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• Installing PhotoShop CS5 in windows XP error: (when up to 12% of the installation);

  - by Croplio

  Error Log: ---------- Exit Code: 6 -------------------------------------- Summary -------------------------------------- - 0 fatal error(s), 43 error(s), 41 warning(s) WARNING: The payload: Adobe Photoshop CS5 Core {7DFEBBA4-81E1-425B-BBAA-06E9E5BBD97E} requires a UI parent with following specification: Family: Photoshop ProductName: Adobe Photoshop CS5 Core_x64 This parent relationship is not satisfied, because this payload is not present in this session. WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure WARNING: Payload cannot be installed due to dependent operation failure ERROR: The following payload errors were found during install: ERROR: - Adobe CSXS Infrastructure CS5: Install failed ERROR: - Microsoft_VC90_ATL_x86: Install failed ERROR: - Adobe Media Player: Install failed ERROR: - Microsoft_VC90_CRT_x86: Install failed ERROR: - Adobe Photoshop CS5 Support: Install failed ERROR: - Adobe Bridge CS5: Install failed ERROR: - Microsoft_VC80_ATL_x86: Install failed ERROR: - DeviceCentral_DeviceCentral3LP-zh_CN: Install failed ERROR: - Adobe XMP Panels CS5: Install failed ERROR: - Photoshop Camera Raw: Install failed ERROR: - AdobeColorCommonSetCMYK: Install failed ERROR: - Adobe Mini Bridge CS5: Install failed ERROR: - Adobe Photoshop CS5 Chinese Language Pack_AdobePhotoshop12-zh_CN: Install failed ERROR: - Adobe ReviewPanel CS5: Install failed ERROR: - Microsoft_VC90_MFC_x86: Install failed ERROR: - Suite Shared Configuration CS5: Install failed ERROR: - Adobe Linguistics CS5: Install failed ERROR: - DeviceCentral: Failed due to Language Pack installation failure ERROR: - AdobeColorEU CS5: Install failed ERROR: - AdobeTypeSupport CS5: Install failed ERROR: - AdobeColorVideoProfilesCS CS5: Install failed ERROR: - AdobeColorCommonSetRGB: Install failed ERROR: - Adobe Photoshop CS5 Core: Failed due to Language Pack installation failure ERROR: - Adobe CSXS Extensions CS5: Install failed ERROR: - AdobeOutputModule: Install failed ERROR: - Microsoft_VC80_CRT_x86: Install failed ERROR: - Adobe WinSoft Linguistics Plugin CS5: Install failed ERROR: - AdobePDFL CS5: Install failed ERROR: - AdobeCMaps CS5: Install failed ERROR: - AdobeColorNA CS5: Install failed ERROR: - Required Common Fonts Installation: Install failed ERROR: - Adobe SwitchBoard 2.0: Install failed ERROR: - Microsoft_VC80_MFC_x86: Install failed ERROR: - AdobeColorPhotoshop CS5: Install failed ERROR: - Microsoft_VC80_MFCLOC_x86: Install failed ERROR: - PDF Settings CS5: Install failed ERROR: - Recommended Common Fonts Installation: Install failed ERROR: - Adobe Extension Manager CS5: Install failed ERROR: - AdobeColorJA CS5: Install failed ERROR: - AdobeJRE: Install failed ERROR: - Adobe ExtendScript Toolkit CS5: Install failed ERROR: - Adobe AIR: Install failed ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I hava tried many time and the issue is still there, any help will be appriciated, thanks!

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• Strange DNS issue with internal Windows DNS

  - by Brady

  I've encountered a strange issue with our internal Windows DNS infrastructure. We have a website hosted on Amazon EC2 with the DNS running on Amazon Route 53. In the publicly facing DNS we have the wildcard record setup as an A record Alias pointing to an AWS Elastic Load Balancer sitting in front of our EC2 instances. For those who are not aware, the A record Alias behaves like a CNAME record, however no extra lookup is required on the client side (See http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/CreatingAliasRRSets.html for more information). We have a secondary domain that has the www subdomain as a CNAME pointing to a subdomain on the primary domain, which resolves against the wildcard entry. For example the subdomain www.secondary.com is a CNAME to sub1.primary.com, but there is no explicit entry for sub1.primary.com, so it resolves to wildcard record. This setup work without issue publicly. The issue comes in our internal DNS at our corporate office where we use the same primary domain for some internal only facing sites. In this setup we have two Active Directory DNS servers with one Server 2003 and one Server 2008 R2 instance. The zone is an AD integrated zone, but it is not the AD domain. In the internal DNS we have the wildcard record pointing to a third external domain, that is also hosted on Route 53 with an A record Alias pointing to the same ELB instance. For example, *.primary.com is a CNAME to tertiary.com, so in effect you have www.secondary.com as a CNAME to *.primary.com, which is a CNAME to tertiary.com. In this setup, attempting to resolve www.secondary.com will fail. Clearing the cache on the Server 2003 instance will allow it to resolve once, but subsequent attempts will fail. It fails even with a clean cache against the 2008 R2 server. It seems that only Windows clients are affected. A Mac running OSX Mountain Lion does not experience this issue. I'm even able to replicate the issue using nslookup. Against the 2003 server, with a freshly cleaned cache, I recieve the appropriate response from www.secondary.com: Non-authoritative answer: Name: subdomain.primary.com Address: x.x.x.x (Public IP) Aliases: www.secondary.com Subsequent checks simply return: Non-authoritative answer: Name: www.secondary.com If you set the type to CNAME you get the appropriate responses all the time. www.secondary.com gives you: Non-authoritative answer: www.secondary.com canonical name = subdomain.primary.com And subdomain.primary.com gives you: subdomain.primary.com canonical name = tertiary.com And setting type back to A gives you the appropriate response for tertiary.com: Non-authoritative answer: Name: tertiary.com Address: x.x.x.x (Public IP) Against the 2008 R2 server things are a little different. Even with a clean cache, www.secondary.com returns just: Non-authoritative answer: Name: www.secondary.com The CNAME records are returned appropriately. www.secondary.com returns: Non-authoritative answer: www.secondary.com canonical name = subdomain.primary.com And subdomain.primary.com gives you: subdomain.primary.com canonical name = tertiary.com tertiary.com internet address = x.x.x.x (Public IP) tertiary.com AAAA IPv6 address = x::x (Public IPv6) And setting type back to A gives you the appropriate response for tertiary.com: Non-authoritative answer: Name: tertiary.com Address: x.x.x.x (Public IP) Requests directly against subdomain.primary.com work correctly.

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• Managing access to multiple linux system

  - by Swartz

  A searched for answers but have found nothing on here... Long story short: a non-profit organization is in dire need of modernizing its infrastructure. First thing is to find an alternatives to managing user accounts on a number of Linux hosts. We have 12 servers (both physical and virtual) and about 50 workstations. We have 500 potential users for these systems. The individual who built and maintained the systems over the years has retired. He wrote his own scripts to manage it all. It still works. No complaints there. However, a lot of the stuff is very manual and error-prone. Code is messy and after updates often needs to be tweaked. Worst part is there is little to no docs written. There are just a few ReadMe's and random notes which may or may not be relevant anymore. So maintenance has become a difficult task. Currently accounts are managed via /etc/passwd on each system. Updates are distributed via cron scripts to correct systems as accounts are added on the "main" server. Some users have to have access to all systems (like a sysadmin account), others need access to shared servers, while others may need access to workstations or only a subset of those. Is there a tool that can help us manage accounts that meets the following requirements? Preferably open source (i.e. free as budget is VERY limited) mainstream (i.e. maintained) preferably has LDAP integration or could be made to interface with LDAP or AD service for user authentication (will be needed in the near future to integrate accounts with other offices) user management (adding, expiring, removing, lockout, etc) allows to manage what systems (or group of systems) each user has access to - not all users are allowed on all systems support for user accounts that could have different homedirs and mounts available depending on what system they are logged into. For example sysadmin logged into "main" server has main://home/sysadmin/ as homedir and has all shared mounts sysadmin logged into staff workstations would have nas://user/s/sysadmin as homedir(different from above) and potentially limited set of mounts, a logged in client would have his/her homedir at different location and no shared mounts. If there is an easy management interface that would be awesome. And if this tool is cross-platform (Linux / MacOS / *nix), that will be a miracle! I have searched the web and so have found nothing suitable. We are open to any suggestions. Thank you. EDIT: This question has been incorrectly marked as a duplicate. The linked to answer only talks about having same homedirs on all systems, whereas we need to have different homedirs based on what system user is currently logged into(MULTIPLE homedirs). Also access needs to be granted only to some machinees not the whole lot. Mods, please understand the full extent of the problem instead of merely marking it as duplicate for points...

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• Integrating HP Systems Insight Manager into an existing environment

  - by ewwhite

  I'm working with an environment that spans multiple data centers/sites and consists primarily of HP ProLiant servers (G5-G7) running Linux. The mix is 30% RHEL/CentOS, the rest are Gentoo :(. I also have a few dozen virtual machines running back-office and Windows servers on VMWare ESX hosts. I run OpenNMS to pull SNMP data from the various server nodes and networking devices. While OpenNMS works wonderfully for up/down, thresholds and notifications, it's native handling of traps is a little rough and the graphs are not particularly pretty. I use Orca/RRD graphs for performance trending and nice graphs. I'm tasked with inventorying the environment and wanted to come up with a clean way to organize server information. Since my environment is mostly HP, I've been playing with HP Systems Insight Manager as a way to extract server data and to deploy HP health/monitoring packages and firmware. The Gentoo systems eventually have to be converted to CentOS, so getting a quick assessment of what hardware is where would be great. Although I've read through a few hundred pages of HP manuals, I'm having a difficult time understanding how to get HP SIM to do what I want, though. My main problems are: I have about 40 subnets to deal with; 98% connected with private lines to facilities across the globe. I don't want to initiate an HP SIM discovery only to pull back every piece of intermediate networking hardware and equipment from all of the locations. I'd like this to focus on the servers. I have OpenNMS configured to accept traps. I don't want HP SIM to duplicate that effort. It seems like the built-in software deployment tool wants to overwrite the trapsink parameters for the systems it encounters during discovery. I have about 10 administrative username/password combinations in use across this infrastructure. Is there a more efficient way to get HP SIM to do the discovery or break discovery into manageable chunks? In terms of general workflow, do people typically install the HP Management Agents during the initial OS deployment (e.g. kickstart post script) or afterwards from HP SIM? Is HP SIM too thick/fat to be an inventory tool? I can't tell if it's meant to be used standalone or alongside other monitoring products. Since the majority of the systems I'm trying to track are those running Gentoo (in order to plan the move to CentOS), is there any way for HP SIM to extract system model information from them ( like dmidecode)? I have systems here where I may have an SSH key established, but not direct user or login access. Is there a way for me to import an SSH private/public key pair into HP SIM to reach out to the servers that can't accept standard credentials? There are a handful of sites where I have inconsistent access or have a double-NAT situation. I may be able to poke a server, but it may not be able to find its way back to the management system. Is there a workaround for this? The certificate configuration for HP SIM seems complicated. What is the preferred setup for trust between systems? I'd also appreciate any notes or recommendations to using this product. Or if there's a better way to do this, I'd like to know.

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• creating a heirarchy of terminals or workspaces

  - by intuited

  <rant This question occurred to me ('occurred' meaning 'whispered seductively in my ear for the 100th time') while using GNU-screen, so I'll make that my example. However this is a much more general question about user interfaces and what I perceive as a flawmissing feature in every implementation I've yet seen. I'm wondering if there is some way to create a heirarchy/tree of terminals in a screen session. EG I'd like to have something like 1 bash 1.1 bash 1.2 bash 2 bash 3 bash 3.1 bash 3.1.1 bash 3.1.2 bash It would be good if the terminals could be labelled instead of having to be navigated to via some arrangement that I suspect doesn't exist. So then you could jump to one using eg ^A:goto happydays or ^A:goto dykstra.angry. So to generalize that: Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, gnome-terminal, roxterm, konsole, yakuake, OpenOffice, Microsoft Office, Mr. Snuffaluppagus's Funtime Carousel™, and Your Mom's Jam Browser™ all offer the ability to create a flat set of tabs containing documents of an identical nature: web pages, terminals, documents, fun rideable animals, and jams. GNU-screen implements the same functionality without using tabs. Linux and OS/X window managers provide the ability to organize windows into an array of workspaces, which amounts to again, the same deal. Over the past few years, this has become a more or less ubiquitous concept which has been righteously welcomed into the far reaches of the computer interface funfest. Heavy users of these systems quickly encounter a problem with it: the set of entities is flat. In the case of workspaces, an option may be available to create a 2d array. However none of these applications furnish their users with the ability to create heirarchies, similar to filesystem directory structures, containing instances of their particular contained type. I for one am consistently bothered by this, and am wondering if the community can offer some wisdom as to why this has not happened in any of the foremost collections of computational functionality our culture has yet produced. Or if perhaps it has and I'm just an ignorant savage. I'd like to be able to not only group things into a tree structure, but also to create references (aka symbolic links, aka pointers) from one part of the structure to another, as well as apply properties (eg default directory, colorscheme, ...) recursively downward from a given node. I see no reason why we shouldn't be able to save these structures as known sessions, and apply tags to particular instances. So then you can sort through them by tag, find them by name, or just use the arrow keys (with an appropriate modifier) to move left or right and in or out of a given level. Another key combo would serve to create a branch in the place of the current terminal/webpage/lifelike statue/spreadsheet/spreadsheet sheet/presentation/jam and move that entity into the new branch, then create a fresh one as a sibling to it: a second leaf node within the same branch node. They would get along well. I find it a bit astonishing that this hasn't happened yet, and the only reason I can venture as a guess is that the creators of these fine systems do not consider such functionality to be useful to a significant portion of their userbase. I posit that the probability that that such an assumption would be correct is pretty low. On the other hand, given the relative ease with which such structures can be implemented using modern libraries/languages, it doesn't seem likely that difficulty of implementation would be a major roadblock. If it could be done in 1972 or whenever within the constraints of a filesystem driver, it should be relatively painless to implement in 2010 in a fullblown application. Given that all of these systems are capable of maintaining a set of equivalent entities, it seems unlikely that a major infrastructure overhaul would be necessary in order to enable a navigable heirarchy of them. </rant Mostly I'm just looking to start up a discussion and/or brainstorming on this topic. Any ideas, examples, criticism, or analysis are quite welcome. * Mr. Snuffaluppagus's Funtime Carousel is a registered trademark of Children's Television Workshop Inc. * Your Mom's Jam Browser is a registered trademark of Your Mom Inc.

