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• Ingredient Substitutes while Baking

  - by Rekha

  In our normal cooking, we substitute the vegetables for the gravies we prepare. When we start baking, we look for a good recipe. At least one or two ingredient will be missing. We do not know where to substitute what to bring same output. So we finally drop the plan of baking. Again after a month, we get the interest in baking. Again one or two lack of ingredient and that’s it. We keep on doing this for months. When I was going through the cooking blogs, I came across a site with the Ingredient Substitutes for Baking: (*) is to indicate that this substitution is ideal from personal experience. Flour Substitutes ( For 1 cup of Flour) All Purpose Flour 1/2 cup white cake flour plus 1/2 cup whole wheat flour 1 cup self-rising flour (omit using salt and baking powder if the recipe calls for it since self raising flour has it already) 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons cake flour 1/2 cup (75 grams) whole wheat flour 7/8 cup (130 grams) rice flour (starch) (do not replace all of the flour with the rice flour) 7/8 cup whole wheat Bread Flour 1 cup all purpose flour 1 cup all purpose flour plus 1 teaspoon wheat gluten (*) Cake Flour Place 2 tbsp cornstarch in 1 cup and fill the rest up with All Purpose flour (*) 1 cup all purpose flour minus 2 tablespoons Pastry flour Place 2 tbsp cornstarch in 1 cup and fill the rest up with All Purpose flour Equal parts of All purpose flour plus cake flour (*) Self-rising Flour 1½ teaspoons of baking powder plus ½ teaspoon of salt plus 1 cup of all-purpose flour. Cornstarch (1 tbsp) 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour 1 tablespoon arrowroot 4 teaspoons quick-cooking tapioca 1 tablespoon potato starch or rice starch or flour Tapioca (1 tbsp) 1 – 1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour Cornmeal (stone ground) polenta OR corn flour (gives baked goods a lighter texture) if using cornmeal for breading,crush corn chips in a blender until they have the consistency of cornmeal. maize meal Corn grits Sweeteners ( for Every 1 cup ) * * (HV) denotes Healthy Version for low fat or fat free substitution in Baking Light Brown Sugar 2 tablespoons molasses plus 1 cup of white sugar Dark Brown Sugar 3 tablespoons molasses plus 1 cup of white sugar Confectioner’s/Powdered Sugar Process 1 cup sugar plus 1 tablespoon cornstarch Corn Syrup 1 cup sugar plus 1/4 cup water 1 cup Golden Syrup 1 cup honey (may be little sweeter) 1 cup molasses Golden Syrup Combine two parts light corn syrup plus one part molasses 1/2 cup honey plus 1/2 cup corn syrup 1 cup maple syrup 1 cup corn syrup Honey 1- 1/4 cups sugar plus 1/4 cup water 3/4 cup maple syrup plus 1/2 cup granulated sugar 3/4 cup corn syrup plus 1/2 cup granulated sugar 3/4 cup light molasses plus 1/2 cup granulated white sugar 1 1/4 cups granulated white or brown sugar plus 1/4 cup additional liquid in recipe plus 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar Maple Syrup 1 cup honey,thinned with water or fruit juice like apple 3/4 cup corn syrup plus 1/4 cup butter 1 cup Brown Rice Syrup 1 cup Brown sugar (in case of cereals) 1 cup light molasses (on pancakes, cereals etc) 1 cup granulated sugar for every 3/4 cup of maple syrup and increase liquid in the recipe by 3 tbsp for every cup of sugar.If baking soda is used, decrease the amount by 1/4 teaspoon per cup of sugar substituted, since sugar is less acidic than maple syrup Molasses 1 cup honey 1 cup dark corn syrup 1 cup maple syrup 3/4 cup brown sugar warmed and dissolved in 1/4 cup of liquid ( use this if taste of molasses is important in the baked good) Cocoa Powder (Natural, Unsweetened) 3 tablespoons (20 grams) Dutch-processed cocoa plus 1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar, lemon juice or white vinegar 1 ounce (30 grams) unsweetened chocolate (reduce fat in recipe by 1 tablespoon) 3 tablespoons (20 grams) carob powder Semisweet baking chocolate (1 oz) 1 oz unsweetened baking chocolate plus 1 Tbsp sugar Unsweetened baking chocolate (1 oz ) 3 Tbsp baking cocoa plus 1 Tbsp vegetable oil or melted shortening or margarine Semisweet chocolate chips (1 cup) 6 oz semisweet baking chocolate, chopped (Alternatively) For 1 cup of Semi sweet chocolate chips you can use : 6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder, 7 tablespoons sugar ,1/4 cup fat (butter or oil) Leaveners and Diary * * (HV) denotes Healthy Version for low fat or fat free substitution in Baking Compressed Yeast (1 cake) 1 envelope or 2 teaspoons active dry yeast 1 packet (1/4 ounce) Active Dry yeast 1 cake fresh compressed yeast 1 tablespoon fast-rising active yeast Baking Powder (1 tsp) 1/3 teaspoon baking soda plus 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar 1/2 teaspoon baking soda plus 1/2 cup buttermilk or plain yogurt 1/4 teaspoon baking soda plus 1/3 cup molasses. When using the substitutions that include liquid, reduce other liquid in recipe accordingly Baking Soda(1 tsp) 3 tsp Baking Powder ( and reduce the acidic ingredients in the recipe. Ex Instead of buttermilk add milk) 1 tsp potassium bicarbonate Ideal substitution – 2 tsp Baking powder and omit salt in recipe Cream of tartar (1 tsp) 1 teaspoon white vinegar 1 tsp lemon juice Notes from What’s Cooking America – If cream of tartar is used along with baking soda in a cake or cookie recipe, omit both and use baking powder instead. If it calls for baking soda and cream of tarter, just use baking powder.Normally, when cream of tartar is used in a cookie, it is used together with baking soda. The two of them combined work like double-acting baking powder. When substituting for cream of tartar, you must also substitute for the baking soda. If your recipe calls for baking soda and cream of tarter, just use baking powder. One teaspoon baking powder is equivalent to 1/4 teaspoon baking soda plus 5/8 teaspoon cream of tartar. If there is additional baking soda that does not fit into the equation, simply add it to the batter. Buttermilk (1 cup) 1 tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar (white or cider) plus enough milk to make 1 cup (let stand 5-10 minutes) 1 cup plain or low fat yogurt 1 cup sour cream 1 cup water plus 1/4 cup buttermilk powder 1 cup milk plus 1 1/2 – 1 3/4 teaspoons cream of tartar Plain Yogurt (1 cup) 1 cup sour cream 1 cup buttermilk 1 cup crème fraiche 1 cup heavy whipping cream (35% butterfat) plus 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice Whole Milk (1 cup) 1 cup fat free milk plus 1 tbsp unsaturated Oil like canola (HV) 1 cup low fat milk (HV) Heavy Cream (1 cup) 3/4 cup milk plus 1/3 cup melted butter.(whipping wont work) Sour Cream (1 cup) (pls refer also Substitutes for Fats in Baking below) 7/8 cup buttermilk or sour milk plus 3 tablespoons butter. 1 cup thickened yogurt plus 1 teaspoon baking soda. 3/4 cup sour milk plus 1/3 cup butter. 3/4 cup buttermilk plus 1/3 cup butter. Cooked sauces: 1 cup yogurt plus 1 tablespoon flour plus 2 teaspoons water. Cooked sauces: 1 cup evaporated milk plus 1 tablespoon vinegar or lemon juice. Let stand 5 minutes to thicken. Dips: 1 cup yogurt (drain through a cheesecloth-lined sieve for 30 minutes in the refrigerator for a thicker texture). Dips: 1 cup cottage cheese plus 1/4 cup yogurt or buttermilk, briefly whirled in a blender. Dips: 6 ounces cream cheese plus 3 tablespoons milk,briefly whirled in a blender. Lower fat: 1 cup low-fat cottage cheese plus 1 tablespoon lemon juice plus 2 tablespoons skim milk, whipped until smooth in a blender. Lower fat: 1 can chilled evaporated milk whipped with 1 teaspoon lemon juice. 1 cup plain yogurt plus 1 tablespoon cornstarch 1 cup plain nonfat yogurt Substitutes for Fats in Baking * * (HV) denoted Healthy Version for low fat or fat free substitution in Baking Butter (1 cup) 1 cup trans-free vegetable shortening 3/4 cups of vegetable oil (example. Canola oil) Fruit purees (example- applesauce, pureed prunes, baby-food fruits). Add it along with some vegetable oil and reduce any other sweeteners needed in the recipe since fruit purees are already sweet. 1 cup polyunsaturated margarine (HV) 3/4 cup polyunsaturated oil like safflower oil (HV) 1 cup mild olive oil (not extra virgin)(HV) Note: Butter creates the flakiness and the richness which an oil/purees cant provide. If you don’t want to compromise that much to taste, replace half the butter with the substitutions. Shortening(1 cup) 1 cup polyunsaturated margarine like Earth Balance or Smart Balance(HV) 1 cup + 2tbsp Butter ( better tasting than shortening but more expensive and has cholesterol and a higher level of saturated fat; makes cookies less crunchy, bread crusts more crispy) 1 cup + 2 tbsp Margarine (better tasting than shortening but more expensive; makes cookies less crunchy, bread crusts tougher) 1 Cup – 2tbsp Lard (Has cholesterol and a higher level of saturated fat) Oil equal amount of apple sauce stiffly beaten egg whites into batter equal parts mashed banana equal parts yogurt prune puree grated raw zucchini or seeds removed if cooked. Works well in quick breads/muffins/coffee cakes and does not alter taste pumpkin puree (if the recipe can handle the taste change) Low fat cottage cheese (use only half of the required fat in the recipe). Can give rubbery texture to the end result Silken Tofu – (use only half of the required fat in the recipe). Can give rubbery texture to the end result Equal parts of fruit juice Note: Fruit purees can alter the taste of the final product is used in large quantities. Cream Cheese (1 cup) 4 tbsps. margarine plus 1 cup low-fat cottage cheese – blended. Add few teaspoons of fat-free milk if needed (HV) Heavy Cream (1 cup) 1 cup evaporated skim milk (or full fat milk) 1/2 cup low fat Yogurt plus 1/2 low fat Cottage Cheese (HV) 1/2 cup Yogurt plus 1/2 Cottage Cheese Sour Cream (1 cup) 1 cup plain yogurt (HV) 3/4 cup buttermilk or plain yogurt plus 1/3 cup melted butter 1 cup crème fraiche 1 tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar plus enough whole milk to fill 1 cup (let stand 5-10 minutes) 1/2 cup low-fat cottage cheese plus 1/2 cup low-fat or nonfat yogurt (HV) 1 cup fat-free sour cream (HV) Note: How to Make Maple Syrup Substitute at home For 1 Cup Maple Syrup 1/2 cup granulated sugar 1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed 1 cup boiling water 1 teaspoon butter 1 teaspoon maple extract or vanilla extract Method In a heavy saucepan, place the granulated sugar and keep stirring until it melts and turns slightly brown. Alternatively in another pan, place brown sugar and water and bring to a boil without stirring. Now mix both the sugars and simmer in low heat until they come together as one thick syrup. Remove from heat, add butter and the extract. Use this in place of maple syrup. Store it in a fridge in an air tight container. Even though this was posted in their site long back, I found it helpful. So posting it for you. via chefinyou . cc image credit: flickr/zetrules

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• MSCC: Scripting - Administrator's­ toolbox of magic...

  Finally, we made it to have our April meetup - in May. The most obvious explanation is the increased amount of open source and IT activities that either the MSCC, the Linux User Group of Mauritius (LUGM), or the University of Mauritius Student's Computer Club is organising. It's absolutely incredible to see the recent hype of events here on the island. And I'm loving it! Unfortunately, we also had to deal with arranging for a location this time. It was kind of an odyssey as my requests (and phone calls) haven't been answered, even though I tried it several times - well, kind of disappointing and I have to look into that for future gatherings. In my opinion, it is essential that two parameters of a community meeting are fixed as early as possible: Location, and Date and time You can't just change one or both on the very last minute. Well, this time we had to do it due to unforeseen reasons, and I apologise to any MSCC member which couldn't make it to our April meetup. Okay, lesson learned but now back to the actual meetup report ... Shortly after the meeting I placed the following statement as my first impression: "Spontaneous and improvised :) No, seriously, Ish and Dan had well prepared presentations on shell scripting, mainly focused towards Bourne Again Shell (bash), and the pros and cons of scripting versus actually writing something in a decent programming language. I thought that I could cut myself out of the equation but the demand for information about PowerShell was higher than expected..." Well, it turned out that the interest in Windows PowerShell was high, as I even got a couple of questions on it via social media networks during the evening. I also like to mention that the number of attendees went back to what I would call a "standard" number of participation. This time there were 12 craftsmen, but again a good number of First Timers. Reactions of other attendees Here are some impressions and feedback from our participants: "Enjoyed the bash and powershell (linux / windows) presentations ..." -- Nadim on event comments "He [Daniel] also showed us some syntax loopholes in Bash that could leave someone with bad code." -- Ish on MSCC – Let's talk about Scripting   Glad to see a couple of first time attendees, especially students from the university itself. Some details on the presentations MSCC: First time visit at the University of Mauritius - Phase II Engineering Tower, room 2.9 Gimme some love ... bash and other shells Ish gave a great introduction into shell scripting as he spoke about existing shell environments and a little bit about their history. Furthermore, he talked about various built-in commands, the use of coreutils, the ability to daisy-chain multiple commands using pipes, the importance of the standard I/O streams and their file descriptors in advanced scripting techniques. Combined with a couple of sample statements in the Linux terminal on Ubuntu 14.04 machine it was a solid presentation. Have a closer look at his slides - published on his blog on MSCC – Let's talk about Scripting. Oddities of scripting After the brief introduction into bash it was Daniel's turn to highlight a good number of oddities when working with shell scripts. First of all, it should be clear that scripting is not supposed for any kind of implementations in terms of software but simply to automate administrative procedures and to simplify routine jobs on a system. One of the cool oddities that he mentioned is that everything (!) in a shell is represented by strings; there are no other types like integer, float, date-time, etc. that you'd like to use in a full-fledged programming language. Let's have a look at his sample:  more to come... What's the output? As a conclusion, Daniel suggests that shell scripting should be limited but not restricted to automatic repetitive command stacks and batch jobs, startup wrapper for applications in order to set up the execution environment, and other not too sophisticated jobs. But as soon as it might involve a little bit more logic or you might rely on performance it's better to write an application in Ruby, Python, or Perl (among others of course). This is also enables the possibility to test your code properly. MSCC: Ish talking about Bourne Again Shell (bash) and shell scripting to automate regular tasks MSCC: Daniel gives an overview about the pros and cons of shell scripting versus programming MSCC: PowerShell as your scripting solution on Windows operating systems The path of the Enlightened is long ... and tough. Honestly, even though PowerShell was mentioned without any further details on the meetup's agenda, I didn't expect that there would be demand to give a presentation on Microsoft PowerShell after all. I already took this topic out of the announcement but the audience wanted to have some information. Okay, then let's see what I could do - improvised style. While my machine booted and got hooked up to the projector, I started to talk about the beginnings of PowerShell from back in 2006, and its predecessors MS DOS and Command Prompt. A throwback in history... always good for young people. As usual, Microsoft didn't get it at that time. Instead of listening to their client's needs and demands they ignored the feasibility to administrate Windows server farms without any UI tools. PowerShell is actually a result of this, and seeing that shell scripting is a common, reliable and fast way in an administrator's toolbox for decades, Microsoft had to adapt from their Microsoft Management Console (MMC) to a broader approach. It's not like shell scripting was something new; it is in daily use by alternative operating systems like AIX, HP UX, Solaris, and last but not least Linux. Most interestingly, Microsoft is very good at renovating existing architectures, and over the years PowerShell not only replaced their own combination of Command Prompt and Scripting Hosts (VBScript and CScript) but really turned into a challenging competitor on the market. The shell is easy to extend with cmdlets, and open to other Microsoft products like SQL Server, SharePoint, as well as Third-party software applications. Similar to MMC PowerShell also offers the ability to administer other machine remotely - only without a graphical user interface and therefore it's easier to automate and schedule regular tasks. Following is a sample of a PowerShell script file (extension .ps1): $strComputer = "." $colItems = get-wmiobject -class Win32_BIOS -namespace root\CIMV2 -comp $strComputer foreach ($objItem in $colItems) {write-host "BIOS Characteristics: " $objItem.BiosCharacteristicswrite-host "BIOS Version: " $objItem.BIOSVersionwrite-host "Build Number: " $objItem.BuildNumberwrite-host "Caption: " $objItem.Captionwrite-host "Code Set: " $objItem.CodeSetwrite-host "Current Language: " $objItem.CurrentLanguagewrite-host "Description: " $objItem.Descriptionwrite-host "Identification Code: " $objItem.IdentificationCodewrite-host "Installable Languages: " $objItem.InstallableLanguageswrite-host "Installation Date: " $objItem.InstallDatewrite-host "Language Edition: " $objItem.LanguageEditionwrite-host "List Of Languages: " $objItem.ListOfLanguageswrite-host "Manufacturer: " $objItem.Manufacturerwrite-host "Name: " $objItem.Namewrite-host "Other Target Operating System: " $objItem.OtherTargetOSwrite-host "Primary BIOS: " $objItem.PrimaryBIOSwrite-host "Release Date: " $objItem.ReleaseDatewrite-host "Serial Number: " $objItem.SerialNumberwrite-host "SMBIOS BIOS Version: " $objItem.SMBIOSBIOSVersionwrite-host "SMBIOS Major Version: " $objItem.SMBIOSMajorVersionwrite-host "SMBIOS Minor Version: " $objItem.SMBIOSMinorVersionwrite-host "SMBIOS Present: " $objItem.SMBIOSPresentwrite-host "Software Element ID: " $objItem.SoftwareElementIDwrite-host "Software Element State: " $objItem.SoftwareElementStatewrite-host "Status: " $objItem.Statuswrite-host "Target Operating System: " $objItem.TargetOperatingSystemwrite-host "Version: " $objItem.Versionwrite-host} Which gives you information about your BIOS and Windows OS. Then change the computer name to another one on your network (NetBIOS based) and run the script again. There lots of samples and tutorials at the Microsoft Script Center, and I would advise you to pay a visit over there if you are more interested in PowerShell. The Script Center provides the download links, too. Upcoming Events What are the upcoming events here in Mauritius? So far, we have the following ones (incomplete list as usual) in chronological order: Hacking Defence (14. May 2014) WebCup Maurice (7. & 8. June 2014) Developers Conference (TBA ~ July 2014) Linuxfest 2014 (TBA ~ November 2014) Hopefully, there will be more announcements during the next couple of weeks and months. If you know about any other event, like a bootcamp, a code challenge or hackathon here in Mauritius, please drop me a note in the comment section below this article. Thanks! My resume of the day Spontaneous and improvised :) The new location at the University of Mauritius turned out very well, there is plenty of space, and it could be a good choice for future meetings. Especially, having the ability to get more and more students into our IT community sounds like a great opportunity. Later during the day, I got some promising mails from Nadim regarding future sessions at the local branch of the Middlesex University. Well, we will see in the future... But for now this will be on hold until approximately October when students resume their regular studies. Anyway, it was a good experience at the university, and thanks again to the UoM Student's Computer Club that made the necessary arrangements for the MSCC!

