effects - Page 68 - Developer IT

Problem implementing Blinn–Phong shading model

- by Joe Hopfgartner

I did this very simple, perfectly working, implementation of Phong Relflection Model (There is no ambience implemented yet, but that doesn't bother me for now). The functions should be self explaining. /** * Implements the classic Phong illumination Model using a reflected light * vector. */ public class PhongIllumination implements IlluminationModel { @RGBParam(r = 0, g = 0, b = 0) public Vec3 ambient; @RGBParam(r = 1, g = 1, b = 1) public Vec3 diffuse; @RGBParam(r = 1, g = 1, b = 1) public Vec3 specular; @FloatParam(value = 20, min = 1, max = 200.0f) public float shininess; /* * Calculate the intensity of light reflected to the viewer . * * @param P = The surface position expressed in world coordinates. * * @param V = Normalized viewing vector from surface to eye in world * coordinates. * * @param N = Normalized normal vector at surface point in world * coordinates. * * @param surfaceColor = surfaceColor Color of the surface at the current * position. * * @param lights = The active light sources in the scene. * * @return Reflected light intensity I. */ public Vec3 shade(Vec3 P, Vec3 V, Vec3 N, Vec3 surfaceColor, Light lights[]) { Vec3 surfaceColordiffused = Vec3.mul(surfaceColor, diffuse); Vec3 totalintensity = new Vec3(0, 0, 0); for (int i = 0; i < lights.length; i++) { Vec3 L = lights[i].calcDirection(P); N = N.normalize(); V = V.normalize(); Vec3 R = Vec3.reflect(L, N); // reflection vector float diffuseLight = Vec3.dot(N, L); float specularLight = Vec3.dot(V, R); if (diffuseLight > 0) { totalintensity = Vec3.add(Vec3.mul(Vec3.mul( surfaceColordiffused, lights[i].calcIntensity(P)), diffuseLight), totalintensity); if (specularLight > 0) { Vec3 Il = lights[i].calcIntensity(P); Vec3 Ilincident = Vec3.mul(Il, Math.max(0.0f, Vec3 .dot(N, L))); Vec3 intensity = Vec3.mul(Vec3.mul(specular, Ilincident), (float) Math.pow(specularLight, shininess)); totalintensity = Vec3.add(totalintensity, intensity); } } } return totalintensity; } } Now i need to adapt it to become a Blinn-Phong illumination model I used the formulas from hearn and baker, followed pseudocodes and tried to implement it multiple times according to wikipedia articles in several languages but it never worked. I just get no specular reflections or they are so weak and/or are at the wrong place and/or have the wrong color. From the numerous wrong implementations I post some little code that already seems to be wrong. So I calculate my Half Way vector and my new specular light like so: Vec3 H = Vec3.mul(Vec3.add(L.normalize(), V), Vec3.add(L.normalize(), V).length()); float specularLight = Vec3.dot(H, N); With theese little changes it should already work (maby not with correct intensity but basically it should be correct). But the result is wrong. Here are two images. Left how it should render correctly and right how it renders. If i lower the shininess factor you can see a little specular light at the top right: Altough I understand the concept of Phong illumination and also the simplified more performant adaptaion of blinn phong I am trying around for days and just cant get it to work. Any help is appriciated. Edit: I was made aware of an error by this answer, that i am mutiplying by |L+V| instead of dividing by it when calculating H. I changed to deviding doing so: Vec3 H = Vec3.mul(Vec3.add(L.normalize(), V), 1/Vec3.add(L.normalize(), V).length()); Unfortunately this doesnt change much. The results look like this: and if I rise the specular constant and lower the shininess You can see the effects more clearly in a smilar wrong way: However this division just the normalisation. I think I am missing one step. Because the formulas like this just dont make sense to me. If you look at this picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Blinn-Phong_vectors.svg The projection of H to N is far less than V to R. And if you imagine changing the vector V in the picture the angle is the same when the viewing vector is "on the left side". and becomes more and more different when going to the right. I pesonally would multiply the whole projection by two to become something similiar (and the hole point is to avoid the calculation of R). Altough I didnt read anythinga bout that anywehre i am gonna try this out... Result: The intension of the specular light is far too much (white areas) and the position is still wrong. I think I am messing something else up because teh reflection are just at the wrong place. But what? Edit: Now I read on wikipedia in the notes that the angle of N/H is in fact approximalty half or V/R. To compensate that i should multiply my shineness exponent by 4 rather than my projection. If i do that I end up with this: Far to intense but still one thing. The projection is at the wrong place. Where could i mess up my vectors?

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1136: Incorrect number of arguments. Expected 0.? AS3 Flash Cs4 (Round 2)

- by charmaine

(I have asked this before but I dont think I was direct enough with my question and therefore it did not get resolved so here goes again!) I am working through a book called Foundation Actionscript 3.0 Animation, making things move. I am now on Chapter 9 - Collision Detection. On two lines of my code I get the 1135 error, letting me know that I have an incorrect number of arguments. I have highlighted the two areas in which this occurs with asterisks: package { import flash.display.Sprite; import flash.events.Event; public class Bubbles extends Sprite { private var balls:Array; private var numBalls:Number = 10; private var centerBall:Ball; private var bounce:Number = -1; private var spring:Number = 0.2; public function Bubbles() { init(); } private function init():void { balls = new Array(); ***centerBall = new Ball(100, 0xcccccc);*** addChild(centerBall); centerBall.x = stage.stageWidth / 2; centerBall.y = stage.stageHeight / 2; for(var i:uint = 0; i < numBalls; i++) { ***var ball:Ball = new Ball(Math.random() * 40 + 5, Math.random() * 0xffffff);*** ball.x = Math.random() * stage.stageWidth; ball.y = Math.random() * stage.stageHeight; ball.vx = Math.random() * 6 - 3; ball.vy = Math.random() * 6 - 3; addChild(ball); balls.push(ball); } addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, onEnterFrame); } private function onEnterFrame(event:Event):void { for(var i:uint = 0; i < numBalls; i++) { var ball:Ball = balls[i]; move(ball); var dx:Number = ball.x - centerBall.x; var dy:Number = ball.y - centerBall.y; var dist:Number = Math.sqrt(dx * dx + dy * dy); var minDist:Number = ball.radius + centerBall.radius; if(dist < minDist) { var angle:Number = Math.atan2(dy, dx); var tx:Number = centerBall.x + Math.cos(angle) * minDist; var ty:Number = centerBall.y + Math.sin(angle) * minDist; ball.vx += (tx - ball.x) * spring; ball.vy += (ty - ball.y) * spring; } } } private function move(ball:Ball):void { ball.x += ball.vx; ball.y += ball.vy; if(ball.x + ball.radius > stage.stageWidth) { ball.x = stage.stageWidth - ball.radius; ball.vx *= bounce; } else if(ball.x - ball.radius < 0) { ball.x = ball.radius; ball.vx *= bounce; } if(ball.y + ball.radius > stage.stageHeight) { ball.y = stage.stageHeight - ball.radius; ball.vy *= bounce; } else if(ball.y - ball.radius < 0) { ball.y = ball.radius; ball.vy *= bounce; } } } } I think this is due to the non-existance of a Ball.as, when reading the tutorial I assumed it meant that I had to create a movie clip of a ball on stage and then export it for actionscript with the class name being Ball, however when flicking back through the book I saw that a Ball.as already existed, stating that I may need to use this again later on in the book, this read: package { import flash.display.Sprite; public class Ball extends Sprite { private var radius:Number; private var color:uint; public var vx:Number=0; public var vy:Number=0; public function Ball(radius:Number=40, color:uint=0xff0000) { this.radius=radius; this.color=color; init(); } public function init():void { graphics.beginFill(color); graphics.drawCircle(0, 0, radius); graphics.endFill(); } } } This managed to stop all the errors appearing however, it did not transmit any of the effects from Bubbles.as it just braught a Red Ball on the center of the stage. How would I alter this code in order to work in favour of Bubbles.as? Please Help! Thanks!

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Odd optimization problem under MSVC

- by Goz

I've seen this blog: http://igoro.com/archive/gallery-of-processor-cache-effects/ The "weirdness" in part 7 is what caught my interest. My first thought was "Thats just C# being weird". Its not I wrote the following C++ code. volatile int* p = (volatile int*)_aligned_malloc( sizeof( int ) * 8, 64 ); memset( (void*)p, 0, sizeof( int ) * 8 ); double dStart = t.GetTime(); for (int i = 0; i < 200000000; i++) { //p[0]++;p[1]++;p[2]++;p[3]++; // Option 1 //p[0]++;p[2]++;p[4]++;p[6]++; // Option 2 p[0]++;p[2]++; // Option 3 } double dTime = t.GetTime() - dStart; The timing I get on my 2.4 Ghz Core 2 Quad go as follows: Option 1 = ~8 cycles per loop. Option 2 = ~4 cycles per loop. Option 3 = ~6 cycles per loop. Now This is confusing. My reasoning behind the difference comes down to the cache write latency (3 cycles) on my chip and an assumption that the cache has a 128-bit write port (This is pure guess work on my part). On that basis in Option 1: It will increment p[0] (1 cycle) then increment p[2] (1 cycle) then it has to wait 1 cycle (for cache) then p[1] (1 cycle) then wait 1 cycle (for cache) then p[3] (1 cycle). Finally 2 cycles for increment and jump (Though its usually implemented as decrement and jump). This gives a total of 8 cycles. In Option 2: It can increment p[0] and p[4] in one cycle then increment p[2] and p[6] in another cycle. Then 2 cycles for subtract and jump. No waits needed on cache. Total 4 cycles. In option 3: It can increment p[0] then has to wait 2 cycles then increment p[2] then subtract and jump. The problem is if you set case 3 to increment p[0] and p[4] it STILL takes 6 cycles (which kinda blows my 128-bit read/write port out of the water). So ... can anyone tell me what the hell is going on here? Why DOES case 3 take longer? Also I'd love to know what I've got wrong in my thinking above, as i obviously have something wrong! Any ideas would be much appreciated! :) It'd also be interesting to see how GCC or any other compiler copes with it as well! Edit: Jerry Coffin's idea gave me some thoughts. I've done some more tests (on a different machine so forgive the change in timings) with and without nops and with different counts of nops case 2 - 0.46 00401ABD jne (401AB0h) 0 nops - 0.68 00401AB7 jne (401AB0h) 1 nop - 0.61 00401AB8 jne (401AB0h) 2 nops - 0.636 00401AB9 jne (401AB0h) 3 nops - 0.632 00401ABA jne (401AB0h) 4 nops - 0.66 00401ABB jne (401AB0h) 5 nops - 0.52 00401ABC jne (401AB0h) 6 nops - 0.46 00401ABD jne (401AB0h) 7 nops - 0.46 00401ABE jne (401AB0h) 8 nops - 0.46 00401ABF jne (401AB0h) 9 nops - 0.55 00401AC0 jne (401AB0h) I've included the jump statetements so you can see that the source and destination are in one cache line. You can also see that we start to get a difference when we are 13 bytes or more apart. Until we hit 16 ... then it all goes wrong. So Jerry isn't right (though his suggestion DOES help a bit), however something IS going on. I'm more and more intrigued to try and figure out what it is now. It does appear to be more some sort of memory alignment oddity rather than some sort of instruction throughput oddity. Anyone want to explain this for an inquisitive mind? :D Edit 3: Interjay has a point on the unrolling that blows the previous edit out of the water. With an unrolled loop the performance does not improve. You need to add a nop in to make the gap between jump source and destination the same as for my good nop count above. Performance still sucks. Its interesting that I need 6 nops to improve performance though. I wonder how many nops the processor can issue per cycle? If its 3 then that account for the cache write latency ... But, if thats it, why is the latency occurring? Curiouser and curiouser ...

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HLSL/XNA Ambient light texture mixed up with multi pass lighting

- by Manu-EPITA

I've been having some troubles lately with lighting. I have found a source on google which is working pretty good on the example. However, when I try to implement it to my current project, I am getting some very weird bugs. The main one is that my textures are "mixed up" when I only activate the ambient light, which means that a model gets the texture of another one . I am using the same effect for every meshes of my models. I guess this could be the problem, but I don't really know how to "reset" an effect for a new model. Is it possible? Here is my shader: float4x4 WVP; float4x4 WVP; float3x3 World; float3 Ke; float3 Ka; float3 Kd; float3 Ks; float specularPower; float3 globalAmbient; float3 lightColor; float3 eyePosition; float3 lightDirection; float3 lightPosition; float spotPower; texture2D Texture; sampler2D texSampler = sampler_state { Texture = <Texture>; MinFilter = anisotropic; MagFilter = anisotropic; MipFilter = linear; MaxAnisotropy = 16; }; struct VertexShaderInput { float4 Position : POSITION0; float2 Texture : TEXCOORD0; float3 Normal : NORMAL0; }; struct VertexShaderOutput { float4 Position : POSITION0; float2 Texture : TEXCOORD0; float3 PositionO: TEXCOORD1; float3 Normal : NORMAL0; }; VertexShaderOutput VertexShaderFunction(VertexShaderInput input) { VertexShaderOutput output; output.Position = mul(input.Position, WVP); output.Normal = input.Normal; output.PositionO = input.Position.xyz; output.Texture = input.Texture; return output; } float4 PSAmbient(VertexShaderOutput input) : COLOR0 { return float4(Ka*globalAmbient + Ke,1) * tex2D(texSampler,input.Texture); } float4 PSDirectionalLight(VertexShaderOutput input) : COLOR0 { //Difuze float3 L = normalize(-lightDirection); float diffuseLight = max(dot(input.Normal,L), 0); float3 diffuse = Kd*lightColor*diffuseLight; //Specular float3 V = normalize(eyePosition - input.PositionO); float3 H = normalize(L + V); float specularLight = pow(max(dot(input.Normal,H),0),specularPower); if(diffuseLight<=0) specularLight=0; float3 specular = Ks * lightColor * specularLight; //sum all light components float3 light = diffuse + specular; return float4(light,1) * tex2D(texSampler,input.Texture); } technique MultiPassLight { pass Ambient { VertexShader = compile vs_3_0 VertexShaderFunction(); PixelShader = compile ps_3_0 PSAmbient(); } pass Directional { PixelShader = compile ps_3_0 PSDirectionalLight(); } } And here is how I actually apply my effects: public void ApplyLights(ModelMesh mesh, Matrix world, Texture2D modelTexture, Camera camera, Effect effect, GraphicsDevice graphicsDevice) { graphicsDevice.BlendState = BlendState.Opaque; effect.CurrentTechnique.Passes["Ambient"].Apply(); foreach (ModelMeshPart part in mesh.MeshParts) { graphicsDevice.SetVertexBuffer(part.VertexBuffer); graphicsDevice.Indices = part.IndexBuffer; // Texturing graphicsDevice.BlendState = BlendState.AlphaBlend; if (modelTexture != null) { effect.Parameters["Texture"].SetValue( modelTexture ); } graphicsDevice.DrawIndexedPrimitives( PrimitiveType.TriangleList, part.VertexOffset, 0, part.NumVertices, part.StartIndex, part.PrimitiveCount ); // Applying our shader to all the mesh parts effect.Parameters["WVP"].SetValue( world * camera.View * camera.Projection ); effect.Parameters["World"].SetValue(world); effect.Parameters["eyePosition"].SetValue( camera.Position ); graphicsDevice.BlendState = BlendState.Additive; // Drawing lights foreach (DirectionalLight light in DirectionalLights) { effect.Parameters["lightColor"].SetValue(light.Color.ToVector3()); effect.Parameters["lightDirection"].SetValue(light.Direction); // Applying changes and drawing them effect.CurrentTechnique.Passes["Directional"].Apply(); graphicsDevice.DrawIndexedPrimitives( PrimitiveType.TriangleList, part.VertexOffset, 0, part.NumVertices, part.StartIndex, part.PrimitiveCount ); } } I am also applying this when loading the effect: effect.Parameters["lightColor"].SetValue(Color.White.ToVector3()); effect.Parameters["globalAmbient"].SetValue(Color.White.ToVector3()); effect.Parameters["Ke"].SetValue(0.0f); effect.Parameters["Ka"].SetValue(0.01f); effect.Parameters["Kd"].SetValue(1.0f); effect.Parameters["Ks"].SetValue(0.3f); effect.Parameters["specularPower"].SetValue(100); Thank you very much UPDATE: I tried to load an effect for each model when drawing, but it doesn't seem to have changed anything. I suppose it is because XNA detects that the effect has already been loaded before and doesn't want to load a new one. Any idea why?

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Alert visualization recipe: Get out your blender, drop in some sp_send_dbmail, Google Charts API, add your favorite colors and sprinkle with html. Blend till it’s smooth and looks pretty enough to taste.

- by Maria Zakourdaev

I really like database monitoring. My email inbox have a constant flow of different types of alerts coming from our production servers with all kinds of information, sometimes more useful and sometimes less useful. Usually database alerts look really simple, it’s usually a plain text email saying “Prod1 Database data file on Server X is 80% used. You’d better grow it manually before some query triggers the AutoGrowth process”. Imagine you could have received email like the one below. In addition to the alert description it could have also included the the database file growth chart over the past 6 months. Wouldn’t it give you much more information whether the data growth is natural or extreme? That’s truly what data visualization is for. Believe it or not, I have sent the graph below from SQL Server stored procedure without buying any additional data monitoring/visualization tool. Would you like to visualize your database alerts like I do? Then like myself, you’d love the Google Charts. All you need to know is a little HTML and have a mail profile configured on your SQL Server instance regardless of the SQL Server version. First of all, I hope you know that the sp_send_dbmail procedure has a great parameter @body_format = ‘HTML’, which allows us to send rich and colorful messages instead of boring black and white ones. All that we need is to dynamically create HTML code. This is how, for instance, you can create a table and populate it with some data: DECLARE @html varchar(max) SET @html = '<html>' + '<H3><font id="Text" style='color: Green;'>Top Databases: </H3>' + '<table border="1" bordercolor="#3300FF" style='background-color:#DDF8CC' width='70%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='3'>' + '<tr><font color="Green"><th>Database Name</th><th>Size</th><th>Physical Name</th></tr>' + CAST( (SELECT TOP 10 td = name,'', td = size * 8/1024 ,'', td = physical_name FROM sys.master_files ORDER BY size DESC FOR XML PATH ('tr'),TYPE ) AS VARCHAR(MAX)) + '</table>' EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_send_dbmail @recipients = '[email protected]', @subject ='Top databases', @body = @html, @body_format = 'HTML' This is the result: If you want to add more visualization effects, you can use Google Charts Tools https://google-developers.appspot.com/chart/interactive/docs/index which is a free and rich library of data visualization charts, they’re also easy to populate and embed. There are two versions of the Google Charts Image based charts: https://google-developers.appspot.com/chart/image/docs/gallery/chart_gall This is an old version, it’s officially deprecated although it will be up for a next few years or so. I really enjoy using this one because it can be viewed within the email body. For mobile devices you need to change the “Load remote images” property in your email application configuration. Charts based on JavaScript classes: https://google-developers.appspot.com/chart/interactive/docs/gallery This API is newer, with rich and highly interactive charts, and it’s much more easier to understand and configure. The only downside of it is that they cannot be viewed within the email body. Outlook, Gmail and many other email clients, as part of their security policy, do not run any JavaScript that’s placed within the email body. However, you can still enjoy this API by sending the report as an email attachment. Here is an example of the old version of Google Charts API, sending the same top databases report as in the previous example but instead of a simple table, this script is using a pie chart right from the T-SQL code DECLARE @html varchar(8000) DECLARE @Series varchar(800),@Labels varchar(8000),@Legend varchar(8000); SET @Series = ''; SET @Labels = ''; SET @Legend = ''; SELECT TOP 5 @Series = @Series + CAST(size * 8/1024 as varchar) + ',', @Labels = @Labels +CAST(size * 8/1024 as varchar) + 'MB'+'|', @Legend = @Legend + name + '|' FROM sys.master_files ORDER BY size DESC SELECT @Series = SUBSTRING(@Series,1,LEN(@Series)-1), @Labels = SUBSTRING(@Labels,1,LEN(@Labels)-1), @Legend = SUBSTRING(@Legend,1,LEN(@Legend)-1) SET @html = '<H3><font color="Green"> '+@@ServerName+' top 5 databases : </H3>'+ '<br>'+ '<img src="http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?'+ 'chf=bg,s,DDF8CC&'+ 'cht=p&'+ 'chs=400x200&'+ 'chco=3072F3|7777CC|FF9900|FF0000|4A8C26&'+ 'chd=t:'+@Series+'&'+ 'chl='+@Labels+'&'+ 'chma=0,0,0,0&'+ 'chdl='+@Legend+'&'+ 'chdlp=b"'+ 'alt="'+@@ServerName+' top 5 databases" />' EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_send_dbmail @recipients = '[email protected]', @subject = 'Top databases', @body = @html, @body_format = 'HTML' This is what you get. Isn’t it great? Chart parameters reference: chf Gradient fill bg - backgroud ; s- solid cht chart type ( p - pie) chs chart size width/height chco series colors chd chart data string 1,2,3,2 chl pir chart labels a|b|c|d chma chart margins chdl chart legend a|b|c|d chdlp chart legend text b - bottom of chart Line graph implementation is also really easy and powerful DECLARE @html varchar(max) DECLARE @Series varchar(max) DECLARE @HourList varchar(max) SET @Series = ''; SET @HourList = ''; SELECT @HourList = @HourList + SUBSTRING(CONVERT(varchar(13),last_execution_time,121), 12,2) + '|' , @Series = @Series + CAST( COUNT(1) as varchar) + ',' FROM sys.dm_exec_query_stats s CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_sql_text(plan_handle) t WHERE last_execution_time > = getdate()-1 GROUP BY CONVERT(varchar(13),last_execution_time,121) ORDER BY CONVERT(varchar(13),last_execution_time,121) SET @Series = SUBSTRING(@Series,1,LEN(@Series)-1) SET @html = '<img src="http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?'+ 'chco=CA3D05,87CEEB&'+ 'chd=t:'+@Series+'&'+ 'chds=1,350&'+ 'chdl= Proc executions from cache&'+ 'chf=bg,s,1F1D1D|c,lg,0,363433,1.0,2E2B2A,0.0&'+ 'chg=25.0,25.0,3,2&'+ 'chls=3|3&'+ 'chm=d,CA3D05,0,-1,12,0|d,FFFFFF,0,-1,8,0|d,87CEEB,1,-1,12,0|d,FFFFFF,1,-1,8,0&'+ 'chs=600x450&'+ 'cht=lc&'+ 'chts=FFFFFF,14&'+ 'chtt=Executions for from' +(SELECT CONVERT(varchar(16),min(last_execution_time),121) FROM sys.dm_exec_query_stats WHERE last_execution_time > = getdate()-1) +' till '+ +(SELECT CONVERT(varchar(16),max(last_execution_time),121) FROM sys.dm_exec_query_stats) + '&'+ 'chxp=1,50.0|4,50.0&'+ 'chxs=0,FFFFFF,12,0|1,FFFFFF,12,0|2,FFFFFF,12,0|3,FFFFFF,12,0|4,FFFFFF,14,0&'+ 'chxt=y,y,x,x,x&'+ 'chxl=0:|1|350|1:|N|2:|'+@HourList+'3:|Hour&'+ 'chma=55,120,0,0" alt="" />' EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_send_dbmail @recipients = '[email protected]', @subject ='Daily number of executions', @body = @html, @body_format = 'HTML' Chart parameters reference: chco series colors chd series data chds scale format chdl chart legend chf background fills chg grid line chls line style chm line fill chs chart size cht chart type chts chart style chtt chart title chxp axis label positions chxs axis label styles chxt axis tick mark styles chxl axis labels chma chart margins If you don’t mind to get your charts as an email attachment, you can enjoy the Java based Google Charts which are even easier to configure, and have much more advanced graphics. In the example below, the sp_send_email procedure uses the parameter @query which will be executed at the time that sp_send_dbemail is executed and the HTML result of this execution will be attached to the email. DECLARE @html varchar(max),@query varchar(max) DECLARE @SeriesDBusers varchar(800); SET @SeriesDBusers = ''; SELECT @SeriesDBusers = @SeriesDBusers + ' ["'+DB_NAME(r.database_id) +'", ' +cast(count(1) as varchar)+'],' FROM sys.dm_exec_requests r GROUP BY DB_NAME(database_id) ORDER BY count(1) desc; SET @SeriesDBusers = SUBSTRING(@SeriesDBusers,1,LEN(@SeriesDBusers)-1) SET @query = ' PRINT '' <html> <head> <script type="text/javascript" src="https://www.google.com/jsapi"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> google.load("visualization", "1", {packages:["corechart"]}); google.setOnLoadCallback(drawChart); function drawChart() { var data = google.visualization.arrayToDataTable([ ["Database Name", "Active users"], '+@SeriesDBusers+' ]); var options = { title: "Active users", pieSliceText: "value" }; var chart = new google.visualization.PieChart(document.getElementById("chart_div")); chart.draw(data, options); }; </script> </head> <body> <table> <tr><td> <div id="chart_div" style='width: 800px; height: 300px;'></div> </td></tr> </table> </body> </html> ''' EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_send_dbmail @recipients = '[email protected]', @subject ='Active users', @body = @html, @body_format = 'HTML', @query = @Query, @attach_query_result_as_file = 1, @query_attachment_filename = 'Results.htm' After opening the email attachment in the browser you are getting this kind of report: In fact, the above is not only for database alerts. It can be used for applicative reports if you need high levels of customization that you cannot achieve using standard methods like SSRS. If you need more information on how to customize the charts, you can try the following: Image Based Charts wizard https://google-developers.appspot.com/chart/image/docs/chart_wizard Live Image Charts Playground https://google-developers.appspot.com/chart/image/docs/chart_playground Image Based Charts Parameters List https://google-developers.appspot.com/chart/image/docs/chart_params Java Script Charts Playground https://code.google.com/apis/ajax/playground/?type=visualization Use the above examples as a starting point for your procedures and I’d be more than happy to hear of your implementations of the above techniques. Yours, Maria

