do that we'd run into problems. Each different collection that I want to display needs different entries in the pageDef file and: I want to continue to use the ADF Bindings mechanism rather than dropping back to passing the whole collection into the taskflow   If I do use bindings, there is no way I want to have to declare iterators and tree bindings for every possible collection that I might want the flow to handle  Ah, joy! I reply, no need to panic, you can just use adaptive bindings. Defining an Adaptive Binding  It's easiest to explain with a simple before and after use case.  Here's a basic pageDef definition for our familiar Departments table.  <executables> <iterator Binds="DepartmentsView1" DataControl="HRAppModuleDataControl" RangeSize="25"             id="DepartmentsView1Iterator"/> </executables> <bindings> <tree IterBinding="DepartmentsView1Iterator" id="DepartmentsView1">   <nodeDefinition DefName="oracle.demo.model.vo.DepartmentsView" Name="DepartmentsView10">     <AttrNames>       <Item Value="DepartmentId"/>         <Item Value="DepartmentName"/>         <Item Value="ManagerId"/>         <Item Value="LocationId"/>       </AttrNames>     </nodeDefinition> </tree> </bindings>  Here's the adaptive version: <executables> <iterator Binds="${pageFlowScope.voName}" DataControl="HRAppModuleDataControl" RangeSize="25"             id="TableSourceIterator"/> </executables> <bindings> <tree IterBinding="TableSourceIterator" id="GenericView"> <nodeDefinition Name="GenericViewNode"/> </tree> </bindings>  You'll notice three changes here.   Most importantly, you'll see that the hard-coded View Object name  that formally populated the iterator Binds attribute is gone and has been replaced by an expression (${pageFlowScope.voName}). This of course, is key, you can see that we can pass a parameter to the task flow, telling it exactly what VO to instantiate to populate this table! I've changed the IDs of the iterator and the tree binding, simply to reflect that they are now re-usable The tree binding itself has simplified and the node definition is now empty.  Now what this effectively means is that the #{node} map exposed through the tree binding will expose every attribute of the underlying iterator's collection - neat! (kudos to Eugene Fedorenko at this point who reminded me that this was even possible in his excellent "deep dive" session at OpenWorld  this year) Using the adaptive binding in the UI Now we have a parametrized  binding we have to make changes in the UI as well, first of all to reflect the new ID that we've assigned to the binding (of course) but also to change the column list from being a fixed known list to being a generic metadata driven set: <af:table value="#{bindings.GenericView.collectionModel}" rows="#{bindings.GenericView.rangeSize}"         fetchSize="#{bindings.GenericView.rangeSize}"           emptyText="#{bindings.GenericView.viewable ? 'No data to display.' : 'Access Denied.'}"           var="row" rowBandingInterval="0"           selectedRowKeys="#{bindings.GenericView.collectionModel.selectedRow}"           selectionListener="#{bindings.GenericView.collectionModel.makeCurrent}"           rowSelection="single" id="t1"> <af:forEach items="#{bindings.GenericView.attributeDefs}" var="def">   <af:column headerText="#{bindings.GenericView.labels[def.name]}" sortable="true"            sortProperty="#{def.name}" id="c1">     <af:outputText value="#{row[def.name]}" id="ot1"/>     </af:column>   </af:forEach> </af:table> Of course you are not constrained to a simple read only table here.  It's a normal tree binding and iterator that you are using behind the scenes so you can do all the usual things, but you can see the value of using ADFBC as the back end model as you have the rich pantheon of UI hints to use to derive things like labels (and validators and converters...)  One Final Twist  To finish on a high note I wanted to point out that you can take this even further and achieve the ultra-reusability I promised. Here's the new version of the pageDef iterator, see if you can notice the subtle change? <iterator Binds="{pageFlowScope.voName}"  DataControl="${pageFlowScope.dataControlName}" RangeSize="25"           id="TableSourceIterator"/>  Yes, as well as parametrizing the collection (VO) name, we can also parametrize the name of the data control. So your task flow can graduate from being re-usable within an application to being truly generic. So if you have some really common patterns within your app you can wrap them up and reuse then across multiple developments without having to dictate data control names, or connection names. This also demonstrates the importance of interacting with data only via the binding layer APIs. If you keep any code in the task flow generic in that way you can deal with data from multiple types of data controls, not just one flavour. Enjoy!

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• How to Implement Project Type "Copy", "Move", "Rename", and "Delete"

