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• Dynamically creating a Generic Type at Runtime

  - by Rick Strahl

  I learned something new today. Not uncommon, but it's a core .NET runtime feature I simply did not know although I know I've run into this issue a few times and worked around it in other ways. Today there was no working around it and a few folks on Twitter pointed me in the right direction. The question I ran into is: How do I create a type instance of a generic type when I have dynamically acquired the type at runtime? Yup it's not something that you do everyday, but when you're writing code that parses objects dynamically at runtime it comes up from time to time. In my case it's in the bowels of a custom JSON parser. After some thought triggered by a comment today I realized it would be fairly easy to implement two-way Dictionary parsing for most concrete dictionary types. I could use a custom Dictionary serialization format that serializes as an array of key/value objects. Basically I can use a custom type (that matches the JSON signature) to hold my parsed dictionary data and then add it to the actual dictionary when parsing is complete. Generic Types at Runtime One issue that came up in the process was how to figure out what type the Dictionary<K,V> generic parameters take. Reflection actually makes it fairly easy to figure out generic types at runtime with code like this: if (arrayType.GetInterface("IDictionary") != null) { if (arrayType.IsGenericType) { var keyType = arrayType.GetGenericArguments()[0]; var valueType = arrayType.GetGenericArguments()[1]; … } } The GetArrayType method gets passed a type instance that is the array or array-like object that is rendered in JSON as an array (which includes IList, IDictionary, IDataReader and a few others). In my case the type passed would be something like Dictionary<string, CustomerEntity>. So I know what the parent container class type is. Based on the the container type using it's then possible to use GetGenericTypeArguments() to retrieve all the generic types in sequential order of definition (ie. string, CustomerEntity). That's the easy part. Creating a Generic Type and Providing Generic Parameters at RunTime The next problem is how do I get a concrete type instance for the generic type? I know what the type name and I have a type instance is but it's generic, so how do I get a type reference to keyvaluepair<K,V> that is specific to the keyType and valueType above? Here are a couple of things that come to mind but that don't work (and yes I tried that unsuccessfully first): Type elementType = typeof(keyvalue<keyType, valueType>); Type elementType = typeof(keyvalue<typeof(keyType), typeof(valueType)>); The problem is that this explicit syntax expects a type literal not some dynamic runtime value, so both of the above won't even compile. I turns out the way to create a generic type at runtime is using a fancy bit of syntax that until today I was completely unaware of: Type elementType = typeof(keyvalue<,>).MakeGenericType(keyType, valueType); The key is the type(keyvalue<,>) bit which looks weird at best. It works however and produces a non-generic type reference. You can see the difference between the full generic type and the non-typed (?) generic type in the debugger: The nonGenericType doesn't show any type specialization, while the elementType type shows the string, CustomerEntity (truncated above) in the type name. Once the full type reference exists (elementType) it's then easy to create an instance. In my case the parser parses through the JSON and when it completes parsing the value/object it creates a new keyvalue<T,V> instance. Now that I know the element type that's pretty trivial with: // Objects start out null until we find the opening tag resultObject = Activator.CreateInstance(elementType); Here the result object is picked up by the JSON array parser which creates an instance of the child object (keyvalue<K,V>) and then parses and assigns values from the JSON document using the types  key/value property signature. Internally the parser then takes each individually parsed item and adds it to a list of  List<keyvalue<K,V>> items. Parsing through a Generic type when you only have Runtime Type Information When parsing of the JSON array is done, the List needs to be turned into a defacto Dictionary<K,V>. This should be easy since I know that I'm dealing with an IDictionary, and I know the generic types for the key and value. The problem is again though that this needs to happen at runtime which would mean using several Convert.ChangeType() calls in the code to dynamically cast at runtime. Yuk. In the end I decided the easier and probably only slightly slower way to do this is a to use the dynamic type to collect the items and assign them to avoid all the dynamic casting madness: else if (IsIDictionary) { IDictionary dict = Activator.CreateInstance(arrayType) as IDictionary; foreach (dynamic item in items) { dict.Add(item.key, item.value); } return dict; } This code creates an instance of the generic dictionary type first, then loops through all of my custom keyvalue<K,V> items and assigns them to the actual dictionary. By using Dynamic here I can side step all the explicit type conversions that would be required in the three highlighted areas (not to mention that this nested method doesn't have access to the dictionary item generic types here). Static <- -> Dynamic Dynamic casting in a static language like C# is a bitch to say the least. This is one of the few times when I've cursed static typing and the arcane syntax that's required to coax types into the right format. It works but it's pretty nasty code. If it weren't for dynamic that last bit of code would have been a pretty ugly as well with a bunch of Convert.ChangeType() calls to litter the code. Fortunately this type of type convulsion is rather rare and reserved for system level code. It's not every day that you create a string to object parser after all :-)© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in .NET  CSharp   Tweet (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• C# Extension Methods - To Extend or Not To Extend...

  - by James Michael Hare

  I've been thinking a lot about extension methods lately, and I must admit I both love them and hate them. They are a lot like sugar, they taste so nice and sweet, but they'll rot your teeth if you eat them too much.   I can't deny that they aren't useful and very handy. One of the major components of the Shared Component library where I work is a set of useful extension methods. But, I also can't deny that they tend to be overused and abused to willy-nilly extend every living type.   So what constitutes a good extension method? Obviously, you can write an extension method for nearly anything whether it is a good idea or not. Many times, in fact, an idea seems like a good extension method but in retrospect really doesn't fit.   So what's the litmus test? To me, an extension method should be like in the movies when a person runs into their twin, separated at birth. You just know you're related. Obviously, that's hard to quantify, so let's try to put a few rules-of-thumb around them.   A good extension method should:     Apply to any possible instance of the type it extends.     Simplify logic and improve readability/maintainability.     Apply to the most specific type or interface applicable.     Be isolated in a namespace so that it does not pollute IntelliSense.     So let's look at a few examples in relation to these rules.   The first rule, to me, is the most important of all. Once again, it bears repeating, a good extension method should apply to all possible instances of the type it extends. It should feel like the long lost relative that should have been included in the original class but somehow was missing from the family tree.    Take this nifty little int extension, I saw this once in a blog and at first I really thought it was pretty cool, but then I started noticing a code smell I couldn't quite put my finger on. So let's look:       public static class IntExtensinos     {         public static int Seconds(int num)         {             return num * 1000;         }           public static int Minutes(int num)         {             return num * 60000;         }     }     This is so you could do things like:       ...     Thread.Sleep(5.Seconds());     ...     proxy.Timeout = 1.Minutes();     ...     Awww, you say, that's cute! Well, that's the problem, it's kitschy and it doesn't always apply (and incidentally you could achieve the same thing with TimeStamp.FromSeconds(5)). It's syntactical candy that looks cool, but tends to rot and pollute the code. It would allow things like:       total += numberOfTodaysOrders.Seconds();     which makes no sense and should never be allowed. The problem is you're applying an extension method to a logical domain, not a type domain. That is, the extension method Seconds() doesn't really apply to ALL ints, it applies to ints that are representative of time that you want to convert to milliseconds.    Do you see what I mean? The two problems, in a nutshell, are that a) Seconds() called off a non-time value makes no sense and b) calling Seconds() off something to pass to something that does not take milliseconds will be off by a factor of 1000 or worse.   Thus, in my mind, you should only ever have an extension method that applies to the whole domain of that type.   For example, this is one of my personal favorites:       public static bool IsBetween<T>(this T value, T low, T high)         where T : IComparable<T>     {         return value.CompareTo(low) >= 0 && value.CompareTo(high) <= 0;     }   This allows you to check if any IComparable<T> is within an upper and lower bound. Think of how many times you type something like:       if (response.Employee.Address.YearsAt >= 2         && response.Employee.Address.YearsAt <= 10)     {     ...     }     Now, you can instead type:       if(response.Employee.Address.YearsAt.IsBetween(2, 10))     {     ...     }     Note that this applies to all IComparable<T> -- that's ints, chars, strings, DateTime, etc -- and does not depend on any logical domain. In addition, it satisfies the second point and actually makes the code more readable and maintainable.   Let's look at the third point. In it we said that an extension method should fit the most specific interface or type possible. Now, I'm not saying if you have something that applies to enumerables, you create an extension for List, Array, Dictionary, etc (though you may have reasons for doing so), but that you should beware of making things TOO general.   For example, let's say we had an extension method like this:       public static T ConvertTo<T>(this object value)     {         return (T)Convert.ChangeType(value, typeof(T));     }         This lets you do more fluent conversions like:       double d = "5.0".ConvertTo<double>();     However, if you dig into Reflector (LOVE that tool) you will see that if the type you are calling on does not implement IConvertible, what you convert to MUST be the exact type or it will throw an InvalidCastException. Now this may or may not be what you want in this situation, and I leave that up to you. Things like this would fail:       object value = new Employee();     ...     // class cast exception because typeof(IEmployee) != typeof(Employee)     IEmployee emp = value.ConvertTo<IEmployee>();       Yes, that's a downfall of working with Convertible in general, but if you wanted your fluent interface to be more type-safe so that ConvertTo were only callable on IConvertibles (and let casting be a manual task), you could easily make it:         public static T ConvertTo<T>(this IConvertible value)     {         return (T)Convert.ChangeType(value, typeof(T));     }         This is what I mean by choosing the best type to extend. Consider that if we used the previous (object) version, every time we typed a dot ('.') on an instance we'd pull up ConvertTo() whether it was applicable or not. By filtering our extension method down to only valid types (those that implement IConvertible) we greatly reduce our IntelliSense pollution and apply a good level of compile-time correctness.   Now my fourth rule is just my general rule-of-thumb. Obviously, you can make extension methods as in-your-face as you want. I included all mine in my work libraries in its own sub-namespace, something akin to:       namespace Shared.Core.Extensions { ... }     This is in a library called Shared.Core, so just referencing the Core library doesn't pollute your IntelliSense, you have to actually do a using on Shared.Core.Extensions to bring the methods in. This is very similar to the way Microsoft puts its extension methods in System.Linq. This way, if you want 'em, you use the appropriate namespace. If you don't want 'em, they won't pollute your namespace.   To really make this work, however, that namespace should only include extension methods and subordinate types those extensions themselves may use. If you plant other useful classes in those namespaces, once a user includes it, they get all the extensions too.   Also, just as a personal preference, extension methods that aren't simply syntactical shortcuts, I like to put in a static utility class and then have extension methods for syntactical candy. For instance, I think it imaginable that any object could be converted to XML:       namespace Shared.Core     {         // A collection of XML Utility classes         public static class XmlUtility         {             ...             // Serialize an object into an xml string             public static string ToXml(object input)             {                 var xs = new XmlSerializer(input.GetType());                   // use new UTF8Encoding here, not Encoding.UTF8. The later includes                 // the BOM which screws up subsequent reads, the former does not.                 using (var memoryStream = new MemoryStream())                 using (var xmlTextWriter = new XmlTextWriter(memoryStream, new UTF8Encoding()))                 {                     xs.Serialize(xmlTextWriter, input);                     return Encoding.UTF8.GetString(memoryStream.ToArray());                 }             }             ...         }     }   I also wanted to be able to call this from an object like:       value.ToXml();     But here's the problem, if i made this an extension method from the start with that one little keyword "this", it would pop into IntelliSense for all objects which could be very polluting. Instead, I put the logic into a utility class so that users have the choice of whether or not they want to use it as just a class and not pollute IntelliSense, then in my extensions namespace, I add the syntactical candy:       namespace Shared.Core.Extensions     {         public static class XmlExtensions         {             public static string ToXml(this object value)             {                 return XmlUtility.ToXml(value);             }         }     }   So now it's the best of both worlds. On one hand, they can use the utility class if they don't want to pollute IntelliSense, and on the other hand they can include the Extensions namespace and use as an extension if they want. The neat thing is it also adheres to the Single Responsibility Principle. The XmlUtility is responsible for converting objects to XML, and the XmlExtensions is responsible for extending object's interface for ToXml().

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• Full-text Indexing Books Online