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Using TPL and PLINQ to raise performance of feed aggregator

- by DigiMortal

In this posting I will show you how to use Task Parallel Library (TPL) and PLINQ features to boost performance of simple RSS-feed aggregator. I will use here only very basic .NET classes that almost every developer starts from when learning parallel programming. Of course, we will also measure how every optimization affects performance of feed aggregator. Feed aggregator Our feed aggregator works as follows: Load list of blogs Download RSS-feed Parse feed XML Add new posts to database Our feed aggregator is run by task scheduler after every 15 minutes by example. We will start our journey with serial implementation of feed aggregator. Second step is to use task parallelism and parallelize feeds downloading and parsing. And our last step is to use data parallelism to parallelize database operations. We will use Stopwatch class to measure how much time it takes for aggregator to download and insert all posts from all registered blogs. After every run we empty posts table in database. Serial aggregation Before doing parallel stuff let’s take a look at serial implementation of feed aggregator. All tasks happen one after other. internal class FeedClient { private readonly INewsService _newsService; private const int FeedItemContentMaxLength = 255; public FeedClient() { ObjectFactory.Initialize(container => { container.PullConfigurationFromAppConfig = true; }); _newsService = ObjectFactory.GetInstance<INewsService>(); } public void Execute() { var blogs = _newsService.ListPublishedBlogs(); for (var index = 0; index <blogs.Count; index++) { ImportFeed(blogs[index]); } } private void ImportFeed(BlogDto blog) { if(blog == null) return; if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(blog.RssUrl)) return; var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl); SyndicationContentFormat feedFormat; feedFormat = SyndicationDiscoveryUtility.SyndicationContentFormatGet(uri); if (feedFormat == SyndicationContentFormat.Rss) ImportRssFeed(blog); if (feedFormat == SyndicationContentFormat.Atom) ImportAtomFeed(blog); } private void ImportRssFeed(BlogDto blog) { var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl); var feed = RssFeed.Create(uri); foreach (var item in feed.Channel.Items) { SaveRssFeedItem(item, blog.Id, blog.CreatedById); } } private void ImportAtomFeed(BlogDto blog) { var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl); var feed = AtomFeed.Create(uri); foreach (var item in feed.Entries) { SaveAtomFeedEntry(item, blog.Id, blog.CreatedById); } } } Serial implementation of feed aggregator downloads and inserts all posts with 25.46 seconds. Task parallelism Task parallelism means that separate tasks are run in parallel. You can find out more about task parallelism from MSDN page Task Parallelism (Task Parallel Library) and Wikipedia page Task parallelism. Although finding parts of code that can run safely in parallel without synchronization issues is not easy task we are lucky this time. Feeds import and parsing is perfect candidate for parallel tasks. We can safely parallelize feeds import because importing tasks doesn’t share any resources and therefore they don’t also need any synchronization. After getting the list of blogs we iterate through the collection and start new TPL task for each blog feed aggregation. internal class FeedClient { private readonly INewsService _newsService; private const int FeedItemContentMaxLength = 255; public FeedClient() { ObjectFactory.Initialize(container => { container.PullConfigurationFromAppConfig = true; }); _newsService = ObjectFactory.GetInstance<INewsService>(); } public void Execute() { var blogs = _newsService.ListPublishedBlogs(); var tasks = new Task[blogs.Count]; for (var index = 0; index <blogs.Count; index++) { tasks[index] = new Task(ImportFeed, blogs[index]); tasks[index].Start(); } Task.WaitAll(tasks); } private void ImportFeed(object blogObject) { if(blogObject == null) return; var blog = (BlogDto)blogObject; if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(blog.RssUrl)) return; var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl); SyndicationContentFormat feedFormat; feedFormat = SyndicationDiscoveryUtility.SyndicationContentFormatGet(uri); if (feedFormat == SyndicationContentFormat.Rss) ImportRssFeed(blog); if (feedFormat == SyndicationContentFormat.Atom) ImportAtomFeed(blog); } private void ImportRssFeed(BlogDto blog) { var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl); var feed = RssFeed.Create(uri); foreach (var item in feed.Channel.Items) { SaveRssFeedItem(item, blog.Id, blog.CreatedById); } } private void ImportAtomFeed(BlogDto blog) { var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl); var feed = AtomFeed.Create(uri); foreach (var item in feed.Entries) { SaveAtomFeedEntry(item, blog.Id, blog.CreatedById); } } } You should notice first signs of the power of TPL. We made only minor changes to our code to parallelize blog feeds aggregating. On my machine this modification gives some performance boost – time is now 17.57 seconds. Data parallelism There is one more way how to parallelize activities. Previous section introduced task or operation based parallelism, this section introduces data based parallelism. By MSDN page Data Parallelism (Task Parallel Library) data parallelism refers to scenario in which the same operation is performed concurrently on elements in a source collection or array. In our code we have independent collections we can process in parallel – imported feed entries. As checking for feed entry existence and inserting it if it is missing from database doesn’t affect other entries the imported feed entries collection is ideal candidate for parallelization. internal class FeedClient { private readonly INewsService _newsService; private const int FeedItemContentMaxLength = 255; public FeedClient() { ObjectFactory.Initialize(container => { container.PullConfigurationFromAppConfig = true; }); _newsService = ObjectFactory.GetInstance<INewsService>(); } public void Execute() { var blogs = _newsService.ListPublishedBlogs(); var tasks = new Task[blogs.Count]; for (var index = 0; index <blogs.Count; index++) { tasks[index] = new Task(ImportFeed, blogs[index]); tasks[index].Start(); } Task.WaitAll(tasks); } private void ImportFeed(object blogObject) { if(blogObject == null) return; var blog = (BlogDto)blogObject; if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(blog.RssUrl)) return; var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl); SyndicationContentFormat feedFormat; feedFormat = SyndicationDiscoveryUtility.SyndicationContentFormatGet(uri); if (feedFormat == SyndicationContentFormat.Rss) ImportRssFeed(blog); if (feedFormat == SyndicationContentFormat.Atom) ImportAtomFeed(blog); } private void ImportRssFeed(BlogDto blog) { var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl); var feed = RssFeed.Create(uri); feed.Channel.Items.AsParallel().ForAll(a => { SaveRssFeedItem(a, blog.Id, blog.CreatedById); }); } private void ImportAtomFeed(BlogDto blog) { var uri = new Uri(blog.RssUrl); var feed = AtomFeed.Create(uri); feed.Entries.AsParallel().ForAll(a => { SaveAtomFeedEntry(a, blog.Id, blog.CreatedById); }); } } We did small change again and as the result we parallelized checking and saving of feed items. This change was data centric as we applied same operation to all elements in collection. On my machine I got better performance again. Time is now 11.22 seconds. Results Let’s visualize our measurement results (numbers are given in seconds). As we can see then with task parallelism feed aggregation takes about 25% less time than in original case. When adding data parallelism to task parallelism our aggregation takes about 2.3 times less time than in original case. More about TPL and PLINQ Adding parallelism to your application can be very challenging task. You have to carefully find out parts of your code where you can safely go to parallel processing and even then you have to measure the effects of parallel processing to find out if parallel code performs better. If you are not careful then troubles you will face later are worse than ones you have seen before (imagine error that occurs by average only once per 10000 code runs). Parallel programming is something that is hard to ignore. Effective programs are able to use multiple cores of processors. Using TPL you can also set degree of parallelism so your application doesn’t use all computing cores and leaves one or more of them free for host system and other processes. And there are many more things in TPL that make it easier for you to start and go on with parallel programming. In next major version all .NET languages will have built-in support for parallel programming. There will be also new language constructs that support parallel programming. Currently you can download Visual Studio Async to get some idea about what is coming. Conclusion Parallel programming is very challenging but good tools offered by Visual Studio and .NET Framework make it way easier for us. In this posting we started with feed aggregator that imports feed items on serial mode. With two steps we parallelized feed importing and entries inserting gaining 2.3 times raise in performance. Although this number is specific to my test environment it shows clearly that parallel programming may raise the performance of your application significantly.

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iPhone SDK vs. Windows Phone 7 Series SDK Challenge, Part 2: MoveMe

In this series, I will be taking sample applications from the iPhone SDK and implementing them on Windows Phone 7 Series. My goal is to do as much of an apples-to-apples comparison as I can. This series will be written to not only compare and contrast how easy or difficult it is to complete tasks on either platform, how many lines of code, etc., but Id also like it to be a way for iPhone developers to either get started on Windows Phone 7 Series development, or for developers in general to learn the platform. Heres my methodology: Run the iPhone SDK app in the iPhone Simulator to get a feel for what it does and how it works, without looking at the implementation Implement the equivalent functionality on Windows Phone 7 Series using Silverlight. Compare the two implementations based on complexity, functionality, lines of code, number of files, etc. Add some functionality to the Windows Phone 7 Series app that shows off a way to make the scenario more interesting or leverages an aspect of the platform, or uses a better design pattern to implement the functionality. You can download Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone CTP here, and the Expression Blend 4 Beta here. If youre seeing this series for the first time, check out Part 1: Hello World. A note on methodologyin the prior post there was some feedback about lines of code not being a very good metric for this exercise. I dont really disagree, theres a lot more to this than lines of code but I believe that is a relevant metric, even if its not the ultimate one. And theres no perfect answer here. So I am going to continue to report the number of lines of code that I, as a developer would need to write in these apps as a data point, and Ill leave it up to the reader to determine how that fits in with overall complexity, etc. The first example was so basic that I think it was difficult to talk about in real terms. I think that as these apps get more complex, the subjective differences in concept count and will be more important. MoveMe The MoveMe app is the main end-to-end app writing example in the iPhone SDK, called Creating an iPhone Application. This application demonstrates a few concepts, including handling touch input, how to do animations, and how to do some basic transforms. The behavior of the application is pretty simple. User touches the button: The button does a throb type animation where it scales up and then back down briefly. User drags the button: After a touch begins, moving the touch point will drag the button around with the touch. User lets go of the button: The button animates back to its original position, but does a few small bounces as it reaches its original point, which makes the app fun and gives it an extra bit of interactivity. Now, how would I write an app that meets this spec for Windows Phone 7 Series, and how hard would it be? Lets find out! Implementing the UI Okay, lets build the UI for this application. In the HelloWorld example, we did all the UI design in Visual Studio and/or by hand in XAML. In this example, were going to use the Expression Blend 4 Beta. You might be wondering when to use Visual Studio, when to use Blend, and when to do XAML by hand. Different people will have different takes on this, but heres mine: XAML by hand simple UI that doesnt contain animations, gradients, etc., and or UI that I want to really optimize and craft when I know exactly what I want to do. Visual Studio Basic UI layout, property setting, data binding, etc. Blend Any serious design work needs to be done in Blend, including animations, handling states and transitions, styling and templating, editing resources. As in Part 1, go ahead and fire up Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone (yes, soon it will take longer to say the name of our products than to start them up!), and create a new Windows Phone Application. As in Part 1, clear out the XAML from the designer. An easy way to do this is to just: Click on the design surface Hit Control+A Hit Delete Theres a little bit left over (the Grid.RowDefinitions element), just go ahead and delete that element so were starting with a clean state of only one outer Grid element. To use Blend, we need to save this project. See, when you create a project with Visual Studio Express, it doesnt commit it to the disk (well, in a place where you can find it, at least) until you actually save the project. This is handy if youre doing some fooling around, because it doesnt clutter your disk with WindowsPhoneApplication23-like directories. But its also kind of dangerous, since when you close VS, if you dont save the projectits all gone. Yes, this has bitten me since I was saving files and didnt remember that, so be careful to save the project/solution via Save All, at least once. So, save and note the location on disk. Start Expression Blend 4 Beta, and chose File > Open Project/Solution, and load your project. You should see just about the same thing you saw over in VS: a blank, black designer surface. Now, thinking about this application, we dont really need a button, even though it looks like one. We never click it. So were just going to create a visual and use that. This is also true in the iPhone example above, where the visual is actually not a button either but a jpg image with a nice gradient and round edges. Well do something simple here that looks pretty good. In Blend, look in the tool pane on the left for the icon that looks like the below (the highlighted one on the left), and hold it down to get the popout menu, and choose Border: Okay, now draw out a box in the middle of the design surface of about 300x100. The Properties Pane to the left should show the properties for this item. First, lets make it more visible by giving it a border brush. Set the BorderBrush to white by clicking BorderBrush and dragging the color selector all the way to the upper right in the palette. Then, down a bit farther, make the BorderThickness 4 all the way around, and the CornerRadius set to 6. In the Layout section, do the following to Width, Height, Horizontal and Vertical Alignment, and Margin (all 4 margin values): Youll see the outline now is in the middle of the design surface. Now lets give it a background color. Above BorderBrush select Background, and click the third tab over: Gradient Brush. Youll see a gradient slider at the bottom, and if you click the markers, you can edit the gradient stops individually (or add more). In this case, you can select something you like, but wheres what I chose: Left stop: #BFACCFE2 (I just picked a spot on the palette and set opacity to 75%, no magic here, feel free to fiddle these or just enter these numbers into the hex area and be done with it) Right stop: #FF3E738F Okay, looks pretty good. Finally set the name of the element in the Name field at the top of the Properties pane to welcome. Now lets add some text. Just hit T and itll select the TextBlock tool automatically: Now draw out some are inside our welcome visual and type Welcome!, then click on the design surface (to exit text entry mode) and hit V to go back into selection mode (or the top item in the tool pane that looks like a mouse pointer). Click on the text again to select it in the tool pane. Just like the border, we want to center this. So set HorizontalAlignment and VerticalAlignment to Center, and clear the Margins: Thats it for the UI. Heres how it looks, on the design surface: Not bad! Okay, now the fun part Adding Animations Using Blend to build animations is a lot of fun, and its easy. In XAML, I can not only declare elements and visuals, but also I can declare animations that will affect those visuals. These are called Storyboards. To recap, well be doing two animations: The throb animation when the element is touched The center animation when the element is released after being dragged. The throb animation is just a scale transform, so well do that first. In the Objects and Timeline Pane (left side, bottom half), click the little + icon to add a new Storyboard called touchStoryboard: The timeline view will appear. In there, click a bit to the right of 0 to create a keyframe at .2 seconds: Now, click on our welcome element (the Border, not the TextBlock in it), and scroll to the bottom of the Properties Pane. Open up Transform, click the third tab ("Scale), and set X and Y to 1.2: This all of this says that, at .2 seconds, I want the X and Y size of this element to scale to 1.2. In fact you can see this happen. Push the Play arrow in the timeline view, and youll see the animation run! Lets make two tweaks. First, we want the animation to automatically reverse so it scales up then back down nicely. Click in the dropdown that says touchStoryboard in Objects and Timeline, then in the Properties pane check Auto Reverse: Now run it again, and youll see it go both ways. Lets even make it nicer by adding an easing function. First, click on the Render Transform item in the Objects tree, then, in the Property Pane, youll see a bunch of easing functions to choose from. Feel free to play with this, then seeing how each runs. I chose Circle In, but some other ones are fun. Try them out! Elastic In is kind of fun, but well stick with Circle In. Thats it for that animation. Now, we also want an animation to move the Border back to its original position when the user ends the touch gesture. This is exactly the same process as above, but just targeting a different transform property. Create a new animation called releaseStoryboard Select a timeline point at 1.2 seconds. Click on the welcome Border element again Scroll to the Transforms panel at the bottom of the Properties Pane Choose the first tab (Translate), which may already be selected Set both X and Y values to 0.0 (we do this just to make the values stick, because the value is already 0 and we need Blend to know we want to save that value) Click on RenderTransform in the Objects tree In the properties pane, choose Bounce Out Set Bounces to 6, and Bounciness to 4 (feel free to play with these as well) Okay, were done. Note, if you want to test this Storyboard, you have to do something a little tricky because the final value is the same as the initial value, so playing it does nothing. If you want to play with it, do the following: Next to the selection dropdown, hit the little "x (Close Storyboard) Go to the Translate Transform value for welcome Set X,Y to 50, 200, respectively (or whatever) Select releaseStoryboard again from the dropdown Hit play, see it run Go into the object tree and select RenderTransform to change the easing function. When youre done, hit the Close Storyboard x again and set the values in Transform/Translate back to 0 Wiring Up the Animations Okay, now go back to Visual Studio. Youll get a prompt due to the modification of MainPage.xaml. Hit Yes. In the designer, click on the welcome Border element. In the Property Browser, hit the Events button, then double click each of ManipulationStarted, ManipulationDelta, ManipulationCompleted. Youll need to flip back to the designer from code, after each double click. Its code time. Here we go. Here, three event handlers have been created for us: welcome_ManipulationStarted: This will execute when a manipulation begins. Think of it as MouseDown. welcome_ManipulationDelta: This executes each time a manipulation changes. Think MouseMove. welcome_ManipulationCompleted: This will execute when the manipulation ends. Think MouseUp. Now, in ManipuliationStarted, we want to kick off the throb animation that we called touchAnimation. Thats easy: 1: private void welcome_ManipulationStarted(object sender, ManipulationStartedEventArgs e) 2: { 3: touchStoryboard.Begin(); 4: } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Likewise, when the manipulation completes, we want to re-center the welcome visual with our bounce animation: 1: private void welcome_ManipulationCompleted(object sender, ManipulationCompletedEventArgs e) 2: { 3: releaseStoryboard.Begin(); 4: } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Note there is actually a way to kick off these animations from Blend directly via something called Triggers, but I think its clearer to show whats going on like this. A Trigger basically allows you to say When this event fires, trigger this Storyboard, so its the exact same logical process as above, but without the code. But how do we get the object to move? Well, for that we really dont want an animation because we want it to respond immediately to user input. We do this by directly modifying the transform to match the offset for the manipulation, and then well let the animation bring it back to zero when the manipulation completes. The manipulation events do a great job of keeping track of all the stuff that you usually had to do yourself when doing drags: where you started from, how far youve moved, etc. So we can easily modify the position as below: 1: private void welcome_ManipulationDelta(object sender, ManipulationDeltaEventArgs e) 2: { 3: CompositeTransform transform = (CompositeTransform)welcome.RenderTransform; 4: 5: transform.TranslateX = e.CumulativeManipulation.Translation.X; 6: transform.TranslateY = e.CumulativeManipulation.Translation.Y; 7: } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Thats it! Go ahead and run the app in the emulator. I suggest running without the debugger, its a little faster (CTRL+F5). If youve got a machine that supports DirectX 10, youll see nice smooth GPU accelerated graphics, which also what it looks like on the phone, running at about 60 frames per second. If your machine does not support DX10 (like the laptop Im writing this on!), it wont be quite a smooth so youll have to take my word for it! Comparing Against the iPhone This is an example where the flexibility and power of XAML meets the tooling of Visual Studio and Blend, and the whole experience really shines. So, for several things that are declarative and 100% toolable with the Windows Phone 7 Series, this example does them with code on the iPhone. In parens is the lines of code that I count to do these operations. PlacardView.m: 19 total LOC Creating the view that hosts the button-like image and the text Drawing the image that is the background of the button Drawing the Welcome text over the image (I think you could technically do this step and/or the prior one using Interface Builder) MoveMeView.m: 63 total LOC Constructing and running the scale (throb) animation (25) Constructing the path describing the animation back to center plus bounce effect (38) Beyond the code count, yy experience with doing this kind of thing in code is that its VERY time intensive. When I was a developer back on Windows Forms, doing GDI+ drawing, we did this stuff a lot, and it took forever! You write some code and even once you get it basically working, you see its not quite right, you go back, tweak the interval, or the math a bit, run it again, etc. You can take a look at the iPhone code here to judge for yourself. Scroll down to animatePlacardViewToCenter toward the bottom. I dont think this code is terribly complicated, but its not what Id call simple and its not at all simple to get right. And then theres a few other lines of code running around for setting up the ViewController and the Views, about 15 lines between MoveMeAppDelegate, PlacardView, and MoveMeView, plus the assorted decls in the h files. Adding those up, I conservatively get something like 100 lines of code (19+63+15+decls) on iPhone that I have to write, by hand, to make this project work. The lines of code that I wrote in the examples above is 5 lines of code on Windows Phone 7 Series. In terms of incremental concept counts beyond the HelloWorld app, heres a shot at that: iPhone: Drawing Images Drawing Text Handling touch events Creating animations Scaling animations Building a path and animating along that Windows Phone 7 Series: Laying out UI in Blend Creating & testing basic animations in Blend Handling touch events Invoking animations from code This was actually the first example I tried converting, even before I did the HelloWorld, and I was pretty surprised. Some of this is luck that this app happens to match up with the Windows Phone 7 Series platform just perfectly. In terms of time, I wrote the above application, from scratch, in about 10 minutes. I dont know how long it would take a very skilled iPhone developer to write MoveMe on that iPhone from scratch, but if I was to write it on Silverlight in the same way (e.g. all via code), I think it would likely take me at least an hour or two to get it all working right, maybe more if I ended up picking the wrong strategy or couldnt get the math right, etc. Making Some Tweaks Silverlight contains a feature called Projections to do a variety of 3D-like effects with a 2D surface. So lets play with that a bit. Go back to Blend and select the welcome Border in the object tree. In its properties, scroll down to the bottom, open Transform, and see Projection at the bottom. Set X,Y,Z to 90. Youll see the element kind of disappear, replaced by a thin blue line. Now Create a new animation called startupStoryboard. Set its key time to .5 seconds in the timeline view Set the projection values above to 0 for X, Y, and Z. Save Go back to Visual Studio, and in the constructor, add the following bold code (lines 7-9 to the constructor: 1: public MainPage() 2: { 3: InitializeComponent(); 4: 5: SupportedOrientations = SupportedPageOrientation.Portrait; 6: 7: this.Loaded += (s, e) => 8: { 9: startupStoryboard.Begin(); 10: }; 11: } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } If the code above looks funny, its using something called a lambda in C#, which is an inline anonymous method. Its just a handy shorthand for creating a handler like the manipulation ones above. So with this youll get a nice 3D looking fly in effect when the app starts up. Here it is, in flight: Pretty cool!Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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Setting a Visual State from a data bound enum in WPF

- by firoso

Hey all, I've got a scenario where I want to switch the visiblity of 4 different content controls. The visual states I have set opacity, and collapsed based on each given state (See code.) What I'd like to do is have the visual state bound to a property of my View Model of type Enum. I tried using DataStateBehavior, but it requires true/false, which doesn't work for me. So I tried DataStateSwitchBehavior, which seems to be totally broken for WPF4 from what I could tell. Is there a better way to be doing this? I'm really open to different approaches if need be, but I'd really like to keep this enum in the equation. Edit: The code shouldn't be too important, I just need to know if there's a well known solution to this problem. <UserControl xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:Custom="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/2010/interactivity" xmlns:ei="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/2010/interactions" xmlns:ee="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/2010/effects" xmlns:customBehaviors="clr-namespace:SEL.MfgTestDev.ESS.Behaviors" x:Class="SEL.MfgTestDev.ESS.View.PresenterControl" mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignHeight="624" d:DesignWidth="1104" d:DataContext="{Binding ApplicationViewModel, Mode=OneWay, Source={StaticResource Locator}}"> <Grid> <Grid.Resources> <ResourceDictionary> <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries> <ResourceDictionary Source="Layout/TerminalViewTemplate.xaml"/> <ResourceDictionary Source="Layout/DebugViewTemplate.xaml"/> <ResourceDictionary Source="Layout/ProgressViewTemplate.xaml"/> <ResourceDictionary Source="Layout/LoadoutViewTemplate.xaml"/> </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries> </ResourceDictionary> </Grid.Resources> <Custom:Interaction.Behaviors> <customBehaviors:DataStateSwitchBehavior Binding="{Binding ApplicationViewState}"> <customBehaviors:DataStateSwitchCase State="LoadoutState" Value="Loadout"/> </customBehaviors:DataStateSwitchBehavior> </Custom:Interaction.Behaviors> <VisualStateManager.VisualStateGroups> <VisualStateGroup x:Name="ApplicationStates" ei:ExtendedVisualStateManager.UseFluidLayout="True"> <VisualStateGroup.Transitions> <VisualTransition GeneratedDuration="0:0:1"> <VisualTransition.GeneratedEasingFunction> <SineEase EasingMode="EaseInOut"/> </VisualTransition.GeneratedEasingFunction> <ei:ExtendedVisualStateManager.TransitionEffect> <ee:SmoothSwirlGridTransitionEffect/> </ei:ExtendedVisualStateManager.TransitionEffect> </VisualTransition> </VisualStateGroup.Transitions> <VisualState x:Name="LoadoutState"> <Storyboard> <DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames Storyboard.TargetProperty="(UIElement.Opacity)" Storyboard.TargetName="LoadoutPage"> <EasingDoubleKeyFrame KeyTime="0" Value="1"/> </DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames> <ObjectAnimationUsingKeyFrames Storyboard.TargetProperty="(UIElement.Visibility)" Storyboard.TargetName="LoadoutPage"> <DiscreteObjectKeyFrame KeyTime="0" Value="{x:Static Visibility.Visible}"/> </ObjectAnimationUsingKeyFrames> </Storyboard> </VisualState> <VisualState x:Name="ProgressState"> <Storyboard> <DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames Storyboard.TargetProperty="(UIElement.Opacity)" Storyboard.TargetName="ProgressPage"> <EasingDoubleKeyFrame KeyTime="0" Value="1"/> </DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames> <ObjectAnimationUsingKeyFrames Storyboard.TargetProperty="(UIElement.Visibility)" Storyboard.TargetName="ProgressPage"> <DiscreteObjectKeyFrame KeyTime="0" Value="{x:Static Visibility.Visible}"/> </ObjectAnimationUsingKeyFrames> </Storyboard> </VisualState> <VisualState x:Name="DebugState"> <Storyboard> <ObjectAnimationUsingKeyFrames Storyboard.TargetProperty="(UIElement.Visibility)" Storyboard.TargetName="DebugPage"> <DiscreteObjectKeyFrame KeyTime="0" Value="{x:Static Visibility.Visible}"/> </ObjectAnimationUsingKeyFrames> <DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames Storyboard.TargetProperty="(UIElement.Opacity)" Storyboard.TargetName="DebugPage"> <EasingDoubleKeyFrame KeyTime="0" Value="1"/> </DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames> </Storyboard> </VisualState> <VisualState x:Name="TerminalState"> <Storyboard> <ObjectAnimationUsingKeyFrames Storyboard.TargetProperty="(UIElement.Visibility)" Storyboard.TargetName="TerminalPage"> <DiscreteObjectKeyFrame KeyTime="0" Value="{x:Static Visibility.Visible}"/> </ObjectAnimationUsingKeyFrames> <DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames Storyboard.TargetProperty="(UIElement.Opacity)" Storyboard.TargetName="TerminalPage"> <EasingDoubleKeyFrame KeyTime="0" Value="1"/> </DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames> </Storyboard> </VisualState> </VisualStateGroup> </VisualStateManager.VisualStateGroups> <ContentControl x:Name="LoadoutPage" ContentTemplate="{StaticResource LoadoutViewTemplate}" Opacity="0" Content="{Binding}" Visibility="Collapsed"/> <ContentControl x:Name="ProgressPage" ContentTemplate="{StaticResource ProgressViewTemplate}" Opacity="0" Content="{Binding}" Visibility="Collapsed"/> <ContentControl x:Name="DebugPage" ContentTemplate="{StaticResource DebugViewTemplate}" Opacity="0" Content="{Binding}" Visibility="Collapsed"/> <ContentControl x:Name="TerminalPage" ContentTemplate="{StaticResource TerminalViewTemplate}" Opacity="0" Content="{Binding}" Visibility="Collapsed"/> <TextBlock HorizontalAlignment="Left" TextWrapping="Wrap" VerticalAlignment="Top" Text="{Binding ApplicationViewState}"> <TextBlock.Background> <LinearGradientBrush EndPoint="0.5,1" StartPoint="0.5,0"> <GradientStop Color="Black" Offset="0"/> <GradientStop Color="White" Offset="1"/> </LinearGradientBrush> </TextBlock.Background> </TextBlock> </Grid>