  - by Geertjan

  You've followed the NetBeans Project Type Tutorial and now you'd like to let the user copy, move, rename, and delete the projects conforming to your project type. When they right-click a project, they should see the relevant menu items and those menu items should provide dialogs for user interaction, followed by event handling code to deal with the current operation. Right now, at the end of the tutorial, the "Copy" and "Delete" menu items are present but disabled, while the "Move" and "Rename" menu items are absent: The NetBeans Project API provides a built-in mechanism out of the box that you can leverage for project-level "Copy", "Move", "Rename", and "Delete" actions. All the functionality is there for you to use, while all that you need to do is a bit of enablement and configuration, which is described below. To get started, read the following from the NetBeans Project API: http://bits.netbeans.org/dev/javadoc/org-netbeans-modules-projectapi/org/netbeans/spi/project/ActionProvider.html http://bits.netbeans.org/dev/javadoc/org-netbeans-modules-projectapi/org/netbeans/spi/project/CopyOperationImplementation.html http://bits.netbeans.org/dev/javadoc/org-netbeans-modules-projectapi/org/netbeans/spi/project/MoveOrRenameOperationImplementation.html http://bits.netbeans.org/dev/javadoc/org-netbeans-modules-projectapi/org/netbeans/spi/project/DeleteOperationImplementation.html Now, let's do some work. For each of the menu items we're interested in, we need to do the following: Provide enablement and invocation handling in an ActionProvider implementation. Provide appropriate OperationImplementation classes. Add the new classes to the Project Lookup. Make the Actions visible on the Project Node. Run the application and verify the Actions work as you'd like. Here we go: Create an ActionProvider. Here you specify the Actions that should be supported, the conditions under which they should be enabled, and what should happen when they're invoked, using lots of default code that lets you reuse the functionality provided by the NetBeans Project API: class CustomerActionProvider implements ActionProvider { @Override public String[] getSupportedActions() { return new String[]{ ActionProvider.COMMAND_RENAME, ActionProvider.COMMAND_MOVE, ActionProvider.COMMAND_COPY, ActionProvider.COMMAND_DELETE }; } @Override public void invokeAction(String string, Lookup lkp) throws IllegalArgumentException { if (string.equalsIgnoreCase(ActionProvider.COMMAND_RENAME)) { DefaultProjectOperations.performDefaultRenameOperation( CustomerProject.this, ""); } if (string.equalsIgnoreCase(ActionProvider.COMMAND_MOVE)) { DefaultProjectOperations.performDefaultMoveOperation( CustomerProject.this); } if (string.equalsIgnoreCase(ActionProvider.COMMAND_COPY)) { DefaultProjectOperations.performDefaultCopyOperation( CustomerProject.this); } if (string.equalsIgnoreCase(ActionProvider.COMMAND_DELETE)) { DefaultProjectOperations.performDefaultDeleteOperation( CustomerProject.this); } } @Override public boolean isActionEnabled(String command, Lookup lookup) throws IllegalArgumentException { if ((command.equals(ActionProvider.COMMAND_RENAME))) { return true; } else if ((command.equals(ActionProvider.COMMAND_MOVE))) { return true; } else if ((command.equals(ActionProvider.COMMAND_COPY))) { return true; } else if ((command.equals(ActionProvider.COMMAND_DELETE))) { return true; } return false; } } Importantly, to round off this step, add "new CustomerActionProvider()" to the "getLookup" method of the project. If you were to run the application right now, all the Actions we're interested in would be enabled (if they are visible, as described in step 4 below) but when you invoke any of them you'd get an error message because each of the DefaultProjectOperations above looks in the Lookup of the Project for the presence of an implementation of a class for handling the operation. That's what we're going to do in the next step. Provide Implementations of Project Operations. For each of our operations, the NetBeans Project API lets you implement classes to handle the operation. The dialogs for interacting with the project are provided by the NetBeans project system, but what happens with the folders and files during the operation can be influenced via the operations. Below are the simplest possible implementations, i.e., here we assume we want nothing special to happen. Each of the below needs to be in the Lookup of the Project in order for the operation invocation to succeed. private final class CustomerProjectMoveOrRenameOperation implements MoveOrRenameOperationImplementation { @Override public List<FileObject> getMetadataFiles() { return new ArrayList<FileObject>(); } @Override public List<FileObject> getDataFiles() { return new ArrayList<FileObject>(); } @Override public void notifyRenaming() throws IOException { } @Override public void notifyRenamed(String nueName) throws IOException { } @Override public void notifyMoving() throws IOException { } @Override public void notifyMoved(Project original, File originalPath, String nueName) throws IOException { } } private final class CustomerProjectCopyOperation implements CopyOperationImplementation { @Override public List<FileObject> getMetadataFiles() { return new ArrayList<FileObject>(); } @Override public List<FileObject> getDataFiles() { return new ArrayList<FileObject>(); } @Override public void notifyCopying() throws IOException { } @Override public void notifyCopied(Project prjct, File file, String string) throws IOException { } } private final class CustomerProjectDeleteOperation implements DeleteOperationImplementation { @Override public List<FileObject> getMetadataFiles() { return new ArrayList<FileObject>(); } @Override public List<FileObject> getDataFiles() { return new ArrayList<FileObject>(); } @Override public void notifyDeleting() throws IOException { } @Override public void notifyDeleted() throws IOException { } } Also make sure to put the above methods into the Project Lookup. Check the Lookup of the Project. The "getLookup()" method of the project should now include the classes you created above, as shown in bold below: @Override public Lookup getLookup() { if (lkp == null) { lkp = Lookups.fixed(new Object[]{ this, new Info(), new CustomerProjectLogicalView(this), new CustomerCustomizerProvider(this), new CustomerActionProvider(), new CustomerProjectMoveOrRenameOperation(), new CustomerProjectCopyOperation(), new CustomerProjectDeleteOperation(), new ReportsSubprojectProvider(this), }); } return lkp; } Make Actions Visible on the Project Node. The NetBeans Project API gives you a number of CommonProjectActions, including for the actions we're dealing with. Make sure the items in bold below are in the "getActions" method of the project node: @Override public Action[] getActions(boolean arg0) { return new Action[]{ CommonProjectActions.newFileAction(), CommonProjectActions.copyProjectAction(), CommonProjectActions.moveProjectAction(), CommonProjectActions.renameProjectAction(), CommonProjectActions.deleteProjectAction(), CommonProjectActions.customizeProjectAction(), CommonProjectActions.closeProjectAction() }; } Run the Application. When you run the application, you should see this: Let's now try out the various actions: Copy. When you invoke the Copy action, you'll see the dialog below. Provide a new project name and location and then the copy action is performed when the Copy button is clicked below: The message you see above, in red, might not be relevant to your project type. When you right-click the application and choose Branding, you can find the string in the Resource Bundles tab, as shown below: However, note that the message will be shown in red, no matter what the text is, hence you can really only put something like a warning message there. If you have no text at all, it will also look odd.If the project has subprojects, the copy operation will not automatically copy the subprojects. Take a look here and here for similar more complex scenarios. Move. When you invoke the Move action, the dialog below is shown: Rename. The Rename Project dialog below is shown when you invoke the Rename action: I tried it and both the display name and the folder on disk are changed. Delete. When you invoke the Delete action, you'll see this dialog: The checkbox is not checkable, in the default scenario, and when the dialog above is confirmed, the project is simply closed, i.e., the node hierarchy is removed from the application. However, if you truly want to let the user delete the project on disk, pass the Project to the DeleteOperationImplementation and then add the children of the Project you want to delete to the getDataFiles method: private final class CustomerProjectDeleteOperation implements DeleteOperationImplementation { private final CustomerProject project; private CustomerProjectDeleteOperation(CustomerProject project) { this.project = project; } @Override public List<FileObject> getDataFiles() { List<FileObject> files = new ArrayList<FileObject>(); FileObject[] projectChildren = project.getProjectDirectory().getChildren(); for (FileObject fileObject : projectChildren) { addFile(project.getProjectDirectory(), fileObject.getNameExt(), files); } return files; } private void addFile(FileObject projectDirectory, String fileName, List<FileObject> result) { FileObject file = projectDirectory.getFileObject(fileName); if (file != null) { result.add(file); } } @Override public List<FileObject> getMetadataFiles() { return new ArrayList<FileObject>(); } @Override public void notifyDeleting() throws IOException { } @Override public void notifyDeleted() throws IOException { } } Now the user will be able to check the checkbox, causing the method above to be called in the DeleteOperationImplementation: Hope this answers some questions or at least gets the discussion started. Before asking questions about this topic, please take the steps above and only then attempt to apply them to your own scenario. Useful implementations to look at: http://kickjava.com/src/org/netbeans/modules/j2ee/clientproject/AppClientProjectOperations.java.htm https://kenai.com/projects/nbandroid/sources/mercurial/content/project/src/org/netbeans/modules/android/project/AndroidProjectOperations.java

