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• unmet dependencies in Ubuntu 12.04

  - by lee.O

  I tried today to install a dvb-card on my Ubuntu 12.04 (Linux blauhai-linux 3.2.0-25-generic #40-Ubuntu SMP Wed May 23 20:30:51 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux ). The installation failed with an error. After that, i tried to install python (it was already installed but i got this error): linux:~$ sudo apt-get install git Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done git is already the newest version. You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these: The following packages have unmet dependencies: python-glade2:i386 : Depends: python:i386 (< 2.5) but it is not going to be installed Depends: python-support:i386 (= 0.3.4) but it is not installable Depends: python:i386 (= 2.4) but it is not going to be installed Depends: libglade2-0:i386 (= 1:2.5.1) but it is not going to be installed Depends: python-gtk2:i386 (= 2.8.6-8) but it is not going to be installed python-numeric:i386 : Depends: python:i386 (< 2.5) but it is not going to be installed Depends: python:i386 (= 2.3) but it is not going to be installed Depends: python-central:i386 (= 0.5.7) but it is not installable E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution). well, i can read and tried the proposed command, but then i get this: linux:~$ sudo apt-get -f install Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Correcting dependencies... Done The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: libopenal1:i386 libsdl-ttf2.0-0:i386 libkrb5-3:i386 libgconf-2-4:i386 libsm-dev libatk1.0-0:i386 libk5crypto3:i386 libstdc++5:i386 libqt4-declarative:i386 libxcomposite1:i386 libice-dev libgail18:i386 libldap-2.4-2:i386 libao-common libv4l-0:i386 liblcms1:i386 libqt4-qt3support:i386 libroken18-heimdal:i386 libunistring0:i386 libcupsimage2:i386 libgphoto2-port0:i386 libidn11:i386 libnss3:i386 libcaca0:i386 gtk2-engines:i386 libgudev-1.0-0:i386 libjpeg-turbo8:i386 libpthread-stubs0 libcairo-gobject2:i386 libavc1394-0:i386 libjpeg8:i386 libotr2 libaio1:i386 libsane:i386 odbcinst1debian2 odbcinst1debian2:i386 libqt4-test:i386 libqt4-script:i386 libqt4-designer:i386 libsdl-mixer1.2:i386 libqt4-network:i386 libqt4-dbus:i386 libcap2:i386 libproxy1:i386 ibus-gtk:i386 libdbus-glib-1-2:i386 libtdb1:i386 libasn1-8-heimdal:i386 libspeex1:i386 libxslt1.1:i386 libgomp1:i386 libcapi20-3:i386 libibus-1.0-0:i386 libcairo2:i386 libgnutls26:i386 libopenal-data odbcinst libgssapi3-heimdal:i386 libcanberra0:i386 libtasn1-3:i386 libfreetype6:i386 x11proto-kb-dev gtk2-engines-murrine:i386 libwavpack1:i386 libqt4-opengl:i386 libsoup-gnome2.4-1:i386 libv4lconvert0:i386 gstreamer0.10-plugins-good:i386 libc6-i386 lib32gcc1 libqt4-xmlpatterns:i386 librsvg2-common:i386 libdatrie1:i386 xtrans-dev libavahi-common-data:i386 libiec61883-0:i386 lib32asound2 libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0:i386 libsdl-image1.2:i386 libp11-kit0:i386 x11proto-input-dev libwind0-heimdal:i386 libpixman-1-0:i386 libsdl1.2debian:i386 libxaw7:i386 libgdbm3:i386 libcups2:i386 libcurl3:i386 libqtcore4:i386 libxinerama1:i386 libesd0:i386 libmikmod2:i386 libkrb5support0:i386 libxft2:i386 libxt-dev libcroco3:i386 libpulse-mainloop-glib0:i386 libice6:i386 libaa1:i386 libieee1284-3:i386 libgcrypt11:i386 libthai0:i386 libao4:i386 libkeyutils1:i386 libxmu6:i386 libcanberra-gtk0:i386 libvorbisfile3:i386 libqt4-sql:i386 esound-common libxpm4:i386 libqt4-svg:i386 libusb-0.1-4:i386 libgail-common:i386 libxrender1:i386 libhcrypto4-heimdal:i386 libraw1394-11:i386 libnspr4:i386 libshout3:i386 libdv4:i386 libhx509-5-heimdal:i386 libxau-dev libqt4-xml:i386 gstreamer0.10-x:i386 libgettextpo0:i386 libxss1:i386 libgd2-xpm:i386 libheimbase1-heimdal:i386 libtiff4:i386 libsdl-net1.2:i386 libjasper1:i386 libgnome-keyring0:i386 libxtst6:i386 gtk2-engines-pixbuf:i386 libqtgui4:i386 libtag1c2a:i386 librsvg2-2:i386 libavahi-client3:i386 libssl0.9.8:i386 libmpg123-0:i386 libmad0:i386 libsasl2-2:i386 xorg-sgml-doctools libgsoap1 gtk2-engines-oxygen:i386 libfontconfig1:i386 xaw3dg:i386 libpango1.0-0:i386 libsm6:i386 libx11-dev libheimntlm0-heimdal:i386 libpulsedsp:i386 lib32stdc++6 libx11-doc libqt4-sql-mysql:i386 libxcb-render0:i386 libodbc1:i386 libexif12:i386 libqt4-scripttools:i386 librtmp0:i386 libgssapi-krb5-2:i386 libxi6:i386 libqtwebkit4:i386 libxcb1-dev libxp6:i386 libaudio2:i386 libxcursor1:i386 libxcb-shm0:i386 libxt6:i386 libxv1:i386 libsasl2-modules:i386 libavahi-common3:i386 libxrandr2:i386 x11proto-core-dev libsqlite3-0:i386 libmng1:i386 libgtk2.0-0:i386 libxdmcp-dev libpthread-stubs0-dev libltdl7:i386 libkrb5-26-heimdal:i386 libssl1.0.0:i386 glib-networking:i386 libgpg-error0:i386 libsoup2.4-1:i386 libgphoto2-2:i386 libtag1-vanilla:i386 libaudiofile1:i386 libglade2-0:i386 Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them. The following extra packages will be installed: default-jre default-jre-headless icedtea-6-jre-cacao icedtea-6-jre-jamvm icedtea-netx icedtea-netx-common libglade2-0:i386 libpython3.2 openjdk-6-jre openjdk-6-jre-headless openjdk-6-jre-lib python3 python3-minimal python3-uno python3.2 python3.2-minimal Suggested packages: icedtea-plugin sun-java6-fonts fonts-ipafont-gothic fonts-ipafont-mincho ttf-telugu-fonts ttf-oriya-fonts ttf-kannada-fonts ttf-bengali-fonts python3-doc python3-tk python3.2-doc binfmt-support The following packages will be REMOVED: activity-log-manager-control-center aisleriot alacarte apparmor apport apport-gtk apt-xapian-index aptdaemon apturl apturl-common bluez bluez-alsa bluez-alsa:i386 bluez-gstreamer checkbox checkbox-qt command-not-found compiz compiz-gnome compiz-plugins-main-default compizconfig-backend-gconf deja-dup duplicity eog evolution-data-server firefox firefox-globalmenu firefox-gnome-support foomatic-db-compressed-ppds gconf-editor gconf2 gdb gedit gir1.2-mutter-3.0 gir1.2-peas-1.0 gir1.2-rb-3.0 gir1.2-totem-1.0 gir1.2-ubuntuoneui-3.0 gksu gnome-applets gnome-applets-data gnome-bluetooth gnome-contacts gnome-control-center gnome-media gnome-menus gnome-orca gnome-panel gnome-panel-data gnome-session-fallback gnome-shell gnome-sudoku gnome-terminal gnome-terminal-data gnome-themes-standard gnome-tweak-tool gnome-user-share gstreamer0.10-gconf gwibber gwibber-service gwibber-service-facebook gwibber-service-identica gwibber-service-twitter hplip hplip-data ia32-libs ia32-libs-multiarch:i386 ibus ibus-pinyin ibus-table indicator-datetime indicator-power jockey-common jockey-gtk landscape-client-ui-install language-selector-common language-selector-gnome launchpad-integration libcanberra-gtk-module libcanberra-gtk-module:i386 libcanberra-gtk3-module libcompizconfig0 libfolks-eds25 libgksu2-0 libgnome-media-profiles-3.0-0 libgnome2-0 libgnome2-common libgnomevfs2-0 libgnomevfs2-common libgweather-3-0 libgweather-common libgwibber-gtk2 libgwibber2 libmetacity-private0 libmutter0 libpeas-1.0-0 libpurple-bin libpython2.7 libreoffice-gnome librhythmbox-core5 libsyncdaemon-1.0-1 libtotem0 libubuntuoneui-3.0-1 light-themes lsb-release metacity metacity-common mutter-common nautilus-dropbox nautilus-share network-manager-gnome nvidia-common nvidia-settings nvidia-settings-updates onboard oneconf openjdk-7-jdk openjdk-7-jre openprinting-ppds pidgin pidgin-libnotify pidgin-otr printer-driver-foo2zjs printer-driver-ptouch printer-driver-pxljr printer-driver-sag-gdi printer-driver-splix python python-appindicator python-apport python-apt python-apt-common python-aptdaemon python-aptdaemon.gtk3widgets python-aptdaemon.pkcompat python-brlapi python-cairo python-central python-chardet python-configglue python-crypto python-cups python-cupshelpers python-dateutil python-dbus python-debian python-debtagshw python-defer python-dirspec python-egenix-mxdatetime python-egenix-mxtools python-gconf python-gdbm python-gi python-gi-cairo python-glade2:i386 python-gmenu python-gnomekeyring python-gnupginterface python-gobject python-gobject-2 python-gpgme python-gst0.10 python-gtk2 python-httplib2 python-ibus python-imaging python-keyring python-launchpadlib python-lazr.restfulclient python-lazr.uri python-libproxy python-libxml2 python-louis python-mako python-markupsafe python-minimal python-notify python-numeric:i386 python-oauth python-openssl python-packagekit python-pam python-pexpect python-piston-mini-client python-pkg-resources python-problem-report python-protobuf python-pyatspi2 python-pycurl python-pyinotify python-renderpm python-reportlab python-reportlab-accel python-serial python-simplejson python-smbc python-software-properties python-speechd python-twisted-bin python-twisted-core python-twisted-names python-twisted-web python-ubuntu-sso-client python-ubuntuone-client python-ubuntuone-control-panel python-ubuntuone-storageprotocol python-uno python-virtkey python-wadllib python-xapian python-xdg python-xkit python-zeitgeist python-zope.interface python2.7 python2.7-minimal rhythmbox rhythmbox-mozilla rhythmbox-plugin-cdrecorder rhythmbox-plugin-magnatune rhythmbox-plugin-zeitgeist rhythmbox-plugins rhythmbox-ubuntuone screen-resolution-extra sessioninstaller skype software-center software-center-aptdaemon-plugins software-properties-common software-properties-gtk system-config-printer-common system-config-printer-gnome system-config-printer-udev texlive-extra-utils totem totem-mozilla totem-plugins ubuntu-artwork ubuntu-desktop ubuntu-minimal ubuntu-sso-client ubuntu-sso-client-gtk ubuntu-standard ubuntu-system-service ubuntuone-client ubuntuone-client-gnome ubuntuone-control-panel ubuntuone-couch ubuntuone-installer ufw unattended-upgrades unity unity-2d unity-common unity-lens-applications unity-lens-video unity-scope-musicstores unity-scope-video-remote update-manager update-manager-core update-notifier update-notifier-common usb-creator-common usb-creator-gtk virtualbox virtualbox-dkms virtualbox-qt xdiagnose xul-ext-ubufox zeitgeist zeitgeist-core zeitgeist-datahub The following NEW packages will be installed: default-jre default-jre-headless icedtea-6-jre-cacao icedtea-6-jre-jamvm icedtea-netx icedtea-netx-common libglade2-0:i386 libpython3.2 openjdk-6-jre openjdk-6-jre-headless openjdk-6-jre-lib python3 python3-minimal python3-uno python3.2 python3.2-minimal WARNING: The following essential packages will be removed. This should NOT be done unless you know exactly what you are doing! python-minimal python2.7-minimal (due to python-minimal) 0 upgraded, 16 newly installed, 273 to remove and 0 not upgraded. 2 not fully installed or removed. Need to get 39.1 MB of archives. After this operation, 324 MB disk space will be freed. You are about to do something potentially harmful. To continue type in the phrase 'Yes, do as I say!' ?] Thats not good, is it?! Should i run this command or should i run another command to fix this problem? Would be great if somebody can help me. :) Thanks in advance. best regards

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• Adding the New HTML Editor Extender to a Web Forms Application using NuGet