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Tomcat 7 taking ages to start up after upgrade

- by Lawrence

I recently updated my server installation from Tomcat 6 to Tomcat 7, in order to take advantage of better connection pooling. My project uses Hibernate, for object persistance, a Mysql 5.5.20 database, and memcached for caching. When I was using Tomcat 6, Tomcat would start in about 8 seconds. After moving to Tomcat 7, it now takes between 75 - 80 seconds to start (this is on a Macbook pro 15", core i7 2Ghz, 8Gb of RAM). The only thing that has really changed between during the move from Tomcat 6 to 7 has been my context.xml file, which controls the connection pooling information: <Context antiJARLocking="true" reloadable="true" path=""> <Resource name="jdbc/test-db" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" factory="org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceFactory" testOnBorrow="true" testOnReturn="false" testWhileIdle="true" validationQuery="SELECT 1" validationQueryTimeout="20000" validationInterval="30000" timeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis="60000" logValidationErrors="true" autoReconnect="true" username="webuser" password="xxxxxxx" driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver" url="jdbc:mysql://databasename.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com:3306/test-db" maxActive="15" minIdle="2" maxIdle="10" maxWait="10000" maxAge="7200000"/> </Context> Now, as you can see, the database is running on Amazon RDS (where our live servers are), and thus is about 200ms round trip time away from my machine. I have already checked that I have security permissions to that database from my machine, (and anyway, it connects after 75 secs, so it cant be that). My initial thought was that Tomcat 7 and hibernate are doing something weird (like pre-instantiating a bunch of connections or something), and the latency to the database is amplifying the effects. While trying to diagnose the problem, I used jstack to get a stack trace of the Tomcat 7 server while its doing its startup thing. Here is the stack trace... Full thread dump Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (20.12-b01-434 mixed mode): "Attach Listener" daemon prio=9 tid=7fa4c0038800 nid=0x10c39a000 waiting on condition [00000000] java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE "Abandoned connection cleanup thread" daemon prio=5 tid=7fa4bb810000 nid=0x10f3ba000 in Object.wait() [10f3b9000] java.lang.Thread.State: WAITING (on object monitor) at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method) - waiting on <7f40a0070> (a java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue$Lock) at java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue.remove(ReferenceQueue.java:118) - locked <7f40a0070> (a java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue$Lock) at java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue.remove(ReferenceQueue.java:134) at com.mysql.jdbc.NonRegisteringDriver$1.run(NonRegisteringDriver.java:93) "PoolCleaner[545768040:1352724902327]" daemon prio=5 tid=7fa4be852800 nid=0x10e772000 in Object.wait() [10e771000] java.lang.Thread.State: TIMED_WAITING (on object monitor) at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method) - waiting on <7f40c7c90> (a java.util.TaskQueue) at java.util.TimerThread.mainLoop(Timer.java:509) - locked <7f40c7c90> (a java.util.TaskQueue) at java.util.TimerThread.run(Timer.java:462) "localhost-startStop-1" daemon prio=5 tid=7fa4bd034800 nid=0x10d66b000 runnable [10d668000] java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE at java.net.SocketInputStream.socketRead0(Native Method) at java.net.SocketInputStream.read(SocketInputStream.java:129) at com.mysql.jdbc.util.ReadAheadInputStream.fill(ReadAheadInputStream.java:114) at com.mysql.jdbc.util.ReadAheadInputStream.readFromUnderlyingStreamIfNecessary(ReadAheadInputStream.java:161) at com.mysql.jdbc.util.ReadAheadInputStream.read(ReadAheadInputStream.java:189) - locked <7f3673be0> (a com.mysql.jdbc.util.ReadAheadInputStream) at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.readFully(MysqlIO.java:3014) at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.reuseAndReadPacket(MysqlIO.java:3467) at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.reuseAndReadPacket(MysqlIO.java:3456) at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.checkErrorPacket(MysqlIO.java:3997) at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.sendCommand(MysqlIO.java:2468) at com.mysql.jdbc.MysqlIO.sqlQueryDirect(MysqlIO.java:2629) at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.execSQL(ConnectionImpl.java:2713) - locked <7f366a1c0> (a com.mysql.jdbc.JDBC4Connection) at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.configureClientCharacterSet(ConnectionImpl.java:1930) at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.initializePropsFromServer(ConnectionImpl.java:3571) at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.connectOneTryOnly(ConnectionImpl.java:2445) at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.createNewIO(ConnectionImpl.java:2215) - locked <7f366a1c0> (a com.mysql.jdbc.JDBC4Connection) at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.<init>(ConnectionImpl.java:813) at com.mysql.jdbc.JDBC4Connection.<init>(JDBC4Connection.java:47) at sun.reflect.GeneratedConstructorAccessor10.newInstance(Unknown Source) at sun.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.java:27) at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:513) at com.mysql.jdbc.Util.handleNewInstance(Util.java:411) at com.mysql.jdbc.ConnectionImpl.getInstance(ConnectionImpl.java:399) at com.mysql.jdbc.NonRegisteringDriver.connect(NonRegisteringDriver.java:334) at org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.PooledConnection.connectUsingDriver(PooledConnection.java:278) at org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.PooledConnection.connect(PooledConnection.java:182) at org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.ConnectionPool.createConnection(ConnectionPool.java:699) at org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.ConnectionPool.borrowConnection(ConnectionPool.java:631) at org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.ConnectionPool.init(ConnectionPool.java:485) at org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.ConnectionPool.<init>(ConnectionPool.java:143) at org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceProxy.pCreatePool(DataSourceProxy.java:116) - locked <7f34f0dc8> (a org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSource) at org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceProxy.createPool(DataSourceProxy.java:103) at org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceFactory.createDataSource(DataSourceFactory.java:539) at org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceFactory.getObjectInstance(DataSourceFactory.java:237) at org.apache.naming.factory.ResourceFactory.getObjectInstance(ResourceFactory.java:143) at javax.naming.spi.NamingManager.getObjectInstance(NamingManager.java:304) at org.apache.naming.NamingContext.lookup(NamingContext.java:843) at org.apache.naming.NamingContext.lookup(NamingContext.java:154) at org.apache.naming.NamingContext.lookup(NamingContext.java:831) at org.apache.naming.NamingContext.lookup(NamingContext.java:168) at org.apache.catalina.core.NamingContextListener.addResource(NamingContextListener.java:1061) at org.apache.catalina.core.NamingContextListener.createNamingContext(NamingContextListener.java:671) at org.apache.catalina.core.NamingContextListener.lifecycleEvent(NamingContextListener.java:270) at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleSupport.fireLifecycleEvent(LifecycleSupport.java:119) at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.fireLifecycleEvent(LifecycleBase.java:90) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.startInternal(StandardContext.java:5173) - locked <7f46b07f0> (a org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext) at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:150) - locked <7f46b07f0> (a org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext) at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$StartChild.call(ContainerBase.java:1559) at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$StartChild.call(ContainerBase.java:1549) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:303) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:138) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:886) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:908) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:680) "Catalina-startStop-1" daemon prio=5 tid=7fa4b7a5e800 nid=0x10d568000 waiting on condition [10d567000] java.lang.Thread.State: WAITING (parking) at sun.misc.Unsafe.park(Native Method) - parking to wait for <7f480e970> (a java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync) at java.util.concurrent.locks.LockSupport.park(LockSupport.java:156) at java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.parkAndCheckInterrupt(AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.java:811) at java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.doAcquireSharedInterruptibly(AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.java:969) at java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.acquireSharedInterruptibly(AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.java:1281) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerGet(FutureTask.java:218) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.get(FutureTask.java:83) at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.startInternal(ContainerBase.java:1123) - locked <7f453c630> (a org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.startInternal(StandardHost.java:800) - locked <7f453c630> (a org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost) at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:150) - locked <7f453c630> (a org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost) at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$StartChild.call(ContainerBase.java:1559) at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$StartChild.call(ContainerBase.java:1549) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:303) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:138) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:886) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:908) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:680) "GC Daemon" daemon prio=2 tid=7fa4b9912800 nid=0x10d465000 in Object.wait() [10d464000] java.lang.Thread.State: TIMED_WAITING (on object monitor) at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method) - waiting on <7f4506d28> (a sun.misc.GC$LatencyLock) at sun.misc.GC$Daemon.run(GC.java:100) - locked <7f4506d28> (a sun.misc.GC$LatencyLock) "Low Memory Detector" daemon prio=5 tid=7fa4b480b800 nid=0x10c8ae000 runnable [00000000] java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE "C2 CompilerThread1" daemon prio=9 tid=7fa4b480b000 nid=0x10c7ab000 waiting on condition [00000000] java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE "C2 CompilerThread0" daemon prio=9 tid=7fa4b480a000 nid=0x10c6a8000 waiting on condition [00000000] java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE "Signal Dispatcher" daemon prio=9 tid=7fa4b4809800 nid=0x10c5a5000 runnable [00000000] java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE "Surrogate Locker Thread (Concurrent GC)" daemon prio=5 tid=7fa4b4808800 nid=0x10c4a2000 waiting on condition [00000000] java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE "Finalizer" daemon prio=8 tid=7fa4b793f000 nid=0x10c297000 in Object.wait() [10c296000] java.lang.Thread.State: WAITING (on object monitor) at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method) - waiting on <7f451c8f0> (a java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue$Lock) at java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue.remove(ReferenceQueue.java:118) - locked <7f451c8f0> (a java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue$Lock) at java.lang.ref.ReferenceQueue.remove(ReferenceQueue.java:134) at java.lang.ref.Finalizer$FinalizerThread.run(Finalizer.java:159) "Reference Handler" daemon prio=10 tid=7fa4b793e000 nid=0x10c194000 in Object.wait() [10c193000] java.lang.Thread.State: WAITING (on object monitor) at java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method) - waiting on <7f452e168> (a java.lang.ref.Reference$Lock) at java.lang.Object.wait(Object.java:485) at java.lang.ref.Reference$ReferenceHandler.run(Reference.java:116) - locked <7f452e168> (a java.lang.ref.Reference$Lock) "main" prio=5 tid=7fa4b7800800 nid=0x104329000 waiting on condition [104327000] java.lang.Thread.State: WAITING (parking) at sun.misc.Unsafe.park(Native Method) - parking to wait for <7f480e9a0> (a java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync) at java.util.concurrent.locks.LockSupport.park(LockSupport.java:156) at java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.parkAndCheckInterrupt(AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.java:811) at java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.doAcquireSharedInterruptibly(AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.java:969) at java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.acquireSharedInterruptibly(AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.java:1281) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerGet(FutureTask.java:218) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.get(FutureTask.java:83) at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.startInternal(ContainerBase.java:1123) - locked <7f451fd90> (a org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine.startInternal(StandardEngine.java:302) - locked <7f451fd90> (a org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine) at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:150) - locked <7f451fd90> (a org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService.startInternal(StandardService.java:443) - locked <7f451fd90> (a org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine) at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:150) - locked <7f453e810> (a org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardServer.startInternal(StandardServer.java:732) - locked <7f4506d58> (a [Lorg.apache.catalina.Service;) at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:150) - locked <7f44f7ba0> (a org.apache.catalina.core.StandardServer) at org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina.start(Catalina.java:684) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597) at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.start(Bootstrap.java:322) at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.main(Bootstrap.java:451) "VM Thread" prio=9 tid=7fa4b7939800 nid=0x10c091000 runnable "Gang worker#0 (Parallel GC Threads)" prio=9 tid=7fa4b7802000 nid=0x10772b000 runnable "Gang worker#1 (Parallel GC Threads)" prio=9 tid=7fa4b7802800 nid=0x10782e000 runnable "Gang worker#2 (Parallel GC Threads)" prio=9 tid=7fa4b7803000 nid=0x107931000 runnable "Gang worker#3 (Parallel GC Threads)" prio=9 tid=7fa4b7804000 nid=0x107a34000 runnable "Gang worker#4 (Parallel GC Threads)" prio=9 tid=7fa4b7804800 nid=0x107b37000 runnable "Gang worker#5 (Parallel GC Threads)" prio=9 tid=7fa4b7805000 nid=0x107c3a000 runnable "Gang worker#6 (Parallel GC Threads)" prio=9 tid=7fa4b7805800 nid=0x107d3d000 runnable "Gang worker#7 (Parallel GC Threads)" prio=9 tid=7fa4b7806800 nid=0x107e40000 runnable "Concurrent Mark-Sweep GC Thread" prio=9 tid=7fa4b78e3800 nid=0x10bd0b000 runnable "Gang worker#0 (Parallel CMS Threads)" prio=9 tid=7fa4b78e2800 nid=0x10b305000 runnable "Gang worker#1 (Parallel CMS Threads)" prio=9 tid=7fa4b78e3000 nid=0x10b408000 runnable "VM Periodic Task Thread" prio=10 tid=7fa4b4815800 nid=0x10c9b1000 waiting on condition "Exception Catcher Thread" prio=10 tid=7fa4b7801800 nid=0x104554000 runnable JNI global references: 919 The only thing I can figure out from this is that it looks like the mysql jdbc drivers might have something to do with the long start up (the various stack traces I took during the start up process all pretty much look the same as this). Could anyone shed some light on what might be causing this? Have I done something dense in my context.xml? Is hibernate perhaps to blame?

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High Load mysql on Debian server stops every day. Why?

- by Oleg Abrazhaev

I have Debian server with 32 gb memory. And there is apache2, memcached and nginx on this server. Memory load always on maximum. Only 500m free. Most memory leak do MySql. Apache only 70 clients configured, other services small memory usage. When mysql use all memory it stops. And nothing works, need mysql reboot. Mysql configured use maximum 24 gb memory. I have hight weight InnoDB bases. (400000 rows, 30 gb). And on server multithread daemon, that makes many inserts in this tables, thats why InnoDB. There is my mysql config. [mysqld] # # * Basic Settings # default-time-zone = "+04:00" user = mysql pid-file = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid socket = /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock port = 3306 basedir = /usr datadir = /var/lib/mysql tmpdir = /tmp language = /usr/share/mysql/english skip-external-locking default-time-zone='Europe/Moscow' # # Instead of skip-networking the default is now to listen only on # localhost which is more compatible and is not less secure. # # * Fine Tuning # #low_priority_updates = 1 concurrent_insert = ALWAYS wait_timeout = 600 interactive_timeout = 600 #normal key_buffer_size = 2024M #key_buffer_size = 1512M #70% hot cache key_cache_division_limit= 70 #16-32 max_allowed_packet = 32M #1-16M thread_stack = 8M #40-50 thread_cache_size = 50 #orderby groupby sort sort_buffer_size = 64M #same myisam_sort_buffer_size = 400M #temp table creates when group_by tmp_table_size = 3000M #tables in memory max_heap_table_size = 3000M #on disk open_files_limit = 10000 table_cache = 10000 join_buffer_size = 5M # This replaces the startup script and checks MyISAM tables if needed # the first time they are touched myisam-recover = BACKUP #myisam_use_mmap = 1 max_connections = 200 thread_concurrency = 8 # # * Query Cache Configuration # #more ignored query_cache_limit = 50M query_cache_size = 210M #on query cache query_cache_type = 1 # # * Logging and Replication # # Both location gets rotated by the cronjob. # Be aware that this log type is a performance killer. #log = /var/log/mysql/mysql.log # # Error logging goes to syslog. This is a Debian improvement :) # # Here you can see queries with especially long duration log_slow_queries = /var/log/mysql/mysql-slow.log long_query_time = 1 log-queries-not-using-indexes # # The following can be used as easy to replay backup logs or for replication. # note: if you are setting up a replication slave, see README.Debian about # other settings you may need to change. #server-id = 1 #log_bin = /var/log/mysql/mysql-bin.log server-id = 1 log-bin = /var/lib/mysql/mysql-bin #replicate-do-db = gate log-bin-index = /var/lib/mysql/mysql-bin.index log-error = /var/lib/mysql/mysql-bin.err relay-log = /var/lib/mysql/relay-bin relay-log-info-file = /var/lib/mysql/relay-bin.info relay-log-index = /var/lib/mysql/relay-bin.index binlog_do_db = 24avia expire_logs_days = 10 max_binlog_size = 100M read_buffer_size = 4024288 innodb_buffer_pool_size = 5000M innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit = 2 innodb_thread_concurrency = 8 table_definition_cache = 2000 group_concat_max_len = 16M #binlog_do_db = gate #binlog_ignore_db = include_database_name # # * BerkeleyDB # # Using BerkeleyDB is now discouraged as its support will cease in 5.1.12. #skip-bdb # # * InnoDB # # InnoDB is enabled by default with a 10MB datafile in /var/lib/mysql/. # Read the manual for more InnoDB related options. There are many! # You might want to disable InnoDB to shrink the mysqld process by circa 100MB. #skip-innodb # # * Security Features # # Read the manual, too, if you want chroot! # chroot = /var/lib/mysql/ # # For generating SSL certificates I recommend the OpenSSL GUI "tinyca". # # ssl-ca=/etc/mysql/cacert.pem # ssl-cert=/etc/mysql/server-cert.pem # ssl-key=/etc/mysql/server-key.pem [mysqldump] quick quote-names max_allowed_packet = 500M [mysql] #no-auto-rehash # faster start of mysql but no tab completition [isamchk] key_buffer = 32M key_buffer_size = 512M # # * NDB Cluster # # See /usr/share/doc/mysql-server-*/README.Debian for more information. # # The following configuration is read by the NDB Data Nodes (ndbd processes) # not from the NDB Management Nodes (ndb_mgmd processes). # # [MYSQL_CLUSTER] # ndb-connectstring=127.0.0.1 # # * IMPORTANT: Additional settings that can override those from this file! # The files must end with '.cnf', otherwise they'll be ignored. # !includedir /etc/mysql/conf.d/ Please, help me make it stable. Memory used /etc/mysql # free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 32930800 32766424 164376 0 139208 23829196 -/+ buffers/cache: 8798020 24132780 Swap: 33553328 44660 33508668 Maybe my problem not in memory, but MySQL stops every day. As you can see, cache memory free 24 gb. Thank to Michael Hampton? for correction. Load overage on server 3.5. Maybe hdd or another problem? Maybe my config not optimal for 30gb InnoDB ? I'm already try mysqltuner and tunung-primer.sh , but they marked all green. Mysqltuner output mysqltuner >> MySQLTuner 1.0.1 - Major Hayden <[email protected]> >> Bug reports, feature requests, and downloads at http://mysqltuner.com/ >> Run with '--help' for additional options and output filtering -------- General Statistics -------------------------------------------------- [--] Skipped version check for MySQLTuner script [OK] Currently running supported MySQL version 5.5.24-9-log [OK] Operating on 64-bit architecture -------- Storage Engine Statistics ------------------------------------------- [--] Status: -Archive -BDB -Federated +InnoDB -ISAM -NDBCluster [--] Data in MyISAM tables: 112G (Tables: 1528) [--] Data in InnoDB tables: 39G (Tables: 340) [--] Data in PERFORMANCE_SCHEMA tables: 0B (Tables: 17) [!!] Total fragmented tables: 344 -------- Performance Metrics ------------------------------------------------- [--] Up for: 8h 18m 33s (14M q [478.333 qps], 259K conn, TX: 9B, RX: 5B) [--] Reads / Writes: 84% / 16% [--] Total buffers: 10.5G global + 81.1M per thread (200 max threads) [OK] Maximum possible memory usage: 26.3G (83% of installed RAM) [OK] Slow queries: 1% (259K/14M) [!!] Highest connection usage: 100% (201/200) [OK] Key buffer size / total MyISAM indexes: 1.5G/5.6G [OK] Key buffer hit rate: 100.0% (6B cached / 1M reads) [OK] Query cache efficiency: 74.3% (8M cached / 11M selects) [OK] Query cache prunes per day: 0 [OK] Sorts requiring temporary tables: 0% (0 temp sorts / 247K sorts) [!!] Joins performed without indexes: 106025 [!!] Temporary tables created on disk: 49% (351K on disk / 715K total) [OK] Thread cache hit rate: 99% (249 created / 259K connections) [!!] Table cache hit rate: 15% (2K open / 13K opened) [OK] Open file limit used: 15% (3K/20K) [OK] Table locks acquired immediately: 99% (4M immediate / 4M locks) [!!] InnoDB data size / buffer pool: 39.4G/5.9G -------- Recommendations ----------------------------------------------------- General recommendations: Run OPTIMIZE TABLE to defragment tables for better performance MySQL started within last 24 hours - recommendations may be inaccurate Reduce or eliminate persistent connections to reduce connection usage Adjust your join queries to always utilize indexes Temporary table size is already large - reduce result set size Reduce your SELECT DISTINCT queries without LIMIT clauses Increase table_cache gradually to avoid file descriptor limits Variables to adjust: max_connections (> 200) wait_timeout (< 600) interactive_timeout (< 600) join_buffer_size (> 5.0M, or always use indexes with joins) table_cache (> 10000) innodb_buffer_pool_size (>= 39G) Mysql primer output -- MYSQL PERFORMANCE TUNING PRIMER -- - By: Matthew Montgomery - MySQL Version 5.5.24-9-log x86_64 Uptime = 0 days 8 hrs 20 min 50 sec Avg. qps = 478 Total Questions = 14369568 Threads Connected = 16 Warning: Server has not been running for at least 48hrs. It may not be safe to use these recommendations To find out more information on how each of these runtime variables effects performance visit: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/server-system-variables.html Visit http://www.mysql.com/products/enterprise/advisors.html for info about MySQL's Enterprise Monitoring and Advisory Service SLOW QUERIES The slow query log is enabled. Current long_query_time = 1.000000 sec. You have 260626 out of 14369701 that take longer than 1.000000 sec. to complete Your long_query_time seems to be fine BINARY UPDATE LOG The binary update log is enabled Binlog sync is not enabled, you could loose binlog records during a server crash WORKER THREADS Current thread_cache_size = 50 Current threads_cached = 45 Current threads_per_sec = 0 Historic threads_per_sec = 0 Your thread_cache_size is fine MAX CONNECTIONS Current max_connections = 200 Current threads_connected = 11 Historic max_used_connections = 201 The number of used connections is 100% of the configured maximum. You should raise max_connections INNODB STATUS Current InnoDB index space = 214 M Current InnoDB data space = 39.40 G Current InnoDB buffer pool free = 0 % Current innodb_buffer_pool_size = 5.85 G Depending on how much space your innodb indexes take up it may be safe to increase this value to up to 2 / 3 of total system memory MEMORY USAGE Max Memory Ever Allocated : 23.46 G Configured Max Per-thread Buffers : 15.84 G Configured Max Global Buffers : 7.54 G Configured Max Memory Limit : 23.39 G Physical Memory : 31.40 G Max memory limit seem to be within acceptable norms KEY BUFFER Current MyISAM index space = 5.61 G Current key_buffer_size = 1.47 G Key cache miss rate is 1 : 5578 Key buffer free ratio = 77 % Your key_buffer_size seems to be fine QUERY CACHE Query cache is enabled Current query_cache_size = 200 M Current query_cache_used = 101 M Current query_cache_limit = 50 M Current Query cache Memory fill ratio = 50.59 % Current query_cache_min_res_unit = 4 K MySQL won't cache query results that are larger than query_cache_limit in size SORT OPERATIONS Current sort_buffer_size = 64 M Current read_rnd_buffer_size = 256 K Sort buffer seems to be fine JOINS Current join_buffer_size = 5.00 M You have had 106606 queries where a join could not use an index properly You have had 8 joins without keys that check for key usage after each row join_buffer_size >= 4 M This is not advised You should enable "log-queries-not-using-indexes" Then look for non indexed joins in the slow query log. OPEN FILES LIMIT Current open_files_limit = 20210 files The open_files_limit should typically be set to at least 2x-3x that of table_cache if you have heavy MyISAM usage. Your open_files_limit value seems to be fine TABLE CACHE Current table_open_cache = 10000 tables Current table_definition_cache = 2000 tables You have a total of 1910 tables You have 2151 open tables. The table_cache value seems to be fine TEMP TABLES Current max_heap_table_size = 2.92 G Current tmp_table_size = 2.92 G Of 366426 temp tables, 49% were created on disk Perhaps you should increase your tmp_table_size and/or max_heap_table_size to reduce the number of disk-based temporary tables Note! BLOB and TEXT columns are not allow in memory tables. If you are using these columns raising these values might not impact your ratio of on disk temp tables. TABLE SCANS Current read_buffer_size = 3 M Current table scan ratio = 2846 : 1 read_buffer_size seems to be fine TABLE LOCKING Current Lock Wait ratio = 1 : 185 You may benefit from selective use of InnoDB. If you have long running SELECT's against MyISAM tables and perform frequent updates consider setting 'low_priority_updates=1'