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• VBA WinHTTPRequest and submitting forms

  - by Hazerider

  Hi. I spent all day yesterday trying to figure out how to submit a form using WinHTTPRequest. I can do it pretty easily with an InternetExplorer object, but the problem is that I need to save a PDF file that gets returned, and I am not sure how to do this with the IE object. Here is the relevant HTML code snippet: <div class="loginHome-left"> <fieldset> <h3>Log in Using</h3> <form> <label for="standardLogin" accesskey="s"> <input name="useLogin" id="standardLogin" value="standard" type="radio" checked="true">Standard Login</label> &nbsp; <label for="rsaSecurID" accesskey="r"> <input name="useLogin" value="rsaSecur" type="radio" id="rsaSecurID" onclick="redirectLogin('ct_logon_securid');return false;">RSA SecurID</label> &nbsp; <label for="employeeNTXP" accesskey="e"> <input name="useLogin" id="employeeNTXP" value="employee" type="radio" onclick="redirectLogin('ct_logon_external_nt');return false; "> Employee Windows Login<br></label> </form> <br> <div class="error">Error: ...</div><br> <form onSubmit="if(validate(this)) {formSubmit();} return false;" name="passwdForm" method="post" action="/UAB/ct_logon"> <input value="custom" name="pageId" type="hidden"> <input value="custom" name="auth_mode" type="hidden"> <input value="/UAB/ct_logon" name="ct_orig_uri" type="hidden"> <INPUT VALUE="" NAME="orig_url" TYPE="hidden"> <input value="" name="lpSp" type="hidden"> <label for="user"> <strong>Username</strong> </label> <input autocomplete="off" name="user" type="text" value="" class="txtFld" onkeypress="return handleEnter(this, event);"> <br> <label for="EnterPassword"> <strong>Password</strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;(<a tabindex="-1" href="/UAB/BCResetWithSecrets">Forgot Your Password?</a>) </label> <input autocomplete="off" name="password" type="password" class="txtFld" onkeypress="return handleEnter(this, event);"> <INPUT id="rememberLogin" name="lpCookie" type="checkbox"> <label for="rememberLogin">Remember My Login Information</label><br> </form> <div class="right"> <br> <input type="image" src="/BC_S/images/bclogin/btn_login.gif" name="" value="Submit" onClick="if(validate(document.forms['passwdForm'])){formSubmit();}return false;"> </div> <div class="clearfix"></div> </fieldset> </div> In order to log in through InternetExplorer, I do the following: Sub TestLogin() Dim ie As InternetExplorer, doc As HTMLDocument, form As HTMLFormElement, inp As Variant Set ie = New InternetExplorer ie.Visible = True ie.navigate "https://URL of the login page" Do Until ie.readyState = READYSTATE_COMPLETE Loop Set doc = ie.document For Each form In doc.forms If InStr(form.innerText, "Password") <> 0 Then form.elements("user").Value = "my_name" form.elements("password").Value = "my_password" Exit For Else End If Next 'This is the unnamed input with an image that is used to submit the form' doc.all(78).Click ie.navigate "https://url of the PDF" Do Until ie.readyState = READYSTATE_COMPLETE Loop Dim filename As String, filenum As Integer filename = "somefile.pdf" filenum = FreeFile Open filename For Binary Access Write As #filenum Write #filenum, doc.DocumentElement.innerText Close #filenum ie.Quit Debug.Print Set ie = Nothing End Sub What I really would like to do is something along the lines of the following: Sub TestLogin3() Dim whr As New WinHttpRequest, postData As String whr.Open "POST", "https://live.barcap.com/UAB/ct_logon", False whr.setRequestHeader "User-Agent", "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)" whr.setRequestHeader "Connection", "Keep-Alive" whr.Send whr.WaitForResponse postData = "user=paschom1&password=change01" 'Or the following?' postData = "user=paschom1&password=change01&orig_url=&pageId=custom&auth_mode=custom&ct_orig_uri=/BC/dispatcher&lpSp=&lpCookie=off" whr.Send postData whr.WaitForResponse Debug.Print whr.responseText End Sub It just refuses to work though. Not sure if I need to use more setRequestHeader with Content-Form or something similar, and if I do, not sure what exactly I am supposed to pass it. If anyone has any advice regarding this, it would be hugely appreciated. I could probably use a perl module to do it, but I would rather keep it all in VBA if possible. Thanks, Marc.

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• Configuring WCF to Handle a Signature on a SOAP Message from an Oracle Server