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• howto only tunnel specific hosts route through openvpn client on tomato

  - by kcome

  I am relatively newbie in networking world although I did coding and know some sysadmin background for a long time. and here I'm only one step from my destination. The whole picture is : at home I use one LinkSys E3000 as the gateway(don't know yet if this is it's name), wireless AP and no other routing/switching devices. It serves 1 PC and 1 Mac with LAN, 1 Mac Mini + 1 iPad + 2 smartphones with WIFI. My goal is use an openvpn client on the E3000 (with tomato firmware) and make my iPad and smartphone's all WiFi traffic through it, and other devices route remain the same non-openvpn route. So far I'm able to connect openvpn client on E3000 to an openvpn server, tunnel all my devices' all traffic through that openvpn connection. What's left is howto selectively route by source IP (at least in my guessing) to the tunnel while don't bother others. I had learned some 'iptables' and 'route' in past few days however without much luck, so here comes my question. Here are some info which will help you get the structure. ifconfig -a output, some useless lines striped, and in the web interface C0:C1:C0:1A:E0:28 is WAN, C0:C1:C0:1A:E0:27 is LAN, C0:C1:C0:1A:E0:29 is 2.4G wifi AP, C0:C1:C0:1A:E0:2A is 5G wifi AP. root@router:/tmp/home/root# ifconfig -a br0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr C0:C1:C0:1A:E0:27 inet addr:192.168.1.1 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr C0:C1:C0:1A:E0:27 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr C0:C1:C0:1A:E0:29 UP BROADCAST RUNNING ALLMULTI MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 eth2 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr C0:C1:C0:1A:E0:2A UP BROADCAST RUNNING ALLMULTI MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host ppp0 Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol inet addr:172.200.1.43 P-t-P:172.200.0.1 Mask:255.255.255.255 UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1480 Metric:1 vlan1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr C0:C1:C0:1A:E0:27 UP BROADCAST RUNNING ALLMULTI MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 vlan2 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr C0:C1:C0:1A:E0:28 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 wl0.1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr C0:C1:C0:1A:E0:29 BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 brctl show output root@router:/tmp/home/root# brctl show bridge name bridge id STP enabled interfaces br0 8000.c0c1c01ae027 no vlan1 eth1 eth2 before openvpn route-up script root@router:/tmp/home/root# route -n Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 172.200.0.1 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.255 UH 0 0 0 ppp0 192.168.1.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 br0 127.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo 0.0.0.0 172.200.0.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 ppp0 openvpn server push PUSH: Received control message: 'PUSH_REPLY,redirect-gateway,dhcp-option DNS 8.8.8.8,route 172.20.0.1,topology net30,ping 10,ping-restart 120,ifconfig 172.20.0.6 172.20.0.5' openvpn's stock route-up script Apr 24 14:52:06 router daemon.notice openvpn[1768]: /sbin/ifconfig tun11 172.20.0.6 pointopoint 172.20.0.5 mtu 1500 Apr 24 14:52:08 router daemon.notice openvpn[1768]: /sbin/route add -net 72.14.177.29 netmask 255.255.255.255 gw 172.200.0.1 Apr 24 14:52:08 router daemon.notice openvpn[1768]: /sbin/route add -net 0.0.0.0 netmask 128.0.0.0 gw 172.20.0.5 Apr 24 14:52:08 router daemon.notice openvpn[1768]: /sbin/route add -net 128.0.0.0 netmask 128.0.0.0 gw 172.20.0.5 Apr 24 14:52:08 router daemon.notice openvpn[1768]: /sbin/route add -net 172.20.0.1 netmask 255.255.255.255 gw 172.20.0.5 route after openvpn root@router:/tmp/home/root# route -n Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 172.20.0.5 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.255 UH 0 0 0 tun11 72.14.177.29 172.200.0.1 255.255.255.255 UGH 0 0 0 ppp0 172.200.0.1 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.255 UH 0 0 0 ppp0 172.20.0.1 172.20.0.5 255.255.255.255 UGH 0 0 0 tun11 192.168.1.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 br0 127.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo 0.0.0.0 172.20.0.5 128.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 tun11 128.0.0.0 172.20.0.5 128.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 tun11 0.0.0.0 172.200.0.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 ppp0 something I had noticed and tried: * on the web interface of openvpn client there is an option "Create NAT on tunnel", if i check this, there is the following script (probably executed after openvpn connection established) root@router:/tmp/home/root# cat /tmp/etc/openvpn/fw/client1-fw.sh #!/bin/sh iptables -I INPUT -i tun11 -j ACCEPT iptables -I FORWARD -i tun11 -j ACCEPT iptables -t nat -I POSTROUTING -s 192.168.1.0/255.255.255.0 -o tun11 -j MASQUERADE if i uncheck this option, the last line will not appear. Then I guess probably the my issue will be solved by iptables and NAT related commands, I just haven't got enough knowledge to figure them out. I tried run iptables -t nat -I POSTROUTING -s 192.168.1.6 -o tun11 -j MASQUERADE manually after openvpn connected (192.168.1.6 is the ip address of my iPad), then my iPad get internet with openvpn tunnel, however all other devices can't reach internet. in case if needed, here is the iptables about NAT root@router:/tmp/home/root# iptables -t nat -L -n Chain PREROUTING (policy ACCEPT) target prot opt source destination DROP all -- 0.0.0.0/0 192.168.1.0/24 WANPREROUTING all -- 0.0.0.0/0 172.200.1.43 upnp all -- 0.0.0.0/0 172.200.1.43 Chain POSTROUTING (policy ACCEPT) target prot opt source destination MASQUERADE all -- 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 SNAT all -- 192.168.1.0/24 192.168.1.0/24 to:192.168.1.1 Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT) target prot opt source destination Chain WANPREROUTING (1 references) target prot opt source destination DNAT icmp -- 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 to:192.168.1.1 Chain upnp (1 references) target prot opt source destination DNAT udp -- 0.0.0.0/0 0.0.0.0/0 udp dpt:5353 to:192.168.1.3:5353 Thanks in advance for helping and read this so much, I hope i made every info you need to give a help :)

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• Finding a person in the forest

  - by PointsToShare

  © 2011 By: Dov Trietsch. All rights reserved finding a person in the forest or Limiting the AD result in SharePoint People Picker There are times when we need to limit the SharePoint audience of certain farms or servers or site collections to a particular audience. One of my experiences involved limiting access to US citizens, another to a particular location. Now, most of us – your humble servant included – are not Active Directory experts – but we must be able to handle the “audience restrictions” as required. So here is how it’s done in a nutshell. Important note. Not all could be done in PowerShell (at least not yet)! There are no Windows PowerShell commands to configure People Picker. The stsadm command is: stsadm -o setproperty -pn peoplepicker-searchadcustomquery -pv ADQuery –url http://somethingOrOther Note the long-hyphenated property name. Now to filling the ADQuery.   LDAP Query in a nutshell Syntax LDAP is no older than SQL and an LDAP query is actually a query against the LDAP Database. LDAP attributes are the equivalent of Database columns, so why do we have to learn a new query language? Beats me! But we must, so here it is. The syntax of an LDAP query string is made of individual statements with relational operators including: = Equal <= Lower than or equal >= Greater than or equal… and memberOf – a group membership. ! Not * Wildcard Equal and memberOf are the most commonly used. Checking for absence uses the ! – not and the * - wildcard Example: (SN=Grant) All whose last name – SurName – is Grant Example: (!(SN=Grant)) All except Grant Example: (!(SN=*)) all where there is no SurName i.e SurName is absent (probably Rappers). Example: (CN=MyGroup) Common Name is MyGroup.  Example: (GN=J*) all the Given Names that start with J (JJ, Jane, Jon, John, etc.) The cryptic SN, CN, GN, etc. are attributes and more about them later All the queries are enclosed in parentheses (Query). Complex queries are comprised of sets that are in AND or OR conditions. AND is denoted by the ampersand (&) and the OR is denoted by the vertical pipe (|). The general syntax is that of the Prefix polish notation where the operand precedes the variables. E.g +ab is the sum of a and b. In an LDAP query (&(A)(B)) will garner the objects for which both A and B are true. In an LDAP query (&(A)(B)(C)) will garner the objects for which A, B and C are true. There’s no limit to the number of conditions. In an LDAP query (|(A)(B)) will garner the objects for which either A or B are true. In an LDAP query (|(A)(B)(C)) will garner the objects for which at least one of A, B and C is true. There’s no limit to the number of conditions. More complex queries have both types of conditions and the parentheses determine the order of operations. Attributes Now let’s get into the SN, CN, GN, and other attributes of the query SN – is the SurName (last name) GN – is the Given Name (first name) CN – is the Common Name, usually GN followed by SN OU – is an Organization Unit such as division, department etc. DC – is a Domain Content in the AD forest l – lower case ‘L’ stands for location. Jerusalem anybody? Or Katmandu. UPN – User Principal Name, is usually the first part of an email address. By nature it is unique in the forest. Most systems set the UPN to be the first initial followed by the SN of the person involved. Some limit the total to 8 characters. If we have many ‘jsmith’ we have to somehow distinguish them from each other. DN – is the distinguished name – a name unique to AD forest in which it lives. Usually it’s a CN with some domain or group distinguishers. DN is important in conjunction with the memberOf relation. Groups have stricter requirement. Each group has to have a unique name - its CN and it has to be unique regardless of its place. See more below. All of the attributes are case insensitive. CN, cn, Cn, and cN are identical. objectCategory is an element that requires special consideration. AD contains many different object like computers, printers, and of course people and groups. In the queries below, we’re limiting our search to people (person). Putting it altogether Let’s get a list of all the Johns in the SPAdmin group of the Jerusalem that local domain. (&(objectCategory=person)(memberOf=cn=SPAdmin,ou=Jerusalem,dc=local)) The memberOf=cn=SPAdmin uses the cn (Common Name) of the SPAdmin group. This is how the memberOf relation is used. ‘SPAdmin’ is actually the DN of the group. Also the memberOf relation does not allow wild cards (*) in the group name. Also, you are limited to at most one ‘OU’ entry. Let’s add Marvin Minsky to the search above. |(&(objectCategory=person)(memberOf=cn=SPAdmin,ou=Jerusalem,dc=local))(CN=Marvin Minsky) Here I added the or pipeline at the beginning of the query and put the CN requirement for Minsky at the end. Note that if Marvin was already in the prior result, he’s not going to be listed twice. One last note: You may see a dryer but more complete list of attributes rules and examples in: http://www.tek-tips.com/faqs.cfm?fid=5667 And finally (thus negating the claim that my previous note was last), to the best of my knowledge there are 3 more ways to limit the audience. One is to use the peoplepicker-searchadcustomfilter property using the same ADQuery. This works only in SP1 and above. The second is to limit the search to users within this particular site collection – the property name is peoplepicker-onlysearchwithinsitecollection and the value is yes (-pv yes) And the third is –pn peoplepicker-serviceaccountdirectorypaths –pv “OU=ou1,DC=dc1…..” Again you are limited to at most one ‘OU’ phrase – no OU=ou1,OU=ou2… And now the real end. The main property discussed in this sprawling and seemingly endless monogram – peoplepicker-searchadcustomquery - is the most general way of getting the job done. Here are a few examples of command lines that worked and some that didn’t. Can you see why? C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN>stsa dm -o setproperty -url http://somethingOrOther -pn peoplepicker-searchadcustomfi lter -pv (Title=David) Operation completed successfully. C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN>stsa dm -o setproperty -url http://somethingOrOther -pn peoplepicker-searchadcustomfi lter -pv (!Title=David) Operation completed successfully. C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN>stsa dm -o setproperty -url http://somethingOrOther -pn peoplepicker-searchadcustomfi lter -pv (OU=OURealName,OU=OUMid,OU=OUTop,DC=TopDC,DC=MidDC,DC=BottomDC) Command line error. Too many OUs C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN>stsa dm -o setproperty -url http://somethingOrOther -pn peoplepicker-searchadcustomfi lter -pv (OU=OURealName) Operation completed successfully. C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN>stsa dm -o setproperty -url http://somethingOrOther -pn peoplepicker-searchadcustomfi lter -pv (DC=TopDC,DC=MidDC,DC=BottomDC) Operation completed successfully. C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\BIN>stsa dm -o setproperty -url http://somethingOrOther -pn peoplepicker-searchadcustomfi lter -pv (OU=OURealName,DC=TopDC,DC=MidDC,DC=BottomDC) Operation completed successfully.   That’s all folks!

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• Dotfuscator Deep Dive with WP7

  - by Bil Simser

  I thought I would share some experience with code obfuscation (specifically the Dotfuscator product) and Windows Phone 7 apps. These days twitter is a buzz with black hat and white operations coming out about how the marketplace is insecure and Microsoft failed, blah, blah, blah. So it’s that much more important to protect your intellectual property. You should protect it no matter what when releasing apps into the wild but more so when someone is paying for them. You want to protect the time and effort that went into your code and have some comfort that the casual hacker isn’t going to usurp your next best thing. Enter code obfuscation. Code obfuscation is one tool that can help protect your IP. Basically it goes into your compiled assemblies, rewrites things at an IL level (like renaming methods and classes and hiding logic flow) and rewrites it back so that the assembly or executable is still fully functional but prying eyes using a tool like ILDASM or Reflector can’t see what’s going on.  You can read more about code obfuscation here on Wikipedia. A word to the wise. Code obfuscation isn’t 100% secure. More so on the WP7 platform where the OS expects certain things to be as they were meant to be. So don’t expect 100% obfuscation of every class and every method and every property. It’s just not going to happen. What this does do is give you some level of protection but don’t put all your eggs in one basket and call it done. Like I said, this is just one step in the process. There are a few tools out there that provide code obfuscation and support the Windows Phone 7 platform (see links to other tools at the end of this post). One such tool is Dotfuscator from PreEmptive solutions. The thing about Dotfuscator is that they’ve struck a deal with Microsoft to provide a *free* copy of their commercial product for Windows Phone 7. The only drawback is that it only runs until March 31, 2010. However it’s a good place to start and the focus of this article. Getting Started When you fire up Dotfuscator you’re presented with a dialog to start a new project or load a previous one. We’ll start with a new project. You’re then looking at a somewhat blank screen that shows an Input tab (among others) and you’re probably wondering what to do? Click on the folder icon (first one) and browse to where your xap file is. At this point you can save the project and click on the arrow to start the process. Bam! You’re done. Right? Think again. The program did indeed run and create a new version of your xap (doing it’s thing and rewriting back your *obfuscated* assemblies) but let’s take a look at the assembly in Reflector to see the end result. Remember a xap file is really just a glorified zip file (or cab file if you prefer). When you ran Dotfuscator for the first time with the default settings you’ll see it created a new version of your xap in a folder under “My Documents” called “Dotfuscated” (you can configure the output directory in settings). Here’s the new xap file. Since a xap is just a zip, rename it to .cab or .zip or something and open it with your favorite unarchive program (I use WinRar but it doesn’t matter as long as it can unzip files). If you already have the xap file associated with your unarchive tool the rename isn’t needed. Once renamed extract the contents of the xap to your hard drive: Now you’ll have a folder with the contents of the xap file extracted: Double click or load up your assembly (WindowsPhoneDataBoundApplication1.dll in the example) in Reflector and let’s see the results: Hmm. That doesn’t look right. I can see all the methods and the code is all there for my LoadData method I wanted to protect. Product failure. Let’s return it for a refund. Hold your horses. We need to check out the settings in the program first. Remember when we loaded up our xap file. It started us on the Input tab but there was a settings tab before that. Wonder what it does? Here’s the default settings: Renaming Taking a closer look, all of the settings in Feature are disabled. WTF? Yeah, it leaves me scratching my head why an obfuscator by default doesn’t obfuscate. However it’s a simple fix to change these settings. Let’s enable Renaming as it sounds like a good start. Renaming obscures code by renaming methods and fields to names that are not understandable. Great. Run the tool again and go through the process of unzipping the updated xap and let’s take a look in Reflector again at our project. This looks a lot better. Lots of methods named a, b, c, d, etc. That’ll help slow hackers down a bit. What about our logic that we spent days weeks on? Let’s take a look at the LoadData method: What gives? We have renaming enabled but all of our code is still there. If you look through all your methods you’ll find it’s still sitting there out in the open. Control Flow Back to the settings page again. Let’s enable Control Flow now. Control Flow obfuscation synthesizes branching, conditional, and iterative constructs (such as if, for, and while) that produce valid executable logic, but yield non-deterministic semantic results when decompilation is attempted. In other words, the code runs as before, but decompilers cannot reproduce the original code. Do the dance again and let’s see the results in Reflector. Ahh, that’s better. Methods renamed *and* nobody can look at our LoadData method now. Life is good. More than Minimum This is the bare minimum to obfuscate your xap to at least a somewhat comfortable level. However I did find that while this worked in my Hello World demo, it didn’t work on one of my real world apps. I had to do some extra tweaking with that. Below are the screens that I used on one app that worked. I’m not sure what it was about the app that the approach above didn’t work with (maybe the extra assembly?) but it works and I’m happy with it. YMMV. Remember to test your obfuscated app on your device first before submitting to ensure you haven’t obfuscated the obfuscator. settings tab: rename tab: string encryption tab: premark tab: A few final notes Play with the settings and keep bumping up the bar to try to get as much obfuscation as you can. The more the better but remember you can overdo it. Always (always, always, always) deploy your obfuscated xap to your device and test it before submitting to the marketplace. I didn’t and got rejected because I had gone overboard with the obfuscation so the app wouldn’t launch at all. Not everything is going to be obfuscated. Specifically I don’t see a way to obfuscate auto properties and a few other language features. Again, if you crank the settings up you might hide these but I haven’t spent a lot of time optimizing the process. Some people might say to obfuscate your xaml using string encryption but again, test, test, test. Xaml is picky so too much obfuscation (or any) might disable your app or produce odd rendering effets. Remember, obfuscation is not 100% secure! Don’t rely on it as a sole way of protecting your assets. Other Tools Dotfuscator is one just product and isn’t the end-all be-all to obfuscation so check out others below. For example, Crypto can make it so Reflector doesn’t even recognize the app as a .NET one and won’t open it. Others can encrypt resources and Xaml markup files. Here are some other obfuscators that support the Windows Phone 7 platform. Feel free to give them a try and let people know your experience with them! Dotfuscator Windows Phone Edition Crypto Obfuscator for .NET DeepSea Obfuscation

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• The Proper Use of the VM Role in Windows Azure

  - by BuckWoody

  At the Professional Developer’s Conference (PDC) in 2010 we announced an addition to the Computational Roles in Windows Azure, called the VM Role. This new feature allows a great deal of control over the applications you write, but some have confused it with our full infrastructure offering in Windows Hyper-V. There is a proper architecture pattern for both of them. Virtualization Virtualization is the process of taking all of the hardware of a physical computer and replicating it in software alone. This means that a single computer can “host” or run several “virtual” computers. These virtual computers can run anywhere - including at a vendor’s location. Some companies refer to this as Cloud Computing since the hardware is operated and maintained elsewhere. IaaS The more detailed definition of this type of computing is called Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas) since it removes the need for you to maintain hardware at your organization. The operating system, drivers, and all the other software required to run an application are still under your control and your responsibility to license, patch, and scale. Microsoft has an offering in this space called Hyper-V, that runs on the Windows operating system. Combined with a hardware hosting vendor and the System Center software to create and deploy Virtual Machines (a process referred to as provisioning), you can create a Cloud environment with full control over all aspects of the machine, including multiple operating systems if you like. Hosting machines and provisioning them at your own buildings is sometimes called a Private Cloud, and hosting them somewhere else is often called a Public Cloud. State-ful and Stateless Programming This paradigm does not create a new, scalable way of computing. It simply moves the hardware away. The reason is that when you limit the Cloud efforts to a Virtual Machine, you are in effect limiting the computing resources to what that single system can provide. This is because much of the software developed in this environment maintains “state” - and that requires a little explanation. “State-ful programming” means that all parts of the computing environment stay connected to each other throughout a compute cycle. The system expects the memory, CPU, storage and network to remain in the same state from the beginning of the process to the end. You can think of this as a telephone conversation - you expect that the other person picks up the phone, listens to you, and talks back all in a single unit of time. In “Stateless” computing the system is designed to allow the different parts of the code to run independently of each other. You can think of this like an e-mail exchange. You compose an e-mail from your system (it has the state when you’re doing that) and then you walk away for a bit to make some coffee. A few minutes later you click the “send” button (the network has the state) and you go to a meeting. The server receives the message and stores it on a mail program’s database (the mail server has the state now) and continues working on other mail. Finally, the other party logs on to their mail client and reads the mail (the other user has the state) and responds to it and so on. These events might be separated by milliseconds or even days, but the system continues to operate. The entire process doesn’t maintain the state, each component does. This is the exact concept behind coding for Windows Azure. The stateless programming model allows amazing rates of scale, since the message (think of the e-mail) can be broken apart by multiple programs and worked on in parallel (like when the e-mail goes to hundreds of users), and only the order of re-assembling the work is important to consider. For the exact same reason, if the system makes copies of those running programs as Windows Azure does, you have built-in redundancy and recovery. It’s just built into the design. The Difference Between Infrastructure Designs and Platform Designs When you simply take a physical server running software and virtualize it either privately or publicly, you haven’t done anything to allow the code to scale or have recovery. That all has to be handled by adding more code and more Virtual Machines that have a slight lag in maintaining the running state of the system. Add more machines and you get more lag, so the scale is limited. This is the primary limitation with IaaS. It’s also not as easy to deploy these VM’s, and more importantly, you’re often charged on a longer basis to remove them. your agility in IaaS is more limited. Windows Azure is a Platform - meaning that you get objects you can code against. The code you write runs on multiple nodes with multiple copies, and it all works because of the magic of Stateless programming. you don’t worry, or even care, about what is running underneath. It could be Windows (and it is in fact a type of Windows Server), Linux, or anything else - but that' isn’t what you want to manage, monitor, maintain or license. You don’t want to deploy an operating system - you want to deploy an application. You want your code to run, and you don’t care how it does that. Another benefit to PaaS is that you can ask for hundreds or thousands of new nodes of computing power - there’s no provisioning, it just happens. And you can stop using them quicker - and the base code for your application does not have to change to make this happen. Windows Azure Roles and Their Use If you need your code to have a user interface, in Visual Studio you add a Web Role to your project, and if the code needs to do work that doesn’t involve a user interface you can add a Worker Role. They are just containers that act a certain way. I’ll provide more detail on those later. Note: That’s a general description, so it’s not entirely accurate, but it’s accurate enough for this discussion. So now we’re back to that VM Role. Because of the name, some have mistakenly thought that you can take a Virtual Machine running, say Linux, and deploy it to Windows Azure using this Role. But you can’t. That’s not what it is designed for at all. If you do need that kind of deployment, you should look into Hyper-V and System Center to create the Private or Public Infrastructure as a Service. What the VM Role is actually designed to do is to allow you to have a great deal of control over the system where your code will run. Let’s take an example. You’ve heard about Windows Azure, and Platform programming. You’re convinced it’s the right way to code. But you have a lot of things you’ve written in another way at your company. Re-writing all of your code to take advantage of Windows Azure will take a long time. Or perhaps you have a certain version of Apache Web Server that you need for your code to work. In both cases, you think you can (or already have) code the the software to be “Stateless”, you just need more control over the place where the code runs. That’s the place where a VM Role makes sense. Recap Virtualizing servers alone has limitations of scale, availability and recovery. Microsoft’s offering in this area is Hyper-V and System Center, not the VM Role. The VM Role is still used for running Stateless code, just like the Web and Worker Roles, with the exception that it allows you more control over the environment of where that code runs.