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doubt regarding carrying data in custom events using actionscript

- by user267530

Hi I am working on actionscript to generate a SWF dynamically using JSON data coming from an HTTP request. I receive the data on creationComplete and try to generate a tree like structure. I don’t create the whole tree at the same time. I create 2 levels, level 1 and level 2. My goal is to attach custom events on the panels which represent tree nodes. When users click the panels, it dispatches custom events and try to generate the next level. So, it goes like this : On creation complete - get JSON- create top tow levels - click on level 2- create the level 2 and level 3 - click on level 3- create level 3 and 4. …and so on and so on. I am attaching my code with this email. Please take a look at it and if you have any hints on how you would do this if you need to paint a tree having total level number = “n” where( 0 import com.iwobanas.effects.*; import flash.events.MouseEvent; import flash.filters.BitmapFilterQuality; import flash.filters.BitmapFilterType; import flash.filters.GradientGlowFilter; import mx.controls.Alert; private var roundedMask:Sprite; private var panel:NewPanel; public var oldPanelIds:Array = new Array(); public var pages:Array = new Array();//cleanup public var delPages:Array = new Array(); public function DrawPlaybook(pos:Number,title:String,chld:Object):void { panel = new NewPanel(chld); panel.title = title; panel.name=title; panel.width = 100; panel.height = 80; panel.x=pos+5; panel.y=40; // Define a gradient glow. var gradientGlow:GradientGlowFilter = new GradientGlowFilter(); gradientGlow.distance = 0; gradientGlow.angle = 45; gradientGlow.colors = [0xFFFFF0, 0xFFFFFF]; gradientGlow.alphas = [0, 1]; gradientGlow.ratios = [0, 255]; gradientGlow.blurX = 10; gradientGlow.blurY = 10; gradientGlow.strength = 2; gradientGlow.quality = BitmapFilterQuality.HIGH; gradientGlow.type = BitmapFilterType.OUTER; panel.filters =[gradientGlow]; this.rawChildren.addChild(panel); pages.push(panel); panel.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, function(e:MouseEvent){onClickHandler(e,title,chld)}); this.addEventListener(CustomPageClickEvent.PANEL_CLICKED, function(e:CustomPageClickEvent){onCustomPanelClicked(e,title)}); } public function onClickHandler(e:MouseEvent,title:String,chld:Object):void { //var panel:Panel; for each(var stp1:NewPanel in pages){ if(stp1.title==title){ var eventObj:CustomPageClickEvent = new CustomPageClickEvent("panelClicked"); eventObj.panelClicked = stp1; dispatchEvent(eventObj); } } } private function onCustomPanelClicked(e:CustomPageClickEvent,title:String):void { //cleanup itself Alert.show("onCustomPanelClicked" + title); var panel:NewPanel; for each(var stp:NewPanel in pages){ startAnimation(e,stp); } if(title == e.panelClicked.title){ panel = new NewPanel(null); panel.title = title; panel.name=title; panel.width = 150; panel.height = 80; panel.x=100; panel.y=40; this.rawChildren.addChild(panel); // var slideRight:SlideRight = new SlideRight(); slideRight.target=panel; slideRight.duration=750; slideRight.showTarget=true; slideRight.play(); //draw the steps var jsonData = this.map.getValue(title); var posX:Number = 50; var posY:Number = 175; for each ( var pnl:NewPanel in pages){ pages.pop(); } for each ( var stp1:Object in jsonData.children){ //Alert.show("map step=" + stp.text ); panel = new NewPanel(null); panel.title = stp1.text; panel.name=stp1.id; panel.width = 100; panel.id=stp1.id; panel.height = 80; panel.x = posX; panel.y=posY; posX+=150; var s:String="hi" + stp1.text; panel.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, function(e:MouseEvent){onChildClick(e,s);}); this.addEventListener(CustomPageClickEvent.PANEL_CLICKED, function(e:CustomPageClickEvent){onCustomPnlClicked(e)}); this.rawChildren.addChild(panel); // Alert.show("map step=" + this.getChildIndex(panel) ); // oldPanelIds.push(panel); pages.push(panel); //this.addEventListener(CustomPageClickEvent.PANEL_CLICKED, //function(e:CustomPageClickEvent){onCustomPanelClicked(e,title)}); var slide:SlideUp = new SlideUp(); slide.target=panel; slide.duration=1500; slide.showTarget=false; slide.play(); } } } public function onChildClick(e:MouseEvent,s:String):void { //var panel:Panel; //Alert.show(e.currentTarget.title); for each(var stp1:NewPanel in pages){ if(stp1.title==e.currentTarget.title){ var eventObj:CustomPageClickEvent = new CustomPageClickEvent("panelClicked"); eventObj.panelClicked = stp1; dispatchEvent(eventObj); } } } private function onCustomPnlClicked(e:CustomPageClickEvent):void { for each ( var pnl:NewPanel in pages){ pages.pop(); } //onCustomPanelClicked(e,e.currentTarget.title); //Alert.show("hi from cstm" + e.panelClicked.title); } private function fadePanel(event:Event,panel:NewPanel):void{ panel.alpha -= .005; if (panel.alpha <= 0){ //Alert.show(panel.title); panel.removeEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, function(e:Event){fadePanel(e,panel);}); }; panel.title=""; } private function startAnimation(event:CustomPageClickEvent,panel:NewPanel):void{ panel.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, function(e:Event){fadePanel(e,panel)}); } Thanks in advance. Palash

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Visualising a 'Smarties' lid using XAML (WPF/Silverlight, Visual Studio/Blend)

- by Mr. Disappointment

Hi folks, First off, to clarify something in the title which could well be ambiguous/misleading, I'd like to inform you of my definition of 'Smarties', as I know often products are available all over - only under a different alias. Smarties are a candy product in the UK, little chocolate drops covered in a crispy shell which are distributed in a card tube, this tube used to have a plastic lid/top with an individual letter on the underside (they've taken a more economical approach as of late), the lid/top of the old-style tube is the main element of this question. Familiarisation Link Lid View Link Okay, now with the seller-type pitch out of the way (no, I don't work for Nestlé ;)), hopefully the question is becoming rather clear. Essentially, I'd like to recreate one of these lids using XAML, ultimately to be utilised in a Silverlight web application. That is, I'd like to result in a reusable control, of which the following is true: It looks like a Smarties lid. The colour can be specified. The letter can be specified. The control can be rotated to display either side. The second two seem trivial, but we must bare in mind that the background colour specified will almost, if not always, be the same as the foreground, leaving a visibility issue where the character content is concerned; as for the rotation, I'm hoping this kind of functionality is reasonably available, and acceptable to implement. So, to put this out there, consider a control named SmartiesLid which derives from ToggleButton (appropriate?) and further plotted out using a style in a resource dictionary which applies to it, as follows: <Style TargetType="local:SmartiesLid"> <Setter Property="Background" Value="Red"/> <Setter Property="Foreground" Value="Red"/> <Setter Property="VerticalContentAlignment" Value="Center"/> <Setter Property="HorizontalContentAlignment" Value="Center"/> <Setter Property="Template"> <Setter.Value> <ControlTemplate TargetType="local:SmartiesLid"> <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot"> <Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <ColumnDefinition Width=".05*"/> <ColumnDefinition/> <ColumnDefinition/> <ColumnDefinition Width=".05*"/> </Grid.ColumnDefinitions> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height=".05*"/> <RowDefinition/> <RowDefinition/> <RowDefinition Height=".05*"/> <RowDefinition Height=".1*"/> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <Ellipse Grid.RowSpan="4" Grid.ColumnSpan="4" Fill="{TemplateBinding Background}" Stroke="Transparent"/> <Ellipse Grid.RowSpan="2" Grid.ColumnSpan="2" Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="1" Fill="{TemplateBinding Background}" Stroke="Transparent"> <Ellipse.Effect> <DropShadowEffect Direction="280" ShadowDepth="6" BlurRadius="6"/> </Ellipse.Effect> </Ellipse> <TextBlock Grid.RowSpan="2" Grid.ColumnSpan="2" Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="1" Name="LetterTextBlock" Text="{TemplateBinding Content}" Foreground="{TemplateBinding Foreground}" FontSize="190" HorizontalAlignment="Center" VerticalAlignment="Center"> </TextBlock>  </Grid> <ControlTemplate.Resources> <TranslateTransform x:Key="IndentTransform" X="10" /> <RotateTransform x:Key="RotateTransform" Angle="0" /> <Storyboard x:Key="MouseOver"> </Storyboard> <Storyboard x:Key="MouseLeave"> </Storyboard> </ControlTemplate.Resources> <ControlTemplate.Triggers> <Trigger Property="IsMouseOver" Value="true"> <Trigger.EnterActions> <BeginStoryboard Storyboard="{StaticResource MouseOver}"/> </Trigger.EnterActions> <Trigger.ExitActions> <BeginStoryboard Storyboard="{StaticResource MouseLeave}"/> </Trigger.ExitActions> </Trigger> <Trigger Property="IsPressed" Value="true"> <Setter TargetName="LayoutRoot" Property="RenderTransform" Value="{StaticResource IndentTransform}"/> </Trigger> <Trigger Property="IsChecked" Value="true"> <Setter TargetName="LayoutRoot" Property="RenderTransform" Value="{StaticResource RotateTransform}"/> </Trigger> <Trigger Property="IsEnabled" Value="False"> <Setter Property="Foreground" Value="Gray"/> <Setter Property="Opacity" Value="0.5"/> </Trigger> </ControlTemplate.Triggers> </ControlTemplate> </Setter.Value> </Setter> </Style> With this in mind, can anyone give input on, in decreasing order of my incompetence in an area: Designing the overall look and feel of the damn thing (I'm no designer, and while I could hack away at this single control for days and potentially get something relatively useful, it's always a gamble). The particular barrier for me here is 'pathing' the tab of the lid, as you will see in the XAML as an element commented out. Should Path be used, or would it be more appropriate to transform a rectangle with rounded corners, or any specific suggestions? Bevelling the individually displayed letter; as detailed above, when the colour of both the foreground and background are the same then this will be invisible if no effects are applied, also for a decent level of realism I'd like to be able to apply such an effect/s. So far use of DropShadow and Balder3DEngine have fulfilled my requirements for graphics in XAML, how achievable is a bevel effect? Rotating the control on mouse-click, that is, showing the opposing face. Is this going to be possible using a style and XAML only for the design? Or is it that ugliness may rear it's head in the form of code-behind to show/hide embedded controls? Should the faces be separate controls and later somehow combined? Allowing the control to size dynamically. I'm supposing I will be able to convert a solid, absolute layout to a nice generic one when I actually have the former in place. Obviously this entails sizing the centralised letter and the lid 'tab', but that's it really, other than keeping the aspect ratio equal (since the ellipses grow nicely with the grid). Any suggestions to approaching this would be greatly appreciated, particularly with a dynamically growing font - I've done that before in a web-imaging scenario using code and System.Drawing, and wouldn't like to approach it in even a similar way. By the way, the reason I specify both WPF and Silverlight is that, from my current knowledge, the inputs being written targeting either of these will be fairly transferable for similar output by the other, albeit not without alterations in either scenario. The resulting application is in fact destined to be written in Silverlight, however, so I don't fancy inviting anything from WPF which will guarantee my only being able to convert 90% of it. I'll go give this little project a start, maybe in Blend(?), hopefully can catch up with some advice shortly. Thanks, Mr. D EDIT: Next question, ought this to be broken up into separate questions? :/

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Create a class that inherets DrawableGameComponent in XNA as a CLASS with custom functions

- by user3675013

using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Media; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; namespace TileEngine { class Renderer : DrawableGameComponent { public Renderer(Game game) : base(game) { } SpriteBatch spriteBatch ; protected override void LoadContent() { base.LoadContent(); } public override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { base.Draw(gameTime); } public override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { base.Update(gameTime); } public override void Initialize() { base.Initialize(); } public RenderTarget2D new_texture(int width, int height) { Texture2D TEX = new Texture2D(GraphicsDevice, width, height); //create the texture to render to RenderTarget2D Mine = new RenderTarget2D(GraphicsDevice, width, height); GraphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget(Mine); //set the render device to the reference provided //maybe base.draw can be used with spritebatch. Idk. We'll see if the order of operation //works out. Wish I could call base.draw here. return Mine; //I'm hoping that this returns the same instance and not a copy. } public void draw_texture(int width, int height, RenderTarget2D Mine) { GraphicsDevice.SetRenderTarget(null); //Set the renderer to render to the backbuffer again Rectangle drawrect = new Rectangle(0, 0, width, height); //Set the rendering size to what we want spriteBatch.Begin(); //This uses spritebatch to draw the texture directly to the screen spriteBatch.Draw(Mine, drawrect, Color.White); //This uses the color white spriteBatch.End(); //ends the spritebatch //Call base.draw after this since it doesn't seem to recognize inside the function //maybe base.draw can be used with spritebatch. Idk. We'll see if the order of operation //works out. Wish I could call base.draw here. } } } I solved a previous issue where I wasn't allowed to access GraphicsDevice outside the main Default 'main' class Ie "Game" or "Game1" etc. Now I have a new issue. FYi no one told me that it would be possible to use GraphicsDevice References to cause it to not be null by using the drawable class. (hopefully after this last bug is solved it doesn't still return null) Anyways at present the problem is that I can't seem to get it to initialize as an instance in my main program. Ie Renderer tileClipping; and I'm unable to use it such as it is to be noted i haven't even gotten to testing these two steps below but before it compiled but when those functions of this class were called it complained that it can't render to a null device. Which meant that the device wasn't being initialized. I had no idea why. It took me hours to google this. I finally figured out the words I needed.. which were "do my rendering in XNA in a seperate class" now I haven't used the addcomponent function because I don't want it to only run these functions automatically and I want to be able to call the custom ones. In a nutshell what I want is: *access to rendering targets and graphics device OUTSIDE default class *passing of Rendertarget2D (which contain textures and textures should automatically be passed with a rendering target? ) *the device should be passed to this function as well OR the device should be passed to this function as a byproduct of passing the rendertarget (which is automatically associated with the render device it was given originally) *I'm assuming I'm dealing with abstracted pointers here so when I pass a class object or instance, I should be recieving the SAME object , I referenced, and not a copy that has only the lifespan of the function running. *the purpose for all these options: I want to initialize new 2d textures on the fly to customize tileclipping and even the X , y Offsets of where a WHOLE texture will be rendered, and the X and Y offsets of where tiles will be rendered ON that surface. This is why. And I'll be doing region based lighting effects per tile or even per 8X8 pixel spaces.. we'll see I'll also be doing sprite rotations on the whole texture then copying it again to a circular masked texture, and then doing a second copy for only solid tiles for masked rotated collisions on sprites. I'll be checking the masked pixels for my collision, and using raycasting possibly to check for collisions on those areas. The sprite will stay in the center, when this rotation happens. Here is a detailed diagram: http://i.stack.imgur.com/INf9K.gif I'll be using texture2D for steps 4-6 I suppose for steps 1 as well. Now ontop of that, the clipping size (IE the sqaure rendered) will be able to be shrunk or increased, on a per frame basis Therefore I can't use the same static size for my main texture2d and I can't use just the backbuffer Or we get the annoying flicker. Also I will have multiple instances of the renderer class so that I can freely pass textures around as if they are playing cards (in a sense) layering them ontop of eachother, cropping them how i want and such. and then using spritebatch to simply draw them at the locations I want. Hopefully this makes sense, and yes I will be planning on using alpha blending but only after all tiles have been drawn.. The masked collision is important and Yes I am avoiding using math on the tile rendering and instead resorting to image manipulation in video memory which is WHY I need this to work the way I'm intending it to work and not in the default way that XNA seems to handle graphics. Thanks to anyone willing to help. I hate the code form offered, because then I have to rely on static presence of an update function. What if I want to kill that update function or that object, but have it in memory, but just have it temporarily inactive? I'm making the assumption here the update function of one of these gamecomponents is automatic ? Anyways this is as detailed as I can make this post hopefully someone can help me solve the issue. Instead of tell me "derrr don't do it this wayyy" which is what a few people told me (but they don't understand the actual goal I have in mind) I'm trying to create basically a library where I can copy images freely no matter the size, i just have to specify the size in the function then as long as a reference to that object exists it should be kept alive? right? :/ anyways.. Anything else? I Don't know. I understand object oriented coding but I don't understand this XNA It's beggining to feel impossible to do anything custom in it without putting ALL my rendering code into the draw function of the main class tileClipping.new_texture(GraphicsDevice, width, height) tileClipping.Draw_texture(...)

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Windows 7 computer apparently connected to working wireless network but can't access router page or internet

- by Hemmer

I can consistently connect successfully to both the router and the internet using both my phone and two different computers which strongly suggests that the issue is at the desktop end. Only my Windows 7 desktop machine has stopped getting internet connectivity. It manages to connect to the router's network using the Windows 7 wireless dialog, but can't access either the router configuration page (192.168.1.1) or the internet in general once connected. The strange thing is the wireless network icon in the notification bar shows a full strength signal, sometimes with the yellow warning triangle. The output of ipconfig /all is: Wireless LAN adapter Wireless Network Connection: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Broadcom 802.11g Network Adapter Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-12-17-94-98-90 DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.102(Preferred) Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0 Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : 08 June 2011 10:32:16 Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : 08 June 2011 12:32:16 Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1 DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1 DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 194.168.4.100 194.168.8.100 NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled I've tried renewing DCHP settings disabling IPv6 resetting TCP stack uninstalling and reinstalling WLAN card drivers I've not installed anything new or made any changes to my knowledge, this just happened out of the blue. The only possible change is my friend connected his macbook to the network, but that has gone now and shouldn't have any lasting effects? TCP/IPv4 is set to automatically find an IP address. Antivirus is MSE (up to date) and doesn't detect anything unusual. Any ideas where to go next? Any help is greatly appreciated. For reference, the results of ipconfig /all on one of the working computers is: Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Broadcom 802.11g Network Adapter Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-16-CF-67-E5-97 Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.100 Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0 Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1 DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1 DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 194.168.4.100 194.168.8.100 Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : 08 June 2011 10:26:38 Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : 08 June 2011 12:26:38 UPDATE: Still not working, but I've managed to find a temporary workaround by tethering my Android phone, effectively becoming a new wifi adapter. Will be moving to a new flat so will test if it is a network specific thing - maybe the card has got damaged somehow? Also will see if the card is working with Linux soon.