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  While preparing for a recent SQL Saturday presentation, I was struck by a crazy idea (shocking, I know): Could someone import the content of SQL Server Books Online into a database and apply full-text indexing to it?  The answer is yes, and it's really quite easy to do. The first step is finding the installed help files.  If you have SQL Server 2012, BOL is installed under the Microsoft Help Library.  You can find the install location by opening SQL Server Books Online and clicking the gear icon for the Help Library Manager.  When the new window pops up click the Settings link, you'll get the following: You'll see the path under Library Location. Once you navigate to that path you'll have to drill down a little further, to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\HelpLibrary\content\Microsoft\store.  This is where the help file content is kept if you downloaded it for offline use. Depending on which products you've downloaded help for, you may see a few hundred files.  Fortunately they're named well and you can easily find the "SQL_Server_Denali_Books_Online_" files.  We are interested in the .MSHC files only, and can skip the Installation and Developer Reference files. Despite the .MHSC extension, these files are compressed with the standard Zip format, so your favorite archive utility (WinZip, 7Zip, WinRar, etc.) can open them.  When you do, you'll see a few thousand files in the archive.  We are only interested in the .htm files, but there's no harm in extracting all of them to a folder.  7zip provides a command-line utility and the following will extract to a D:\SQLHelp folder previously created: 7z e –oD:\SQLHelp "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\HelpLibrary\content\Microsoft\store\SQL_Server_Denali_Books_Online_B780_SQL_110_en-us_1.2.mshc" *.htm Well that's great Rob, but how do I put all those files into a full-text index? I'll tell you in a second, but first we have to set up a few things on the database side.  I'll be using a database named Explore (you can certainly change that) and the following setup is a fragment of the script I used in my presentation: USE Explore; GO CREATE SCHEMA help AUTHORIZATION dbo; GO -- Create default fulltext catalog for later FT indexes CREATE FULLTEXT CATALOG FTC AS DEFAULT; GO CREATE TABLE help.files(file_id int not null IDENTITY(1,1) CONSTRAINT PK_help_files PRIMARY KEY, path varchar(256) not null CONSTRAINT UNQ_help_files_path UNIQUE, doc_type varchar(6) DEFAULT('.xml'), content varbinary(max) not null); CREATE FULLTEXT INDEX ON help.files(content TYPE COLUMN doc_type LANGUAGE 1033) KEY INDEX PK_help_files; This will give you a table, default full-text catalog, and full-text index on that table for the content you're going to insert.  I'll be using the command line again for this, it's the easiest method I know: for %a in (D:\SQLHelp\*.htm) do sqlcmd -S. -E -d Explore -Q"set nocount on;insert help.files(path,content) select '%a', cast(c as varbinary(max)) from openrowset(bulk '%a', SINGLE_CLOB) as c(c)" You'll need to copy and run that as one line in a command prompt.  I'll explain what this does while you run it and watch several thousand files get imported: The "for" command allows you to loop over a collection of items.  In this case we want all the .htm files in the D:\SQLHelp folder.  For each file it finds, it will assign the full path and file name to the %a variable.  In the "do" clause, we'll specify another command to be run for each iteration of the loop.  I make a call to "sqlcmd" in order to run a SQL statement.  I pass in the name of the server (-S.), where "." represents the local default instance. I specify -d Explore as the database, and -E for trusted connection.  I then use -Q to run a query that I enclose in double quotes. The query uses OPENROWSET(BULK…SINGLE_CLOB) to open the file as a data source, and to treat it as a single character large object.  In order for full-text indexing to work properly, I have to convert the text content to varbinary. I then INSERT these contents along with the full path of the file into the help.files table created earlier.  This process continues for each file in the folder, creating one new row in the table. And that's it! 5 SQL Statements and 2 command line statements to unzip and import SQL Server Books Online!  In case you're wondering why I didn't use FILESTREAM or FILETABLE, it's simply because I haven't learned them…yet. I may return to this blog after I figure that out and update it with the steps to do so.  I believe that will make it even easier. In the spirit of exploration, I'll leave you to work on some fulltext queries of this content.  I also recommend playing around with the sys.dm_fts_xxxx DMVs (I particularly like sys.dm_fts_index_keywords, it's pretty interesting).  There are additional example queries in the download material for my presentation linked above. Many thanks to Kevin Boles (t) for his advice on (re)checking the content of the help files.  Don't let that .htm extension fool you! The 2012 help files are actually XML, and you'd need to specify '.xml' in your document type column in order to extract the full-text keywords.  (You probably noticed this in the default definition for the doc_type column.)  You can query sys.fulltext_document_types to get a complete list of the types that can be full-text indexed. I also need to thank Hilary Cotter for giving me the original idea. I believe he used MSDN content in a full-text index for an article from waaaaaaaaaaay back, that I can't find now, and had forgotten about until just a few days ago.  He is also co-author of Pro Full-Text Search in SQL Server 2008, which I highly recommend.  He also has some FTS articles on Simple Talk: http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/learn-sql-server/sql-server-full-text-search-language-features/ http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/learn-sql-server/sql-server-full-text-search-language-features,-part-2/

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• The SPARC SuperCluster

  - by Karoly Vegh

  Oracle has been providing a lead in the Engineered Systems business for quite a while now, in accordance with the motto "Hardware and Software Engineered to Work Together." Indeed it is hard to find a better definition of these systems.  Allow me to summarize the idea. It is:  Build a compute platform optimized to run your technologies Develop application aware, intelligently caching storage components Take an impressively fast network technology interconnecting it with the compute nodes Tune the application to scale with the nodes to yet unseen performance Reduce the amount of data moving via compression Provide this all in a pre-integrated single product with a single-pane management interface All these ideas have been around in IT for quite some time now. The real Oracle advantage is adding the last one to put these all together. Oracle has built quite a portfolio of Engineered Systems, to run its technologies - and run those like they never ran before. In this post I'll focus on one of them that serves as a consolidation demigod, a multi-purpose engineered system.  As you probably have guessed, I am talking about the SPARC SuperCluster. It has many great features inherited from its predecessors, and it adds several new ones. Allow me to pick out and elaborate about some of the most interesting ones from a technological point of view.  I. It is the SPARC SuperCluster T4-4. That is, as compute nodes, it includes SPARC T4-4 servers that we learned to appreciate and respect for their features: The SPARC T4 CPUs: Each CPU has 8 cores, each core runs 8 threads. The SPARC T4-4 servers have 4 sockets. That is, a single compute node can in parallel, simultaneously  execute 256 threads. Now, a full-rack SPARC SuperCluster has 4 of these servers on board. Remember the keyword demigod.  While retaining the forerunner SPARC T3's exceptional throughput, the SPARC T4 CPUs raise the bar with single performance too - a humble 5x better one than their ancestors.  actually, the SPARC T4 CPU cores run in both single-threaded and multi-threaded mode, and switch between these two on-the-fly, fulfilling not only single-threaded OR multi-threaded applications' needs, but even mixed requirements (like in database workloads!). Data security, anyone? Every SPARC T4 CPU core has a built-in encryption engine, that is, encryption algorithms cast into silicon.  A PCI controller right on the chip for customers who need I/O performance.  Built-in, no-cost Virtualization:  Oracle VM for SPARC (the former LDoms or Logical Domains) is not a server-emulation virtualization technology but rather a serverpartitioning one, the hypervisor runs in the server firmware, and all the VMs' HW resources (I/O, CPU, memory) are accessed natively, without performance overhead.  This enables customers to run a number of Solaris 10 and Solaris 11 VMs separated, independent of each other within a physical server II. For Database performance, it includes Exadata Storage Cells - one of the main reasons why the Exadata Database Machine performs at diabolic speed. What makes them important? They provide DB backend storage for your Oracle Databases to run on the SPARC SuperCluster, that is what they are built and tuned for DB performance.  These storage cells are SQL-aware.  That is, if a SPARC T4 database compute node executes a query, it doesn't simply request tons of raw datablocks from the storage, filters the received data, and throws away most of it where the statement doesn't apply, but provides the SQL query to the storage node too. The storage cell software speaks SQL, that is, it is able to prefilter and through that transfer only the relevant data. With this, the traffic between database nodes and storage cells is reduced immensely. Less I/O is a good thing - as they say, all the CPUs of the world do one thing just as fast as any other - and that is waiting for I/O.  They don't only pre-filter, but also provide data preprocessing features - e.g. if a DB-node requests an aggregate of data, they can calculate it, and handover only the results, not the whole set. Again, less data to transfer.  They support the magical HCC, (Hybrid Columnar Compression). That is, data can be stored in a precompressed form on the storage. Less data to transfer.  Of course one can't simply rely on disks for performance, there is Flash Storage included there for caching.  III. The low latency, high-speed backbone network: InfiniBand, that interconnects all the members with: Real High Speed: 40 Gbit/s. Full Duplex, of course. Oh, and a really low latency.  RDMA. Remote Direct Memory Access. This technology allows the DB nodes to do exactly that. Remotely, directly placing SQL commands into the Memory of the storage cells. Dodging all the network-stack bottlenecks, avoiding overhead, placing requests directly into the process queue.  You can also run IP over InfiniBand if you please - that's the way the compute nodes can communicate with each other.  IV. Including a general-purpose storage too: the ZFSSA, which is a unified storage, providing NAS and SAN access too, with the following features:  NFS over RDMA over InfiniBand. Nothing is faster network-filesystem-wise.  All the ZFS features onboard, hybrid storage pools, compression, deduplication, snapshot, replication, NFS and CIFS shares Storageheads in a HA-Cluster configuration providing availability of the data  DTrace Live Analytics in a web-based Administration UI Being a general purpose application data storage for your non-database applications running on the SPARC SuperCluster over whichever protocol they prefer, easily replicating, snapshotting, cloning data for them.  There's a lot of great technology included in Oracle's SPARC SuperCluster, we have talked its interior through. As for external scalability: you can start with a half- of full- rack SPARC SuperCluster, and scale out to several racks - that is, stacking not separate full-rack SPARC SuperClusters, but extending always one large instance of the size of several full-racks. Yes, over InfiniBand network. Add racks as you grow.  What technologies shall run on it? SPARC SuperCluster is a general purpose scaleout consolidation/cloud environment. You can run Oracle Databases with RAC scaling, or Oracle Weblogic (end enjoy the SPARC T4's advantages to run Java). Remember, Oracle technologies have been integrated with the Oracle Engineered Systems - this is the Oracle on Oracle advantage. But you can run other software environments such as SAP if you please too. Run any application that runs on Oracle Solaris 10 or Solaris 11. Separate them in Virtual Machines, or even Oracle Solaris Zones, monitor and manage those from a central UI. Here the key takeaways once again: The SPARC SuperCluster: Is a pre-integrated Engineered System Contains SPARC T4-4 servers with built-in virtualization, cryptography, dynamic threading Contains the Exadata storage cells that intelligently offload the burden of the DB-nodes  Contains a highly available ZFS Storage Appliance, that provides SAN/NAS storage in a unified way Combines all these elements over a high-speed, low-latency backbone network implemented with InfiniBand Can grow from a single half-rack to several full-rack size Supports the consolidation of hundreds of applications To summarize: All these technologies are great by themselves, but the real value is like in every other Oracle Engineered System: Integration. All these technologies are tuned to perform together. Together they are way more than the sum of all - and a careful and actually very time consuming integration process is necessary to orchestrate all these for performance. The SPARC SuperCluster's goal is to enable infrastructure operations and offer a pre-integrated solution that can be architected and delivered in hours instead of months of evaluations and tests. The tedious and most importantly time and resource consuming part of the work - testing and evaluating - has been done.  Now go, provide services.   -- charlie  

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• Community Outreach - Where Should I Go

  - by Roger Brinkley

  A few days ago I was talking to person new to community development and they asked me what guidelines I used to determine the worthiness of a particular event. After our conversation was over I thought about it a little bit more and figured out there are three ways to determine if any event (be it conference, blog, podcast or other social medias) is worth doing: Transferability, Multiplication, and Impact. Transferability - Is what I have to say useful to the people that are going to hear it. For instance, consider a company that has product offering that can connect up using a number of languages like Scala, Grovey or Java. Sending a Scala expert to talk about Scala and the product is not transferable to a Java User Group, but a Java expert doing the same talk with a Java slant is. Similarly, talking about JavaFX to any Java User Group meeting in Brazil was pretty much a wasted effort until it was open sourced. Once it was open sourced it was well received. You can also look at transferability in relation to the subject matter that you're dealing with. How transferable is a presentation that I create. Can I, or a technical writer on the staff, turn it into some technical document. Could it be converted into some type of screen cast. If we have a regular podcast can we make a reference to the document, catch the high points or turn it into a interview. Is there a way of using this in the sales group. In other words is the document purely one dimensional or can it be re-purposed in other forms. Multiplication - On every trip I'm looking for 2 to 5 solid connections that I can make with developers. These are long term connections, because I know that once that relationship is established it will lead to another 2 - 5 from that connection and within a couple of years were talking about some 100 connections from just one developer. For instance, when I was working on JavaHelp in 2000 I hired a science teacher with a programming background. We've developed a very tight relationship over the year though we rarely see each other more than once a year. But at this JavaOne, one of his employees came up to me and said, "Richard (Rick Hard in Czech) told me to tell you that he couldn't make it to JavaOne this year but if I saw you to tell you hi". Another example is from my Mobile & Embedded days in Brasil. On our very first FISL trip about 5 years ago there were two university students that had created a project called "Marge". Marge was a Bluetooth framework that made connecting bluetooth devices easier. I invited them to a "Sun" dinner that evening. Originally they were planning on leaving that afternoon, but they changed their plans recognizing the opportunity. Their eyes were as big a saucers when they realized the level of engineers at the meeting. They went home started a JUG in Florianoplis that we've visited more than a couple of times. One of them went to work for Brazilian government lab like Berkley Labs, MIT Lab, John Hopkins Applied Physicas Labs or Lincoln Labs in the US. That presented us with an opportunity to show Embedded Java as a possibility for some of the work they were doing there. Impact - The final criteria is how life changing is what I'm going to say be to the individuals I'm reaching. A t-shirt is just a token, but when I reach down and tug at their developer hearts then I know I've succeeded. I'll never forget one time we flew all night to reach Joan Pasoa in Northern Brazil. We arrived at 2am went immediately to our hotel only to be woken up at 6 am to travel 2 hours by car to the presentation hall. When we arrived we were totally exhausted. Outside the facility there were 500 people lined up to hear 6 speakers for the day. That itself was uplifting.  I delivered one of my favorite talks on "I have passion". It was a talk on golf and embedded java development, "Find your passion". When we finished a couple of first year students came up to me and said how much my talk had inspired them. FISL is another great example. I had been about 4 years in a row. FISL is a very young group of developers so capturing their attention is important. Several of the students will come back 2 or 3 years later and ask me questions about research or jobs. And then there's Louis. Louis is one my favorite Brazilians. I can only describe him as a big Brazilian teddy bear. I see him every year at FISL. He works primarily in Java EE but he's attended every single one of my talks over the last 4 years. I can't tell you why, but he always greets me and gives me a hug. For some reason I've had a real impact. And of course when it comes to impact you don't just measure a presentation but every single interaction you have at an event. It's the hall way conversations, the booth conversations, but more importantly it's the conversations at dinner tables or in the cars when you're getting transported to an event. There's a good story that illustrates this. Last year in the spring I was traveling to Goiânia in Brazil. I've been there many times and leaders there no me well. One young man has picked me up at the airport on more than one occasion. We were going out to dinner one evening and he brought his girl friend along. One thing let to another and I eventually asked him, in front of her, "Why haven't you asked her to marry you?" There were all kinds of excuses and she just looked at him and smiled. When I came back in December for JavaOne he came and sought me. "I just want to tell you that I thought a lot about what you said, and I asked her to marry me. We're getting married next Spring." Sometimes just one presentation is all it takes to make an impact. Other times it takes years. Some impacts are directly related to the company and some are more personal in nature. It doesn't matter which it is because it's having the impact that matters.