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• Code Camp 2011 – Summary

  - by hajan

  Waiting whole twelve months to come this year’s Code Camp 2011 event was something which all Microsoft technologies (and even non-Microsoft techs.) developers were doing in the past year. Last year’s success was enough big to be heard and to influence everything around our developer community and beyond. Code Camp 2011 was nothing else but a invincible success which will remain in our memory for a long time from now. Darko Milevski (president of MKDOT.NET UG and SharePoint MVP) said something interesting at the event keynote that up to now we were looking at the past by saying what we did… now we will focus on the future and how to develop our community more and more in the future days, weeks, months and I hope so for many years… Even though it was held only two days ago (26th of November 2011), I already feel the nostalgia for everything that happened there and for the excellent time we have spent all together. ORGANIZED BY ENTHUSIASTS AND EXPERTS Code Camp 2011 was organized by number of community enthusiasts and experts who have unselfishly contributed with all their free time to make the best of this event. The event was organized by a known community group called MKDOT.NET User Group, name of a user group which is known not only in Macedonia, but also in many countries abroad. Organization mainly consists of software developers, technical leaders, team leaders in several known companies in Macedonia, as well as Microsoft MVPs. SPEAKERS There were 24 speakers at five parallel tracks. At Code Camp 2011 we had two groups of speakers: Professional Experts in various technologies and Student Speakers. The new interesting thing here is the Student Speakers, which draw attention a lot, especially to other students who were interested to see what their colleagues are going to speak about and how do they use Microsoft technologies in different coding scenarios and practices, in different topics. From the rest of the professional speakers, there were 7 Microsoft MVPs: Two ASP.NET/IIS MVPs, Two C# MVPs, and One MVP in SharePoint, SQL Server and Exchange Server. I must say that besides the MVP Speakers, who definitely did a great job as always… there were other excellent speakers as well, which were speaking on various technologies, such as: Web Development, Windows Phone Development, XNA, Windows 8, Games Development, Entity Framework, Event-driven programming, SOLID, SQLCLR, T-SQL, e.t.c. SESSIONS There were 25 sessions mainly all related to Microsoft technologies, but ranging from Windows 8, WP7, ASP.NET till Games Development, XNA and Event-driven programming. Sessions were going in five parallel tracks named as Red, Yellow, Green, Blue and Student track. Five presentations in each track, each with level 300 or 400. More info MY SESSION (ASP.NET MVC Best Practices) I must say that from the big number of speaking engagements I have had, this was one of my best performances and definitely I have set new records of attendees at my sessions and probably overall. I spoke on topic ASP.NET MVC Best Practices, where I have shown tips, tricks, guidelines and best practices on what to use and what to avoid by developing with one of the best web development frameworks nowadays, ASP.NET MVC. I had approximately 350+ attendees, the hall was full so that there was no room for staying at feet. Besides .NET developers, there were a lot of other technology oriented developers, who has also received the presentation very well and I really hope I gave them reason to think about ASP.NET as one of the best options for web development nowadays (if you ask me, it’s the best one ;-)). I have included 10 tips in using ASP.NET MVC each of them followed by a demo. Besides these 10 tips, I have briefly introduced the concept of ASP.NET MVC for those that haven’t been working with the framework and at the end some bonus tips. I must say there was lot of laugh for some funny sentences I have stated, like “If you code ASP.NET MVC, girls will love you more” – same goes for girls, only replace girls with boys :). [LINK TO SESSION WILL GO HERE, ONCE SESSIONS ARE AVAILABLE ON MK CODECAMP WEBSITE] VOLUNTEERS Without strong organization, such events wouldn’t be able to gather hundreds of attendees at one place and still stay perfectly organized to the smallest details, without dedicated organization and volunteers. I would like to dedicate this space in my blog to them and to say one big THANK YOU for supporting us before the event and during the whole day in the event. With such young and dedicated volunteers, we couldn’t achieve anything but great results. THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR YOUR CONTRIBUTION! NETWORKING One of the main reasons why we do such events is to gather all professionals in one place. Networking is what everyone wants because through this way of networking, we can meet incredible people in one place. It is amazing feeling to share your knowledge with others and exchange thoughts on various topics. Meet and talk to interesting people. I have had very special moments with many attendees especially after my presentation. Special Thank You to all of them who come to meet me in person, whether to ask a question, say congrats for my session or simply meet me and just smile :)… everything counts! Thank You! TWITTER During the event, twitter was one of the most useful event-wide communication tool where everyone could tweet with hash tag #mkcodecamp or #mkdotnet and say what he/she wants to say about the current state and happenings at that moment… In my next blog post I will list the top craziest tweets that were posted at this event… FUTURE OF MKDOT.NET Having such strong community around MKDOT.NET, the future seems very bright. The initial plans are to have sub-groups in several technologies, however all these sub-groups will belong to the MKDOT.NET UG which will be, somehow, the HEAD of these sub-groups. We are doing this to provide better divisions by technologies and organize ourselves better since our community is very big, around 500 members in MKDOT.NET.We will have five sub-groups:- Web User Group (Lead:Hajan Selmani - me)- Mobile User Group (Lead: Filip Kerazovski)- Visual C# User Group (Lead: Vekoslav Stefanovski)- SharePoint User Group (Lead: Darko Milevski)- Dynamics User Group (Lead: Vladimir Senih) SUMMARY Online registered attendees: ~1.200 Event attendees: ~800 Number of members in organization: 40+ Organized by: MKDOT.NET User Group Number of tracks: 5 Number of speakers: 24 Number of sessions: 25 Event official website: http://codecamp.mkdot.net Total number of sponsors: 20 Platinum Sponsors: Microsoft, INETA, Telerik Place held: FON University City and Country: Skopje, Macedonia THANK YOU FOR BEING PART OF THE BEST EVENT IN MACEDONIA, CODE CAMP 2011. Regards, Hajan

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• Looking Back at MIX10

  - by WeigeltRo

  It’s the sad truth of my life that even though I’m fascinated by airplanes and flight in general since my childhood days, my body doesn’t like flying. Even the ridiculously short flights inside Germany are taking their toll on me each time. Now combine this with sitting in the cramped space of economy class for many hours on a transatlantic flight from Germany to Las Vegas and back, and factor in some heavy dose of jet lag (especially on my way eastwards), and you get an idea why after coming back home I had this question on my mind: Was it really worth it to attend MIX10? This of course is a question that will also be asked by my boss at Comma Soft (for other reasons, obviously), who decided to send me and my colleague Jens Schaller, to the MIX10 conference. (A note to my German readers: An dieser Stelle der Hinweis, dass Comma Soft noch Silverlight-Entwickler und/oder UI-Designer für den Standort Bonn sucht – aussagekräftige Bewerbungen bitte an [email protected]) Too keep things short: My answer is yes. Before I’ll go into detail, let me ask the heretical questions whether tech conferences in general still make sense. There was a time, where actually being at a tech conference gave you a head-start in regard to learning about new technologies. Nowadays this is no longer true, where every bit of information and every detail is immediately twittered, blogged and whatevered to death. In the case of MIX10 you even can download the video-taped sessions shortly after. So: Does visiting a conference still make sense? It depends on what you expect from a conference. It should be clear to everybody that you’ll neither get exclusive information, nor receive training in a small group. What a conference does offer that sitting in front of your computer does not can be summarized as follows: Focus Being away from work and home will help you to focus on the presented information. Of course there are always the poor guys who are haunted by their work (with mails and short text messages reporting the latest showstopper problem), but in general being out of your office makes a huge difference. Inspiration With the focus comes the emotional involvement. I find it much easier to absorb information if I feel that certain vibe when sitting in a session. This still means that I have put work into reviewing the information later, but it’s a better starting point. And all the impressions collected at a (good) conference combined lead to a higher motivation – be it by the buzz (“this is gonna be sooo cool!”) or by the fear to fall behind (“man, we’ll have work on this, or else…”). People At a conference it’s pretty easy to get into contact with other people during breakfast, lunch and other breaks. This is a good opportunity to get a feel for what other development teams are doing (on a very general level of course, nobody will tell you about their secret formula) and what they are thinking about specific technologies. So MIX10 did offer focus, inspiration and people, but that would have meant nothing without valuable content. When I (being a frontend developer with a strong interest in UI/UX) planned my visit to MIX10, I made the decision to focus on the "soft" topics of design, interaction and user experience. I figured that I would be bombarded with all the technical details about Silverlight 4 anyway in the weeks and months to come. Actually, I would have liked to catch a few technical sessions, but the agenda wasn’t exactly in favor of people interested in any kind of Silverlight and UI/UX/Design topics. That’s one of my few complaints about the conference – I would have liked one more day and/or more sessions per day. Overall, the quality of the workshops and sessions was pretty high. In fact, looking back at my collection of conferences I’ve visited in the past I’d say that MIX10 ranks somewhere near the top spot. Here’s an overview of the workshops/sessions I attended (I’ll leave out the keynotes): Day 0 (Workshops on Sunday) Design Fundamentals for Developers Robby Ingebretsen is the man! Great workshop in three parts with the perfect mix of examples, well-structured definition of terminology and the right dose of humor. Robby was part of the WPF team before founding his own company so he not only has a strong interest in design (and the skillz!) but also the technical background.   Design Tools and Techniques Originally announced to be held by Arturo Toledo, the Rosso brothers from ArcheType filled in for the first two parts, and Corrina Black had a pretty general part about the Windows Phone UI. The first two thirds were a mixed bag; the two guys definitely knew what they were talking about, and the demos were great, but the talk lacked the preparation and polish of a truly great presentation. Corrina was not allowed to go into too much detail before the keynote on Monday, but the session was still very interesting as it showed how much thought went into the Windows Phone UI (and there’s always a lot to learn when people talk about their thought process). Day 1 (Monday) Designing Rich Experiences for Data-Centric Applications I wonder whether there was ever a test-run for this session, but what Ken Azuma and Yoshihiro Saito delivered in the first 15 minutes of a 30-minutes-session made me walk out. A commercial for a product (just great: a video showing a SharePoint plug-in in an all-Japanese UI) combined with the most generic blah blah one could imagine. EPIC FAIL.   Great User Experiences: Seamlessly Blending Technology & Design I switched to this session from the one above but I guess I missed the interesting part – what I did catch was what looked like a “look at the cool stuff we did” without being helpful. Or maybe I was just in a bad mood after the other session.   The Art, Technology and Science of Reading This talk by Kevin Larson was very interesting, but was more a presentation of what Microsoft is doing in research (pretty impressive) and in the end lacked a bit the helpful advice one could have hoped for.   10 Ways to Attack a Design Problem and Come Out Winning Robby Ingebretsen again, and again a great mix of theory and practice. The clean and simple, yet effective, UI of the reader app resulted in a simultaneous “wow” of Jens and me. If you’d watch only one session video, this should be it. Microsoft has to bring Robby back next year! Day 2 (Tuesday) Touch in Public: Multi-touch Interaction Design for Kiosks & Architectural Experiences Very interesting session by Jason Brush, a great inspiration with many details to look out for in the examples. Exactly what I was hoping for – and then some!   Designing Bing: Heart and Science How hard can it be to design the UI for a search engine? An input field and a list of results, that should be it, right? Well, not so fast! The talk by Paul Ray showed the many iterations to finally get it right (up to the choice of a specific blue for the links). And yes, I want an eye-tracking device to play around with!   The Elephant in the Room When Nishant Kothary presented a long list of what his session was not about, I told to myself (not having the description text present) “Am I in the wrong talk? Should I leave?”. Boy, was I wrong. A great talk about human factors in the process of designing stuff.   An Hour with Bill Buxton Having seen Bill Buxton’s presentation in the keynote, I just had to see this man again – even though I didn’t know what to expect. Being more or less unplanned and intended to be more of a conversation, the session didn’t provide a wealth of immediately useful information. Nevertheless Bill Buxton was impressive with his huge knowledge of seemingly everything. But this could/should have been a session some when in the evening and not in parallel to at least two other interesting talks. Day 3 (Wednesday) Design the Ordinary, Like the Fixie This session by DL Byron and Kevin Tamura started really well and brought across the message to keep things simple. But towards the end the talk lost some of its steam. And, as a member of the audience pointed out, they kind of ignored their own advice when they used a fancy presentation software other then PowerPoint that sometimes got in the way of showing things.   Developing Natural User Interfaces Speaking of alternative presentation software, Joshua Blake definitely had the most remarkable alternative to PowerPoint, a self-written program called NaturalShow that was controlled using multi-touch on a touch screen. Not a PowerPoint-killer, but impressive nevertheless. The (excellent) talk itself was kind of eye-opening in regard to what “multi-touch support” on various platforms (WPF, Silverlight, Windows Phone) actually means.   Treat your Content Right The talk by Tiffani Jones Brown wasn’t even on my planned schedule, but somehow I ended up in that session – and it was great. And even for people who don’t necessarily have to write content for websites, some points made by Tiffani are valid in many places, notably wherever you put texts with more than a single word into your UI. Creating Effective Info Viz in Microsoft Silverlight The last session of MIX10 I attended was kind of disappointing. At first things were very promising, with Matthias Shapiro giving a brief but well-structured introduction to info graphics and interactive visualizations. Then the live-coding began and while the result was interesting, too much time was spend on wrestling to get the code working. Ending earlier than planned, the talk was a bit light on actual content, but at least it included a nice list of resources. Conclusion It could be felt all across MIX10, UIs will take a huge leap forward; in fact, there are enough examples that have already. People who both have the technical know-how and at least a basic understanding of design (“literacy” as Bill Buxton called it) are in high demand. The concept of the MIX conference and initiatives like design.toolbox shows that Microsoft understands very well that frontend developers have to acquire new knowledge besides knowing how to hack code and putting buttons on a form. There are extremely exciting times before us, with lots of opportunity for those who are eager to develop their skills, that is for sure.

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• WCF – interchangeable data-contract types

  - by nmarun

  In a WSDL based environment, unlike a CLR-world, we pass around the ‘state’ of an object and not the reference of an object. Well firstly, what does ‘state’ mean and does this also mean that we can send a struct where a class is expected (or vice-versa) as long as their ‘state’ is one and the same? Let’s see. So I have an operation contract defined as below: 1: [ServiceContract] 2: public interface ILearnWcfServiceExtend : ILearnWcfService 3: { 4: [OperationContract] 5: Employee SaveEmployee(Employee employee); 6: } 7:  8: [ServiceBehavior] 9: public class LearnWcfService : ILearnWcfServiceExtend 10: { 11: public Employee SaveEmployee(Employee employee) 12: { 13: employee.EmployeeId = 123; 14: return employee; 15: } 16: } Quite simplistic operation there (which translates to ‘absolutely no business value’). Now, the data contract Employee mentioned above is a struct. 1: public struct Employee 2: { 3: public int EmployeeId { get; set; } 4:  5: public string FName { get; set; } 6: } After compilation and consumption of this service, my proxy (in the Reference.cs file) looks like below (I’ve ignored the rest of the details just to avoid unwanted confusion): 1: public partial struct Employee : System.Runtime.Serialization.IExtensibleDataObject, System.ComponentModel.INotifyPropertyChanged I call the service with the code below: 1: private static void CallWcfService() 2: { 3: Employee employee = new Employee { FName = "A" }; 4: Console.WriteLine("IsValueType: {0}", employee.GetType().IsValueType); 5: Console.WriteLine("IsClass: {0}", employee.GetType().IsClass); 6: Console.WriteLine("Before calling the service: {0} - {1}", employee.EmployeeId, employee.FName); 7: employee = LearnWcfServiceClient.SaveEmployee(employee); 8: Console.WriteLine("Return from the service: {0} - {1}", employee.EmployeeId, employee.FName); 9: } The output is: I now change my Employee type from a struct to a class in the proxy class and run the application: 1: public partial class Employee : System.Runtime.Serialization.IExtensibleDataObject, System.ComponentModel.INotifyPropertyChanged { The output this time is: The state of an object implies towards its composition, the properties and the values of these properties and not based on whether it is a reference type (class) or a value type (struct). And as shown above, we’re actually passing an object by its state and not by reference. Continuing on the same topic of ‘type-interchangeability’, WCF treats two data contracts as equivalent if they have the same ‘wire-representation’. We can do so using the DataContract and DataMember attributes’ Name property. 1: [DataContract] 2: public struct Person 3: { 4: [DataMember] 5: public int Id { get; set; } 6:  7: [DataMember] 8: public string FirstName { get; set; } 9: } 10:  11: [DataContract(Name="Person")] 12: public class Employee 13: { 14: [DataMember(Name = "Id")] 15: public int EmployeeId { get; set; } 16:  17: [DataMember(Name="FirstName")] 18: public string FName { get; set; } 19: } I’ve created two data contracts with the exact same wire-representation. Just remember that the names and the types of data members need to match to be considered equivalent. The question then arises as to what gets generated in the proxy class. Despite us declaring two data contracts (Person and Employee), only one gets emitted – Person. This is because we’re saying that the Employee type has the same wire-representation as the Person type. Also that the signature of the SaveEmployee operation gets changed on the proxy side: 1: [System.CodeDom.Compiler.GeneratedCodeAttribute("System.ServiceModel", "4.0.0.0")] 2: [System.ServiceModel.ServiceContractAttribute(ConfigurationName="ServiceProxy.ILearnWcfServiceExtend")] 3: public interface ILearnWcfServiceExtend 4: { 5: [System.ServiceModel.OperationContractAttribute(Action="http://tempuri.org/ILearnWcfServiceExtend/SaveEmployee", ReplyAction="http://tempuri.org/ILearnWcfServiceExtend/SaveEmployeeResponse")] 6: ClientApplication.ServiceProxy.Person SaveEmployee(ClientApplication.ServiceProxy.Person employee); 7: } But, on the service side, the SaveEmployee still accepts and returns an Employee data contract. 1: [ServiceBehavior] 2: public class LearnWcfService : ILearnWcfServiceExtend 3: { 4: public Employee SaveEmployee(Employee employee) 5: { 6: employee.EmployeeId = 123; 7: return employee; 8: } 9: } Despite all these changes, our output remains the same as the last one: This is type-interchangeability at work! Here’s one more thing to ponder about. Our Person type is a struct and Employee type is a class. Then how is it that the Person type got emitted as a ‘class’ in the proxy? It’s worth mentioning that WSDL describes a type called Employee and does not say whether it is a class or a struct (see the SOAP message below): 1: <soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" 2: xmlns:tem="http://tempuri.org/" 3: xmlns:ser="http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07/ServiceApplication"> 4: <soapenv:Header/> 5: <soapenv:Body> 6: <tem:SaveEmployee> 7: <!--Optional:--> 8: <tem:employee> 9: <!--Optional:--> 10: <ser:EmployeeId>?</ser:EmployeeId> 11: <!--Optional:--> 12: <ser:FName>?</ser:FName> 13: </tem:employee> 14: </tem:SaveEmployee> 15: </soapenv:Body> 16: </soapenv:Envelope> There are some differences between how ‘Add Service Reference’ and the svcutil.exe generate the proxy class, but turns out both do some kind of reflection and determine the type of the data contract and emit the code accordingly. So since the Employee type is a class, the proxy ‘Person’ type gets generated as a class. In fact, reflecting on svcutil.exe application, you’ll see that there are a couple of places wherein a flag actually determines a type as a class or a struct. One example is in the ExportISerializableDataContract method in the System.Runtime.Serialization.CodeExporter class. Seems like these flags have a say in deciding whether the type gets emitted as a struct or a class. This behavior is different if you use the WSDL tool though. WSDL tool does not do any kind of reflection of the data contract / serialized type, it emits the type as a class by default. You can check this using the two command lines below:   Note to self: Remember ‘state’ and type-interchangeability when traversing through the WSDL planet!