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New features of C# 4.0

This article covers New features of C# 4.0. Article has been divided into below sections. Introduction. Dynamic Lookup. Named and Optional Arguments. Features for COM interop. Variance. Relationship with Visual Basic. Resources. Other interested readings… 22 New Features of Visual Studio 2008 for .NET Professionals 50 New Features of SQL Server 2008 IIS 7.0 New features Introduction It is now close to a year since Microsoft Visual C# 3.0 shipped as part of Visual Studio 2008. In the VS Managed Languages team we are hard at work on creating the next version of the language (with the unsurprising working title of C# 4.0), and this document is a first public description of the planned language features as we currently see them. Please be advised that all this is in early stages of production and is subject to change. Part of the reason for sharing our plans in public so early is precisely to get the kind of feedback that will cause us to improve the final product before it rolls out. Simultaneously with the publication of this whitepaper, a first public CTP (community technology preview) of Visual Studio 2010 is going out as a Virtual PC image for everyone to try. Please use it to play and experiment with the features, and let us know of any thoughts you have. We ask for your understanding and patience working with very early bits, where especially new or newly implemented features do not have the quality or stability of a final product. The aim of the CTP is not to give you a productive work environment but to give you the best possible impression of what we are working on for the next release. The CTP contains a number of walkthroughs, some of which highlight the new language features of C# 4.0. Those are excellent for getting a hands-on guided tour through the details of some common scenarios for the features. You may consider this whitepaper a companion document to these walkthroughs, complementing them with a focus on the overall language features and how they work, as opposed to the specifics of the concrete scenarios. C# 4.0 The major theme for C# 4.0 is dynamic programming. Increasingly, objects are “dynamic” in the sense that their structure and behavior is not captured by a static type, or at least not one that the compiler knows about when compiling your program. Some examples include a. objects from dynamic programming languages, such as Python or Ruby b. COM objects accessed through IDispatch c. ordinary .NET types accessed through reflection d. objects with changing structure, such as HTML DOM objects While C# remains a statically typed language, we aim to vastly improve the interaction with such objects. A secondary theme is co-evolution with Visual Basic. Going forward we will aim to maintain the individual character of each language, but at the same time important new features should be introduced in both languages at the same time. They should be differentiated more by style and feel than by feature set. The new features in C# 4.0 fall into four groups: Dynamic lookup Dynamic lookup allows you to write method, operator and indexer calls, property and field accesses, and even object invocations which bypass the C# static type checking and instead gets resolved at runtime. Named and optional parameters Parameters in C# can now be specified as optional by providing a default value for them in a member declaration. When the member is invoked, optional arguments can be omitted. Furthermore, any argument can be passed by parameter name instead of position. COM specific interop features Dynamic lookup as well as named and optional parameters both help making programming against COM less painful than today. On top of that, however, we are adding a number of other small features that further improve the interop experience. Variance It used to be that an IEnumerable<string> wasn’t an IEnumerable<object>. Now it is – C# embraces type safe “co-and contravariance” and common BCL types are updated to take advantage of that. Dynamic Lookup Dynamic lookup allows you a unified approach to invoking things dynamically. With dynamic lookup, when you have an object in your hand you do not need to worry about whether it comes from COM, IronPython, the HTML DOM or reflection; you just apply operations to it and leave it to the runtime to figure out what exactly those operations mean for that particular object. This affords you enormous flexibility, and can greatly simplify your code, but it does come with a significant drawback: Static typing is not maintained for these operations. A dynamic object is assumed at compile time to support any operation, and only at runtime will you get an error if it wasn’t so. Oftentimes this will be no loss, because the object wouldn’t have a static type anyway, in other cases it is a tradeoff between brevity and safety. In order to facilitate this tradeoff, it is a design goal of C# to allow you to opt in or opt out of dynamic behavior on every single call. The dynamic type C# 4.0 introduces a new static type called dynamic. When you have an object of type dynamic you can “do things to it” that are resolved only at runtime: dynamic d = GetDynamicObject(…); d.M(7); The C# compiler allows you to call a method with any name and any arguments on d because it is of type dynamic. At runtime the actual object that d refers to will be examined to determine what it means to “call M with an int” on it. The type dynamic can be thought of as a special version of the type object, which signals that the object can be used dynamically. It is easy to opt in or out of dynamic behavior: any object can be implicitly converted to dynamic, “suspending belief” until runtime. Conversely, there is an “assignment conversion” from dynamic to any other type, which allows implicit conversion in assignment-like constructs: dynamic d = 7; // implicit conversion int i = d; // assignment conversion Dynamic operations Not only method calls, but also field and property accesses, indexer and operator calls and even delegate invocations can be dispatched dynamically: dynamic d = GetDynamicObject(…); d.M(7); // calling methods d.f = d.P; // getting and settings fields and properties d[“one”] = d[“two”]; // getting and setting thorugh indexers int i = d + 3; // calling operators string s = d(5,7); // invoking as a delegate The role of the C# compiler here is simply to package up the necessary information about “what is being done to d”, so that the runtime can pick it up and determine what the exact meaning of it is given an actual object d. Think of it as deferring part of the compiler’s job to runtime. The result of any dynamic operation is itself of type dynamic. Runtime lookup At runtime a dynamic operation is dispatched according to the nature of its target object d: COM objects If d is a COM object, the operation is dispatched dynamically through COM IDispatch. This allows calling to COM types that don’t have a Primary Interop Assembly (PIA), and relying on COM features that don’t have a counterpart in C#, such as indexed properties and default properties. Dynamic objects If d implements the interface IDynamicObject d itself is asked to perform the operation. Thus by implementing IDynamicObject a type can completely redefine the meaning of dynamic operations. This is used intensively by dynamic languages such as IronPython and IronRuby to implement their own dynamic object models. It will also be used by APIs, e.g. by the HTML DOM to allow direct access to the object’s properties using property syntax. Plain objects Otherwise d is a standard .NET object, and the operation will be dispatched using reflection on its type and a C# “runtime binder” which implements C#’s lookup and overload resolution semantics at runtime. This is essentially a part of the C# compiler running as a runtime component to “finish the work” on dynamic operations that was deferred by the static compiler. Example Assume the following code: dynamic d1 = new Foo(); dynamic d2 = new Bar(); string s; d1.M(s, d2, 3, null); Because the receiver of the call to M is dynamic, the C# compiler does not try to resolve the meaning of the call. Instead it stashes away information for the runtime about the call. This information (often referred to as the “payload”) is essentially equivalent to: “Perform an instance method call of M with the following arguments: 1. a string 2. a dynamic 3. a literal int 3 4. a literal object null” At runtime, assume that the actual type Foo of d1 is not a COM type and does not implement IDynamicObject. In this case the C# runtime binder picks up to finish the overload resolution job based on runtime type information, proceeding as follows: 1. Reflection is used to obtain the actual runtime types of the two objects, d1 and d2, that did not have a static type (or rather had the static type dynamic). The result is Foo for d1 and Bar for d2. 2. Method lookup and overload resolution is performed on the type Foo with the call M(string,Bar,3,null) using ordinary C# semantics. 3. If the method is found it is invoked; otherwise a runtime exception is thrown. Overload resolution with dynamic arguments Even if the receiver of a method call is of a static type, overload resolution can still happen at runtime. This can happen if one or more of the arguments have the type dynamic: Foo foo = new Foo(); dynamic d = new Bar(); var result = foo.M(d); The C# runtime binder will choose between the statically known overloads of M on Foo, based on the runtime type of d, namely Bar. The result is again of type dynamic. The Dynamic Language Runtime An important component in the underlying implementation of dynamic lookup is the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR), which is a new API in .NET 4.0. The DLR provides most of the infrastructure behind not only C# dynamic lookup but also the implementation of several dynamic programming languages on .NET, such as IronPython and IronRuby. Through this common infrastructure a high degree of interoperability is ensured, but just as importantly the DLR provides excellent caching mechanisms which serve to greatly enhance the efficiency of runtime dispatch. To the user of dynamic lookup in C#, the DLR is invisible except for the improved efficiency. However, if you want to implement your own dynamically dispatched objects, the IDynamicObject interface allows you to interoperate with the DLR and plug in your own behavior. This is a rather advanced task, which requires you to understand a good deal more about the inner workings of the DLR. For API writers, however, it can definitely be worth the trouble in order to vastly improve the usability of e.g. a library representing an inherently dynamic domain. Open issues There are a few limitations and things that might work differently than you would expect. · The DLR allows objects to be created from objects that represent classes. However, the current implementation of C# doesn’t have syntax to support this. · Dynamic lookup will not be able to find extension methods. Whether extension methods apply or not depends on the static context of the call (i.e. which using clauses occur), and this context information is not currently kept as part of the payload. · Anonymous functions (i.e. lambda expressions) cannot appear as arguments to a dynamic method call. The compiler cannot bind (i.e. “understand”) an anonymous function without knowing what type it is converted to. One consequence of these limitations is that you cannot easily use LINQ queries over dynamic objects: dynamic collection = …; var result = collection.Select(e => e + 5); If the Select method is an extension method, dynamic lookup will not find it. Even if it is an instance method, the above does not compile, because a lambda expression cannot be passed as an argument to a dynamic operation. There are no plans to address these limitations in C# 4.0. Named and Optional Arguments Named and optional parameters are really two distinct features, but are often useful together. Optional parameters allow you to omit arguments to member invocations, whereas named arguments is a way to provide an argument using the name of the corresponding parameter instead of relying on its position in the parameter list. Some APIs, most notably COM interfaces such as the Office automation APIs, are written specifically with named and optional parameters in mind. Up until now it has been very painful to call into these APIs from C#, with sometimes as many as thirty arguments having to be explicitly passed, most of which have reasonable default values and could be omitted. Even in APIs for .NET however you sometimes find yourself compelled to write many overloads of a method with different combinations of parameters, in order to provide maximum usability to the callers. Optional parameters are a useful alternative for these situations. Optional parameters A parameter is declared optional simply by providing a default value for it: public void M(int x, int y = 5, int z = 7); Here y and z are optional parameters and can be omitted in calls: M(1, 2, 3); // ordinary call of M M(1, 2); // omitting z – equivalent to M(1, 2, 7) M(1); // omitting both y and z – equivalent to M(1, 5, 7) Named and optional arguments C# 4.0 does not permit you to omit arguments between commas as in M(1,,3). This could lead to highly unreadable comma-counting code. Instead any argument can be passed by name. Thus if you want to omit only y from a call of M you can write: M(1, z: 3); // passing z by name or M(x: 1, z: 3); // passing both x and z by name or even M(z: 3, x: 1); // reversing the order of arguments All forms are equivalent, except that arguments are always evaluated in the order they appear, so in the last example the 3 is evaluated before the 1. Optional and named arguments can be used not only with methods but also with indexers and constructors. Overload resolution Named and optional arguments affect overload resolution, but the changes are relatively simple: A signature is applicable if all its parameters are either optional or have exactly one corresponding argument (by name or position) in the call which is convertible to the parameter type. Betterness rules on conversions are only applied for arguments that are explicitly given – omitted optional arguments are ignored for betterness purposes. If two signatures are equally good, one that does not omit optional parameters is preferred. M(string s, int i = 1); M(object o); M(int i, string s = “Hello”); M(int i); M(5); Given these overloads, we can see the working of the rules above. M(string,int) is not applicable because 5 doesn’t convert to string. M(int,string) is applicable because its second parameter is optional, and so, obviously are M(object) and M(int). M(int,string) and M(int) are both better than M(object) because the conversion from 5 to int is better than the conversion from 5 to object. Finally M(int) is better than M(int,string) because no optional arguments are omitted. Thus the method that gets called is M(int). Features for COM interop Dynamic lookup as well as named and optional parameters greatly improve the experience of interoperating with COM APIs such as the Office Automation APIs. In order to remove even more of the speed bumps, a couple of small COM-specific features are also added to C# 4.0. Dynamic import Many COM methods accept and return variant types, which are represented in the PIAs as object. In the vast majority of cases, a programmer calling these methods already knows the static type of a returned object from context, but explicitly has to perform a cast on the returned value to make use of that knowledge. These casts are so common that they constitute a major nuisance. In order to facilitate a smoother experience, you can now choose to import these COM APIs in such a way that variants are instead represented using the type dynamic. In other words, from your point of view, COM signatures now have occurrences of dynamic instead of object in them. This means that you can easily access members directly off a returned object, or you can assign it to a strongly typed local variable without having to cast. To illustrate, you can now say excel.Cells[1, 1].Value = "Hello"; instead of ((Excel.Range)excel.Cells[1, 1]).Value2 = "Hello"; and Excel.Range range = excel.Cells[1, 1]; instead of Excel.Range range = (Excel.Range)excel.Cells[1, 1]; Compiling without PIAs Primary Interop Assemblies are large .NET assemblies generated from COM interfaces to facilitate strongly typed interoperability. They provide great support at design time, where your experience of the interop is as good as if the types where really defined in .NET. However, at runtime these large assemblies can easily bloat your program, and also cause versioning issues because they are distributed independently of your application. The no-PIA feature allows you to continue to use PIAs at design time without having them around at runtime. Instead, the C# compiler will bake the small part of the PIA that a program actually uses directly into its assembly. At runtime the PIA does not have to be loaded. Omitting ref Because of a different programming model, many COM APIs contain a lot of reference parameters. Contrary to refs in C#, these are typically not meant to mutate a passed-in argument for the subsequent benefit of the caller, but are simply another way of passing value parameters. It therefore seems unreasonable that a C# programmer should have to create temporary variables for all such ref parameters and pass these by reference. Instead, specifically for COM methods, the C# compiler will allow you to pass arguments by value to such a method, and will automatically generate temporary variables to hold the passed-in values, subsequently discarding these when the call returns. In this way the caller sees value semantics, and will not experience any side effects, but the called method still gets a reference. Open issues A few COM interface features still are not surfaced in C#. Most notably these include indexed properties and default properties. As mentioned above these will be respected if you access COM dynamically, but statically typed C# code will still not recognize them. There are currently no plans to address these remaining speed bumps in C# 4.0. Variance An aspect of generics that often comes across as surprising is that the following is illegal: IList<string> strings = new List<string>(); IList<object> objects = strings; The second assignment is disallowed because strings does not have the same element type as objects. There is a perfectly good reason for this. If it were allowed you could write: objects[0] = 5; string s = strings[0]; Allowing an int to be inserted into a list of strings and subsequently extracted as a string. This would be a breach of type safety. However, there are certain interfaces where the above cannot occur, notably where there is no way to insert an object into the collection. Such an interface is IEnumerable<T>. If instead you say: IEnumerable<object> objects = strings; There is no way we can put the wrong kind of thing into strings through objects, because objects doesn’t have a method that takes an element in. Variance is about allowing assignments such as this in cases where it is safe. The result is that a lot of situations that were previously surprising now just work. Covariance In .NET 4.0 the IEnumerable<T> interface will be declared in the following way: public interface IEnumerable<out T> : IEnumerable { IEnumerator<T> GetEnumerator(); } public interface IEnumerator<out T> : IEnumerator { bool MoveNext(); T Current { get; } } The “out” in these declarations signifies that the T can only occur in output position in the interface – the compiler will complain otherwise. In return for this restriction, the interface becomes “covariant” in T, which means that an IEnumerable<A> is considered an IEnumerable<B> if A has a reference conversion to B. As a result, any sequence of strings is also e.g. a sequence of objects. This is useful e.g. in many LINQ methods. Using the declarations above: var result = strings.Union(objects); // succeeds with an IEnumerable<object> This would previously have been disallowed, and you would have had to to some cumbersome wrapping to get the two sequences to have the same element type. Contravariance Type parameters can also have an “in” modifier, restricting them to occur only in input positions. An example is IComparer<T>: public interface IComparer<in T> { public int Compare(T left, T right); } The somewhat baffling result is that an IComparer<object> can in fact be considered an IComparer<string>! It makes sense when you think about it: If a comparer can compare any two objects, it can certainly also compare two strings. This property is referred to as contravariance. A generic type can have both in and out modifiers on its type parameters, as is the case with the Func<…> delegate types: public delegate TResult Func<in TArg, out TResult>(TArg arg); Obviously the argument only ever comes in, and the result only ever comes out. Therefore a Func<object,string> can in fact be used as a Func<string,object>. Limitations Variant type parameters can only be declared on interfaces and delegate types, due to a restriction in the CLR. Variance only applies when there is a reference conversion between the type arguments. For instance, an IEnumerable<int> is not an IEnumerable<object> because the conversion from int to object is a boxing conversion, not a reference conversion. Also please note that the CTP does not contain the new versions of the .NET types mentioned above. In order to experiment with variance you have to declare your own variant interfaces and delegate types. COM Example Here is a larger Office automation example that shows many of the new C# features in action. using System; using System.Diagnostics; using System.Linq; using Excel = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel; using Word = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word; class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { var excel = new Excel.Application(); excel.Visible = true; excel.Workbooks.Add(); // optional arguments omitted excel.Cells[1, 1].Value = "Process Name"; // no casts; Value dynamically excel.Cells[1, 2].Value = "Memory Usage"; // accessed var processes = Process.GetProcesses() .OrderByDescending(p => p.WorkingSet) .Take(10); int i = 2; foreach (var p in processes) { excel.Cells[i, 1].Value = p.ProcessName; // no casts excel.Cells[i, 2].Value = p.WorkingSet; // no casts i++; } Excel.Range range = excel.Cells[1, 1]; // no casts Excel.Chart chart = excel.ActiveWorkbook.Charts. Add(After: excel.ActiveSheet); // named and optional arguments chart.ChartWizard( Source: range.CurrentRegion, Title: "Memory Usage in " + Environment.MachineName); //named+optional chart.ChartStyle = 45; chart.CopyPicture(Excel.XlPictureAppearance.xlScreen, Excel.XlCopyPictureFormat.xlBitmap, Excel.XlPictureAppearance.xlScreen); var word = new Word.Application(); word.Visible = true; word.Documents.Add(); // optional arguments word.Selection.Paste(); } } The code is much more terse and readable than the C# 3.0 counterpart. Note especially how the Value property is accessed dynamically. This is actually an indexed property, i.e. a property that takes an argument; something which C# does not understand. However the argument is optional. Since the access is dynamic, it goes through the runtime COM binder which knows to substitute the default value and call the indexed property. Thus, dynamic COM allows you to avoid accesses to the puzzling Value2 property of Excel ranges. Relationship with Visual Basic A number of the features introduced to C# 4.0 already exist or will be introduced in some form or other in Visual Basic: · Late binding in VB is similar in many ways to dynamic lookup in C#, and can be expected to make more use of the DLR in the future, leading to further parity with C#. · Named and optional arguments have been part of Visual Basic for a long time, and the C# version of the feature is explicitly engineered with maximal VB interoperability in mind. · NoPIA and variance are both being introduced to VB and C# at the same time. VB in turn is adding a number of features that have hitherto been a mainstay of C#. As a result future versions of C# and VB will have much better feature parity, for the benefit of everyone. Resources All available resources concerning C# 4.0 can be accessed through the C# Dev Center. Specifically, this white paper and other resources can be found at the Code Gallery site. Enjoy! span.fullpost {display:none;}

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Avoid richfaces to send back javascript libraries in the ajax responses

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I'm using JSF 1.2 with Richfaces, and for every ajax request, the server is sending back the response, whichi is good, but it also contains all the links to the javascript files. I want to improve the performance so I just want the <body> to be returned, because all the javascript files are already loaded in the browser when the user logs in (my app is not restful). How can i do that? 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src="/eyeprevent/a4j/g/3_3_3.Finalorg/richfaces/renderkit/html/scripts/tooltip.js.xhtml" type="text/javascript"> </script><link class="component" href="/eyeprevent/a4j/s/3_3_3.Finalorg/richfaces/renderkit/html/css/tooltip.xcss/DATB/eAF7sqpgb-jyGdIAFrMEaw__.xhtml" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /><script src="/eyeprevent/a4j/g/3_3_3.Finalorg/richfaces/renderkit/html/scripts/datascroller.js.xhtml" type="text/javascript"> </script><link class="component" href="/eyeprevent/a4j/s/3_3_3.Finalcss/datascroller.xcss/DATB/eAF7sqpgb-jyGdIAFrMEaw__.xhtml" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /><script src="/eyeprevent/a4j/g/3_3_3.Finalorg/richfaces/renderkit/html/scripts/modalPanel.js.xhtml" type="text/javascript"> </script><script src="/eyeprevent/a4j/g/3_3_3.Finalorg/richfaces/renderkit/html/scripts/modalPanelBorders.js.xhtml" type="text/javascript"> </script><link class="component" href="/eyeprevent/a4j/s/3_3_3.Finalorg/richfaces/renderkit/html/css/modalPanel.xcss/DATB/eAF7sqpgb-jyGdIAFrMEaw__.xhtml" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /><script src="/eyeprevent/a4j/g/3_3_3.Finalscripts/tiny_mce/tiny_mce_src.js.xhtml" type="text/javascript"> </script><script src="/eyeprevent/a4j/g/3_3_3.Finalscripts/editor.js.xhtml" type="text/javascript"> </script><link class="component" href="/eyeprevent/a4j/s/3_3_3.Finalcss/editor.xcss/DATB/eAF7sqpgb-jyGdIAFrMEaw__.xhtml" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /><script src="/eyeprevent/a4j/g/3_3_3.Finalorg/richfaces/renderkit/html/scripts/events.js.xhtml" type="text/javascript"> </script><script src="/eyeprevent/a4j/g/3_3_3.Finalorg/richfaces/renderkit/html/scripts/scriptaculous/effects.js.xhtml" type="text/javascript"> </script><script src="/eyeprevent/a4j/g/3_3_3.Finalorg/richfaces/renderkit/html/scripts/JQuerySpinBtn.js.xhtml" type="text/javascript"> </script><script src="/eyeprevent/a4j/g/3_3_3.Finalorg/richfaces/renderkit/html/scripts/calendar.js.xhtml" type="text/javascript"> </script><link class="component" href="/eyeprevent/a4j/s/3_3_3.Finalorg/richfaces/renderkit/html/css/calendar.xcss/DATB/eAF7sqpgb-jyGdIAFrMEaw__.xhtml" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /><script src="/eyeprevent/a4j/g/3_3_3.Finalscripts/panelbar.js.xhtml" type="text/javascript"> </script><link class="component" href="/eyeprevent/a4j/s/3_3_3.Finalcss/panelbar.xcss/DATB/eAF7sqpgb-jyGdIAFrMEaw__.xhtml" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /><script src="/eyeprevent/a4j/g/3_3_3.Finalscripts/comboboxUtils.js.xhtml" type="text/javascript"> </script><script src="/eyeprevent/a4j/g/3_3_3.Finalscripts/utils.js.xhtml" type="text/javascript"> </script><script src="/eyeprevent/a4j/g/3_3_3.Finalscripts/inplaceinputstyles.js.xhtml" type="text/javascript"> </script><script src="/eyeprevent/a4j/g/3_3_3.Finalscripts/inplaceinput.js.xhtml" type="text/javascript"> </script><link class="component" href="/eyeprevent/a4j/s/3_3_3.Finalcss/inplaceinput.xcss/DATB/eAF7sqpgb-jyGdIAFrMEaw__.xhtml" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /><script src="/eyeprevent/a4j/g/3_3_3.Finalorg/richfaces/renderkit/html/scripts/skinning.js.xhtml" type="text/javascript"> </script><script src="/eyeprevent/a4j/g/3_3_3.Finaljquery.js.xhtml" type="text/javascript"> </script></head> <body> <img id="j_id305:supportImage" src="/eyeprevent/image/os-ir-central.jpg" width="50%" /> <meta name="Ajax-Update-Ids" content="j_id305:supportImage" /> <span id="ajax-view-state"><input type="hidden" name="javax.faces.ViewState" id="javax.faces.ViewState" value="j_id24" autocomplete="off" /> </span><meta id="Ajax-Response" name="Ajax-Response" content="true" /> <meta name="Ajax-Update-Ids" content="j_id305:supportImage" /> <span id="ajax-view-state"><input type="hidden" name="javax.faces.ViewState" id="javax.faces.ViewState" value="j_id24" autocomplete="off" /> </span><meta id="Ajax-Response" name="Ajax-Response" content="true" /> </body> </html> And this is the code that generated it: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:ui="http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets" xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html" xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core" xmlns:a4j="http://richfaces.org/a4j" xmlns:rich="http://richfaces.org/rich"> <ui:composition> <h:form> <h:panelGrid columns="1"> <a4j:region> <h:graphicImage id="supportImage" value="#{user.support.imagePath}" rendered="#{user.support.imageLoaded}" width="50%" /> </a4j:region> <h:panelGroup> <a4j:commandButton action="#{user.support.acceptImage}" value="YES" reRender="supportImage"/> <a4j:commandButton action="#{user.support.rejectImage}" value="NO" reRender="supportImage"/> </h:panelGroup> </h:panelGrid> </h:form> </ui:composition> </html>

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Keep width even when column changes. (HTML)

- by Andrew

I have a login on the left sidebar of my website. When a user is logged in, the sidebar width doesn't remain the same as it was when the user wasn't logged in. Is there a way to keep the width the same?  <td id="sidebar" valign="top" height="400px" style="width: 200px">  <table id="TABLE2"> <tr> <td valign="top"> <asp:LoginView ID="LoginView1" runat="server"> <LoggedInTemplate> <br /> <br /> You are currently logged in. </LoggedInTemplate> <AnonymousTemplate> <asp:Login ID="Login1" runat="server" BorderPadding="0" BorderStyle="None" BorderWidth="0px" Font-Names="Verdana" Font-Size="0.8em" CreateUserText="Sign Up Now!" CreateUserUrl="http://www.tiltonindustries.com/Tilton/Login/CreateAccount.aspx" Height="1px" PasswordRecoveryText="Forgot your password?" PasswordRecoveryUrl="http://www.tiltonindustries.com/Tilton/Login/ForgotPassword.aspx" TextLayout="TextOnTop" Width="200px" DestinationPageUrl="http://www.tiltonindustries.com/Tilton/default.aspx"> <TitleTextStyle Font-Bold="True" Font-Size="0.9em"/> <InstructionTextStyle Font-Italic="True" ForeColor="Black" /> <TextBoxStyle Font-Size="0.8em" /> <LoginButtonStyle BorderStyle="Solid" BorderWidth="1px" Font-Names="Verdana" Font-Size="0.8em" ForeColor="#990000" /> <LayoutTemplate> <table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse; height: 159px;"> <tr> <td style="height: 176px; width: 135px;"> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" style="width: 219px; height: 1px" id="TABLE1"> <tr> <td align="center" style="font-weight: bold; font-size: 0.9em; color: white; height: 18px; background-color: #990000; text-align: center" colspan="2"> Log In</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="width: 94px; height: 10px;"> </td> <td style="height: 10px; width: 78px;"> </td> </tr> <tr> <td style="width: 94px; height: 20px; text-align: right"> <asp:Label ID="UserNameLabel" runat="server" AssociatedControlID="UserName">User Name:</asp:Label>   </td> <td style="height: 20px; text-align: left; width: 78px;"> <asp:TextBox ID="UserName" runat="server" Font-Size="0.9em" EnableViewState="False" Width="100px" MaxLength="20"></asp:TextBox><asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="UserNameRequired" runat="server" ControlToValidate="UserName" ErrorMessage="User Name is required." ToolTip="User Name is required." ValidationGroup="ctl01$Login1">*</asp:RequiredFieldValidator></td> </tr> <tr> <td style="width: 94px; text-align: right"> <asp:Label ID="PasswordLabel" runat="server" AssociatedControlID="Password">Password:</asp:Label>   </td> <td style="text-align: left; width: 78px;"> <asp:TextBox ID="Password" runat="server" Font-Size="0.9em" TextMode="Password" Width="100px"></asp:TextBox><asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="PasswordRequired" runat="server" ControlToValidate="Password" ErrorMessage="Password is required." ToolTip="Password is required." ValidationGroup="ctl01$Login1">*</asp:RequiredFieldValidator></td> </tr> <tr> <td style="height: 20px; width: 94px;">  </td> <td style="height: 20px; text-align: left; width: 78px;"> <asp:CheckBox ID="chkRememberMe" runat="server" Text="Remember Me" Width="104px" /></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center" style="color: red; width: 94px; height: 20px;"> </td> <td align="center" style="color: red; text-align: left; width: 78px; height: 20px;"> <asp:Button ID="LoginButton" runat="server" BorderStyle="Solid" BorderWidth="1px" CommandName="Login" Font-Names="Verdana" Font-Size="1.0 em" Text="Log In" ValidationGroup="ctl01$Login1" Width="59px" BackColor="Gray" BorderColor="Black" Height="20px" /></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center" style="width: 250px; color: red; height: 35px; text-align: center;" colspan="2"> <asp:Literal ID="FailureText" runat="server" EnableViewState="False"></asp:Literal></td> </tr> <tr> <td style="height: 26px; width: 94px;"> <asp:HyperLink ID="CreateUserLink" runat="server" NavigateUrl="http://www.tiltonindustries.com/Tilton/Login/CreateAccount.aspx">Sign Up Now!</asp:HyperLink>  </td> <td style="width: 78px; height: 26px"> <asp:HyperLink ID="PasswordRecoveryLink" runat="server" NavigateUrl="http://www.tiltonindustries.com/Tilton/Login/ForgotPassword.aspx">Forgot your password?</asp:HyperLink></td> </tr> </table> </td> </tr> </table> </LayoutTemplate> </asp:Login> </AnonymousTemplate> </asp:LoginView>   <br /> <br /> <p style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; color: White"> Quick Links:<br /> </p> <br /> <p id="quicklinks"> <a href="default.aspx">Home</a><br /> <a href="services.aspx">Services</a><br /> <a href="matching.aspx">Color Matching</a><br /> <a href="packaging.aspx">Custom Packaging</a><br /> <a href="decorals.aspx">Decorals</a><br /> <a href="delivery.aspx">Delivery</a><br /> <a href="items.aspx">Items</a><br /> <a href="msds.aspx">MSDS</a><br /> <a href="plant.aspx">Plant Capabilities</a><br /> <a href="standard.aspx">Standard Colors</a><br /> <a href="special.aspx">Special Effects</a><br /> <a href="coatings.aspx">Spray Coatings</a><br /> <a href="warranty.aspx">Warranty</a><br /> <a href="http://www.tiltonindustries.com/Tilton/Login/Login.aspx">My Account</a><br /> <a href="gallery.aspx">Gallery</a><br /> <a href="about.aspx">About</a><br /> <a href="faq.aspx">F.A.Q</a><br /> <a href="links.aspx">Links</a><br /> <a href="careers.aspx">Careers</a><br /> <a href="contact.aspx">Contact</a><br /> <br /> </p> </td> </tr> </table> </td>

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Big task - problems with page refresh and ajax