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• DHCP and DNS services configuration for VOIP system, windows domain, etc

  - by Stemen

  My company has numerous physical offices (for purposes of this discussion, 15 buildings). Some of them are well-connected to our primary data center via fiber. Others will be connected to the data center by P2P T1. We are in the beginning stages of implementing an Avaya VOIP telephone system, and we will be replacing a significant portion of our network infrastructure in the process. In tandem with the phone system implementation, we are going to be re-addressing some of our networks, and consolidating most of our Windows domains into one (not all domains, just most). We currently have quite a few Windows domains, and they of course each have their own DNS zones. A few of those networks currently use DHCP, but the majority use static IP assignments for every device. I'm tired of managing static assignments -- I want to use DHCP configuration on everything except servers. Printers and etc will have DHCP reservations. The new IP phones will need to get IP addresses from DHCP, though they need to be in a separate VLAN from the computers/printers/etc. The computers and printers need to be registered in DNS. That's currently handled by the Windows DHCP servers on each of the respective domains. We need to place a priority on DHCP and DNS being available on a per-site basis (in case something were to interrupt the WAN connection) for computers and (primarily) phones. Smaller locations (which will have IP phones but not be a member of any Windows domain) will not have any Windows DNS/DHCP server(s) available. We also are looking for the easiest way to replace a part if it were to fail. That is to say, if a server/appliance/router hosting DHCP were to crash hard, and we couldn't extremely quickly recover the DHCP reservations and leases (and subsequently restore them onto a cold spare), we anticipate that bad things could happen. What is the best idea for how to re-implement DNS and DHCP keeping all of the above in mind? Some thoughts that have been raised (by myself or my coworkers): Use Windows DNS and DHCP servers, where they exist, and use IP helpers to route DHCP requests to some other Windows server if necessary. May not be acceptable if the WAN goes down and clients don't get a DHCP response. Use Windows DNS (everywhere, over WAN in some cases) and a mix of Windows DHCP and DHCP provided by Cisco routers. Every site would be covered for DHCP, but from what I've read, Cisco routers can't handle dynamic registration of DHCP clients to Windows DNS servers, which might create a problem where Cisco routers are used for DHCP. Use Windows DNS (everywhere, over WAN in some cases) and a mix of Windows DHCP and DHCP provided by some service running on an extremely low-price linux server. Is there any such software that would allow DHCP leases granted by these linux boxes to be dynamically registered on the Windows DNS servers? Come up with a Linux solution for both DNS and DHCP, and deploy low-price linux servers to every site. Requirements would be that the DNS zone be multi-master (like Windows DNS integrated with Active Directory), that DHCP be able to make dynamic DNS registrations in that zone, for every lease (where a hostname is provided and is thus possible), and that multiple servers be either authoritative for the same DHCP scope or at least receiving a real-time copy / replication / sync of the leases table so that if one server dies, we still know which MAC has what address. Purchase dedicated DNS/DHCP appliances, deploying to all sites. From what I read/see, this solves all of our technical problems. Then come the financial problems... I don't have a ton of money to spend on this. Or, some other solution that we've thus far overlooked and will consider upon recommendation. Can Cisco routers or Windows servers sync DHCP lease tables so that multiple servers can be authoritative (or active/passive for all I care) for the same scope, in case one of the partners were to fail? I've read online (repeatedly) that ISC's DHCP is able to maintain the same lease table across multiple servers, in order to solve this problem. Does anyone have any experience or advice to regarding that?

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• Is the Cloud ready for an Enterprise Java web application? Seeking a JEE hosting advice.

  - by Jakub Holý

  Greetings to all the smart people around here! I'd like to ask whether it is feasible or a good idea at all to deploy a Java enterprise web application to a Cloud such as Amazon EC2. More exactly, I'm looking for infrastructure options for an application that shall handle few hundred users with long but neither CPU nor memory intensive sessions. I'm considering dedicated servers, virtual private servers (VPSs) and EC2. I've noticed that there is a project called JBoss Cloud so people are working on enabling such a deployment, on the other hand it doesn't seem to be mature yet and I'm not sure that the cloud is ready for this kind of applications, which differs from the typical cloud-based applications like Twitter. Would you recommend to deploy it to the cloud? What are the pros and cons? The application is a Java EE 5 web application whose main function is to enable users to compose their own customized Product by combining the available Parts. It uses stateless and stateful session beans and JPA for persistence of entities to a RDBMS and fetches information about Parts from the company's inventory system via a web service. Aside of external users it's used also by few internal ones, who are authenticated against the company's LDAP. The application should handle around 300-400 concurrent users building their product and should be reasonably scalable and available though these qualities are only of a medium importance at this stage. I've proposed an architecture consisting of a firewall (FW) and load balancer supporting sticky sessions and https (in the Cloud this would be replaced with EC2's Elastic Load Balancing service and FW on the app. servers, in a physical architecture the load-balancer would be a HW), then two physical clustered application servers combined with web servers (so that if one fails, a user doesn't loose his/her long built product) and finally a database server. The DB server would need a slave backup instance that can replace the master instance if it fails. This should provide reasonable availability and fault tolerance and provide good scalability as long as a single RDBMS can keep with the load, which should be OK for quite a while because most of the operations are done in the memory using a stateful bean and only occasionally stored or retrieved from the DB and the amount of data is low too. A problematic part could be the dependency on the remote inventory system webservice but with good caching of its outputs in the application it should be OK too. Unfortunately I've only vague idea of the system resources (memory size, number and speed of CPUs/cores) that such an "average Java EE application" for few hundred users needs. My rough and mostly unfounded estimate based on actual Amazon offerings is that 1.7GB and a single, 2-core "modern CPU" with speed around 2.5GHz (the High-CPU Medium Instance) should be sufficient for any of the two application servers (since we can handle higher load by provisioning more of them). Alternatively I would consider using the Large instance (64b, 7.5GB RAM, 2 cores at 1GHz) So my question is whether such a deployment to the cloud is technically and financially feasible or whether dedicated/VPS servers would be a better option and whether there are some real-world experiences with something similar. Thank you very much! /Jakub Holy PS: I've found the JBoss EAP in a Cloud Case Study that shows that it is possible to deploy a real-world Java EE application to the EC2 cloud but unfortunately there're no details regarding topology, instance types, or anything :-(

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• can't login to new install of SQL 2008 x64 via SSMS

  - by tpcolson

  I have performed a fresh install of SQL 2008 x64 on a fresh install of Server 2008 R2 x64 in an AD environment. Upon install completion, I cannot login to the SQL Instance via SSMS, with the following error: Login failed for user domain\user. Reason: Token-based server access validation failed with an infrastructure error. Check for previous errors. [CLIENT: ]. Background: the server is correctly joined to the AD Domain, the install was performed with defaults, windows authentication only (per organizational rules), the SQL install completes with no errors, domain\user was added as SQL Amin during setup account provisioning, I am logged into to console as domain\user when this error occurs, windows firewall is OFF, UAC is ON (an will never be turned off in accordance with organizational policy). To troubleshoot this error I have tried: Run SSMS as administrator: fail; Start SQL in single user mode, run SSMS: fail Start SQL in single user mode, run SSMS as administrator: Success Start SQL in single user mode, run SSMS as administrator, remove domain\user from sysadmin group, re-add, run SSMS: fail; Any combination and permutation of log off and log on, reboot, and chant gregorian prayers: fail; Reimage server with 2008 x64, slipstream SP2 into SQL 2008 install, all above troubleshooting steps are repeatable exactly, so I've narrowed this down to not being a SP issue; (this is NOT 2008 SQL R2) Any suggestion on how to grant management access to this fresh install of SQL 2008 via SSMS? Our organizational policy is no console access to servers, management will be done via management tools intalled on client workstations. domain\user is a group of 8 users whom will have SSMS installed on workstations. However, we can't even access SQL via SSMS from the console! We cannot deploy this in an environment where these 8 users will have to sneak into the server closet on the weekends and have console access to SQL and run SSMS as administrator. EDIT: domain\group is a replacement for the actual object; the queries indicate that domain\group does indeed have the right privelges....!?! 1> EXEC xp_logininfo 'domain\group' go account name type privilege mapped login name permission path 'domain\group' group admin 'domain\group' NULL xp_logininfo seems to show 'domain\group' in the sql admin group; 1> SELECT A.name AS 'Role', B.name AS 'Login' 3> FROM sys.server_role_members C 5> INNER JOIN sys.server_principals A ON A.principal_id = C.role_principal_id 7> INNER JOIN sys.server_principals B ON B.principal_id = C.member_principal _id 9> go Role Login sysadmin sa sysadmin NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM sysadmin NT SERVICE\MSSQLSERVER sysadmin NT SERVICE\SQLSERVERAGENT sysadmin domain\group 1> SELECT PRINCIPAL_ID AS [Principal ID], 2> NAME AS [User], 3> TYPE_DESC AS [Type Description], 4> IS_DISABLED AS [Status] 5> FROM sys.server_principals 6> GO Principal ID User Type Description Status ------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------ ------------------------------------------ ------ 1 sa SQL_LOGIN 1 2 public SERVER_ROLE 0 3 sysadmin SERVER_ROLE 0 4 securityadmin SERVER_ROLE 0 5 serveradmin SERVER_ROLE 0 6 setupadmin SERVER_ROLE 0 7 processadmin SERVER_ROLE 0 8 diskadmin SERVER_ROLE 0 9 dbcreator SERVER_ROLE 0 10 bulkadmin SERVER_ROLE 0 101 ##MS_SQLResourceSigningCertificate## CERTIFICATE_MAPPED _LOGIN 0 102 ##MS_SQLReplicationSigningCertificate## CERTIFICATE_MAPPED _LOGIN 0 103 ##MS_SQLAuthenticatorCertificate## CERTIFICATE_MAPPED _LOGIN 0 105 ##MS_PolicySigningCertificate## CERTIFICATE_MAPPED _LOGIN 0 257 ##MS_PolicyTsqlExecutionLogin## SQL_LOGIN 1 259 NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM WINDOWS_LOGIN 0 260 NT SERVICE\MSSQLSERVER WINDOWS_GROUP 0 262 NT SERVICE\SQLSERVERAGENT WINDOWS_GROUP 0 263 ##MS_PolicyEventProcessingLogin## SQL_LOGIN 1 264 ##MS_AgentSigningCertificate## CERTIFICATE_MAPPED _LOGIN 0 265 domain\group WINDOWS_GROUP 0 (21 rows affected)

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• Bridged virtual interface is not available or visible to ifconfig.

  - by Omniwombat

  Hello all. I'm running Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.28-18, and vmware-server 2.0.1. I'm attempting to setup a virtual linux machine to use a bridged interface rather than NAT or host-only. Both NAT and host-only work just fine. When running vmware-config.pl, I set /dev/vmnet0 to bridge eth0, /dev/vmnet1 to host-only, and /dev/vmnet8 to NAT. When I run ifconfig -a I see the physical interface (eth0), vmnet1 and vmnet8 both of which are up and have IP addresses assigned to them. I also see other various interfaces that are not relevant here. In the web console, when I ask that the guest machine's network card be bridged, it states that a bridged setup is "Not available" and shows the disabled device icon. Inside the guest machine, I do have an eth0 interface which I can set to anything I like, however it can't see my external network, or the host. I do see errors in my vmware/hostd.log which state: "The network bridge on device vmnet0 is not running. The virtual machine will not be able to communicate with the host or with other machines on your network" which confirms the problem. vmnet-bridge is running, and I see the following in my process table: /usr/bin/vmnet-bridge -d /var/run/vmnet-bridge-0.pid -n 0 -i eth0 I confirm that the /var/run/vmnet-bridge-0.pid file is there and that it points to the correct process. I saw this question relating to Ubuntu 9.04 and bridged interfaces, in which the poster determined that the vsock library was not getting built due to a flaw in the vmware-config.pl script. I applied the patch, reran the script, and confirm that vsock.ko and vsock.o are in my /lib directory structure. vsock does show up in an lsmod. My /etc/vmware directory has /vmnet1 and /vmnet8 subdirectories. They contain configuration utilities for running DHCP and nat type services as expected. There is no vmnet0 subdirectory. My /etc/vmware/netmap.conf file DOES show entries for vmnet0; both the name and the device as I configured it from the script. My /dev directory contains devices vmnet0 through vmnet9. They have major device number 119, and minor device numbers 0 through 9. /proc/net/dev shows statistics for vmnet1 and vmnet8, but not vmnet0. I have a /proc/vmnet directory, but it's empty. When I start or stop the vmware service with /etc/init.d/vmware start, I see the following: Starting VMware services: Virtual machine monitor done Virtual machine communication interface done VM communication interface socket family: done Virtual ethernet done Bridged networking on /dev/vmnet0 done Host-only networking on /dev/vmnet1 (background) done DHCP server on /dev/vmnet1 done Host-only networking on /dev/vmnet8 (background) done DHCP server on /dev/vmnet8 done NAT service on /dev/vmnet8 done VMware Server Authentication Daemon (background) done Shared Memory Available done Starting VMware management services: VMware Server Host Agent (background) done VMware Virtual Infrastructure Web Access Starting VMware autostart virtual machines: Virtual machines done Nothing appears to be wrong there. What n00b thing am I doing such that vmnet0 and only vmnet0 does not show up in the interface list?

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• Is there a bug with Apache 2.2 and content filters (and maybe mod_proxy)?