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• Making Sense of ASP.NET Paths

  - by Renso

  Making Sense of ASP.NET Paths ASP.Net includes quite a plethora of properties to retrieve path information about the current request, control and application. There's a ton of information available about paths on the Request object, some of it appearing to overlap and some of it buried several levels down, and it can be confusing to find just the right path that you are looking for. To keep things straight I thought it a good idea to summarize the path options along with descriptions and example paths. I wrote a post about this a long time ago in 2004 and I find myself frequently going back to that page to quickly figure out which path I’m looking for in processing the current URL. Apparently a lot of people must be doing the same, because the original post is the second most visited even to this date on this blog to the tune of nearly 500 hits per day. So, I decided to update and expand a bit on the original post with a little more information and clarification based on the original comments. Request Object Paths Available Here's a list of the Path related properties on the Request object (and the Page object). Assume a path like http://www.west-wind.com/webstore/admin/paths.aspx for the paths below where webstore is the name of the virtual. Request Property Description and Value ApplicationPath Returns the web root-relative logical path to the virtual root of this app. /webstore/ PhysicalApplicationPath Returns local file system path of the virtual root for this app. c:\inetpub\wwwroot\webstore PhysicalPath Returns the local file system path to the current script or path. c:\inetpub\wwwroot\webstore\admin\paths.aspx Path FilePath CurrentExecutionFilePath All of these return the full root relative logical path to the script page including path and scriptname. CurrentExcecutionFilePath will return the ‘current’ request path after a Transfer/Execute call while FilePath will always return the original request’s path. /webstore/admin/paths.aspx AppRelativeCurrentExecutionFilePath Returns an ASP.NET root relative virtual path to the script or path for the current request. If in  a Transfer/Execute call the transferred Path is returned. ~/admin/paths.aspx PathInfo Returns any extra path following the script name. If no extra path is provided returns the root-relative path (returns text in red below). string.Empty if no PathInfo is available. /webstore/admin/paths.aspx/ExtraPathInfo RawUrl Returns the full root relative URL including querystring and extra path as a string. /webstore/admin/paths.aspx?sku=wwhelp40 Url Returns a fully qualified URL including querystring and extra path. Note this is a Uri instance rather than string. http://www.west-wind.com/webstore/admin/paths.aspx?sku=wwhelp40 UrlReferrer The fully qualified URL of the page that sent the request. This is also a Uri instance and this value is null if the page was directly accessed by typing into the address bar or using an HttpClient based Referrer client Http header. http://www.west-wind.com/webstore/default.aspx?Info Control.TemplateSourceDirectory Returns the logical path to the folder of the page, master or user control on which it is called. This is useful if you need to know the path only to a Page or control from within the control. For non-file controls this returns the Page path. /webstore/admin/ As you can see there’s a ton of information available there for each of the three common path formats: Physical Path is an OS type path that points to a path or file on disk. Logical Path is a Web path that is relative to the Web server’s root. It includes the virtual plus the application relative path. ~/ (Root-relative) Path is an ASP.NET specific path that includes ~/ to indicate the virtual root Web path. ASP.NET can convert virtual paths into either logical paths using Control.ResolveUrl(), or physical paths using Server.MapPath(). Root relative paths are useful for specifying portable URLs that don’t rely on relative directory structures and very useful from within control or component code. You should be able to get any necessary format from ASP.NET from just about any path or script using these mechanisms. ~/ Root Relative Paths and ResolveUrl() and ResolveClientUrl() ASP.NET supports root-relative virtual path syntax in most of its URL properties in Web Forms. So you can easily specify a root relative path in a control rather than a location relative path: <asp:Image runat="server" ID="imgHelp" ImageUrl="~/images/help.gif" /> ASP.NET internally resolves this URL by using ResolveUrl("~/images/help.gif") to arrive at the root-relative URL of /webstore/images/help.gif which uses the Request.ApplicationPath as the basepath to replace the ~. By convention any custom Web controls also should use ResolveUrl() on URL properties to provide the same functionality. In your own code you can use Page.ResolveUrl() or Control.ResolveUrl() to accomplish the same thing: string imgPath = this.ResolveUrl("~/images/help.gif"); imgHelp.ImageUrl = imgPath; Unfortunately ResolveUrl() is limited to WebForm pages, so if you’re in an HttpHandler or Module it’s not available. ASP.NET Mvc also has it’s own more generic version of ResolveUrl in Url.Decode: <script src="<%= Url.Content("~/scripts/new.js") %>" type="text/javascript"></script> which is part of the UrlHelper class. In ASP.NET MVC the above sort of syntax is actually even more crucial than in WebForms due to the fact that views are not referencing specific pages but rather are often path based which can lead to various variations on how a particular view is referenced. In a Module or Handler code Control.ResolveUrl() unfortunately is not available which in retrospect seems like an odd design choice – URL resolution really should happen on a Request basis not as part of the Page framework. Luckily you can also rely on the static VirtualPathUtility class: string path = VirtualPathUtility.ToAbsolute("~/admin/paths.aspx"); VirtualPathUtility also many other quite useful methods for dealing with paths and converting between the various kinds of paths supported. One thing to watch out for is that ToAbsolute() will throw an exception if a query string is provided and doesn’t work on fully qualified URLs. I wrote about this topic with a custom solution that works fully qualified URLs and query strings here (check comments for some interesting discussions too). Similar to ResolveUrl() is ResolveClientUrl() which creates a fully qualified HTTP path that includes the protocol and domain name. It’s rare that this full resolution is needed but can be useful in some scenarios. Mapping Virtual Paths to Physical Paths with Server.MapPath() If you need to map root relative or current folder relative URLs to physical URLs or you can use HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath(). Inside of a Page you can do the following: string physicalPath = Server.MapPath("~/scripts/ww.jquery.js")); MapPath is pretty flexible and it understands both ASP.NET style virtual paths as well as plain relative paths, so the following also works. string physicalPath = Server.MapPath("scripts/silverlight.js"); as well as dot relative syntax: string physicalPath = Server.MapPath("../scripts/jquery.js"); Once you have the physical path you can perform standard System.IO Path and File operations on the file. Remember with physical paths and IO or copy operations you need to make sure you have permissions to access files and folders based on the Web server user account that is active (NETWORK SERVICE, ASPNET typically). Note the Server.MapPath will not map up beyond the virtual root of the application for security reasons. Server and Host Information Between these settings you can get all the information you may need to figure out where you are at and to build new Url if necessary. If you need to build a URL completely from scratch you can get access to information about the server you are accessing: Server Variable Function and Example SERVER_NAME The of the domain or IP Address wwww.west-wind.com or 127.0.0.1 SERVER_PORT The port that the request runs under. 80 SERVER_PORT_SECURE Determines whether https: was used. 0 or 1 APPL_MD_PATH ADSI DirectoryServices path to the virtual root directory. Note that LM typically doesn’t work for ADSI access so you should replace that with LOCALHOST or the machine’s NetBios name. /LM/W3SVC/1/ROOT/webstore Request.Url and Uri Parsing If you still need more control over the current request URL or  you need to create new URLs from an existing one, the current Request.Url Uri property offers a lot of control. Using the Uri class and UriBuilder makes it easy to retrieve parts of a URL and create new URLs based on existing URL. The UriBuilder class is the preferred way to create URLs – much preferable over creating URIs via string concatenation. Uri Property Function Scheme The URL scheme or protocol prefix. http or https Port The port if specifically specified. DnsSafeHost The domain name or local host NetBios machine name www.west-wind.com or rasnote LocalPath The full path of the URL including script name and extra PathInfo. /webstore/admin/paths.aspx Query The query string if any ?id=1 The Uri class itself is great for retrieving Uri parts, but most of the properties are read only if you need to modify a URL in order to change it you can use the UriBuilder class to load up an existing URL and modify it to create a new one. Here are a few common operations I’ve needed to do to get specific URLs: Convert the Request URL to an SSL/HTTPS link For example to take the current request URL and converted  it to a secure URL can be done like this: UriBuilder build = new UriBuilder(Request.Url); build.Scheme = "https"; build.Port = -1; // don't inject portUri newUri = build.Uri; string newUrl = build.ToString(); Retrieve the fully qualified URL without a QueryString AFAIK, there’s no native routine to retrieve the current request URL without the query string. It’s easy to do with UriBuilder however: UriBuilder builder = newUriBuilder(Request.Url); builder.Query = ""; stringlogicalPathWithoutQuery = builder.ToString();

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• Developer’s Life – Attitude and Communication – They Can Cause Problems – Notes from the Field #027

  - by Pinal Dave

  [Note from Pinal]: This is a 27th episode of Notes from the Field series. The biggest challenge for anyone is to understand human nature. We human have so many things on our mind at any moment of time. There are cases when what we say is not what we mean and there are cases where what we mean we do not say. We do say and things as per our mood and our agenda in mind. Sometimes there are incidents when our attitude creates confusion in the communication and we end up creating a situation which is absolutely not warranted. In this episode of the Notes from the Field series database expert Mike Walsh explains a very crucial issue we face in our career, which is not technical but more to relate to human nature. Read on this may be the best blog post you might read in recent times. In this week’s note from the field, I’m taking a slight departure from technical knowledge and concepts explained. We’ll be back to it next week, I’m sure. Pinal wanted us to explain some of the issues we bump into and how we see some of our customers arrive at problem situations and how we have helped get them back on the right track. Often it is a technical problem we are officially solving – but in a lot of cases as a consultant, we are really helping fix some communication difficulties. This is a technical blog post and not an “advice column” in a newspaper – but the longer I am a consultant, the more years I add to my experience in technology the more I learn that the vast majority of the problems we encounter have “soft skills” included in the chain of causes for the issue we are helping overcome. This is not going to be exhaustive but I hope that sharing four pieces of advice inspired by real issues starts a process of searching for places where we can be the cause of these challenges and look at fixing them in ourselves. Or perhaps we can begin looking at resolving them in teams that we manage. I’ll share three statements that I’ve either heard, read or said and talk about some of the communication or attitude challenges highlighted by the statement. 1 – “But that’s the SAN Administrator’s responsibility…” I heard that early on in my consulting career when talking with a customer who had serious corruption and no good recent backups – potentially no good backups at all. The statement doesn’t have to be this one exactly, but the attitude here is an attitude of “my job stops here, and I don’t care about the intent or principle of why I’m here.” It’s also a situation of having the attitude that as long as there is someone else to blame, I’m fine…  You see in this case, the DBA had a suspicion that the backups were not being handled right.  They were the DBA and they knew that they had responsibility to ensure SQL backups were good to go – it’s a basic requirement of a production DBA. In my “As A DBA Where Do I start?!” presentation, I argue that is job #1 of a DBA. But in this case, the thought was that there was someone else to blame. Rather than create extra work and take on responsibility it was decided to just let it be another team’s responsibility. This failed the company, the company’s customers and no one won. As technologists – we should strive to go the extra mile. If there is a lack of clarity around roles and responsibilities and we know it – we should push to get it resolved. Especially as the DBAs who should act as the advocates of the data contained in the databases we are responsible for. 2 – “We’ve always done it this way, it’s never caused a problem before!” Complacency. I have to say that many failures I’ve been paid good money to help recover from would have not happened had it been for an attitude of complacency. If any thoughts like this have entered your mind about your situation you may be suffering from it. If, while reading this, you get this sinking feeling in your stomach about that one thing you know should be fixed but haven’t done it.. Why don’t you stop and go fix it then come back.. “We should have better backups, but we’re on a SAN so we should be fine really.” “Technically speaking that could happen, but what are the chances?” “We’ll just clean that up as a fast follow” ..and so on. In the age of tightening IT budgets, increased expectations of up time, availability and performance there is no room for complacency. Our customers and business units expect – no demand – the best. Complacency says “we will give you second best or hopefully good enough and we accept the risk and know this may hurt us later. Sometimes an organization will opt for “good enough” and I agree with the concept that at times the perfect can be the enemy of the good. But when we make those decisions in a vacuum and are not reporting them up and discussing them as an organization that is different. That is us unilaterally choosing to do something less than the best and purposefully playing a game of chance. 3 – “This device must accept interference from other devices but not create any” I’ve paraphrased this one – but it’s something the Federal Communications Commission – a federal agency in the United States that regulates electronic communication – requires of all manufacturers of any device that could cause or receive interference electronically. I blogged in depth about this here (http://www.straightpathsql.com/archives/2011/07/relationship-advice-from-the-fcc/) so I won’t go into much detail other than to say this… If we all operated more on the premise that we should do our best to not be the cause of conflict, and to be less easily offended and less upset when we perceive offense life would be easier in many areas! This doesn’t always cause the issues we are called in to help out. Not directly. But where we see it is in unhealthy relationships between the various technology teams at a client. We’ll see teams hoarding knowledge, not sharing well with others and almost working against other teams instead of working with them. If you trace these problems back far enough it often stems from someone or some group of people violating this principle from the FCC. To Sum It Up Technology problems are easy to solve. At Linchpin People we help many customers get past the toughest technological challenge – and at the end of the day it is really just a repeatable process of pattern based troubleshooting, logical thinking and starting at the beginning and carefully stepping through to the end. It’s easy at the end of the day. The tough part of what we do as consultants is the people skills. Being able to help get teams working together, being able to help teams take responsibility, to improve team to team communication? That is the difficult part, and we get to use the soft skills on every engagement. Work on professional development (http://professionaldevelopment.sqlpass.org/) and see continuing improvement here, not just with technology. I can teach just about anyone how to be an excellent DBA and performance tuner, but some of these soft skills are much more difficult to teach. If you want to get started with performance analytics and triage of virtualized SQL Servers with the help of experts, read more over at Fix Your SQL Server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: Notes from the Field, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• Life Technologies: Making Life Easier to Manage

  - by Michael Snow

  12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} When we’re thinking about customer engagement, we’re acutely aware of all the forces at play competing for our customer’s attention. Solutions that make life easier for our customers draw attention to themselves. We tend to engage more when there is a distinct benefit and we can take a deep breath and accept that there is hope in the world and everything isn’t designed to frustrate us and make our lives miserable. (sigh…) When products are designed to automate processes that were consuming hours of our time with no relief in sight, they deserve to be recognized. One of our recent Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Award Winners in the WebCenter category, Life Technologies, has recently posted a video promoting their “award winning” solution. The Oracle Innovation Awards are part of the overall Oracle Excellence awards given to customers for innovation with Oracle products. More info here. Their award nomination included this description: Life Technologies delivered the My Life Service Portal as part of a larger Digital Hub strategy. This Portal is the first of its kind in the biotechnology service providing industry. The Portal provides access to Life Technologies cloud based service monitoring system where all customer deployed instruments can be remotely monitored and proactively repaired. The portal provides alerts from these cloud based monitoring services directly to the customer and to Life Technologies Field Engineers. The Portal provides insight into the instruments and services customers purchased for the purpose of analyzing and anticipating future customer needs and creating targeted sales and service programs. This portal not only provides benefits for Life Technologies internal sales and service teams but provides customers a central place to track all pertinent instrument information including: instrument service history instrument status and previous activities instrument performance analytics planned service visits warranty/contract information discussion forums social networks for lab management and collaboration alerts and notifications on all of the above team scheduling for instrument usage promote optional reagents required to keep instruments performing From their website The Life Technologies Instruments & Services Portal Helps You Save Time and Gain Peace of Mind Introducing the new, award-winning, free online tool that enables easier management of your instrument use and care, faster response to requests for service or service quotes, and instant sharing of key instrument and service information with your colleagues. Now – this unto itself is obviously beneficial for their customers who were previously burdened with having to do all of these tasks separately, manually and inconsistently by nature. Now – all in one place and free to their customers – a portal that ties it all together. They now have built the platform to give their customers yet another reason to do business with them – Their headline on their product page says it all: “Life is now easier to manage - All your instrument use and care in one place – the no-cost, no-hassle Instruments and Services Portal.” Of course – it’s very convenient that the company name includes “Life” and now can also promote to their clients and prospects that doing business with them is easy and their sophisticated lab equipment is easy to manage. In an industry full of PhD’s – “Easy” isn’t usually the first word that comes to mind, but Life Technologies has now tied the word to their brand in a very eloquent way. Between our work lives and family or personal lives, getting any mono-focused minutes of dedicated attention has become such a rare occurrence in our current era of multi-tasking that those moments of focus are highly prized. So – when something is done really well – so well that it becomes captivating and urges sharing impulses – I take notice and dig deeper and most of the time I discover other gems not so hidden below the surface. And then I share with those I know would enjoy and understand. In the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit here that the first person I shared the videos below with was my daughter. She’s in her senior year of high school in the midst of her college search. She’s passionate about her academics and has already decided that she wants to study Neuroscience in college and like her mother will be in for the long haul to a PhD eventually. In a summer science program at Smith College 2 summers ago – she sent the family famous text to me – “I just dissected a sheep’s brain – wicked cool!” – This was followed by an equally memorable text this past summer in a research mentorship in Neuroscience at UConn – “Just sliced up some rat brain. Reminded me of a deli slicer at the supermarket… sorry I forgot to call last night…” So… needless to say – I knew I had an audience that would enjoy and understand these videos below and are now being shared among her science classmates and faculty. And evidently - so does Life Technologies! They’ve done a great job on these making them fun and something that will easily be shared among their customers social networks. They’ve created a neuro-archetypal character, “Ph.Diddy” and know that their world of clients in academics, research, and other institutions would understand and enjoy the “edutainment” value in this series of videos on their YouTube channel that pokes fun at the stereotypes while also promoting their products at the same time. They use their Facebook page for additional engagement with their clients and as another venue to promote these videos. Enjoy this one as well! More to be found here: http://www.youtube.com/lifetechnologies Stay tuned to this Oracle WebCenter blog channel. Tomorrow we'll be taking a look at another winner of the Innovation Awards, LADWP - helping to keep the citizens of Los Angeles engaged with their Water and Power provider.

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• C#: String Concatenation vs Format vs StringBuilder

  - by James Michael Hare

  I was looking through my groups’ C# coding standards the other day and there were a couple of legacy items in there that caught my eye.  They had been passed down from committee to committee so many times that no one even thought to second guess and try them for a long time.  It’s yet another example of how micro-optimizations can often get the best of us and cause us to write code that is not as maintainable as it could be for the sake of squeezing an extra ounce of performance out of our software. So the two standards in question were these, in paraphrase: Prefer StringBuilder or string.Format() to string concatenation. Prefer string.Equals() with case-insensitive option to string.ToUpper().Equals(). Now some of you may already know what my results are going to show, as these items have been compared before on many blogs, but I think it’s always worth repeating and trying these yourself.  So let’s dig in. The first test was a pretty standard one.  When concattenating strings, what is the best choice: StringBuilder, string concattenation, or string.Format()? So before we being I read in a number of iterations from the console and a length of each string to generate.  Then I generate that many random strings of the given length and an array to hold the results.  Why am I so keen to keep the results?  Because I want to be able to snapshot the memory and don’t want garbage collection to collect the strings, hence the array to keep hold of them.  I also didn’t want the random strings to be part of the allocation, so I pre-allocate them and the array up front before the snapshot.  So in the code snippets below: num – Number of iterations. strings – Array of randomly generated strings. results – Array to hold the results of the concatenation tests. timer – A System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch() instance to time code execution. start – Beginning memory size. stop – Ending memory size. after – Memory size after final GC. So first, let’s look at the concatenation loop: 1: // build num strings using concattenation. 2: for (int i = 0; i < num; i++) 3: { 4: results[i] = "This is test #" + i + " with a result of " + strings[i]; 5: } Pretty standard, right?  Next for string.Format(): 1: // build strings using string.Format() 2: for (int i = 0; i < num; i++) 3: { 4: results[i] = string.Format("This is test #{0} with a result of {1}", i, strings[i]); 5: }   Finally, StringBuilder: 1: // build strings using StringBuilder 2: for (int i = 0; i < num; i++) 3: { 4: var builder = new StringBuilder(); 5: builder.Append("This is test #"); 6: builder.Append(i); 7: builder.Append(" with a result of "); 8: builder.Append(strings[i]); 9: results[i] = builder.ToString(); 10: } So I take each of these loops, and time them by using a block like this: 1: // get the total amount of memory used, true tells it to run GC first. 2: start = System.GC.GetTotalMemory(true); 3:  4: // restart the timer 5: timer.Reset(); 6: timer.Start(); 7:  8: // *** code to time and measure goes here. *** 9:  10: // get the current amount of memory, stop the timer, then get memory after GC. 11: stop = System.GC.GetTotalMemory(false); 12: timer.Stop(); 13: other = System.GC.GetTotalMemory(true); So let’s look at what happens when I run each of these blocks through the timer and memory check at 500,000 iterations: 1: Operator + - Time: 547, Memory: 56104540/55595960 - 500000 2: string.Format() - Time: 749, Memory: 57295812/55595960 - 500000 3: StringBuilder - Time: 608, Memory: 55312888/55595960 – 500000   Egad!  string.Format brings up the rear and + triumphs, well, at least in terms of speed.  The concat burns more memory than StringBuilder but less than string.Format().  This shows two main things: StringBuilder is not always the panacea many think it is. The difference between any of the three is miniscule! The second point is extremely important!  You will often here people who will grasp at results and say, “look, operator + is 10% faster than StringBuilder so always use StringBuilder.”  Statements like this are a disservice and often misleading.  For example, if I had a good guess at what the size of the string would be, I could have preallocated my StringBuffer like so:   1: for (int i = 0; i < num; i++) 2: { 3: // pre-declare StringBuilder to have 100 char buffer. 4: var builder = new StringBuilder(100); 5: builder.Append("This is test #"); 6: builder.Append(i); 7: builder.Append(" with a result of "); 8: builder.Append(strings[i]); 9: results[i] = builder.ToString(); 10: }   Now let’s look at the times: 1: Operator + - Time: 551, Memory: 56104412/55595960 - 500000 2: string.Format() - Time: 753, Memory: 57296484/55595960 - 500000 3: StringBuilder - Time: 525, Memory: 59779156/55595960 - 500000   Whoa!  All of the sudden StringBuilder is back on top again!  But notice, it takes more memory now.  This makes perfect sense if you examine the IL behind the scenes.  Whenever you do a string concat (+) in your code, it examines the lengths of the arguments and creates a StringBuilder behind the scenes of the appropriate size for you. But even IF we know the approximate size of our StringBuilder, look how much less readable it is!  That’s why I feel you should always take into account both readability and performance.  After all, consider all these timings are over 500,000 iterations.   That’s at best  0.0004 ms difference per call which is neglidgable at best.  The key is to pick the best tool for the job.  What do I mean?  Consider these awesome words of wisdom: Concatenate (+) is best at concatenating.  StringBuilder is best when you need to building. Format is best at formatting. Totally Earth-shattering, right!  But if you consider it carefully, it actually has a lot of beauty in it’s simplicity.  Remember, there is no magic bullet.  If one of these always beat the others we’d only have one and not three choices. The fact is, the concattenation operator (+) has been optimized for speed and looks the cleanest for joining together a known set of strings in the simplest manner possible. StringBuilder, on the other hand, excels when you need to build a string of inderterminant length.  Use it in those times when you are looping till you hit a stop condition and building a result and it won’t steer you wrong. String.Format seems to be the looser from the stats, but consider which of these is more readable.  Yes, ignore the fact that you could do this with ToString() on a DateTime.  1: // build a date via concatenation 2: var date1 = (month < 10 ? string.Empty : "0") + month + '/' 3: + (day < 10 ? string.Empty : "0") + '/' + year; 4:  5: // build a date via string builder 6: var builder = new StringBuilder(10); 7: if (month < 10) builder.Append('0'); 8: builder.Append(month); 9: builder.Append('/'); 10: if (day < 10) builder.Append('0'); 11: builder.Append(day); 12: builder.Append('/'); 13: builder.Append(year); 14: var date2 = builder.ToString(); 15:  16: // build a date via string.Format 17: var date3 = string.Format("{0:00}/{1:00}/{2:0000}", month, day, year); 18:  So the strength in string.Format is that it makes constructing a formatted string easy to read.  Yes, it’s slower, but look at how much more elegant it is to do zero-padding and anything else string.Format does. So my lesson is, don’t look for the silver bullet!  Choose the best tool.  Micro-optimization almost always bites you in the end because you’re sacrificing readability for performance, which is almost exactly the wrong choice 90% of the time. I love the rules of optimization.  They’ve been stated before in many forms, but here’s how I always remember them: For Beginners: Do not optimize. For Experts: Do not optimize yet. It’s so true.  Most of the time on today’s modern hardware, a micro-second optimization at the sake of readability will net you nothing because it won’t be your bottleneck.  Code for readability, choose the best tool for the job which will usually be the most readable and maintainable as well.  Then, and only then, if you need that extra performance boost after profiling your code and exhausting all other options… then you can start to think about optimizing.