- by user1830414

I have a navigation which load dynamically content via ajax. But if I refresh the page or visit another url and go back the current content is away and I see the old content under the first menu tab. Now I have to solve this problem. The index.php include the elements header_registrated.inc.php, navigation.inc.php and main_container.inc.php index.php: <?php include("inc/incfiles/header_registrated.inc.php"); ?> <?php if (!isset($_SESSION["userLogin"])) { echo "<meta http-equiv=\"refresh\" content=\"0; url=http://localhost/project\">"; } else { echo ""; } ?> <?php include("inc/incfiles/navigation.inc.php"); ?> <?php include("inc/incfiles/main_container.inc.php"); ?> <?php include("inc/incfiles/footer.inc.php"); ?> header_registrated.inc.php: <?php include ("inc/scripts/mysql_connect.inc.php"); session_start(); $user = $_SESSION["userLogin"]; ?> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> <title>title</title> <link href="css/style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> <script language="JavaScript" src="js/framework/jquery.js"></script> <script language="JavaScript" src="js/dropdown/window.js"></script> <script language="JavaScript" src="js/navigation/navigation.js"></script> </head> <body> </body> navigation.inc.php: <div class="navigation"> <ul> <li id="1"> <div id="menuImage1" class="menuImage"></div> <div class="menuText"><p>Punkt 1</p></div> <div class="navigationDart"></div> </li> <li id="2"> <div id="menuImage2" class="menuImage"></div> <div class="menuText"><p>Punkt 2</p></div> </li> <li id="3"> <div id="menuImage3" class="menuImage"></div> <div class="menuText"><p>Punkt 3</p></div> </li> <li id="4"> <div id="menuImage4" class="menuImage"></div> <div class="menuText"><p>Punkt 4</p></div> </li> <li id="5"> <div id="menuImage5" class="menuImage"></div> <div class="menuText"><p>Punkt 5</p></div> </li> <li id="6"> <div id="menuImage6" class="menuImage"></div> <div class="menuText"><p>Punkt 6</p></div> </li> </ul> </div> main_container.inc.php: <div class="mainContainer"> <div class="containerHeader"> <div class="contentHeader"> </div> </div> <div class="contentContainer"> <div class="content"> </div> <div class="advertisement"> </div> </div> </div> Now the divs content, cnotentHeader and advertisement (in file main_content.inc.php) is filled via ajax. Also the navigation has some jquery effects which also have to be the same after page refresh. navigation.js: $(document).ready(function() { $.get('inc/incfiles/content_container/header/1.php', function(data) { $('.contentHeader').html(data); }); $.get('inc/incfiles/content_container/content/1.php', function(data) { $('.content').html(data); }); $.get('inc/incfiles/content_container/advertisement/1.php', function(data) { $('.advertisement').html(data); }); var current = '1.php'; $(".navigation li").click(function() { var quelle = $(this).attr('id') + ".php"; // the current content doesn't load again if(current === quelle) { return; } current = quelle; // content $(".content").fadeOut(function() { $(this).load("inc/incfiles/content_container/content/" + quelle).fadeIn('normal'); }) // advertisement $(".advertisement").fadeOut(function() { $(this).load("inc/incfiles/content_container/advertisement/" + quelle).fadeIn('normal'); }) // header $(".contentHeader").fadeOut(function() { $(this).load("inc/incfiles/content_container/header/" + quelle).fadeIn('normal'); }) }); $(".navigation li").click(function() { $(".menuImage").removeClass("menuImageActive1"); $(".menuImage").removeClass("menuImageActive2"); $(".menuImage").removeClass("menuImageActive3"); $(".menuImage").removeClass("menuImageActive4"); $(".menuImage").removeClass("menuImageActive5"); $(".menuImage").removeClass("menuImageActive6"); }); $("#1").mousedown(function() { $("#menuImage1").addClass("menuImageClick1"); // new class on mouse button press }); $("#1").mouseup(function() { $("#menuImage1").removeClass("menuImageClick1"); //remove class after mouse button release }); $("#1").click(function() { $("#menuImage1").addClass("menuImageActive1"); }); $("#2").mousedown(function() { $("#menuImage2").addClass("menuImageClick2"); // new class on mouse button press }); $("#2").mouseup(function() { $("#menuImage2").removeClass("menuImageClick2"); //remove class after mouse button release }); $("#2").click(function() { $("#menuImage2").addClass("menuImageActive2"); }); $("#3").mousedown(function() { $("#menuImage3").addClass("menuImageClick3"); // new class on mouse button press }); $("#3").mouseup(function() { $("#menuImage3").removeClass("menuImageClick3"); //remove class after mouse button release }); $("#3").click(function() { $("#menuImage3").addClass("menuImageActive3"); }); $("#4").mousedown(function() { $("#menuImage4").addClass("menuImageClick4"); // new class on mouse button press }); $("#4").mouseup(function() { $("#menuImage4").removeClass("menuImageClick4"); //remove class after mouse button release }); $("#4").click(function() { $("#menuImage4").addClass("menuImageActive4"); }); $("#5").mousedown(function() { $("#menuImage5").addClass("menuImageClick5"); // new class on mouse button press }); $("#5").mouseup(function() { $("#menuImage5").removeClass("menuImageClick5"); //remove class after mouse button release }); $("#5").click(function() { $("#menuImage5").addClass("menuImageActive5"); }); $("#6").mousedown(function() { $("#menuImage6").addClass("menuImageClick6"); // new class on mouse button press }); $("#6").mouseup(function() { $("#menuImage6").removeClass("menuImageClick6"); //remove class after mouse button release }); $("#6").click(function() { $("#menuImage6").addClass("menuImageActive6"); }); $("#1").click(function(){ $(".navigationDart").animate({ top: "16px" }, 500 ); }); $("#2").click(function(){ $(".navigationDart").animate({ top: "88px" }, 500 ); }); $("#3").click(function(){ $(".navigationDart").animate({ top: "160px" }, 500 ); }); $("#4").click(function(){ $(".navigationDart").animate({ top: "232px" }, 500 ); }); $("#5").click(function(){ $(".navigationDart").animate({ top: "304px" }, 500 ); }); $("#6").click(function(){ $(".navigationDart").animate({ top: "376px" }, 500 ); }); }); My idea was it to work with if(isset($_SESSION['ajaxresponse'])) but I don't no how to do this. Please help me. I have the feeling that I've searched the whole web to find an answer.

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Scriptaculous Shaking Effect Problem

- by TheOnly92

The scriptaculous shaking effect somehow produce some bugs for Webkit browsers, including Chrome and Safari. When shaking, the element will shift to the top left of the screen covering everything. An example code is given as below, are there any ways of solving this? <html> <head> <script type='text/javascript' src='http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/prototype/1.6.1/prototype.js'></script> <script type='text/javascript' src='http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/scriptaculous/1.8.3/scriptaculous.js'></script> <script type='text/javascript' src='http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/scriptaculous/1.8.3/scriptaculous.js?load=effects'></script> </head> <body> <div style="z-index: 20000; position: fixed; display: block; bottom: 10px; right: 10px; background-attachment: scroll; background-color: white;" id="floating_text"> <p>This should be some floating text.</p> <p>Some more floating text.</p> </div> <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Integer dui ligula, tempus adipiscing posuere id, sollicitudin sed nulla. Sed neque diam, volutpat non interdum vel, pellentesque vitae lorem. Vivamus et leo risus. Fusce at nunc nulla, non ultricies elit. Aliquam erat volutpat. Aliquam pulvinar mi at purus laoreet eu varius nisl laoreet. Mauris lobortis sapien diam. Maecenas arcu est, ullamcorper fringilla placerat nec, semper ut arcu. Curabitur metus nisl, ornare nec posuere at, tincidunt tempor nisi. Ut ut est risus. Curabitur elit urna, sagittis sagittis cursus quis, accumsan eget nulla. Donec odio ante, rutrum at fermentum vel, tempus gravida odio. Quisque a ante a urna vehicula posuere ac ut orci. Integer luctus sem et justo condimentum consequat. Phasellus pharetra malesuada velit, et commodo arcu imperdiet vitae. Suspendisse vitae risus orci. Maecenas massa tortor, sodales ut luctus ac, lacinia vitae sapien. Vestibulum sit amet rutrum est. Nullam magna erat, semper a volutpat id, porta sed nisl.</p> <p>Praesent nec consectetur sapien. Integer mollis libero a odio pharetra vulputate. Donec mattis consequat arcu, vel ultricies orci imperdiet sit amet. Mauris sit amet tellus libero. Morbi ac venenatis ligula. Cras tellus neque, porttitor sit amet hendrerit nec, ornare quis tellus. Nam iaculis mi at mi bibendum at commodo justo pretium. Ut in nibh non diam hendrerit fermentum a ut odio. Curabitur lorem turpis, tincidunt et rhoncus et, pulvinar a metus. Vestibulum a quam sit amet arcu condimentum cursus vitae feugiat lectus. Sed ut lorem tellus, non sagittis enim. Curabitur lectus eros, commodo a elementum et, molestie eget est. Donec ullamcorper, arcu nec volutpat auctor, sem odio interdum tellus, nec volutpat lacus libero at nisl. Aliquam metus sapien, aliquam a rutrum ac, tincidunt at purus. Donec in erat mi. Quisque semper mauris in massa bibendum sed tincidunt augue facilisis. In tempus lacinia urna ac tristique.</p> <p>Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Fusce tristique urna sem. Etiam iaculis aliquam dui nec porta. Proin tristique diam non augue mattis tristique. Phasellus nulla erat, adipiscing sed cursus sed, pulvinar eget nisl. Maecenas blandit nibh eu nisl facilisis et semper turpis posuere. Pellentesque auctor sem in massa sollicitudin congue. Vivamus quis lacinia massa. Aliquam sodales dictum magna, eget ullamcorper eros placerat at. Quisque gravida diam sit amet nunc porta aliquam. Ut quis aliquet est. Maecenas risus tellus, euismod id porttitor at, porta id turpis. Phasellus id molestie ante. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Aenean purus nibh, egestas vestibulum aliquet eget, luctus nec eros. Nulla facilisi. Quisque molestie, sem interdum posuere lacinia, nisl purus ornare lectus, id dapibus lacus dolor in ipsum. Aenean pharetra leo nulla.</p> <p>Curabitur nisi quam, iaculis eget pellentesque vel, pretium sed massa. In viverra, tellus at sollicitudin fringilla, orci eros blandit elit, a bibendum mauris dolor ut metus. Vivamus pellentesque suscipit diam, vitae euismod mi pellentesque vitae. Nullam neque libero, vehicula ut iaculis at, tincidunt eget leo. Suspendisse vitae velit justo. Nullam vitae sem tincidunt nulla tincidunt mollis in id massa. Duis rhoncus elementum turpis quis mollis. Vivamus egestas urna in velit commodo iaculis. Aenean quis dolor eu odio porttitor rhoncus nec vel eros. Donec ut est eu nisl vehicula pulvinar et id dolor. Donec a dolor neque. Morbi tempus mattis tortor ut rutrum. Phasellus orci metus, pellentesque vel tincidunt nec, pulvinar eu ante. Duis faucibus felis et diam ullamcorper in feugiat urna dignissim. Quisque nec diam mauris, vel viverra arcu. Cras sagittis dignissim nisl in sagittis. Fusce venenatis rhoncus est, nec elementum libero dapibus eget. Donec eu velit metus. Sed sollicitudin felis a diam condimentum in suscipit neque varius. Nulla nec tortor tristique elit malesuada luctus luctus quis leo.</p> <p>Nullam at quam dui. Ut gravida, tellus malesuada faucibus gravida, purus nulla consequat lorem, pellentesque egestas justo quam et enim. Suspendisse fringilla tellus id odio tristique varius. Cras et metus elit. Etiam interdum adipiscing mollis. Aliquam aliquet vestibulum imperdiet. In consectetur, nunc cursus sodales scelerisque, tellus eros tristique nisl, ut luctus augue dolor vel nibh. Fusce eget dui sed eros tristique varius lacinia id sapien. Nullam ac lorem ac lacus cursus ultricies id a risus. Ut eget dolor sem. Aliquam euismod consequat euismod. Duis sit amet neque et massa ullamcorper tempor.</p> <p>Quisque rutrum, ipsum ac volutpat dictum, urna diam facilisis enim, ac vestibulum justo metus eu mi. Curabitur nunc sem, consequat a mollis non, bibendum vitae dolor. Mauris pulvinar pellentesque tellus, vel aliquet mauris vulputate vel. Morbi eu ante id nulla ultricies tincidunt. Proin porta, felis nec tincidunt iaculis, justo nibh laoreet dolor, eu sollicitudin arcu justo et odio. Sed suscipit tellus lobortis est tristique semper fermentum magna laoreet. Sed eget ante nunc, vitae varius purus. Mauris nec viverra neque. Morbi et lectus velit. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Integer sit amet lobortis magna.</p> <p>Phasellus elementum iaculis sem in consectetur. Curabitur nec dictum enim. Nunc at pellentesque augue. Nulla sit amet sapien neque, et molestie augue. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Proin non elit ante. Mauris justo tellus, feugiat at dapibus a, placerat id felis. Nullam lobortis vehicula rutrum. Fusce tristique pharetra urna, ac scelerisque ipsum consequat eget. Morbi at ipsum in tellus luctus volutpat. Duis placerat accumsan lacus, dictum convallis elit porttitor eu.</p> <p>Sed ac neque sit amet neque luctus rhoncus. Vestibulum sit amet commodo ante. Duis ullamcorper est id dui ullamcorper cursus. Maecenas fringilla ultricies turpis, nec pulvinar libero faucibus a. Quisque bibendum aliquam sapien, in fermentum arcu iaculis at. Mauris bibendum, metus sed rhoncus fringilla, nisl purus interdum eros, vitae malesuada felis est rhoncus magna. Phasellus elit justo, sagittis nec interdum tincidunt, mollis quis justo. Suspendisse rhoncus rutrum vestibulum. Aliquam ut nunc lectus, quis aliquam risus. Aliquam vel nulla sed odio blandit sagittis. Nulla facilisi. Vivamus ullamcorper, lectus facilisis eleifend accumsan, purus massa sollicitudin nunc, in sodales tellus dui eget est. Morbi ipsum nisi, semper sit amet vehicula sit amet, semper at mauris. Nam mollis massa sed risus scelerisque quis congue mauris tempus. Vestibulum nec urna magna, vitae ornare massa. 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Is there a Telecommunications Reference Architecture?