  - by AlEl

  I'm trying to use WCF to consume a web service provided by a third-party's Oracle Application Server. I pass a username and password and as part of the response the web service returns a standard security tag in the header which includes a digest and signature. With my current setup, I successfully send a request to the server and the web service sends the expected response data back. However, when parsing the response WCF throws a MessageSecurityException, with an InnerException.Message of "Supporting token signatures not expected." My guess is that WCF wants me to configure it to handle the signature and verify it. I have a certificate from the third party that hosts the web service that I should be able to use to verify the signature. It's in the form of -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----- [certificate garble] -----END CERTIFICATE----- Here's a sample header from a response that makes WCF throw the exception: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"> <soap:Header> <wsse:Security soap:mustUnderstand="1" xmlns:wsse="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd" xmlns="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd"> <dsig:Signature xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#" xmlns:dsig="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#"> <dsig:SignedInfo> <dsig:CanonicalizationMethod Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2001/10/xml-exc-c14n#"/> <dsig:SignatureMethod Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#rsa-sha1"/> <dsig:Reference URI="#_51IUwNWRVvPOcz12pZHLNQ22"> <dsig:Transforms> <dsig:Transform Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2001/10/xml-exc-c14n#"/> </dsig:Transforms> <dsig:DigestMethod Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#sha1"/> <dsig:DigestValue> [DigestValue here] </dsig:DigestValue> </dsig:Reference> <dsig:Reference URI="#_dI5j0EqxrVsj0e62J6vd6w22"> <dsig:Transforms> <dsig:Transform Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2001/10/xml-exc-c14n#"/> </dsig:Transforms> <dsig:DigestMethod Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#sha1"/> <dsig:DigestValue> [DigestValue here] </dsig:DigestValue> </dsig:Reference> </dsig:SignedInfo> <dsig:SignatureValue> [Signature Value Here] </dsig:SignatureValue> <dsig:KeyInfo> <wsse:SecurityTokenReference xmlns="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd"> <wsse:Reference URI="#BST-9nKWbrE4LRv6maqstrGuUQ22" ValueType="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-x509-token-profile-1.0#X509v3"/> </wsse:SecurityTokenReference> </dsig:KeyInfo> </dsig:Signature> <wsse:BinarySecurityToken ValueType="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-x509-token-profile-1.0#X509v3" EncodingType="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-soap-message-security-1.0#Base64Binary" wsu:Id="BST-9nKWbrE4LRv6maqstrGuUQ22" xmlns:wsu="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd"> [Security Token Here] </wsse:BinarySecurityToken> <wsu:Timestamp wsu:Id="_dI5j0EqxrVsj0e62J6vd6w22" xmlns:wsu="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd" xmlns="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd"> <wsu:Created>2010-05-26T18:46:30Z</wsu:Created> </wsu:Timestamp> </wsse:Security> </soap:Header> <soap:Body wsu:Id="_51IUwNWRVvPOcz12pZHLNQ22" xmlns:wsu="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd"> [Body content here] </soap:Body> </soap:Envelope> My binding configuration looks like: <basicHttpBinding> <binding name="myBinding" closeTimeout="00:01:00" openTimeout="00:01:00" receiveTimeout="00:10:00" sendTimeout="00:01:00" allowCookies="false" bypassProxyOnLocal="false" hostNameComparisonMode="StrongWildcard" maxBufferSize="65536" maxBufferPoolSize="524288" maxReceivedMessageSize="65536" messageEncoding="Text" textEncoding="utf-8" transferMode="Buffered" useDefaultWebProxy="true"> <readerQuotas maxDepth="32" maxStringContentLength="8192" maxArrayLength="16384" maxBytesPerRead="4096" maxNameTableCharCount="16384" /> <security mode="TransportWithMessageCredential"> <transport clientCredentialType="None" proxyCredentialType="None" realm="" /> <message clientCredentialType="UserName" algorithmSuite="Default" /> </security> </binding> </basicHttpBinding> I'm new at WCF, so I'm sorry if this is a bit of a dumb question. I've been trying to Google solutions, but there seem to be so many different ways to configure WCF that I'm getting overwhelmed. Thanks in advance!

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• Maintain cookie session in Android

  - by datguywhowanders

  Okay, I have an android application that has a form in it, two EditText, a spinner, and a login button. The user selects the service from the spinner, types in their user name and password, and clicks login. The data is sent via POST, a response is returned, it's handled, a new webview is launched, the html string generated form the response is loaded, and I have the home page of whatever service the user selected. That's all well and good. Now, when the user clicks on a link, the login info can't be found, and the page asks the user to login again. My login session is being dropped somewhere, and I'm not certain how to pass the info from the class that controls the main part of my app to the class that just launches the webview activity. The on click handler from the form login button: private class FormOnClickListener implements View.OnClickListener { public void onClick(View v) { String actionURL, user, pwd, user_field, pwd_field; actionURL = "thePageURL"; user_field = "username"; //this changes based on selections in a spinner pwd_field = "password"; //this changes based on selections in a spinner user = "theUserLogin"; pwd = "theUserPassword"; List<NameValuePair> myList = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>(); myList.add(new BasicNameValuePair(user_field, user)); myList.add(new BasicNameValuePair(pwd_field, pwd)); HttpParams params = new BasicHttpParams(); DefaultHttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient(params); HttpPost post = new HttpPost(actionURL); HttpResponse response = null; BasicResponseHandler myHandler = new BasicResponseHandler(); String endResult = null; try { post.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(myList)); } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } try { response = client.execute(post); } catch (ClientProtocolException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } catch (IOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } try { endResult = myHandler.handleResponse(response); } catch (HttpResponseException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } catch (IOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } List cookies = client.getCookieStore().getCookies(); if (!cookies.isEmpty()) { for (int i = 0; i < cookies.size(); i++) { cookie = cookies.get(i); } } Intent myWebViewIntent = new Intent(MsidePortal.this, MyWebView.class); myWebViewIntent.putExtra("htmlString", endResult); myWebViewIntent.putExtra("actionURL", actionURL); startActivity(myWebViewIntent); } } And here is the webview class that handles the response display: public class MyWebView extends android.app.Activity{ private class MyWebViewClient extends WebViewClient { @Override public boolean shouldOverrideUrlLoading(WebView view, String url) { view.loadUrl(url); return true; } } @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.web); MyWebViewClient myClient = new MyWebViewClient(); WebView webview = (WebView)findViewById(R.id.mainwebview); webview.getSettings().setBuiltInZoomControls(true); webview.getSettings().setJavaScriptEnabled(true); webview.setWebViewClient(myClient); Bundle extras = getIntent().getExtras(); if(extras != null) { // Get endResult String htmlString = extras.getString("htmlString"); String actionURL = extras.getString("actionURL"); Cookie sessionCookie = MsidePortal.cookie; CookieSyncManager.createInstance(this); CookieManager cookieManager = CookieManager.getInstance(); if (sessionCookie != null) { cookieManager.removeSessionCookie(); String cookieString = sessionCookie.getName() + "=" + sessionCookie.getValue() + "; domain=" + sessionCookie.getDomain(); cookieManager.setCookie(actionURL, cookieString); CookieSyncManager.getInstance().sync(); } webview.loadDataWithBaseURL(actionURL, htmlString, "text/html", "utf-8", actionURL); } } } I've had mixed success implementing that cookie solution. It seems to work for one service I log into that I know keeps the cookies on the server (old, archaic, but it works and they don't want to change it.) The service I'm attempting now requires the user to keep cookies on their local machine, and it does not work with this setup. Any suggestions?