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• Career development as a Software Developer without becoming a manager.

  - by albertpascual

  I’m a developer, I like to write new exciting code everyday, my perfect day at work is a day that when I wake up, I know that I have to write some code that I haven’t done before or to use a new framework/language/platform that is unknown to me. The best days in the office is when a project is waiting for me to architect or write. In my 15 years in the development field, I had to in order to get a better salary to manage people, not just to lead developers, to actually manage people. Something that I found out when I get into a management position is that I’m not that good at managing people, and not afraid to say it. I do not enjoy that part of the job, the worse one, takes time away from what I really like. Leading developers and managing people are very different things. I do like teaching and leading developers in a project. Yet most people believe, and is true in most companies, the way to get a better salary is to be promoted to a manager position. In order to advance in your career you need to let go of the everyday writing code and become a supervisor or manager. This is the path for developers after they become senior developers. As you get older and your family grows, the only way to hit your salary requirements is to advance your career to become a manager and get that manager salary. That path is the common in most companies, the most intelligent companies out there, have learned that promoting good developers mean getting a crappy manager and losing a good resource. Now scratch everything I said, because as I previously stated, I don’t see myself going to the office everyday and just managing people until is time to go home. I like to spend hours working in some code to accomplish a task, learning new platforms and languages or patterns to existing languages. Being interrupted every 15 minutes by emails or people stopping by my office to resolve their problems, is not something I could enjoy. All the sudden riding my motorcycle to work one cold morning over the Redlands Canyon and listening to .NET Rocks podcast, Michael “Doc” Norton explaining how to take control of your development career without necessary going to the manager’s track. I know, I should not have headphones under my helmet when riding a motorcycle in California. His conversation with Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell was just confirming everything I have ever did with actually more details and assuring that there are other paths. His method was simple yet most of us, already do many of those steps, Mr. Michael “Doc” Norton believe that it pays off on the long run, that finally companies prefer to pay higher salaries to those developers, yet I would actually think that many companies do not see developers that way, this is not true for bigger companies. However I do believe the value of those developers increase and most of the time, changing companies could increase their salary instead of staying in the same one. In short without even trying to get into the shadow of Mr. Norton and without following the steps in the order; you should love to learn new technologies, and then teach them to other geeks. I personally have learn many technologies and I haven’t stop doing that, I am a professor at UCR where I teach ASP.NET and Silverlight. Mr Norton continues that after than, you want to be involve in the development community, user groups, online forums, open source projects. I personally talk to user groups, I’m very active in forums asking and answering questions as well as for those I got awarded the Microsoft MVP for ASP.NET. After you accomplish all those, you should also expose yourself for what you know and what you do not know, learning a new language will make you humble again as well as extremely happy. There is no better feeling that learning a new language or pattern in your daily job. If you love your job everyday and what you do, I really recommend you to follow Michael’s presentation that he kindly share it on the link below. His confirmation is a refreshing, knowing that my future is not behind a desk where the computer screen is on my right hand side instead of in front of me. Where I don’t have to spent the days filling up performance forms for people and the new platforms that I haven’t been using yet are just at my fingertips. Presentation here. http://www.slideshare.net/LeanDog/take-control-of-your-development-career-michael-doc-norton?from=share_email_logout3 Take Control of Your Development Career Welcome! Michael “Doc” Norton @DocOnDev http://docondev.blogspot.com/ [email protected] Recovering Post Technical I love to learn I love to teach I love to work in teams I love to write code I really love to write code What about YOU? Do you love your job? Do you love your Employer? Do you love your Boss? What do you love? What do you really love? Take Control Take Control • Get Noticed • Get Together • Get Your Mojo • Get Naked • Get Schooled Get Noticed Get Noticed Know Your Business Get Noticed Get Noticed Understand Management Get Noticed Get Noticed Do Your Existing Job Get Noticed Get Noticed Make Yourself Expendable Get Together Get Together Join a User Group Get Together Help Run a User Group Get Together Start a User Group Get Your Mojo Get Your Mojo Kata Get Your Mojo Koans Get Your Mojo Breakable Toys Get Your Mojo Open Source Get Naked Get Naked Run with Group A Get Naked Do Something Different Get Naked Own Your Mistakes Get Naked Admit You Don’t Know Get Schooled Get Schooled Choose a Mentor Get Schooled Attend Conferences Get Schooled Teach a New Subject Get Started Read These (Again) Take Control of Your Development Career Thank You! Michael “Doc” Norton @DocOnDev http://docondev.blogspot.com/ [email protected] In a short summary, I recommend any developer to check his blog and more important his presentation, I haven’t been lucky enough to watch him live, I’m looking forward the day I have the opportunity. He is giving us hope in the future of developers, when I see some of my geek friends moving to position that in short years they begin to regret, I get more unsure of my future doing what I love. I would say that now is looking at the spectrum of companies that understand and appreciate developers. There are a few there, hopefully with time code sweat shops will start disappearing and being a developer will feed a family of 4. Cheers Al tweetmeme_url = 'http://weblogs.asp.net/albertpascual/archive/2010/12/07/career-development-as-a-software-developer-without-becoming-a-manager.aspx'; tweetmeme_source = 'alpascual';

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, April 09, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, April 09, 2010New Projects(SocketCoder) Free Silverlight Voice/Video Conferencing Modules: The Goal of this project is to provide complete Open Source Voice/Video Chatting Client/Server Modules Using Silverlight techniques, this project i...AJAX Control Framework: Do PageMethods and the UpdatePanel make you feel dirty? Think making AJAX enabled custom ASP.NET controls should WAY easier than it is? Wish ASP.NE...Bluetooth Radar: WPF 4.0 Application working with The final release of 32feet.net (v2.2) to Discover Bluetooth devices, send files and more cool stuff for Bluetooth...Bomberman: Bomberman c++ Project Code Library: This is just a personal storage place for a utility library containing extension methods, new classes, and/or improvements to existing classes.DianPing.com MogileFS Client: MogileFS Client for .Net 2.0Dirty City Hearts Website: Dirty City Hearts WebsiteDocGen - SharePoint 2010 Bulk Document Loader: DocGen is a SharePoint 2010 multithreaded console application for bulk loading sample documents into SharePoint. This program generates Microsoft ...dou24: WebSite for DOUExplora: Explora es un navegador de archivos que no pretende ser un sustituto del explorador de Windows, sino un experimento de codificación que compartir c...HobbyBrew Mobile: This project is basic beer brewing software for Windows Mobile able to read HobbyBrew xml files. Developed in C# and Windows FormsjLight: Interop between Silverlight and the javascript based on jQuery. The syntax used in Silverlight is as close as posible to the jQuery syntax.johandekoning.nl samples: Sample code project which are discussed on johandekoning.nl / johandekoning.com. Most examples are / will be developed with C#Kanban: this is a agile paroject managementMETAR.NET Decoder: Project libraries used to decode airport METAR weather information into adequate data types, change them and back, create resulting METAR informati...Micro Framework: MFDeploy with Set/Get mote SKU ID: This is a modification to the Micro Framework's MFDeploy utility that lets the user set and get the mote's ID (aka SKU). It can be done via the GUI...MobySharp: MobySharp is a implementation of the Mobypicture.com API written in C#NGilead: NGilead permits you to use your NHibernate POCO (and especially the partially loaded ones) outside the .NET Virtual Machine (to Silverlight for exa...OpenIdPortableArea: OpenIdPortableArea is an MvcContrib powered Portable Area that encapsulates logic for implementing OpenId encapsulation (using DotNetOpenAuth).OrderToList Extension for IEnumerable: An extension method for IEnumerable<T> that will sort the IEnumerable based on a list of keys. Suppose you have a list of IDs {10, 5, 12} and wa...project3140.org: Code repository for project3140.org.Prometheus Backup Solution: The Prometheus Backup Solution is a free and small Backup Utility for personal use and for small businesses.Roids: an asteroids clone for Silverlight and XNA: An example of a simple game cross-compiling for both Silverlight and XNA using SilverSprite.SemanticAnalyzer: 3rd phase of Compiler Design ProjectSSRS SDK for PHP: SQL Server Reporting Service SDK for PHPWorking Memory Workout: Working Memory Workout is a working memory training game based on the N-back, a task researchers say may improve fluid intelligence. It greatly ex...Wouters Code Samples: This Project will host some of my sample projects I created. I'm a professional SharePoint/BizTalk developer so most of the provided samples will ...New Releases(SocketCoder) Free Silverlight Voice/Video Conferencing Modules: Silverlight Voice Video Chat Modules: Client/Server Silverlight Voice Video Chat ModulesAccessibilityChecker: Accessibility Checker V0.2: Accessibility Checker V0.2 - Direct url´s input functionality added - XHTML, WAI validation modules, easy to extend. (W3C and Achecker modules incl...AStar.net: AStar.net 1.1 downloads: AStar.net 1.1 Version detailsGreatly improved path finding speed and memory usage from version 1.0. Avalaible downloads:AStar.net 1.1 dll - Runtim...AutoPoco: AutoPoco 0.2: This release will bring some non-generic alternatives to configuration + some more automatic configuration options such as assembly scanningBluetooth Radar: Version 1: Basic version only with the ability to discover Bluetooth devices around you.Convert-Media PowerShell Module for Expression Encoder: Release 1.0.0.2: This is a build that incorporates the latest change sets including perform publish. No other changesDevTreks -social budgeting that improves lives and livelihoods: Social Budgeting Web Software, DevTreks alpha 3e: Alpha 3e is a general debug. It also upgrades the software's family budgeting capabilities, including the addition of a new 'Food Nutrition Input'...dV2t Enterprise Library: dV2tEntLib 1.0.0.3: dV2tEntLib 1.0.0.3EnhSim: Release v1.9.8.3: Release v1.9.8.3 Change Armour Penetration calcs to apply the "Rouncer fix" (current version displays debug info to assist users in testing that th...HouseFly controls: HouseFly controls alpha 0.9: HouseFly controls 0.9 alpha binaries (Includes HouseFly.Classes and HouseFly.Controls).Jitbit WYSWYG BBCode Editor: Release: ReleaseMicro Framework: MFDeploy with Set/Get mote SKU ID: MFDeploy with get, set mote ID: The Micro Framework 4.0 MFDeploy, modified to let the user get & set the mote IDMobySharp: MobySharp 1.0: Initial ReleaseOpenIdPortableArea: OpenIdPortableArea: OpenIdPortableArea.Release: DotNetOpenAuth.dll DotNetOpenAuth.xml MvcContrib.dll MvcContrib.xml OpenIdPortableArea.dll OpenIdPortableAre...OrderToList Extension for IEnumerable: Release 0.9b: I'm calling this 0.9 because I came up with it yesterday and there's little real word use so there's probably something that needs fixing or improv...Prometheus Backup Solution: Prometheus BETA: Actual BETA Release. Restore Functions are not available...Reusable Library: V1.0.6: A collection of reusable abstractions for enterprise application developer.Reusable Library Demo: V1.0.4: A demonstration of reusable abstractions for enterprise application developerSharePoint Labs: SPLab4005A-FRA-Level100: SPLab4005A-FRA-Level100 This SharePoint Lab will teach you the 5th best practice you should apply when writing code with the SharePoint API. Lab La...SharePoint Labs: SPLab6001A-FRA-Level200: SPLab6001A-FRA-Level200 This SharePoint Lab will teach you how to create a generic Feature Receiver within Visual Studio. Creating a Feature Receiv...SharePoint LogViewer: SharePoint LogViewer 2.0: Supports live Farm monitoring. Many bug fixes.Simple Savant: Simple Savant v0.5: Added support for custom constraint/validation logic (See Versioning and Consistency) Added support for reliable cross-domain writes (See Version...SQL Server Extended Properties Quick Editor: Release 1.6.1: Whats new in 1.6.1: Add an edit form to support long text editing. double click to open editor. Add an ORM extended properties initializer to creat...SSRS SDK for PHP: SSRS SDK for PHP: Current release includes the SSRSReport library to connect to SQL Server Reporting Services and a sample application to show the basic steps needed...Table Storage Backup & Restore for Windows Azure: Table Storage Backup 1.0.3751: Bug fix: Crash when creating a table if the existing table had not finished deleting. Bug fix: Incorrect batch URI if the storage account ended in ...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30408.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVisual Studio DSite: Audio Player (Visual C++ 2008): An audio player that can play wav files.Working Memory Workout: Working Memory Workout 1.0: Working Memory Workout is a working memory trainer based on the N-back memory task.Wouters Code Samples: XMLReceiveCBR: This is a Custom Pipeline component. It will help you create a Content Based Routing solution in combination of a WCF Requst/Response service. Gene...Xen: Graphics API for XNA: Xen 1.8: Version 1.8 (XNA 3.1) This update fixes a number of bugs in several areas of the API and introduces a large new Tutorial. [Added] L2 Spherical Ha...Most Popular ProjectsWBFS ManagerRawrMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseASP.NET Ajax LibrarySilverlight ToolkitAJAX Control ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesFacebook Developer ToolkitMost Active ProjectsnopCommerce. Open Source online shop e-commerce solution.Shweet: SharePoint 2010 Team Messaging built with PexRawrAutoPocopatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleFacebook Developer ToolkitFarseer Physics EngineNcqrs Framework - The CQRS framework for .NET

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• SQL Server Master class winner

  - by Testas

   The winner of the SQL Server MasterClass competition courtesy of the UK SQL Server User Group and SQL Server Magazine!    Steve Hindmarsh     There is still time to register for the seminar yourself at:  www.regonline.co.uk/kimtrippsql     More information about the seminar     Where: Radisson Edwardian Heathrow Hotel, London  When: Thursday 17th June 2010  This one-day MasterClass will focus on many of the top issues companies face when implementing and maintaining a SQL Server-based solution. In the case where a company has no dedicated DBA, IT managers sometimes struggle to keep the data tier performing well and the data available. This can be especially troublesome when the development team is unfamiliar with the affect application design choices have on database performance. The Microsoft SQL Server MasterClass 2010 is presented by Paul S. Randal and Kimberly L. Tripp, two of the most experienced and respected people in the SQL Server world. Together they have over 30 years combined experience working with SQL Server in the field, and on the SQL Server product team itself. This is a unique opportunity to hear them present at a UK event which will: Debunk many of the ingrained misconceptions around SQL Server's behaviour    Show you disaster recovery techniques critical to preserving your company's life-blood - the data    Explain how a common application design pattern can wreak havoc in the database Walk through the top-10 points to follow around operations and maintenance for a well-performing and available data tier! Please Note: Agenda may be subject to change  Sessions Abstracts  KEYNOTE: Bridging the Gap Between Development and Production    Applications are commonly developed with little regard for how design choices will affect performance in production. This is often because developers don't realize the implications of their design on how SQL Server will be able to handle a high workload (e.g. blocking, fragmentation) and/or because there's no full-time trained DBA that can recognize production problems and help educate developers. The keynote sets the stage for the rest of the day. Discussing some of the issues that can arise, explaining how some can be avoided and highlighting some of the features in SQL 2008 that can help developers and DBAs make better use of SQL Server, and troubleshoot when things go wrong.   SESSION ONE: SQL Server Mythbusters  It's amazing how many myths and misconceptions have sprung up and persisted over the years about SQL Server - after many years helping people out on forums, newsgroups, and customer engagements, Paul and Kimberly have heard it all. Are there really non-logged operations? Can interrupting shrinks or rebuilds cause corruption? Can you override the server's MAXDOP setting? Will the server always do a table-scan to get a row count? Many myths lead to poor design choices and inappropriate maintenance practices so these are just a few of many, many myths that Paul and Kimberly will debunk in this fast-paced session on how SQL Server operates and should be managed and maintained.   SESSION TWO: Database Recovery Techniques Demo-Fest  Even if a company has a disaster recovery strategy in place, they need to practice to make sure that the plan will work when a disaster does strike. In this fast-paced demo session Paul and Kimberly will repeatedly do nasty things to databases and then show how they are recovered - demonstrating many techniques that can be used in production for disaster recovery. Not for the faint-hearted!   SESSION THREE: GUIDs: Use, Abuse, and How To Move Forward   Since the addition of the GUID (Microsoft’s implementation of the UUID), my life as a consultant and "tuner" has been busy. I’ve seen databases designed with GUID keys run fairly well with small workloads but completely fall over and fail because they just cannot scale. And, I know why GUIDs are chosen - it simplifies the handling of parent/child rows in your batches so you can reduce round-trips or avoid dealing with identity values. And, yes, sometimes it's even for distributed databases and/or security that GUIDs are chosen. I'm not entirely against ever using a GUID but overusing and abusing GUIDs just has to be stopped! Please, please, please let me give you better solutions and explanations on how to deal with your parent/child rows, round-trips and clustering keys!   SESSION 4: Essential Database Maintenance  In this session, Paul and Kimberly will run you through their top-ten database maintenance recommendations, with a lot of tips and tricks along the way. These are distilled from almost 30 years combined experience working with SQL Server customers and are geared towards making your databases more performant, more available, and more easily managed (to save you time!). Everything in this session will be practical and applicable to a wide variety of databases. Topics covered include: backups, shrinks, fragmentation, statistics, and much more! Focus will be on 2005 but we'll explain some of the key differences for 2000 and 2008 as well. Speaker Biographies     Kimberley L. Tripp Paul and Kimberly are a husband-and-wife team who own and run SQLskills.com, a world-renowned SQL Server consulting and training company. They are both SQL Server MVPs and Microsoft Regional Directors, with over 30 years of combined experience on SQL Server. Paul worked on the SQL Server team for nine years in development and management roles, writing many of the DBCC commands, and ultimately with responsibility for core Storage Engine for SQL Server 2008. Paul writes extensively on his blog (SQLskills.com/blogs/Paul) and for TechNet Magazine, for which he is also a Contributing Editor. Kimberly worked on the SQL Server team in the early 1990s as a tester and writer before leaving to found SQLskills and embrace her passion for teaching and consulting. Kimberly has been a staple at worldwide conferences since she first presented at TechEd in 1996, and she blogs at SQLskills.com/blogs/Kimberly. They have written Microsoft whitepapers and books for SQL Server 2000, 2005 and 2008, and are regular, top-rated presenters worldwide on database maintenance, high availability, disaster recovery, performance tuning, and SQL Server internals. Together they teach the SQL MCM certification and throughout Microsoft.In their spare time, they like to find frogfish in remote corners of the world.   Speaker Testimonials  "To call them good trainers is an epic understatement. They know how to deliver technical material in ways that illustrate it well. I had to stop Paul at one point and ask him how long it took to build a particular slide because the animations were so good at conveying a hard-to-describe process." "These are not beginner presenters, and they put an extreme amount of preparation and attention to detail into everything that they do. Completely, utterly professional." "When it comes to the instructors themselves, Kimberly and Paul simply have no equal. Not only are they both ultimate authorities, but they have endless enthusiasm about the material, and spot on delivery. If either ever got tired they never showed it, even after going all day and all week. We witnessed countless demos over the course of the week, some extremely involved, multi-step processes, and I can’t recall one that didn’t go the way it was supposed to." "You might think that with this extreme level of skill comes extreme levels of egotism and lack of patience. Nothing could be further from the truth. ... They simply know how to teach, and are approachable, humble, and patient." "The experience Paul and Kimberly have had with real live customers yields a lot more information and things to watch out for than you'd ever get from documentation alone." “Kimberly, I just wanted to send you an email to let you know how awesome you are! I have applied some of your indexing strategies to our website’s homegrown CMS and we are experiencing a significant performance increase. WOW....amazing tips delivered in an exciting way!  Thanks again” 

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• Java JRE 7 Certified with Oracle E-Business Suite

  - by Steven Chan (Oracle Development)