- by raul.goycoolea

@font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Abstract Reference architecture provides needed architectural information that can be provided in advance to an enterprise to enable consistent architectural best practices. Enterprise Reference Architecture helps business owners to actualize their strategies, vision, objectives, and principles. It evaluates the IT systems, based on Reference Architecture goals, principles, and standards. It helps to reduce IT costs by increasing functionality, availability, scalability, etc. Telecom Reference Architecture provides customers with the flexibility to view bundled service bills online with the provision of multiple services. It provides real-time, flexible billing and charging systems, to handle complex promotions, discounts, and settlements with multiple parties. This paper attempts to describe the Reference Architecture for the Telecom Enterprises. It lays the foundation for a Telecom Reference Architecture by articulating the requirements, drivers, and pitfalls for telecom service providers. It describes generic reference architecture for telecom enterprises and moves on to explain how to achieve Enterprise Reference Architecture by using SOA. Introduction A Reference Architecture provides a methodology, set of practices, template, and standards based on a set of successful solutions implemented earlier. These solutions have been generalized and structured for the depiction of both a logical and a physical architecture, based on the harvesting of a set of patterns that describe observations in a number of successful implementations. It helps as a reference for the various architectures that an enterprise can implement to solve various problems. It can be used as the starting point or the point of comparisons for various departments/business entities of a company, or for the various companies for an enterprise. It provides multiple views for multiple stakeholders. Major artifacts of the Enterprise Reference Architecture are methodologies, standards, metadata, documents, design patterns, etc. Purpose of Reference Architecture In most cases, architects spend a lot of time researching, investigating, defining, and re-arguing architectural decisions. It is like reinventing the wheel as their peers in other organizations or even the same organization have already spent a lot of time and effort defining their own architectural practices. This prevents an organization from learning from its own experiences and applying that knowledge for increased effectiveness. Reference architecture provides missing architectural information that can be provided in advance to project team members to enable consistent architectural best practices. Enterprise Reference Architecture helps an enterprise to achieve the following at the abstract level: · Reference architecture is more of a communication channel to an enterprise · Helps the business owners to accommodate to their strategies, vision, objectives, and principles. · Evaluates the IT systems based on Reference Architecture Principles · Reduces IT spending through increasing functionality, availability, scalability, etc · A Real-time Integration Model helps to reduce the latency of the data updates Is used to define a single source of Information · Provides a clear view on how to manage information and security · Defines the policy around the data ownership, product boundaries, etc. · Helps with cost optimization across project and solution portfolios by eliminating unused or duplicate investments and assets · Has a shorter implementation time and cost Once the reference architecture is in place, the set of architectural principles, standards, reference models, and best practices ensure that the aligned investments have the greatest possible likelihood of success in both the near term and the long term (TCO). Common pitfalls for Telecom Service Providers Telecom Reference Architecture serves as the first step towards maturity for a telecom service provider. During the course of our assignments/experiences with telecom players, we have come across the following observations – Some of these indicate a lack of maturity of the telecom service provider: · In markets that are growing and not so mature, it has been observed that telcos have a significant amount of in-house or home-grown applications. In some of these markets, the growth has been so rapid that IT has been unable to cope with business demands. Telcos have shown a tendency to come up with workarounds in their IT applications so as to meet business needs. · Even for core functions like provisioning or mediation, some telcos have tried to manage with home-grown applications. · Most of the applications do not have the required scalability or maintainability to sustain growth in volumes or functionality. · Applications face interoperability issues with other applications in the operator's landscape. Integrating a new application or network element requires considerable effort on the part of the other applications. · Application boundaries are not clear, and functionality that is not in the initial scope of that application gets pushed onto it. This results in the development of the multiple, small applications without proper boundaries. · Usage of Legacy OSS/BSS systems, poor Integration across Multiple COTS Products and Internal Systems. Most of the Integrations are developed on ad-hoc basis and Point-to-Point Integration. · Redundancy of the business functions in different applications • Fragmented data across the different applications and no integrated view of the strategic data • Lot of performance Issues due to the usage of the complex integration across OSS and BSS systems However, this is where the maturity of the telecom industry as a whole can be of help. The collaborative efforts of telcos to overcome some of these problems have resulted in bodies like the TM Forum. They have come up with frameworks for business processes, data, applications, and technology for telecom service providers. These could be a good starting point for telcos to clean up their enterprise landscape. Industry Trends in Telecom Reference Architecture Telecom reference architectures are evolving rapidly because telcos are facing business and IT challenges. “The reality is that there probably is no killer application, no silver bullet that the telcos can latch onto to carry them into a 21st Century.... Instead, there are probably hundreds – perhaps thousands – of niche applications.... And the only way to find which of these works for you is to try out lots of them, ramp up the ones that work, and discontinue the ones that fail.” – Martin Creaner President & CTO TM Forum. The following trends have been observed in telecom reference architecture: · Transformation of business structures to align with customer requirements · Adoption of more Internet-like technical architectures. The Web 2.0 concept is increasingly being used. · Virtualization of the traditional operations support system (OSS) · Adoption of SOA to support development of IP-based services · Adoption of frameworks like Service Delivery Platforms (SDPs) and IP Multimedia Subsystem · (IMS) to enable seamless deployment of various services over fixed and mobile networks · Replacement of in-house, customized, and stove-piped OSS/BSS with standards-based COTS products · Compliance with industry standards and frameworks like eTOM, SID, and TAM to enable seamless integration with other standards-based products Drivers of Reference Architecture The drivers of the Reference Architecture are Reference Architecture Goals, Principles, and Enterprise Vision and Telecom Transformation. The details are depicted below diagram. @font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } Figure 1. Drivers for Reference Architecture @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Today’s telecom reference architectures should seamlessly integrate traditional legacy-based applications and transition to next-generation network technologies (e.g., IP multimedia subsystems). This has resulted in new requirements for flexible, real-time billing and OSS/BSS systems and implications on the service provider’s organizational requirements and structure. Telecom reference architectures are today expected to: · Integrate voice, messaging, email and other VAS over fixed and mobile networks, back end systems · Be able to provision multiple services and service bundles • Deliver converged voice, video and data services · Leverage the existing Network Infrastructure · Provide real-time, flexible billing and charging systems to handle complex promotions, discounts, and settlements with multiple parties. · Support charging of advanced data services such as VoIP, On-Demand, Services (e.g. Video), IMS/SIP Services, Mobile Money, Content Services and IPTV. · Help in faster deployment of new services • Serve as an effective platform for collaboration between network IT and business organizations · Harness the potential of converging technology, networks, devices and content to develop multimedia services and solutions of ever-increasing sophistication on a single Internet Protocol (IP) · Ensure better service delivery and zero revenue leakage through real-time balance and credit management · Lower operating costs to drive profitability Enterprise Reference Architecture The Enterprise Reference Architecture (RA) fills the gap between the concepts and vocabulary defined by the reference model and the implementation. Reference architecture provides detailed architectural information in a common format such that solutions can be repeatedly designed and deployed in a consistent, high-quality, supportable fashion. This paper attempts to describe the Reference Architecture for the Telecom Application Usage and how to achieve the Enterprise Level Reference Architecture using SOA. • Telecom Reference Architecture • Enterprise SOA based Reference Architecture Telecom Reference Architecture Tele Management Forum’s New Generation Operations Systems and Software (NGOSS) is an architectural framework for organizing, integrating, and implementing telecom systems. NGOSS is a component-based framework consisting of the following elements: · The enhanced Telecom Operations Map (eTOM) is a business process framework. · The Shared Information Data (SID) model provides a comprehensive information framework that may be specialized for the needs of a particular organization. · The Telecom Application Map (TAM) is an application framework to depict the functional footprint of applications, relative to the horizontal processes within eTOM. · The Technology Neutral Architecture (TNA) is an integrated framework. TNA is an architecture that is sustainable through technology changes. NGOSS Architecture Standards are: · Centralized data · Loosely coupled distributed systems · Application components/re-use · A technology-neutral system framework with technology specific implementations · Interoperability to service provider data/processes · Allows more re-use of business components across multiple business scenarios · Workflow automation The traditional operator systems architecture consists of four layers, · Business Support System (BSS) layer, with focus toward customers and business partners. Manages order, subscriber, pricing, rating, and billing information. · Operations Support System (OSS) layer, built around product, service, and resource inventories. · Networks layer – consists of Network elements and 3rd Party Systems. · Integration Layer – to maximize application communication and overall solution flexibility. Reference architecture for telecom enterprises is depicted below. @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Figure 2. Telecom Reference Architecture The major building blocks of any Telecom Service Provider architecture are as follows: 1. Customer Relationship Management CRM encompasses the end-to-end lifecycle of the customer: customer initiation/acquisition, sales, ordering, and service activation, customer care and support, proactive campaigns, cross sell/up sell, and retention/loyalty. CRM also includes the collection of customer information and its application to personalize, customize, and integrate delivery of service to a customer, as well as to identify opportunities for increasing the value of the customer to the enterprise. The key functionalities related to Customer Relationship Management are · Manage the end-to-end lifecycle of a customer request for products. · Create and manage customer profiles. · Manage all interactions with customers – inquiries, requests, and responses. · Provide updates to Billing and other south bound systems on customer/account related updates such as customer/ account creation, deletion, modification, request bills, final bill, duplicate bills, credit limits through Middleware. · Work with Order Management System, Product, and Service Management components within CRM. · Manage customer preferences – Involve all the touch points and channels to the customer, including contact center, retail stores, dealers, self service, and field service, as well as via any media (phone, face to face, web, mobile device, chat, email, SMS, mail, the customer's bill, etc.). · Support single interface for customer contact details, preferences, account details, offers, customer premise equipment, bill details, bill cycle details, and customer interactions. CRM applications interact with customers through customer touch points like portals, point-of-sale terminals, interactive voice response systems, etc. The requests by customers are sent via fulfillment/provisioning to billing system for ordering processing. 2. Billing and Revenue Management Billing and Revenue Management handles the collection of appropriate usage records and production of timely and accurate bills – for providing pre-bill usage information and billing to customers; for processing their payments; and for performing payment collections. In addition, it handles customer inquiries about bills, provides billing inquiry status, and is responsible for resolving billing problems to the customer's satisfaction in a timely manner. This process grouping also supports prepayment for services. The key functionalities provided by these applications are · To ensure that enterprise revenue is billed and invoices delivered appropriately to customers. · To manage customers’ billing accounts, process their payments, perform payment collections, and monitor the status of the account balance. · To ensure the timely and effective fulfillment of all customer bill inquiries and complaints. · Collect the usage records from mediation and ensure appropriate rating and discounting of all usage and pricing. · Support revenue sharing; split charging where usage is guided to an account different from the service consumer. · Support prepaid and post-paid rating. · Send notification on approach / exceeding the usage thresholds as enforced by the subscribed offer, and / or as setup by the customer. · Support prepaid, post paid, and hybrid (where some services are prepaid and the rest of the services post paid) customers and conversion from post paid to prepaid, and vice versa. · Support different billing function requirements like charge prorating, promotion, discount, adjustment, waiver, write-off, account receivable, GL Interface, late payment fee, credit control, dunning, account or service suspension, re-activation, expiry, termination, contract violation penalty, etc. · Initiate direct debit to collect payment against an invoice outstanding. · Send notification to Middleware on different events; for example, payment receipt, pre-suspension, threshold exceed, etc. Billing systems typically get usage data from mediation systems for rating and billing. They get provisioning requests from order management systems and inquiries from CRM systems. Convergent and real-time billing systems can directly get usage details from network elements. 3. Mediation Mediation systems transform/translate the Raw or Native Usage Data Records into a general format that is acceptable to billing for their rating purposes. The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Mediation system in the end-to-end solution. · Collect Usage Data Records from different data sources – like network elements, routers, servers – via different protocol and interfaces. · Process Usage Data Records – Mediation will process Usage Data Records as per the source format. · Validate Usage Data Records from each source. · Segregates Usage Data Records coming from each source to multiple, based on the segregation requirement of end Application. · Aggregates Usage Data Records based on the aggregation rule if any from different sources. · Consolidates multiple Usage Data Records from each source. · Delivers formatted Usage Data Records to different end application like Billing, Interconnect, Fraud Management, etc. · Generates audit trail for incoming Usage Data Records and keeps track of all the Usage Data Records at various stages of mediation process. · Checks duplicate Usage Data Records across files for a given time window. 4. Fulfillment This area is responsible for providing customers with their requested products in a timely and correct manner. It translates the customer's business or personal need into a solution that can be delivered using the specific products in the enterprise's portfolio. This process informs the customers of the status of their purchase order, and ensures completion on time, as well as ensuring a delighted customer. These processes are responsible for accepting and issuing orders. They deal with pre-order feasibility determination, credit authorization, order issuance, order status and tracking, customer update on customer order activities, and customer notification on order completion. Order management and provisioning applications fall into this category. The key functionalities provided by these applications are · Issuing new customer orders, modifying open customer orders, or canceling open customer orders; · Verifying whether specific non-standard offerings sought by customers are feasible and supportable; · Checking the credit worthiness of customers as part of the customer order process; · Testing the completed offering to ensure it is working correctly; · Updating of the Customer Inventory Database to reflect that the specific product offering has been allocated, modified, or cancelled; · Assigning and tracking customer provisioning activities; · Managing customer provisioning jeopardy conditions; and · Reporting progress on customer orders and other processes to customer. These applications typically get orders from CRM systems. They interact with network elements and billing systems for fulfillment of orders. 5. Enterprise Management This process area includes those processes that manage enterprise-wide activities and needs, or have application within the enterprise as a whole. They encompass all business management processes that · Are necessary to support the whole of the enterprise, including processes for financial management, legal management, regulatory management, process, cost, and quality management, etc.; · Are responsible for setting corporate policies, strategies, and directions, and for providing guidelines and targets for the whole of the business, including strategy development and planning for areas, such as Enterprise Architecture, that are integral to the direction and development of the business; · Occur throughout the enterprise, including processes for project management, performance assessments, cost assessments, etc. (i) Enterprise Risk Management: Enterprise Risk Management focuses on assuring that risks and threats to the enterprise value and/or reputation are identified, and appropriate controls are in place to minimize or eliminate the identified risks. The identified risks may be physical or logical/virtual. Successful risk management ensures that the enterprise can support its mission critical operations, processes, applications, and communications in the face of serious incidents such as security threats/violations and fraud attempts. Two key areas covered in Risk Management by telecom operators are: · Revenue Assurance: Revenue assurance system will be responsible for identifying revenue loss scenarios across components/systems, and will help in rectifying the problems. The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Revenue Assurance system in the end-to-end solution. o Identify all usage information dropped when networks are being upgraded. o Interconnect bill verification. o Identify where services are routinely provisioned but never billed. o Identify poor sales policies that are intensifying collections problems. o Find leakage where usage is sent to error bucket and never billed for. o Find leakage where field service, CRM, and network build-out are not optimized. · Fraud Management: Involves collecting data from different systems to identify abnormalities in traffic patterns, usage patterns, and subscription patterns to report suspicious activity that might suggest fraudulent usage of resources, resulting in revenue losses to the operator. The key roles and responsibilities of the system component are as follows: o Fraud management system will capture and monitor high usage (over a certain threshold) in terms of duration, value, and number of calls for each subscriber. The threshold for each subscriber is decided by the system and fixed automatically. o Fraud management will be able to detect the unauthorized access to services for certain subscribers. These subscribers may have been provided unauthorized services by employees. The component will raise the alert to the operator the very first time of such illegal calls or calls which are not billed. o The solution will be to have an alarm management system that will deliver alarms to the operator/provider whenever it detects a fraud, thus minimizing fraud by catching it the first time it occurs. o The Fraud Management system will be capable of interfacing with switches, mediation systems, and billing systems (ii) Knowledge Management This process focuses on knowledge management, technology research within the enterprise, and the evaluation of potential technology acquisitions. Key responsibilities of knowledge base management are to · Maintain knowledge base – Creation and updating of knowledge base on ongoing basis. · Search knowledge base – Search of knowledge base on keywords or category browse · Maintain metadata – Management of metadata on knowledge base to ensure effective management and search. · Run report generator. · Provide content – Add content to the knowledge base, e.g., user guides, operational manual, etc. (iii) Document Management It focuses on maintaining a repository of all electronic documents or images of paper documents relevant to the enterprise using a system. (iv) Data Management It manages data as a valuable resource for any enterprise. For telecom enterprises, the typical areas covered are Master Data Management, Data Warehousing, and Business Intelligence. It is also responsible for data governance, security, quality, and database management. Key responsibilities of Data Management are · Using ETL, extract the data from CRM, Billing, web content, ERP, campaign management, financial, network operations, asset management info, customer contact data, customer measures, benchmarks, process data, e.g., process inputs, outputs, and measures, into Enterprise Data Warehouse. · Management of data traceability with source, data related business rules/decisions, data quality, data cleansing data reconciliation, competitors data – storage for all the enterprise data (customer profiles, products, offers, revenues, etc.) · Get online update through night time replication or physical backup process at regular frequency. · Provide the data access to business intelligence and other systems for their analysis, report generation, and use. (v) Business Intelligence It uses the Enterprise Data to provide the various analysis and reports that contain prospects and analytics for customer retention, acquisition of new customers due to the offers, and SLAs. It will generate right and optimized plans – bolt-ons for the customers. The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Business Intelligence system at the Enterprise Level: · It will do Pattern analysis and reports problem. · It will do Data Analysis – Statistical analysis, data profiling, affinity analysis of data, customer segment wise usage patterns on offers, products, service and revenue generation against services and customer segments. · It will do Performance (business, system, and forecast) analysis, churn propensity, response time, and SLAs analysis. · It will support for online and offline analysis, and report drill down capability. · It will collect, store, and report various SLA data. · It will provide the necessary intelligence for marketing and working on campaigns, etc., with cost benefit analysis and predictions. It will advise on customer promotions with additional services based on loyalty and credit history of customer · It will Interface with Enterprise Data Management system for data to run reports and analysis tasks. It will interface with the campaign schedules, based on historical success evidence. (vi) Stakeholder and External Relations Management It manages the enterprise's relationship with stakeholders and outside entities. Stakeholders include shareholders, employee organizations, etc. Outside entities include regulators, local community, and unions. Some of the processes within this grouping are Shareholder Relations, External Affairs, Labor Relations, and Public Relations. (vii) Enterprise Resource Planning It is used to manage internal and external resources, including tangible assets, financial resources, materials, and human resources. Its purpose is to facilitate the flow of information between all business functions inside the boundaries of the enterprise and manage the connections to outside stakeholders. ERP systems consolidate all business operations into a uniform and enterprise wide system environment. The key roles and responsibilities for Enterprise System are given below: · It will handle responsibilities such as core accounting, financial, and management reporting. · It will interface with CRM for capturing customer account and details. · It will interface with billing to capture the billing revenue and other financial data. · It will be responsible for executing the dunning process. Billing will send the required feed to ERP for execution of dunning. · It will interface with the CRM and Billing through batch interfaces. Enterprise management systems are like horizontals in the enterprise and typically interact with all major telecom systems. E.g., an ERP system interacts with CRM, Fulfillment, and Billing systems for different kinds of data exchanges. 6. External Interfaces/Touch Points The typical external parties are customers, suppliers/partners, employees, shareholders, and other stakeholders. External interactions from/to a Service Provider to other parties can be achieved by a variety of mechanisms, including: · Exchange of emails or faxes · Call Centers · Web Portals · Business-to-Business (B2B) automated transactions These applications provide an Internet technology driven interface to external parties to undertake a variety of business functions directly for themselves. These can provide fully or partially automated service to external parties through various touch points. Typical characteristics of these touch points are · Pre-integrated self-service system, including stand-alone web framework or integration front end with a portal engine · Self services layer exposing atomic web services/APIs for reuse by multiple systems across the architectural environment · Portlets driven connectivity exposing data and services interoperability through a portal engine or web application These touch points mostly interact with the CRM systems for requests, inquiries, and responses. 7. Middleware The component will be primarily responsible for integrating the different systems components under a common platform. It should provide a Standards-Based Platform for building Service Oriented Architecture and Composite Applications. The following lists the high-level roles and responsibilities executed by the Middleware component in the end-to-end solution. · As an integration framework, covering to and fro interfaces · Provide a web service framework with service registry. · Support SOA framework with SOA service registry. · Each of the interfaces from / to Middleware to other components would handle data transformation, translation, and mapping of data points. · Receive data from the caller / activate and/or forward the data to the recipient system in XML format. · Use standard XML for data exchange. · Provide the response back to the service/call initiator. · Provide a tracking until the response completion. · Keep a store transitional data against each call/transaction. · Interface through Middleware to get any information that is possible and allowed from the existing systems to enterprise systems; e.g., customer profile and customer history, etc. · Provide the data in a common unified format to the SOA calls across systems, and follow the Enterprise Architecture directive. · Provide an audit trail for all transactions being handled by the component. 8. Network Elements The term Network Element means a facility or equipment used in the provision of a telecommunications service. Such terms also includes features, functions, and capabilities that are provided by means of such facility or equipment, including subscriber numbers, databases, signaling systems, and information sufficient for billing and collection or used in the transmission, routing, or other provision of a telecommunications service. Typical network elements in a GSM network are Home Location Register (HLR), Intelligent Network (IN), Mobile Switching Center (MSC), SMS Center (SMSC), and network elements for other value added services like Push-to-talk (PTT), Ring Back Tone (RBT), etc. Network elements are invoked when subscribers use their telecom devices for any kind of usage. These elements generate usage data and pass it on to downstream systems like mediation and billing system for rating and billing. They also integrate with provisioning systems for order/service fulfillment. 9. 3rd Party Applications 3rd Party systems are applications like content providers, payment gateways, point of sale terminals, and databases/applications maintained by the Government. Depending on applicability and the type of functionality provided by 3rd party applications, the integration with different telecom systems like CRM, provisioning, and billing will be done. 10. Service Delivery Platform A service delivery platform (SDP) provides the architecture for the rapid deployment, provisioning, execution, management, and billing of value added telecom services. SDPs are based on the concept of SOA and layered architecture. They support the delivery of voice, data services, and content in network and device-independent fashion. They allow application developers to aggregate network capabilities, services, and sources of content. SDPs typically contain layers for web services exposure, service application development, and network abstraction. SOA Reference Architecture SOA concept is based on the principle of developing reusable business service and building applications by composing those services, instead of building monolithic applications in silos. It’s about bridging the gap between business and IT through a set of business-aligned IT services, using a set of design principles, patterns, and techniques. In an SOA, resources are made available to participants in a value net, enterprise, line of business (typically spanning multiple applications within an enterprise or across multiple enterprises). It consists of a set of business-aligned IT services that collectively fulfill an organization’s business processes and goals. We can choreograph these services into composite applications and invoke them through standard protocols. SOA, apart from agility and reusability, enables: · The business to specify processes as orchestrations of reusable services · Technology agnostic business design, with technology hidden behind service interface · A contractual-like interaction between business and IT, based on service SLAs · Accountability and governance, better aligned to business services · Applications interconnections untangling by allowing access only through service interfaces, reducing the daunting side effects of change · Reduced pressure to replace legacy and extended lifetime for legacy applications, through encapsulation in services · A Cloud Computing paradigm, using web services technologies, that makes possible service outsourcing on an on-demand, utility-like, pay-per-usage basis The following section represents the Reference Architecture of logical view for the Telecom Solution. The new custom built application needs to align with this logical architecture in the long run to achieve EA benefits. Packaged implementation applications, such as ERP billing applications, need to expose their functions as service providers (as other applications consume) and interact with other applications as service consumers. COT applications need to expose services through wrappers such as adapters to utilize existing resources and at the same time achieve Enterprise Architecture goal and objectives. The following are the various layers for Enterprise level deployment of SOA. This diagram captures the abstract view of Enterprise SOA layers and important components of each layer. Layered architecture means decomposition of services such that most interactions occur between adjacent layers. However, there is no strict rule that top layers should not directly communicate with bottom layers. The diagram below represents the important logical pieces that would result from overall SOA transformation. @font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Courier New"; }@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoCaption, li.MsoCaption, div.MsoCaption { margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; font-size: 9pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: rgb(79, 129, 189); font-weight: bold; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0cm; }ul { margin-bottom: 0cm; } Figure 3. Enterprise SOA Reference Architecture 1. Operational System Layer: This layer consists of all packaged applications like CRM, ERP, custom built applications, COTS based applications like Billing, Revenue Management, Fulfilment, and the Enterprise databases that are essential and contribute directly or indirectly to the Enterprise OSS/BSS Transformation. ERP holds the data of Asset Lifecycle Management, Supply Chain, and Advanced Procurement and Human Capital Management, etc. CRM holds the data related to Order, Sales, and Marketing, Customer Care, Partner Relationship Management, Loyalty, etc. Content Management handles Enterprise Search and Query. Billing application consists of the following components: · Collections Management, Customer Billing Management, Invoices, Real-Time Rating, Discounting, and Applying of Charges · Enterprise databases will hold both the application and service data, whether structured or unstructured. MDM - Master data majorly consists of Customer, Order, Product, and Service Data. 2. Enterprise Component Layer: This layer consists of the Application Services and Common Services that are responsible for realizing the functionality and maintaining the QoS of the exposed services. This layer uses container-based technologies such as application servers to implement the components, workload management, high availability, and load balancing. Application Services: This Service Layer enables application, technology, and database abstraction so that the complex accessing logic is hidden from the other service layers. This is a basic service layer, which exposes application functionalities and data as reusable services. The three types of the Application access services are: · Application Access Service: This Service Layer exposes application level functionalities as a reusable service between BSS to BSS and BSS to OSS integration. This layer is enabled using disparate technology such as Web Service, Integration Servers, and Adaptors, etc. · Data Access Service: This Service Layer exposes application data services as a reusable reference data service. This is done via direct interaction with application data. and provides the federated query. · Network Access Service: This Service Layer exposes provisioning layer as a reusable service from OSS to OSS integration. This integration service emphasizes the need for high performance, stateless process flows, and distributed design. Common Services encompasses management of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data such as information services, portal services, interaction services, infrastructure services, and security services, etc. 3. Integration Layer: This consists of service infrastructure components like service bus, service gateway for partner integration, service registry, service repository, and BPEL processor. Service bus will carry the service invocation payloads/messages between consumers and providers. The other important functions expected from it are itinerary based routing, distributed caching of routing information, transformations, and all qualities of service for messaging-like reliability, scalability, and availability, etc. Service registry will hold all contracts (wsdl) of services, and it helps developers to locate or discover service during design time or runtime. • BPEL processor would be useful in orchestrating the services to compose a complex business scenario or process. • Workflow and business rules management are also required to support manual triggering of certain activities within business process. based on the rules setup and also the state machine information. Application, data, and service mediation layer typically forms the overall composite application development framework or SOA Framework. 4. Business Process Layer: These are typically the intermediate services layer and represent Shared Business Process Services. At Enterprise Level, these services are from Customer Management, Order Management, Billing, Finance, and Asset Management application domains. 5. Access Layer: This layer consists of portals for Enterprise and provides a single view of Enterprise information management and dashboard services. 6. Channel Layer: This consists of various devices; applications that form part of extended enterprise; browsers through which users access the applications. 7. Client Layer: This designates the different types of users accessing the enterprise applications. The type of user typically would be an important factor in determining the level of access to applications. 8. Vertical pieces like management, monitoring, security, and development cut across all horizontal layers Management and monitoring involves all aspects of SOA-like services, SLAs, and other QoS lifecycle processes for both applications and services surrounding SOA governance. 9. EA Governance, Reference Architecture, Roadmap, Principles, and Best Practices: EA Governance is important in terms of providing the overall direction to SOA implementation within the enterprise. This involves board-level involvement, in addition to business and IT executives. At a high level, this involves managing the SOA projects implementation, managing SOA infrastructure, and controlling the entire effort through all fine-tuned IT processes in accordance with COBIT (Control Objectives for Information Technology). Devising tools and techniques to promote reuse culture, and the SOA way of doing things needs competency centers to be established in addition to training the workforce to take up new roles that are suited to SOA journey. Conclusions Reference Architectures can serve as the basis for disparate architecture efforts throughout the organization, even if they use different tools and technologies. Reference architectures provide best practices and approaches in the independent way a vendor deals with technology and standards. Reference Architectures model the abstract architectural elements for an enterprise independent of the technologies, protocols, and products that are used to implement an SOA. Telecom enterprises today are facing significant business and technology challenges due to growing competition, a multitude of services, and convergence. Adopting architectural best practices could go a long way in meeting these challenges. The use of SOA-based architecture for communication to each of the external systems like Billing, CRM, etc., in OSS/BSS system has made the architecture very loosely coupled, with greater flexibility. Any change in the external systems would be absorbed at the Integration Layer without affecting the rest of the ecosystem. The use of a Business Process Management (BPM) tool makes the management and maintenance of the business processes easy, with better performance in terms of lead time, quality, and cost. Since the Architecture is based on standards, it will lower the cost of deploying and managing OSS/BSS applications over their lifecycles.

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Magento My Account Layout XML Problem

- by Remy

Hi there, I'm having issues getting the customer.xml layout file to work properly for the customer's "my account" pages. The navigation links and the previously ordered items that are usually on the left hand side of the page won't show up on the page, but if I change the reference name to "content" in the xml file, it shows up (except it's obviously then on the right hand side). I've checked the template it's referencing (2columns-left.phtml), and the getChildHtml('left') is there in the correct position. The block that's causing the problem: <customer_account>  <reference name="root"> <action method="setTemplate"><template>page/2columns-left.phtml</template></action> </reference> <reference name="left"> <action method="unsetChild"><name>catalog.navigation.all</name></action> <action method="unsetChild"><name>callout.sendcard</name></action> <action method="unsetChild"><name>callout.specialorder</name></action> <block type="customer/account_navigation" name="customer_account_navigation" before="-" template="customer/account/navigation.phtml"> <action method="addLink" translate="label" module="customer"><name>account</name><path>customer/account/</path><label>Account Dashboard</label></action> <action method="addLink" translate="label" module="customer"><name>account_edit</name><path>customer/account/edit/</path><label>Account Information</label></action> <action method="addLink" translate="label" module="customer"><name>address_book</name><path>customer/address/</path><label>Address Book</label></action> </block> <block type="sales/reorder_sidebar" name="sale.reorder.sidebar" as="reorder" template="sales/reorder/sidebar.phtml"/> <remove name="tags_popular"/> </reference> </customer_account> This was basically copied straight over from another one of our sites where this works 100%. I've tried everything I can think of (changing the name of the reference in both the template and the layout xml, for example) to no avail. The templates that the layout is referencing are obviously working because they do show up when put into the "content" area. This installation of magento is version 1.3.1.1. I appreciate any advice you have to give me... *Update: I tried changing the reference to "global_messages", and it doesn't show there either. It only seems to work in the "content" section.* Update 2: These are the results of using the "showLayout=page" query string on the page when used with Alan Storm's very handy debugging module (which you'll find in his answer below). <?xml version="1.0"?> <layout><block type="page/html" name="root" output="toHtml" template="page/3columns.phtml"> <block type="page/html_head" name="head" as="head"> <action method="addJs"> <script>prototype/prototype.js</script> </action> <action method="addJs"> <script>prototype/validation.js</script> </action> <action method="addJs"> <script>paypoint/validation.js</script> </action> <action method="addJs"> <script>scriptaculous/builder.js</script> </action> <action method="addJs"> <script>scriptaculous/effects.js</script> </action> <action method="addJs"> <script>scriptaculous/dragdrop.js</script> </action> <action method="addJs"> <script>scriptaculous/controls.js</script> </action> <action method="addJs"> <script>scriptaculous/slider.js</script> </action> <action method="addJs"> <script>varien/js.js</script> </action> <action method="addJs"> <script>varien/form.js</script> </action> <action method="addJs"> <script>varien/menu.js</script> </action> <action method="addJs"> <script>mage/translate.js</script> </action> <action method="addJs"> <script>mage/cookies.js</script> </action> <action method="addCss"> <stylesheet>css/reset.css</stylesheet> </action> <action method="addCss"> <stylesheet>css/boxes.css</stylesheet> </action> <action method="addCss"> <stylesheet>css/clears.css</stylesheet> </action> <action method="addCss"> <stylesheet>css/menu.css</stylesheet> </action> <action method="addCss"> <stylesheet>css/calendar-blue.css</stylesheet> </action> <action method="addCss"> <stylesheet>css/styles.css</stylesheet> </action> <action method="addItem"> <type>skin_css</type> <name>css/iestyles.css</name> <params/> <if>IE</if> </action> <action method="addItem"> <type>skin_css</type> <name>css/ie7.css</name> <params/> <if>IE 7</if> </action> <action method="addItem"> <type>skin_css</type> <name>css/ie7minus.css</name> <params/> <if>lt IE 7</if> </action> <action method="addItem"> <type>js</type> <name>lib/ds-sleight.js</name> <params/> <if>lt IE 7</if> </action> <action method="addItem"> <type>js</type> <name>varien/iehover-fix.js</name> <params/> <if>lt IE 7</if> </action> <action method="addCss"> <stylesheet>css/print.css</stylesheet> <params>media="print"</params> </action> </block> <block type="page/html_header" name="header" as="header"> <block type="page/template_links" name="top.links" as="topLinks"/> <block type="page/switch" name="store_language" as="store_language" template="page/switch/languages.phtml"/> <block type="core/template" name="top.nav" template="page/html/top.nav.phtml"/> </block> <block type="core/messages" name="global_messages" as="global_messages"/> <block type="core/messages" name="messages" as="messages"/> <block type="core/text_list" name="content" as="content"/> <block type="core/text_list" name="right" as="right"/> <block type="page/html_footer" name="footer" as="footer" template="page/html/footer.phtml"/> <block type="core/text_list" name="before_body_end" as="before_body_end"/> </block> <block type="core/profiler" output="toHtml"/> <reference name="top.links"> <action method="addLink" translate="label title" module="customer"> <label>My Account</label> <url helper="customer/getAccountUrl"/> <title>My Account</title> <prepare/> <urlParams/> <position>10</position> </action> </reference> <reference name="root"> <action method="setTemplate"> <template>page/2columns-left.phtml</template> </action> </reference> <reference name="top.menu"> <block type="catalog/navigation" name="catalog.topnav" template="catalog/navigation/top.phtml"/> </reference> <reference name="footer_links"> <action method="addLink" translate="label title" module="catalog" ifconfig="catalog/seo/site_map"> <label>Site Map</label> <url helper="catalog/map/getCategoryUrl"/> <title>Site Map</title> </action> </reference> <reference name="footer_links"> <action method="addLink" translate="label title" module="catalogsearch" ifconfig="catalog/seo/search_terms"> <label>Search Terms</label> <url helper="catalogsearch/getSearchTermUrl"/> <title>Search Terms</title> </action> <action method="addLink" translate="label title" module="catalogsearch"> <label>Advanced Search</label> <url helper="catalogsearch/getAdvancedSearchUrl"/> <title>Advanced Search</title> </action> </reference> <reference name="top.links"> <block type="checkout/links" name="checkout_cart_link"> <action method="addCartLink"/> <action method="addCheckoutLink"/> </block> </reference> <reference name="footer"> <block type="cms/block" name="cms_footer_links" before="footer_links"> <action method="setBlockId"> <block_id>footer_links</block_id> </action> </block> </reference> <reference name="left"> <block type="tag/popular" name="tags_popular" template="tag/popular.phtm" ignore="1"> <action method="setTemplate"> <template>tag/popular.phtml</template> </action> </block> </reference> <reference name="left"> </reference> <reference name="before_body_end"> <block type="googleanalytics/ga" name="google_analytics" as="google_analytics"/> </reference> <reference name="footer_links"> <action method="addLink" translate="label title" module="contacts" ifconfig="contacts/contacts/enabled"> <label>Contact Us</label> <url>contact-us</url> <title>Contact Us</title> <prepare>true</prepare> </action> </reference> <reference name="footer_links"> <action method="addLink" translate="label title" module="rss" ifconfig="rss/config/active"> <label>RSS</label> <url>rss</url> <title>RSS testing</title> <prepare>true</prepare> <urlParams/> <position/> <li/> <a>class="link-feed"</a> </action> </reference> <reference name="wishlist_sidebar"> <action method="addPriceBlockType"> <type>bundle</type> <block>bundle/catalog_product_price</block> <template>bundle/catalog/product/price.phtml</template> </action> </reference> <reference name="cart_sidebar"> <action method="addItemRender"> <type>bundle</type> <block>bundle/checkout_cart_item_renderer</block> <template>checkout/cart/sidebar/default.phtml</template> </action> </reference> <reference name="root"> <action method="setTemplate"> <template>page/2columns-left.phtml</template> </action> </reference> <reference name="left"> <action method="unsetChild"> <name>catalog.navigation.all</name> </action> <action method="unsetChild"> <name>callout.sendcard</name> </action> <action method="unsetChild"> <name>callout.specialorder</name> </action> <block type="customer/account_navigation" name="customer_account_navigation" before="-" template="customer/account/navigation.phtml"> <action method="addLink" translate="label" module="customer"> <name>account</name> <path>customer/account/</path> <label>Account Dashboard</label> </action> <action method="addLink" translate="label" module="customer"> <name>account_edit</name> <path>customer/account/edit/</path> <label>Account Information</label> </action> <action method="addLink" translate="label" module="customer"> <name>address_book</name> <path>customer/address/</path> <label>Address Book</label> </action> </block> <block type="sales/reorder_sidebar" name="sale.reorder.sidebar" as="reorder" template="sales/reorder/sidebar.phtml"/> <remove name="tags_popular"/> </reference> <reference name="customer_account_navigation"> <action method="addLink" translate="label" module="sales"> <name>orders</name> <path>sales/order/history/</path> <label>My Orders</label> </action> </reference> <reference name="customer_account_navigation"> <action method="addLink" translate="label" module="tag"> <name>tags</name> <path>tag/customer/</path> <label>My Tags</label> </action> </reference> <reference name="customer_account_navigation"> <action method="addLink" translate="label" module="newsletter"> <name>newsletter</name> <path>newsletter/manage/</path> <label>Newsletter Subscriptions</label> </action> </reference> <reference name="cart_sidebar"> <action method="addItemRender"> <type>bundle</type> <block>bundle/checkout_cart_item_renderer</block> <template>checkout/cart/sidebar/default.phtml</template> </action> </reference> <update handle="customer_account"/> <reference name="content"> <block type="customer/account_dashboard" name="customer_account_dashboard" template="customer/account/dashboard.phtml"> <block type="customer/account_dashboard_hello" name="customer_account_dashboard_hello" as="hello" template="customer/account/dashboard/hello.phtml"/> <block type="core/template" name="customer_account_dashboard_top" as="top"/> <block type="customer/account_dashboard_info" name="customer_account_dashboard_info" as="info" template="customer/account/dashboard/info.phtml"/> <block type="customer/account_dashboard_newsletter" name="customer_account_dashboard_newsletter" as="newsletter" template="customer/account/dashboard/newsletter.phtml"/> <block type="customer/account_dashboard_address" name="customer_account_dashboard_address" as="address" template="customer/account/dashboard/address.phtml"/> <block type="core/template" name="customer_account_dashboard_info1" as="info1"/> <block type="core/template" name="customer_account_dashboard_info2" as="info2"/> </block> </reference> <reference name="right"> <action method="unsetChild"> <name>catalog_compare_sidebar</name> </action> </reference> <reference name="customer_account_dashboard"> <action method="unsetChild"> <name>top</name> </action> <block type="sales/order_recent" name="customer_account_dashboard_top" as="top" template="sales/order/recent.phtml"/> </reference> <reference name="right"> <action method="unsetChild"> <name>right.poll</name> </action> </reference> <reference name="customer_account_dashboard"> <action method="unsetChild"> <name>customer_account_dashboard_info2</name> </action> <block type="tag/customer_recent" name="customer_account_dashboard_info2" as="info2" template="tag/customer/recent.phtml"/> </reference> <reference name="right"> <action method="unsetChild"> <name>right.newsletter</name> </action> </reference> <reference name="top.links"> <action method="addLink" translate="label title" module="customer"> <label>Log Out</label> <url helper="customer/getLogoutUrl"/> <title>Log Out</title> <prepare/> <urlParams/> <position>100</position> </action> </reference></layout>