  - by asciiphil

  I'm running Apache 2.2.15-29 on RHEL 6 (actually Scientific Linux 6.4) and I'm trying to set up a reverse proxy with content rewriting so all of the links on the proxied web pages are rewritten to reference the proxy host. I'm running into a problem with some of the content rewriting and I'd like to know if this is a bug or if I'm doing something wrong (and how to do it right, if applicable). I'm proxying a subdirectory on an internal host (internal.example.com/foo) onto the root of an external host (external.example.com). I need to rewrite HTML, CSS, and Javascript content to fix all of the URLs. I'm also hosting some content locally on the external host, which I don't think is a problem but I'm mentioning here for completeness. My httpd.conf looks roughly like this: <VirtualHost *:80> ServerName external.example.com ServerAlias example.com # Serve all local content directly, reverse-proxy all unknown URIs. RewriteEngine On RewriteRule ^(/(index.html?)?)?$ http://internal.example.com/foo/ [P] RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}%{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR] RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}%{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d RewriteRule ^.*$ - [L] RewriteRule ^/~ - [L] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://internal.example.com$1 [P] # Standard header rewriting. ProxyPassReverse / http://internal.example.com/foo/ ProxyPassReverseCookieDomain internal.example.com external.example.com ProxyPassReverseCookiePath /foo/ / # Strip any Accept-Encoding: headers from the client so we can process the pages # as plain text. RequestHeader unset Accept-Encoding # Use mod_proxy_html to fix URLs in text/html content. ProxyHTMLEnable On ProxyHTMLURLMap http://internal.example.com/foo/ / ProxyHTMLURLMap http://internal.example.com/foo / ProxyHTMLURLMap /foo/ / ## Use mod_substitute to fix URLs in CSS and Javascript #<Location /> # AddOutputFilterByType SUBSTITUTE text/css # AddOutputFilterByType SUBSTITUTE text/javascript # Substitute "s|http://internal.example.com/foo/|/|nq" #</Location> # Use mod_ext_filter to fix URLs in CSS and Javascript ExtFilterDefine fixurlcss mode=output intype=text/css cmd="/bin/sed -rf /etc/httpd/fixurls" ExtFilterDefine fixurljs mode=output intype=text/javascript cmd="/bin/sed -rf /etc/httpd/fixurls" <Location /> SetOutputFilter fixurlcss;fixurljs </Location> </VirtualHost> The text/html rewriting works just fine. When I use either mod_substitute or mod_ext_filter, the external server sends the pages as Transfer-Encoding: chunked, sends all of the data, and then closes the connection without sending the final, zero-length chunk. Some HTTP clients are unhappy with this. (Chrome won't process any content sent in this way, for example, so the pages don't get CSS applied to them.) Here's a sample wget session: $ wget -O /dev/null -S http://external.example.com/include/jquery.js --2013-11-01 11:36:36-- http://external.example.com/include/jquery.js Resolving external.example.com (external.example.com)... 192.168.0.1 Connecting to external.example.com (external.example.com)|192.168.0.1|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Fri, 01 Nov 2013 15:36:36 GMT Server: Apache Last-Modified: Tue, 29 Oct 2013 13:09:10 GMT ETag: "1d60026-187b8-4e9e0ec273e35" Accept-Ranges: bytes Vary: Accept-Encoding X-UA-Compatible: IE=edge,chrome=1 Content-Type: text/javascript;charset=utf-8 Connection: close Transfer-Encoding: chunked Length: unspecified [text/javascript] Saving to: `/dev/null' [ <=> ] 100,280 --.-K/s in 0.005s 2013-11-01 11:36:37 (19.8 MB/s) - Read error at byte 100280 (Success).Retrying. --2013-11-01 11:36:38-- (try: 2) http://external.example.com/include/jquery.js Connecting to external.example.com (external.example.com)|192.168.0.1|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... HTTP/1.1 416 Requested Range Not Satisfiable Date: Fri, 01 Nov 2013 15:36:38 GMT Server: Apache Vary: Accept-Encoding Content-Type: text/html;charset=utf-8 Content-Length: 260 Connection: close The file is already fully retrieved; nothing to do. Am I doing something wrong? Am I hitting some sort of Apache bug? What do I need to do to get it working? (Note that I'd prefer solutions that work within RHEL-6-packaged RPMs and upgrading to Apache 2.4 would be a last resort, as we have a lot of infrastructure built around 2.2 on this system at the moment.)

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• Multi-tenant ASP.NET MVC – Introduction

  - by zowens

  I’ve read a few different blogs that talk about multi-tenancy and how to resolve some of the issues surrounding multi-tenancy. What I’ve come to realize is that these implementations overcomplicate the issues and give only a muddy implementation! I’ve seen some really illogical code out there. I have recently been building a multi-tenancy framework for internal use at eagleenvision.net. Through this process, I’ve realized a few different techniques to make building multi-tenant applications actually quite easy. I will be posting a few different entries over the issue and my personal implementation. In this first post, I will discuss what multi-tenancy means and how my implementation will be structured.   So what’s the problem? Here’s the deal. Multi-tenancy is basically a technique of code-reuse of web application code. A multi-tenant application is an application that runs a single instance for multiple clients. Here the “client” is different URL bindings on IIS using ASP.NET MVC. The problem with different instances of the, essentially, same application is that you have to spin up different instances of ASP.NET. As the number of running instances of ASP.NET grows, so does the memory footprint of IIS. Stack Exchange shifted its architecture to multi-tenancy March. As the blog post explains, multi-tenancy saves cost in terms of memory utilization and physical disc storage. If you use the same code base for many applications, multi-tenancy just makes sense. You’ll reduce the amount of work it takes to synchronize the site implementations and you’ll thank your lucky stars later for choosing to use one application for multiple sites. Multi-tenancy allows the freedom of extensibility while relying on some pre-built code.   You’d think this would be simple. I have actually seen a real lack of reference material on the subject in terms of ASP.NET MVC. This is somewhat surprising given the number of users of ASP.NET MVC. However, I will certainly fill the void ;). Implementing a multi-tenant application takes a little thinking. It’s not straight-forward because the possibilities of implementation are endless. I have yet to see a great implementation of a multi-tenant MVC application. The only one that comes close to what I have in mind is Rob Ashton’s implementation (all the entries are listed on this page). There’s some really nasty code in there… something I’d really like to avoid. He has also written a library (MvcEx) that attempts to aid multi-tenant development. This code is even worse, in my honest opinion. Once I start seeing Reflection.Emit, I have to assume the worst :) In all seriousness, if his implementation makes sense to you, use it! It’s a fine implementation that should be given a look. At least look at the code. I will reference MvcEx going forward as a comparison to my implementation. I will explain why my approach differs from MvcEx and how it is better or worse (hopefully better).   Core Goals of my Multi-Tenant Implementation The first, and foremost, goal is to use Inversion of Control containers to my advantage. As you will see throughout this series, I pass around containers quite frequently and rely on their use heavily. I will be using StructureMap in my implementation. However, you could probably use your favorite IoC tool instead. <RANT> However, please don’t be stupid and abstract your IoC tool. Each IoC is powerful and by abstracting the capabilities, you’re doing yourself a real disservice. Who in the world swaps out IoC tools…? No one!</RANT> (It had to be said.) I will outline some of the goodness of StructureMap as we go along. This is really an invaluable tool in my tool belt and simple to use in my multi-tenant implementation. The second core goal is to represent a tenant as easily as possible. Just as a dependency container will be a first-class citizen, so will a tenant. This allows us to easily extend and use tenants. This will also allow different ways of “plugging in” tenants into your application. In my implementation, there will be a single dependency container for a single tenant. This will enable isolation of the dependencies of the tenant. The third goal is to use composition as a means to delegate “core” functions out to the tenant. More on this later.   Features In MvcExt, “Modules” are a code element of the infrastructure. I have simplified this concept and have named this “Features”. A feature is a simple element of an application. Controllers can be specified to have a feature and actions can have “sub features”. Each tenant can select features it needs and the other features will be hidden to the tenant’s users. My implementation doesn’t require something to be a feature. A controller can be common to all tenants. For example, (as you will see) I have a “Content” controller that will return the CSS, Javascript and Images for a tenant. This is common logic to all tenants and shouldn’t be hidden or considered a “feature”; Content is a core component.   Up next My next post will be all about the code. I will reveal some of the foundation to the way I do multi-tenancy. I will have posts dedicated to Foundation, Controllers, Views, Caching, Content and how to setup the tenants. Each post will be in-depth about the issues and implementation details, while adhering to my core goals outlined in this post. As always, comment with questions of DM me on twitter or send me an email.

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• This task is currently locked by a running workflow and cannot be edited. Limitation to both Nintex and SPD workflow

  - by ybbest

  Note, this post is from Nintex Forum here. These limitations apply to both SharePoint designer Workflow and Nintex Workflow as Nintex using the SharePoint workflow engine. The common cause that I experience is that ‘parent’ workflow is generating more than one task at once. This is common as you can have multiple approvers for certain approval process. You could also have workflow running when the task is created, one of the common scenario is you would like to set a custom column value in your approval task. For me this is huge limitation, as Nintex lover I really hope Nintex could solve this problem with Microsoft going forward. Introduction “This task is currently locked by a running workflow and cannot be edited” is a common message that is seen when an error occurs while the SharePoint workflow engine is processing a task item associated with a workflow. When a workflow processes a task normally, the following sequence of events is expected to occur: 1.       The process begins. 2.       The workflow places a ‘lock’ on the task so nothing else can change the values while the workflow is processing. 3.       The workflow processes the task. 4.       The lock is released when the task processing is finished. When the message is encountered, it usually indicates that an error occurred between step 2 and 4. As a result, the lock is never released. Therefore, the ‘task locked’ message is not an error itself, rather a symptom of another error – the ‘task locked’ message does not indicate what went wrong. In most cases, once this message is encountered, the workflow cannot be made to continue and must be terminated and started again. The following is a guide that can help troubleshoot the cause of these messages.  Some initial observations to narrow down the potential causes are: Is the error consistent or intermittent? When the error is consistent, it will happen every time the workflow is run. When it is intermittent, it may happen regularly, but not every time. Does the error occur the first time the user tries to respond to a task, or do they respond and notice the workflow does not continue, and when they respond again the error occurs? If the message is present when the user first responds to the task, the issue would have occurred when the task was created. Otherwise, it would have occurred when the user attempted to respond to the task. Causes Modifying the task list A cause of this error appearing consistently the first time a user tries to respond to a task is a modification to the default task list schema. For example, changing the ‘Assigned to’ field in a task list to be a multiple selection will cause the behaviour. Deleting the workflow task then restoring it from the Recycle bin If you start a workflow, delete the workflow task then restore it from the Recycle Bin in SharePoint, the workflow will fail with the ‘task locked’ error.  This is confirmed behaviour whether using a SharePoint Designer or a Nintex workflow.  You will need to terminate the workflow and start it again. Parallel simultaneous responses A cause of this error appearing inconsistently is multiple users responding to tasks in parallel at the same time. In this scenario, one task will complete correctly and the other will not process. When the user tries again, the ‘task locked’ message will display. Nintex included a workaround for this issue in build 11000. In build 11000 and later, one of the users will receive a message on the task form when they attempt to respond, stating that they need to try again in a few moments. Additional processing on the task A cause of this error appearing consistently and inconsistently is having an additional system running on the items in the task list. Some examples include: a workflow running on the task list, an event receiver running on the task list or another automated process querying and updating workflow tasks. Note: This Microsoft help article (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/HA102376561033.aspx#5) explains creating a workflow that runs on the task list to update a field on the task. Our experience shows that this causes the ‘Task Locked’ issues when the ‘parent’ workflow is generating more than one task at once. Isolated system error If the error is a rare event, or a ‘one off’ event, then an isolated system error may have occurred. For example, if there is a database connectivity issue while the workflow is processing the task response, the task will lock. In this case, the user will respond to a task but the workflow will not continue. When they respond again, the ‘task locked’ message will display. In this case, there will be an error in the SharePoint ULS Logs at the time that the user originally responded. Temporary delay while workflow processes If the workflow is taking a long time to process after a user submits a task, they may notice and try to respond to the task again. They will see the task locked error, but after a number of attempts (or after waiting some time) the task response page eventually indicates the task has been responded to. In this case, nothing actually went wrong, and the error message gives an accurate indication of what is happening – the workflow temporarily locked the task while it was processing. This scenario may occur in a very large workflow, or after the SharePoint application pool has just started. Modifying the task via a web service with an invalid url If the Nintex Workflow web service is used to respond to or delegate a task, the site context part of the url must be a valid alternative access mapping url. For example, if you access the web service via the IP address of the SharePoint server, and the IP address is not a valid AAM, the task can become locked. The workflow has become stuck without any apparent errors This behaviour can occur as a result of a bug in the SharePoint 2010 workflow engine.  If you do not have the August 2010 Cumulative Update (or later) for SharePoint, and your workflow uses delays, “Flexi-task”, State machine”, “Task Reminder” actions or variables, you could be affected. Check the SharePoint 2010 Updates site here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ff800847.  The October CU is recommended http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2553031.   The fix is described as “Consider the following scenario. You add a Delay activity to a workflow. Then, you set the duration for the Delay activity. You deploy the workflow in SharePoint Foundation 2010. In this scenario, the workflow is not resumed after the duration of the Delay activity”. If you find this is occurring in your environment, install the October CU, terminate all the running workflows affected and run them afresh. Investigative steps The first step to isolate the issue is to create a new task list on the site and configure the workflow to use it.  Any customizations that were made to the original task list should not be made to the new task list. If the new task list eliminates the issue, then the cause can be attributed to the original task list or a change that was made to it. To change the task list that the workflow uses: In Workflow Designer select Settings -> Startup Options Then configure the task list as required If any of the scenarios above do not help, check the SharePoint logs for any messages with a category of ‘Workflow Infrastructure’. Conclusion The information in this article has been gathered from observations and investigations by Nintex. The sources of these issues are the underlying SharePoint workflow engine. This article will be updated if further causes are discovered. From <http://connect.nintex.com/forums/thread/6503.aspx>

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• Parallelism in .NET – Part 14, The Different Forms of Task

  - by Reed

  Before discussing Task creation and actual usage in concurrent environments, I will briefly expand upon my introduction of the Task class and provide a short explanation of the distinct forms of Task.  The Task Parallel Library includes four distinct, though related, variations on the Task class. In my introduction to the Task class, I focused on the most basic version of Task.  This version of Task, the standard Task class, is most often used with an Action delegate.  This allows you to implement for each task within the task decomposition as a single delegate. Typically, when using the new threading constructs in .NET 4 and the Task Parallel Library, we use lambda expressions to define anonymous methods.  The advantage of using a lambda expression is that it allows the Action delegate to directly use variables in the calling scope.  This eliminates the need to make separate Task classes for Action<T>, Action<T1,T2>, and all of the other Action<…> delegate types.  As an example, suppose we wanted to make a Task to handle the ”Show Splash” task from our earlier decomposition.  Even if this task required parameters, such as a message to display, we could still use an Action delegate specified via a lambda: // Store this as a local variable string messageForSplashScreen = GetSplashScreenMessage(); // Create our task Task showSplashTask = new Task( () => { // We can use variables in our outer scope, // as well as methods scoped to our class! this.DisplaySplashScreen(messageForSplashScreen); }); .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; } This provides a huge amount of flexibility.  We can use this single form of task for any task which performs an operation, provided the only information we need to track is whether the task has completed successfully or not.  This leads to my first observation: Use a Task with a System.Action delegate for any task for which no result is generated. This observation leads to an obvious corollary: we also need a way to define a task which generates a result.  The Task Parallel Library provides this via the Task<TResult> class. Task<TResult> subclasses the standard Task class, providing one additional feature – the ability to return a value back to the user of the task.  This is done by switching from providing an Action delegate to providing a Func<TResult> delegate.  If we decompose our problem, and we realize we have one task where its result is required by a future operation, this can be handled via Task<TResult>.  For example, suppose we want to make a task for our “Check for Update” task, we could do: Task<bool> checkForUpdateTask = new Task<bool>( () => { return this.CheckWebsiteForUpdate(); }); Later, we would start this task, and perform some other work.  At any point in the future, we could get the value from the Task<TResult>.Result property, which will cause our thread to block until the task has finished processing: // This uses Task<bool> checkForUpdateTask generated above... // Start the task, typically on a background thread checkForUpdateTask.Start(); // Do some other work on our current thread this.DoSomeWork(); // Discover, from our background task, whether an update is available // This will block until our task completes bool updateAvailable = checkForUpdateTask.Result; This leads me to my second observation: Use a Task<TResult> with a System.Func<TResult> delegate for any task which generates a result. Task and Task<TResult> provide a much cleaner alternative to the previous Asynchronous Programming design patterns in the .NET framework.  Instead of trying to implement IAsyncResult, and providing BeginXXX() and EndXXX() methods, implementing an asynchronous programming API can be as simple as creating a method that returns a Task or Task<TResult>.  The client side of the pattern also is dramatically simplified – the client can call a method, then either choose to call task.Wait() or use task.Result when it needs to wait for the operation’s completion. While this provides a much cleaner model for future APIs, there is quite a bit of infrastructure built around the current Asynchronous Programming design patterns.  In order to provide a model to work with existing APIs, two other forms of Task exist.  There is a constructor for Task which takes an Action<Object> and a state parameter.  In addition, there is a constructor for creating a Task<TResult> which takes a Func<Object, TResult> as well as a state parameter.  When using these constructors, the state parameter is stored in the Task.AsyncState property. While these two overloads exist, and are usable directly, I strongly recommend avoiding this for new development.  The two forms of Task which take an object state parameter exist primarily for interoperability with traditional .NET Asynchronous Programming methodologies.  Using lambda expressions to capture variables from the scope of the creator is a much cleaner approach than using the untyped state parameters, since lambda expressions provide full type safety without introducing new variables.