  - by Stephen Walther

  The July 2011 release of the Ajax Control Toolkit includes a new, lightweight, HTML5 compatible HTML Editor extender. In this blog entry, I explain how you can take advantage of NuGet to quickly add the new HTML Editor control extender to a new or existing ASP.NET Web Forms application. Installing the Latest Version of the Ajax Control Toolkit with NuGet NuGet is a package manager. It enables you to quickly install new software directly from within Visual Studio 2010. You can use NuGet to install additional software when building any type of .NET application including ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC applications. If you have not already installed NuGet then you can install NuGet by navigating to the following address and clicking the giant install button: http://nuget.org/ After you install NuGet, you can add the Ajax Control Toolkit to a new or existing ASP.NET Web Forms application by selecting the Visual Studio menu option Tools, Library Package Manager, Package Manager Console: Selecting this menu option opens the Package Manager Console. You can enter the command Install-Package AjaxControlToolkit in the console to install the Ajax Control Toolkit: After you install the Ajax Control Toolkit with NuGet, your application will include an assembly reference to the AjaxControlToolkit.dll and SanitizerProviders.dll assemblies: Furthermore, your Web.config file will be updated to contain a new tag prefix for the Ajax Control Toolkit controls: <configuration> <system.web> <compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.0" /> <pages> <controls> <add tagPrefix="ajaxToolkit" assembly="AjaxControlToolkit" namespace="AjaxControlToolkit" /> </controls> </pages> </system.web> </configuration> The configuration file installed by NuGet adds the prefix ajaxToolkit for all of the Ajax Control Toolkit controls. You can type ajaxToolkit: in source view to get auto-complete in Source view. You can, of course, change this prefix to anything you want. Using the HTML Editor Extender After you install the Ajax Control Toolkit, you can use the HTML Editor Extender with the standard ASP.NET TextBox control to enable users to enter rich formatting such as bold, underline, italic, different fonts, and different background and foreground colors. For example, the following page can be used for entering comments. The page contains a standard ASP.NET TextBox, Button, and Label control. When you click the button, any text entered into the TextBox is displayed in the Label control. It is a pretty boring page: Let’s make this page fancier by extending the standard ASP.NET TextBox with the HTML Editor extender control: Notice that the ASP.NET TextBox now has a toolbar which includes buttons for performing various kinds of formatting. For example, you can change the size and font used for the text. You also can change the foreground and background color – and make many other formatting changes. You can customize the toolbar buttons which the HTML Editor extender displays. To learn how to customize the toolbar, see the HTML Editor Extender sample page here: http://www.asp.net/ajaxLibrary/AjaxControlToolkitSampleSite/HTMLEditorExtender/HTMLEditorExtender.aspx Here’s the source code for the ASP.NET page: <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="Default.aspx.cs" Inherits="WebApplication1.Default" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head runat="server"> <title>Add Comments</title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <div> <ajaxToolkit:ToolkitScriptManager ID="TSM1" runat="server" /> <asp:TextBox ID="txtComments" TextMode="MultiLine" Columns="50" Rows="8" Runat="server" /> <ajaxToolkit:HtmlEditorExtender ID="hee" TargetControlID="txtComments" Runat="server" /> <br /><br /> <asp:Button ID="btnSubmit" Text="Add Comment" Runat="server" onclick="btnSubmit_Click" /> <hr /> <asp:Label ID="lblComment" Runat="server" /> </div> </form> </body> </html> Notice that the page above contains 5 controls. The page contains a standard ASP.NET TextBox, Button, and Label control. However, the page also contains an Ajax Control Toolkit ToolkitScriptManager control and HtmlEditorExtender control. The HTML Editor extender control extends the standard ASP.NET TextBox control. The HTML Editor TargetID attribute points at the TextBox control. Here’s the code-behind for the page above:   using System; namespace WebApplication1 { public partial class Default : System.Web.UI.Page { protected void btnSubmit_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { lblComment.Text = txtComments.Text; } } }   Preventing XSS/JavaScript Injection Attacks If you use an HTML Editor -- any HTML Editor -- in a public facing web page then you are opening your website up to Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks. An evil hacker could submit HTML using the HTML Editor which contains JavaScript that steals private information such as other user’s passwords. Imagine, for example, that you create a web page which enables your customers to post comments about your website. Furthermore, imagine that you decide to redisplay the comments so every user can see them. In that case, a malicious user could submit JavaScript which displays a dialog asking for a user name and password. When an unsuspecting customer enters their secret password, the script could transfer the password to the hacker’s website. So how do you accept HTML content without opening your website up to JavaScript injection attacks? The Ajax Control Toolkit HTML Editor supports the Anti-XSS library. You can use the Anti-XSS library to sanitize any HTML content. The Anti-XSS library, for example, strips away all JavaScript automatically. You can download the Anti-XSS library from NuGet. Open the Package Manager Console and execute the command Install-Package AntiXSS: Adding the Anti-XSS library to your application adds two assemblies to your application named AntiXssLibrary.dll and HtmlSanitizationLibrary.dll. After you install the Anti-XSS library, you can configure the HTML Editor extender to use the Anti-XSS library your application’s web.config file: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <configuration> <configSections> <sectionGroup name="system.web"> <section name="sanitizer" requirePermission="false" type="AjaxControlToolkit.Sanitizer.ProviderSanitizerSection, AjaxControlToolkit"/> </sectionGroup> </configSections> <system.web> <sanitizer defaultProvider="AntiXssSanitizerProvider"> <providers> <add name="AntiXssSanitizerProvider" type="AjaxControlToolkit.Sanitizer.AntiXssSanitizerProvider"></add> </providers> </sanitizer> <compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.0" /> <pages> <controls> <add tagPrefix="ajaxToolkit" assembly="AjaxControlToolkit" namespace="AjaxControlToolkit" /> </controls> </pages> </system.web> </configuration> Summary In this blog entry, I described how you can quickly get started using the new HTML Editor extender – included with the July 2011 release of the Ajax Control Toolkit – by installing the Ajax Control Toolkit with NuGet. If you want to learn more about the HTML Editor then please take a look at the Ajax Control Toolkit sample site: http://www.asp.net/ajaxLibrary/AjaxControlToolkitSampleSite/HTMLEditorExtender/HTMLEditorExtender.aspx

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• Ajax Control Toolkit Now Supports jQuery

  - by Stephen.Walther

  I’m excited to announce the September 2013 release of the Ajax Control Toolkit, which now supports building new Ajax Control Toolkit controls with jQuery. You can download the latest release of the Ajax Control Toolkit from http://AjaxControlToolkit.CodePlex.com or you can install the Ajax Control Toolkit directly within Visual Studio by executing the following NuGet command: The New jQuery Extender Base Class This release of the Ajax Control Toolkit introduces a new jQueryExtender base class. This new base class enables you to create Ajax Control Toolkit controls with jQuery instead of the Microsoft Ajax Library. Currently, only one control in the Ajax Control Toolkit has been rewritten to use the new jQueryExtender base class (only one control has been jQueryized). The ToggleButton control is the first of the Ajax Control Toolkit controls to undergo this dramatic transformation. All of the other controls in the Ajax Control Toolkit are written using the Microsoft Ajax Library. We hope to gradually rewrite these controls as jQuery controls over time. You can view the new jQuery ToggleButton live at the Ajax Control Toolkit sample site: http://www.asp.net/ajaxLibrary/AjaxControlToolkitSampleSite/ToggleButton/ToggleButton.aspx Why are we rewriting Ajax Control Toolkits with jQuery? There are very few developers actively working with the Microsoft Ajax Library while there are thousands of developers actively working with jQuery. Because we want talented developers in the community to continue to contribute to the Ajax Control Toolkit, and because almost all JavaScript developers are familiar with jQuery, it makes sense to support jQuery with the Ajax Control Toolkit. Also, we believe that the Ajax Control Toolkit is a great framework for Web Forms developers who want to build new ASP.NET controls that use JavaScript. The Ajax Control Toolkit has great features such as automatic bundling, minification, caching, and compression. We want to make it easy for ASP.NET developers to build new controls that take advantage of these features. Instantiating Controls with data-* Attributes We took advantage of the new JQueryExtender base class to change the way that Ajax Control Toolkit controls are instantiated. In the past, adding an Ajax Control Toolkit to a page resulted in inline JavaScript being injected into the page. For example, adding the ToggleButton control to a page injected the following HTML and script: <input id="ctl00_SampleContent_CheckBox1" name="ctl00$SampleContent$CheckBox1" type="checkbox" checked="checked" /> <script type="text/javascript"> //<![CDATA[ Sys.Application.add_init(function() { $create(Sys.Extended.UI.ToggleButtonBehavior, {"CheckedImageAlternateText":"Check", "CheckedImageUrl":"ToggleButton_Checked.gif", "ImageHeight":19, "ImageWidth":19, "UncheckedImageAlternateText":"UnCheck", "UncheckedImageUrl":"ToggleButton_Unchecked.gif", "id":"ctl00_SampleContent_ToggleButtonExtender1"}, null, null, $get("ctl00_SampleContent_CheckBox1")); }); //]]> </script> Notice the call to the JavaScript $create() method at the bottom of the page. When using the Microsoft Ajax Library, this call to the $create() method is necessary to create the Ajax Control Toolkit control. This inline script looks pretty ugly to a modern JavaScript developer. Inline script! Horrible! The jQuery version of the ToggleButton injects the following HTML and script into the page: <input id="ctl00_SampleContent_CheckBox1" name="ctl00$SampleContent$CheckBox1" type="checkbox" checked="checked" data-act-togglebuttonextender="imageWidth:19, imageHeight:19, uncheckedImageUrl:'ToggleButton_Unchecked.gif', checkedImageUrl:'ToggleButton_Checked.gif', uncheckedImageAlternateText:'I don&#39;t understand why you don&#39;t like ASP.NET', checkedImageAlternateText:'It&#39;s really nice to hear from you that you like ASP.NET'" /> Notice that there is no script! There is no call to the $create() method. In fact, there is no inline JavaScript at all. The jQuery version of the ToggleButton uses an HTML5 data-* attribute instead of an inline script. The ToggleButton control is instantiated with a data-act-togglebuttonextender attribute. Using data-* attributes results in much cleaner markup (You don’t need to feel embarrassed when selecting View Source in your browser). Ajax Control Toolkit versus jQuery So in a jQuery world why is the Ajax Control Toolkit needed at all? Why not just use jQuery plugins instead of the Ajax Control Toolkit? For example, there are lots of jQuery ToggleButton plugins floating around the Internet. Why not just use one of these jQuery plugins instead of using the Ajax Control Toolkit ToggleButton control? There are three main reasons why the Ajax Control Toolkit continues to be valuable in a jQuery world: Ajax Control Toolkit controls run on both the server and client jQuery plugins are client only. A jQuery plugin does not include any server-side code. If you need to perform any work on the server – think of the AjaxFileUpload control – then you can’t use a pure jQuery solution. Ajax Control Toolkit controls provide a better Visual Studio experience You don’t get any design time experience when you use jQuery plugins within Visual Studio. Ajax Control Toolkit controls, on the other hand, are designed to work with Visual Studio. For example, you can use the Visual Studio Properties window to set Ajax Control Toolkit control properties. Ajax Control Toolkit controls shield you from working with JavaScript I like writing code in JavaScript. However, not all developers like JavaScript and some developers want to completely avoid writing any JavaScript code at all. The Ajax Control Toolkit enables you to take advantage of JavaScript (and the latest features of HTML5) in your ASP.NET Web Forms websites without writing a single line of JavaScript. Better ToolkitScriptManager Documentation With this release, we have added more detailed documentation for using the ToolkitScriptManager. In particular, we added documentation that describes how to take advantage of the new bundling, minification, compression, and caching features of the Ajax Control Toolkit. The ToolkitScriptManager documentation is part of the Ajax Control Toolkit sample site and it can be read here: http://www.asp.net/ajaxLibrary/AjaxControlToolkitSampleSite/ToolkitScriptManager/ToolkitScriptManager.aspx Other Fixes This release of the Ajax Control Toolkit includes several important bug fixes. For example, the Ajax Control Toolkit Twitter control was completely rewritten with this release. Twitter is in the process of retiring the first version of their API. You can read about their plans here: https://dev.twitter.com/blog/planning-for-api-v1-retirement We completely rewrote the Ajax Control Toolkit Twitter control to use the new Twitter API. To take advantage of the new Twitter API, you must get a key and access token from Twitter and add the key and token to your web.config file. Detailed instructions for using the new version of the Ajax Control Toolkit Twitter control can be found here: http://www.asp.net/ajaxLibrary/AjaxControlToolkitSampleSite/Twitter/Twitter.aspx   Summary We’ve made some really great changes to the Ajax Control Toolkit over the last two releases to modernize the toolkit. In the previous release, we updated the Ajax Control Toolkit to use a better bundling, minification, compression, and caching system. With this release, we updated the Ajax Control Toolkit to support jQuery. We also continue to update the Ajax Control Toolkit with important bug fixes. I hope you like these changes and I look forward to hearing your feedback.