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• WCF: Server Not Found - from trace Empty Message when run async but works fine from console app?

  - by MrTortoise

  Todays cause of hair loss has been the following scenario: I have a service that takes 2 strings and returns another. This service uses basicHttpBinding <basicHttpBinding> <binding name="basicHttpNoSec"> <security mode="None" /> </binding> </basicHttpBinding> Anyway, it works fine from a console test app. I have a silverlight app sat on top which implements another basicHttpBinding service that simply reuses the contract in the other service and the silverlight App uses this service. I have a console app that confirms that this service is working and set up with basichttpbinding. I have all the clientAccessPolicy stuff in place. when I run the silverlight app the difference is that it runs everything async ... as such the only message i directly get back rom wcf is server not found. When i enable tracing I dig down to this message - as I know the methods work and the parameteres i pass in will return a valid string i am really puzzled at to what the cause is. any help much appreciated. <E2ETraceEvent xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2004/06/E2ETraceEvent"> <System xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2004/06/windows/eventlog/system"> <EventID>131075</EventID> <Type>3</Type> <SubType Name="Error">0</SubType> <Level>2</Level> <TimeCreated SystemTime="2010-06-07T14:17:40.6639249Z" /> <Source Name="System.ServiceModel" /> <Correlation ActivityID="{8ea9530e-12f4-4a82-9c26-dd2e23264c3c}" /> <Execution ProcessName="aspnet_wp" ProcessID="4616" ThreadID="6" /> <Channel /> <Computer>5JC2Y2J</Computer> </System> <ApplicationData> <TraceData> <DataItem> <TraceRecord xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2004/10/E2ETraceEvent/TraceRecord" Severity="Error"> <TraceIdentifier>http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-GB/library/System.ServiceModel.Diagnostics.ThrowingException.aspx</TraceIdentifier> <Description>Throwing an exception.</Description> <AppDomain>/LM/w3svc/1/ROOT/CopSilverlight.Web-1-129203938565564172</AppDomain> <Exception> <ExceptionType>System.ServiceModel.ProtocolException, System.ServiceModel, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089</ExceptionType> <Message>There is a problem with the XML that was received from the network. See inner exception for more details.</Message> <StackTrace> at System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpRequestContext.CreateMessage() at System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpChannelListener.HttpContextReceived(HttpRequestContext context, Action callback) at System.ServiceModel.Activation.HostedHttpTransportManager.HttpContextReceived(HostedHttpRequestAsyncResult result) at System.ServiceModel.Activation.HostedHttpRequestAsyncResult.HandleRequest() at System.ServiceModel.Activation.HostedHttpRequestAsyncResult.BeginRequest() at System.ServiceModel.Activation.HostedHttpRequestAsyncResult.OnBeginRequest(Object state) at System.Runtime.IOThreadScheduler.ScheduledOverlapped.IOCallback(UInt32 errorCode, UInt32 numBytes, NativeOverlapped* nativeOverlapped) at System.Runtime.Fx.IOCompletionThunk.UnhandledExceptionFrame(UInt32 error, UInt32 bytesRead, NativeOverlapped* nativeOverlapped) at System.Threading._IOCompletionCallback.PerformIOCompletionCallback(UInt32 errorCode, UInt32 numBytes, NativeOverlapped* pOVERLAP) </StackTrace> <ExceptionString>System.ServiceModel.ProtocolException: There is a problem with the XML that was received from the network. See inner exception for more details. ---&gt; System.Xml.XmlException: The body of the message cannot be read because it is empty. --- End of inner exception stack trace ---</ExceptionString> <InnerException> <ExceptionType>System.Xml.XmlException, System.Xml, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089</ExceptionType> <Message>The body of the message cannot be read because it is empty.</Message> <StackTrace> at System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpRequestContext.CreateMessage() at System.ServiceModel.Channels.HttpChannelListener.HttpContextReceived(HttpRequestContext context, Action callback) at System.ServiceModel.Activation.HostedHttpTransportManager.HttpContextReceived(HostedHttpRequestAsyncResult result) at System.ServiceModel.Activation.HostedHttpRequestAsyncResult.HandleRequest() at System.ServiceModel.Activation.HostedHttpRequestAsyncResult.BeginRequest() at System.ServiceModel.Activation.HostedHttpRequestAsyncResult.OnBeginRequest(Object state) at System.Runtime.IOThreadScheduler.ScheduledOverlapped.IOCallback(UInt32 errorCode, UInt32 numBytes, NativeOverlapped* nativeOverlapped) at System.Runtime.Fx.IOCompletionThunk.UnhandledExceptionFrame(UInt32 error, UInt32 bytesRead, NativeOverlapped* nativeOverlapped) at System.Threading._IOCompletionCallback.PerformIOCompletionCallback(UInt32 errorCode, UInt32 numBytes, NativeOverlapped* pOVERLAP) </StackTrace> <ExceptionString>System.Xml.XmlException: The body of the message cannot be read because it is empty.</ExceptionString> </InnerException> </Exception> </TraceRecord> </DataItem> </TraceData> </ApplicationData> </E2ETraceEvent>

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• Configuring a WCF Client to Use UserName Credentials On the Request and Check Certificate Credential