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• My vertex shader doesn't affect texture coords or diffuse info but works for position

  - by tina nyaa

  I am new to 3D and DirectX - in the past I have only used abstractions for 2D drawing. Over the past month I've been studying really hard and I'm trying to modify and adapt some of the shaders as part of my personal 'study project'. Below I have a shader, modified from one of the Microsoft samples. I set diffuse and tex0 vertex shader outputs to zero, but my model still shows the full texture and lighting as if I hadn't changed the values from the vertex buffer. Changing the position of the model works, but nothing else. Why is this? // // Skinned Mesh Effect file // Copyright (c) 2000-2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. // float4 lhtDir = {0.0f, 0.0f, -1.0f, 1.0f}; //light Direction float4 lightDiffuse = {0.6f, 0.6f, 0.6f, 1.0f}; // Light Diffuse float4 MaterialAmbient : MATERIALAMBIENT = {0.1f, 0.1f, 0.1f, 1.0f}; float4 MaterialDiffuse : MATERIALDIFFUSE = {0.8f, 0.8f, 0.8f, 1.0f}; // Matrix Pallette static const int MAX_MATRICES = 100; float4x3 mWorldMatrixArray[MAX_MATRICES] : WORLDMATRIXARRAY; float4x4 mViewProj : VIEWPROJECTION; /////////////////////////////////////////////////////// struct VS_INPUT { float4 Pos : POSITION; float4 BlendWeights : BLENDWEIGHT; float4 BlendIndices : BLENDINDICES; float3 Normal : NORMAL; float3 Tex0 : TEXCOORD0; }; struct VS_OUTPUT { float4 Pos : POSITION; float4 Diffuse : COLOR; float2 Tex0 : TEXCOORD0; }; float3 Diffuse(float3 Normal) { float CosTheta; // N.L Clamped CosTheta = max(0.0f, dot(Normal, lhtDir.xyz)); // propogate scalar result to vector return (CosTheta); } VS_OUTPUT VShade(VS_INPUT i, uniform int NumBones) { VS_OUTPUT o; float3 Pos = 0.0f; float3 Normal = 0.0f; float LastWeight = 0.0f; // Compensate for lack of UBYTE4 on Geforce3 int4 IndexVector = D3DCOLORtoUBYTE4(i.BlendIndices); // cast the vectors to arrays for use in the for loop below float BlendWeightsArray[4] = (float[4])i.BlendWeights; int IndexArray[4] = (int[4])IndexVector; // calculate the pos/normal using the "normal" weights // and accumulate the weights to calculate the last weight for (int iBone = 0; iBone < NumBones-1; iBone++) { LastWeight = LastWeight + BlendWeightsArray[iBone]; Pos += mul(i.Pos, mWorldMatrixArray[IndexArray[iBone]]) * BlendWeightsArray[iBone]; Normal += mul(i.Normal, mWorldMatrixArray[IndexArray[iBone]]) * BlendWeightsArray[iBone]; } LastWeight = 1.0f - LastWeight; // Now that we have the calculated weight, add in the final influence Pos += (mul(i.Pos, mWorldMatrixArray[IndexArray[NumBones-1]]) * LastWeight); Normal += (mul(i.Normal, mWorldMatrixArray[IndexArray[NumBones-1]]) * LastWeight); // transform position from world space into view and then projection space //o.Pos = mul(float4(Pos.xyz, 1.0f), mViewProj); o.Pos = mul(float4(Pos.xyz, 1.0f), mViewProj); o.Diffuse.x = 0.0f; o.Diffuse.y = 0.0f; o.Diffuse.z = 0.0f; o.Diffuse.w = 0.0f; o.Tex0 = float2(0,0); return o; } technique t0 { pass p0 { VertexShader = compile vs_3_0 VShade(4); } } I am currently using the SlimDX .NET wrapper around DirectX, but the API is extremely similar: public void Draw() { var device = vertexBuffer.Device; device.Clear(ClearFlags.Target | ClearFlags.ZBuffer, Color.White, 1.0f, 0); device.SetRenderState(RenderState.Lighting, true); device.SetRenderState(RenderState.DitherEnable, true); device.SetRenderState(RenderState.ZEnable, true); device.SetRenderState(RenderState.CullMode, Cull.Counterclockwise); device.SetRenderState(RenderState.NormalizeNormals, true); device.SetSamplerState(0, SamplerState.MagFilter, TextureFilter.Anisotropic); device.SetSamplerState(0, SamplerState.MinFilter, TextureFilter.Anisotropic); device.SetTransform(TransformState.World, Matrix.Identity * Matrix.Translation(0, -50, 0)); device.SetTransform(TransformState.View, Matrix.LookAtLH(new Vector3(-200, 0, 0), Vector3.Zero, Vector3.UnitY)); device.SetTransform(TransformState.Projection, Matrix.PerspectiveFovLH((float)Math.PI / 4, (float)device.Viewport.Width / device.Viewport.Height, 10, 10000000)); var material = new Material(); material.Ambient = material.Diffuse = material.Emissive = material.Specular = new Color4(Color.White); material.Power = 1f; device.SetStreamSource(0, vertexBuffer, 0, vertexSize); device.VertexDeclaration = vertexDeclaration; device.Indices = indexBuffer; device.Material = material; device.SetTexture(0, texture); var param = effect.GetParameter(null, "mWorldMatrixArray"); var boneWorldTransforms = bones.OrderedBones.OrderBy(x => x.Id).Select(x => x.CombinedTransformation).ToArray(); effect.SetValue(param, boneWorldTransforms); effect.SetValue(effect.GetParameter(null, "mViewProj"), Matrix.Identity);// Matrix.PerspectiveFovLH((float)Math.PI / 4, (float)device.Viewport.Width / device.Viewport.Height, 10, 10000000)); effect.SetValue(effect.GetParameter(null, "MaterialDiffuse"), material.Diffuse); effect.SetValue(effect.GetParameter(null, "MaterialAmbient"), material.Ambient); effect.Technique = effect.GetTechnique(0); var passes = effect.Begin(FX.DoNotSaveState); for (var i = 0; i < passes; i++) { effect.BeginPass(i); device.DrawIndexedPrimitives(PrimitiveType.TriangleList, 0, 0, skin.Vertices.Length, 0, skin.Indicies.Length / 3); effect.EndPass(); } effect.End(); } Again, I set diffuse and tex0 vertex shader outputs to zero, but my model still shows the full texture and lighting as if I hadn't changed the values from the vertex buffer. Changing the position of the model works, but nothing else. Why is this? Also, whatever I set in the bone transformation matrices doesn't seem to have an effect on my model. If I set every bone transformation to a zero matrix, the model still shows up as if nothing had happened, but changing the Pos field in shader output makes the model disappear. I don't understand why I'm getting this kind of behaviour. Thank you!

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• Nvidia drivers don't work with mainline kernel

  - by dutchie

  I want to try some of the new features in the btrfs filesystem, and to do that I need to use a newer kernel than is included in Ubuntu 12.04. To do that, I have installed linux-headers-3.4.0-030400_3.4.0-030400.201205210521_all.deb, linux-headers-3.4.0-030400-generic_3.4.0-030400.201205210521_amd64.deb, and linux-image-3.4.0-030400-generic_3.4.0-030400.201205210521_amd64.deb from the mainline kernel download here. However, on rebooting into the 3.4 kernel, my desktop is stuck at a very low resolution and I cannot increase it to the full. This did happen when I first installed, but a simple install of the nvidia-current package got everything working nicely with my GTX570 card. There were appear to be some DKMS errors when I installed the kernel, and they indicated I should look at /var/lib/dkms/nvidia-current/295.40/build/make.log: josh@sirius:~/Downloads$ sudo dpkg -i linux-*.deb Selecting previously unselected package linux-headers-3.4.0-030400. (Reading database ... 309400 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking linux-headers-3.4.0-030400 (from linux-headers-3.4.0-030400_3.4.0-030400.201205210521_all.deb) ... Selecting previously unselected package linux-headers-3.4.0-030400-generic. Unpacking linux-headers-3.4.0-030400-generic (from linux-headers-3.4.0-030400-generic_3.4.0-030400.201205210521_amd64.deb) ... Selecting previously unselected package linux-image-3.4.0-030400-generic. Unpacking linux-image-3.4.0-030400-generic (from linux-image-3.4.0-030400-generic_3.4.0-030400.201205210521_amd64.deb) ... Done. Setting up linux-headers-3.4.0-030400 (3.4.0-030400.201205210521) ... Setting up linux-headers-3.4.0-030400-generic (3.4.0-030400.201205210521) ... Examining /etc/kernel/header_postinst.d. run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/header_postinst.d/dkms 3.4.0-030400-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.4.0-030400-generic ERROR (dkms apport): kernel package linux-headers-3.4.0-030400-generic is not supported Error! Bad return status for module build on kernel: 3.4.0-030400-generic (x86_64) Consult /var/lib/dkms/nvidia-current/295.40/build/make.log for more information. Setting up linux-image-3.4.0-030400-generic (3.4.0-030400.201205210521) ... Running depmod. update-initramfs: deferring update (hook will be called later) Examining /etc/kernel/postinst.d. run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/dkms 3.4.0-030400-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.4.0-030400-generic ERROR (dkms apport): kernel package linux-headers-3.4.0-030400-generic is not supported Error! Bad return status for module build on kernel: 3.4.0-030400-generic (x86_64) Consult /var/lib/dkms/nvidia-current/295.40/build/make.log for more information. run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/initramfs-tools 3.4.0-030400-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.4.0-030400-generic update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-3.4.0-030400-generic run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/pm-utils 3.4.0-030400-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.4.0-030400-generic run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/update-notifier 3.4.0-030400-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.4.0-030400-generic run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/zz-update-grub 3.4.0-030400-generic /boot/vmlinuz-3.4.0-030400-generic Generating grub.cfg ... Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.4.0-030400-generic Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.4.0-030400-generic Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-24-generic Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-24-generic Found memtest86+ image: /memtest86+.bin Found Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (12.04) on /dev/sda1 Found Windows 7 (loader) on /dev/sda2 Found Windows 7 (loader) on /dev/sda3 done /var/lib/dkms/nvidia-current/295.40/build/make.log: DKMS make.log for nvidia-current-295.40 for kernel 3.4.0-030400-generic (x86_64) Thu Jun 7 00:58:39 BST 2012 NVIDIA: calling KBUILD... test -e include/generated/autoconf.h -a -e include/config/auto.conf || ( \ echo; \ echo " ERROR: Kernel configuration is invalid."; \ echo " include/generated/autoconf.h or include/config/auto.conf are missing.";\ echo " Run 'make oldconfig && make prepare' on kernel src to fix it."; \ echo; \ /bin/false) mkdir -p /var/lib/dkms/nvidia-current/295.40/build/.tmp_versions ; rm -f /var/lib/dkms/nvidia-current/295.40/build/.tmp_versions/* make -f scripts/Makefile.build obj=/var/lib/dkms/nvidia-current/295.40/build cc -Wp,-MD,/var/lib/dkms/nvidia-current/295.40/build/.nv.o.d -nostdinc -isystem /usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.6/include -I/usr/src/linux-headers-3.4.0-030400-generic/arch/x86/include -Iarch/x86/include/generated -Iinclude -include /usr/src/linux-headers-3.4.0-030400-generic/include/linux/kconfig.h -D__KERNEL__ -Wall -Wundef -Wstrict-prototypes -Wno-trigraphs -fno-strict-aliasing -fno-common -Werror-implicit-function-declaration -Wno-format-security -fno-delete-null-pointer-checks -O2 -m64 -mtune=generic -mno-red-zone -mcmodel=kernel -funit-at-a-time -maccumulate-outgoing-args -fstack-protector -DCONFIG_AS_CFI=1 -DCONFIG_AS_CFI_SIGNAL_FRAME=1 -DCONFIG_AS_CFI_SECTIONS=1 -DCONFIG_AS_FXSAVEQ=1 -pipe -Wno-sign-compare -fno-asynchronous-unwind-tables -mno-sse -mno-mmx -mno-sse2 -mno-3dnow -mno-avx -Wframe-larger-than=1024 -Wno-unused-but-set-variable -fno-omit-frame-pointer -fno-optimize-sibling-calls -pg -Wdeclaration-after-statement -Wno-pointer-sign -fno-strict-overflow -fconserve-stack -DCC_HAVE_ASM_GOTO -I/var/lib/dkms/nvidia-current/295.40/build -Wall -MD -Wsign-compare -Wno-cast-qual -Wno-error -D__KERNEL__ -DMODULE -DNVRM -DNV_VERSION_STRING=\"295.40\" -Wno-unused-function -Wuninitialized -mno-red-zone -mcmodel=kernel -UDEBUG -U_DEBUG -DNDEBUG -DMODULE -D"KBUILD_STR(s)=#s" -D"KBUILD_BASENAME=KBUILD_STR(nv)" -D"KBUILD_MODNAME=KBUILD_STR(nvidia)" -c -o /var/lib/dkms/nvidia-current/295.40/build/.tmp_nv.o /var/lib/dkms/nvidia-current/295.40/build/nv.c In file included from include/linux/kernel.h:19:0, from include/linux/sched.h:55, from include/linux/utsname.h:35, from /var/lib/dkms/nvidia-current/295.40/build/nv-linux.h:38, from /var/lib/dkms/nvidia-current/295.40/build/nv.c:13: include/linux/bitops.h: In function ‘hweight_long’: include/linux/bitops.h:66:41: warning: signed and unsigned type in conditional expression [-Wsign-compare] In file included from /usr/src/linux-headers-3.4.0-030400-generic/arch/x86/include/asm/uaccess.h:577:0, from include/linux/poll.h:14, from /var/lib/dkms/nvidia-current/295.40/build/nv-linux.h:97, from /var/lib/dkms/nvidia-current/295.40/build/nv.c:13: /usr/src/linux-headers-3.4.0-030400-generic/arch/x86/include/asm/uaccess_64.h: In function ‘copy_from_user’: /usr/src/linux-headers-3.4.0-030400-generic/arch/x86/include/asm/uaccess_64.h:53:6: warning: comparison between signed and unsigned integer expressions [-Wsign-compare] In file included from /var/lib/dkms/nvidia-current/295.40/build/nv.c:13:0: /var/lib/dkms/nvidia-current/295.40/build/nv-linux.h: At top level: /var/lib/dkms/nvidia-current/295.40/build/nv-linux.h:114:75: fatal error: asm/system.h: No such file or directory compilation terminated. make[3]: *** [/var/lib/dkms/nvidia-current/295.40/build/nv.o] Error 1 make[2]: *** [_module_/var/lib/dkms/nvidia-current/295.40/build] Error 2 NVIDIA: left KBUILD. nvidia.ko failed to build! make[1]: *** [module] Error 1 make: *** [module] Error 2

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• Passing a parameter so that it cannot be changed – C#