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• Conversation as User Assistance

  - by ultan o'broin

  Applications User Experience members (Erika Web, Laurie Pattison, and I) attended the User Assistance Europe Conference in Stockholm, Sweden. We were impressed with the thought leadership and practical application of ideas in Anne Gentle's keynote address "Social Web Strategies for Documentation". After the conference, we spoke with Anne to explore the ideas further. Anne Gentle (left) with Applications User Experience Senior Director Laurie Pattison In Anne's book called Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation, she explains how user assistance is undergoing a seismic shift. The direction is away from the old print manuals and online help concept towards a web-based, user community-driven solution using social media tools. User experience professionals now have a vast range of such tools to start and nurture this "conversation": blogs, wikis, forums, social networking sites, microblogging systems, image and video sharing sites, virtual worlds, podcasts, instant messaging, mashups, and so on. That user communities are a rich source of user assistance is not a surprise, but the extent of available assistance is. For example, we know from the Consortium for Service Innovation that there has been an 'explosion' of user-generated content on the web. User-initiated community conversations provide as much as 30 times the number of official help desk solutions for consortium members! The growing reliance on user community solutions is clearly a user experience issue. Anne says that user assistance as conversation "means getting closer to users and helping them perform well. User-centered design has been touted as one of the most important ideas developed in the last 20 years of workplace writing. Now writers can take the idea of user-centered design a step further by starting conversations with users and enabling user assistance in interactions." Some of Anne's favorite examples of this paradigm shift from the world of traditional documentation to community conversation include: Writer Bob Bringhurst's blog about Adobe InDesign and InCopy products and Adobe's community help The Microsoft Development Network Community Center ·The former Sun (now Oracle) OpenDS wiki, NetBeans Ruby and other community approaches to engage diverse audiences using screencasts, wikis, and blogs. Cisco's customer support wiki, EMC's community, as well as Symantec and Intuit's approaches The efforts of Ubuntu, Mozilla, and the FLOSS community generally Adobe Writer Bob Bringhurst's Blog Oracle is not without a user community conversation too. Besides the community discussions and blogs around documentation offerings, we have the My Oracle Support Community forums, Oracle Technology Network (OTN) communities, wiki, blogs, and so on. We have the great work done by our user groups and customer councils. Employees like David Haimes reach out, and enthusiastic non-employee gurus like Chet Justice (OracleNerd), Floyd Teter and Eddie Awad provide great "how-to" information too. But what does this paradigm shift mean for existing technical writers as users turn away from the traditional printable PDF manual deliverables? We asked Anne after the conference. The writer role becomes one of conversation initiator or enabler. The role evolves, along with the process, as the users define their concept of user assistance and terms of engagement with the product instead of having it pre-determined. It is largely a case now of "inventing the job while you're doing it, instead of being hired for it" Anne said. There is less emphasis on formal titles. Anne mentions that her own title "Content Stacker" at OpenStack; others use titles such as "Content Curator" or "Community Lead". However, the role remains one essentially about communications, "but of a new type--interacting with users, moderating, curating content, instead of sitting down to write a manual from start to finish." Clearly then, this role is open to more than professional technical writers. Product managers who write blogs, developers who moderate forums, support professionals who update wikis, rock star programmers with a penchant for YouTube are ideal. Anyone with the product knowledge, empathy for the user, and flair for relationships on the social web can join in. Some even perform these roles already but do not realize it. Anne feels the technical communicator space will move from hiring new community conversation professionals (who are already active in the space through blogging, tweets, wikis, and so on) to retraining some existing writers over time. Our own research reveals that the established proponents of community user assistance even set employee performance objectives for internal content curators about the amount of community content delivered by people outside the organization! To take advantage of the conversations on the web as user assistance, enterprises must first establish where on the spectrum their community lies. "What is the line between community willingness to contribute and the enterprise objectives?" Anne asked. "The relationship with users must be managed and also measured." Anne believes that the process can start with a "just do it" approach. Begin by reaching out to existing user groups, individual bloggers and tweeters, forum posters, early adopter program participants, conference attendees, customer advisory board members, and so on. Use analytical tools to measure the level of conversation about your products and services to show a return on investment (ROI), winning management support. Anne emphasized that success with the community model is dependent on lowering the technical and motivational barriers so that users can readily contribute to the conversation. Simple tools must be provided, and guidelines, if any, must be straightforward but not mandatory. The conversational approach is one where traditional style and branding guides do not necessarily apply. Tools and infrastructure help users to create content easily, to search and find the information online, read it, rate it, translate it, and participate further in the content's evolution. Recognizing contributors by using ratings on forums, giving out Twitter kudos, conference invitations, visits to headquarters, free products, preview releases, and so on, also encourages the adoption of the conversation model. The move to conversation as user assistance is not free, but there is a business ROI. The conversational model means that customer service is enhanced, as user experience moves from a functional to a valued, emotional level. Studies show a positive correlation between loyalty and financial performance (Consortium for Service Innovation, 2010), and as customer experience and loyalty become key differentiators, user experience professionals cannot explore the model's possibilities. The digital universe (measured at 1.2 million petabytes in 2010) is doubling every 12 to 18 months, and 70 percent of that universe consists of user-generated content (IDC, 2010). Conversation as user assistance cannot be ignored but must be embraced. It is a time to manage for abundance, not scarcity. Besides, the conversation approach certainly sounds more interesting, rewarding, and fun than the traditional model! I would like to thank Anne for her time and thoughts, and recommend that all user assistance professionals read her book. You can follow Anne on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/annegentle. Oracle's Acrolinx IQ deployment was used to author this article.

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• Introducing Oracle VM Server for SPARC

  - by Honglin Su

  As you are watching Oracle's Virtualization Strategy Webcast and exploring the great virtualization offerings of Oracle VM product line, I'd like to introduce Oracle VM Server for SPARC --  highly efficient, enterprise-class virtualization solution for Sun SPARC Enterprise Systems with Chip Multithreading (CMT) technology. Oracle VM Server for SPARC, previously called Sun Logical Domains, leverages the built-in SPARC hypervisor to subdivide supported platforms' resources (CPUs, memory, network, and storage) by creating partitions called logical (or virtual) domains. Each logical domain can run an independent operating system. Oracle VM Server for SPARC provides the flexibility to deploy multiple Oracle Solaris operating systems simultaneously on a single platform. Oracle VM Server also allows you to create up to 128 virtual servers on one system to take advantage of the massive thread scale offered by the CMT architecture. Oracle VM Server for SPARC integrates both the industry-leading CMT capability of the UltraSPARC T1, T2 and T2 Plus processors and the Oracle Solaris operating system. This combination helps to increase flexibility, isolate workload processing, and improve the potential for maximum server utilization. Oracle VM Server for SPARC delivers the following: Leading Price/Performance - The low-overhead architecture provides scalable performance under increasing workloads without additional license cost. This enables you to meet the most aggressive price/performance requirement Advanced RAS - Each logical domain is an entirely independent virtual machine with its own OS. It supports virtual disk mutipathing and failover as well as faster network failover with link-based IP multipathing (IPMP) support. Moreover, it's fully integrated with Solaris FMA (Fault Management Architecture), which enables predictive self healing. CPU Dynamic Resource Management (DRM) - Enable your resource management policy and domain workload to trigger the automatic addition and removal of CPUs. This ability helps you to better align with your IT and business priorities. Enhanced Domain Migrations - Perform domain migrations interactively and non-interactively to bring more flexibility to the management of your virtualized environment. Improve active domain migration performance by compressing memory transfers and taking advantage of cryptographic acceleration hardware. These methods provide faster migration for load balancing, power saving, and planned maintenance. Dynamic Crypto Control - Dynamically add and remove cryptographic units (aka MAU) to and from active domains. Also, migrate active domains that have cryptographic units. Physical-to-virtual (P2V) Conversion - Quickly convert an existing SPARC server running the Oracle Solaris 8, 9 or 10 OS into a virtualized Oracle Solaris 10 image. Use this image to facilitate OS migration into the virtualized environment. Virtual I/O Dynamic Reconfiguration (DR) - Add and remove virtual I/O services and devices without needing to reboot the system. CPU Power Management - Implement power saving by disabling each core on a Sun UltraSPARC T2 or T2 Plus processor that has all of its CPU threads idle. Advanced Network Configuration - Configure the following network features to obtain more flexible network configurations, higher performance, and scalability: Jumbo frames, VLANs, virtual switches for link aggregations, and network interface unit (NIU) hybrid I/O. Official Certification Based On Real-World Testing - Use Oracle VM Server for SPARC with the most sophisticated enterprise workloads under real-world conditions, including Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC). Affordable, Full-Stack Enterprise Class Support - Obtain worldwide support from Oracle for the entire virtualization environment and workloads together. The support covers hardware, firmware, OS, virtualization, and the software stack. SPARC Server Virtualization Oracle offers a full portfolio of virtualization solutions to address your needs. SPARC is the leading platform to have the hard partitioning capability that provides the physical isolation needed to run independent operating systems. Many customers have already used Oracle Solaris Containers for application isolation. Oracle VM Server for SPARC provides another important feature with OS isolation. This gives you the flexibility to deploy multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single Sun SPARC T-Series server with finer granularity for computing resources.  For SPARC CMT processors, the natural level of granularity is an execution thread, not a time-sliced microsecond of execution resources. Each CPU thread can be treated as an independent virtual processor. The scheduler is naturally built into the CPU for lower overhead and higher performance. Your organizations can couple Oracle Solaris Containers and Oracle VM Server for SPARC with the breakthrough space and energy savings afforded by Sun SPARC Enterprise systems with CMT technology to deliver a more agile, responsive, and low-cost environment. Management with Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center The Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center Virtualization Management Pack provides full lifecycle management of virtual guests, including Oracle VM Server for SPARC and Oracle Solaris Containers. It helps you streamline operations and reduce downtime. Together, the Virtualization Management Pack and the Ops Center Provisioning and Patch Automation Pack provide an end-to-end management solution for physical and virtual systems through a single web-based console. This solution automates the lifecycle management of physical and virtual systems and is the most effective systems management solution for Oracle's Sun infrastructure. Ease of Deployment with Configuration Assistant The Oracle VM Server for SPARC Configuration Assistant can help you easily create logical domains. After gathering the configuration data, the Configuration Assistant determines the best way to create a deployment to suit your requirements. The Configuration Assistant is available as both a graphical user interface (GUI) and terminal-based tool. Oracle Solaris Cluster HA Support The Oracle Solaris Cluster HA for Oracle VM Server for SPARC data service provides a mechanism for orderly startup and shutdown, fault monitoring and automatic failover of the Oracle VM Server guest domain service. In addition, applications that run on a logical domain, as well as its resources and dependencies can be controlled and managed independently. These are managed as if they were running in a classical Solaris Cluster hardware node. Supported Systems Oracle VM Server for SPARC is supported on all Sun SPARC Enterprise Systems with CMT technology. UltraSPARC T2 Plus Systems ·   Sun SPARC Enterprise T5140 Server ·   Sun SPARC Enterprise T5240 Server ·   Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 Server ·   Sun Netra T5440 Server ·   Sun Blade T6340 Server Module ·   Sun Netra T6340 Server Module UltraSPARC T2 Systems ·   Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 Server ·   Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 Server ·   Sun Netra T5220 Server ·   Sun Blade T6320 Server Module ·   Sun Netra CP3260 ATCA Blade Server Note that UltraSPARC T1 systems are supported on earlier versions of the software.Sun SPARC Enterprise Systems with CMT technology come with the right to use (RTU) of Oracle VM Server, and the software is pre-installed. If you have the systems under warranty or with support, you can download the software and system firmware as well as their updates. Oracle Premier Support for Systems provides fully-integrated support for your server hardware, firmware, OS, and virtualization software. Visit oracle.com/support for information about Oracle's support offerings for Sun systems. For more information about Oracle's virtualization offerings, visit oracle.com/virtualization.