  - by AlEl

  I'm trying to use WCF to consume a web service provided by a third-party's Oracle Application Server. I pass a username and password in a UsernameToken as part of the request and as part of the response the web service returns a standard security tag in the header which includes a digest and signature. With my current setup, I successfully send a request to the server and the web service sends the expected response data back. However, when parsing the response WCF throws a MessageSecurityException, with an InnerException.Message of "Supporting token signatures not expected." My guess is that WCF wants me to configure it to handle the signature and verify it. I have a certificate from the third party that hosts the web service that I should be able to use to verify the signature, although I'm not sure if I'll need it. Here's a sample header from a response that makes WCF throw the exception: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"> <soap:Header> <wsse:Security soap:mustUnderstand="1" xmlns:wsse="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd" xmlns="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd"> <dsig:Signature xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#" xmlns:dsig="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#"> <dsig:SignedInfo> <dsig:CanonicalizationMethod Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2001/10/xml-exc-c14n#"/> <dsig:SignatureMethod Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#rsa-sha1"/> <dsig:Reference URI="#_51IUwNWRVvPOcz12pZHLNQ22"> <dsig:Transforms> <dsig:Transform Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2001/10/xml-exc-c14n#"/> </dsig:Transforms> <dsig:DigestMethod Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#sha1"/> <dsig:DigestValue> [DigestValue here] </dsig:DigestValue> </dsig:Reference> <dsig:Reference URI="#_dI5j0EqxrVsj0e62J6vd6w22"> <dsig:Transforms> <dsig:Transform Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2001/10/xml-exc-c14n#"/> </dsig:Transforms> <dsig:DigestMethod Algorithm="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#sha1"/> <dsig:DigestValue> [DigestValue here] </dsig:DigestValue> </dsig:Reference> </dsig:SignedInfo> <dsig:SignatureValue> [Signature Value Here] </dsig:SignatureValue> <dsig:KeyInfo> <wsse:SecurityTokenReference xmlns="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd"> <wsse:Reference URI="#BST-9nKWbrE4LRv6maqstrGuUQ22" ValueType="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-x509-token-profile-1.0#X509v3"/> </wsse:SecurityTokenReference> </dsig:KeyInfo> </dsig:Signature> <wsse:BinarySecurityToken ValueType="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-x509-token-profile-1.0#X509v3" EncodingType="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-soap-message-security-1.0#Base64Binary" wsu:Id="BST-9nKWbrE4LRv6maqstrGuUQ22" xmlns:wsu="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd"> [Security Token Here] </wsse:BinarySecurityToken> <wsu:Timestamp wsu:Id="_dI5j0EqxrVsj0e62J6vd6w22" xmlns:wsu="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd" xmlns="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd"> <wsu:Created>2010-05-26T18:46:30Z</wsu:Created> </wsu:Timestamp> </wsse:Security> </soap:Header> <soap:Body wsu:Id="_51IUwNWRVvPOcz12pZHLNQ22" xmlns:wsu="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd"> [Body content here] </soap:Body> </soap:Envelope> My binding configuration looks like: <basicHttpBinding> <binding name="myBinding" closeTimeout="00:01:00" openTimeout="00:01:00" receiveTimeout="00:10:00" sendTimeout="00:01:00" allowCookies="false" bypassProxyOnLocal="false" hostNameComparisonMode="StrongWildcard" maxBufferSize="65536" maxBufferPoolSize="524288" maxReceivedMessageSize="65536" messageEncoding="Text" textEncoding="utf-8" transferMode="Buffered" useDefaultWebProxy="true"> <readerQuotas maxDepth="32" maxStringContentLength="8192" maxArrayLength="16384" maxBytesPerRead="4096" maxNameTableCharCount="16384" /> <security mode="TransportWithMessageCredential"> <transport clientCredentialType="None" proxyCredentialType="None" realm="" /> <message clientCredentialType="UserName" algorithmSuite="Default" /> </security> </binding> </basicHttpBinding> I think that basically what I have to do is configure WCF to use UserName client credentials in the request and Certificate client credentials in the response. I don't know how to do this though. I'm new at WCF, so I'm sorry if this is a bit of a dumb question. I've been trying to Google solutions, but there seem to be so many different ways to configure WCF that I'm getting overwhelmed. Thanks in advance!

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• Problem with room/screen/menu controller in python game: old rooms are not removed from memory