  - by nmarun

  I read this requirement of not allowing a user to change the value of a property passed as a parameter to a method. In C++, as far as I could recall (it’s been over 10 yrs, so I had to refresh memory), you can pass ‘const’ to a function parameter and this ensures that the parameter cannot be changed inside the scope of the function. There’s no such direct way of doing this in C#, but that does not mean it cannot be done!! Ok, so this ‘not-so-direct’ technique depends on the type of the parameter – a simple property or a collection. Parameter as a simple property: This is quite easy (and you might have guessed it already). Bulent Ozkir clearly explains how this can be done here. Parameter as a collection property: Obviously the above does not work if the parameter is a collection of some type. Let’s dig-in. Suppose I need to create a collection of type KeyTitle as defined below. 1: public class KeyTitle 2: { 3: public int Key { get; set; } 4: public string Title { get; set; } 5: } My class is declared as below: 1: public class Class1 2: { 3: public Class1() 4: { 5: MyKeyTitleList = new List<KeyTitle>(); 6: } 7: 8: public List<KeyTitle> MyKeyTitleList { get; set; } 9: public ReadOnlyCollection<KeyTitle> ReadonlyKeyTitleCollection 10: { 11: // .AsReadOnly creates a ReadOnlyCollection<> type 12: get { return MyKeyTitleList.AsReadOnly(); } 13: } 14: } See the .AsReadOnly() method used in the second property? As MSDN says it: “Returns a read-only IList<T> wrapper for the current collection.” Knowing this, I can implement my code as: 1: public static void Main() 2: { 3: Class1 class1 = new Class1(); 4: class1.MyKeyTitleList.Add(new KeyTitle { Key = 1, Title = "abc" }); 5: class1.MyKeyTitleList.Add(new KeyTitle { Key = 2, Title = "def" }); 6: class1.MyKeyTitleList.Add(new KeyTitle { Key = 3, Title = "ghi" }); 7: class1.MyKeyTitleList.Add(new KeyTitle { Key = 4, Title = "jkl" }); 8:  9: TryToModifyCollection(class1.MyKeyTitleList.AsReadOnly()); 10:  11: Console.ReadLine(); 12: } 13:  14: private static void TryToModifyCollection(ReadOnlyCollection<KeyTitle> readOnlyCollection) 15: { 16: // can only read 17: for (int i = 0; i < readOnlyCollection.Count; i++) 18: { 19: Console.WriteLine("{0} - {1}", readOnlyCollection[i].Key, readOnlyCollection[i].Title); 20: } 21: // Add() - not allowed 22: // even the indexer does not have a setter 23: } The output is as expected: The below image shows two things. In the first line, I’ve tried to access an element in my read-only collection through an indexer. It shows that the ReadOnlyCollection<> does not have a setter on the indexer. The second line tells that there’s no ‘Add()’ method for this type of collection. The capture below shows there’s no ‘Remove()’ method either, there-by eliminating all ways of modifying a collection. Mission accomplished… right? Now, even if you have a collection of different type, all you need to do is to somehow cast (used loosely) it to a List<> and then do a .AsReadOnly() to get a ReadOnlyCollection of your custom collection type. As an example, if you have an IDictionary<int, string>, you can create a List<T> of this type with a wrapper class (KeyTitle in our case). 1: public IDictionary<int, string> MyDictionary { get; set; } 2:  3: public ReadOnlyCollection<KeyTitle> ReadonlyDictionary 4: { 5: get 6: { 7: return (from item in MyDictionary 8: select new KeyTitle 9: { 10: Key = item.Key, 11: Title = item.Value, 12: }).ToList().AsReadOnly(); 13: } 14: } Cool huh? Just one thing you need to know about the .AsReadOnly() method is that the only way to modify your ReadOnlyCollection<> is to modify the original collection. So doing: 1: public static void Main() 2: { 3: Class1 class1 = new Class1(); 4: class1.MyKeyTitleList.Add(new KeyTitle { Key = 1, Title = "abc" }); 5: class1.MyKeyTitleList.Add(new KeyTitle { Key = 2, Title = "def" }); 6: class1.MyKeyTitleList.Add(new KeyTitle { Key = 3, Title = "ghi" }); 7: class1.MyKeyTitleList.Add(new KeyTitle { Key = 4, Title = "jkl" }); 8: TryToModifyCollection(class1.MyKeyTitleList.AsReadOnly()); 9:  10: Console.WriteLine(); 11:  12: class1.MyKeyTitleList.Add(new KeyTitle { Key = 5, Title = "mno" }); 13: class1.MyKeyTitleList[2] = new KeyTitle{Key = 3, Title = "GHI"}; 14: TryToModifyCollection(class1.MyKeyTitleList.AsReadOnly()); 15:  16: Console.ReadLine(); 17: } Gives me the output of: See that the second element’s Title is changed to upper-case and the fifth element also gets displayed even though we’re still looping through the same ReadOnlyCollection<KeyTitle>. Verdict: Now you know of a way to implement ‘Method(const param1)’ in your code!

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• SharePoint logging to a list

  - by Norgean

  I recently worked in an environment with several servers. Locating the correct SharePoint log file for error messages, or development trace calls, is cumbersome. And once the solution hit the cloud, it got even worse, as we had no access to the log files at all. Obviously we are not the only ones with this problem, and the current trend seems to be to log to a list. This had become an off-hour project, so rather than do the sensible thing and find a ready-made solution, I decided to do it the hard way. So! Fire up Visual Studio, create yet another empty SharePoint solution, and start to think of some requirements. Easy on/offI want to be able to turn list-logging on and off.Easy loggingFor me, this means being able to use string.Format.Easy filteringLet's have the possibility to add some filtering columns; category and severity, where severity can be "verbose", "warning" or "error". Easy on/off Well, that's easy. Create a new web feature. Add an event receiver, and create the list on activation of the feature. Tear the list down on de-activation. I chose not to create a new content type; I did not feel that it would give me anything extra. I based the list on the generic list - I think a better choice would have been the announcement type. Approximately: public void CreateLog(SPWeb web)         {             var list = web.Lists.TryGetList(LogListName);             if (list == null)             {                 var listGuid = web.Lists.Add(LogListName, "Logging for the masses", SPListTemplateType.GenericList);                 list = web.Lists[listGuid];                 list.Title = LogListTitle;                 list.Update();                 list.Fields.Add(Category, SPFieldType.Text, false);                 var stringColl = new StringCollection();                 stringColl.AddRange(new[]{Error, Information, Verbose});                 list.Fields.Add(Severity, SPFieldType.Choice, true, false, stringColl);                 ModifyDefaultView(list);             }         }Should be self explanatory, but: only create the list if it does not already exist (d'oh). Best practice: create it with a Url-friendly name, and, if necessary, give it a better title. ...because otherwise you'll have to look for a list with a name like "Simple_x0020_Log". I've added a couple of fields; a field for category, and a 'severity'. Both to make it easier to find relevant log messages. Notice that I don't have to call list.Update() after adding the fields - this would cause a nasty error (something along the lines of "List locked by another user"). The function for deleting the log is exactly as onerous as you'd expect:         public void DeleteLog(SPWeb web)         {             var list = web.Lists.TryGetList(LogListTitle);             if (list != null)             {                 list.Delete();             }         } So! "All" that remains is to log. Also known as adding items to a list. Lots of different methods with different signatures end up calling the same function. For example, LogVerbose(web, message) calls LogVerbose(web, null, message) which again calls another method which calls: private static void Log(SPWeb web, string category, string severity, string textformat, params object[] texts)         {             if (web != null)             {                 var list = web.Lists.TryGetList(LogListTitle);                 if (list != null)                 {                     var item = list.AddItem(); // NOTE! NOT list.Items.Add… just don't, mkay?                     var text = string.Format(textformat, texts);                     if (text.Length > 255) // because the title field only holds so many chars. Sigh.                         text = text.Substring(0, 254);                     item[SPBuiltInFieldId.Title] = text;                     item[Degree] = severity;                     item[Category] = category;                     item.Update();                 }             } // omitted: Also log to SharePoint log.         } By adding a params parameter I can call it as if I was doing a Console.WriteLine: LogVerbose(web, "demo", "{0} {1}{2}", "hello", "world", '!'); Ok, that was a silly example, a better one might be: LogError(web, LogCategory, "Exception caught when updating {0}. exception: {1}", listItem.Title, ex); For performance reasons I use list.AddItem rather than list.Items.Add. For completeness' sake, let us include the "ModifyDefaultView" function that I deliberately skipped earlier.         private void ModifyDefaultView(SPList list)         {             // Add fields to default view             var defaultView = list.DefaultView;             var exists = defaultView.ViewFields.Cast<string>().Any(field => String.CompareOrdinal(field, Severity) == 0);               if (!exists)             {                 var field = list.Fields.GetFieldByInternalName(Severity);                 if (field != null)                     defaultView.ViewFields.Add(field);                 field = list.Fields.GetFieldByInternalName(Category);                 if (field != null)                     defaultView.ViewFields.Add(field);                 defaultView.Update();                   var sortDoc = new XmlDocument();                 sortDoc.LoadXml(string.Format("<Query>{0}</Query>", defaultView.Query));                 var orderBy = (XmlElement) sortDoc.SelectSingleNode("//OrderBy");                 if (orderBy != null && sortDoc.DocumentElement != null)                     sortDoc.DocumentElement.RemoveChild(orderBy);                 orderBy = sortDoc.CreateElement("OrderBy");                 sortDoc.DocumentElement.AppendChild(orderBy);                 field = list.Fields[SPBuiltInFieldId.Modified];                 var fieldRef = sortDoc.CreateElement("FieldRef");                 fieldRef.SetAttribute("Name", field.InternalName);                 fieldRef.SetAttribute("Ascending", "FALSE");                 orderBy.AppendChild(fieldRef);                   fieldRef = sortDoc.CreateElement("FieldRef");                 field = list.Fields[SPBuiltInFieldId.ID];                 fieldRef.SetAttribute("Name", field.InternalName);                 fieldRef.SetAttribute("Ascending", "FALSE");                 orderBy.AppendChild(fieldRef);                 defaultView.Query = sortDoc.DocumentElement.InnerXml;                 //defaultView.Query = "<OrderBy><FieldRef Name='Modified' Ascending='FALSE' /><FieldRef Name='ID' Ascending='FALSE' /></OrderBy>";                 defaultView.Update();             }         } First two lines are easy - see if the default view includes the "Severity" column. If it does - quit; our job here is done.Adding "severity" and "Category" to the view is not exactly rocket science. But then? Then we build the sort order query. Through XML. The lines are numerous, but boring. All to achieve the CAML query which is commented out. The major benefit of using the dom to build XML, is that you may get compile time errors for spelling mistakes. I say 'may', because although the compiler will not let you forget to close a tag, it will cheerfully let you spell "Name" as "Naem". Whichever you prefer, at the end of the day the view will sort by modified date and ID, both descending. I added the ID as there may be several items with the same time stamp. So! Simple logging to a list, with sensible a view, and with normal functionality for creating your own filterings. I should probably have added some more views in code, ready filtered for "only errors", "errors and warnings" etc. And it would be nice to block verbose logging completely, but I'm not happy with the alternatives. (yetanotherfeature or an admin page seem like overkill - perhaps just removing it as one of the choices, and not log if it isn't there?) Before you comment - yes, try-catches have been removed for clarity. There is nothing worse than having a logging function that breaks your site!

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• Nokia Windows Phone 8 App Collection

  - by Tim Murphy

  I recently upgraded to a Nokia Lumia 920.  Along with it came the availability of a number of Nokia developed apps or apps that Nokia has made available from other developers.  Below is a summary of some of the ones that I have used to this point.  There are quite a few of them so I won’t be covering everything that is available. Nokia Maps I am quite pleased with the accuracy of Nokia Maps and not having to tap the screen for each turn any more.  The information on the screen is quite good as well.  The couple of improvements I would like to see are for the voice directions to include which street or exit you need to use and improve the search accuracy.  Bing maps had much better search results in my opinion. Nokia Drive This one really had me confused when I first setup the phone.  I was driving down the road and suddenly I am getting notification tones, but there were no visual notifications on the phone.  It seems that in their infinite wisdom Nokia thinks I don’t know when I am going over the speed limit and need to be told. ESPN I really liked my ESPN app on Windows Phone 7.5, but I am not getting the type of experience I was looking for out of this app.  While it allows me to pick my favorite teams, but there isn’t a pivot page or panorama page that shows a summary of my favorite teams.  I have also found that the live tile don’t update very often.  Over all I am rather disappointed compared app produced by ESPN. Smart Shoot I really need to get the kids to let me use this on.  I like the concept, but I need to spend more time with it.  The idea how running the camera through a continuous shooting mode and then picking the best is something that I have done with my DSLR and am glad to see it available here. Cinemagraph Here is a fun filter.  It doesn’t have the most accurate editing features, but it is fun to stop certain parts of a scene and let other parts move.  As a test I stopped the traffic on the highway and let the traffic on the frontage road flow.  It makes for a fun effect.  If nothing else it could be great for sending prank animations to your friends. YouSendIt I have only briefly touched this application.  What I don’t understand is why it is needed.  Most of the functionality seems to be similar to SkyDrive and it gives you less storage.  They only feature that seems to differentiate the app is the signature capability. Creative Studio This app has some nice quick edits, but it is not very comprehensive.  I am also not to thrilled with the user experience.  It puts you though an initial color cast series that I’m not sure why it is there.  Discovery of the remaining adjustments isn’t that great.  In the end I found myself wanting Thumbia back. Panorama This is one of the apps that I like.  I found it easy to use as it guides you with a target circle that you center for it to take the next pictures.  It also stitches the images with amazing speed.  The one thing I wish it had was the capability to turn the phone into portrait orientation and do a taller panorama.  Perhaps we will see this in the future. Nokia Music After getting over the missing album art I found that there were a number of missing features with this app as well.  I have a Zune HD and I am used to being able to go through my collection and adding songs, albums or artists to my now playing.  There also doesn’t seem to be a way to manage playlists that I have seen yet.  Other than that the UI is familiar and it give Nokia City Lens Augmented reality is a cool concept, but I still haven’t seen it implemented in a compelling fashion beyond a demo at TED a couple of years ago.  The app still leaves me wanting as well.  It does give an interesting toy.  It gives you the ability to look for general categories and see general direction and clusters of locations.  I think as this concept is better thought out it will become more compelling. Nokia Trailers I don’t know how often I will use this app, but I do like being able to see what movies are being promoted.  I can’t wait for The Hobbit to come out and the trailer was just what the doctor ordered.  I can see coming back to this app from time to time. PhotoBeamer PhotoBeamer is a strange beast that needs a better instruction manual.  It seems a lot like magic but very confusing.  I need some more testing, but I don’t think this is something that most people are going to understand quickly and may give up before getting it to work.  I may put an update here after playing with it further. Ringtone Maker The app was just published and it didn’t work very well for me. It couldn’t find 95% of the songs that Nokia Music was playing for me and crashed several times.  It also had songs named wrong that when I checked them in Nokia Music they were fine.  This app looks like it has a long way to go. Summary In all I think that Nokia is offering a well rounded set of initial applications that can get any new owner started.  There is definitely room for improvement in all of these apps.  The main need is usability upgrades.  I would guess that with feedback from users they will come up to acceptable levels.  Try them out and see if you agree. del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone,Nokia,Lumia,Nokia Apps,ESPN,PhotoBeamer,City Lens,YouSendIt,Drive,Maps