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• Interesting things – Twitter annotations and your phone as a web server

  - by jamiet

  I overheard/read a couple of things today that really made me, data junkie that I am, take a step back and think, “Hmmm, yeah, that could be really interesting” and I wanted to make a note of them here so that (a) I could bring them to the attention of anyone that happens to read this and (b) I can maybe come back here in a few years and see if either of these have come to fruition. Your phone as a web server While listening to Jon Udell’s (twitter) “Interviews with Innovators Podcast” today in which he interviewed Herbert Van de Sompel (twitter) about his Momento project. During the interview Jon and Herbert made the following remarks: Jon: [some people] really had this vision of a web of servers, the notion that every node on the internet, every connected entity, is potentially a server and a client…we can see where we’re getting to a point where these endpoint devices we have in our pockets are going to be massively capable and it may be in the not too distant future that significant chunks of the web archive will be cached all over the place including on your own machine… Herbert: wasn’t it Opera who at one point turned your browser into a server? That really got my brain ticking. We all carry a mobile phone with us and therefore we all potentially carry a mobile web server with us as well and to my mind the only thing really stopping that from happening is the capabilities of the phone hardware, the capabilities of the network infrastructure and the will to just bloody do it. Certainly all the standards required for addressing a web server on a phone already exist (to this uninitiated observer DNS and IPv6 seem to solve that problem) so why not? I tweeted about the idea and Rory Street answered back with “why would you want a phone to be a web server?”: Its a fair question and one that I would like to try and answer. Mobile phones are increasingly becoming our window onto the world as we use them to upload messages to Twitter, record our location on FourSquare or interact with our friends on Facebook but in each of these cases some other service is acting as our intermediary; to see what I’m thinking you have to go via Twitter, to see where I am you have to go to FourSquare (I’m using ‘I’ liberally, I don’t actually use FourSquare before you ask). Why should this have to be the case? Why can’t that data be decentralised? Why can’t we be masters of our own data universe? If my phone acted as a web server then I could expose all of that information without needing those intermediary services. I see a time when we can pass around URLs such as the following: http://jamiesphone.net/location/current - Where is Jamie right now? http://jamiesphone.net/location/2010-04-21 – Where was Jamie on 21st April 2010? http://jamiesphone.net/thoughts/current – What’s on Jamie’s mind right now? http://jamiesphone.net/blog – What documents is Jamie sharing with me? http://jamiesphone.net/calendar/next7days – Where is Jamie planning to be over the next 7 days? and those URLs get served off of the phone in our pockets. If we govern that data then we can control who has access to it and (crucially) how long its available for. Want to wipe yourself off the face of the web? its pretty easy if you’re in control of all the data – just turn your phone off. None of this exists today but I look forward to a time when it does. Opera really were onto something last June when they announced Opera Unite (admittedly Unite only works because Opera provide an intermediary DNS-alike system – it isn’t totally decentralised). Opening up Twitter annotations Last week Twitter held their first developer conference called Chirp where they announced an upcoming new feature called ‘Twitter Annotations’; in short this will allow us to attach metadata to a Tweet thus enhancing the tweet itself. Think of it as a richer version of hashtags. To think of it another way Twitter are turning their data into a humongous Entity-Attribute-Value or triple-tuple store. That alone has huge implications both for the web and Twitter as a whole – the ability to enrich that 140 characters data and thus make it more useful is indeed compelling however today I stumbled upon a blog post from Eugene Mandel entitled Tweet Annotations – a Way to a Metadata Marketplace? where he proposed the idea of allowing tweets to have metadata added by people other than the person who tweeted the original tweet. This idea really fascinated me especially when I read some of the potential uses that Eugene and his commenters suggested. They included: Amazon could attach an ISBN to a tweet that mentions a book. Specialist clients apps for book lovers could be built up around this metadata. Advertisers could pay to place adverts in metadata. The revenue generated from those adverts could be shared with the tweeter or people who add the metadata. Granted, allowing anyone to add metadata to a tweet has the potential to create a spam problem the like of which we haven’t even envisaged but spam hasn’t halted the growth of the web and neither should it halt the growth of data annotations either. The original tweeter should of course be able to determine who can add metadata and whether it should be moderated. As Eugene says himself: Opening publishing tweet annotations to anyone will open the way to a marketplace of metadata where client developers, data mining companies and advertisers can add new meaning to Twitter and build innovative businesses. What Eugene and his followers did not mention is what I think is potentially the most fascinating use of opening up annotations. Google’s success today is built on their page rank algorithm that measures the validity of a web page by the number of incoming links to it and the page rank of the sites containing those links – its a system built on reputation. Twitter annotations could open up a new paradigm however – let’s call it People rank- where reputation can be measured by the metadata that people choose to apply to links and the websites containing those links. Its not hard to see why Google and Microsoft have paid big bucks to get access to the Twitter firehose! Neither of these features, phones as a web server or the ability to add annotations to other people’s tweets, exist today but I strongly believe that they could dramatically enhance the web as we know it today. I hope to look back on this blog post in a few years in the knowledge that these ideas have been put into place. @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Bye Bye Year of the Dragon, Hello BPM

  - by Ajay Khanna

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} As 2012 fades and we usher in a New Year, let’s look back at some of the hottest BPM trends and those we’ll be seeing more of in the coming months. BPM is as much about people as it is about technology. As people adopt new ways of engagement, new channels of communications and new devices to interact , the changes are reflected in BPM practices. As Social and Mobile have become an integral part of our personal and professional lives, we’ll see tighter integration of social and mobile with BPM, and more use cases emerging for smarter process management in 2013. And with products and services becoming less differentiated, organizations will strive to differentiate on Customer Experience. Concepts like Pace Layered Architecture and Dynamic Case Management will provide more flexibility and agility to IT groups and knowledge workers. Take a look at some of these capabilities we showcased (see video) at Oracle OpenWorld 2012. Some of these trends that will continue to gain momentum in 2013: Social networks and social media have provided a new way for businesses to engage with customers. A prospect is likely to reach out to their social network before making any purchase. Companies are increasingly engaging with customers in social networks to influence their purchasing decisions, as well as listening to customers via tools like sentiment analysis to see what customers think about a particular product or process. These insights are valuable as companies look to improve their processes. Inside organizations, workers are using social tools to engage with each other to design new products and processes. Social collaboration tools are being used to resolve issues where an employee needs consultation to reach a decision. Oracle BPM Suite includes social interaction as an integral part of its process design and work management to empower today’s business users. Ubiquitous smart mobile devices are trending as a tool of choice for many workers. Many companies are adopting the policy of “Bring Your Own Device,” and the device of choice is a tablet. Devices like smart phones and tablets not only provide mobility to workers and customers, but they also provide additional important information – the context. By integrating the mobile context (location, photos, and preferences) into your processes, organizations can make much more informed decisions, as well as offer more personalized service to customers. Using Oracle ADF Mobile, you can easily create user interfaces for mobile devices and also capture location data for process execution. Customer experience was at the forefront of trending topics in 2012. Organizations are trying to understand their customers better and offer them more personalized and differentiated services. Customer experience is paramount when companies design sales and support processes. Companies are looking to BPM to consistently and efficiently orchestrate customer facing processes across disparate systems, departments and channels of communication. Oracle BPM Suite provides just the right capabilities for organizations to design and deliver an excellent customer experience. Pace Layered Architecture strategy is gaining traction as a way to maximize agility and minimize disruption in organizations. It provides a framework to manage the evolution of your information system when different pieces of it are changing at different rates and need to be updated independent of one another. Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle BPM Suite are designed with this in mind. The database layer, integration layer, application layer, and process layer should not be required to change at the same time. Most of the business changes to policy or process can be done at the process layer without disrupting the whole infrastructure. By understanding the type of change needed at a particular level, organizations can become much more agile and efficient. Adaptive Case Management proposes more flexibility to manage processes or cases that do not follow a structured process flow. In such situations, the knowledge worker managing the case needs to evaluate what step should occur next because the sequence of steps can’t be predetermined. Another characteristic is that it requires much more collaboration than straight-through process. As simple processes become automated, and customers adopt more and more self-service, cases that reach the case workers are much more complex and need more investigation. Oracle BPM suite includes comprehensive adaptive case management capability to manage such unstructured and complex processes. Smart BPM or making your BPM intelligent has been the holy grail for BPM practitioners who imagined that one day BPM would become one with Business Intelligence, Business Activity Monitoring and Complex Event Processing, making it much more responsive and helpful in organizational decision making. In 2013, organizations will begin to deploy these intelligent BPM solutions. Oracle offers an integrated solution that brings together the powerful functionality of BI, BAM, event processing, and Real Time Decisions to help organizations create smart process based solutions. In order to help customers reach their BPM goals faster and remove risks associated with BPM initiatives, Oracle has introduced Oracle Process Accelerators, pre-built best practices applications built on Oracle BPM Suite that are fully production grade and ready to deploy. These are exiting times for BPM practitioners and there is so much to look forward to in 2013. We wish you a very happy and prosperous New Year 2013. Happy BPMing!

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• Soapi.CS : A fully relational fluent .NET Stack Exchange API client library

  - by Sky Sanders

  Soapi.CS for .Net / Silverlight / Windows Phone 7 / Mono as easy as breathing...: var context = new ApiContext(apiKey).Initialize(false); Question thisPost = context.Official .StackApps .Questions.ById(386) .WithComments(true) .First(); Console.WriteLine(thisPost.Title); thisPost .Owner .Questions .PageSize(5) .Sort(PostSort.Votes) .ToList() .ForEach(q=> { Console.WriteLine("\t" + q.Score + "\t" + q.Title); q.Timeline.ToList().ForEach(t=> Console.WriteLine("\t\t" + t.TimelineType + "\t" + t.Owner.DisplayName)); Console.WriteLine(); }); // if you can think it, you can get it. Output Soapi.CS : A fully relational fluent .NET Stack Exchange API client library 21 Soapi.CS : A fully relational fluent .NET Stack Exchange API client library Revision code poet Revision code poet Votes code poet Votes code poet Revision code poet Revision code poet Revision code poet Votes code poet Votes code poet Votes code poet Revision code poet Revision code poet Revision code poet Revision code poet Revision code poet Revision code poet Revision code poet Revision code poet Revision code poet Revision code poet Votes code poet Comment code poet Revision code poet Votes code poet Revision code poet Revision code poet Revision code poet Answer code poet Revision code poet Revision code poet 14 SOAPI-WATCH: A realtime service that notifies subscribers via twitter when the API changes in any way. Votes code poet Revision code poet Votes code poet Comment code poet Comment code poet Comment code poet Votes lfoust Votes code poet Comment code poet Comment code poet Comment code poet Comment code poet Revision code poet Comment lfoust Votes code poet Revision code poet Votes code poet Votes lfoust Votes code poet Revision code poet Comment Dave DeLong Revision code poet Revision code poet Votes code poet Comment lfoust Comment Dave DeLong Comment lfoust Comment lfoust Comment Dave DeLong Revision code poet 11 SOAPI-EXPLORE: Self-updating single page JavaSript API test harness Votes code poet Votes code poet Votes code poet Votes code poet Votes code poet Comment code poet Revision code poet Votes code poet Revision code poet Revision code poet Revision code poet Comment code poet Revision code poet Votes code poet Comment code poet Question code poet Votes code poet 11 Soapi.JS V1.0: fluent JavaScript wrapper for the StackOverflow API Comment George Edison Comment George Edison Comment George Edison Comment George Edison Comment George Edison Comment George Edison Answer George Edison Votes code poet Votes code poet Votes code poet Votes code poet Revision code poet Revision code poet Answer code poet Comment code poet Revision code poet Comment code poet Comment code poet Comment code poet Revision code poet Revision code poet Votes code poet Votes code poet Votes code poet Votes code poet Comment code poet Comment code poet Comment code poet Comment code poet Comment code poet 9 SOAPI-DIFF: Your app broke? Check SOAPI-DIFF to find out what changed in the API Votes code poet Revision code poet Comment Dennis Williamson Answer Dennis Williamson Votes code poet Votes Dennis Williamson Comment code poet Question code poet Votes code poet About A robust, fully relational, easy to use, strongly typed, end-to-end StackOverflow API Client Library. Out of the box, Soapi provides you with a robust client library that abstracts away most all of the messy details of consuming the API and lets you concentrate on implementing your ideas. A few features include: A fully relational model of the API data set exposed via a fully 'dot navigable' IEnumerable (LINQ) implementation. Simply tell Soapi what you want and it will get it for you. e.g. "On my first question, from the author of the first comment, get the first page of comments by that person on any post" my.Questions.First().Comments.First().Owner.Comments.ToList(); (yes this is a real expression that returns the data as expressed!) Full coverage of the API, all routes and all parameters with an intuitive syntax. Strongly typed Domain Data Objects for all API data structures. Eager and Lazy Loading of 'stub' objects. Eager\Lazy loading may be disabled. When finer grained control of requests is desired, the core RouteMap objects may be leveraged to request data from any of the API paths using all available parameters as documented on the help pages. A rich Asynchronous implementation. A configurable request cache to reduce unnecessary network traffic and to simplify your usage logic. There is no need to go out of your way to be frugal. You may set a distinct cache duration for any particular route. A configurable request throttle to ensure compliance with the api terms of usage and to simplify your code in that you do not have to worry about and respond to 50X errors. The RequestCache and Throttled Queue are thread-safe, so can make as many requests as you like from as many threads as you like as fast as you like and not worry about abusing the api or having to write reams of management/compensation code. Configurable retry threshold that will, by default, make up to 3 attempts to retrieve a request before failing. Every request made by Soapi is properly formed and directed so most any http error will be the result of a timeout or other network infrastructure. A retry buffer provides a level of fault tolerance that you can rely on. An almost identical javascript library, Soapi.JS, and it's full figured big brother, Soapi.JS2, that will enable you to leverage your server cycles and bandwidth for only those tasks that require it and offload things like status updates to the client's browser. License Licensed GPL Version 2 license. Why is Soapi.CS GPL? Can I get an LGPL license for Soapi.CS? (hint: probably) Platforms .NET 3.5 .NET 4.0 Silverlight 3 Silverlight 4 Windows Phone 7 Mono Download Source code lives @ http://soapics.codeplex.com. Binary releases are forthcoming. codeplex is acting up again. get the source and binaries @ http://bitbucket.org/bitpusher/soapi.cs/downloads The source is C# 3.5. and includes projects and solutions for the following IDEs Visual Studio 2008 Visual Studio 2010 ModoDevelop 2.4 Documentation Full documentation is available at http://soapi.info/help/cs/index.aspx Sample Code / Usage Examples Sample code and usage examples will be added as answers to this question. Full API Coverage all API routes are covered Full Parameter Parity If the API exposes it, Soapi giftwraps it for you. Building a simple app with Soapi.CS - a simple app that gathers all traces of a user in the whole stackiverse. Fluent Configuration - Setting up a Soapi.ApiContext could not be easier Bulk Data Import - A tiny app that quickly loads a SQLite data file with all users in the stackiverse. Paged Results - Soapi.CS transparently handles multi-page operations. Asynchronous Requests - Soapi.CS provides a rich asynchronous model that is especially useful when writing api apps in Silverlight or Windows Phone 7. Caching and Throttling - how and why Apps that use Soapi.CS Soapi.FindUser - .net utility for locating a user anywhere in the stackiverse Soapi.Explore - The entire API at your command Soapi.LastSeen - List users by last access time Add your app/site here - I know you are out there ;-) if you are not comfortable editing this post, simply add a comment and I will add it. The CS/SL/WP7/MONO libraries all compile the same code and with the exception of environmental considerations of Silverlight, the code samples are valid for all libraries. You may also find guidance in the test suites. More information on the SOAPI eco-system. Contact This library is currently the effort of me, Sky Sanders (code poet) and can be reached at gmail - sky.sanders Any who are interested in improving this library are welcome. Support Soapi You can help support this project by voting for Soapi's Open Source Ad post For more information about the origins of Soapi.CS and the rest of the Soapi eco-system see What is Soapi and why should I care?