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• Week in Geek: 4chan Falls Victim to DDoS Attack Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  This week we learned how to tweak the low battery action on a Windows 7 laptop, access an eBook collection anywhere in the world, “extend iPad battery life, batch resize photos, & sync massive music collections”, went on a reign of destruction with Snow Crusher, and had fun decorating our desktops with abstract icon collections. Photo by pasukaru76. Random Geek Links We have included extra news article goodness to help you catch up on any developments that you may have missed during the holiday break this past week. Note: The three 27C3 articles listed here represent three different presentations at the 27th Chaos Communication Congress hacker conference. 4chan victim of DDoS as FBI investigates role in PayPal attack Users of 4chan may have gotten a taste of their own medicine after the site was knocked offline by a DDoS attack from an unknown origin early Thursday morning. Report: FBI seizes server in probe of WikiLeaks attacks The FBI has seized a server in Texas as part of its hunt for the groups behind the pro-WikiLeaks denial-of-service attacks launched in December against PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, and others. Mozilla exposes older user-account database Mozilla has disabled 44,000 older user accounts for its Firefox add-ons site after a security researcher found part of a database of the account information on a publicly available server. Data breach affects 4.9 million Honda customers Japanese automaker Honda has put some 2.2 million customers in the United States on a security breach alert after a database containing information on the owners and their cars was hacked. Chinese Trojan discovered in Android games An Android-based Trojan called “Geinimi” has been discovered in the wild and the Trojan is capable of sending personal information to remote servers and exhibits botnet-like behavior. 27C3 presentation claims many mobiles vulnerable to SMS attacks According to security experts, an ‘SMS of death’ threatens to disable many current Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola, Micromax and LG mobiles. 27C3: GSM cell phones even easier to tap Security researchers have demonstrated how open source software on a number of revamped, entry-level cell phones can decrypt and record mobile phone calls in the GSM network. 27C3: danger lurks in PDF documents Security researcher Julia Wolf has pointed out numerous, previously hardly known, security problems in connection with Adobe’s PDF standard. Critical update for WordPress A critical update has been made available for WordPress in the form of version 3.0.4. The update fixes a security bug in WordPress’s KSES library. McAfee Labs Predicts Geolocation, Mobile Devices and Apple Will Top the List of Targets for Emerging Threats in 2011 The list comprises 2010’s most buzzed about platforms and services, including Google’s Android, Apple’s iPhone, foursquare, Google TV and the Mac OS X platform, which are all expected to become major targets for cybercriminals. McAfee Labs also predicts that politically motivated attacks will be on the rise. Windows Phone 7 piracy materializes with FreeMarketplace A proof-of-concept application, FreeMarketplace, that allows any Windows Phone 7 application to be downloaded and installed free of charge has been developed. Empty email accounts, and some bad buzz for Hotmail In the past few days, a number of Hotmail users have been complaining about a rather disconcerting issue: their Hotmail accounts, some up to 10 years old, appear completely empty.  No emails, no folders, nothing, just what appears to be a new account. Reports: Nintendo warns of 3DS risk for kids Nintendo has reportedly issued a warning that the 3DS, its eagerly awaited glasses-free 3D portable gaming device, should not be used by children under 6 when the gadget is in 3D-viewing mode. Google eyes ‘cloaking’ as next antispam target Google plans to take a closer look at the practice of “cloaking,” or presenting one look to a Googlebot crawling one’s site while presenting another look to users. Facebook, Twitter stock trading drawing SEC eye? The high degree of investor interest in shares of hot Silicon Valley companies that aren’t yet publicly traded–like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Zynga–may be leading to scrutiny from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Random TinyHacker Links Photo by jcraveiro. Exciting Software Set for Release in 2011 A few bloggers from great websites such as How-To Geek, Guiding Tech and 7 Tutorials took the time to sit down and talk about their software wishes for 2011. Take the time to read it and share… Wikileaks Infopr0n An infographic detailing the quest to plug WikiLeaks. The New York Times Guide to Mobile Apps A growing collection of all mobile app coverage by the New York Times as well as lists of favorite apps from Times writers. 7,000,000,000 (Video) A fascinating look at the world’s population via National Geographic Magazine. Super User Questions Check out the great answers to these hot questions from Super User. How to use a Personal computer as a Linux web server for development purposes? How to link processing power of old computers together? Free virtualization tool for testing suspicious files? Why do some actions not work with Remote Desktop? What is the simplest way to send a large batch of pictures to a distant friend or colleague? How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Had a busy week and need to get caught up on your HTG reading? Then sit back and relax while enjoying these hot posts full of how-to roundup goodness. The 50 Best How-To Geek Windows Articles of 2010 The 20 Best How-To Geek Explainer Topics for 2010 The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 How to Search Just the Site You’re Viewing Using Google Search Ask the Readers: Backing Your Files Up – Local Storage versus the Cloud One Year Ago on How-To Geek Need more how-to geekiness for your weekend? Then look through this great batch of articles from one year ago that focus on dual-booting and O.S. installation goodness. Dual Boot Your Pre-Installed Windows 7 Computer with Vista Dual Boot Your Pre-Installed Windows 7 Computer with XP How To Setup a USB Flash Drive to Install Windows 7 Dual Boot Your Pre-Installed Windows 7 Computer with Ubuntu Easily Install Ubuntu Linux with Windows Using the Wubi Installer The Geek Note We hope that you and your families have had a terrific holiday break as everyone prepares to return to work and school this week. Remember to keep those great tips coming in to us at [email protected]! Photo by pjbeardsley. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 The 50 Best How-To Geek Windows Articles of 2010 The 20 Best How-To Geek Explainer Topics for 2010 How to Disable Caps Lock Key in Windows 7 or Vista How to Use the Avira Rescue CD to Clean Your Infected PC The Complete List of iPad Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials Tune Pop Enhances Android Music Notifications Another Busy Night in Gotham City Wallpaper Classic Super Mario Brothers Theme for Chrome and Iron Experimental Firefox Builds Put Tabs on the Title Bar (Available for Download) Android Trojan Found in the Wild Chaos, Panic, and Disorder Wallpaper

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, February 22, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, February 22, 2010New ProjectsAVDB: System to keep track of orders and the inventory of televisions, DVDs, VCRs etcBooky: Booky is an online Bookmark Management Tool. Gear Up for Lord of the Rings Online (lotro): Windows utility for checking what your LOTRO character currently has equipped and figuring out gear you should get to improve your stats.GotSharp Extensions: GotSharp Extensions is a set of helpful classes and extension methods that can make your coding experience easier and cleaner. Halfwit: A minimalist WPF Twitter client.HOA Starter Kit: A community subdivision website starter kit. First draft.Lua For Irony: Project to define the Lua language using the Irony (http://irony.codeplex.com/) development kit. This work is based heavily on the work done for V...MimeCloud: Scalable .NET Digital Asset & Media Management: MimeCloud is a scalable digital asset library & media management toolset. Founded by Alex Norcliffe and Peter Miller Written by people who have b...Parallel Mandelbrot Set solver: Solving the Mandelbrot set using the Parallel class in .NET 4.0. Showing the resulting image in a WPF application. The solution file requires VS 2010.Pomogad - Pomodoro Windows Gadget: Você usa Pomodoro Technique? Não sabe o que é? Veja aqui http://www.pomodorotechnique.com Agora que você já sabe, que tal usar essa técnica? E p...PostCrap - flyweight .NET AOP post compiler: PostCrap is a flyweight attribute based aspect injection .NET post compiler It is written in C# and uses Mono.Cecil to modify assemblies and injec...Software + Service Reference Demo Kit: MS China Developer and Platform Evangelism team created an End-2-End demo for Software + Service. Yet Another SharePoint Tool: YEAST provides you with a simple to integrate approach to generating SharePoint solution packages as part of a Visual Studio project. Zen Coding Visual Studio Plugin: Zen Coding for Visual Studio is plugin for HTML and CSS hi-speed codingNew Releases.Net MSBuild Google Closure Compiler Task: .Net MSBuild Google Closure Compiler Task 1.1: - Corrected issue with regular expression source file and renamingdotNails: dotNails_0.5.9: NOTE - the latest source code has been moved to google code to take advantage of Mercurial source control - http://code.google.com/p/dotnails/sourc...EasyWFUnit: EasyWFUnit-2.2: Release 2.2 of EasyWFUnit, an extension library to support unit testing of Windows Workflow, includes a revised WinForm GUI Test Builder that utili...Fluent Ribbon Control Suite: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite BETA2 (for .NET 4.0RC): Includes Fluent.dll (with .pdb and .xml) and test application compiled with .NET 4.0 RC.FolderSize: FolderSize.Win32.1.0.3.0: FolderSize.Win32.1.0.3.0 A simple utility intended to be used to scan harddrives for the folders that take most place and display this to the user...Fusion Charts Free for SharePoint: 1.3: Fix release for issue #11833 : Feature Must Be Activated on Root of Web Application.GotSharp Extensions: 1.0: First release, containing only a few extension methods for the System.String and System.IO.Stream classes, and a Range utility class.Jeremy's Experimental Repository: FluentValidation with IoC Sample: Sample code for the blog post Using FluentValidation with an IoC containerMiniTwitter: 1.08: MiniTwitter 1.08 更新内容 修正 自動更新が CodePlex の変更で動いていなかった問題を修正 自動更新に失敗すると落ちるバグを修正 通知領域アイコン右クリックで表示されるメニューが消えないバグを修正 変更 ハッシュタグの抽出条件を変更 API のエンドポイ...MSTS Editors & Tools: Simis Editor v0.3: Simis Editor v0.3 Enabled Edit > Undo and Edit > Redo. Undoing/redoing back to last saved state is identified as saved (no prompt on exit, etc.)....Parallel Mandelbrot Set solver: Alpha 1: First releaseParallelTasks: ParallelTasks 2.0 beta1: ParallelTasks 2.0 is a total re-write of the original version. Featuring improved performance and stability and a more consistent API.Personal Expense Tracker: Personal Expense Tracker v0.1 beta: This is the first beta release. Please provide me with your feedback.PostCrap - flyweight .NET AOP post compiler: PostCrap 1.0 AOP source and binaries: PostCrap 1.0 source and binaries (the unit test project contains sample interceptor attributes for exception handling & logging)Protoforma | Tactica Adversa: Skilful 0.1.3.276: AlphaRawr: Rawr 2.3.10: - More improvements to the default filters - Further improvement on avoiding useless gem swaps from the Optimizer. - Normal/Heroic ICC items shou...Reusable Library: v1.0.2: A collection of reusable abstractions for enterprise application developer.Sem.Sync: 2010-02-21 - Synchronization Manager - Beta: This release is not tested very well, so you should use this version only to evaluate new features. - Changed way of handling source-ids in order ...Survey - web survey & form engine: Survey 1.1.0: Release Survey v. 1.1.0.0 Major changes: - layout & graphics completely overhauled - several technical changes & repairs (e.g. matrix question iss...Yet Another SharePoint Tool: Version 1: Version 1Zeta Resource Editor: Release 2010-02-21: New source code release.Most Popular ProjectsWBFS ManagerRawrAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)Image Resizer Powertoy Clone for WindowsASP.NETDotNetNuke® Community EditionMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesMost Active ProjectsDinnerNow.netRawrBlogEngine.NETNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleSharpyjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesSharePoint ContribInfoServicepatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryPHPExcel

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• WinInet Apps failing when Internet Explorer is set to Offline Mode

  - by Rick Strahl

  Ran into a nasty issue last week when all of a sudden many of my old applications that are using WinInet for HTTP access started failing. Specifically, the WinInet HttpSendRequest() call started failing with an error of 2, which when retrieving the error boils down to: WinInet Error 2: The system cannot find the file specified Now this error can pop up in many legitimate scenarios with WinInet such as when no Internet connection is available or the HTTP configuration (usually configured in Internet Explorer’s options) is misconfigured. The error typically means that the server in question cannot be found or more specifically an Internet connection can’t be established. In this case the problem started suddenly and was causing some of my own applications (old Visual FoxPro apps using my own wwHttp library) and all Adobe Air applications (which apparently uses WinInet for its basic HTTP stack) along with a few more oddball applications to fail instantly when trying to connect via HTTP. Most other applications – all of my installed browsers, email clients, various social network updaters all worked just fine. It seems it was only WinInet apps that were failing. Yet oddly Internet Explorer appeared to be working. So the problem seemed to be isolated to those ‘classic’ applications using WinInet. WinInet’s base configuration uses the Internet Explorer options dialog. To check this out I typically go to the Internet Explorer options and find the Connection tab, and check out the LAN Setup. Make sure there are no rogue proxy settings or configuration scripts that are invalid. Trying with Auto-configuration on and off also can often fix ‘real’ configuration errors. This time however this wasn’t a problem – nothing in the LAN configuration was set (all default). I also played with the Automatic detection of settings which also had no effect. I also tried to use Fiddler to see if that would tell me something. Fiddler has a few additional WinInet configuration options in its configuration. Running Fiddler and hitting an HTTP request using WinInet would never actually hit Fiddler – the failure would occur before WinInet ever fired up the HTTP connection to go through the Fiddler HTTP proxy. And the Culprit is: Internet Explorer’s Work Offline Option The culprit in this situation was Internet Explorer which at some point, unknown to me switched into Offline Mode and was then shut down: When this Offline mode is checked when IE is running *or* if IE gets shut down with this flag set, all applications using WinInet by default assume that it’s running in offline mode. Depending on your caching HTTP headers and whether the page was cached previously you may or may not get a response or an error. For an independent non-browser application this will be highly unpredictable and likely result in failures getting online – especially if the application forces requests to always reload by disabling HTTP caching (as I do on most of my dynamic HTTP clients). What makes this especially tricky is that even when IE is in offline mode in the browser, you can still browse around the Web *if* you have a connection. IE will try to load anything it has cached from the local cache, but as soon as you hit a URL that isn’t cached it will automatically try to access that URL and uncheck the Work Offline option. Conversely if you get knocked off the Internet and browse in IE 9, IE will automatically go into offline mode. I never explicitly set offline mode – it just automatically sets itself on and off depending on the connection. Problem is if you’re not using IE all the time (as I do – rarely and just for testing so usually a few commonly used URLs) and you left it in offline mode when you exit, offline mode stays set which results in the above head scratcher. Ack. This isn’t new behavior in IE 9 BTW – this behavior has always been there, but I think what’s different is that IE now automatically switches between online and offline modes without notifying you at all, so it’s hard to tell when you are offline. Fixing the Issue in your Code If you have an application that is using WinInet, there’s a WinInet option called INTERNET_OPTION_IGNORE_OFFLINE. I just checked this out in my own applications and Internet Explorer 9 and it works, but apparently it’s been broken for some older releases (I can’t confirm how far back though) – lots of posts seem to suggest the flag doesn’t work. However, in IE 9 at least it does seem to work if you call InternetSetOption before you call HttpOpenRequest with the Http Session handle. In FoxPro code I use: DECLARE INTEGER InternetSetOption ;    IN WININET.DLL ;    INTEGER HINTERNET,;    INTEGER dwFlags,;    INTEGER @dwValue,;    INTEGER cbSize lnOptionValue = 1   && BOOL TRUE pass by reference   *** Set needed SSL flags lnResult=InternetSetOption(this.hHttpSession,;    INTERNET_OPTION_IGNORE_OFFLINE ,;  && 77    @lnOptionValue ,4)   DECLARE INTEGER HttpOpenRequest ;    IN WININET.DLL ;    INTEGER hHTTPHandle,;    STRING lpzReqMethod,;    STRING lpzPage,;    STRING lpzVersion,;    STRING lpzReferer,;    STRING lpzAcceptTypes,;    INTEGER dwFlags,;    INTEGER dwContextw     hHTTPResult=HttpOpenRequest(THIS.hHttpsession,;    lcVerb,;    tcPage,;    NULL,NULL,NULL,;    INTERNET_FLAG_RELOAD + ;    IIF(THIS.lsecurelink,INTERNET_FLAG_SECURE,0) + ;    this.nHTTPServiceFlags,0) …  And this fixes the issue at least for IE 9… In my FoxPro wwHttp class I now call this by default to never get bitten by this again… This solves the problem permanently for my HTTP client. I never want to see offline operation in an HTTP client API – it’s just too unpredictable in handling errors and the last thing you want is getting unpredictably stale data. Problem solved but this behavior is – well ugly. But then that’s to be expected from an API that’s based on Internet Explorer, eh?© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in HTTP  Windows  