  Java Runtime Environment 7u10 (a.k.a. JRE 1.7.0_10 build 18) and later updates on the JRE 7 codeline are now certified with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i and 12 Windows-based desktop clients. What's needed to enable EBS environments for JRE 7? EBS customers should ensure that they are running JRE 7u10, at minimum, on Windows desktop clients. Of the compatibility issues identified with JRE 7, the most critical is an issue that prevents E-Business Suite Forms-based products from launching on Windows desktops that are running JRE 7.  Customers can prevent this issue -- and all other JRE 7 compatibility issues -- by ensuring that they have applied the latest certified patches documented for JRE 7 configurations to their EBS application tier servers.  These are summarized here for convenience. If the requirements change over time, please check the Notes for the authoritative list of patches: Apply Forms patch 14615390 to EBS 11i environments (Note 125767.1) Apply Forms patch 14614795 to EBS 12.0 and 12.1 environments (Note 437878.1) These patches are compatible with JRE 6 and 7, production ready, and fully-tested with the E-Business Suite.  These patches may be applied immediately to all E-Business Suite environments. All other Forms prerequisites documented in the Notes above should also be applied.  Where are the official patch requirements documented? All patches required for ensuring full compatibility of the E-Business Suite with JRE 7 are documented in these Notes: For EBS 11i: Deploying Sun JRE (Native Plug-in) for Windows Clients in Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i (Note 290807.1) Upgrading Developer 6i with Oracle E-Business Suite 11i (Note 125767.1) For EBS 12 Deploying Sun JRE (Native Plug-in) for Windows Clients in Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (Note 393931.1) Upgrading OracleAS 10g Forms and Reports in Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 (Note 437878.1) Prerequisites for 32-bit and 64-bit JRE certifications JRE 1.70_10 32-bit + EBS 11.5.10.2 Windows XP SP3 Windows Vista SP1 and SP2 Windows 7 and Windows 7 SP1  Forms 6.0.8.28.x patch 14615390 (Note 125767.1) JRE 1.70_10 32-bit + EBS 12.0 & 12.1 Windows XP SP3 Windows Vista SP1 and SP2 Windows 7 and Windows 7 SP1 Forms 10g overlay patch 14614795 (Note 437878.1) SSL Users:  10.1.0.5 version of Patch 6370967 applied to AS 10.1.3 with OPatch. Note: This fix is already included in the April 2011 AS 10.1.3.5 CPU patch and later. JRE 1.7.0_10 64-bit + EBS 11.5.10.2 Windows 7 (64-bit) and Windows 7 SP1 (64-bit) Forms 6.0.8.28.x patch 14615390 (Note 125767.1) JRE 1.70_10 64-bit + EBS 12.0 & 12.1 Windows 7 (64-bit) and Windows 7 SP1 (64-bit) Forms 10g overlay patch 14614795 (Note 437878.1) SSL Users:  10.1.0.5 version of Patch 6370967 applied to AS 10.1.3 with OPatch. Note: This fix is already included in the April 2011 AS 10.1.3.5 CPU patch and later.  EBS + Discoverer 11g Users JRE 1.7.0_10 (7u10) is certified for Discoverer 11g in E-Business Suite environments with the following minimum requirements: Discoverer (11g) 11.1.1.6 plus Patch 13877486 and later  Reference: How To Find Oracle BI Discoverer 10g and 11g Certification Information (Document 233047.1) Worried about the 'mismanaged session cookie' issue? No need to worry -- it's fixed.  To recap: JRE releases 1.6.0_18 through 1.6.0_22 had issues with mismanaging session cookies that affected some users in some circumstances. The fix for those issues was first included in JRE 1.6.0_23. These fixes will carry forward and continue to be fixed in all future JRE releases on the JRE 6 and 7 codelines.  In other words, if you wish to avoid the mismanaged session cookie issue, you should apply any release after JRE 1.6.0_22 on the JRE 6 codeline, and JRE 7u10 and later JRE 7 codeline updates. All JRE 6 and 7 releases are certified with EBS upon release Our standard policy is that all E-Business Suite customers can apply all JRE updates to end-user desktops from JRE 1.6.0_03 and later updates on the 1.6 codeline, and from JRE 7u10 and later updates on the JRE 7 codeline.  We test all new JRE 1.6 and JRE 7 releases in parallel with the JRE development process, so all new JRE 1.6 and 7 releases are considered certified with the E-Business Suite on the same day that they're released by our Java team.  You do not need to wait for a certification announcement before applying new JRE 1.6 or JRE 7 releases to your EBS users' desktops. Implications of Java 6 End of Public Updates for EBS Users The Support Roadmap for Oracle Java is published here: Oracle Java SE Support Roadmap The latest updates to that page (as of Sept. 19, 2012) state (emphasis added): Java SE 6 End of Public Updates Notice After February 2013, Oracle will no longer post updates of Java SE 6 to its public download sites. Existing Java SE 6 downloads already posted as of February 2013 will remain accessible in the Java Archive on Oracle Technology Network. Developers and end-users are encouraged to update to more recent Java SE versions that remain available for public download. For enterprise customers, who need continued access to critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for Java SE 6 or older versions, long term support is available through Oracle Java SE Support . What does this mean for Oracle E-Business Suite users? EBS users fall under the category of "enterprise users" above.  Java is an integral part of the Oracle E-Business Suite technology stack, so EBS users will continue to receive Java SE 6 updates after February 2013. In other words, nothing will change for EBS users after February 2013.  EBS users will continue to receive critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for Java SE 6. These Java SE 6 updates will be made available to EBS users for the Extended Support periods documented in the Oracle Lifetime Support policy document for Oracle Applications (PDF): EBS 11i Extended Support ends November 2013 EBS 12.0 Extended Support ends January 2015 EBS 12.1 Extended Support ends December 2018 Will EBS users be forced to upgrade to JRE 7 for Windows desktop clients? No. This upgrade is highly recommended but currently remains optional. JRE 6 will be available to Windows users to run with EBS for the duration of your respective EBS Extended Support period.  Updates will be delivered via My Oracle Support, where you can continue to receive critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for JRE 6 desktop clients.  Coexistence of JRE 6 and JRE 7 on Windows desktops The upgrade to JRE 7 is highly recommended for EBS users, but some users may need to run both JRE 6 and 7 on their Windows desktops for reasons unrelated to the E-Business Suite. Most EBS configurations with IE and Firefox use non-static versioning by default. JRE 7 will be invoked instead of JRE 6 if both are installed on a Windows desktop. For more details, see "Appendix B: Static vs. Non-static Versioning and Set Up Options" in Notes 290801.1 and 393931.1. Applying Updates to JRE 6 and JRE 7 to Windows desktops Auto-update will keep JRE 7 up-to-date for Windows users with JRE 7 installed. Auto-update will only keep JRE 7 up-to-date for Windows users with both JRE 6 and 7 installed.  JRE 6 users are strongly encouraged to apply the latest Critical Patch Updates as soon as possible after each release. The Jave SE CPUs will be available via My Oracle Support.  EBS users can find more information about JRE 6 and 7 updates here: Information Center: Installation & Configuration for Oracle Java SE (Note 1412103.2) The dates for future Java SE CPUs can be found on the Critical Patch Updates, Security Alerts and Third Party Bulletin.  An RSS feed is available on that site for those who would like to be kept up-to-date. What will Mac users need? Oracle will provide updates to JRE 7 for Mac OS X users. EBS users running Macs will need to upgrade to JRE 7 to receive JRE updates. The certification of Oracle E-Business Suite with JRE 7 for Mac-based desktop clients accessing EBS Forms-based content is underway. Mac users waiting for that certification may find this article useful: How to Reenable Apple Java 6 Plug-in for Mac EBS Users Will EBS users be forced to upgrade to JDK 7 for EBS application tier servers? No. This upgrade will be highly recommended but will be optional for EBS application tier servers running on Windows, Linux, and Solaris.  You can choose to remain on JDK 6 for the duration of your respective EBS Extended Support period.  If you remain on JDK 6, you will continue to receive critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for JDK 6. The certification of Oracle E-Business Suite with JDK 7 for EBS application tier servers on Windows, Linux, and Solaris as well as other platforms such as IBM AIX and HP-UX is planned.  Customers running platforms other than Windows, Linux, and Solaris should refer to their Java vendors's sites for more information about their support policies. References Recommended Browsers for Oracle Applications 11i (Metalink Note 285218.1) Upgrading Sun JRE (Native Plug-in) with Oracle Applications 11i for Windows Clients (Metalink Note 290807.1) Recommended Browsers for Oracle Applications 12 (MetaLink Note 389422.1) Upgrading JRE Plugin with Oracle Applications R12 (MetaLink Note 393931.1) Related Articles Mismanaged Session Cookie Issue Fixed for EBS in JRE 1.6.0_23 Roundup: Oracle JInitiator 1.3 Desupported for EBS Customers in July 2009

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• Intermittent Connection Issues to SQL Server 2008 R2 RTM

  - by Chandan Jha

  The problem I am facing is a very complex one and inspite of trying to gather a root cause of the problem, I am standing at the same place after 2 months with just bits and pieces of information.Here is a scenario: There is a windows 2003 server which uses an system DSN ODBC connection. I looked into the driver properties and it is as follows: Name Version File SQL Server 2000.86.3959.00 SQLSRV32.DLL Now, this system DSN has been given configured with TCP\IP in Network Libraries and 'determine port dynamically' is checked. Now, lets come to the database destination. It is hosted on Windows 2008 having SQL 2008 R2 RTM version 64-bit. Now, I will give you a an overview about the events that happen and whatever troubleshooting I could perform: I get an email saying 'blah blah' failed and the only message their application gets is 'cannot connect to database' I go the SQL Server logs and find the following information: Login failed for user ''. Reason: An attempt to login using SQL authentication failed. Server is configured for Windows authentication only. [CLIENT: 10.0.0.xx Error: 18456, Severity: 14, State: 58.] A quick search shows that this error may come when an SQL Server is configured with windows authentication but its not true. We have mixed mode and connection issue is intermittent. This SQL Server is configured to run on a local system account but since we use only SQL Server accounts to connect to this, there should not be any Kerberos errors. When I run a profiler trace and see only 'existing connections', i see a lot of them coming from my client server displaying the sql user but NO hostname is shown. Textdata field shows TCP\IP information along with some arithabort and ansi-null settings. Now, I tried looking into ring connectivity buffer by using following: SELECTCAST(record AS XML) FROM sys.dm_os_ring_buffers WHERE ring_buffer_type = 'RING_BUFFER_CONNECTIVITY' One sample output is: <ConnectivityTraceRecord> <RecordType>Error</RecordType> <RecordSource>Tds</RecordSource> <Spid>118</Spid> <SniConnectionId>5124905D-D1EC-460E-AD78-201050B78C67</SniConnectionId> <OSError>0</OSError> <SniConsumerError>18452</SniConsumerError> <SniProvider>7</SniProvider> <State>1</State> <RemoteHost>10.0.0.21</RemoteHost> <RemotePort>5008</RemotePort> <LocalHost>10.1.0.38</LocalHost> <LocalPort>1433</LocalPort> <RecordTime>6/6/2012 21:14:57.527</RecordTime> <TdsBuffersInformation> <TdsInputBufferError>0</TdsInputBufferError> <TdsOutputBufferError>0</TdsOutputBufferError> <TdsInputBufferBytes>120</TdsInputBufferBytes> </TdsBuffersInformation> <TdsDisconnectFlags> <PhysicalConnectionIsKilled>0</PhysicalConnectionIsKilled> <DisconnectDueToReadError>0</DisconnectDueToReadError> <NetworkErrorFoundInInputStream>0</NetworkErrorFoundInInputStream> <ErrorFoundBeforeLogin>0</ErrorFoundBeforeLogin> <SessionIsKilled>0</SessionIsKilled> <NormalDisconnect>0</NormalDisconnect> </TdsDisconnectFlags> </ConnectivityTraceRecord> <Stack> <frame id="0">0X000000000174C34B</frame> <frame id="1">0X0000000001748FDD</frame> <frame id="2">0X0000000002461001</frame> <frame id="3">0X0000000000C47E98</frame> <frame id="4">0X00000000008015AD</frame> <frame id="5">0X0000000000801492</frame> <frame id="6">0X00000000003CBBD8</frame> <frame id="7">0X00000000003CB8BA</frame> <frame id="8">0X00000000003CB6FF</frame> <frame id="9">0X00000000008E8FB6</frame> <frame id="10">0X00000000008E9175</frame> <frame id="11">0X00000000008E9839</frame> <frame id="12">0X00000000008E9502</frame> <frame id="13">0X0000000074E437D7</frame> <frame id="14">0X0000000074E43894</frame> <frame id="15">0X00000000775A652D</frame> Somehow all the errors show error number 18452 whereas I never found this error in my SQL logs where I see only 18456. I am just stuck on a dead end because this connection issue appears intermittently. Sorry for a long question but I hope if you read this, you can make out that I tried a lot at my end before giving up.

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• Visiting the Emtel Data Centre

  Back in February at the first event of the Emtel Knowledge Series (EKS) I spoke to various people at Emtel about their data centre here on the island. I was trying to see whether it would be possible to arrange a meeting over there for a selected group of our community members. Well, let's say it like this... My first approach wasn't that promising and far from successful but during the following months there were more and more occasions to get in touch with the "right" contact persons at Emtel to make it happen... Setting up an appointment and pre-requisites The major improvement came during a Boot Camp for Windows Phone 8.1 App development organised by Microsoft Indian Ocean Islands in cooperation with Emtel at the Emtel World, Ebene. Apart from learning bits and pieces regarding Universal Apps I took the opportunity to get in touch with Arvin Lockee, Sales Executive - Data, during our lunch break. And this really kicked off the whole procedure. Prior to get access to the Emtel data centre it is requested that you provide full name and National ID of anyone going to visit. Also, it should be noted that there was only a limited amount of seats available. Anyways, packed with this information I posted through the usual social media channels. Responses came in very quickly and based on First-come, first-serve (FCFS) principle I noted down the details and forwarded them to Emtel in order to fix a date and time for the visit. In preparation on our side, all attendees exchanged contact details and we organised transport options to go to the data centre in Arsenal. The day before and on the day of our meeting, Arvin send me a reminder to check whether everything is still confirmed and ready to go... Of course, it was! Arriving at the Emtel Data Centre As I'm coming from Flic En Flac towards the North, we agreed that I'm going to pick up a couple of young fellows near the old post office in Port Louis. All went well, except that Sean eventually might be living in another time zone compared to the rest of us. Anyway, after some extended stop we were complete and arrived just in time in Arsenal to meet and greet with Ish and Veer. Again, Emtel is taking access procedures to their data centre very serious and the gate stayed close until all our IDs had been noted and compared to the list of registered attendees. Despite having a good laugh at the mixture of old and new ID cards it was a straight-forward processing. The ward was very helpful and guided us to the waiting area at the entrance section of the building. Shortly after we were welcomed by Kamlesh Bokhoree, the Data Centre Officer. He gave us brief introduction into the rules and regulations during our visit, like no photography allowed, not touching the buttons, and following his instructions through the whole visit. Of course! Inside the data centre Next, he explained us the multi-factor authentication system using a combination of bio-metric data, like finger print reader, and "classic" pin panel. The Emtel data centre provides multiple services and next to co-location for your own hardware they also offer storage options for your backup and archive data in their massive, fire-resistant vault. Very impressive to get to know about the considerations that have been done in choosing the right location and how to set up the whole premises. It should also be noted that there is 24/7 CCTV surveillance inside and outside the buildings. Strengths of the Emtel TIER 3 Data Centre, Mauritius Finally, we were guided into the first server room. And wow, the whole setup is cleverly planned and outlined in the architecture. From the false floor and ceilings in order to provide optimum air flow, over to the separation of cold and hot aisles between the full-size server racks, and of course the monitored air conditions in order to analyse and watch changes in temperature, smoke detection and other parameters. And not surprisingly everything has been implemented in two independent circuits. There is a standardised classification for the construction and operation of data centres world-wide, and the Emtel's one has been designed to be a TIER 4 building but due to the lack of an alternative power supplier on the island it is officially registered as a TIER 3 compliant data centre. Maybe in the long run there might be a second supplier of energy next to CEB... time will tell. Luckily, the data centre is integrated into the National Fibre Optic Gigabit Ring and Emtel already connects internationally through diverse undersea cable routes like SAFE & LION/LION2 out of Mauritius and through several other providers for onwards connectivity. The data centre is part of the National Fibre Optic Gigabit Ring and has redundant internet connectivity onwards. Meanwhile, Arvin managed to join our little group of geeks and he supported Kamlesh in answering our technical questions regarding the capacities and general operation of the data centre. Visiting the NOC and its dedicated team of IT professionals was surely one of the visual highlights. Seeing their wall of screens to monitor any kind of activities on the data lines, the managed servers and the activity in and around the building was great. Even though I'm using a multi-head setup since years I cannot keep it up with that setup... ;-) But I got a couple of ideas on how to improve my work spaces here at the office. Clear advantages of hosting your e-commerce and mobile backends locally After the completely isolated NOC area we continued our Q&A session with Kamlesh and Arvin in the second server room which is dedictated to shared environments. On first thought it should be well-noted that there is lots of space for full-sized racks and therefore co-location of your own hardware. Actually, given the feedback that there will be upcoming changes in prices the facilities at the Emtel data centre are getting more and more competitive and interesting for local companies, especially small and medium enterprises. After seeing this world-class infrastructure available on the island, I'm already considering of moving one of my root servers abroad to be co-located here on the island. This would provide an improved user experience in terms of site performance and latency. This would be a good improvement, especially for upcoming e-commerce solutions for two of my local clients. Later on, we actually started the conversation of additional services that could be a catalyst for the local market in order to attract more small and medium companies to take the data centre into their evaluations regarding online activities. Until today Emtel does not provide virtualised server environments but there might be ongoing plans in the future to cover this field as well. Emtel is a mobile operator and internet connectivity provider in the first place, entering a market of managed and virtualised server infrastructures including capacities in terms of cloud storage and computing are rather new and there is a continuous learning curve at Emtel, too. You cannot just jump into a new market and see how it works out... And I appreciate Emtel's approach towards a solid fundament and then building new services on top of that. Emtel as a future one-stop-shop service provider for all your internet and telecommunications needs. Emtel's promotional video about their TIER 3 data centre in Arsenal, Mauritius More details are thoroughly described in Emtel's brochure of their data centre. Check out their PDF document here. Thanks for this opportunity Visiting and walking through the Emtel data centre for more than 2 hours was a great experience. As representative of the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community (MSCC) I would like to thank anyone at Emtel involved in the process of making it happen, and especially to Arvin Lockee and Kamlesh Bokhoree for their time and patience in explaining the infrastructure and answering all the endless questions from our members. Thank You!

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• 24+ Coda Alternatives for Windows and Linux

  - by Matt

  Coda plays an important role in designing layout on Mac. There are numerous coda alternatives for windows and Linux too. It is not possible to describe each and everyone so some of the coda alternatives, which work on both windows and Linux platforms, are discussed below. EditPlus $35.00 Good thing about EditPlus is that it highlights URLs and email addresses, activating them when you ‘crtl + double-click’. It also has a built in browser for previewing HTML, and FTP and SFTP support. Also supports Macros and RegEx find and replace. UltraEdit $49.99 It is another good coda alternative for windows and Linux. It is the best suited editor for text, HTML and HEX. It also plays an advanced PHP, Perl, Java and JavaScript editor for programmers. It supports disk-based 64-bit or standard file handling on 32-bit Windows platforms or window 2000 and later versions. HippoEdit $39.95 HippoEDIT has the best autocomplete it gives pop a ‘tooltip’ above your cursor as you type, suggesting words you’ve already typed. It does syntax highlighting for over 2 dozen language. Sublime Text $59.00 Sublime Text awesome ‘zoomed out’ view of the file lets you focus on the area you want. It lets you open a local file when you right-click on its link, and there are a few automation features, so this would make a solid choice of a text editor. Textpad $24.70 TextPad is simple editor with nifty features such as column select, drag-and-drop text between files, and hyperlink support. It also supports large files. Aptana Free Aptana Studio is one of the best editors working on both windows and Linux. It is a complete web development setting that has a nice blend of powerful authoring tools with a collection of online hosting and collaboration services. It is quite helpful as it support for PHP, CSS, FTP, and more. SciTE Free It is a SCIntilla based Text Editor. It has gradually developed as a generally useful editor. It provides for building and running programs. It is best to be used for jobs with simple configurations. SciTE is currently available for Intel Win32 and Linux compatible operating systems with GTK+. It has been run on Windows XP and on Fedora 8 and Ubuntu 7.10 with GTK+ 2.12 E Text Editor $34.96 E Text Editor is a new text editor for Windows, which also works on Linux as well. It has powerful editing features and also some unique abilities. It makes text manipulation quite fast and easy, and makes user focus on his writing as it automatically does all the manual work. It can be extend it in any language. It supports Text Mate bundles, thus allows the user to tap into a huge and active community. Editra Free Editra is an upcoming editor, with some fantastic features such as user profiles, auto-completion, session saving, and syntax highlighing for 60+ languages. Plugins can extend the feature set, offering an integrated python console, FTP client, file browser, and calculator, among others. PSPad Free PSPad is a good Template for writing CSS, as it an internal web browser, and a macro recorder to the table. It also supports hex editing, and some degree of code compiling. JEdit Free It is a mature programmer’s text editor and has taken a good deal of time to be developed as it is today. It is better than many costlier development tools due to its features and simplicity of use. It has been released as free software with full source code, provided under the terms of the GPL 2.0. Which also adds to its attractiveness. NEdit Free It is a multi-purpose text editor for the X Window System, which also works on Linux. It combines a standard, easy to use, graphical user interface with the full functionality and stability required by users who edit text for long period a day. It also provides for thorough support for development in various languages. It also facilitates the use of text processors, and other tools at the same time. It can be used productively by anyone who needs to edit text. It is quite a user-friendly tool. Its salient features include syntax highlighting with built in pattern, auto indent, tab emulation, block indentation adjustment etc. As of version 5.1, NEdit may be freely distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. MadEdit Free Mad Edit is an Open-Source and Cross-Platform Text/Hex Editor. It is written in C++ and wxWidgets. MadEdit can edit files in Text/Column/Hex modes. It also supports many useful functions, such as Syntax Highlighting, Word Wrap, Encoding for UTF8/16/32,and others. It also supports word count, which makes it quite a useful text editor for both windows and Linux. It has been recently modified on 10/09/2010. KompoZer Free Kompozer is a complete web authoring system that has a combination of web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing. KompoZer has been designed to be completely and extensively easy to use. It is thus an ideal tool for non-technical computer users who want to create an attractive, professional-looking web site without knowing HTML or web coding. It is based on the NVU source code. Vim Free Vim or “Vi IMproved” is an advanced text editor. Its salient features are syntax highlighting, word completion and it also has a huge amount of contributed content. Vim has several “modes” on offer for editing, which adds to the efficiency in editing. Thus it becomes a non-user-friendly application but it is also strength for its users. The normal mode binds alphanumeric keys to task-oriented commands. The visual mode highlights text. More tools for search & replace, defining functions, etc. are offered through command line mode. Vim comes with complete help. NotePad ++ Free One of the the best free text editor for Windows out there; with support for simple things—like syntax highlighting and folding—all the way up to FTP, Notepad++ should tick most of the boxes Notepad2 Free Notepad2 is also based on the Scintilla editing engine, but it’s much simpler than Notepad++. It bills itself as being fast, light-weight, and Notepad-like. Crimson Editor Free Crimson Editor has the ability to edit remote files, using a built-in FTP client; there’s also a spell checker. TotalEdit Free TotalEdit allows file comparison, RegEx search and replace, and has multiple options for file backup / versioning. For cleanup, it offers (X)HTML and XML customizable formatting, and a spell checker. In-Type Free ConTEXT Free SourceEdit Free SourceEdit includes features such as clipboard history, syntax highlighting and autocompletion for a decent set of languages. A hex editor and FTP client. RJ TextED Free RJ TextED supports integration with TopStyle Lite. Provides HTML validation and formatting. It includes an FTP client, a file browser, and a code browser, as well as a character map and support for email. GEDIT Free It is one of the best coda alternatives for windows and Linux. It has syntax highlighting and is best suitable for programming. It has many attractive features such as full support for UTF-8, undo/redo, and clipboard support, search and replace, configurable syntax highlighting for various languages and many more supportive features. It is extensible with plug ins. Other important coda alternatives for windows and Linux are Redcar, Bluefish Editor, NVU, Ruby Mine, Slick Edit, Geany, Editra, txt2html and CSSED. There are many more. Its up to user to decide which one suits best to his requirements. Related posts:10 Useful Text Editor For Developer Applications to Install & Run Windows on Linux Open Source WYSIWYG Text Editors