  - by Jordan Magnuson

  I'm literally banging my head against a wall here (as in, yes, physically, at my current location, I am damaging my cranium). Basically, I've got a Python/Pygame game with some typical game "rooms", or "screens." EG title screen, high scores screen, and the actual game room. Something bad is happening when I switch between rooms: the old room (and its various items) are not removed from memory, or from my event listener. Not only that, but every time I go back to a certain room, my number of event listeners increases, as well as the RAM being consumed! (So if I go back and forth between the title screen and the "game room", for instance, the number of event listeners and the memory usage just keep going up and up. The main issue is that all the event listeners start to add up and really drain the CPU. I'm new to Python, and don't know if I'm doing something obviously wrong here, or what. I will love you so much if you can help me with this! Below is the relevant source code. Complete source code at http://www.necessarygames.com/my_games/betraveled/betraveled_src0328.zip MAIN.PY class RoomController(object): """Controls which room is currently active (eg Title Screen)""" def __init__(self, screen, ev_manager): self.room = None self.screen = screen self.ev_manager = ev_manager self.ev_manager.register_listener(self) self.room = self.set_room(config.room) def set_room(self, room_const): #Unregister old room from ev_manager if self.room: self.room.ev_manager.unregister_listener(self.room) self.room = None #Set new room based on const if room_const == config.TITLE_SCREEN: return rooms.TitleScreen(self.screen, self.ev_manager) elif room_const == config.GAME_MODE_ROOM: return rooms.GameModeRoom(self.screen, self.ev_manager) elif room_const == config.GAME_ROOM: return rooms.GameRoom(self.screen, self.ev_manager) elif room_const == config.HIGH_SCORES_ROOM: return rooms.HighScoresRoom(self.screen, self.ev_manager) def notify(self, event): if isinstance(event, ChangeRoomRequest): if event.game_mode: config.game_mode = event.game_mode self.room = self.set_room(event.new_room) #Run game def main(): pygame.init() screen = pygame.display.set_mode(config.screen_size) ev_manager = EventManager() spinner = CPUSpinnerController(ev_manager) room_controller = RoomController(screen, ev_manager) pygame_event_controller = PyGameEventController(ev_manager) spinner.run() EVENT_MANAGER.PY class EventManager: #This object is responsible for coordinating most communication #between the Model, View, and Controller. def __init__(self): from weakref import WeakKeyDictionary self.last_listeners = {} self.listeners = WeakKeyDictionary() self.eventQueue= [] self.gui_app = None #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def register_listener(self, listener): self.listeners[listener] = 1 #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def unregister_listener(self, listener): if listener in self.listeners: del self.listeners[listener] #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def clear(self): del self.listeners[:] #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def post(self, event): # if isinstance(event, MouseButtonLeftEvent): # debug(event.name) #NOTE: copying the list like this before iterating over it, EVERY tick, is highly inefficient, #but currently has to be done because of how new listeners are added to the queue while it is running #(eg when popping cards from a deck). Should be changed. See: http://dr0id.homepage.bluewin.ch/pygame_tutorial08.html #and search for "Watch the iteration" print 'Number of listeners: ' + str(len(self.listeners)) for listener in list(self.listeners): #NOTE: If the weakref has died, it will be #automatically removed, so we don't have #to worry about it. listener.notify(event) def notify(self, event): pass #------------------------------------------------------------------------------ class PyGameEventController: """...""" def __init__(self, ev_manager): self.ev_manager = ev_manager self.ev_manager.register_listener(self) self.input_freeze = False #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def notify(self, incoming_event): if isinstance(incoming_event, UserInputFreeze): self.input_freeze = True elif isinstance(incoming_event, UserInputUnFreeze): self.input_freeze = False elif isinstance(incoming_event, TickEvent) or isinstance(incoming_event, BoardCreationTick): #Share some time with other processes, so we don't hog the cpu pygame.time.wait(5) #Handle Pygame Events for event in pygame.event.get(): #If this event manager has an associated PGU GUI app, notify it of the event if self.ev_manager.gui_app: self.ev_manager.gui_app.event(event) #Standard event handling for everything else ev = None if event.type == QUIT: ev = QuitEvent() elif event.type == pygame.MOUSEBUTTONDOWN and not self.input_freeze: if event.button == 1: #Button 1 pos = pygame.mouse.get_pos() ev = MouseButtonLeftEvent(pos) elif event.type == pygame.MOUSEBUTTONDOWN and not self.input_freeze: if event.button == 2: #Button 2 pos = pygame.mouse.get_pos() ev = MouseButtonRightEvent(pos) elif event.type == pygame.MOUSEBUTTONUP and not self.input_freeze: if event.button == 2: #Button 2 Release pos = pygame.mouse.get_pos() ev = MouseButtonRightReleaseEvent(pos) elif event.type == pygame.MOUSEMOTION: pos = pygame.mouse.get_pos() ev = MouseMoveEvent(pos) #Post event to event manager if ev: self.ev_manager.post(ev) # elif isinstance(event, BoardCreationTick): # #Share some time with other processes, so we don't hog the cpu # pygame.time.wait(5) # # #If this event manager has an associated PGU GUI app, notify it of the event # if self.ev_manager.gui_app: # self.ev_manager.gui_app.event(event) #------------------------------------------------------------------------------ class CPUSpinnerController: def __init__(self, ev_manager): self.ev_manager = ev_manager self.ev_manager.register_listener(self) self.clock = pygame.time.Clock() self.cumu_time = 0 self.keep_going = True #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def run(self): if not self.keep_going: raise Exception('dead spinner') while self.keep_going: time_passed = self.clock.tick() fps = self.clock.get_fps() self.cumu_time += time_passed self.ev_manager.post(TickEvent(time_passed, fps)) if self.cumu_time >= 1000: self.cumu_time = 0 self.ev_manager.post(SecondEvent(fps=fps)) pygame.quit() #---------------------------------------------------------------------- def notify(self, event): if isinstance(event, QuitEvent): #this will stop the while loop from running self.keep_going = False EXAMPLE CLASS USING EVENT MANAGER class Timer(object): def __init__(self, ev_manager, time_left): self.ev_manager = ev_manager self.ev_manager.register_listener(self) self.time_left = time_left self.paused = False def __repr__(self): return str(self.time_left) def pause(self): self.paused = True def unpause(self): self.paused = False def notify(self, event): #Pause Event if isinstance(event, Pause): self.pause() #Unpause Event elif isinstance(event, Unpause): self.unpause() #Second Event elif isinstance(event, SecondEvent): if not self.paused: self.time_left -= 1

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• "Randomly" occurring errors...

  - by ClarkeyBoy

  Hi, My website has a setup whereby when the application starts a module called SiteContent is "created". This runs a clearup function which basically deletes any irrelevant data from the database, in case any has been left in there from previously run functions. The module has instances of Manager classes - namely RangeManager, CollectionManager, DesignManager. There are others but I will just use these as an example. Each Manager class contains an array of items - items may be of type Range, Collection or Design, whichever one is relevant. Data for each range is then read into an instance of Range, Collection or Design. I know this is basically duplicating data - not very efficient but its my final year project at the moment so I can always change it to use Linq or something similar later, when I am not pressured by the one month deadline. I have a form which, on clicking the Save button, saves data by calling SiteContent.RangeManager.Create(vars) or SiteContent.RangeManager.Update(Range As Range, vars) (or the equivalent for other manager classes, whichever one happens to be relevant). These functions call a stored procedure to insert or update in the relevant table. Classes Range, Collection and Design all have attributes such as Name, Description, Display and several others. When the Create or Update function is called, the Manager loops through all the other items to check if an item with the same name already exists. The Update function ensures that it does not compare the item being updated to itself. A custom exception (ItemAlreadyExistsException) is thrown if another item with the same name is found. For some weird reason, if I go into a Range, Collection or Design in edit mode, change something and try to update it, it occasionally doesnt update the item. When I say occasionally I mean every 3 - 4 page loads, sometimes more. I see absolutely no pattern in when or why it occurs. I have a try-catch statement which catches ItemAlreadyExistsException, and outputs "An item with this name already exists" when caught. Occasionally it will output this; other times it will not. Does anyone have any idea why this could happen? Maybe a mistake which someone has made and solved before? I used to have regular expressions in place that the names were compared to - I believe it was [a-zA-Z]{1, 100} (between 1 and 100 lower- or upper-case characters). For some reason the customer who I am developing the site for used to get errors saying its not in the correct format. Yet he could try the same text 5 minutes later and it would work fine. I am thinking this could well be the same problem, since both problems occur at random. Many thanks in advance. Regards, Richard Clarke Edit: After much time spent narrowing down the code, I have decided to wait till my brother, who has been a programmer for at least 8 years more than I have, to come down over Easter and get him to have a look at it. If he cant solve it then I will zip the files up and put them somewhere for people to access and have a go at. I narrowed it down literally to the minimum number of files possible, and it still occurs. It seems to be about every 10th time. Having said that, I force the manager classes to refresh every 10 page loads or 5 minutes (whichever one is sooner). I may look into this - this could be causing a problem. Basically each Manager contains an array of an object. This array is populated using data from the database. The Update function takes an instance of the item and the new values to be set for the object. If it happens to be a page load where the array is reset (ie the data is loaded freshly from the database) then the object instance with the same ID wont be the same instance as the one being passed in. This explains the fact that it throws an ItemAlreadyExistsException now and then. It all makes sense now the more I think about it. If I were to pass in the ID of the object to be altered, rather than the object itself, then it should work perfectly. I will answer the question if I solve it..