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• Cloud MBaaS : The Next Big Thing in Enterprise Mobility

  - by shiju

  In this blog post, I will take a look at Cloud Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS) and how we can leverage Cloud based Mobile Backend as a Service for building enterprise mobile apps. Today, mobile apps are incredibly significant in both consumer and enterprise space and the demand for the mobile apps is unbelievably increasing in day to day business. An enterprise can’t survive in business without a proper mobility strategy. A better mobility strategy and faster delivery of your mobile apps will give you an extra mileage for your business and IT strategy. So organizations and mobile developers are looking for different strategy for meeting this demand and adopting different development strategy for their mobile apps. Some developers are adopting hybrid mobile app development platforms, for delivering their products for multiple platforms, for fast time-to-market. Others are adopting a Mobile enterprise application platform (MEAP) such as Kony for their enterprise mobile apps for fast time-to-market and better business integration. The Challenges of Enterprise Mobility The real challenge of enterprise mobile apps, is not about creating the front-end environment or developing front-end for multiple platforms. The most important thing of enterprise mobile apps is to expose your enterprise data to mobile devices where the real pain is your business data might be residing in lot of different systems including legacy systems, ERP systems etc., and these systems will be deployed with lot of security restrictions. Exposing your data from the on-premises servers, is not a easy thing for most of the business organizations. Many organizations are spending too much time for their front-end development strategy, but they are really lacking for building a strategy on their back-end for exposing the business data to mobile apps. So building a REST services layer and mobile back-end services, on the top of legacy systems and existing middleware systems, is the key part of most of the enterprise mobile apps, where multiple mobile platforms can easily consume these REST services and other mobile back-end services for building mobile apps. For some mobile apps, we can’t predict its user base, especially for products where customers can gradually increase at any time. And for today’s mobile apps, faster time-to-market is very critical so that spending too much time for mobile app’s scalability, will not be worth. The real power of Cloud is the agility and on-demand scalability, where we can scale-up and scale-down our applications very easily. It would be great if we could use the power of Cloud to mobile apps. So using Cloud for mobile apps is a natural fit, where we can use Cloud as the storage for mobile apps and hosting mechanism for mobile back-end services, where we can enjoy the full power of Cloud with greater level of on-demand scalability and operational agility. So Cloud based Mobile Backend as a Service is great choice for building enterprise mobile apps, where enterprises can enjoy the massive scalability power of their mobile apps, provided by public cloud vendors such as Microsoft Windows Azure. Mobile Backend as a Service (MBaaS) We have discussed the key challenges of enterprise mobile apps and how we can leverage Cloud for hosting mobile backend services. MBaaS is a set of cloud-based, server-side mobile services for multiple mobile platforms and HTML5 platform, which can be used as a backend for your mobile apps with the scalability power of Cloud. The information below provides the key features of a typical MBaaS platform: Cloud based storage for your application data. Automatic REST API services on the application data, for CRUD operations. Native push notification services with massive scalability power. User management services for authenticate users. User authentication via Social accounts such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter. Scheduler services for periodically sending data to mobile devices. Native SDKs for multiple mobile platforms such as Windows Phone and Windows Store, Android, Apple iOS, and HTML5, for easily accessing the mobile services from mobile apps, with better security.  Typically, a MBaaS platform will provide native SDKs for multiple mobile platforms so that we can easily consume the server-side mobile services. MBaaS based REST APIs can use for integrating to enterprise backend systems. We can use the same mobile services for multiple platform so hat we can reuse the application logic to multiple mobile platforms. Public cloud vendors are building the mobile services on the top of their PaaS offerings. Windows Azure Mobile Services is a great platform for a MBaaS offering that is leveraging Windows Azure Cloud platform’s PaaS capabilities. Hybrid mobile development platform Titanium provides their own MBaaS services. LoopBack is a new MBaaS service provided by Node.js consulting firm StrongLoop, which can be hosted on multiple cloud platforms and also for on-premises servers. The Challenges of MBaaS Solutions If you are building your mobile apps with a new data storage, it will be very easy, since there is not any integration challenges you have to face. But most of the use cases, you have to extract your application data in which stored in on-premises servers which might be under VPNs and firewalls. So exposing these data to your MBaaS solution with a proper security would be a big challenge. The capability of your MBaaS vendor is very important as you have to interact with your legacy systems for many enterprise mobile apps. So you should be very careful about choosing for MBaaS vendor. At the same time, you should have a proper strategy for mobilizing your application data which stored in on-premises legacy systems, where your solution architecture and strategy is more important than platforms and tools.  Windows Azure Mobile Services Windows Azure Mobile Services is an MBaaS offerings from Windows Azure cloud platform. IMHO, Microsoft Windows Azure is the best PaaS platform in the Cloud space. Windows Azure Mobile Services extends the PaaS capabilities of Windows Azure, to mobile devices, which can be used as a cloud backend for your mobile apps, which will provide global availability and reach for your mobile apps. Windows Azure Mobile Services provides storage services, user management with social network integration, push notification services and scheduler services and provides native SDKs for all major mobile platforms and HTML5. In Windows Azure Mobile Services, you can write server-side scripts in Node.js where you can enjoy the full power of Node.js including the use of NPM modules for your server-side scripts. In the previous section, we had discussed some challenges of MBaaS solutions. You can leverage Windows Azure Cloud platform for solving many challenges regarding with enterprise mobility. The entire Windows Azure platform can play a key role for working as the backend for your mobile apps where you can leverage the entire Windows Azure platform for your mobile apps. With Windows Azure, you can easily connect to your on-premises systems which is a key thing for mobile backend solutions. Another key point is that Windows Azure provides better integration with services like Active Directory, which makes Windows Azure as the de facto platform for enterprise mobility, for enterprises, who have been leveraging Microsoft ecosystem for their application and IT infrastructure. Windows Azure Mobile Services  is going to next evolution where you can expect some exciting features in near future. One area, where Windows Azure Mobile Services should definitely need an improvement, is about the default storage mechanism in which currently it is depends on SQL Server. IMHO, developers should be able to choose multiple default storage option when creating a new mobile service instance. Let’s say, there should be a different storage providers such as SQL Server storage provider and Table storage provider where developers should be able to choose their choice of storage provider when creating a new mobile services project. I have been used Windows Azure and Windows Azure Mobile Services as the backend for production apps for mobile, where it performed very well. MBaaS Over MEAP Recently, many larger enterprises has been adopted Mobile enterprise application platform (MEAP) for their mobile apps. I haven’t worked on any production MEAP solution, but I heard that developers are really struggling with MEAP in different way. The learning curve for a proprietary MEAP platform is very high. I am completely against for using larger proprietary ecosystem for mobile apps. For enterprise mobile apps, I highly recommend to use native iOS/Android/Windows Phone or HTML5  for front-end with a cloud hosted MBaaS solution as the middleware. A MBaaS service can be consumed from multiple mobile apps where REST APIs are using to integrating with enterprise backend systems. Enterprise mobility should start with exposing REST APIs on the enterprise backend systems and these REST APIs can host on Cloud where we can enjoy the power of Cloud for our services. If you are having REST APIs for your enterprise data, then you can easily build mobile frontends for multiple platforms.   You can follow me on Twitter @shijucv

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• Class-Level Model Validation with EF Code First and ASP.NET MVC 3

  - by ScottGu

  Earlier this week the data team released the CTP5 build of the new Entity Framework Code-First library.  In my blog post a few days ago I talked about a few of the improvements introduced with the new CTP5 build.  Automatic support for enforcing DataAnnotation validation attributes on models was one of the improvements I discussed.  It provides a pretty easy way to enable property-level validation logic within your model layer. You can apply validation attributes like [Required], [Range], and [RegularExpression] – all of which are built-into .NET 4 – to your model classes in order to enforce that the model properties are valid before they are persisted to a database.  You can also create your own custom validation attributes (like this cool [CreditCard] validator) and have them be automatically enforced by EF Code First as well.  This provides a really easy way to validate property values on your models.  I showed some code samples of this in action in my previous post. Class-Level Model Validation using IValidatableObject DataAnnotation attributes provides an easy way to validate individual property values on your model classes.  Several people have asked - “Does EF Code First also support a way to implement class-level validation methods on model objects, for validation rules than need to span multiple property values?”  It does – and one easy way you can enable this is by implementing the IValidatableObject interface on your model classes. IValidatableObject.Validate() Method Below is an example of using the IValidatableObject interface (which is built-into .NET 4 within the System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations namespace) to implement two custom validation rules on a Product model class.  The two rules ensure that: New units can’t be ordered if the Product is in a discontinued state New units can’t be ordered if there are already more than 100 units in stock We will enforce these business rules by implementing the IValidatableObject interface on our Product class, and by implementing its Validate() method like so: The IValidatableObject.Validate() method can apply validation rules that span across multiple properties, and can yield back multiple validation errors. Each ValidationResult returned can supply both an error message as well as an optional list of property names that caused the violation (which is useful when displaying error messages within UI). Automatic Validation Enforcement EF Code-First (starting with CTP5) now automatically invokes the Validate() method when a model object that implements the IValidatableObject interface is saved.  You do not need to write any code to cause this to happen – this support is now enabled by default. This new support means that the below code – which violates one of our above business rules – will automatically throw an exception (and abort the transaction) when we call the “SaveChanges()” method on our Northwind DbContext: In addition to reactively handling validation exceptions, EF Code First also allows you to proactively check for validation errors.  Starting with CTP5, you can call the “GetValidationErrors()” method on the DbContext base class to retrieve a list of validation errors within the model objects you are working with.  GetValidationErrors() will return a list of all validation errors – regardless of whether they are generated via DataAnnotation attributes or by an IValidatableObject.Validate() implementation.  Below is an example of proactively using the GetValidationErrors() method to check (and handle) errors before trying to call SaveChanges(): ASP.NET MVC 3 and IValidatableObject ASP.NET MVC 2 included support for automatically honoring and enforcing DataAnnotation attributes on model objects that are used with ASP.NET MVC’s model binding infrastructure.  ASP.NET MVC 3 goes further and also honors the IValidatableObject interface.  This combined support for model validation makes it easy to display appropriate error messages within forms when validation errors occur.  To see this in action, let’s consider a simple Create form that allows users to create a new Product: We can implement the above Create functionality using a ProductsController class that has two “Create” action methods like below: The first Create() method implements a version of the /Products/Create URL that handles HTTP-GET requests - and displays the HTML form to fill-out.  The second Create() method implements a version of the /Products/Create URL that handles HTTP-POST requests - and which takes the posted form data, ensures that is is valid, and if it is valid saves it in the database.  If there are validation issues it redisplays the form with the posted values.  The razor view template of our “Create” view (which renders the form) looks like below: One of the nice things about the above Controller + View implementation is that we did not write any validation logic within it.  The validation logic and business rules are instead implemented entirely within our model layer, and the ProductsController simply checks whether it is valid (by calling the ModelState.IsValid helper method) to determine whether to try and save the changes or redisplay the form with errors. The Html.ValidationMessageFor() helper method calls within our view simply display the error messages our Product model’s DataAnnotations and IValidatableObject.Validate() method returned.  We can see the above scenario in action by filling out invalid data within the form and attempting to submit it: Notice above how when we hit the “Create” button we got an error message.  This was because we ticked the “Discontinued” checkbox while also entering a value for the UnitsOnOrder (and so violated one of our business rules).  You might ask – how did ASP.NET MVC know to highlight and display the error message next to the UnitsOnOrder textbox?  It did this because ASP.NET MVC 3 now honors the IValidatableObject interface when performing model binding, and will retrieve the error messages from validation failures with it. The business rule within our Product model class indicated that the “UnitsOnOrder” property should be highlighted when the business rule we hit was violated: Our Html.ValidationMessageFor() helper method knew to display the business rule error message (next to the UnitsOnOrder edit box) because of the above property name hint we supplied: Keeping things DRY ASP.NET MVC and EF Code First enables you to keep your validation and business rules in one place (within your model layer), and avoid having it creep into your Controllers and Views.  Keeping the validation logic in the model layer helps ensure that you do not duplicate validation/business logic as you add more Controllers and Views to your application.  It allows you to quickly change your business rules/validation logic in one single place (within your model layer) – and have all controllers/views across your application immediately reflect it.  This help keep your application code clean and easily maintainable, and makes it much easier to evolve and update your application in the future. Summary EF Code First (starting with CTP5) now has built-in support for both DataAnnotations and the IValidatableObject interface.  This allows you to easily add validation and business rules to your models, and have EF automatically ensure that they are enforced anytime someone tries to persist changes of them to a database.  ASP.NET MVC 3 also now supports both DataAnnotations and IValidatableObject as well, which makes it even easier to use them with your EF Code First model layer – and then have the controllers/views within your web layer automatically honor and support them as well.  This makes it easy to build clean and highly maintainable applications. You don’t have to use DataAnnotations or IValidatableObject to perform your validation/business logic.  You can always roll your own custom validation architecture and/or use other more advanced validation frameworks/patterns if you want.  But for a lot of applications this built-in support will probably be sufficient – and provide a highly productive way to build solutions. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 14, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 14, 2010New ProjectsBD File Hash: BD File Hash is a convenient file hash and hash compare tool for Windows which currently works with MD5, SHA-1, and SHA-256 algorithms. FileScan: This is an application that searches through a drive or directory structure for files matching a filter. This project was converted from VB to ...genesis9: genesis9HeinanOS: HeinanOS is an operating system developed mainly in C++. HeinanOS is a light OS (1.44 MB image) with a lot of capabilites and many more are being ...MediaBrowserWS - Creates a Web Service for the popular MediaBrowser plugin: Creates a web service in Media Center for accessing your MediaBrowser collection. Allows for external devices (Tablets/phones/laptops) to access a ...MME: New Edition of Managed Menu Extensions for Visual Studio 2010 The Main goal of "MME" is to provide easy access to adding Right Click menus in the ...MVMMapper: Generate the ViewModel and its mapping to the Model when implementing MVVM in .NET. Developed using T4 templates. Current version supports Silver...ProjectArDotNet: Si te agarro te parto! Si te agarro te emperno no me importa que seas menor de edad!Scriptagility for DotNetNuke: Scriptagility is a DotNetNuke module for Javascript developers. This module provides dynamic client scripting infrastructure for developing javascr...simpleLinux Distro: SimpleLinux. is a Linux distributions that is easy to use. Simple Linux website: http://simplelinux.tkTag Cloud Control for asp.net: Tag Cloud Control for asp.net allows the user to display the most important keywords to display in tag cloud. Each Tag has it own navigation url to...thefreeimdb: fsadie qwUppityUp: UppityUp is a simple and light-weight tray application which monitors a remote server and shows a notification when it comes online. This is usefu...Vivid3D 2 - DirectX 10 3D ToolKit: The sequel to my first ever engine wrote several years ago. It is not based on it in anyway. VSIDev: VSI DevXTQXK_WORK: Actionscript 3.0东坡博客: 这是一个ASP。net mvc 2博客。New Releases.NET Extensions - Extension Methods Library: Release 2010.08: Added extension methods for Bitmap manipulation (scaling for now): - Bitmap.ScaleToSize() - Bitmap.ScaleToSizeProportional() - Bitmap.ScaleProport...Black Falcon Software's Database Data-Access-Layers: “SQLHELPER”, “ORAHELPER” - Handling Binary Data: See attached document...BTech Networking Library: BTech Networking Library: Same as pervious just new namespace, extended networking coming soon!!!Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V37: Release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open source NNTP bridge. This release has ad...Generic Entity Model 2: GEM2 build 54383: This is second BETA release of GEM2! Please see source code change sets for updates! Following implementation is not included in this release: My...Hades: Projet Hadès - Official Demo - Version 0.1.0 Beta: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Projet Hadès - Official Demo - Version 0.1.0 Beta ------------------...HeinanOS: HeinanOS M1 Source Code: You can download HeinanOS M1 Source Code and contribute to HeinanOS development! Be aware that you should not use this code for your own systems! ...HeinanOS: Milestone 1: This is the first major release for HeinanOS 1.0 Please note this is a PRE-RELEASE! This release includes the following features: -Bootable DOS-...HKGolden Express: HKGoldenExpress (Build 201006131900): New features: (None) Bug fix: Incorrect message submit date of message/ replies. (Note: Showing message submit date is enabled since Build 20100...HKGolden Express: HKGoldenExpress (Build 201006140110): New features: (None) Bug fix: (None) Improvements: (None) Other changes: Set time zone of message date as Hong Kong. Adjusted the format of messa...MediaCoder.NET: MediaCoder.NET v1.0 Beta 1.5: Installer file for MediaCoder.NET v1.0 beta 1.5. Now converts multiple files.MME: First release: Features of this release 1. One installer MME.msi. However you can also install MMEMenuManagerSetup.vsix which installs a project template that e...MSBuild Launch Pad (mPad): 1.1 Beta 1: Platform selection box is added.MVMMapper: MVMMapper Release v 1.0.1: This release has no downloadable documentation. Please use the Documentation section to get started.NginxTray: NginxTray 0.7 RC2: NginxTray 0.7 RC2PowerAuras: PowerAuras-3.0.0K-beta3: New Auras: Item Name Equipment Slot Tracking Changes from beta1 5 new aura textures Fixed Tracking bug Added graphical equipment slot sele...PowerAuras: PowerAuras-3.0.0K-beta4: New Auras: Item Name Equipment Slot Tracking Changes from beta1 5 new aura textures Fixed Tracking bug Added graphical equipment slot sele...Scriptagility for DotNetNuke: Scriptagility 1.0 (Beta): Initial public release please evaluate and feedbackSharpDevelop: SharpDevelop 4.0 Beta 1: Release notes: http://community.sharpdevelop.net/forums/t/11388.aspxsimpleLinux Distro: Project X3: This is an example of download for simpleLinuxSOAPI - StackOverflow API Parser/Wrapper Generator: SOAPI Beta 3: The SOAPI Beta 3 download will be made availabe later today when the initial documentation is complete. The previously available Beta 1 download h...Sofa: Initial release V1.0: This is the first release of Sofa. As it is made of code being previously used, as we tested it is a stable release. But bugs are always possible,...Tag Cloud Control for asp.net: Tag Cloud Control for asp.net: Tag Cloud Control for asp.net allows the user to display the most important keywords to display in tag cloud. Each Tag has it own navigation url to...UppityUp: UppityUp v0.1: First functional version, supports monitoring availability by ping (ICMP) requests. Fit for general use. Consists of one standalone .exe file - no...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30613.0: Automatic drop of latest buildWindStyle ExifInfo for Windows Live Writer: 1.1.0.0: Add: Multiple Language(English and Simplified Chinese); Add: Insert multiple files; Fix: Error when insert pictures without Exif info; Update: Icon...Work Recorder - Hold on own time!: WorkRecorder 1.2: +Add a whole day chartXsltDb - DotNetNuke Module Builder: 01.01.24: Syntax highlighting delivered!New samples for RadControls. On single page you can find RadTreeView, RadRating, RadChart, RadFormDecorator, RadEdito...xUnit.net Contrib: xunitcontrib 0.4 (ReSharper 5.0 RTM + dotCover): xunitcontrib release 0.4 (ReSharper runner) This release provides a test runner plugin for Resharper 5.0, 4.5 and 4.1, targetting all versions of x...Most Popular ProjectsCommunity Forums NNTP bridgeRIA Services EssentialsNeatUploadBxf (Basic XAML Framework)Agile Personal Development Methodology.NET Transactional File ManagerSOLID by exampleASP.NET MVC Time PlannerWEI ShareSiverlight ProjectMost Active ProjectsjQuery Library for SharePoint Web Servicespatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleRhyduino - Arduino and Managed CodeCommunity Forums NNTP bridgeCassandraemonBlogEngine.NETLightweight Fluent WorkflowMediaCoder.NETAndrew's XNA Helpers