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• DropDownList and SelectListItem Array Item Updates in MVC

  - by Rick Strahl

  So I ran into an interesting behavior today as I deployed my first MVC 4 app tonight. I have a list form that has a filter drop down that allows selection of categories. This list is static and rarely changes so rather than loading these items from the database each time I load the items once and then cache the actual SelectListItem[] array in a static property. However, when we put the site online tonight we immediately noticed that the drop down list was coming up with pre-set values that randomly changed. Didn't take me long to trace this back to the cached list of SelectListItem[]. Clearly the list was getting updated - apparently through the model binding process in the selection postback. To clarify the scenario here's the drop down list definition in the Razor View:@Html.DropDownListFor(mod => mod.QueryParameters.Category, Model.CategoryList, "All Categories") where Model.CategoryList gets set with:[HttpPost] [CompressContent] public ActionResult List(MessageListViewModel model) { InitializeViewModel(model); busEntry entryBus = new busEntry(); var entries = entryBus.GetEntryList(model.QueryParameters); model.Entries = entries; model.DisplayMode = ApplicationDisplayModes.Standard; model.CategoryList = AppUtils.GetCachedCategoryList(); return View(model); } The AppUtils.GetCachedCategoryList() method gets the cached list or loads the list on the first access. The code to load up the list is housed in a Web utility class. The method looks like this:/// <summary> /// Returns a static category list that is cached /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public static SelectListItem[] GetCachedCategoryList() { if (_CategoryList != null) return _CategoryList; lock (_SyncLock) { if (_CategoryList != null) return _CategoryList; var catBus = new busCategory(); var categories = catBus.GetCategories().ToList(); // Turn list into a SelectItem list var catList= categories .Select(cat => new SelectListItem() { Text = cat.Name, Value = cat.Id.ToString() }) .ToList(); catList.Insert(0, new SelectListItem() { Value = ((int)SpecialCategories.AllCategoriesButRealEstate).ToString(), Text = "All Categories except Real Estate" }); catList.Insert(1, new SelectListItem() { Value = "-1", Text = "--------------------------------" }); _CategoryList = catList.ToArray(); } return _CategoryList; } private static SelectListItem[] _CategoryList ; This seemed normal enough to me - I've been doing stuff like this forever caching smallish lists in memory to avoid an extra trip to the database. This list is used in various places throughout the application - for the list display and also when adding new items and setting up for notifications etc.. Watch that ModelBinder! However, it turns out that this code is clearly causing a problem. It appears that the model binder on the [HttpPost] method is actually updating the list that's bound to and changing the actual entry item in the list and setting its selected value. If you look at the code above I'm not setting the SelectListItem.Selected value anywhere - the only place this value can get set is through ModelBinding. Sure enough when stepping through the code I see that when an item is selected the actual model - model.CategoryList[x].Selected - reflects that. This is bad on several levels: First it's obviously affecting the application behavior - nobody wants to see their drop down list values jump all over the place randomly. But it's also a problem because the array is getting updated by multiple ASP.NET threads which likely would lead to odd crashes from time to time. Not good! In retrospect the modelbinding behavior makes perfect sense. The actual items and the Selected property is the ModelBinder's way of keeping track of one or more selected values. So while I assumed the list to be read-only, the ModelBinder is actually updating it on a post back producing the rather surprising results. Totally missed this during testing and is another one of those little - "Did you know?" moments. So, is there a way around this? Yes but it's maybe not quite obvious. I can't change the behavior of the ModelBinder, but I can certainly change the way that the list is generated. Rather than returning the cached list, I can return a brand new cloned list from the cached items like this:/// <summary> /// Returns a static category list that is cached /// </summary> /// <returns></returns> public static SelectListItem[] GetCachedCategoryList() { if (_CategoryList != null) { // Have to create new instances via projection // to avoid ModelBinding updates to affect this // globally return _CategoryList .Select(cat => new SelectListItem() { Value = cat.Value, Text = cat.Text }) .ToArray(); } …}  The key is that newly created instances of SelectListItems are returned not just filtered instances of the original list. The key here is 'new instances' so that the ModelBinding updates do not update the actual static instance. The code above uses LINQ and a projection into new SelectListItem instances to create this array of fresh instances. And this code works correctly - no more cross-talk between users. Unfortunately this code is also less efficient - it has to reselect the items and uses extra memory for the new array. Knowing what I know now I probably would have not cached the list and just take the hit to read from the database. If there is even a possibility of thread clashes I'm very wary of creating code like this. But since the method already exists and handles this load in one place this fix was easy enough to put in. Live and learn. It's little things like this that can cause some interesting head scratchers sometimes…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in MVC  ASP.NET  .NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (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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• The Windows Browser Ballot Screen Offers Web Browser Choice to European Users

  - by Matthew Guay

  Since March, our friends across the pond in Europe get to decide which browser they want to install with their Windows OS. Today we thought we would take a look at the ballot choices, some are well known, and others you may not have heard of. Windows users in European countries should start seeing the so called “Browser Ballot Screen” after installing the Windows Update KB976002 (link below). The browser ballot offers a dozen different browsers, including some you’ve likely never heard of.  They each have some unique features, and are all free, and here we take a quick look at each of them. Internet Explorer 8 Internet Explorer is the world’s most used web browser, as it’s bundled with Windows. It also includes several unique features, including Accelerators that make it easy to search or find a map of a location, and InPrivate filtering to directly control what sites can get personal information.  Additionally, it offers great integration with Windows Touch and the new taskbar in Windows 7. IE 8 runs on Windows XP and newer, and is bundled with Windows 7. Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Firefox is the most popular browser other than Internet Explorer.  It is the modern descendant of Netscape, and is loved by web developers for its adherence to web standards, openness, and expandability.  It offers thousands of Add-ons and themes to let you customize it to fit your preferences. The most recent version has added Personas, which are quick, lightweight themes to let you personalize the look your browser. It’s open source, and runs on all modern versions of Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Of course thanks to Asian Angel, our resident browser expert, you can check out several articles regarding this popular IE alternative. Google Chrome 4 Google Chrome has gained an impressive amount of market share during its short time in the market. It offers a minimalistic interface and fast speeds with intensive web applications. The address bar is also a search bar, so you can enter a search query or web address and quickly get the information you need. With version 4 you can add a growing number of extensions, personalize it with a variety of stylish themes, and automatically translate foreign websites into your own language. Opera 10.50 Although Opera has been around for over a decade, relatively few users have used it. With the new 10.50 release, Opera has many unique features packed in a sleek UI. It integrates great with Aero and the Windows 7 taskbar, and lets you preview the contents of your websites in the tab bar. It also includes Opera Unite, a small personal web server to make file sharing easy, Opera Turbo to speed up your internet when the connection is slow, and Opera Link to keep all your copies of Opera in sync. It’s a popular browser on many mobile devices, and version 10.50 has a lot of enhancements. Apple Safari 4 Safari is the default browser in Mac OS X, and starting with version 3 it has been available for Windows as well. It’s based on Webkit, the popular new rendering engine that provides great speed and standards compatibility.  Safari 4 lets you browse your browsing history in a unique Coverflow interface, and shows your Top Sites in a fancy, 3D interface.  It’s also great for viewing mobile websites for the iPhone and other mobile devices through Developer Tools. Flock 2.5 Based on the popular Firefox core, Flock brings a multitude of social features to your browsing experience. You can view the latest YouTube videos, Flickr pictures, update your favorite social network, and keep up with your webmail thanks to It’s integration with a wide variety of services. You can even post to your blog through the integrated blog editor. If your time online is mostly spent in social services, this may be a browser you want to check out. Maxthon 2.5 Maxthon is a unique browser that builds on Internet Explorer to bring more features with IE’s rendering. Formerly known as MyIE2, Maxthon was popular for bringing tabbed browsing with IE rendering during the days of IE 6.  Today Maxthon supports a wide range of plugins and skins, so you can customize it however you want. It includes mouse gestures, a web accelerator to speed up pokey internet connections, a content blocker to remove unwanted content from sites, an online account to backup your favorites, and a nice download manager. Avant Browser Another nice browser based on Internet Explorer, Avant brings a wide variety of features in a nice brushed-metal interface. It includes an integrated AutoFill for forms, mouse gestures, customizable skins, and privacy protection features. It also includes a Flash blocker that will only load flash in webpages when you select them. You can also integrate Avant with an online account to store your bookmarks, feeds, settings and passwords online. Sleipnir Sleipnir is a customizable browser meant for advance users that is quite popular in Japan. It’s built on the Trident engine and virtually every aspect of is customizable unlike Internet Explorer.   FlashPeak SlimBrowser SlimBrowser from FlashPeak incorporates a lot of features like Popup Killer, Auto Login, site filtering and more. It’s based on Internet Explorer but offers a lot more customizable options out of the box.   K-meleon This basic browser is light on system resources and based on the Gecko engine. It’s been in development for years on SourceForge, and if you like to tweak virtually any aspect of your browser, this might be a good choice for you.   GreenBrowser GreenBrowser is based on Internet Explorer and is available in several languages. It has a large amount of features out of the box and is light on system resources.   Conclusion The European Union asked for more choices in the web browser they could choose from when installing Windows, and with the Browser Ballot Screen, they certainly get a variety to choose from.  If you’ve tried out some of the lesser known browsers, or think some important ones have been left out, leave a comment and tell us about it. Learn More About the Browser Ballot Screen and Download Alternatives to IE Windows Update KB976002 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Set the Default Browser on Ubuntu From the Command LineQuick Tip: Empty Internet Explorer 7 Cache when Browser is ClosedView Hidden Files and Folders in Ubuntu File BrowserSet the Default Browser and Email Client in UbuntuAccess Multiple Browsers from Firefox with Browser View Plus TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Play Music in Chrome by Simply Dragging a File 15 Great Illustrations by Chow Hon Lam Easily Sync Files & Folders with Friends & Family Amazon Free Kindle for PC Download Stretch popurls.com with a Stylish Script (Firefox) OldTvShows.org – Find episodes of Hitchcock, Soaps, Game Shows and more

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• Securing an ASP.NET MVC 2 Application

  - by rajbk

  This post attempts to look at some of the methods that can be used to secure an ASP.NET MVC 2 Application called Northwind Traders Human Resources.  The sample code for the project is attached at the bottom of this post. We are going to use a slightly modified Northwind database. The screen capture from SQL server management studio shows the change. I added a new column called Salary, inserted some random salaries for the employees and then turned off AllowNulls.   The reporting relationship for Northwind Employees is shown below.   The requirements for our application are as follows: Employees can see their LastName, FirstName, Title, Address and Salary Employees are allowed to edit only their Address information Employees can see the LastName, FirstName, Title, Address and Salary of their immediate reports Employees cannot see records of non immediate reports.  Employees are allowed to edit only the Salary and Title information of their immediate reports. Employees are not allowed to edit the Address of an immediate report Employees should be authenticated into the system. Employees by default get the “Employee” role. If a user has direct reports, they will also get assigned a “Manager” role. We use a very basic empId/pwd scheme of EmployeeID (1-9) and password test$1. You should never do this in an actual application. The application should protect from Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF). For example, Michael could trick Steven, who is already logged on to the HR website, to load a page which contains a malicious request. where without Steven’s knowledge, a form on the site posts information back to the Northwind HR website using Steven’s credentials. Michael could use this technique to give himself a raise :-) UI Notes The layout of our app looks like so: When Nancy (EmpID 1) signs on, she sees the default page with her details and is allowed to edit her address. If Nancy attempts to view the record of employee Andrew who has an employeeID of 2 (Employees/Edit/2), she will get a “Not Authorized” error page. When Andrew (EmpID 2) signs on, he can edit the address field of his record and change the title and salary of employees that directly report to him. Implementation Notes All controllers inherit from a BaseController. The BaseController currently only has error handling code. When a user signs on, we check to see if they are in a Manager role. We then create a FormsAuthenticationTicket, encrypt it (including the roles that the employee belongs to) and add it to a cookie. private void SetAuthenticationCookie(int employeeID, List<string> roles) { HttpCookiesSection cookieSection = (HttpCookiesSection) ConfigurationManager.GetSection("system.web/httpCookies"); AuthenticationSection authenticationSection = (AuthenticationSection) ConfigurationManager.GetSection("system.web/authentication"); FormsAuthenticationTicket authTicket = new FormsAuthenticationTicket( 1, employeeID.ToString(), DateTime.Now, DateTime.Now.AddMinutes(authenticationSection.Forms.Timeout.TotalMinutes), false, string.Join("|", roles.ToArray())); String encryptedTicket = FormsAuthentication.Encrypt(authTicket); HttpCookie authCookie = new HttpCookie(FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName, encryptedTicket); if (cookieSection.RequireSSL || authenticationSection.Forms.RequireSSL) { authCookie.Secure = true; } HttpContext.Current.Response.Cookies.Add(authCookie); } We read this cookie back in Global.asax and set the Context.User to be a new GenericPrincipal with the roles we assigned earlier. protected void Application_AuthenticateRequest(Object sender, EventArgs e){ if (Context.User != null) { string cookieName = FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName; HttpCookie authCookie = Context.Request.Cookies[cookieName]; if (authCookie == null) return; FormsAuthenticationTicket authTicket = FormsAuthentication.Decrypt(authCookie.Value); string[] roles = authTicket.UserData.Split(new char[] { '|' }); FormsIdentity fi = (FormsIdentity)(Context.User.Identity); Context.User = new System.Security.Principal.GenericPrincipal(fi, roles); }} We ensure that a user has permissions to view a record by creating a custom attribute AuthorizeToViewID that inherits from ActionFilterAttribute. public class AuthorizeToViewIDAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute{ IEmployeeRepository employeeRepository = new EmployeeRepository(); public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext) { if (filterContext.ActionParameters.ContainsKey("id") && filterContext.ActionParameters["id"] != null) { if (employeeRepository.IsAuthorizedToView((int)filterContext.ActionParameters["id"])) { return; } } throw new UnauthorizedAccessException("The record does not exist or you do not have permission to access it"); }} We add the AuthorizeToView attribute to any Action method that requires authorization. [HttpPost][Authorize(Order = 1)]//To prevent CSRF[ValidateAntiForgeryToken(Salt = Globals.EditSalt, Order = 2)]//See AuthorizeToViewIDAttribute class[AuthorizeToViewID(Order = 3)] [ActionName("Edit")]public ActionResult Update(int id){ var employeeToEdit = employeeRepository.GetEmployee(id); if (employeeToEdit != null) { //Employees can edit only their address //A manager can edit the title and salary of their subordinate string[] whiteList = (employeeToEdit.IsSubordinate) ? new string[] { "Title", "Salary" } : new string[] { "Address" }; if (TryUpdateModel(employeeToEdit, whiteList)) { employeeRepository.Save(employeeToEdit); return RedirectToAction("Details", new { id = id }); } else { ModelState.AddModelError("", "Please correct the following errors."); } } return View(employeeToEdit);} The Authorize attribute is added to ensure that only authorized users can execute that Action. We use the TryUpdateModel with a white list to ensure that (a) an employee is able to edit only their Address and (b) that a manager is able to edit only the Title and Salary of a subordinate. This works in conjunction with the AuthorizeToViewIDAttribute. The ValidateAntiForgeryToken attribute is added (with a salt) to avoid CSRF. The Order on the attributes specify the order in which the attributes are executed. The Edit View uses the AntiForgeryToken helper to render the hidden token: ......<% using (Html.BeginForm()) {%><%=Html.AntiForgeryToken(NorthwindHR.Models.Globals.EditSalt)%><%= Html.ValidationSummary(true, "Please correct the errors and try again.") %><div class="editor-label"> <%= Html.LabelFor(model => model.LastName) %></div><div class="editor-field">...... The application uses View specific models for ease of model binding. public class EmployeeViewModel{ public int EmployeeID; [Required] [DisplayName("Last Name")] public string LastName { get; set; } [Required] [DisplayName("First Name")] public string FirstName { get; set; } [Required] [DisplayName("Title")] public string Title { get; set; } [Required] [DisplayName("Address")] public string Address { get; set; } [Required] [DisplayName("Salary")] [Range(500, double.MaxValue)] public decimal Salary { get; set; } public bool IsSubordinate { get; set; }} To help with displaying readonly/editable fields, we use a helper method. //Simple extension method to display a TextboxFor or DisplayFor based on the isEditable variablepublic static MvcHtmlString TextBoxOrLabelFor<TModel, TProperty>(this HtmlHelper<TModel> htmlHelper, Expression<Func<TModel, TProperty>> expression, bool isEditable){ if (isEditable) { return htmlHelper.TextBoxFor(expression); } else { return htmlHelper.DisplayFor(expression); }} The helper method is used in the view like so: <%=Html.TextBoxOrLabelFor(model => model.Title, Model.IsSubordinate)%> As mentioned in this post, there is a much easier way to update properties on an object. Download Demo Project VS 2008, ASP.NET MVC 2 RTM Remember to change the connectionString to point to your Northwind DB NorthwindHR.zip Feedback and bugs are always welcome :-)