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, September 05, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, September 05, 2012Popular ReleasesDesktop Google Reader: 1.4.6: Sorting feeds alphabetical is now optional (see preferences window)DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.02.03: Major Highlights Fixed issue where mailto: links were not working when sending bulk email Fixed issue where uses did not see friendship relationships Problem is in 6.2, which does not show in the Versions Affected list above. Fixed the issue with cascade deletes in comments in CoreMessaging_Notification Fixed UI issue when using a date fields as a required profile property during user registration Fixed error when running the product in debug mode Fixed visibility issue when...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.65: Fixed null-reference error in the build task constructor.BLACK ORANGE: HPAD TEXT EDITOR 0.9 Beta: HOW TO RUN THE TEXT EDITOR Download the HPAD ARCHIVED FILES which is in .rar format Extract using Winrar Make sure that extracted files are in the same folder Double-Click on HPAD.exe application fileTelerikMvcGridCustomBindingHelper: Version 1.0.15.247-RC2: TelerikMvcGridCustomBindingHelper 1.0.15.247 RC2 Release notes: This is a RC version (hopefully the last one), please test and report any error or problem you encounter. This release is all about performance and fixes Support: "Or" and "Does Not contain" filter options Improved BooleanSubstitutes, Custom Aggregates and expressions-to-queryover Add EntityFramework examples in ExampleWebApplication Many other improvements and fixes Fix invalid cast on CustomAggregates Support for ...ServiceMon - Extensible Real-time, Service Monitoring Utility: ServiceMon Release 0.9.0.44: Auto-uploaded from build serverJavaScript Grid: Release 09-05-2012: Release 09-05-2012xUnit.net Contrib: xunitcontrib-dotCover 0.6.1 (dotCover 2.1 beta): xunitcontrib release 0.6.1 for dotCover 2.1 beta This release provides a test runner plugin for dotCover 2.1 beta, targetting all versions of xUnit.net. (See the xUnit.net project to download xUnit.net itself.) This release adds support for running xUnit.net tests to dotCover 2.1 beta's Visual Studio plugin. PLEASE NOTE: You do NOT need this if you also have ReSharper and the existing 0.6.1 release installed. DotCover will use ReSharper's test runners if available. This release includes th...B INI Sharp Library: B INI Sharp Library v1.0.0.0 Realsed: The frist realsedActive Forums for DotNetNuke CMS: Active Forums 5.0.0 RC: RC release of Active Forums 5.0.Droid Explorer: Droid Explorer 0.8.8.7 Beta: Bug in the display icon for apk's, will fix with next release Added fallback icon if unable to get the image/icon from the Cloud Service Removed some stale plugins that were either out dated or incomplete. Added handler for *.ab files for restoring backups Added plugin to create device backups Backups stored in %USERPROFILE%\Android Backups\%DEVICE_ID%\ Added custom folder icon for the android backups directory better error handling for installing an apk bug fixes for the Runn...BI System Monitor: v2.1: Data Audits report and supporting SQL, and SSIS package Environment Overview report enhancements, improving the appearance, addition of data audit finding indicators Note: SQL 2012 version coming soon.The Visual Guide for Building Team Foundation Server 2012 Environments: Version 1: --Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v8.5: Version 8.5 of Nearforums, the ASP.NET MVC Forum Engine. New features include: Built-in search engine using Lucene.NET Flood control improvements Notifications improvements: sync option and mail body View Roadmap for more details webdeploy package sha1 checksum: 961aff884a9187b6e8a86d68913cdd31f8deaf83WiX Toolset: WiX Toolset v3.6: WiX Toolset v3.6 introduces the Burn bootstrapper/chaining engine and support for Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5. Other minor functionality includes: WixDependencyExtension supports dependency checking among MSI packages. WixFirewallExtension supports more features of Windows Firewall. WixTagExtension supports Software Id Tagging. WixUtilExtension now supports recursive directory deletion. Melt simplifies pure-WiX patching by extracting .msi package content and updating .w...Iveely Search Engine: Iveely Search Engine （0.2.0）: ????ISE?0.1.0??，?????，ISE?0.2.0?????????，???????，????????20???follow?ISE，????，??ISE??????????，??????????，?????????，?????????0.2.0??????，??????????。 Iveely Search Engine ?0.2.0?????????“??????????”，??????，?????????，???????，???????????????????，????、????????????。???0.1.0????????????： 1. ??“????” ??。??????????，?????????，???????????????????。??：????????，????????????，??????????????????。??????。 2. ??“????”??。?0.1.0??????，???????，???????????????，?????????????，????????，?0.2.0?，???????...GmailDefaultMaker: GmailDefaultMaker 3.0.0.2: Add QQ Mail BugfixSmart Data Access layer: Smart Data access Layer Ver 3: In this version support executing inline query is added. Check Documentation section for detail.DotNetNuke® Form and List: 06.00.04: DotNetNuke Form and List 06.00.04 Don't forget to backup your installation before upgrade. Changes in 06.00.04 Fix: Sql Scripts for 6.003 missed object qualifiers within stored procedures Fix: added missing resource "cmdCancel.Text" in form.ascx.resx Changes in 06.00.03 Fix: MakeThumbnail was broken if the application pool was configured to .Net 4 Change: Data is now stored in nvarchar(max) instead of ntext Changes in 06.00.02 The scripts are now compatible with SQL Azure, tested in a ne...Coevery - Free CRM: Coevery 1.0.0.24: Add a sample database, and installation instructions.New ProjectsA Simple Eng-Hindi CMS: A simple English- Hindi dual language content management system for small business/personal websites.Active Social Migrator: This project for managing the Active Social migration tool.ANSI Console User Control: Custom console control for .NET WinformsAutoSPInstallerGUI: GUI Configuration Tool for SPAutoInstaller Codeplex ProjectCode Documentation Checkin Policy: This checkin policy for Visual Studio 2012 checks if c# code is documented the way it's configured in the config of the policy. Code Dojo/Kata - Free Time Coding: Doing some katas of the Coding Dojo page. http://codingdojo.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?KataCataloguefjycUnifyShow: fjycUnifyShowHidden Capture (HC): HC is simple and easy utility to hidden and auto capture desktop or active windowHRC Integration Services: Fake SQL Server Integration Services. LOLKooboo CMS Sites Switcher: Kooboo CMS Sites SwitcherMod.CookieDetector: Orchard module for detecting whether cookies are enabledMyCodes: Created!MySQL Statement Monitor: MySQL Statement Monitor is a monitoring tool that monitors SQL statements transferred over the network.NeoModulusPIRandom: The idea with PI Random is to use easy string manipulation and simple math to generate a pseudo random number. Net Core Tech - Medical Record System: This is a Medical Record System ProjectOraPowerShell: PowerShell library for backup and maintenance of a Oracle Database environment under Microsoft Windows 2008PinDNN: PinDNN is a module that imparts Pinterest-like functionality to DotNetNuke sites. This module works with a MongoDB database and uses the built-in social relatioPyrogen Code Generator: PyroGen is a simple code generator accepting C# as the markup language.restMs: wil be deleted soonScript.NET: Script.NET is a script management utility for web forms and MVC, using ScriptJS-like features to link dependencies between scripts.SpringExample-Pagination: Simple Spring example with PaginationXNA and Component Based Design: This project includes code for XNA and Component Based Design

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• Android using ksoap calling PHP SOAP webservice fails: 'procedure 'CheckLogin' not found

  - by AmazingDreams

  I'm trying to call a PHP SOAP webservice. I know my webservice functions correctly because I use it in a WPF project succesfully. I'm also building an app in android, using the same webservice. The WSDL file can be found here: http://www.wegotcha.nl/servicehandler/service.wsdl This is my code in the android app: String SOAP_ACTION = "http://www.wegotcha.nl/servicehandler/CheckLogin"; String NAMESPACE = "http://www.wegotcha.nl/servicehandler"; String METHOD_NAME = "CheckLogin"; String URL = "http://www.wegotcha.nl/servicehandler/servicehandler.php"; String resultData = ""; SoapSerializationEnvelope soapEnv = new SoapSerializationEnvelope(SoapEnvelope.VER11); SoapObject request = new SoapObject(NAMESPACE, METHOD_NAME); SoapObject UserCredentials = new SoapObject("Types", "UserCredentials6"); UserCredentials.addProperty("mail", params[0]); UserCredentials.addProperty("password", md5(params[1])); request.addSoapObject(UserCredentials); soapEnv.setOutputSoapObject(request); HttpTransportSE http = new HttpTransportSE(URL); http.setXmlVersionTag("<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"utf-8\"?>"); http.debug = true; try { http.call(SOAP_ACTION, soapEnv); } catch (IOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } catch (XmlPullParserException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } SoapObject results = null; results = (SoapObject)soapEnv.bodyOut; if(results != null) resultData = results.getProperty(0).toString(); return resultData; Using fiddler I got the following: Android request: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <v:Envelope xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:d="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:c="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:v="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"><v:Header /> <v:Body> <n0:CheckLogin id="o0" c:root="1" xmlns:n0="http://www.wegotcha.nl/servicehandler"> <n1:UserCredentials6 i:type="n1:UserCredentials6" xmlns:n1="Types"> <mail i:type="d:string">myemail</mail> <password i:type="d:string">myhashedpass</password> </n1:UserCredentials6> </n0:CheckLogin> </v:Body> </v:Envelope> Getting the following response: Procedure 'CheckLogin' not present My request produced by my WPF app looks completely different: <s:Envelope xmlns:s="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"> <s:Body xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <UserCredentials6 xmlns="Types"> <mail>mymail</mail> <password>mypassword</password> </UserCredentials6> </s:Body> </s:Envelope> After googling my ass off I was not able to solve this problem by myself. It may be possible there are some weird things in my Java code because I changed a lot since. I hope you guys will be able to help me, thanks. EDIT: My webservice is of document/literal encoding style, after doing some research I found I should be able to use SoepEnvelope Instead of SoapSerializationEnvelope Though when I replace this I get an error before the try cache block, causing my app to crash. Error: 11-04 16:23:26.786: E/AndroidRuntime(26447): Caused by: java.lang.ClassCastException: org.ksoap2.serialization.SoapObject cannot be cast to org.kxml2.kdom.Node Which is caused by these lines: request.addSoapObject(UserCredentials); soapEnv.setOutputSoapObject(request); This may be a solution though, how do I go about this? I found nothing about using a SoapEnvelope instead of a SoapSerializationEnvelope except for this awesome tutorial: http://ksoap.objectweb.org/project/mailingLists/ksoap/msg00849.html

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• .NET: Serializing object to a file from a 3rd party assembly

  - by MacGyver

  Below is a link that describes how to serialize an object. But it requires you implement from ISerializable for the object you are serializing. What I'd like to do is serialize an object that I did not define--an object based on a class in a 3rd party assembly (from a project reference) that is not implementing ISerializable. Is that possible? How can this be done? http://www.switchonthecode.com/tutorials/csharp-tutorial-serialize-objects-to-a-file Property (IWebDriver = interface type): private IWebDriver driver; Object Instance (FireFoxDriver is a class type): driver = new FirefoxDriver(firefoxProfile); ================ 3/21/2012 update after answer posted Why would this throw an error? It doesn't like this line: serializedObject.DriverInstance = (FirefoxDriver)driver; ... Error: Cannot implicitly convert type 'OpenQA.Selenium.IWebDriver' to 'OpenQA.Selenium.Firefox.FirefoxDriver'. An explicit conversion exists (are you missing a cast?) Here is the code: FirefoxDriverSerialized serializedObject = new FirefoxDriverSerialized(); Serializer serializer = new Serializer(); serializedObject = serializer.DeSerializeObject(@"C:\firefoxDriver.qa"); driver = serializedObject.DriverInstance; if (driver == null) { driver = new FirefoxDriver(firefoxProfile); serializedObject.DriverInstance = (FirefoxDriverSerialized)driver; serializer.SerializeObject(@"C:\firefoxDriver.qa", serializedObject); } Here are the two Serializer classes I built: public class Serializer { public Serializer() { } public void SerializeObject(string filename, FirefoxDriverSerialized objectToSerialize) { Stream stream = File.Open(filename, FileMode.Create); BinaryFormatter bFormatter = new BinaryFormatter(); bFormatter.Serialize(stream, objectToSerialize); stream.Close(); } public FirefoxDriverSerialized DeSerializeObject(string filename) { FirefoxDriverSerialized objectToSerialize; Stream stream = File.Open(filename, FileMode.Open); BinaryFormatter bFormatter = new BinaryFormatter(); objectToSerialize = (FirefoxDriverSerialized)bFormatter.Deserialize(stream); stream.Close(); return objectToSerialize; } } [Serializable()] public class FirefoxDriverSerialized : FirefoxDriver, ISerializable { private FirefoxDriver driverInstance; public FirefoxDriver DriverInstance { get { return this.driverInstance; } set { this.driverInstance = value; } } public FirefoxDriverSerialized() { } public FirefoxDriverSerialized(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext ctxt) { this.driverInstance = (FirefoxDriver)info.GetValue("DriverInstance", typeof(FirefoxDriver)); } public void GetObjectData(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext ctxt) { info.AddValue("DriverInstance", this.driverInstance); } } ================= 3/23/2012 update #2 - fixed serialization/de-serialization, but having another issue (might be relevant for new question) This fixed the calling code. Because we're deleting the *.qa file when we call the WebDriver.Quit() because that's when we chose to close the browser. This will kill off our cached driver as well. So if we start with a new browser window, we'll hit the catch block and create a new instance and save it to our *.qa file (in the serialized form). FirefoxDriverSerialized serializedObject = new FirefoxDriverSerialized(); Serializer serializer = new Serializer(); try { serializedObject = serializer.DeSerializeObject(@"C:\firefoxDriver.qa"); driver = serializedObject.DriverInstance; } catch { driver = new FirefoxDriver(firefoxProfile); serializedObject = new FirefoxDriverSerialized(); serializedObject.DriverInstance = (FirefoxDriver)driver; serializer.SerializeObject(@"C:\firefoxDriver.qa", serializedObject); } However, still getting this exception: Acu.QA.Main.Test_0055_GiftCertificate_UserCheckout: SetUp : System.Runtime.Serialization.SerializationException : Type 'OpenQA.Selenium.Firefox.FirefoxDriver' in Assembly 'WebDriver, Version=2.16.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=1c2bd1631853048f' is not marked as serializable. TearDown : System.NullReferenceException : Object reference not set to an instance of an object. The 3rd line in this code block is throwing the exception: public void SerializeObject(string filename, FirefoxDriverSerialized objectToSerialize) { Stream stream = File.Open(filename, FileMode.Create); BinaryFormatter bFormatter = new BinaryFormatter(); bFormatter.Serialize(stream, objectToSerialize); // <=== this line stream.Close(); }