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• wifi not recognized

  - by pumper

  I had wifi and worked then some day ubuntu asked me to update some packeages and restarted the system and after that no wifi. this is my wireless_script output : ########## wireless info START ########## ##### release ##### Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Release: 14.04 Codename: trusty ##### kernel ##### Linux S510p 3.13.0-24-generic #47-Ubuntu SMP Fri May 2 23:30:00 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux ##### lspci ##### 02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9565 / AR9565 Wireless Network Adapter [168c:0036] (rev 01) Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:3026] Kernel driver in use: ath9k 03:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Qualcomm Atheros AR8162 Fast Ethernet [1969:1090] (rev 10) Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:3807] Kernel driver in use: alx ##### lsusb ##### Bus 001 Device 006: ID 0eef:a111 D-WAV Scientific Co., Ltd Bus 001 Device 007: ID 0cf3:3004 Atheros Communications, Inc. Bus 001 Device 004: ID 174f:1488 Syntek Bus 001 Device 003: ID 03f0:5607 Hewlett-Packard Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:8000 Intel Corp. Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 002: ID 15d9:0a4c Trust International B.V. USB+PS/2 Optical Mouse Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub ##### PCMCIA Card Info ##### ##### rfkill ##### 0: ideapad_wlan: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 1: ideapad_bluetooth: Bluetooth Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 2: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 3: hci0: Bluetooth Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no ##### iw reg get ##### country 00: (2402 - 2472 @ 40), (3, 20) (2457 - 2482 @ 40), (3, 20), PASSIVE-SCAN, NO-IBSS (2474 - 2494 @ 20), (3, 20), NO-OFDM, PASSIVE-SCAN, NO-IBSS (5170 - 5250 @ 40), (3, 20), PASSIVE-SCAN, NO-IBSS (5735 - 5835 @ 40), (3, 20), PASSIVE-SCAN, NO-IBSS ##### interfaces ##### # interfaces(5) file used by ifup(8) and ifdown(8) auto lo iface lo inet loopback auto dsl-provider iface dsl-provider inet ppp pre-up /sbin/ifconfig wlan0 up # line maintained by pppoeconf provider dsl-provider auto wlan0 iface wlan0 inet manual ##### iwconfig ##### wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:off/any Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=16 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:off ##### route ##### Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface ##### resolv.conf ##### ##### nm-tool ##### NetworkManager Tool State: connected (global) - Device: eth0 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Type: Wired Driver: alx State: unavailable Default: no HW Address: <MAC address removed> Capabilities: Carrier Detect: yes Wired Properties Carrier: off - Device: wlan0 ---------------------------------------------------------------- Type: 802.11 WiFi Driver: ath9k State: unmanaged Default: no HW Address: <MAC address removed> Capabilities: Wireless Properties WEP Encryption: yes WPA Encryption: yes WPA2 Encryption: yes Wireless Access Points ##### NetworkManager.state ##### [main] NetworkingEnabled=true WirelessEnabled=true WWANEnabled=true WimaxEnabled=true ##### NetworkManager.conf ##### [main] plugins=ifupdown,keyfile,ofono dns=dnsmasq no-auto-default=<MAC address removed>, [ifupdown] managed=false ##### iwlist ##### wlan0 Scan completed : Cell 01 - Address: <MAC address removed> Channel:1 Frequency:2.412 GHz (Channel 1) Quality=55/70 Signal level=-55 dBm Encryption key:on ESSID:"mohsen" Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s 9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s Bit Rates:24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s Mode:Master Extra:tsf=000000076c342498 Extra: Last beacon: 12ms ago IE: Unknown: 00066D6F6873656E IE: Unknown: 010882848B960C121824 IE: Unknown: 030101 IE: Unknown: 2A0104 IE: Unknown: 32043048606C ##### iwlist channel ##### wlan0 13 channels in total; available frequencies : Channel 01 : 2.412 GHz Channel 02 : 2.417 GHz Channel 03 : 2.422 GHz Channel 04 : 2.427 GHz Channel 05 : 2.432 GHz Channel 06 : 2.437 GHz Channel 07 : 2.442 GHz Channel 08 : 2.447 GHz Channel 09 : 2.452 GHz Channel 10 : 2.457 GHz Channel 11 : 2.462 GHz Channel 12 : 2.467 GHz Channel 13 : 2.472 GHz ##### lsmod ##### ath3k 13318 0 bluetooth 395423 23 bnep,ath3k,btusb,rfcomm ath9k 164164 0 ath9k_common 13551 1 ath9k ath9k_hw 453856 2 ath9k_common,ath9k ath 28698 3 ath9k_common,ath9k,ath9k_hw mac80211 626489 1 ath9k cfg80211 484040 3 ath,ath9k,mac80211 ##### modinfo ##### filename: /lib/modules/3.13.0-24-generic/kernel/drivers/bluetooth/ath3k.ko firmware: ath3k-1.fw license: GPL version: 1.0 description: Atheros AR30xx firmware driver author: Atheros Communications srcversion: 98A5245588C09E5E41690D0 alias: usb:v0489pE036d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v0489pE03Cd*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v0489pE02Cd*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v0CF3pE003d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v0CF3p3121d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v13D3p3402d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v04C5p1330d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v0489pE04Dd*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v0489pE056d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v0489pE04Ed*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v13D3p3393d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v0489pE057d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v0930p0220d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v0930p0219d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v0CF3pE005d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v0CF3pE004d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v13D3p3362d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v04CAp3008d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v04CAp3006d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v04CAp3005d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v04CAp3004d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v13D3p3375d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v0CF3p817Ad*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v0CF3p311Dd*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v0CF3p3008d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v0CF3p3004d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v0CF3p0036d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v03F0p311Dd*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v0489pE027d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v0489pE03Dd*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v0930p0215d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v13D3p3304d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v0CF3pE019d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v0CF3p3002d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* alias: usb:v0CF3p3000d*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*in* depends: bluetooth intree: Y vermagic: 3.13.0-24-generic SMP mod_unload modversions signer: Magrathea: Glacier signing key sig_key: <MAC address removed>:D9:06:21:70:6E:8D:06:60:4D:73:0B:35:9F:C0 sig_hashalgo: sha512 filename: /lib/modules/3.13.0-24-generic/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath9k/ath9k.ko license: Dual BSD/GPL description: Support for Atheros 802.11n wireless LAN cards. author: Atheros Communications srcversion: BAF225EEB618908380B28DA alias: platform:qca955x_wmac alias: platform:ar934x_wmac alias: platform:ar933x_wmac alias: platform:ath9k alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv0000185Fsd00003027bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv00001B9Asd00002810bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv0000144Fsd00007202bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv00001A3Bsd00002130bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv000011ADsd00000612bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv000011ADsd00000652bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv000011ADsd00000642bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv0000168Csd0000302Cbc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv0000168Csd00003027bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv0000144Dsd0000411Ebc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv0000144Dsd0000411Dbc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv0000144Dsd0000411Cbc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv0000144Dsd0000411Bbc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv0000144Dsd0000411Abc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv00001028sd0000020Ebc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv0000103Csd0000217Fbc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv0000103Csd000018E3bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv000017AAsd00003026bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv00001A3Bsd0000213Abc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv000011ADsd00000662bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv000011ADsd00000672bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv000011ADsd00000622bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv0000185Fsd00003028bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv0000105Bsd0000E069bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv0000168Csd0000302Bbc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv0000168Csd00003026bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv0000168Csd00003025bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv00001B9Asd00002812bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv00001B9Asd00002811bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv000011ADsd00006671bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv000011ADsd00000632bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv0000185Fsd0000A119bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv0000105Bsd0000E068bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv00001A3Bsd00002176bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv0000168Csd00003028bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000037sv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000034sv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000034sv000010CFsd00001783bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000034sv000014CDsd00000064bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000034sv000014CDsd00000063bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000034sv0000103Csd00001864bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000034sv000011ADsd00006641bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000034sv000011ADsd00006631bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000034sv00001043sd0000850Ebc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000034sv00001A3Bsd00002110bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000034sv00001969sd00000091bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000034sv000017AAsd00003214bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000034sv0000168Csd00003117bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000034sv000011ADsd00006661bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000034sv00001A3Bsd00002116bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000033sv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv00001043sd0000850Dbc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv00001B9Asd00001C01bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv00001B9Asd00001C00bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv00001A3Bsd00001F95bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv00001A3Bsd00001195bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv00001A3Bsd00001F86bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv00001A3Bsd00001186bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv00001B9Asd00002001bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv00001B9Asd00002000bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv0000144Fsd00007197bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv0000105Bsd0000E04Fbc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv0000105Bsd0000E04Ebc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv000011ADsd00006628bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv000011ADsd00006627bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv00001C56sd00004001bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv00001A3Bsd00002100bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv00001A3Bsd00002C97bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv000017AAsd00003219bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv000017AAsd00003218bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv0000144Dsd0000C708bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv0000144Dsd0000C680bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv0000144Dsd0000C706bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv0000144Dsd0000410Fbc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv0000144Dsd0000410Ebc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv0000144Dsd0000410Dbc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv0000144Dsd00004106bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv0000144Dsd00004105bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv0000185Fsd00003027bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv0000185Fsd00003119bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv0000168Csd00003122bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv0000168Csd00003119bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv0000105Bsd0000E075bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv00001A3Bsd00002152bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv00001A3Bsd0000126Abc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv00001A3Bsd00002126bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv00001A3Bsd00001237bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000032sv00001A3Bsd00002086bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000030sv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd0000002Esv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd0000002Dsv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd0000002Csv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd0000002Bsv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd0000002Bsv00001A3Bsd00002C37bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd0000002Asv000010CFsd00001536bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd0000002Asv000010CFsd0000147Dbc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd0000002Asv000010CFsd0000147Cbc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd0000002Asv0000185Fsd0000309Dbc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd0000002Asv00001A32sd00000306bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd0000002Asv000011ADsd00006642bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd0000002Asv000011ADsd00006632bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd0000002Asv0000105Bsd0000E01Fbc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd0000002Asv00001A3Bsd00001C71bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd0000002Asv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000029sv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000027sv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000024sv*sd*bc*sc*i* alias: pci:v0000168Cd00000023sv*sd*bc*sc*i* depends: ath9k_hw,mac80211,ath9k_common,cfg80211,ath intree: Y vermagic: 3.13.0-24-generic SMP mod_unload modversions signer: Magrathea: Glacier signing key sig_key: <MAC address removed>:D9:06:21:70:6E:8D:06:60:4D:73:0B:35:9F:C0 sig_hashalgo: sha512 parm: debug:Debugging mask (uint) parm: nohwcrypt:Disable hardware encryption (int) parm: blink:Enable LED blink on activity (int) parm: btcoex_enable:Enable wifi-BT coexistence (int) parm: bt_ant_diversity:Enable WLAN/BT RX antenna diversity (int) parm: ps_enable:Enable WLAN PowerSave (int) filename: /lib/modules/3.13.0-24-generic/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath9k/ath9k_common.ko license: Dual BSD/GPL description: Shared library for Atheros wireless 802.11n LAN cards. author: Atheros Communications srcversion: 696B00A6C59713EC0966997 depends: ath,ath9k_hw intree: Y vermagic: 3.13.0-24-generic SMP mod_unload modversions signer: Magrathea: Glacier signing key sig_key: <MAC address removed>:D9:06:21:70:6E:8D:06:60:4D:73:0B:35:9F:C0 sig_hashalgo: sha512 filename: /lib/modules/3.13.0-24-generic/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath9k/ath9k_hw.ko license: Dual BSD/GPL description: Support for Atheros 802.11n wireless LAN cards. author: Atheros Communications srcversion: 4809F3842A0542CD6B556D3 depends: ath intree: Y vermagic: 3.13.0-24-generic SMP mod_unload modversions signer: Magrathea: Glacier signing key sig_key: <MAC address removed>:D9:06:21:70:6E:8D:06:60:4D:73:0B:35:9F:C0 sig_hashalgo: sha512 filename: /lib/modules/3.13.0-24-generic/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath.ko license: Dual BSD/GPL description: Shared library for Atheros wireless LAN cards. author: Atheros Communications srcversion: 88A67C5359B02C5A710AFCF depends: cfg80211 intree: Y vermagic: 3.13.0-24-generic SMP mod_unload modversions signer: Magrathea: Glacier signing key sig_key: <MAC address removed>:D9:06:21:70:6E:8D:06:60:4D:73:0B:35:9F:C0 sig_hashalgo: sha512 ##### modules ##### lp rtc ##### blacklist ##### [/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-ath_pci.conf] blacklist ath_pci [/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf] blacklist evbug blacklist usbmouse blacklist usbkbd blacklist eepro100 blacklist de4x5 blacklist eth1394 blacklist snd_intel8x0m blacklist snd_aw2 blacklist i2c_i801 blacklist prism54 blacklist bcm43xx blacklist garmin_gps blacklist asus_acpi blacklist snd_pcsp blacklist pcspkr blacklist amd76x_edac [/etc/modprobe.d/fbdev-blacklist.conf] blacklist arkfb blacklist aty128fb blacklist atyfb blacklist radeonfb blacklist cirrusfb blacklist cyber2000fb blacklist gx1fb blacklist gxfb blacklist kyrofb blacklist matroxfb_base blacklist mb862xxfb blacklist neofb blacklist nvidiafb blacklist pm2fb blacklist pm3fb blacklist s3fb blacklist savagefb blacklist sisfb blacklist tdfxfb blacklist tridentfb blacklist viafb blacklist vt8623fb ##### udev rules ##### # PCI device 0x1969:0x1090 (alx) SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="<MAC address removed>", ATTR{dev_id}=="0x0", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="eth0" # PCI device 0x168c:0x0036 (ath9k) SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="<MAC address removed>", ATTR{dev_id}=="0x0", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="wlan*", NAME="wlan0" ##### dmesg ##### [ 1.707662] psmouse serio1: elantech: assuming hardware version 3 (with firmware version 0x450f03) [ 11.918852] ath: phy0: WB335 1-ANT card detected [ 11.918856] ath: phy0: Set BT/WLAN RX diversity capability [ 11.926438] ath: phy0: Enable LNA combining [ 11.928469] ath: phy0: ASPM enabled: 0x42 [ 11.928473] ath: EEPROM regdomain: 0x65 [ 11.928475] ath: EEPROM indicates we should expect a direct regpair map [ 11.928478] ath: Country alpha2 being used: 00 [ 11.928479] ath: Regpair used: 0x65 [ 14.066021] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready ########## wireless info END ############

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• What's up with LDoms: Part 1 - Introduction & Basic Concepts

  - by Stefan Hinker

  LDoms - the correct name is Oracle VM Server for SPARC - have been around for quite a while now.  But to my surprise, I get more and more requests to explain how they work or to give advise on how to make good use of them.  This made me think that writing up a few articles discussing the different features would be a good idea.  Now - I don't intend to rewrite the LDoms Admin Guide or to copy and reformat the (hopefully) well known "Beginners Guide to LDoms" by Tony Shoumack from 2007.  Those documents are very recommendable - especially the Beginners Guide, although based on LDoms 1.0, is still a good place to begin with.  However, LDoms have come a long way since then, and I hope to contribute to their adoption by discussing how they work and what features there are today.  In this and the following posts, I will use the term "LDoms" as a common abbreviation for Oracle VM Server for SPARC, just because it's a lot shorter and easier to type (and presumably, read). So, just to get everyone on the same baseline, lets briefly discuss the basic concepts of virtualization with LDoms.  LDoms make use of a hypervisor as a layer of abstraction between real, physical hardware and virtual hardware.  This virtual hardware is then used to create a number of guest systems which each behave very similar to a system running on bare metal:  Each has its own OBP, each will install its own copy of the Solaris OS and each will see a certain amount of CPU, memory, disk and network resources available to it.  Unlike some other type 1 hypervisors running on x86 hardware, the SPARC hypervisor is embedded in the system firmware and makes use both of supporting functions in the sun4v SPARC instruction set as well as the overall CPU architecture to fulfill its function. The CMT architecture of the supporting CPUs (T1 through T4) provide a large number of cores and threads to the OS.  For example, the current T4 CPU has eight cores, each running 8 threads, for a total of 64 threads per socket.  To the OS, this looks like 64 CPUs.  The SPARC hypervisor, when creating guest systems, simply assigns a certain number of these threads exclusively to one guest, thus avoiding the overhead of having to schedule OS threads to CPUs, as do typical x86 hypervisors.  The hypervisor only assigns CPUs and then steps aside.  It is not involved in the actual work being dispatched from the OS to the CPU, all it does is maintain isolation between different guests. Likewise, memory is assigned exclusively to individual guests.  Here,  the hypervisor provides generic mappings between the physical hardware addresses and the guest's views on memory.  Again, the hypervisor is not involved in the actual memory access, it only maintains isolation between guests. During the inital setup of a system with LDoms, you start with one special domain, called the Control Domain.  Initially, this domain owns all the hardware available in the system, including all CPUs, all RAM and all IO resources.  If you'd be running the system un-virtualized, this would be what you'd be working with.  To allow for guests, you first resize this initial domain (also called a primary domain in LDoms speak), assigning it a small amount of CPU and memory.  This frees up most of the available CPU and memory resources for guest domains.  IO is a little more complex, but very straightforward.  When LDoms 1.0 first came out, the only way to provide IO to guest systems was to create virtual disk and network services and attach guests to these services.  In the meantime, several different ways to connect guest domains to IO have been developed, the most recent one being SR-IOV support for network devices released in version 2.2 of Oracle VM Server for SPARC. I will cover these more advanced features in detail later.  For now, lets have a short look at the initial way IO was virtualized in LDoms: For virtualized IO, you create two services, one "Virtual Disk Service" or vds, and one "Virtual Switch" or vswitch.  You can, of course, also create more of these, but that's more advanced than I want to cover in this introduction.  These IO services now connect real, physical IO resources like a disk LUN or a networt port to the virtual devices that are assigned to guest domains.  For disk IO, the normal case would be to connect a physical LUN (or some other storage option that I'll discuss later) to one specific guest.  That guest would be assigned a virtual disk, which would appear to be just like a real LUN to the guest, while the IO is actually routed through the virtual disk service down to the physical device.  For network, the vswitch acts very much like a real, physical ethernet switch - you connect one physical port to it for outside connectivity and define one or more connections per guest, just like you would plug cables between a real switch and a real system. For completeness, there is another service that provides console access to guest domains which mimics the behavior of serial terminal servers. The connections between the virtual devices on the guest's side and the virtual IO services in the primary domain are created by the hypervisor.  It uses so called "Logical Domain Channels" or LDCs to create point-to-point connections between all of these devices and services.  These LDCs work very similar to high speed serial connections and are configured automatically whenever the Control Domain adds or removes virtual IO. To see all this in action, now lets look at a first example.  I will start with a newly installed machine and configure the control domain so that it's ready to create guest systems. In a first step, after we've installed the software, let's start the virtual console service and downsize the primary domain.  root@sun # ldm list NAME STATE FLAGS CONS VCPU MEMORY UTIL UPTIME primary active -n-c-- UART 512 261632M 0.3% 2d 13h 58m root@sun # ldm add-vconscon port-range=5000-5100 \ primary-console primary root@sun # svcadm enable vntsd root@sun # svcs vntsd STATE STIME FMRI online 9:53:21 svc:/ldoms/vntsd:default root@sun # ldm set-vcpu 16 primary root@sun # ldm set-mau 1 primary root@sun # ldm start-reconf primary root@sun # ldm set-memory 7680m primary root@sun # ldm add-config initial root@sun # shutdown -y -g0 -i6 So what have I done: I've defined a range of ports (5000-5100) for the virtual network terminal service and then started that service.  The vnts will later provide console connections to guest systems, very much like serial NTS's do in the physical world. Next, I assigned 16 vCPUs (on this platform, a T3-4, that's two cores) to the primary domain, freeing the rest up for future guest systems.  I also assigned one MAU to this domain.  A MAU is a crypto unit in the T3 CPU.  These need to be explicitly assigned to domains, just like CPU or memory.  (This is no longer the case with T4 systems, where crypto is always available everywhere.) Before I reassigned the memory, I started what's called a "delayed reconfiguration" session.  That avoids actually doing the change right away, which would take a considerable amount of time in this case.  Instead, I'll need to reboot once I'm all done.  I've assigned 7680MB of RAM to the primary.  That's 8GB less the 512MB which the hypervisor uses for it's own private purposes.  You can, depending on your needs, work with less.  I'll spend a dedicated article on sizing, discussing the pros and cons in detail. Finally, just before the reboot, I saved my work on the ILOM, to make this configuration available after a powercycle of the box.  (It'll always be available after a simple reboot, but the ILOM needs to know the configuration of the hypervisor after a power-cycle, before the primary domain is booted.) Now, lets create a first disk service and a first virtual switch which is connected to the physical network device igb2. We will later use these to connect virtual disks and virtual network ports of our guest systems to real world storage and network. root@sun # ldm add-vds primary-vds root@sun # ldm add-vswitch net-dev=igb2 switch-primary primary You are free to choose whatever names you like for the virtual disk service and the virtual switch.  I strongly recommend that you choose names that make sense to you and describe the function of each service in the context of your implementation.  For the vswitch, for example, you could choose names like "admin-vswitch" or "production-network" etc. This already concludes the configuration of the control domain.  We've freed up considerable amounts of CPU and RAM for guest systems and created the necessary infrastructure - console, vts and vswitch - so that guests systems can actually interact with the outside world.  The system is now ready to create guests, which I'll describe in the next section. For further reading, here are some recommendable links: The LDoms 2.2 Admin Guide The "Beginners Guide to LDoms" The LDoms Information Center on MOS LDoms on OTN