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• Introducing Oracle VM Server for SPARC

  - by Honglin Su

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

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• Creating packages in code - Package Configurations

  Continuing my theme of building various types of packages in code, this example shows how to building a package with package configurations. Incidentally it shows you how to add a variable, and a connection too. It covers the five most common configurations: Configuration File Indirect Configuration File SQL Server Indirect SQL Server Environment Variable  For a general overview try the SQL Server Books Online Package Configurations topic. The sample uses a a simple helper function ApplyConfig to create or update a configuration, although in the example we will only ever create. The most useful knowledge is the configuration string (Configuration.ConfigurationString) that you need to set. Configuration Type Configuration String Description Configuration File The full path and file name of an XML configuration file. The file can contain one or more configuration and includes the target path and new value to set. Indirect Configuration File An environment variable the value of which contains full path and file name of an XML configuration file as per the Configuration File type described above. SQL Server A three part configuration string, with each part being quote delimited and separated by a semi-colon. -- The first part is the connection manager name. The connection tells you which server and database to look for the configuration table. -- The second part is the name of the configuration table. The table is of a standard format, use the Package Configuration Wizard to help create an example, or see the sample script files below. The table contains one or more rows or configuration items each with a target path and new value. -- The third and final part is the optional filter name. A configuration table can contain multiple configurations, and the filter is  literal value that can be used to group items together and act as a filter clause when configurations are being read. If you do not need a filter, just leave the value empty. Indirect SQL Server An environment variable the value of which is the three part configuration string as per the SQL Server type described above. Environment Variable An environment variable the value of which is the value to set in the package. This is slightly different to the other examples as the configuration definition in the package also includes the target information. In our ApplyConfig function this is the only example that actually supplies a target value for the Configuration.PackagePath property. The path is an XPath style path for the target property, \Package.Variables[User::Variable].Properties[Value], the equivalent of which can be seen in the screenshot below, with the object being our variable called Variable, and the property to set is the Value property of that variable object. The configurations as seen when opening the generated package in BIDS: The sample code creates the package, adds a variable and connection manager, enables configurations, and then adds our example configurations. The package is then saved to disk, useful for checking the package and testing, before finally executing, just to prove it is valid. There are some external resources used here, namely some environment variables and a table, see below for more details. namespace Konesans.Dts.Samples { using System; using Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime; public class PackageConfigurations { public void CreatePackage() { // Create a new package Package package = new Package(); package.Name = "ConfigurationSample"; // Add a variable, the target for our configurations package.Variables.Add("Variable", false, "User", 0); // Add a connection, for SQL configurations // Add the SQL OLE-DB connection ConnectionManager connectionManagerOleDb = package.Connections.Add("OLEDB"); connectionManagerOleDb.Name = "SQLConnection"; connectionManagerOleDb.ConnectionString = "Provider=SQLOLEDB.1;Data Source=(local);Initial Catalog=master;Integrated Security=SSPI;"; // Add our example configurations, first must enable package setting package.EnableConfigurations = true; // Direct configuration file, see sample file this.ApplyConfig(package, "Configuration File", DTSConfigurationType.ConfigFile, "C:\\Temp\\XmlConfig.dtsConfig", string.Empty); // Indirect configuration file, the emvironment variable XmlConfigFileEnvironmentVariable // contains the path to the configuration file, e.g. C:\Temp\XmlConfig.dtsConfig this.ApplyConfig(package, "Indirect Configuration File", DTSConfigurationType.IConfigFile, "XmlConfigFileEnvironmentVariable", string.Empty); // Direct SQL Server configuration, uses the SQLConnection package connection to read // configurations from the [dbo].[SSIS Configurations] table, with a filter of "SampleFilter" this.ApplyConfig(package, "SQL Server", DTSConfigurationType.SqlServer, "\"SQLConnection\";\"[dbo].[SSIS Configurations]\";\"SampleFilter\";", string.Empty); // Indirect SQL Server configuration, the environment variable "SQLServerEnvironmentVariable" // contains the configuration string e.g. "SQLConnection";"[dbo].[SSIS Configurations]";"SampleFilter"; this.ApplyConfig(package, "Indirect SQL Server", DTSConfigurationType.ISqlServer, "SQLServerEnvironmentVariable", string.Empty); // Direct environment variable, the value of the EnvironmentVariable environment variable is // applied to the target property, the value of the "User::Variable" package variable this.ApplyConfig(package, "EnvironmentVariable", DTSConfigurationType.EnvVariable, "EnvironmentVariable", "\\Package.Variables[User::Variable].Properties[Value]"); #if DEBUG // Save package to disk, DEBUG only new Application().SaveToXml(String.Format(@"C:\Temp\{0}.dtsx", package.Name), package, null); Console.WriteLine(@"C:\Temp\{0}.dtsx", package.Name); #endif // Execute package package.Execute(); // Basic check for warnings foreach (DtsWarning warning in package.Warnings) { Console.WriteLine("WarningCode : {0}", warning.WarningCode); Console.WriteLine(" SubComponent : {0}", warning.SubComponent); Console.WriteLine(" Description : {0}", warning.Description); Console.WriteLine(); } // Basic check for errors foreach (DtsError error in package.Errors) { Console.WriteLine("ErrorCode : {0}", error.ErrorCode); Console.WriteLine(" SubComponent : {0}", error.SubComponent); Console.WriteLine(" Description : {0}", error.Description); Console.WriteLine(); } package.Dispose(); } /// <summary> /// Add or update an package configuration. /// </summary> /// <param name="package">The package.</param> /// <param name="name">The configuration name.</param> /// <param name="type">The type of configuration</param> /// <param name="setting">The configuration setting.</param> /// <param name="target">The target of the configuration, leave blank if not required.</param> internal void ApplyConfig(Package package, string name, DTSConfigurationType type, string setting, string target) { Configurations configurations = package.Configurations; Configuration configuration; if (configurations.Contains(name)) { configuration = configurations[name]; } else { configuration = configurations.Add(); } configuration.Name = name; configuration.ConfigurationType = type; configuration.ConfigurationString = setting; configuration.PackagePath = target; } } } The following table lists the environment variables required for the full example to work along with some sample values. Variable Sample value EnvironmentVariable 1 SQLServerEnvironmentVariable "SQLConnection";"[dbo].[SSIS Configurations]";"SampleFilter"; XmlConfigFileEnvironmentVariable C:\Temp\XmlConfig.dtsConfig Sample code, package and configuration file. ConfigurationApplication.cs ConfigurationSample.dtsx XmlConfig.dtsConfig

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• Anunciando Windows Azure Mobile Services (Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure)

  - by Leniel Macaferi

  Estou animado para anunciar uma nova capacidade que estamos adicionando à Windows Azure hoje: Windows Azure Mobile Services (Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure) Os Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure tornam incrivelmente fácil conectar um backend da nuvem escalável em suas aplicações clientes e móveis. Estes serviços permitem que você facilmente armazene dados estruturados na nuvem que podem abranger dispositivos e usuários, integrando tais dados com autenticação do usuário. Você também pode enviar atualizações para os clientes através de notificações push. O lançamento de hoje permite que você adicione essas capacidades em qualquer aplicação Windows 8 em literalmente minutos, e fornece uma maneira super produtiva para que você transforme rapidamente suas ideias em aplicações. Também vamos adicionar suporte para permitir esses mesmos cenários para o Windows Phone, iOS e dispositivos Android em breve. Leia este tutorial inicial (em Inglês) que mostra como você pode construir (em menos de 5 minutos) uma simples aplicação Windows 8 "Todo List" (Lista de Tarefas) que é habilitada para a nuvem usando os Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure. Ou assista este vídeo (em Inglês) onde mostro como construí-la passo a passo. Começando Se você ainda não possui uma conta na Windows Azure, você pode se inscrever usando uma assinatura gratuita sem compromisso. Uma vez inscrito, clique na seção "preview features" logo abaixo da tab "account" (conta) no website www.windowsazure.com e ative sua conta para ter acesso ao preview dos "Mobile Services" (Serviços Móveis). Instruções sobre como ativar estes novos recursos podem ser encontradas aqui (em Inglês). Depois de habilitar os Serviços Móveis, entre no Portal da Windows Azure, clique no botão "New" (Novo) e escolha o novo ícone "Mobile Services" (Serviços Móveis) para criar o seu primeiro backend móvel. Uma vez criado, você verá uma página de início rápido como a mostrada a seguir com instruções sobre como conectar o seu serviço móvel a uma aplicação Windows 8 cliente já existente, a qual você já tenha começado a implementar, ou como criar e conectar uma nova aplicação Windows 8 cliente ao backend móvel: Leia este tutorial inicial (em Inglês) com explicações passo a passo sobre como construir (em menos de 5 minutos) uma simples aplicação Windows 8 "Todo List" (Lista de Tarefas) que armazena os dados na Windows Azure. Armazenamento Dados na Nuvem Armazenar dados na nuvem com os Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure é incrivelmente fácil. Quando você cria um Serviço Móvel da Windows Azure, nós automaticamente o associamos com um banco de dados SQL dentro da Windows Azure. O backend do Serviço Móvel da Windows Azure então fornece suporte nativo para permitir que aplicações remotas armazenem e recuperem dados com segurança através dele (usando end-points REST seguros, através de um formato OData baseado em JSON) - sem que você tenha que escrever ou implantar qualquer código personalizado no servidor. Suporte integrado para o gerenciamento do backend é fornecido dentro do Portal da Windows Azure para a criação de novas tabelas, navegação pelos dados, criação de índices, e controle de permissões de acesso. Isto torna incrivelmente fácil conectar aplicações clientes na nuvem, e permite que os desenvolvedores de aplicações desktop que não têm muito conhecimento sobre código que roda no servidor sejam produtivos desde o início. Eles podem se concentrar na construção da experiência da aplicação cliente, tirando vantagem dos Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure para fornecer os serviços de backend da nuvem que se façam necessários.  A seguir está um exemplo de código Windows 8 C#/XAML do lado do cliente que poderia ser usado para consultar os dados de um Serviço Móvel da Windows Azure. Desenvolvedores de aplicações que rodam no cliente e que usam C# podem escrever consultas como esta usando LINQ e objetos fortemente tipados POCO, os quais serão mais tarde traduzidos em consultas HTTP REST que são executadas em um Serviço Móvel da Windows Azure. Os desenvolvedores não precisam escrever ou implantar qualquer código personalizado no lado do servidor para permitir que o código do lado do cliente mostrado a seguir seja executado de forma assíncrona preenchendo a interface (UI) do cliente: Como os Serviços Móveis fazem parte da Windows Azure, os desenvolvedores podem escolher mais tarde se querem aumentar ou estender sua solução adicionando funcionalidades no lado do servidor bem como lógica de negócio mais avançada, se quiserem. Isso proporciona o máximo de flexibilidade, e permite que os desenvolvedores ampliem suas soluções para atender qualquer necessidade. Autenticação do Usuário e Notificações Push Os Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure também tornam incrivelmente fácil integrar autenticação/autorização de usuários e notificações push em suas aplicações. Você pode usar esses recursos para habilitar autenticação e controlar as permissões de acesso aos dados que você armazena na nuvem de uma maneira granular. Você também pode enviar notificações push para os usuários/dispositivos quando os dados são alterados. Os Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure suportam o conceito de "scripts do servidor" (pequenos pedaços de script que são executados no servidor em resposta a ações), os quais tornam a habilitação desses cenários muito fácil. A seguir estão links para alguns tutoriais (em Inglês) no formato passo a passo para cenários comuns de autenticação/autorização/push que você pode utilizar com os Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure e aplicações Windows 8: Habilitando Autenticação do Usuário Autorizando Usuários  Começando com Push Notifications Push Notifications para múltiplos Usuários Gerencie e Monitore seu Serviço Móvel Assim como todos os outros serviços na Windows Azure, você pode monitorar o uso e as métricas do backend de seu Serviço Móvel usando a tab "Dashboard" dentro do Portal da Windows Azure. A tab Dashboard fornece uma visão de monitoramento que mostra as chamadas de API, largura de banda e ciclos de CPU do servidor consumidos pelo seu Serviço Móvel da Windows Azure. Você também usar a tab "Logs" dentro do portal para ver mensagens de erro.  Isto torna fácil monitorar e controlar como sua aplicação está funcionando. Aumente a Capacidade de acordo com o Crescimento do Seu Negócio Os Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure agora permitem que cada cliente da Windows Azure crie e execute até 10 Serviços Móveis de forma gratuita, em um ambiente de hospedagem compartilhado com múltiplos banco de dados (onde o backend do seu Serviço Móvel será um dos vários aplicativos sendo executados em um conjunto compartilhado de recursos do servidor). Isso fornece uma maneira fácil de começar a implementar seus projetos sem nenhum custo algum (nota: cada conta gratuita da Windows Azure também inclui um banco de dados SQL de 1GB que você pode usar com qualquer número de aplicações ou Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure). Se sua aplicação cliente se tornar popular, você pode clicar na tab "Scale" (Aumentar Capacidade) do seu Serviço Móvel e mudar de "Shared" (Compartilhado) para o modo "Reserved" (Reservado). Isso permite que você possa isolar suas aplicações de maneira que você seja o único cliente dentro de uma máquina virtual. Isso permite que você dimensione elasticamente a quantidade de recursos que suas aplicações consomem - permitindo que você aumente (ou diminua) sua capacidade de acordo com o tráfego de dados: Com a Windows Azure você paga por capacidade de processamento por hora - o que te permite dimensionar para cima e para baixo seus recursos para atender apenas o que você precisa. Isso permite um modelo super flexível que é ideal para novos cenários de aplicações móveis, bem como para novas empresas que estão apenas começando. Resumo Eu só toquei na superfície do que você pode fazer com os Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure - há muito mais recursos para explorar. Com os Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure, você será capaz de construir cenários de aplicações móveis mais rápido do que nunca, permitindo experiências de usuário ainda melhores - conectando suas aplicações clientes na nuvem. Visite o centro de desenvolvimento dos Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure (em Inglês) para aprender mais, e construa sua primeira aplicação Windows 8 conectada à Windows Azure hoje. E leia este tutorial inicial (em Inglês) com explicações passo a passo que mostram como você pode construir (em menos de 5 minutos) uma simples aplicação Windows 8 "Todo List" (Lista de Tarefas) habilitada para a nuvem usando os Serviços Móveis da Windows Azure. Espero que ajude, - Scott P.S. Além do blog, eu também estou utilizando o Twitter para atualizações rápidas e para compartilhar links. Siga-me em: twitter.com/ScottGu Texto traduzido do post original por Leniel Macaferi.