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• WWDC and Tech Ed: A Tale of Two DevCons

  - by andrewbrust

  Next week marks the first full week of June.  Summer will feel in full swing and it will be a pretty big season for technology.  In seeming acknowledgement of that very fact, both Apple and Microsoft will be holding large developers conferences starting Monday.  Apple will hold its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in lovely San Francisco and Microsoft will hold its Tech Ed conference in muggy, oil-laden yet soulful New Orleans.  A brief survey of each show reveals much about the differences in each company’s offerings, strategy, and approach to customers and partners. In the interest of full disclosure, I must explain that I will be speaking at Microsoft’s Tech Ed show, and have done so, on and off, since 2003.  I have never been to an Apple conference and, as readers of this blog may know, I acquired my first ever Apple product 2 months ago when I bought an iPad on the day of that product’s launch.  I think I have keen insights into Microsoft’s conference.  My ability to comment on Apple’s event ranges somewhere between backseat driver and naive observer.  Just so you know. Although both shows cater to their respective company’s developers, there are a number of differences in the events’ purposes and content approaches.  First off, let’s consider each show as a news and PR vehicle.  WWDC will feature Steve Jobs’ keynote address and most likely will be where Apple officially reveals details of its 4th-generation iPhone. Jobs will likely also provide deep background information on the corresponding iPhone OS release.  These presumed announcements will make the show a magnet for the tech press and tech blogger elite.  Apple’s customers will be interested too, especially since the iPhone OS release will likely be made available to owners of existing iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad devices. Tech Ed, on the other hand, may not be especially newsworthy at all.  The keynote address will be given by Bob Muglia, who is President of the company’s Server and Tools Division, and he’ll likely be reviewing things more than previewing them. That’s because the company has, in the last 6-8 months, already released new versions of a majority of its products, including Windows, Office, SharePoint, SQL Server, Exchange, its Azure cloud platform, its .NET software development layer, its Silverlight Rich Internet Application (RIA) technology and its Visual Studio developer suite.  Redmond’s product pipeline has functioned more like a firehose of late, and the company has a ton of work to do to get developers up to speed on everything that’s new. I know I keep saying “developers,” but in Tech Ed’s case, that’s not really accurate.  In North America, Tech Ed caters to both developers and IT pros (i.e. technologists who work with physical IT infrastructure, as well as security and administration of the server software that runs on it).  This pairing has, since its inception, struck some as anomalous and others, including many exhibitors, as very smart. Certainly, it means Tech Ed ends up being a confab for virtually all professionals in Microsoft’s ecosystem.  And this year, Microsoft’s Business Intelligence (BI) conference will be co-located with Tech Ed, further enhancing that fusion effect. Clearly then, Microsoft’s show will focus on education, as its name assures us.  Apple’s will serve as both a press event and an opportunity to get its own App Store developer channel synced up with its newest technology advances.  For example, we already know that iPhone OS 4.0 will provide for a limited multitasking capability; that will only work well if people know how to code to it in a capable way.  Apple also told us its iAd advertising platform will be part of the new OS, and Steve Jobs insists that’s to provide a revenue opportunity for developers.  This too, then, needs to be explicated and soaked up buy the faithful. A look at each show’s breakout session lineup provides some interesting takeaways.  WWDC will have very few Mac-specific sessions on offer, and virtually no sessions that at are IT- or “Enterprise-“ related.  It’s all about the phone, music players and tablets.  However, WWDC will have plenty of low-level, hardcore tech coverage of such things as Advanced Memory Analysis and Creating Secure Applications, as well as lots of rich media-related content like Core Animation and Game Design and Development.  Beyond Apple’s proprietary platform, WWDC will also feature an array of sessions on HTML 5 and other Web standards.  In all, WWDC offers over 100 technical sessions and hands-on labs. What about Tech Ed’s editorial content?  Like the target audience, it really runs the gamut.  The show has 21 tracks (versus WWDC’s 5) and more than 745 “learning opportunities” which include breakout sessions, demo stations, hands-on labs and BIrds of a Feather discussion sessions.  Topics range from Architecture talks like Patterns of Parallel Programming to cloud computing talks like Building High Capacity Compute Applications with Windows Azure to IT-focused topics like Virtualization of Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Farm Architecture.  I also count 19 sessions on Windows Phone 7.  Unfortunately, with regard to Web standards and HTML 5, only a few sessions are offered, all of them specific to Internet Explorer. All-in-all, Apple’s show looks more exciting and “sexier” than Tech Ed. Microsoft’s show seems a lot more enterprise-focused than WWDC. This is, of course, well in sync with each company’s approach and products.  Microsoft’s content is much wider ranging and bests WWDC in sheer volume of sessions and labs.  I suppose some might argue that less is more; others that Apple’s consumer-focused offerings simply don’t provide for the same depth of coverage to a business audience.  Microsoft has a serious focus on the cloud and  a paucity of coverage on client-side Web standards; Apple has virtually no cloud offering at all.  Again, this reflects each tech titan’s go-to-market strategy. My own take is that employees of each company should attend the other’s event.  The amount of mutual exclusivity in content may make sense in terms of corporate philosophy, but the reality is that each company could stand to diversify into the other’s territory, at least somewhat. My own talk at Tech Ed will focus on competitive analysis around Microsoft’s BI products.  Apple does not today figure into that analysis. Maybe one day it will.

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• Community Conversation

  - by ultan o'broin

  Applications User Experience members (Erika Webb, Laurie Pattison, and I) attended the User Assistance Europe Conference in Stockholm, Sweden. We were impressed with the thought leadership and practical application of ideas in Anne Gentle's keynote address "Social Web Strategies for Documentation". After the conference, we spoke with Anne to explore the ideas further. Applications User Experience Senior Director Laurie Pattison (left) with Anne Gentle at the User Assistance Europe Conference In Anne's book called Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation, she explains how user assistance is undergoing a seismic shift. The direction is away from the old print manuals and online help concept towards a web-based, user community-driven solution using social media tools. User experience professionals now have a vast range of such tools to start and nurture this "conversation": blogs, wikis, forums, social networking sites, microblogging systems, image and video sharing sites, virtual worlds, podcasts, instant messaging, mashups, and so on. That user communities are a rich source of user assistance is not a surprise, but the extent of available assistance is. For example, we know from the Consortium for Service Innovation that there has been an 'explosion' of user-generated content on the web. User-initiated community conversations provide as much as 30 times the number of official help desk solutions for consortium members! The growing reliance on user community solutions is clearly a user experience issue. Anne says that user assistance as conversation "means getting closer to users and helping them perform well. User-centered design has been touted as one of the most important ideas developed in the last 20 years of workplace writing. Now writers can take the idea of user-centered design a step further by starting conversations with users and enabling user assistance in interactions." Some of Anne's favorite examples of this paradigm shift from the world of traditional documentation to community conversation include: * Writer Bob Bringhurst's blog about Adobe InDesign and InCopy products and Adobe's community help * The Microsoft Development Network Community Center * ·The former Sun (now Oracle) OpenDS wiki, NetBeans Ruby and other community approaches to engage diverse audiences using screencasts, wikis, and blogs. * Cisco's customer support wiki, EMC's community, as well as Symantec and Intuit's approaches * The efforts of Ubuntu, Mozilla, and the FLOSS community generally Adobe Writer Bob Bringhurst's Blog Oracle is not without a user community conversation too. Besides the community discussions and blogs around documentation offerings, we have the My Oracle Support Community forums, Oracle Technology Network (OTN) communities, wiki, blogs, and so on. We have the great work done by our user groups and customer councils. Employees like David Haimes are reaching out, and enthusiastic non-employee gurus like Chet Justice (OracleNerd), Floyd Teter and Eddie Awad provide great "how-to" information too. But what does this paradigm shift mean for existing technical writers as users turn away from the traditional printable PDF manual deliverables? We asked Anne after the conference. The writer role becomes one of conversation initiator or enabler. The role evolves, along with the process, as the users define their concept of user assistance and terms of engagement with the product instead of having it pre-determined. It is largely a case now of "inventing the job while you're doing it, instead of being hired for it" Anne said. There is less emphasis on formal titles. Anne mentions that her own title "Content Stacker" at OpenStack; others use titles such as "Content Curator" or "Community Lead". However, the role remains one essentially about communications, "but of a new type--interacting with users, moderating, curating content, instead of sitting down to write a manual from start to finish." Clearly then, this role is open to more than professional technical writers. Product managers who write blogs, developers who moderate forums, support professionals who update wikis, rock star programmers with a penchant for YouTube are ideal. Anyone with the product knowledge, empathy for the user, and flair for relationships on the social web can join in. Some even perform these roles already but do not realize it. Anne feels the technical communicator space will move from hiring new community conversation professionals (who are already active in the space through blogging, tweets, wikis, and so on) to retraining some existing writers over time. Our own research reveals that the established proponents of community user assistance even set employee performance objectives for internal content curators about the amount of community content delivered by people outside the organization! To take advantage of the conversations on the web as user assistance, enterprises must first establish where on the spectrum their community lies. "What is the line between community willingness to contribute and the enterprise objectives?" Anne asked. "The relationship with users must be managed and also measured." Anne believes that the process can start with a "just do it" approach. Begin by reaching out to existing user groups, individual bloggers and tweeters, forum posters, early adopter program participants, conference attendees, customer advisory board members, and so on. Use analytical tools to measure the level of conversation about your products and services to show a return on investment (ROI), winning management support. Anne emphasized that success with the community model is dependent on lowering the technical and motivational barriers so that users can readily contribute to the conversation. Simple tools must be provided, and guidelines, if any, must be straightforward but not mandatory. The conversational approach is one where traditional style and branding guides do not necessarily apply. Tools and infrastructure help users to create content easily, to search and find the information online, read it, rate it, translate it, and participate further in the content's evolution. Recognizing contributors by using ratings on forums, giving out Twitter kudos, conference invitations, visits to headquarters, free products, preview releases, and so on, also encourages the adoption of the conversation model. The move to conversation as user assistance is not free, but there is a business ROI. The conversational model means that customer service is enhanced, as user experience moves from a functional to a valued, emotional level. Studies show a positive correlation between loyalty and financial performance (Consortium for Service Innovation, 2010), and as customer experience and loyalty become key differentiators, user experience professionals cannot explore the model's possibilities. The digital universe (measured at 1.2 million petabytes in 2010) is doubling every 12 to 18 months, and 70 percent of that universe consists of user-generated content (IDC, 2010). Conversation as user assistance cannot be ignored but must be embraced. It is a time to manage for abundance, not scarcity. Besides, the conversation approach certainly sounds more interesting, rewarding, and fun than the traditional model! I would like to thank Anne for her time and thoughts, and recommend that all user assistance professionals read her book. You can follow Anne on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/annegentle. Oracle's Acrolinx IQ deployment was used to author this article.