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• PHP/Java bridge problem

  - by Jack

  I am using tomcat 6 on windows. Here is the code I am testing. import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream; import java.io.Closeable; import java.io.StringReader; import javax.script.Invocable; import javax.script.ScriptEngine; import javax.script.ScriptEngineManager; /** * Create and run THREAD_COUNT PHP threads, concurrently accessing a * shared resource. * * Create 5 script engines, passing each a shared resource allocated * from Java. Each script engine has to implement Runnable. * * Java accesses the Runnable script engine using * scriptEngine.getInterface() and calls thread.start() to invoke each * PHP Runnable implementations concurrently. */ class PhpThreads { public static final String runnable = new String("<?php\n" + "function run() {\n" + " $out = java_context()->getAttribute('sharedResource', 100);\n" + " $nr = (string)java_context()->getAttribute('nr', 100);\n" + " echo \"started thread: $nr\n\";\n" + " for($i=0; $i<100; $i++) {\n" + " $out->write(ord($nr));\n" + " java('java.lang.Thread')->sleep(1);\n" + " }\n" + "}\n" + "?>\n"); static final int THREAD_COUNT = 5; public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception { ScriptEngineManager manager = new ScriptEngineManager(); Thread threads[] = new Thread[THREAD_COUNT]; ScriptEngine engines[] = new ScriptEngine[THREAD_COUNT]; ByteArrayOutputStream sharedResource = new ByteArrayOutputStream(); StringReader runnableReader = new StringReader(runnable); // create THREAD_COUNT PHP threads for (int i=0; i<THREAD_COUNT; i++) { engines[i] = manager.getEngineByName("php-invocable"); if (engines[i] == null) throw new NullPointerException ("php script engine not found"); engines[i].put("nr", new Integer(i+1)); engines[i].put("sharedResource", sharedResource); engines[i].eval(runnableReader); runnableReader.reset(); // cast the whole script to Runnable; note also getInterface(specificClosure, type) Runnable r = (Runnable) ((Invocable)engines[i]).getInterface(Runnable.class); threads[i] = new Thread(r); } // run the THREAD_COUNT PHP threads for (int i=0; i<THREAD_COUNT; i++) { threads[i].start(); } // wait for the THREAD_COUNT PHP threads to finish for (int i=0; i<THREAD_COUNT; i++) { threads[i].join(); ((Closeable)engines[i]).close(); } // print the output generated by the THREAD_COUNT concurrent threads String result = sharedResource.toString(); System.out.println(result); // Check result Object res=manager.getEngineByName("php").eval( "<?php " + "exit((int)('10011002100310041005'!=" + "@system(\"echo -n "+result+"|sed 's/./&\\\n/g'|sort|uniq -c|tr -d ' \\\n'\")));" + "?>"); System.exit(((Number)res).intValue()); } } I have added all the libraries. When I run the file I get the following error - run: Exception in thread "main" javax.script.ScriptException: java.io.IOException: Cannot run program "php-cgi": CreateProcess error=2, The system cannot find the file specified at php.java.script.InvocablePhpScriptEngine.eval(InvocablePhpScriptEngine.java:209) at php.java.script.SimplePhpScriptEngine.eval(SimplePhpScriptEngine.java:178) at javax.script.AbstractScriptEngine.eval(AbstractScriptEngine.java:232) at PhpThreads.main(NewClass.java:53) Caused by: java.io.IOException: Cannot run program "php-cgi": CreateProcess error=2, The system cannot find the file specified at java.lang.ProcessBuilder.start(ProcessBuilder.java:459) at java.lang.Runtime.exec(Runtime.java:593) at php.java.bridge.Util$Process.start(Util.java:1064) at php.java.bridge.Util$ProcessWithErrorHandler.start(Util.java:1166) at php.java.bridge.Util$ProcessWithErrorHandler.start(Util.java:1217) at php.java.script.CGIRunner.doRun(CGIRunner.java:126) at php.java.script.HttpProxy.doRun(HttpProxy.java:63) at php.java.script.CGIRunner.run(CGIRunner.java:111) at php.java.bridge.ThreadPool$Delegate.run(ThreadPool.java:60) Caused by: java.io.IOException: CreateProcess error=2, The system cannot find the file specified at java.lang.ProcessImpl.create(Native Method) at java.lang.ProcessImpl.<init>(ProcessImpl.java:81) at java.lang.ProcessImpl.start(ProcessImpl.java:30) at java.lang.ProcessBuilder.start(ProcessBuilder.java:452) ... 8 more What am I missing?

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• NHibernate MySQL Composite-Key

  - by LnDCobra

  I am trying to create a composite key that mimicks the set of PrimaryKeys in the built in MySQL.DB table. The Db primary key is as follows: Field | Type | Null | ---------------------------------- Host | char(60) | No | Db | char(64) | No | User | char(16) | No | This is my DataBasePrivilege.hbm.xml file <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <hibernate-mapping xmlns="urn:nhibernate-mapping-2.2" assembly="TGS.MySQL.DataBaseObjects" namespace="TGS.MySQL.DataBaseObjects"> <class name="TGS.MySQL.DataBaseObjects.DataBasePrivilege,TGS.MySQL.DataBaseObjects" table="db"> <composite-id name="CompositeKey" class="TGS.MySQL.DataBaseObjects.DataBasePrivilegePrimaryKey, TGS.MySQL.DataBaseObjects"> <key-property name="Host" column="Host" type="char" length="60" /> <key-property name="DataBase" column="Db" type="char" length="64" /> <key-property name="User" column="User" type="char" length="16" /> </composite-id> </class> </hibernate-mapping> The following are my 2 classes for my composite key: namespace TGS.MySQL.DataBaseObjects { public class DataBasePrivilege { public virtual DataBasePrivilegePrimaryKey CompositeKey { get; set; } } public class DataBasePrivilegePrimaryKey { public string Host { get; set; } public string DataBase { get; set; } public string User { get; set; } public override bool Equals(object obj) { if (ReferenceEquals(null, obj)) return false; if (ReferenceEquals(this, obj)) return true; if (obj.GetType() != typeof (DataBasePrivilegePrimaryKey)) return false; return Equals((DataBasePrivilegePrimaryKey) obj); } public bool Equals(DataBasePrivilegePrimaryKey other) { if (ReferenceEquals(null, other)) return false; if (ReferenceEquals(this, other)) return true; return Equals(other.Host, Host) && Equals(other.DataBase, DataBase) && Equals(other.User, User); } public override int GetHashCode() { unchecked { int result = (Host != null ? Host.GetHashCode() : 0); result = (result*397) ^ (DataBase != null ? DataBase.GetHashCode() : 0); result = (result*397) ^ (User != null ? User.GetHashCode() : 0); return result; } } } } And the following is the exception I am getting: Execute System.InvalidCastException: Unable to cast object of type 'System.Object[]' to type 'TGS.MySQL.DataBaseObjects.DataBasePrivilegePrimaryKey'. at (Object , GetterCallback ) at NHibernate.Bytecode.Lightweight.AccessOptimizer.GetPropertyValues(Object target) at NHibernate.Tuple.Component.PocoComponentTuplizer.GetPropertyValues(Object component) at NHibernate.Type.ComponentType.GetPropertyValues(Object component, EntityMode entityMode) at NHibernate.Type.ComponentType.GetHashCode(Object x, EntityMode entityMode) at NHibernate.Type.ComponentType.GetHashCode(Object x, EntityMode entityMode, ISessionFactoryImplementor factory) at NHibernate.Engine.EntityKey.GenerateHashCode() at NHibernate.Engine.EntityKey..ctor(Object identifier, String rootEntityName, String entityName, IType identifierType, Boolean batchLoadable, ISessionFactoryImplementor factory, EntityMode entityMode) at NHibernate.Engine.EntityKey..ctor(Object id, IEntityPersister persister, EntityMode entityMode) at NHibernate.Event.Default.DefaultLoadEventListener.OnLoad(LoadEvent event, LoadType loadType) at NHibernate.Impl.SessionImpl.FireLoad(LoadEvent event, LoadType loadType) at NHibernate.Impl.SessionImpl.Get(String entityName, Object id) at NHibernate.Impl.SessionImpl.Get(Type entityClass, Object id) at NHibernate.Impl.SessionImpl.Get[T](Object id) at TGS.MySQL.DataBase.DataProvider.GetDatabasePrivilegeByHostDbUser(String host, String db, String user) in C:\Documents and Settings\Michal\My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects\TGS\TGS.MySQL.DataBase\DataProvider.cs:line 20 at TGS.UserAccountControl.UserAccountManager.GetDatabasePrivilegeByHostDbUser(String host, String db, String user) in C:\Documents and Settings\Michal\My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects\TGS\TGS.UserAccountControl\UserAccountManager.cs:line 10 at TGS.UserAccountControlTest.UserAccountManagerTest.CanGetDataBasePrivilegeByHostDbUser() in C:\Documents and Settings\Michal\My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects\TGS\TGS.UserAccountControlTest\UserAccountManagerTest.cs:line 12 I am new to NHibernate and any help would be appreciated. I just can't see where it is getting the object[] from? Is the composite key supposed to be object[]?

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• JAXB + JAK java.lang.ClassCastException

  - by Ivansek

  Hi, I read page about JAK implementation where is a piece of code from pom.xml file (Listing 1). This piece of code is actually commented in pom.xml file so i uncommented it in order to add my own schema to compile. After that i run command mvn -e clean install, and i get this error: ivansek ~/Sites/Xlab/KMLTest/javaapiforkml-read-only $ mvn -e clean install + Error stacktraces are turned on. [INFO] Scanning for projects... [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [INFO] Building a Java API for Kml [INFO] task-segment: [clean, install] [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [INFO] [clean:clean {execution: default-clean}] [INFO] [antrun:run {execution: xjc-invocation}] [INFO] Executing tasks [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [ERROR] BUILD ERROR [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [INFO] An Ant BuildException has occured: java.util.ServiceConfigurationError: com.sun.tools.xjc.Plugin: Provider org.jvnet.jaxb2_commons.javaforkmlapi.XJCJavaForKmlApiPlugin could not be instantiated: java.lang.ClassCastException [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [INFO] Trace org.apache.maven.lifecycle.LifecycleExecutionException: An Ant BuildException has occured: java.util.ServiceConfigurationError: com.sun.tools.xjc.Plugin: Provider org.jvnet.jaxb2_commons.javaforkmlapi.XJCJavaForKmlApiPlugin could not be instantiated: java.lang.ClassCastException at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.DefaultLifecycleExecutor.executeGoals(DefaultLifecycleExecutor.java:719) at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.DefaultLifecycleExecutor.executeGoalWithLifecycle(DefaultLifecycleExecutor.java:556) at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.DefaultLifecycleExecutor.executeGoal(DefaultLifecycleExecutor.java:535) at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.DefaultLifecycleExecutor.executeGoalAndHandleFailures(DefaultLifecycleExecutor.java:387) at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.DefaultLifecycleExecutor.executeTaskSegments(DefaultLifecycleExecutor.java:348) at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.DefaultLifecycleExecutor.execute(DefaultLifecycleExecutor.java:180) at org.apache.maven.DefaultMaven.doExecute(DefaultMaven.java:328) at org.apache.maven.DefaultMaven.execute(DefaultMaven.java:138) at org.apache.maven.cli.MavenCli.main(MavenCli.java:362) at org.apache.maven.cli.compat.CompatibleMain.main(CompatibleMain.java:60) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597) at org.codehaus.classworlds.Launcher.launchEnhanced(Launcher.java:315) at org.codehaus.classworlds.Launcher.launch(Launcher.java:255) at org.codehaus.classworlds.Launcher.mainWithExitCode(Launcher.java:430) at org.codehaus.classworlds.Launcher.main(Launcher.java:375) Caused by: org.apache.maven.plugin.MojoExecutionException: An Ant BuildException has occured: java.util.ServiceConfigurationError: com.sun.tools.xjc.Plugin: Provider org.jvnet.jaxb2_commons.javaforkmlapi.XJCJavaForKmlApiPlugin could not be instantiated: java.lang.ClassCastException at org.apache.maven.plugin.antrun.AbstractAntMojo.executeTasks(AbstractAntMojo.java:131) at org.apache.maven.plugin.antrun.AntRunMojo.execute(AntRunMojo.java:98) at org.apache.maven.plugin.DefaultPluginManager.executeMojo(DefaultPluginManager.java:490) at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.DefaultLifecycleExecutor.executeGoals(DefaultLifecycleExecutor.java:694) ... 17 more Caused by: java.util.ServiceConfigurationError: com.sun.tools.xjc.Plugin: Provider org.jvnet.jaxb2_commons.javaforkmlapi.XJCJavaForKmlApiPlugin could not be instantiated: java.lang.ClassCastException at org.apache.tools.ant.dispatch.DispatchUtils.execute(DispatchUtils.java:116) at org.apache.tools.ant.Task.perform(Task.java:348) at org.apache.tools.ant.Target.execute(Target.java:357) at org.apache.maven.plugin.antrun.AbstractAntMojo.executeTasks(AbstractAntMojo.java:118) ... 20 more Caused by: java.util.ServiceConfigurationError: com.sun.tools.xjc.Plugin: Provider org.jvnet.jaxb2_commons.javaforkmlapi.XJCJavaForKmlApiPlugin could not be instantiated: java.lang.ClassCastException at java.util.ServiceLoader.fail(ServiceLoader.java:207) at java.util.ServiceLoader.access$100(ServiceLoader.java:164) at java.util.ServiceLoader$LazyIterator.next(ServiceLoader.java:353) at java.util.ServiceLoader$1.next(ServiceLoader.java:421) at com.sun.tools.xjc.Options.findServices(Options.java:910) at com.sun.tools.xjc.Options.getAllPlugins(Options.java:351) at com.sun.tools.xjc.Options.parseArgument(Options.java:650) at com.sun.tools.xjc.Options.parseArguments(Options.java:760) at com.sun.tools.xjc.XJC2Task._doXJC(XJC2Task.java:453) at com.sun.tools.xjc.XJC2Task.doXJC(XJC2Task.java:443) at com.sun.tools.xjc.XJC2Task.execute(XJC2Task.java:369) at com.sun.istack.tools.ProtectedTask.execute(ProtectedTask.java:55) at org.apache.tools.ant.UnknownElement.execute(UnknownElement.java:288) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597) at org.apache.tools.ant.dispatch.DispatchUtils.execute(DispatchUtils.java:106) ... 23 more Caused by: java.lang.ClassCastException at java.lang.Class.cast(Class.java:2990) at java.util.ServiceLoader$LazyIterator.next(ServiceLoader.java:345) ... 38 more [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [INFO] Total time: 3 seconds [INFO] Finished at: Thu May 13 09:53:19 CEST 2010 [INFO] Final Memory: 16M/79M [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Any suggestions?