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• Windows Azure: Backup Services Release, Hyper-V Recovery Manager, VM Enhancements, Enhanced Enterprise Management Support

  - by ScottGu

  This morning we released a huge set of updates to Windows Azure.  These new capabilities include: Backup Services: General Availability of Windows Azure Backup Services Hyper-V Recovery Manager: Public preview of Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager Virtual Machines: Delete Attached Disks, Availability Set Warnings, SQL AlwaysOn Configuration Active Directory: Securely manage hundreds of SaaS applications Enterprise Management: Use Active Directory to Better Manage Windows Azure Windows Azure SDK 2.2: A massive update of our SDK + Visual Studio tooling support All of these improvements are now available to use immediately.  Below are more details about them. Backup Service: General Availability Release of Windows Azure Backup Today we are releasing Windows Azure Backup Service as a general availability service.  This release is now live in production, backed by an enterprise SLA, supported by Microsoft Support, and is ready to use for production scenarios. Windows Azure Backup is a cloud based backup solution for Windows Server which allows files and folders to be backed up and recovered from the cloud, and provides off-site protection against data loss. The service provides IT administrators and developers with the option to back up and protect critical data in an easily recoverable way from any location with no upfront hardware cost. Windows Azure Backup is built on the Windows Azure platform and uses Windows Azure blob storage for storing customer data. Windows Server uses the downloadable Windows Azure Backup Agent to transfer file and folder data securely and efficiently to the Windows Azure Backup Service. Along with providing cloud backup for Windows Server, Windows Azure Backup Service also provides capability to backup data from System Center Data Protection Manager and Windows Server Essentials, to the cloud. All data is encrypted onsite before it is sent to the cloud, and customers retain and manage the encryption key (meaning the data is stored entirely secured and can’t be decrypted by anyone but yourself). Getting Started To get started with the Windows Azure Backup Service, create a new Backup Vault within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  Click New->Data Services->Recovery Services->Backup Vault to do this: Once the backup vault is created you’ll be presented with a simple tutorial that will help guide you on how to register your Windows Servers with it: Once the servers you want to backup are registered, you can use the appropriate local management interface (such as the Microsoft Management Console snap-in, System Center Data Protection Manager Console, or Windows Server Essentials Dashboard) to configure the scheduled backups and to optionally initiate recoveries. You can follow these tutorials to learn more about how to do this: Tutorial: Schedule Backups Using the Windows Azure Backup Agent This tutorial helps you with setting up a backup schedule for your registered Windows Servers. Additionally, it also explains how to use Windows PowerShell cmdlets to set up a custom backup schedule. Tutorial: Recover Files and Folders Using the Windows Azure Backup Agent This tutorial helps you with recovering data from a backup. Additionally, it also explains how to use Windows PowerShell cmdlets to do the same tasks. Below are some of the key benefits the Windows Azure Backup Service provides: Simple configuration and management. Windows Azure Backup Service integrates with the familiar Windows Server Backup utility in Windows Server, the Data Protection Manager component in System Center and Windows Server Essentials, in order to provide a seamless backup and recovery experience to a local disk, or to the cloud. Block level incremental backups. The Windows Azure Backup Agent performs incremental backups by tracking file and block level changes and only transferring the changed blocks, hence reducing the storage and bandwidth utilization. Different point-in-time versions of the backups use storage efficiently by only storing the changes blocks between these versions. Data compression, encryption and throttling. The Windows Azure Backup Agent ensures that data is compressed and encrypted on the server before being sent to the Windows Azure Backup Service over the network. As a result, the Windows Azure Backup Service only stores encrypted data in the cloud storage. The encryption key is not available to the Windows Azure Backup Service, and as a result the data is never decrypted in the service. Also, users can setup throttling and configure how the Windows Azure Backup service utilizes the network bandwidth when backing up or restoring information. Data integrity is verified in the cloud. In addition to the secure backups, the backed up data is also automatically checked for integrity once the backup is done. As a result, any corruptions which may arise due to data transfer can be easily identified and are fixed automatically. Configurable retention policies for storing data in the cloud. The Windows Azure Backup Service accepts and implements retention policies to recycle backups that exceed the desired retention range, thereby meeting business policies and managing backup costs. Hyper-V Recovery Manager: Now Available in Public Preview I’m excited to also announce the public preview of a new Windows Azure Service – the Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager (HRM). Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager helps protect your business critical services by coordinating the replication and recovery of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 SP1 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2 private clouds at a secondary location. With automated protection, asynchronous ongoing replication, and orderly recovery, the Hyper-V Recovery Manager service can help you implement Disaster Recovery and restore important services accurately, consistently, and with minimal downtime. Application data in an Hyper-V Recovery Manager scenarios always travels on your on-premise replication channel. Only metadata (such as names of logical clouds, virtual machines, networks etc.) that is needed for orchestration is sent to Azure. All traffic sent to/from Azure is encrypted. You can begin using Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery today by clicking New->Data Services->Recovery Services->Hyper-V Recovery Manager within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  You can read more about Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager in Brad Anderson’s 9-part series, Transform the datacenter. To learn more about setting up Hyper-V Recovery Manager follow our detailed step-by-step guide. Virtual Machines: Delete Attached Disks, Availability Set Warnings, SQL AlwaysOn Today’s Windows Azure release includes a number of nice updates to Windows Azure Virtual Machines.  These improvements include: Ability to Delete both VM Instances + Attached Disks in One Operation Prior to today’s release, when you deleted VMs within Windows Azure we would delete the VM instance – but not delete the drives attached to the VM.  You had to manually delete these yourself from the storage account.  With today’s update we’ve added a convenience option that now allows you to either retain or delete the attached disks when you delete the VM:   We’ve also added the ability to delete a cloud service, its deployments, and its role instances with a single action. This can either be a cloud service that has production and staging deployments with web and worker roles, or a cloud service that contains virtual machines.  To do this, simply select the Cloud Service within the Windows Azure Management Portal and click the “Delete” button: Warnings on Availability Sets with Only One Virtual Machine In Them One of the nice features that Windows Azure Virtual Machines supports is the concept of “Availability Sets”.  An “availability set” allows you to define a tier/role (e.g. webfrontends, databaseservers, etc) that you can map Virtual Machines into – and when you do this Windows Azure separates them across fault domains and ensures that at least one of them is always available during servicing operations.  This enables you to deploy applications in a high availability way. One issue we’ve seen some customers run into is where they define an availability set, but then forget to map more than one VM into it (which defeats the purpose of having an availability set).  With today’s release we now display a warning in the Windows Azure Management Portal if you have only one virtual machine deployed in an availability set to help highlight this: You can learn more about configuring the availability of your virtual machines here. Configuring SQL Server Always On SQL Server Always On is a great feature that you can use with Windows Azure to enable high availability and DR scenarios with SQL Server. Today’s Windows Azure release makes it even easier to configure SQL Server Always On by enabling “Direct Server Return” endpoints to be configured and managed within the Windows Azure Management Portal.  Previously, setting this up required using PowerShell to complete the endpoint configuration.  Starting today you can enable this simply by checking the “Direct Server Return” checkbox: You can learn more about how to use direct server return for SQL Server AlwaysOn availability groups here. Active Directory: Application Access Enhancements This summer we released our initial preview of our Application Access Enhancements for Windows Azure Active Directory.  This service enables you to securely implement single-sign-on (SSO) support against SaaS applications (including Office 365, SalesForce, Workday, Box, Google Apps, GitHub, etc) as well as LOB based applications (including ones built with the new Windows Azure AD support we shipped last week with ASP.NET and VS 2013). Since the initial preview we’ve enhanced our SAML federation capabilities, integrated our new password vaulting system, and shipped multi-factor authentication support. We've also turned on our outbound identity provisioning system and have it working with hundreds of additional SaaS Applications: Earlier this month we published an update on dates and pricing for when the service will be released in general availability form.  In this blog post we announced our intention to release the service in general availability form by the end of the year.  We also announced that the below features would be available in a free tier with it: SSO to every SaaS app we integrate with – Users can Single Sign On to any app we are integrated with at no charge. This includes all the top SAAS Apps and every app in our application gallery whether they use federation or password vaulting. Application access assignment and removal – IT Admins can assign access privileges to web applications to the users in their active directory assuring that every employee has access to the SAAS Apps they need. And when a user leaves the company or changes jobs, the admin can just as easily remove their access privileges assuring data security and minimizing IP loss User provisioning (and de-provisioning) – IT admins will be able to automatically provision users in 3rd party SaaS applications like Box, Salesforce.com, GoToMeeting, DropBox and others. We are working with key partners in the ecosystem to establish these connections, meaning you no longer have to continually update user records in multiple systems. Security and auditing reports – Security is a key priority for us. With the free version of these enhancements you'll get access to our standard set of access reports giving you visibility into which users are using which applications, when they were using them and where they are using them from. In addition, we'll alert you to un-usual usage patterns for instance when a user logs in from multiple locations at the same time. Our Application Access Panel – Users are logging in from every type of devices including Windows, iOS, & Android. Not all of these devices handle authentication in the same manner but the user doesn't care. They need to access their apps from the devices they love. Our Application Access Panel will support the ability for users to access access and launch their apps from any device and anywhere. You can learn more about our plans for application management with Windows Azure Active Directory here.  Try out the preview and start using it today. Enterprise Management: Use Active Directory to Better Manage Windows Azure Windows Azure Active Directory provides the ability to manage your organization in a directory which is hosted entirely in the cloud, or alternatively kept in sync with an on-premises Windows Server Active Directory solution (allowing you to seamlessly integrate with the directory you already have).  With today’s Windows Azure release we are integrating Windows Azure Active Directory even more within the core Windows Azure management experience, and enabling an even richer enterprise security offering.  Specifically: 1) All Windows Azure accounts now have a default Windows Azure Active Directory created for them.  You can create and map any users you want into this directory, and grant administrative rights to manage resources in Windows Azure to these users. 2) You can keep this directory entirely hosted in the cloud – or optionally sync it with your on-premises Windows Server Active Directory.  Both options are free.  The later approach is ideal for companies that wish to use their corporate user identities to sign-in and manage Windows Azure resources.  It also ensures that if an employee leaves an organization, his or her access control rights to the company’s Windows Azure resources are immediately revoked. 3) The Windows Azure Service Management APIs have been updated to support using Windows Azure Active Directory credentials to sign-in and perform management operations.  Prior to today’s release customers had to download and use management certificates (which were not scoped to individual users) to perform management operations.  We still support this management certificate approach (don’t worry – nothing will stop working).  But we think the new Windows Azure Active Directory authentication support enables an even easier and more secure way for customers to manage resources going forward.  4) The Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release (which is also shipping today) includes built-in support for the new Service Management APIs that authenticate with Windows Azure Active Directory, and now allow you to create and manage Windows Azure applications and resources directly within Visual Studio using your Active Directory credentials.  This, combined with updated PowerShell scripts that also support Active Directory, enables an end-to-end enterprise authentication story with Windows Azure. Below are some details on how all of this works: Subscriptions within a Directory As part of today’s update, we have associated all existing Window Azure accounts with a Windows Azure Active Directory (and created one for you if you don’t already have one). When you login to the Windows Azure Management Portal you’ll now see the directory name in the URI of the browser.  For example, in the screen-shot below you can see that I have a “scottgu” directory that my subscriptions are hosted within: Note that you can continue to use Microsoft Accounts (formerly known as Microsoft Live IDs) to sign-into Windows Azure.  These map just fine to a Windows Azure Active Directory – so there is no need to create new usernames that are specific to a directory if you don’t want to.  In the scenario above I’m actually logged in using my @hotmail.com based Microsoft ID which is now mapped to a “scottgu” active directory that was created for me.  By default everything will continue to work just like you used to before. Manage your Directory You can manage an Active Directory (including the one we now create for you by default) by clicking the “Active Directory” tab in the left-hand side of the portal.  This will list all of the directories in your account.  Clicking one the first time will display a getting started page that provides documentation and links to perform common tasks with it: You can use the built-in directory management support within the Windows Azure Management Portal to add/remove/manage users within the directory, enable multi-factor authentication, associate a custom domain (e.g. mycompanyname.com) with the directory, and/or rename the directory to whatever friendly name you want (just click the configure tab to do this).  You can also setup the directory to automatically sync with an on-premises Active Directory using the “Directory Integration” tab. Note that users within a directory by default do not have admin rights to login or manage Windows Azure based resources.  You still need to explicitly grant them co-admin permissions on a subscription for them to login or manage resources in Windows Azure.  You can do this by clicking the Settings tab on the left-hand side of the portal and then by clicking the administrators tab within it. Sign-In Integration within Visual Studio If you install the new Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release, you can now connect to Windows Azure from directly inside Visual Studio without having to download any management certificates.  You can now just right-click on the “Windows Azure” icon within the Server Explorer and choose the “Connect to Windows Azure” context menu option to do so: Doing this will prompt you to enter the email address of the username you wish to sign-in with (make sure this account is a user in your directory with co-admin rights on a subscription): You can use either a Microsoft Account (e.g. Windows Live ID) or an Active Directory based Organizational account as the email.  The dialog will update with an appropriate login prompt depending on which type of email address you enter: Once you sign-in you’ll see the Windows Azure resources that you have permissions to manage show up automatically within the Visual Studio server explorer and be available to start using: No downloading of management certificates required.  All of the authentication was handled using your Windows Azure Active Directory! Manage Subscriptions across Multiple Directories If you have already have multiple directories and multiple subscriptions within your Windows Azure account, we have done our best to create a good default mapping of your subscriptions->directories as part of today’s update.  If you don’t like the default subscription-to-directory mapping we have done you can click the Settings tab in the left-hand navigation of the Windows Azure Management Portal and browse to the Subscriptions tab within it: If you want to map a subscription under a different directory in your account, simply select the subscription from the list, and then click the “Edit Directory” button to choose which directory to map it to.  Mapping a subscription to a different directory takes only seconds and will not cause any of the resources within the subscription to recycle or stop working.  We’ve made the directory->subscription mapping process self-service so that you always have complete control and can map things however you want. Filtering By Directory and Subscription Within the Windows Azure Management Portal you can filter resources in the portal by subscription (allowing you to show/hide different subscriptions).  If you have subscriptions mapped to multiple directory tenants, we also now have a filter drop-down that allows you to filter the subscription list by directory tenant.  This filter is only available if you have multiple subscriptions mapped to multiple directories within your Windows Azure Account:   Windows Azure SDK 2.2 Today we are also releasing a major update of our Windows Azure SDK.  The Windows Azure SDK 2.2 release adds some great new features including: Visual Studio 2013 Support Integrated Windows Azure Sign-In support within Visual Studio Remote Debugging Cloud Services with Visual Studio Firewall Management support within Visual Studio for SQL Databases Visual Studio 2013 RTM VM Images for MSDN Subscribers Windows Azure Management Libraries for .NET Updated Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets and ScriptCenter I’ll post a follow-up blog shortly with more details about all of the above. Additional Updates In addition to the above enhancements, today’s release also includes a number of additional improvements: AutoScale: Richer time and date based scheduling support (set different rules on different dates) AutoScale: Ability to Scale to Zero Virtual Machines (very useful for Dev/Test scenarios) AutoScale: Support for time-based scheduling of Mobile Service AutoScale rules Operation Logs: Auditing support for Service Bus management operations Today we also shipped a major update to the Windows Azure SDK – Windows Azure SDK 2.2.  It has so much goodness in it that I have a whole second blog post coming shortly on it! :-) Summary Today’s Windows Azure release enables a bunch of great new scenarios, and enables a much richer enterprise authentication offering. If you don’t already have a Windows Azure account, you can sign-up for a free trial and start using all of the above features today.  Then visit the Windows Azure Developer Center to learn more about how to build apps with it. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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• Simplify your Ajax code by using jQuery Global Ajax Handlers and ajaxSetup low-level interface