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• Windows Azure Evolution &ndash; Preview Developer Portal

  - by Shaun

  With the MEET Windows Azure event on 7th June, there are many new features and updates in windows azure platform. In the coming several posts I will try to cover some of them. And in the first post here I would like to just have a quick walkthrough of the new preview developer portal.   History of the Developer Portal If you have been working with windows azure since 2009 or 2010, you should remember the first version of the developer portal. It was built in HTML with very limited features. I have the impression when I was using is old one. The layout is not that attractive and you have very limited features. On November, 2010 alone with the SDK 1.3 release, the developer portal was getting a big jump. In order to give more usability and features this it turned to be built on Silverlight. Hence it runs like a desktop application with many windows, lists, commands and context menus. From 2010 till now many features were involved into this portal, such as the remote desktop, co-admin, virtual connect, VM role, etc.. And the portal itself became more and more complicated. But it brought some problems by using the Silverlight. The first one is the browser capability. As you know in most mobile and tablet device the browser doesn’t allow the rich content plugin, such as Flash and Silverlight. This means people cannot open and configure their azure services from their iPad, iPhone and Windows Phone, etc., even though what they need may just be restart a hosted service, or view the status of their databases. Another problem is the performance. Silverlight provides rich experience to the users, but also needs more bandwidth. So in this upgrade the preview developer portal will be back to use HTML, with JavaScript, as a mobile friendly, cross browser, interactively web site.   Preview Portal vs. Silverlight Portal Before I started to talk about the new preview portal I’d better highlight that, this preview portal is a PREVIEW version, which means even though you can do almost all features that already in the old one, as long as some cool new features I will mention in the coming several posts, there are something still under developed and migrated. So sometimes you need to switch back to the old one. For example, in preview portal there is no co-admin manage function, no remote desktop function and the SQL database manage function will take you back to the old SQL Azure Manage Portal. But as Microsoft said these missing features will be moved in the preview portal in the couple of next few months. Since the public URL of the developer portal, https://windows.azure.com/, had been changed to point to this preview one, you need to click to preview button on top of the page and click the “Take me to the previous portal” link.   Overview There are four parts in the preview portal. On the top is the header which shows the account you are currently logging in. If you click on the header it will show the top menu of windows azure, where you can navigate to the windows azure home page, the price information page, community and account, etc.. The navigation bar is on the left hand side, with the categories listed below. ALL ITEMS All items in your windows azure account, includes the web sites, services, databases, etc.. WEB SITES The web sites in your windows azure account. It will only show the web sites you have. The linked resources will be shown if you drill down into a web site. VIRTUAL MACHINES The virtual machines that you had been deployed to azure. CLOUD SERVICES All windows azure hosted services in your account. SQL DATABASES All SQL databases (SQL Azure) in your account. STORAGE All windows azure storage services in your account. NETWORKS The virtual network (Windows Azure Connect) you had been created. The available items will be listed in the main part of the page based on which category your currently selected. If there’s no item it will show the link to you to quick create. At the bottom of the page there will be the command and information bar. Based on what is selected and what is performed by the user, it will show the related information and commands. For example, in the image below when I was creating a new web site, the information bar told me that my web site is being provisioned; and there are two commands in the command bar. And once it ready the command bar will show some commands that I can do to my new web site. The “Web Sites” is a new feature introduced alone with this upgrade. It gives us an easier and quicker way to establish a website from the scratch or from some existing library. I will introduce it more details in the coming next post. Also in the command bar you can create a service by clicking the NEW button. It will slide the creation panel up to you.   Where’s My Hosted Services The Windows Azure Hosted Services had been renamed to the Cloud Services. Create a new service would be very easy. Just click the NEW button at the bottom of the page, and select the CLOUD SERVICE and QIUICK CREATE. This will create a blank hosted service without deployment and certificate. It just needs you to specify the service URL and the affinity/region. Then the service will be shown in the list. If you clicked the item all information will be shown in the main part. Since there’s no package deployed to this service so currently we cannot see any information about it. But we can upload the package by using the command at the bottom. And as you can see, we could manage the configuration, instances, certificates and we can scale up and down (change the VM size), in and out (increase and decrease the instance count) to our service. Assuming I had created an ASP.NET MVC 3 web role project in Visual Studio and completed the package. Then I can click the UPLOAD button in this page to deploy my package. In the popping up window I just specify my deployment name, package file and configure file. Also I can check the box below so that it will NOT warn me if only one instance of this deployment. Once we clicked the OK button our package will be uploaded and provisioned by the platform. After a while we can see the service was ready from the information bar. We can have the basic information about this service and deployment if we to the dashboard page. For example the usage overview diagram, status, URL, public IP address, etc.. In the configure page we can view and change the CSCFG content such as the monitor setting, connection strings, OS family. In scale page we can increase and decrease the count of the instances. And in the instances page we can view all instances status. And, if your services is using some SQL databases and storages they will be shown as the linked resources under the linked resources page. And you can manage the certificates of this service as well under the certificates page.   How About My Storage Services The storage service can be managed by clicking into the STORAGES link in the navigation bar. And we can create a new storage service from the NEW button. After specify the storage name and region it will be previsioned by the platform. If you want to copy or manage the storage key you can just click the Manage Keys button at the bottom, which is very easy. What I want to highlight here is that, you can monitor your storage service by enabling the monitor configuration. Click the storage item in the list and navigate to the configure page. As you can see in the page you can enable the monitoring for blob, table and queue. And you can also enable the logging when any requests come to the storage. But as the tooltip shown in the page, enabling the monitoring and logging will increase the usage of the storage, which means increase the bill of them. So make sure you enable them properly.   And My SQL Databases (SQL Azure) The last thing I want to quick introduce is the SQL databases, which was formally named SQL Azure. You can create a new SQL Database Server and a new database by clicking the ADD button under the SQL Database navigation item. In the popping up windows just specify the database name, the edition, size, collation and the server. You can select an existing SQL Database Server if you have, or cerate a new one. If you selected to create a new server, there will be another step you need to do, which is specify the server login, password and the region. Once it ready you can mange your databases as well as the servers in the portal. In a particular server you can update the firewall settings in its Configure page. So, What Else There are some other area on the preview portal I didn’t cover, such as the virtual machines, virtual network and web sites. Regarding the virtual machines and web sites I will talk about them in the future separated post. Regarding the virtual network, it the Windows Azure Connect we are familiar with. But as I mention in the beginning of this post, the preview portal is still under developed. Some features are not available here. For example, you cannot manage the co-admin of your subscriptions, you cannot open the remote desktop on your hosted services, and you cannot navigate to the Windows Azure Service Bus, Access Control and Caching, which formally named Windows Azure AppFabric directly. In these cases you need to navigate back to the old portal. So in the coming several months we might need to use both these two sites.   Summary In this post I quick introduced the new windows azure developer portal. Since it had been rearranged and renamed I demonstrated some features that existing in the old portal, such as how to create and deploy a hosted service, how to provision a storage service and SQL database. All features in the old portal had been, is being and will be migrated into this new portal, but some of them were in a different category and page we need to figure out.   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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• Clustering Basics and Challenges

  - by Karoly Vegh

  For upcoming posts it seemed to be a good idea to dedicate some time for cluster basic concepts and theory. This post misses a lot of details that would explode the articlesize, should you have questions, do not hesitate to ask them in the comments.  The goal here is to get some concepts straight. I can't promise to give you an overall complete definitions of cluster, cluster agent, quorum, voting, fencing, split brain condition, so the following is more of an explanation. Here we go. -------- Cluster, HA, failover, switchover, scalability -------- An attempted definition of a Cluster: A cluster is a set (2+) server nodes dedicated to keep application services alive, communicating through the cluster software/framework with eachother, test and probe health status of servernodes/services and with quorum based decisions and with switchover/failover techniques keep the application services running on them available. That is, should a node that runs a service unexpectedly lose functionality/connection, the other ones would take over the and run the services, so that availability is guaranteed. To provide availability while strictly sticking to a consistent clusterconfiguration is the main goal of a cluster.  At this point we have to add that this defines a HA-cluster, a High-Availability cluster, where the clusternodes are planned to run the services in an active-standby, or failover fashion. An example could be a single instance database. Some applications can be run in a distributed or scalable fashion. In the latter case instances of the application run actively on separate clusternodes serving servicerequests simultaneously. An example for this version could be a webserver that forwards connection requests to many backend servers in a round-robin way. Or a database running in active-active RAC setup.  -------- Cluster arhitecture, interconnect, topologies -------- Now, what is a cluster made of? Servers, right. These servers (the clusternodes) need to communicate. This of course happens over the network, usually over dedicated network interfaces interconnecting all the clusternodes. These connection are called interconnects.How many clusternodes are in a cluster? There are different cluster topologies. The most simple one is a clustered pair topology, involving only two clusternodes:  There are several more topologies, clicking the image above will take you to the relevant documentation. Also, to answer the question Solaris Cluster allows you to run up to 16 servers in a cluster. Where shall these clusternodes be placed? A very important question. The right answer is: It depends on what you plan to achieve with the cluster. Do you plan to avoid only a server outage? Then you can place them right next to eachother in the datacenter. Do you need to avoid DataCenter outage? In that case of course you should place them at least in different fire zones. Or in two geographically distant DataCenters to avoid disasters like floods, large-scale fires or power outages. We call this a stretched- or campus cluster, the clusternodes being several kilometers away from eachother. To cover really large distances, you probably need to move to a GeoCluster, which is a different kind of animal.  What is a geocluster? A Geographic Cluster in Solaris Cluster terms is actually a metacluster between two, separate (locally-HA) clusters.  -------- Cluster resource types, agents, resources, resource groups -------- So how does the cluster manage my applications? The cluster needs to start, stop and probe your applications. If you application runs, the cluster needs to check regularly if the application state is healthy, does it respond over the network, does it have all the processes running, etc. This is called probing. If the cluster deems the application is in a faulty state, then it can try to restart it locally or decide to switch (stop on node A, start on node B) the service. Starting, stopping and probing are the three actions that a cluster agent does. There are many different kinds of agents included in Solaris Cluster, but you can build your own too. Examples are an agent that manages (mounts, moves) ZFS filesystems, or the Oracle DB HA agent that cares about the database, or an agent that moves a floating IP address between nodes. There are lots of other agents included for Apache, Tomcat, MySQL, Oracle DB, Oracle Weblogic, Zones, LDoms, NFS, DNS, etc.We also need to clarify the difference between a cluster resource and the cluster resource group.A cluster resource is something that is managed by a cluster agent. Cluster resource types are included in Solaris cluster (see above, e.g. HAStoragePlus, HA-Oracle, LogicalHost). You can group cluster resources into cluster resourcegroups, and switch these groups together from one node to another. To stick to the example above, to move an Oracle DB service from one node to another, you have to switch the group between nodes, and the agents of the cluster resources in the group will do the following:  On node A Shut down the DB Unconfigure the LogicalHost IP the DB Listener listens on unmount the filesystem   Then, on node B: mount the FS configure the IP  startup the DB -------- Voting, Quorum, Split Brain Condition, Fencing, Amnesia -------- How do the clusternodes agree upon their action? How do they decide which node runs what services? Another important question. Running a cluster is a strictly democratic thing.Every node has votes, and you need the majority of votes to have the deciding power. Now, this is usually no problem, clusternodes think very much all alike. Still, every action needs to be governed upon in a productive system, and has to be agreed upon. Agreeing is easy as long as the clusternodes all behave and talk to eachother over the interconnect. But if the interconnect is gone/down, this all gets tricky and confusing. Clusternodes think like this: "My job is to run these services. The other node does not answer my interconnect communication, it must be down. I'd better take control and run the services!". The problem is, as I have already mentioned, clusternodes very much think alike. If the interconnect is gone, they all assume the other node is down, and they all want to mount the data backend, enable the IP and run the database. Double IPs, double mounts, double DB instances - now that is trouble. Also, in a 2-node cluster they both have only 50% of the votes, that is, they themselves alone are not allowed to run a cluster.  This is where you need a quorum device. According to Wikipedia, the "requirement for a quorum is protection against totally unrepresentative action in the name of the body by an unduly small number of persons.". They need additional votes to run the cluster. For this requirement a 2-node cluster needs a quorum device or a quorum server. If the interconnect is gone, (this is what we call a split brain condition) both nodes start to race and try to reserve the quorum device to themselves. They do this, because the quorum device bears an additional vote, that could ensure majority (50% +1). The one that manages to lock the quorum device (e.g. if it's an FC LUN, it SCSI reserves it) wins the right to build/run a cluster, the other one - realizing he was late - panics/reboots to ensure the cluster config stays consistent.  Losing the interconnect isn't only endangering the availability of services, but it also endangers the cluster configuration consistence. Just imagine node A being down and during that the cluster configuration changes. Now node B goes down, and node A comes up. It isn't uptodate about the cluster configuration's changes so it will refuse to start a cluster, since that would lead to cluster amnesia, that is the cluster had some changes, but now runs with an older cluster configuration repository state, that is it's like it forgot about the changes.  Also, to ensure application data consistence, the clusternode that wins the race makes sure that a server that isn't part of or can't currently join the cluster can access the devices. This procedure is called fencing. This usually happens to storage LUNs via SCSI reservation.  Now, another important question: Where do I place the quorum disk?  Imagine having two sites, two separate datacenters, one in the north of the city and the other one in the south part of it. You run a stretched cluster in the clustered pair topology. Where do you place the quorum disk/server? If you put it into the north DC, and that gets hit by a meteor, you lose one clusternode, which isn't a problem, but you also lose your quorum, and the south clusternode can't keep the cluster running lacking the votes. This problem can't be solved with two sites and a campus cluster. You will need a third site to either place the quorum server to, or a third clusternode. Otherwise, lacking majority, if you lose the site that had your quorum, you lose the cluster. Okay, we covered the very basics. We haven't talked about virtualization support, CCR, ClusterFilesystems, DID devices, affinities, storage-replication, management tools, upgrade procedures - should those be interesting for you, let me know in the comments, along with any other questions. Given enough demand I'd be glad to write a followup post too. Now I really want to move on to the second part in the series: ClusterInstallation.  Oh, as for additional source of information, I recommend the documentation: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23623_01/index.html, and the OTN Oracle Solaris Cluster site: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris-cluster/index.html

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• Build an Organization Chart In Visio 2010

  - by Mysticgeek

  With trying to manage a business these days, it’s very important to have an Organization Chart to keep everything manageable. Here we’ll show you how to build one in Visio 2010. This Guest Article was written by our friends over at Office 2010 Club. Need for Organization Charts The need of creating Organization Charts are becoming indispensable these days, as companies start focusing on extensive hiring for far reach availability, increase in productivity and targeting diverse markets. Considering this rigorous change, creating an organization chart can help stakeholders in comprehending the ever growing organization structure & hierarchy with an ease. It shows the basic structure of organization along with defining the relationships between employees working in different departments. Opportunely, Microsoft Visio 2010 offers an easy way to create Organization chart. As before now, orthodox ways of listing organization hierarchy have been used for defining the structure of departments along with communication possible including; horizontal and vertical communications. To transform these lists which defines organizational structure, into a detailed chart, Visio 2010 includes an add-in for importing Excel spreadsheet, which comes in handy for pulling out data from spreadsheet to create an organization chart. Importantly, you don’t need to indulge yourself in maze of defining organizational hierarchies and chalking-out structure, as you just need to specify the column & row headers, along with data you need to import and it will automatically create out chart defining; organizational hierarchies with specified credentials of each employee, categorized in their corresponding departments. Creating Organization Charts in Visio 2010 To start off with, we have created an Excel spreadsheet having fields, Name, Supervisor, Designation, Department and Phone. The Name field contains name of all the employees working in different departments, whereas Supervisor field contains name of supervisors or team leads. This field is vital for creating Organization Chart, as it defines the basic structure & hierarchy in chart. Now launch Visio 2010, head over to View tab, under Add-Ons menu, from Business options, click Organization Chart Wizard. This will start Organization Chart Wizard, in the first step, enable Information that’s already stored in a file or database option, and click Next. As we are importing Excel sheet, select the second option for importing Excel spreadsheet. Specify the Excel file path and click Next to continue. In this step, you need to specify the fields which actually defines the structure of an organization. In our case, these are Name & Supervisor fields. After specifying fields, click Next to Proceed further. As organization chart is primarily for showing the hierarchy of departments/employees working in organization along with how they are linked together, and who supervises whom. Considering this, in this step we will leave out Supervisor field, because it’s inclusion wouldn’t be necessary as Visio automatically chalks-out the basic structure defined in Excel sheet. Add the rest of the fields under Displayed fields category, and click Next. Now choose the fields which you want to include in Organization Chart’s shapes and click Next. This step is about breaking the chart into multiple pages, if you are dealing with 100+ employees, you may want to specify numbers of pages on which Organization Chart will be displayed. But in our case, we are dealing with much less amount of data, so we will enable I want the wizard to automatically break my organization chart across pages option. Specify the name you need to show on the top of the page. If you are having less than 20 hierarchies, enter the name of the highest ranked employee in organization and click Finish to end the wizard. It will instantly create an Organization chart out of specified Excel spreadsheet. Highest ranked employee will be shown on top of the organization chart, supervising various employees from different departments. As shown below, his immediate subordinates further manages other employees and so on. For advance customizations, head over to Org Chart tab, here you will find different groups for setting up the Org Chart’s hierarchy and manage other employees’ positions. Under Arrange group, shapes’ arrangements can be changed and it provides easy navigation through the chart. You can also change the type of the position and hide subordinates of selected employee. From Picture group, you can insert a picture of the employees, departments, etc. From synchronization group, you have the option of creating a synced copy and expanding subordinates of selected employee. Under Organization Data group, you can change whole layout of Organization chart from Display Options including; shape display, show divider, enable/disable imported fields, change block position, and fill colors, etc. If at any point of time, you need to insert new position or announce vacancy, Organization Chart stencil is always available on the left sidebar. Drag the desired Organization Chart shape into main diagram page, to maintain the structure integrity, i.e, for inserting subordinates for a specific employee, drag the position shape over the existing employee shape box. For instance, We have added a consultant in organization, who is directly under CEO, for maintaining this, we have dragged the Consultant box and just dropped it over the CEO box to make the immediate subordinate position. Adding details to new position is a cinch, just right-click new position box and click Properties. This will open up Shape Data dialog, start filling in all the relevant information and click OK. Here you can see the newly created position is easily populated with all the specified information. Now expanding an Organization Chart doesn’t require maintenance of long lists any more. Under Design tab, you can also try out different designs & layouts over organization chart to make it look more flamboyant and professional.  Conclusion An Organization Chart is a great way of showing detailed organizational hierarchies; with defined credentials of employees, departments structure, new vacancies, newly hired employees, recently added departments, and importantly shows most convenient way of interaction between different departments & employees, etc. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Geek Reviews: Using Dia as a Free Replacement for Microsoft VisioMysticgeek Blog: Create Appealing Charts In Excel 2007Create Charts in Excel 2007 the Easy Way with Chart AdvisorCreate a Hyperlink in a Word 2007 Flow Chart and Hide Annoying ScreenTipsCreate A Flow Chart In Word 2007 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Know if Someone Accessed Your Facebook Account Shop for Music with Windows Media Player 12 Access Free Documentaries at BBC Documentaries Rent Cameras In Bulk At CameraRenter Download Songs From MySpace Steve Jobs’ iPhone 4 Keynote Video

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