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• No EJB receiver available for handling [appName:,modulename:HelloWorldSessionBean,distinctname:]

  - by zoit

  I'm trying to develop my first EJB with an Example I found, I have the next mistake: Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IllegalStateException: No EJB receiver available for handling [appName:,modulename:HelloWorldSessionBean,distinctname:] combination for invocation context org.jboss.ejb.client.EJBClientInvocationContext@41408b80 at org.jboss.ejb.client.EJBClientContext.requireEJBReceiver(EJBClientContext.java:584) at org.jboss.ejb.client.ReceiverInterceptor.handleInvocation(ReceiverInterceptor.java:119) at org.jboss.ejb.client.EJBClientInvocationContext.sendRequest(EJBClientInvocationContext.java:181) at org.jboss.ejb.client.EJBInvocationHandler.doInvoke(EJBInvocationHandler.java:136) at org.jboss.ejb.client.EJBInvocationHandler.doInvoke(EJBInvocationHandler.java:121) at org.jboss.ejb.client.EJBInvocationHandler.invoke(EJBInvocationHandler.java:104) at $Proxy0.sayHello(Unknown Source) at com.ibytecode.client.EJBApplicationClient.main(EJBApplicationClient.java:16) I use JBOSS 7.1, and the code is this: HelloWorld.java package com.ibytecode.business; import javax.ejb.Remote; @Remote public interface HelloWorld { public String sayHello(); } HelloWorldBean.java package com.ibytecode.businesslogic; import com.ibytecode.business.HelloWorld; import javax.ejb.Stateless; /** * Session Bean implementation class HelloWorldBean */ @Stateless public class HelloWorldBean implements HelloWorld { /** * Default constructor. */ public HelloWorldBean() { } public String sayHello() { return "Hello World !!!"; } } EJBApplicationClient.java: package com.ibytecode.client; import javax.naming.Context; import javax.naming.NamingException; import com.ibytecode.business.HelloWorld; import com.ibytecode.businesslogic.HelloWorldBean; import com.ibytecode.clientutility.ClientUtility; public class EJBApplicationClient { public static void main(String[] args) { // TODO Auto-generated method stub HelloWorld bean = doLookup(); System.out.println(bean.sayHello()); // 4. Call business logic } private static HelloWorld doLookup() { Context context = null; HelloWorld bean = null; try { // 1. Obtaining Context context = ClientUtility.getInitialContext(); // 2. Generate JNDI Lookup name String lookupName = getLookupName(); // 3. Lookup and cast bean = (HelloWorld) context.lookup(lookupName); } catch (NamingException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } return bean; } private static String getLookupName() { /* The app name is the EAR name of the deployed EJB without .ear suffix. Since we haven't deployed the application as a .ear, the app name for us will be an empty string */ String appName = ""; /* The module name is the JAR name of the deployed EJB without the .jar suffix. */ String moduleName = "HelloWorldSessionBean"; /*AS7 allows each deployment to have an (optional) distinct name. This can be an empty string if distinct name is not specified. */ String distinctName = ""; // The EJB bean implementation class name String beanName = HelloWorldBean.class.getSimpleName(); // Fully qualified remote interface name final String interfaceName = HelloWorld.class.getName(); // Create a look up string name String name = "ejb:" + appName + "/" + moduleName + "/" + distinctName + "/" + beanName + "!" + interfaceName; return name; } } ClientUtility.java package com.ibytecode.clientutility; import java.util.Properties; import javax.naming.Context; import javax.naming.InitialContext; import javax.naming.NamingException; public class ClientUtility { private static Context initialContext; private static final String PKG_INTERFACES = "org.jboss.ejb.client.naming"; public static Context getInitialContext() throws NamingException { if (initialContext == null) { Properties properties = new Properties(); properties.put("jboss.naming.client.ejb.context", true); properties.put(Context.URL_PKG_PREFIXES, PKG_INTERFACES); initialContext = new InitialContext(properties); } return initialContext; } } properties.file: remote.connectionprovider.create.options.org.xnio.Options.SSL_ENABLED=false remote.connections=default remote.connection.default.host=localhost remote.connection.default.port = 4447 remote.connection.default.connect.options.org.xnio.Options.SASL_POLICY_NOANONYMOUS=false This is what I have. Why I have this?. Thanks so much. Regards

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• Const references when dereferencing iterator on set, starting from Visual Studio 2010

  - by Patrick

  Starting from Visual Studio 2010, iterating over a set seems to return an iterator that dereferences the data as 'const data' instead of non-const. The following code is an example of something that does compile on Visual Studio 2005, but not on 2010 (this is an artificial example, but clearly illustrates the problem we found on our own code). In this example, I have a class that stores a position together with a temperature. I define comparison operators (not all them, just enough to illustrate the problem) that only use the position, not the temperature. The point is that for me two instances are identical if the position is identical; I don't care about the temperature. #include <set> class DataPoint { public: DataPoint (int x, int y) : m_x(x), m_y(y), m_temperature(0) {} void setTemperature(double t) {m_temperature = t;} bool operator<(const DataPoint& rhs) const { if (m_x==rhs.m_x) return m_y<rhs.m_y; else return m_x<rhs.m_x; } bool operator==(const DataPoint& rhs) const { if (m_x!=rhs.m_x) return false; if (m_y!=rhs.m_y) return false; return true; } private: int m_x; int m_y; double m_temperature; }; typedef std::set<DataPoint> DataPointCollection; void main(void) { DataPointCollection points; points.insert (DataPoint(1,1)); points.insert (DataPoint(1,1)); points.insert (DataPoint(1,2)); points.insert (DataPoint(1,3)); points.insert (DataPoint(1,1)); for (DataPointCollection::iterator it=points.begin();it!=points.end();++it) { DataPoint &point = *it; point.setTemperature(10); } } In the main routine I have a set to which I add some points. To check the correctness of the comparison operator, I add data points with the same position multiple times. When writing the contents of the set, I can clearly see there are only 3 points in the set. The for-loop loops over the set, and sets the temperature. Logically this is allowed, since the temperature is not used in the comparison operators. This code compiles correctly in Visual Studio 2005, but gives compilation errors in Visual Studio 2010 on the following line (in the for-loop): DataPoint &point = *it; The error given is that it can't assign a "const DataPoint" to a [non-const] "DataPoint &". It seems that you have no decent (= non-dirty) way of writing this code in VS2010 if you have a comparison operator that only compares parts of the data members. Possible solutions are: Adding a const-cast to the line where it gives an error Making temperature mutable and making setTemperature a const method But to me both solutions seem rather 'dirty'. It looks like the C++ standards committee overlooked this situation. Or not? What are clean solutions to solve this problem? Did some of you encounter this same problem and how did you solve it? Patrick

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• setting up subreport in ireport using XML datasource

  - by shyam

  can anyone explain in detail(if possible with screen shorts) how to add subreport (one to many relation) this being the xml data source <addressbook> <category name="home"> <person id="1"> <LASTNAME>Davolio</LASTNAME> <FIRSTNAME>Nancy</FIRSTNAME> <hobbies> <hobby>Radio Control</hobby> <hobby>R/C Cars</hobby> <hobby>Micro R/C Cars</hobby> <hobby>Die-Cast Models</hobby> </hobbies> <email>[email protected]</email> <email>[email protected]</email> </person> <person id="2"> <LASTNAME>Fuller</LASTNAME> <FIRSTNAME>Andrew</FIRSTNAME> <email>[email protected]</email> <email>[email protected]</email> </person> <person id="3"> <LASTNAME>Leverling</LASTNAME> <FIRSTNAME>Janet</FIRSTNAME> <hobbies> <hobby>Rockets</hobby> <hobby>Puzzles</hobby> <hobby>Science Hobby</hobby> <hobby>Toy Horse</hobby> </hobbies> <email>[email protected]</email> <email>[email protected]</email> </person> </category> <category name="work"> <person id="4"> <LASTNAME>Peacock</LASTNAME> <FIRSTNAME>Margaret</FIRSTNAME> <hobbies> <hobby>Toy Horse</hobby> </hobbies> <email>[email protected]</email> </person> <person id="5"> <LASTNAME>Buchanan</LASTNAME> <FIRSTNAME>Steven</FIRSTNAME> <hobbies> </hobbies> <email>[email protected]</email> </person> <person id="6"> <LASTNAME>Suyama</LASTNAME> <FIRSTNAME>Michael</FIRSTNAME> </person> <person id="7"> <LASTNAME>King</LASTNAME> <FIRSTNAME>Robert</FIRSTNAME> </person> </category> <category name="Other"> <person id="8"> <LASTNAME>Callahan</LASTNAME> <FIRSTNAME>Laura</FIRSTNAME> <email>[email protected]</email> </person> <person id="9"> <LASTNAME>Dodsworth</LASTNAME> <email>[email protected]</email> </person> </category> </addressbook>

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• being able to solve google code jam problem sets

  - by JPro

  This is not a homework question, but rather my intention to know if this is what it takes to learn programming. I keep loggin into TopCoder not to actually participate but to get the basic understand of how the problems are solved. But to my knowledge I don't understand what the problem is and how to translate the problem into an algorithm that can solve it. Just now I happen to look at ACM ICPC 2010 World Finals which is being held in china. The teams were given problem sets and one of them is this: Given at most 100 points on a plan with distinct x-coordinates, find the shortest cycle that passes through each point exactly once, goes from the leftmost point always to the right until it reaches the rightmost point, then goes always to the left until it gets back to the leftmost point. Additionally, two points are given such that the the path from left to right contains the first point, and the path from right to left contains the second point. This seems to be a very simple DP: after processing the last k points, and with the first path ending in point a and the second path ending in point b, what is the smallest total length to achieve that? This is O(n^2) states, transitions in O(n). We deal with the two special points by forcing the first path to contain the first one, and the second path contain the second one. Now I have no idea what I am supposed to solve after reading the problem set. and there's an other one from google code jam: Problem In a big, square room there are two point light sources: one is red and the other is green. There are also n circular pillars. Light travels in straight lines and is absorbed by walls and pillars. The pillars therefore cast shadows: they do not let light through. There are places in the room where no light reaches (black), where only one of the two light sources reaches (red or green), and places where both lights reach (yellow). Compute the total area of each of the four colors in the room. Do not include the area of the pillars. Input * One line containing the number of test cases, T. Each test case contains, in order: * One line containing the coordinates x, y of the red light source. * One line containing the coordinates x, y of the green light source. * One line containing the number of pillars n. * n lines describing the pillars. Each contains 3 numbers x, y, r. The pillar is a disk with the center (x, y) and radius r. The room is the square described by 0 = x, y = 100. Pillars, room walls and light sources are all disjoint, they do not overlap or touch. Output For each test case, output: Case #X: black area red area green area yellow area Is it required that people who program should be should be able to solve these type of problems? I would apprecite if anyone can help me interpret the google code jam problem set as I wish to participate in this years Code Jam to see if I can do anthing or not. Thanks.

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• Architecture for Qt SIGNAL with subclass-specific, templated argument type

  - by Barry Wark

  I am developing a scientific data acquisition application using Qt. Since I'm not a deep expert in Qt, I'd like some architecture advise from the community on the following problem: The application supports several hardware acquisition interfaces but I would like to provide an common API on top of those interfaces. Each interface has a sample data type and a units for its data. So I'm representing a vector of samples from each device as a std::vector of Boost.Units quantities (i.e. std::vector<boost::units::quantity<unit,sample_type> >). I'd like to use a multi-cast style architecture, where each data source broadcasts newly received data to 1 or more interested parties. Qt's Signal/Slot mechanism is an obvious fit for this style. So, I'd like each data source to emit a signal like typedef std::vector<boost::units::quantity<unit,sample_type> > SampleVector signals: void samplesAcquired(SampleVector sampleVector); for the unit and sample_type appropriate for that device. Since tempalted QObject subclasses aren't supported by the meta-object compiler, there doesn't seem to be a way to have a (tempalted) base class for all data sources which defines the samplesAcquired Signal. In other words, the following won't work: template<T,U> //sample type and units class DataSource : public QObject { Q_OBJECT ... public: typedef std::vector<boost::units::quantity<U,T> > SampleVector signals: void samplesAcquired(SampleVector sampleVector); }; The best option I've been able to come up with is a two-layered approach: template<T,U> //sample type and units class IAcquiredSamples { public: typedef std::vector<boost::units::quantity<U,T> > SampleVector virtual shared_ptr<SampleVector> acquiredData(TimeStamp ts, unsigned long nsamples); }; class DataSource : public QObject { ... signals: void samplesAcquired(TimeStamp ts, unsigned long nsamples); }; The samplesAcquired signal now gives a timestamp and number of samples for the acquisition and clients must use the IAcquiredSamples API to retrieve those samples. Obviously data sources must subclass both DataSource and IAcquiredSamples. The disadvantage of this approach appears to be a loss of simplicity in the API... it would be much nicer if clients could get the acquired samples in the Slot connected. Being able to use Qt's queued connections would also make threading issues easier instead of having to manage them in the acquiredData method within each subclass. One other possibility, is to use a QVariant argument. This necessarily puts the onus on subclass to register their particular sample vector type with Q_REGISTER_METATYPE/qRegisterMetaType. Not really a big deal. Clients of the base class however, will have no way of knowing what type the QVariant value type is, unless a tag struct is also passed with the signal. I consider this solution at least as convoluted as the one above, as it forces clients of the abstract base class API to deal with some of the gnarlier aspects of type system. So, is there a way to achieve the templated signal parameter? Is there a better architecture than the one I've proposed?