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• Getting template metaprogramming compile-time constants at runtime

  - by GMan - Save the Unicorns

  Background Consider the following: template <unsigned N> struct Fibonacci { enum { value = Fibonacci<N-1>::value + Fibonacci<N-2>::value }; }; template <> struct Fibonacci<1> { enum { value = 1 }; }; template <> struct Fibonacci<0> { enum { value = 0 }; }; This is a common example and we can get the value of a Fibonacci number as a compile-time constant: int main(void) { std::cout << "Fibonacci(15) = "; std::cout << Fibonacci<15>::value; std::cout << std::endl; } But you obviously cannot get the value at runtime: int main(void) { std::srand(static_cast<unsigned>(std::time(0))); // ensure the table exists up to a certain size // (even though the rest of the code won't work) static const unsigned fibbMax = 20; Fibonacci<fibbMax>::value; // get index into sequence unsigned fibb = std::rand() % fibbMax; std::cout << "Fibonacci(" << fibb << ") = "; std::cout << Fibonacci<fibb>::value; std::cout << std::endl; } Because fibb is not a compile-time constant. Question So my question is: What is the best way to peek into this table at run-time? The most obvious solution (and "solution" should be taken lightly), is to have a large switch statement: unsigned fibonacci(unsigned index) { switch (index) { case 0: return Fibonacci<0>::value; case 1: return Fibonacci<1>::value; case 2: return Fibonacci<2>::value; . . . case 20: return Fibonacci<20>::value; default: return fibonacci(index - 1) + fibonacci(index - 2); } } int main(void) { std::srand(static_cast<unsigned>(std::time(0))); static const unsigned fibbMax = 20; // get index into sequence unsigned fibb = std::rand() % fibbMax; std::cout << "Fibonacci(" << fibb << ") = "; std::cout << fibonacci(fibb); std::cout << std::endl; } But now the size of the table is very hard coded and it wouldn't be easy to expand it to say, 40. The only one I came up with that has a similiar method of query is this: template <int TableSize = 40> class FibonacciTable { public: enum { max = TableSize }; static unsigned get(unsigned index) { if (index == TableSize) { return Fibonacci<TableSize>::value; } else { // too far, pass downwards return FibonacciTable<TableSize - 1>::get(index); } } }; template <> class FibonacciTable<0> { public: enum { max = 0 }; static unsigned get(unsigned) { // doesn't matter, no where else to go. // must be 0, or the original value was // not in table return 0; } }; int main(void) { std::srand(static_cast<unsigned>(std::time(0))); // get index into sequence unsigned fibb = std::rand() % FibonacciTable<>::max; std::cout << "Fibonacci(" << fibb << ") = "; std::cout << FibonacciTable<>::get(fibb); std::cout << std::endl; } Which seems to work great. The only two problems I see are: Potentially large call stack, since calculating Fibonacci<2 requires we go through TableMax all the way to 2, and: If the value is outside of the table, it returns zero as opposed to calculating it. So is there something I am missing? It seems there should be a better way to pick out these values at runtime. A template metaprogramming version of a switch statement perhaps, that generates a switch statement up to a certain number? Thanks in advance.

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• Variable in one query is getting into another query in view

  - by Jason Shultz

  I have two foreach statements. The variable from one one is somehow getting into another and i'm not sure how to fix it. Here's my controller: // Categories Page Code function categories($id) { $this->load->model('Business_model'); $data['businessList'] = $this->Business_model->categoryPageList($id); $data['catList'] = $this->Business_model->categoryList(); $data['featured'] = $this->Business_model->frontPageList(); $data['user_id'] = $this->tank_auth->get_user_id(); $data['username'] = $this->tank_auth->get_username(); $data['page_title'] = 'Welcome To Jerome - Largest Ghost Town in America'; $data['page'] = 'category_view'; // pass the actual view to use as a parameter $this->load->view('container',$data); } What happens is categories will only show the businesses in a certain category. The businesses are pulled from the database using the categoryPageList($id) function. Here is that function: function categoryPageList($id) { $this->db->select('b.id, b.busname, b.busowner, b.webaddress, p.thumb, v.title, c.catname, s.specname, p.thumb, c.id'); $this->db->from ('business AS b'); $this->db->where('b.category', $id); $this->db->join('photos AS p', 'p.busid = b.id', 'left'); $this->db->join('video AS v', 'v.busid = b.id', 'left'); $this->db->join('specials AS s', 's.busid = b.id', 'left'); $this->db->join('category As c', 'b.category = c.id', 'left'); $this->db->group_by("b.id"); return $this->db->get(); } And here is the view: <h2>Welcome to Jerome, Arizona</h2> <p>Choose the Category of Business you are interested in:<br/> <?php foreach ($catList->result() as $row): ?> <a href="/site/categories/<?=$row->id?>"><?=$row->catname?></a>, &nbsp; <?php endforeach; ?></p> <table id="businessTable" class="tablesorter"> <thead><tr><th>Business Name</th><th>Business Owner</th><th>Web</th><th>Photos</th><th>Videos</th><th>Specials</th></tr></thead> <?php if(count($businessList) > 0) : foreach ($businessList->result() as $crow): ?> <tr> <td><a href="/site/business/<?=$crow->id?>"><?=$crow->busname?></a></td> <td><?=$crow->busowner?></td> <td><a href="<?=$crow->webaddress?>">Visit Site</a></td> <td> <?php if(isset($crow->thumb)):?> yes <?php else:?> no <?php endif?> </td> <td> <?php if(isset($crow->title)):?> yes <?php else:?> no <?php endif?> </td> <td> <?php if(isset($crow->specname)):?> yes <?php else:?> no <?php endif?> </td> </tr> <?php endforeach; ?> <?php else : ?> <td colspan="4"><p>No Category Selected</p></td> <?php endif; ?> </table> The problem occurs here. <?=$crow->id?> should be showing the row id from the business table. Instead, it's showing the row ID of the category table. so, if i'm viewing /site/categories/6 <?=$crow->id?> will show 6 when it should be showing 10 (the row ID of the only business in that category at this time. How can I fix this?

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