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• Interview with Lenz Grimmer about MySQL Connect

  - by Keith Larson

  Keith Larson: Thank you for allowing me to do this interview with you.  I have been talking with a few different Oracle ACEs   about the MySQL Connect Conference. I figured the MySQL community might be missing you as well. You have been very busy with Oracle Linux but I know you still have an eye on the MySQL Community. How have things been?Lenz Grimmer: Thanks for including me in this series of interviews, I feel honored! I've read the other interviews, and really liked them. I still try to follow what's going on over in the MySQL community and it's good to see that many of the familiar faces are still around. Over the course of the 9 years that I was involved with MySQL, many colleagues and contacts turned into good friends and we still maintain close relationships.It's been almost 1.5 years ago that I moved into my new role here in the Linux team at Oracle, and I really enjoy working on a Linux distribution again (I worked for SUSE before I joined MySQL AB in 2002). I'm still learning a lot - Linux in the data center has greatly evolved in so many ways and there are a lot of new and exciting technologies to explore. Keith Larson: What were your thoughts when you heard that Oracle was going to deliver the MySQL Connect conference to the MySQL Community?Lenz Grimmer: I think it's testament to the fact that Oracle deeply cares about MySQL, despite what many skeptics may say. What started as "MySQL Sunday" two years ago has now evolved into a full-blown sub-conference, with 80 sessions at one of the largest corporate IT events in the world. I find this quite telling, not many products at Oracle enjoy this level of exposure! So it certainly makes me feel proud to see how far MySQL has come. Keith Larson: Have you had a chance to look over the sessions? What are your thoughts on them?Lenz Grimmer: I did indeed look at the final schedule.The content committee did a great job with selecting these sessions. I'm glad to see that the content selection was influenced by involving well-known and respected members of the MySQL community. The sessions cover a broad range of topics and technologies, both covering established topics as well as recent developments. Keith Larson: When you get a chance, what sessions do you plan on attending?Lenz Grimmer: I will actually be manning the Oracle booth in the exhibition area on one of these days, so I'm not sure if I'll have a lot of time attending sessions. But if I do, I'd love to see the keynotes and catch some of the sessions that talk about recent developments and new features in MySQL, High Availability and Clustering . Quite a lot has happened and it's hard to keep up with this constant flow of new MySQL releases.In particular, the following sessions caught my attention: MySQL Connect Keynote: The State of the Dolphin Evaluating MySQL High-Availability Alternatives CERN’s MySQL “as a Service” Deployment with Oracle VM: Empowering Users MySQL 5.6 Replication: Taking Scalability and High Availability to the Next Level What’s New in MySQL Server 5.6? MySQL Security: Past and Present MySQL at Twitter: Development and Deployment MySQL Community BOF MySQL Connect Keynote: MySQL Perspectives Keith Larson: So I will ask you just like I have asked the others I have interviewed, any tips that you would give to people for handling the long hours at conferences?Lenz Grimmer: Wear comfortable shoes and make sure to drink a lot! Also prepare a plan of the sessions you would like to attend beforehand and familiarize yourself with the venue, so you can get to the next talk in time without scrambling to find the location. The good thing about piggybacking on such a large conference like Oracle OpenWorld is that you benefit from the whole infrastructure. For example, there is a nice schedule builder that helps you to keep track of your sessions of interest. Other than that, bring enough business cards and talk to people, build up your network among your peers and other MySQL professionals! Keith Larson: What features of the MySQL 5.6 release do you look forward to the most ?Lenz Grimmer: There has been solid progress in so many areas like the InnoDB Storage Engine, the Optimizer, Replication or Performance Schema, it's hard for me to really highlight anything in particular. All in all, MySQL 5.6 sounds like a very promising release. I'm confident it will follow the tradition that Oracle already established with MySQL 5.5, which received a lot of praise even from very critical members of the MySQL community. If I had to name a single feature, I'm particularly and personally happy that the precise GIS functions have finally made it into a GA release - that was long overdue. Keith Larson:  In your opinion what is the best reason for someone to attend this event?Lenz Grimmer: This conference is an excellent opportunity to get in touch with the key people in the MySQL community and ecosystem and to get facts and information from the domain experts and developers that work on MySQL. The broad range of topics should attract people from a variety of roles and relations to MySQL, beginning with Developers and DBAs, to CIOs considering MySQL as a viable solution for their requirements. Keith Larson: You will be attending MySQL Connect and have some Oracle Linux Demos, do you see a growing demand for MySQL on Oracle Linux ?Lenz Grimmer: Yes! Oracle Linux is our recommended Linux distribution and we have a good relationship to the MySQL engineering group. They use Oracle Linux as a base Linux platform for development and QA, so we make sure that MySQL and Oracle Linux are well tested together. Setting up a MySQL server on Oracle Linux can be done very quickly, and many customers recognize the benefits of using them both in combination.Because Oracle Linux is available for free (including free bug fixes and errata), it's an ideal choice for running MySQL in your data center. You can run the same Linux distribution on both your development/staging systems as well as on the production machines, you decide which of these should be covered by a support subscription and at which level of support. This gives you flexibility and provides some really attractive cost-saving opportunities. Keith Larson: Since I am a Linux user and fan, what is on the horizon for  Oracle Linux?Lenz Grimmer: We're working hard on broadening the ecosystem around Oracle Linux, building up partnerships with ISVs and IHVs to certify Oracle Linux as a fully supported platform for their products. We also continue to collaborate closely with the Linux kernel community on various projects, to make sure that Linux scales and performs well on large systems and meets the demands of today's data centers. These improvements and enhancements will then rolled into the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel, which is the key ingredient that sets Oracle Linux apart from other distributions. We also have a number of ongoing projects which are making good progress, and I'm sure you'll hear more about this at the upcoming OpenWorld conference :) Keith Larson: What is something that more people should be aware of when it comes to Oracle Linux and MySQL ?Lenz Grimmer: Many people assume that Oracle Linux is just tuned for Oracle products, such as the Oracle Database or our Engineered Systems. While it's of course true that we do a lot of testing and optimization for these workloads, Oracle Linux is and will remain a general-purpose Linux distribution that is a very good foundation for setting up a LAMP-Stack, for example. We also provide MySQL RPM packages for Oracle Linux, so you can easily stay up to date if you need something newer than what's included in the stock distribution.One more thing that is really unique to Oracle Linux is Ksplice, which allows you to apply security patches to the running Linux kernel, without having to reboot. This ensures that your MySQL database server keeps up and running and is not affected by any downtime. Keith Larson: What else would you like to add ?Lenz Grimmer: Thanks again for getting in touch with me, I appreciated the opportunity. I'm looking forward to MySQL Connect and Oracle OpenWorld and to meet you and many other people from the MySQL community that I haven't seen for quite some time! Keith Larson:  Thank you Lenz!

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• Big Data – Is Big Data Relevant to me? – Big Data Questionnaires – Guest Post by Vinod Kumar

  - by Pinal Dave

  This guest post is by Vinod Kumar. Vinod Kumar has worked with SQL Server extensively since joining the industry over a decade ago. Working on various versions of SQL Server 7.0, Oracle 7.3 and other database technologies – he now works with the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) as a Technology Architect. Let us read the blog post in Vinod’s own voice. I think the series from Pinal is a good one for anyone planning to start on Big Data journey from the basics. In my daily customer interactions this buzz of “Big Data” always comes up, I react generally saying – “Sir, do you really have a ‘Big Data’ problem or do you have a big Data problem?” Generally, there is a silence in the air when I ask this question. Data is everywhere in organizations – be it big data, small data, all data and for few it is bad data which is same as no data :). Wow, don’t discount me as someone who opposes “Big Data”, I am a big supporter as much as I am a critic of the abuse of this term by the people. In this post, I wanted to let my mind flow so that you can also think in the direction I want you to see these concepts. In any case, this is not an exhaustive dump of what is in my mind – but you will surely get the drift how I am going to question Big Data terms from customers!!! Is Big Data Relevant to me? Many of my customers talk to me like blank whiteboard with no idea – “why Big Data”. They want to jump into the bandwagon of technology and they want to decipher insights from their unexplored data a.k.a. unstructured data with structured data. So what are these industry scenario’s that come to mind? Here are some of them: Financials Fraud detection: Banks and Credit cards are monitoring your spending habits on real-time basis. Customer Segmentation: applies in every industry from Banking to Retail to Aviation to Utility and others where they deal with end customer who consume their products and services. Customer Sentiment Analysis: Responding to negative brand perception on social or amplify the positive perception. Sales and Marketing Campaign: Understand the impact and get closer to customer delight. Call Center Analysis: attempt to take unstructured voice recordings and analyze them for content and sentiment. Medical Reduce Re-admissions: How to build a proactive follow-up engagements with patients. Patient Monitoring: How to track Inpatient, Out-Patient, Emergency Visits, Intensive Care Units etc. Preventive Care: Disease identification and Risk stratification is a very crucial business function for medical. Claims fraud detection: There is no precise dollars that one can put here, but this is a big thing for the medical field. Retail Customer Sentiment Analysis, Customer Care Centers, Campaign Management. Supply Chain Analysis: Every sensors and RFID data can be tracked for warehouse space optimization. Location based marketing: Based on where a check-in happens retail stores can be optimize their marketing. Telecom Price optimization and Plans, Finding Customer churn, Customer loyalty programs Call Detail Record (CDR) Analysis, Network optimizations, User Location analysis Customer Behavior Analysis Insurance Fraud Detection & Analysis, Pricing based on customer Sentiment Analysis, Loyalty Management Agents Analysis, Customer Value Management This list can go on to other areas like Utility, Manufacturing, Travel, ITES etc. So as you can see, there are obviously interesting use cases for each of these industry verticals. These are just representative list. Where to start? A lot of times I try to quiz customers on a number of dimensions before starting a Big Data conversation. Are you getting the data you need the way you want it and in a timely manner? Can you get in and analyze the data you need? How quickly is IT to respond to your BI Requests? How easily can you get at the data that you need to run your business/department/project? How are you currently measuring your business? Can you get the data you need to react WITHIN THE QUARTER to impact behaviors to meet your numbers or is it always “rear-view mirror?” How are you measuring: The Brand Customer Sentiment Your Competition Your Pricing Your performance Supply Chain Efficiencies Predictive product / service positioning What are your key challenges of driving collaboration across your global business?  What the challenges in innovation? What challenges are you facing in getting more information out of your data? Note: Garbage-in is Garbage-out. Hold good for all reporting / analytics requirements Big Data POCs? A number of customers get into the realm of setting a small team to work on Big Data – well it is a great start from an understanding point of view, but I tend to ask a number of other questions to such customers. Some of these common questions are: To what degree is your advanced analytics (natural language processing, sentiment analysis, predictive analytics and classification) paired with your Big Data’s efforts? Do you have dedicated resources exploring the possibilities of advanced analytics in Big Data for your business line? Do you plan to employ machine learning technology while doing Advanced Analytics? How is Social Media being monitored in your organization? What is your ability to scale in terms of storage and processing power? Do you have a system in place to sort incoming data in near real time by potential value, data quality, and use frequency? Do you use event-driven architecture to manage incoming data? Do you have specialized data services that can accommodate different formats, security, and the management requirements of multiple data sources? Is your organization currently using or considering in-memory analytics? To what degree are you able to correlate data from your Big Data infrastructure with that from your enterprise data warehouse? Have you extended the role of Data Stewards to include ownership of big data components? Do you prioritize data quality based on the source system (that is Facebook/Twitter data has lower quality thresholds than radio frequency identification (RFID) for a tracking system)? Do your retention policies consider the different legal responsibilities for storing Big Data for a specific amount of time? Do Data Scientists work in close collaboration with Data Stewards to ensure data quality? How is access to attributes of Big Data being given out in the organization? Are roles related to Big Data (Advanced Analyst, Data Scientist) clearly defined? How involved is risk management in the Big Data governance process? Is there a set of documented policies regarding Big Data governance? Is there an enforcement mechanism or approach to ensure that policies are followed? Who is the key sponsor for your Big Data governance program? (The CIO is best) Do you have defined policies surrounding the use of social media data for potential employees and customers, as well as the use of customer Geo-location data? How accessible are complex analytic routines to your user base? What is the level of involvement with outside vendors and third parties in regard to the planning and execution of Big Data projects? What programming technologies are utilized by your data warehouse/BI staff when working with Big Data? These are some of the important questions I ask each customer who is actively evaluating Big Data trends for their organizations. These questions give you a sense of direction where to start, what to use, how to secure, how to analyze and more. Sign off Any Big data is analysis is incomplete without a compelling story. The best way to understand this is to watch Hans Rosling – Gapminder (2:17 to 6:06) videos about the third world myths. Don’t get overwhelmed with the Big Data buzz word, the destination to what your data speaks is important. In this blog post, we did not particularly look at any Big Data technologies. This is a set of questionnaire one needs to keep in mind as they embark their journey of Big Data. I did write some of the basics in my blog: Big Data – Big Hype yet Big Opportunity. Do let me know if these questions make sense?  Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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