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• Passing a variable from Excel 2007 Custom Task Pane to Hosted PowerShell

  - by Uros Calakovic

  I am testing PowerShell hosting using C#. Here is a console application that works: using System; using System.Collections; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Collections.ObjectModel; using System.Management.Automation; using System.Management.Automation.Runspaces; using Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel; namespace ConsoleApplication3 { class Program { static void Main() { Application app = new Application(); app.Visible = true; app.Workbooks.Add(XlWBATemplate.xlWBATWorksheet); Runspace runspace = RunspaceFactory.CreateRunspace(); runspace.Open(); runspace.SessionStateProxy.SetVariable("Application", app); Pipeline pipeline = runspace.CreatePipeline("$Application"); Collection<PSObject> results = null; try { results = pipeline.Invoke(); foreach (PSObject pob in results) { Console.WriteLine(pob); } } catch (RuntimeException re) { Console.WriteLine(re.GetType().Name); Console.WriteLine(re.Message); } } } } I first create an Excel.Application instance and pass it to the hosted PowerShell instance as a varible named $Application. This works and I can use this variable as if Excel.Application was created from within PowerShell. I next created an Excel addin using VS 2008 and added a user control with two text boxes and a button to the addin (the user control appears as a custom task pane when Excel starts). The idea was this: when I click the button a hosted PowerShell instance is created and I can pass to it the current Excel.Application instance as a variable, just like in the first sample, so I can use this variable to automate Excel from PowerShell (one text box would be used for input and the other one for output. Here is the code: using System; using System.Windows.Forms; using System.Management.Automation; using System.Management.Automation.Runspaces; using System.Collections.ObjectModel; using Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel; namespace POSHAddin { public partial class POSHControl : UserControl { public POSHControl() { InitializeComponent(); } private void btnRun_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { txtOutput.Clear(); Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Application app = Globals.ThisAddIn.Application; Runspace runspace = RunspaceFactory.CreateRunspace(); runspace.Open(); runspace.SessionStateProxy.SetVariable("Application", app); Pipeline pipeline = runspace.CreatePipeline( "$Application | Get-Member | Out-String"); app.ActiveCell.Value2 = "Test"; Collection<PSObject> results = null; try { results = pipeline.Invoke(); foreach (PSObject pob in results) { txtOutput.Text += pob.ToString() + "-"; } } catch (RuntimeException re) { txtOutput.Text += re.GetType().Name; txtOutput.Text += re.Message; } } } } The code is similar to the first sample, except that the current Excel.Application instance is available to the addin via Globals.ThisAddIn.Application (VSTO generated) and I can see that it is really a Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Application instance because I can use things like app.ActiveCell.Value2 = "Test" (this actually puts the text into the active cell). But when I pass the Excel.Application instance to the PowerShell instance what gets there is an instance of System.__ComObject and I can't figure out how to cast it to Excel.Application. When I examine the variable from PowerShell using $Application | Get-Member this is the output I get in the second text box: TypeName: System.__ComObject Name MemberType Definition ---- ---------- ---------- CreateObjRef Method System.Runtime.Remoting.ObjRef CreateObj... Equals Method System.Boolean Equals(Object obj) GetHashCode Method System.Int32 GetHashCode() GetLifetimeService Method System.Object GetLifetimeService() GetType Method System.Type GetType() InitializeLifetimeService Method System.Object InitializeLifetimeService() ToString Method System.String ToString() My question is how can I pass an instance of Microsoft.Office.Interop.Excel.Application from a VSTO generated Excel 2007 addin to a hosted PowerShell instance, so I can manipulate it from PowerShell? (I have previously posted the question in the Microsoft C# forum without an answer)

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• NHibernate Proxy Creation

  - by Chris Meek

  I have a class structure like the following class Container { public virtual int Id { get; set; } public IList<Base> Bases { get; set; } } class Base { public virtual int Id { get; set; } public virtual string Name { get; set; } } class EnemyBase : Base { public virtual int EstimatedSize { get; set; } } class FriendlyBase : Base { public virtual int ActualSize { get; set; } } Now when I ask the session for a particular Container it normally gives me the concrete EnemyBase and FriendlyBase objects in the Bases collection. I can then (if I so choose) cast them to their concrete types and do something specific with them. However, sometime I get a proxy of the "Base" class which is not castable to the concrete types. The same method is used both times with the only exception being that in the case that I get proxies I have added some related entities to the session (think the friendly base having a collection of people or something like that). Is there any way I can prevent it from doing the proxy creating and why would it choose to do this in some scenarios? UPDATE The mappings are generated with the automap feature of fluentnhibernate but look something like this when exported <hibernate-mapping xmlns="urn:nhibernate-mapping-2.2" default-access="property" auto-import="true" default-cascade="none" default-lazy="true"> <class xmlns="urn:nhibernate-mapping-2.2" mutable="true" name="Base" table="`Base`"> <id name="Id" type="System.Int32, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"> <column name="Id" /> <generator class="MyIdGenerator" /> </id> <property name="Name" type="String"> <column name="Name" /> </property> <joined-subclass name="EnemyBase"> <key> <column name="Id" /> </key> <property name="EstimatedSize" type="Int"> <column name="EstimatedSize" /> </property> </joined-subclass> <joined-subclass name="FriendlyBase"> <key> <column name="Id" /> </key> <property name="ActualSize" type="Int"> <column name="ActualSize" /> </property> </joined-subclass> </class> </hibernate-mapping> <hibernate-mapping xmlns="urn:nhibernate-mapping-2.2" default-access="property" auto-import="true" default-cascade="none" default-lazy="true"> <class xmlns="urn:nhibernate-mapping-2.2" mutable="true" name="Container" table="`Container`"> <id name="Id" type="System.Int32, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"> <column name="Id" /> <generator class="MyIdGenerator" /> </id> <bag cascade="all-delete-orphan" inverse="true" lazy="false" name="Bases" mutable="true"> <key> <column name="ContainerId" /> </key> <one-to-many class="Base" /> </bag> </class> </hibernate-mapping>

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• Serializing WPF DataTemplates and {Binding Expressions} (from PowerShell?)

  - by Jaykul

  Ok, here's the deal: I have code that works in C#, but when I call it from PowerShell, it fails. I can't quite figure it out, but it's something specific to PowerShell. Here's the relevant code calling the library (assuming you've added a reference ahead of time) from C#: public class Test { [STAThread] public static void Main() { Console.WriteLine( PoshWpf.XamlHelper.RoundTripXaml( "<TextBlock Text=\"{Binding FullName}\" xmlns=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation\"/>" ) ); } } Compiled into an executable, that works fine ... but if you call that method from PowerShell, it returns with no {Binding FullName} for the Text! add-type -path .\PoshWpf.dll [PoshWpf.Test]::Main() I've pasted below the entire code for the library, all wrapped up in a PowerShell Add-Type call so you can just compile it by pasting it into PowerShell (you can leave off the first and last lines if you want to paste it into a new console app in Visual Studio. To output (from PowerShell 2) as an executable, just change the -OutputType parameter to ConsoleApplication and the -OutputAssembly to PoshWpf.exe (or something). Thus, you can see that running the SAME CODE from the executable gives you the correct output. But running the two lines as above or manually calling [PoshWpf.XamlHelper]::RoundTripXaml or [PoshWpf.XamlHelper]::ConvertToXaml from PowerShell just doesn't seem to work at all ... HELP?! Add-Type -TypeDefinition @" using System; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Globalization; using System.Linq; using System.Windows; using System.Windows.Data; using System.Windows.Markup; namespace PoshWpf { public class Test { [STAThread] public static void Main() { Console.WriteLine( PoshWpf.XamlHelper.RoundTripXaml( "<TextBlock Text=\"{Binding FullName}\" xmlns=\"http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation\"/>" ) ); } } public class BindingTypeDescriptionProvider : TypeDescriptionProvider { private static readonly TypeDescriptionProvider _DEFAULT_TYPE_PROVIDER = TypeDescriptor.GetProvider(typeof(Binding)); public BindingTypeDescriptionProvider() : base(_DEFAULT_TYPE_PROVIDER) { } public override ICustomTypeDescriptor GetTypeDescriptor(Type objectType, object instance) { ICustomTypeDescriptor defaultDescriptor = base.GetTypeDescriptor(objectType, instance); return instance == null ? defaultDescriptor : new BindingCustomTypeDescriptor(defaultDescriptor); } } public class BindingCustomTypeDescriptor : CustomTypeDescriptor { public BindingCustomTypeDescriptor(ICustomTypeDescriptor parent) : base(parent) { } public override PropertyDescriptorCollection GetProperties(Attribute[] attributes) { PropertyDescriptor pd; var pdc = new PropertyDescriptorCollection(base.GetProperties(attributes).Cast<PropertyDescriptor>().ToArray()); if ((pd = pdc.Find("Source", false)) != null) { pdc.Add(TypeDescriptor.CreateProperty(typeof(Binding), pd, new Attribute[] { new DefaultValueAttribute("null") })); pdc.Remove(pd); } return pdc; } } public class BindingConverter : ExpressionConverter { public override bool CanConvertTo(ITypeDescriptorContext context, Type destinationType) { return (destinationType == typeof(MarkupExtension)) ? true : false; } public override object ConvertTo(ITypeDescriptorContext context, CultureInfo culture, object value, Type destinationType) { if (destinationType == typeof(MarkupExtension)) { var bindingExpression = value as BindingExpression; if (bindingExpression == null) throw new Exception(); return bindingExpression.ParentBinding; } return base.ConvertTo(context, culture, value, destinationType); } } public static class XamlHelper { static XamlHelper() { // this is absolutely vital: TypeDescriptor.AddProvider(new BindingTypeDescriptionProvider(), typeof(Binding)); TypeDescriptor.AddAttributes(typeof(BindingExpression), new Attribute[] { new TypeConverterAttribute(typeof(BindingConverter)) }); } public static string RoundTripXaml(string xaml) { return XamlWriter.Save(XamlReader.Parse(xaml)); } public static string ConvertToXaml(object wpf) { return XamlWriter.Save(wpf); } } } "@ -language CSharpVersion3 -reference PresentationCore, PresentationFramework, WindowsBase -OutputType Library -OutputAssembly PoshWpf.dll Again, you can get an executable by just altering the last line like so: "@ -language CSharpVersion3 -reference PresentationCore, PresentationFramework, WindowsBase -OutputType ConsoleApplication -OutputAssembly PoshWpf.exe

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• MVC using ODP.NET getting ORA-01840

  - by sse

  I am writing a simple MVC Application using ODP.NET. I am trying to call a Pl/Sql proc that inserts a record. Here is the simple Pl/Sql: procedure spAddCountry(pGisRecid in country.GISRECID%type, pCountryCode in country.COUNTRYCODE%type, pCountryName in country.COUNTRYNAME%type, pCurrencyCode in country.CURRENCYCODE%type, pEUTerritory in country.EUTERRITORY%type, pFatCAStatus in country.FATCASTATUS%type, pFATF in country.FATF%type, pFSCountryCode in country.COUNTRYCODE%type, pInsertedBy in country.INSERTEDBY%type, pInsertedOn in country.INSERTEDON%type, pLanguages in country.LANGUAGES%type, pNCCT in country.NCCT%type) is PRAGMA AUTONOMOUS_TRANSACTION; begin INSERT INTO COUNTRY (GISRECID, COUNTRYCODE, COUNTRYNAME, CURRENCYCODE, EUTERRITORY, FATCASTATUS, FATF, FSCOUNTRYCODE, INSERTEDBY, INSERTEDON, LANGUAGES, NCCT) VALUES(pGISRECID, pCOUNTRYCODE, pCOUNTRYNAME, pCURRENCYCODE, pEUTERRITORY, pFATCASTATUS, pFATF, pFSCOUNTRYCODE, pINSERTEDBY, pINSERTEDON, pLANGUAGES, pNCCT); Commit; end; I am having difficulty passing the date parameter, pInsertedOn, to the Stored Proc. I have verified that the web form retrieves the form data successfully and calls the AddCountry method below, which in turns calls the stored proc, spAddCountry, after populating all of the parms. Here is a snippet of the MVC C# code. I get the following exception: "ORA-01840 input value not long enough for date format". public void AddCountry(Country aCountry) //because the country object field names match the form field names they automatically get bound!! { string oradb = "Data Source=XYZ;User Id=XYZ;Password=xyz;"; OracleConnection conn = new OracleConnection(oradb); OracleCommand cmd = conn.CreateCommand(); cmd.CommandText = "tstpack.spAddCountry"; cmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure; ... OracleParameter paramInsertedBy = new OracleParameter(); paramInsertedBy.ParameterName = "pInsertedBy"; paramInsertedBy.Value = aCountry.InsertedBy; cmd.Parameters.Add(paramInsertedBy); // CultureInfo ci = new CultureInfo("en-US"); OracleParameter paramInsertedOn = new OracleParameter(); paramInsertedOn.ParameterName = "pInsertedOn"; // paramInsertedOn.Value = DateTime.Now; //just testing to see if it's WebForm issue // paramInsertedOn.Value = Convert.ToDateTime(DateTime.Now.ToString(), ci); //flail! paramInsertedOn.Value = aCountry.InsertedOn; cmd.Parameters.Add(paramInsertedOn); ... conn.Open(); cmd.ExecuteNonQuery(); //CRASH! ORA-01840 conn.Close(); } Just to verify that the flow of the program is working, I tried removing the date parm "pInsertedOn" from the pl/sql and from the parm list above, and everything worked fine. I know I am going off of the rails with the date. Can someone tell me how to pass a date to Oracle from an MVC WebForm? Is there some sort of type cast needed? I would really appreciate an example too. Thanks so much! ps, I did try changing the parm type to Varchar2 in the Pl/Sql and doing some conversions myself in the Pl/Sql, the automatic MVC binder was getting in my way, forcing the property of paramInsertedOn.OracleType to DateTime. I tried forcing it to Varchar2, but no luck there either...

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