  - by hajan

  Creating web applications with consistent layout and user interface is very important for your users. In several ASP.NET projects I’ve completed lately, I’ve been using a lot jQuery and jQuery Ajax to achieve rich user experience and seamless interaction between the client and the server. In almost all of them, I took advantage of the nice jQuery global ajax handlers and jQuery ajax functions. Let’s say you build web application which mainly interacts using Ajax post and get to accomplish various operations. As you may already know, you can easily perform Ajax operations using jQuery Ajax low-level method or jQuery $.get, $.post, etc. Simple get example: $.get("/Home/GetData", function (d) { alert(d); }); As you can see, this is the simplest possible way to make Ajax call. What it does in behind is constructing low-level Ajax call by specifying all necessary information for the request, filling with default information set for the required properties such as data type, content type, etc... If you want to have some more control over what is happening with your Ajax Request, you can easily take advantage of the global ajax handlers. In order to register global ajax handlers, jQuery API provides you set of global Ajax methods. You can find all the methods in the following link http://api.jquery.com/category/ajax/global-ajax-event-handlers/, and these are: ajaxComplete ajaxError ajaxSend ajaxStart ajaxStop ajaxSuccess And the low-level ajax interfaces http://api.jquery.com/category/ajax/low-level-interface/: ajax ajaxPrefilter ajaxSetup For global settings, I usually use ajaxSetup combining it with the ajax event handlers. $.ajaxSetup is very good to help you set default values that you will use in all of your future Ajax Requests, so that you won’t need to repeat the same properties all the time unless you want to override the default settings. Mainly, I am using global ajaxSetup function similarly to the following way: $.ajaxSetup({ cache: false, error: function (x, e) { if (x.status == 550) alert("550 Error Message"); else if (x.status == "403") alert("403. Not Authorized"); else if (x.status == "500") alert("500. Internal Server Error"); else alert("Error..."); }, success: function (x) { //do something global on success... } }); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Now, you can make ajax call using low-level $.ajax interface and you don’t need to worry about specifying any of the properties we’ve set in the $.ajaxSetup function. So, you can create your own ways to handle various situations when your Ajax requests are occurring. Sometimes, some of your Ajax Requests may take much longer than expected… So, in order to make user friendly UI that will show some progress bar or animated image that something is happening in behind, you can combine ajaxStart and ajaxStop methods to do the same. First of all, add one <div id=”loading” style=”display:none;”> <img src="@Url.Content("~/Content/images/ajax-loader.gif")" alt="Ajax Loader" /></div> anywhere on your Master Layout / Master page (you can download nice ajax loading images from http://ajaxload.info/). Then, add the following two handlers: $(document).ajaxStart(function () { $("#loading").attr("style", "position:absolute; z-index: 1000; top: 0px; "+ "left:0px; text-align: center; display:none; background-color: #ddd; "+ "height: 100%; width: 100%; /* These three lines are for transparency "+ "in all browsers. */-ms-filter:\"progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(Opacity=50)\";"+ " filter: alpha(opacity=50); opacity:.5;"); $("#loading img").attr("style", "position:relative; top:40%; z-index:5;"); $("#loading").show(); }); $(document).ajaxStop(function () { $("#loading").removeAttr("style"); $("#loading img").removeAttr("style"); $("#loading").hide(); }); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Note: While you can reorganize the style in a more reusable way, since these are global Ajax Start/Stop, it is very possible that you won’t use the same style in other places. With this way, you will see that now for any ajax request in your web site or application, you will have the loading image appearing providing better user experience. What I’ve shown is several useful examples on how to simplify your Ajax code by using Global Ajax Handlers and the low-level AjaxSetup function. Of course, you can do a lot more with the other methods as well. Hope this was helpful. Regards, Hajan

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• Getting Started with ASP.NET Membership, Profile and RoleManager

  - by Ben Griswold

  A new ASP.NET MVC project includes preconfigured Membership, Profile and RoleManager providers right out of the box.  Try it yourself – create a ASP.NET MVC application, crack open the web.config file and have a look.  First, you’ll find the ApplicationServices database connection: <connectionStrings>   <add name="ApplicationServices"        connectionString="data source=.\SQLEXPRESS;Integrated Security=SSPI;AttachDBFilename=|DataDirectory|aspnetdb.mdf;User Instance=true"        providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/> </connectionStrings>   Notice the connection string is referencing the aspnetdb.mdf database hosted by SQL Express and it’s using integrated security so it’ll just work for you without having to call out a specific database login or anything. Scroll down the file a bit and you’ll find each of the three noted sections: <membership>   <providers>     <clear/>     <add name="AspNetSqlMembershipProvider"          type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"          connectionStringName="ApplicationServices"          enablePasswordRetrieval="false"          enablePasswordReset="true"          requiresQuestionAndAnswer="false"          requiresUniqueEmail="false"          passwordFormat="Hashed"          maxInvalidPasswordAttempts="5"          minRequiredPasswordLength="6"          minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters="0"          passwordAttemptWindow="10"          passwordStrengthRegularExpression=""          applicationName="/"             />   </providers> </membership>   <profile>   <providers>     <clear/>     <add name="AspNetSqlProfileProvider"          type="System.Web.Profile.SqlProfileProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"          connectionStringName="ApplicationServices"          applicationName="/"             />   </providers> </profile>   <roleManager enabled="false">   <providers>     <clear />     <add connectionStringName="ApplicationServices" applicationName="/" name="AspNetSqlRoleProvider" type="System.Web.Security.SqlRoleProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />     <add applicationName="/" name="AspNetWindowsTokenRoleProvider" type="System.Web.Security.WindowsTokenRoleProvider, System.Web, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />   </providers> </roleManager> Really. It’s all there. Still don’t believe me.  Run the application, walk through the registration process and finally login and logout.  Completely functional – and you didn’t have to do a thing! What else?  Well, you can manage your users via the Configuration Manager which is hiding in Visual Studio behind Projects > ASP.NET Configuration. The ASP.NET Web Site Administration Tool isn’t MVC-specific (neither is the Membership, Profile or RoleManager stuff) but it’s neat and I hardly ever see anyone using it.  Here you can set up and edit users, roles, and set access permissions for your site. You can manage application settings, establish your SMTP settings, configure debugging and tracing, define default error page and even take your application offline.  The UI is rather plain-Jane but it works great. And here’s the best of all.  Let’s say you, like most of us, don’t want to run your application on top of the aspnetdb.mdf database.  Let’s suppose you want to use your own database and you’d like to add the membership stuff to it.  Well, that’s easy enough. Take a look inside your [drive:]\%windir%\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v2.0.50727\ folder.  Here you’ll find a bunch of files.  If you were to run the InstallCommon.sql, InstallMembership.sql, InstallRoles.sql and InstallProfile.sql files against the database of your choices, you’d be installing the same membership, profile and role artifacts which are found in the aspnet.db to your own database.  Too much trouble?  Okay. Run [drive:]\%windir%\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_regsql.exe from the command line instead.  This will launch the ASP.NET SQL Server Setup Wizard which walks you through the installation of those same database objects into the new or existing database of your choice. You may not always have the luxury of using this tool on your destination server, but you should use it whenever you can.  Last tip: don’t forget to update the ApplicationServices connectionstring to point to your custom database after the setup is complete. At the risk of sounding like a smarty, everything I’ve mentioned in this post has been around for quite a while. The thing is that not everyone has had the opportunity to use it.  And it makes sense. I know I’ve worked on projects which used custom membership services.  Why bother with the out-of-the-box stuff, right?   And the .NET framework is so massive, who can know it all. Well, eventually you might have a chance to architect your own solution using any implementation you’d like or you will have the time to play around with another aspect of the framework.  When you do, think back to this post.