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Failed to Install Xdebug

- by burnt1ce

've registered xdebug in php.ini (as per http://xdebug.org/docs/install) but it's not showing up when i run "php -m" or when i get a test page to run "phpinfo()". I've just installed the latest version of XAMPP. I've used both "zend_extention" and "zend_extention_ts" to specify the path of the xdebug dll. I ensured that my apache server restarted and used the latest change of my php.ini by executing "httpd -k restart". Can anyone provide any suggestions in getting xdebug to show up? Here are the contents of my php.ini file. [PHP] ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; About php.ini ; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; PHP's initialization file, generally called php.ini, is responsible for ; configuring many of the aspects of PHP's behavior. ; PHP attempts to find and load this configuration from a number of locations. ; The following is a summary of its search order: ; 1. SAPI module specific location. ; 2. The PHPRC environment variable. (As of PHP 5.2.0) ; 3. A number of predefined registry keys on Windows (As of PHP 5.2.0) ; 4. Current working directory (except CLI) ; 5. The web server's directory (for SAPI modules), or directory of PHP ; (otherwise in Windows) ; 6. The directory from the --with-config-file-path compile time option, or the ; Windows directory (C:\windows or C:\winnt) ; See the PHP docs for more specific information. ; http://php.net/configuration.file ; The syntax of the file is extremely simple. Whitespace and Lines ; beginning with a semicolon are silently ignored (as you probably guessed). ; Section headers (e.g. [Foo]) are also silently ignored, even though ; they might mean something in the future. ; Directives following the section heading [PATH=/www/mysite] only ; apply to PHP files in the /www/mysite directory. Directives ; following the section heading [HOST=www.example.com] only apply to ; PHP files served from www.example.com. Directives set in these ; special sections cannot be overridden by user-defined INI files or ; at runtime. Currently, [PATH=] and [HOST=] sections only work under ; CGI/FastCGI. ; http://php.net/ini.sections ; Directives are specified using the following syntax: ; directive = value ; Directive names are *case sensitive* - foo=bar is different from FOO=bar. ; Directives are variables used to configure PHP or PHP extensions. ; There is no name validation. If PHP can't find an expected ; directive because it is not set or is mistyped, a default value will be used. ; The value can be a string, a number, a PHP constant (e.g. E_ALL or M_PI), one ; of the INI constants (On, Off, True, False, Yes, No and None) or an expression ; (e.g. E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE), a quoted string ("bar"), or a reference to a ; previously set variable or directive (e.g. ${foo}) ; Expressions in the INI file are limited to bitwise operators and parentheses: ; | bitwise OR ; ^ bitwise XOR ; & bitwise AND ; ~ bitwise NOT ; ! boolean NOT ; Boolean flags can be turned on using the values 1, On, True or Yes. ; They can be turned off using the values 0, Off, False or No. ; An empty string can be denoted by simply not writing anything after the equal ; sign, or by using the None keyword: ; foo = ; sets foo to an empty string ; foo = None ; sets foo to an empty string ; foo = "None" ; sets foo to the string 'None' ; If you use constants in your value, and these constants belong to a ; dynamically loaded extension (either a PHP extension or a Zend extension), ; you may only use these constants *after* the line that loads the extension. ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; About this file ; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; PHP comes packaged with two INI files. One that is recommended to be used ; in production environments and one that is recommended to be used in ; development environments. ; php.ini-production contains settings which hold security, performance and ; best practices at its core. But please be aware, these settings may break ; compatibility with older or less security conscience applications. We ; recommending using the production ini in production and testing environments. ; php.ini-development is very similar to its production variant, except it's ; much more verbose when it comes to errors. We recommending using the ; development version only in development environments as errors shown to ; application users can inadvertently leak otherwise secure information. ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; Quick Reference ; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; The following are all the settings which are different in either the production ; or development versions of the INIs with respect to PHP's default behavior. ; Please see the actual settings later in the document for more details as to why ; we recommend these changes in PHP's behavior. ; allow_call_time_pass_reference ; Default Value: On ; Development Value: Off ; Production Value: Off ; display_errors ; Default Value: On ; Development Value: On ; Production Value: Off ; display_startup_errors ; Default Value: Off ; Development Value: On ; Production Value: Off ; error_reporting ; Default Value: E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE ; Development Value: E_ALL | E_STRICT ; Production Value: E_ALL & ~E_DEPRECATED ; html_errors ; Default Value: On ; Development Value: On ; Production value: Off ; log_errors ; Default Value: Off ; Development Value: On ; Production Value: On ; magic_quotes_gpc ; Default Value: On ; Development Value: Off ; Production Value: Off ; max_input_time ; Default Value: -1 (Unlimited) ; Development Value: 60 (60 seconds) ; Production Value: 60 (60 seconds) ; output_buffering ; Default Value: Off ; Development Value: 4096 ; Production Value: 4096 ; register_argc_argv ; Default Value: On ; Development Value: Off ; Production Value: Off ; register_long_arrays ; Default Value: On ; Development Value: Off ; Production Value: Off ; request_order ; Default Value: None ; Development Value: "GP" ; Production Value: "GP" ; session.bug_compat_42 ; Default Value: On ; Development Value: On ; Production Value: Off ; session.bug_compat_warn ; Default Value: On ; Development Value: On ; Production Value: Off ; session.gc_divisor ; Default Value: 100 ; Development Value: 1000 ; Production Value: 1000 ; session.hash_bits_per_character ; Default Value: 4 ; Development Value: 5 ; Production Value: 5 ; short_open_tag ; Default Value: On ; Development Value: Off ; Production Value: Off ; track_errors ; Default Value: Off ; Development Value: On ; Production Value: Off ; url_rewriter.tags ; Default Value: "a=href,area=href,frame=src,form=,fieldset=" ; Development Value: "a=href,area=href,frame=src,input=src,form=fakeentry" ; Production Value: "a=href,area=href,frame=src,input=src,form=fakeentry" ; variables_order ; Default Value: "EGPCS" ; Development Value: "GPCS" ; Production Value: "GPCS" ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; php.ini Options ; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; Name for user-defined php.ini (.htaccess) files. Default is ".user.ini" ;user_ini.filename = ".user.ini" ; To disable this feature set this option to empty value ;user_ini.filename = ; TTL for user-defined php.ini files (time-to-live) in seconds. Default is 300 seconds (5 minutes) ;user_ini.cache_ttl = 300 ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; Language Options ; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; Enable the PHP scripting language engine under Apache. ; http://php.net/engine engine = On ; This directive determines whether or not PHP will recognize code between ; <? and ?> tags as PHP source which should be processed as such. It's been ; recommended for several years that you not use the short tag "short cut" and ; instead to use the full <?php and ?> tag combination. With the wide spread use ; of XML and use of these tags by other languages, the server can become easily ; confused and end up parsing the wrong code in the wrong context. But because ; this short cut has been a feature for such a long time, it's currently still ; supported for backwards compatibility, but we recommend you don't use them. ; Default Value: On ; Development Value: Off ; Production Value: Off ; http://php.net/short-open-tag short_open_tag = Off ; Allow ASP-style <% %> tags. ; http://php.net/asp-tags asp_tags = Off ; The number of significant digits displayed in floating point numbers. ; http://php.net/precision precision = 14 ; Enforce year 2000 compliance (will cause problems with non-compliant browsers) ; http://php.net/y2k-compliance y2k_compliance = On ; Output buffering is a mechanism for controlling how much output data ; (excluding headers and cookies) PHP should keep internally before pushing that ; data to the client. If your application's output exceeds this setting, PHP ; will send that data in chunks of roughly the size you specify. ; Turning on this setting and managing its maximum buffer size can yield some ; interesting side-effects depending on your application and web server. ; You may be able to send headers and cookies after you've already sent output ; through print or echo. You also may see performance benefits if your server is ; emitting less packets due to buffered output versus PHP streaming the output ; as it gets it. On production servers, 4096 bytes is a good setting for performance ; reasons. ; Note: Output buffering can also be controlled via Output Buffering Control ; functions. ; Possible Values: ; On = Enabled and buffer is unlimited. (Use with caution) ; Off = Disabled ; Integer = Enables the buffer and sets its maximum size in bytes. ; Note: This directive is hardcoded to Off for the CLI SAPI ; Default Value: Off ; Development Value: 4096 ; Production Value: 4096 ; http://php.net/output-buffering output_buffering = Off ; You can redirect all of the output of your scripts to a function. For ; example, if you set output_handler to "mb_output_handler", character ; encoding will be transparently converted to the specified encoding. ; Setting any output handler automatically turns on output buffering. ; Note: People who wrote portable scripts should not depend on this ini ; directive. Instead, explicitly set the output handler using ob_start(). ; Using this ini directive may cause problems unless you know what script ; is doing. ; Note: You cannot use both "mb_output_handler" with "ob_iconv_handler" ; and you cannot use both "ob_gzhandler" and "zlib.output_compression". ; Note: output_handler must be empty if this is set 'On' !!!! ; Instead you must use zlib.output_handler. ; http://php.net/output-handler ;output_handler = ; Transparent output compression using the zlib library ; Valid values for this option are 'off', 'on', or a specific buffer size ; to be used for compression (default is 4KB) ; Note: Resulting chunk size may vary due to nature of compression. PHP ; outputs chunks that are few hundreds bytes each as a result of ; compression. If you prefer a larger chunk size for better ; performance, enable output_buffering in addition. ; Note: You need to use zlib.output_handler instead of the standard ; output_handler, or otherwise the output will be corrupted. ; http://php.net/zlib.output-compression zlib.output_compression = Off ; http://php.net/zlib.output-compression-level ;zlib.output_compression_level = -1 ; You cannot specify additional output handlers if zlib.output_compression ; is activated here. This setting does the same as output_handler but in ; a different order. ; http://php.net/zlib.output-handler ;zlib.output_handler = ; Implicit flush tells PHP to tell the output layer to flush itself ; automatically after every output block. This is equivalent to calling the ; PHP function flush() after each and every call to print() or echo() and each ; and every HTML block. Turning this option on has serious performance ; implications and is generally recommended for debugging purposes only. ; http://php.net/implicit-flush ; Note: This directive is hardcoded to On for the CLI SAPI implicit_flush = Off ; The unserialize callback function will be called (with the undefined class' ; name as parameter), if the unserializer finds an undefined class ; which should be instantiated. A warning appears if the specified function is ; not defined, or if the function doesn't include/implement the missing class. ; So only set this entry, if you really want to implement such a ; callback-function. unserialize_callback_func = ; When floats & doubles are serialized store serialize_precision significant ; digits after the floating point. The default value ensures that when floats ; are decoded with unserialize, the data will remain the same. serialize_precision = 100 ; This directive allows you to enable and disable warnings which PHP will issue ; if you pass a value by reference at function call time. Passing values by ; reference at function call time is a deprecated feature which will be removed ; from PHP at some point in the near future. The acceptable method for passing a ; value by reference to a function is by declaring the reference in the functions ; definition, not at call time. This directive does not disable this feature, it ; only determines whether PHP will warn you about it or not. These warnings ; should enabled in development environments only. ; Default Value: On (Suppress warnings) ; Development Value: Off (Issue warnings) ; Production Value: Off (Issue warnings) ; http://php.net/allow-call-time-pass-reference allow_call_time_pass_reference = On ; Safe Mode ; http://php.net/safe-mode safe_mode = Off ; By default, Safe Mode does a UID compare check when ; opening files. If you want to relax this to a GID compare, ; then turn on safe_mode_gid. ; http://php.net/safe-mode-gid safe_mode_gid = Off ; When safe_mode is on, UID/GID checks are bypassed when ; including files from this directory and its subdirectories. ; (directory must also be in include_path or full path must ; be used when including) ; http://php.net/safe-mode-include-dir safe_mode_include_dir = ; When safe_mode is on, only executables located in the safe_mode_exec_dir ; will be allowed to be executed via the exec family of functions. ; http://php.net/safe-mode-exec-dir safe_mode_exec_dir = ; Setting certain environment variables may be a potential security breach. ; This directive contains a comma-delimited list of prefixes. In Safe Mode, ; the user may only alter environment variables whose names begin with the ; prefixes supplied here. By default, users will only be able to set ; environment variables that begin with PHP_ (e.g. PHP_FOO=BAR). ; Note: If this directive is empty, PHP will let the user modify ANY ; environment variable! ; http://php.net/safe-mode-allowed-env-vars safe_mode_allowed_env_vars = PHP_ ; This directive contains a comma-delimited list of environment variables that ; the end user won't be able to change using putenv(). These variables will be ; protected even if safe_mode_allowed_env_vars is set to allow to change them. ; http://php.net/safe-mode-protected-env-vars safe_mode_protected_env_vars = LD_LIBRARY_PATH ; open_basedir, if set, limits all file operations to the defined directory ; and below. This directive makes most sense if used in a per-directory ; or per-virtualhost web server configuration file. This directive is ; *NOT* affected by whether Safe Mode is turned On or Off. ; http://php.net/open-basedir ;open_basedir = ; This directive allows you to disable certain functions for security reasons. ; It receives a comma-delimited list of function names. This directive is ; *NOT* affected by whether Safe Mode is turned On or Off. ; http://php.net/disable-functions disable_functions = ; This directive allows you to disable certain classes for security reasons. ; It receives a comma-delimited list of class names. This directive is ; *NOT* affected by whether Safe Mode is turned On or Off. ; http://php.net/disable-classes disable_classes = ; Colors for Syntax Highlighting mode. Anything that's acceptable in ; <span style="color: ???????"> would work. ; http://php.net/syntax-highlighting ;highlight.string = #DD0000 ;highlight.comment = #FF9900 ;highlight.keyword = #007700 ;highlight.bg = #FFFFFF ;highlight.default = #0000BB ;highlight.html = #000000 ; If enabled, the request will be allowed to complete even if the user aborts ; the request. Consider enabling it if executing long requests, which may end up ; being interrupted by the user or a browser timing out. PHP's default behavior ; is to disable this feature. ; http://php.net/ignore-user-abort ;ignore_user_abort = On ; Determines the size of the realpath cache to be used by PHP. This value should ; be increased on systems where PHP opens many files to reflect the quantity of ; the file operations performed. ; http://php.net/realpath-cache-size ;realpath_cache_size = 16k ; Duration of time, in seconds for which to cache realpath information for a given ; file or directory. For systems with rarely changing files, consider increasing this ; value. ; http://php.net/realpath-cache-ttl ;realpath_cache_ttl = 120 ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; Miscellaneous ; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; Decides whether PHP may expose the fact that it is installed on the server ; (e.g. by adding its signature to the Web server header). It is no security ; threat in any way, but it makes it possible to determine whether you use PHP ; on your server or not. ; http://php.net/expose-php expose_php = On ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; Resource Limits ; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; Maximum execution time of each script, in seconds ; http://php.net/max-execution-time ; Note: This directive is hardcoded to 0 for the CLI SAPI max_execution_time = 60 ; Maximum amount of time each script may spend parsing request data. It's a good ; idea to limit this time on productions servers in order to eliminate unexpectedly ; long running scripts. ; Note: This directive is hardcoded to -1 for the CLI SAPI ; Default Value: -1 (Unlimited) ; Development Value: 60 (60 seconds) ; Production Value: 60 (60 seconds) ; http://php.net/max-input-time max_input_time = 60 ; Maximum input variable nesting level ; http://php.net/max-input-nesting-level ;max_input_nesting_level = 64 ; Maximum amount of memory a script may consume (128MB) ; http://php.net/memory-limit memory_limit = 128M ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; Error handling and logging ; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; This directive informs PHP of which errors, warnings and notices you would like ; it to take action for. The recommended way of setting values for this ; directive is through the use of the error level constants and bitwise ; operators. The error level constants are below here for convenience as well as ; some common settings and their meanings. ; By default, PHP is set to take action on all errors, notices and warnings EXCEPT ; those related to E_NOTICE and E_STRICT, which together cover best practices and ; recommended coding standards in PHP. For performance reasons, this is the ; recommend error reporting setting. Your production server shouldn't be wasting ; resources complaining about best practices and coding standards. That's what ; development servers and development settings are for. ; Note: The php.ini-development file has this setting as E_ALL | E_STRICT. This ; means it pretty much reports everything which is exactly what you want during ; development and early testing. ; ; Error Level Constants: ; E_ALL - All errors and warnings (includes E_STRICT as of PHP 6.0.0) ; E_ERROR - fatal run-time errors ; E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR - almost fatal run-time errors ; E_WARNING - run-time warnings (non-fatal errors) ; E_PARSE - compile-time parse errors ; E_NOTICE - run-time notices (these are warnings which often result ; from a bug in your code, but it's possible that it was ; intentional (e.g., using an uninitialized variable and ; relying on the fact it's automatically initialized to an ; empty string) ; E_STRICT - run-time notices, enable to have PHP suggest changes ; to your code which will ensure the best interoperability ; and forward compatibility of your code ; E_CORE_ERROR - fatal errors that occur during PHP's initial startup ; E_CORE_WARNING - warnings (non-fatal errors) that occur during PHP's ; initial startup ; E_COMPILE_ERROR - fatal compile-time errors ; E_COMPILE_WARNING - compile-time warnings (non-fatal errors) ; E_USER_ERROR - user-generated error message ; E_USER_WARNING - user-generated warning message ; E_USER_NOTICE - user-generated notice message ; E_DEPRECATED - warn about code that will not work in future versions ; of PHP ; E_USER_DEPRECATED - user-generated deprecation warnings ; ; Common Values: ; E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE (Show all errors, except for notices and coding standards warnings.) ; E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE | E_STRICT (Show all errors, except for notices) ; E_COMPILE_ERROR|E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR|E_ERROR|E_CORE_ERROR (Show only errors) ; E_ALL | E_STRICT (Show all errors, warnings and notices including coding standards.) ; Default Value: E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE ; Development Value: E_ALL | E_STRICT ; Production Value: E_ALL & ~E_DEPRECATED ; http://php.net/error-reporting error_reporting = E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE & ~E_DEPRECATED ; This directive controls whether or not and where PHP will output errors, ; notices and warnings too. Error output is very useful during development, but ; it could be very dangerous in production environments. Depending on the code ; which is triggering the error, sensitive information could potentially leak ; out of your application such as database usernames and passwords or worse. ; It's recommended that errors be logged on production servers rather than ; having the errors sent to STDOUT. ; Possible Values: ; Off = Do not display any errors ; stderr = Display errors to STDERR (affects only CGI/CLI binaries!) ; On or stdout = Display errors to STDOUT ; Default Value: On ; Development Value: On ; Production Value: Off ; http://php.net/display-errors display_errors = On ; The display of errors which occur during PHP's startup sequence are handled ; separately from display_errors. PHP's default behavior is to suppress those ; errors from clients. Turning the display of startup errors on can be useful in ; debugging configuration problems. But, it's strongly recommended that you ; leave this setting off on production servers. ; Default Value: Off ; Development Value: On ; Production Value: Off ; http://php.net/display-startup-errors display_startup_errors = On ; Besides displaying errors, PHP can also log errors to locations such as a ; server-specific log, STDERR, or a location specified by the error_log ; directive found below. While errors should not be displayed on productions ; servers they should still be monitored and logging is a great way to do that. ; Default Value: Off ; Development Value: On ; Production Value: On ; http://php.net/log-errors log_errors = Off ; Set maximum length of log_errors. In error_log information about the source is ; added. The default is 1024 and 0 allows to not apply any maximum length at all. ; http://php.net/log-errors-max-len log_errors_max_len = 1024 ; Do not log repeated messages. Repeated errors must occur in same file on same ; line unless ignore_repeated_source is set true. ; http://php.net/ignore-repeated-errors ignore_repeated_errors = Off ; Ignore source of message when ignoring repeated messages. When this setting ; is On you will not log errors with repeated messages from different files or ; source lines. ; http://php.net/ignore-repeated-source ignore_repeated_source = Off ; If this parameter is set to Off, then memory leaks will not be shown (on ; stdout or in the log). This has only effect in a debug compile, and if ; error reporting includes E_WARNING in the allowed list ; http://php.net/report-memleaks report_memleaks = On ; This setting is on by default. ;report_zend_debug = 0 ; Store the last error/warning message in $php_errormsg (boolean). Setting this value ; to On can assist in debugging and is appropriate for development servers. It should ; however be disabled on production servers. ; Default Value: Off ; Development Value: On ; Production Value: Off ; http://php.net/track-errors track_errors = Off ; Turn off normal error reporting and emit XML-RPC error XML ; http://php.net/xmlrpc-errors ;xmlrpc_errors = 0 ; An XML-RPC faultCode ;xmlrpc_error_number = 0 ; When PHP displays or logs an error, it has the capability of inserting html ; links to documentation related to that error. This directive controls whether ; those HTML links appear in error messages or not. For performance and security ; reasons, it's recommended you disable this on production servers. ; Note: This directive is hardcoded to Off for the CLI SAPI ; Default Value: On ; Development Value: On ; Production value: Off ; http://php.net/html-errors html_errors = On ; If html_errors is set On PHP produces clickable error messages that direct ; to a page describing the error or function causing the error in detail. ; You can download a copy of the PHP manual from http://php.net/docs ; and change docref_root to the base URL of your local copy including the ; leading '/'. You must also specify the file extension being used including ; the dot. PHP's default behavior is to leave these settings empty. ; Note: Never use this feature for production boxes. ; http://php.net/docref-root ; Examples ;docref_root = "/phpmanual/" ; http://php.net/docref-ext ;docref_ext = .html ; String to output before an error message. PHP's default behavior is to leave ; this setting blank. ; http://php.net/error-prepend-string ; Example: ;error_prepend_string = "<font color=#ff0000>" ; String to output after an error message. PHP's default behavior is to leave ; this setting blank. ; http://php.net/error-append-string ; Example: ;error_append_string = "</font>" ; Log errors to specified file. PHP's default behavior is to leave this value ; empty. ; http://php.net/error-log ; Example: ;error_log = php_errors.log ; Log errors to syslog (Event Log on NT, not valid in Windows 95). ;error_log = syslog ;error_log = "C:\xampp\apache\logs\php_error.log" ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; Data Handling ; ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; ; Note - track_vars is ALWAYS enabled ; The separator used in PHP generated URLs to separate arguments. ; PHP's default setting is "&". ; http://php.net/arg-separator.output ; Example: arg_separator.output = "&" ; List of separator(s) used by PHP to parse input URLs into variables. ; PHP's default setting is "&

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