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• Thursday Community Keynote: "By the Community, For the Community"

  - by Janice J. Heiss

  Sharat Chander, JavaOne Community Chairperson, began Thursday's Community Keynote. As part of the morning’s theme of "By the Community, For the Community," Chander noted that 60% of the material at the 2012 JavaOne conference was presented by Java Community members. "So next year, when the call for papers starts, put-in your submissions," he urged.From there, Gary Frost, Principal Member of Technical Staff, AMD, expanded upon Sunday's Strategy Keynote exploration of Project Sumatra, an OpenJDK project targeted at bringing Java to heterogeneous computing platforms (which combine the CPU and the parallel processor of the GPU into a single piece of silicon). Sumatra entails enhancing the JVM to make maximum use of these advanced platforms. Within this development space, AMD created the Aparapi API, which converts Java bytecode into OpenCL for execution on such GPU devices. The Aparapi API was open sourced in September 2011.Whether it was zooming-in on a Mandelbrot set, "the game of life," or a swarm of 10,000 Dukes in a space-bound gravitational dance, Frost's demos, using an Aparapi/OpenCL implementation, produced stunningly faster display results. He indicated that the Java 9 timeframe is where they see Project Sumatra coming to ultimate fruition, employing the Lamdas of Java 8.Returning to the theme of the keynote, Donald Smith, Director, Java Product Management, Oracle, explored a mind map graphic demonstrating the importance of Community in terms of fostering innovation. "It's the sharing and mixing of culture, the diversity, and the rapid prototyping," he said. Within this topic, Smith, brought up a panel of representatives from Cloudera, Eclipse, Eucalyptus, Perrone Robotics, and Twitter--ideal manifestations of community and innovation in the world of Java.Marten Mickos, CEO, Eucalyptus Systems, explored his company's open source cloud software platform, written in Java, and used by gaming companies, technology companies, media companies, and more. Chris Aniszczyk, Operations Engineering,Twitter, noted the importance of the JVM in terms of their multiple-language development environment. Mike Olson, CEO, Cloudera, described his company's Apache Hadoop-based software, support, and training. Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director, Eclipse Foundation, noted that they have about 270 tools projects at Eclipse, with 267 of them written in Java. Milinkovich added that Eclipse will even be going into space in 2013, as part of the control software on various experiments aboard the International Space Station. Lastly, Paul Perrone, CEO, Perrone Robotics, detailed his company's robotics and automation software platform built 100% on Java, including Java SE and Java ME--"on rat, to cat, to elephant-sized systems." Milinkovic noted that communities are by nature so good at innovation because of their very openness--"The more open you make your innovation process, the more ideas are challenged, and the more developers are focused on justifying their choices all the way through the process."From there, Georges Saab, VP Development Java SE OpenJDK, continued the topic of innovation and helping the Java Community to "Make the Future Java." Martijn Verburg, representing the London Java Community (winner of a Duke's Choice Award 2012 for their activity in OpenJDK and JCP), soon joined Saab onstage. Verburg detailed the LJC's "Adopt a JSR" program--"to get day-to-day developers more involved in the innovation that's happening around them."  From its London launching pad, the innovative program has spread to Brazil, Morocco, Latvia, India, and more.Other active participants in the program joined Verburg onstage--Ben Evans, London Java Community; James Gough, Stackthread; Bruno Souza, SOUJava; Richard Warburton, jClarity; and Cecelia Borg, Oracle--OpenJDK Onboarding. Together, the group explored the goals and tasks inherent in the Adopt a JSR program--from organizing hack days (testing prototype implementations), to managing mailing lists and forums, to triaging issues, to evangelism—all with the goal of fostering greater community/developer involvement, but equally importantly, building better open standards. “Come join us, and make your ecosystem better!" urged Verburg.Paul Perrone returned to profile the latest in his company's robotics work around Java--including the AARDBOTS family of smaller robotic vehicles, running the Perrone MAX platform on top of the Java JVM. Perrone took his "Rumbles" four-wheeled robot out for a spin onstage--a roaming, ARM-based security-bot vehicle, complete with IR, ultrasonic, and "cliff" sensors (the latter, for the raised stage at JavaOne). As an ultimate window into the future of robotics, Perrone displayed a "head-set" controller--a sensor directed at the forehead to monitor brainwaves, for the someday-implementation of brain-to-robot control.Then, just when it seemed this might be the end of the day's futuristic offerings, a mystery voice from offstage pronounced "I've got some toys"--proving to be guest-visitor James Gosling, there to explore his cutting-edge work with Liquid Robotics. While most think of robots as something with wheels or arms or lasers, Gosling explained, the Liquid Robotics vehicle is an entirely new and innovative ocean-going 'bot. Looking like a floating surfboard, with an attached set of underwater wings, the autonomous devices roam the oceans using only the energy of ocean waves to propel them, and a single actuated rudder to steer. "We have to accomplish all guidance just by wiggling the rudder," Gosling said. The devices offer applications from self-installing weather buoy, to pollution monitoring station, to marine mammal monitoring device, to climate change data gathering, to even ocean life genomic sampling. The early versions of the vehicle used C code on very tiny industrial micro controllers, where they had to "count the bytes one at a time."  But the latest generation vehicles, which just hit the water a week or so ago, employ an ARM processor running Linux and the ARM version of JDK 7. Gosling explained that vehicle communication from remote locations is achieved via the Iridium satellite network. But because of the costs of this communication path, the data must be sent in very small bursts--using SBD short burst data. "It costs $1/kb, so that rules everything in the software design,” said Gosling. “If you were trying to stream a Netflix video over this, it would cost a million dollars a movie. …We don't have a 'big data' problem," he quipped. There are currently about 150 Liquid Robotics vehicles out traversing the oceans. Gosling demonstrated real time satellite tracking of several vehicles currently at sea, noting that Java is actually particularly good at AI applications--due to the language having garbage collection, which facilitates complex data structures. To close-out his time onstage, Gosling of course participated in the ceremonial Java tee-shirt toss out to the audience…In parting, Chander passed the JavaOne Community Chairperson baton to Stephen Chin, Java Technology Evangelist, Oracle. Onstage in full motorcycle gear, Chin noted that he'll soon be touring Europe by motorcycle, meeting Java Community Members and streaming live via UStream--the ultimate manifestation of community and technology!  He also reminded attendees of the upcoming JavaOne Latin America 2012, São Paulo, Brazil (December 4-6, 2012), and stated that the CFP (call for papers) at the conference has been extended for one more week. "Remember, December is summer in Brazil!" Chin said.

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• Using Unity – Part 2

  - by nmarun

  In the first part of this series, we created a simple project and learned how to implement IoC pattern using Unity. In this one, I’ll show how you can instantiate other types that implement our IProduct interface. One place where this one would want to use this feature is to create mock types for testing purposes. Alright, let’s dig in. I added another class – Product2.cs  to the ProductModel project. 1: public class Product2 : IProduct 2: { 3: public string Name { get; set;} 4: public Category Category { get; set; } 5: public DateTime MfgDate { get;set; } 6:  7: public Product2() 8: { 9: Name = "Canon Digital Rebel XTi"; 10: Category = new Category {Name = "Electronics", SubCategoryName = "Digital Cameras"}; 11: MfgDate = DateTime.Now; 12: } 13:  14: public string WriteProductDetails() 15: { 16: return string.Format("Name: {0}<br/>Category: {1}<br/>Mfg Date: {2}", 17: Name, Category, MfgDate.ToShortDateString()); 18: } 19: } Highlights of this class are that it implements IProduct interface and it has some different properties than the Product class. The Category class looks like below: 1: public class Category 2: { 3: public string Name { get; set; } 4: public string SubCategoryName { get; set; } 5:  6: public override string ToString() 7: { 8: return string.Format("{0} - {1}", Name, SubCategoryName); 9: } 10: } We’ll go to our web.config file to add the configuration information about this new class – Product2 that we created. Let’s first add a typeAlias element. 1: <typeAlias alias="Product2" type="ProductModel.Product2, ProductModel"/> That’s all that is needed for us to get an instance of Product2 in our application. I have a new button added to the .aspx page and the click event of this button is where all the magic happens: 1: private IUnityContainer unityContainer; 2: protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) 3: { 4: unityContainer = Application["UnityContainer"] as IUnityContainer; 5: 6: if (unityContainer == null) 7: { 8: productDetailsLabel.Text = "ERROR: Unity Container not populated in Global.asax.<p />"; 9: } 10: else 11: { 12: if (!IsPostBack) 13: { 14: IProduct productInstance = unityContainer.Resolve<IProduct>(); 15: productDetailsLabel.Text = productInstance.WriteProductDetails(); 16: } 17: } 18: } 19:  20: protected void Product2Button_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) 21: { 22: unityContainer.RegisterType<IProduct, Product2>(); 23: IProduct product2Instance = unityContainer.Resolve<IProduct>(); 24: productDetailsLabel.Text = product2Instance.WriteProductDetails(); 25: } The unityContainer instance is set in the Page_Load event. Line 22 in the click event of the Product2Button registers a type mapping in the container. In English, this means that when unityContainer tries to resolve for IProduct, it gets an instance of Product2. Once this code runs, following output is rendered: There’s another way of doing this. You can resolve an instance of the requested type with a name from the container. We’ll have to update the container element of our web.config file to include the following: 1: <container name="unityContainer"> 2: <types> 3: <type type="IProduct" mapTo="Product"/> 4: <!-- Named mapping for IProduct to Product --> 5: <type type="IProduct" mapTo="Product" name="LegacyProduct" /> 6: <!-- Named mapping for IProduct to Product2 --> 7: <type type="IProduct" mapTo="Product2" name="NewProduct" /> 8: </types> 9: </container> I’ve added a Dropdownlist and a button to the design page: 1: <asp:DropDownList ID="ModelTypesList" runat="server"> 2: <asp:ListItem Text="Legacy Product" Value="LegacyProduct" /> 3: <asp:ListItem Text="New Product" Value="NewProduct" /> 4: </asp:DropDownList> 5: <br /> 6: <asp:Button ID="SelectedModelButton" Text="Get Selected Instance" runat="server" 7: onclick="SelectedModelButton_Click" /> 1: protected void SelectedModelButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) 2: { 3: // get the selected value: LegacyProduct or NewProduct 4: string modelType = ModelTypesList.SelectedValue; 5: // pass the modelType to the Resolve method 6: IProduct customModel = unityContainer.Resolve<IProduct>(modelType); 7: productDetailsLabel.Text = customModel.WriteProductDetails(); 8: } Pretty straight forward right? The only thing to note here is that the values in the dropdownlist item need to match the name attribute of the type. Depending on what you select, you’ll get an instance of either the Product class or the Product2 class and the corresponding WriteProductDetails() method is called. Now you see, how either of these methods can be used to create mock objects your the test project. See the code here. I’ll continue to share more of Unity in the next blog.

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• SQL Server and Hyper-V Dynamic Memory Part 3

  - by SQLOS Team

  In parts 1 and 2 of this series we looked at the basics of Hyper-V Dynamic Memory and SQL Server memory management. In this part Serdar looks at configuration guidelines for SQL Server memory management. Part 3: Configuration Guidelines for Hyper-V Dynamic Memory and SQL Server Now that we understand SQL Server Memory Management and Hyper-V Dynamic Memory basics, let’s take a look at general configuration guidelines in order to utilize benefits of Hyper-V Dynamic Memory in your SQL Server VMs. Requirements Host Operating System Requirements Hyper-V Dynamic Memory feature is introduced with Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. Therefore in order to use Dynamic Memory for your virtual machines, you need to have Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 or Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1 in your Hyper-V host. Guest Operating System Requirements In addition to this Dynamic Memory is only supported in Standard, Web, Enterprise and Datacenter editions of windows running inside VMs. Make sure that your VM is running one of these editions. For additional requirements on each operating system see “Dynamic Memory Configuration Guidelines” here. SQL Server Requirements All versions of SQL Server support Hyper-V Dynamic Memory. However, only certain editions of SQL Server are aware of dynamically changing system memory. To have a truly dynamic environment for your SQL Server VMs make sure that you are running one of the SQL Server editions listed below: ·         SQL Server 2005 Enterprise ·         SQL Server 2008 Enterprise / Datacenter Editions ·         SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise / Datacenter Editions Configuration guidelines for other versions of SQL Server are covered below in the FAQ section. Guidelines for configuring Dynamic Memory Parameters Here is how to configure Dynamic Memory for your SQL VMs in a nutshell: Hyper-V Dynamic Memory Parameter Recommendation Startup RAM 1 GB + SQL Min Server Memory Maximum RAM > SQL Max Server Memory Memory Buffer % 5 Memory Weight Based on performance needs   Startup RAM In order to ensure that your SQL Server VMs can start correctly, ensure that Startup RAM is higher than configured SQL Min Server Memory for your VMs. Otherwise SQL Server service will need to do paging in order to start since it will not be able to see enough memory during startup. Also note that Startup Memory will always be reserved for your VMs. This will guarantee a certain level of performance for your SQL Servers, however setting this too high will limit the consolidation benefits you’ll get out of your virtualization environment. Maximum RAM This one is obvious. If you’ve configured SQL Max Server Memory for your SQL Server, make sure that Dynamic Memory Maximum RAM configuration is higher than this value. Otherwise your SQL Server will not grow to memory values higher than the value configured for Dynamic Memory. Memory Buffer % Memory buffer configuration is used to provision file cache to virtual machines in order to improve performance. Due to the fact that SQL Server is managing its own buffer pool, Memory Buffer setting should be configured to the lowest value possible, 5%. Configuring a higher memory buffer will prevent low resource notifications from Windows Memory Manager and it will prevent reclaiming memory from SQL Server VMs. Memory Weight Memory weight configuration defines the importance of memory to a VM. Configure higher values for the VMs that have higher performance requirements. VMs with higher memory weight will have more memory under high memory pressure conditions on your host. Questions and Answers Q1 – Which SQL Server memory model is best for Dynamic Memory? The best SQL Server model for Dynamic Memory is “Locked Page Memory Model”. This memory model ensures that SQL Server memory is never paged out and it’s also adaptive to dynamically changing memory in the system. This will be extremely useful when Dynamic Memory is attempting to remove memory from SQL Server VMs ensuring no SQL Server memory is paged out. You can find instructions on configuring “Locked Page Memory Model” for your SQL Servers here. Q2 – What about other SQL Server Editions, how should I configure Dynamic Memory for them? Other editions of SQL Server do not adapt to dynamically changing environments. They will determine how much memory they should allocate during startup and don’t change this value afterwards. Therefore make sure that you configure a higher startup memory for your VM because that will be all the memory that SQL Server utilize Tune Maximum Memory and Memory Buffer based on the other workloads running on the system. If there are no other workloads consider using Static Memory for these editions. Q3 – What if I have multiple SQL Server instances in a VM? Having multiple SQL Server instances in a VM is not a general recommendation for predictable performance, manageability and isolation. In order to achieve a predictable behavior make sure that you configure SQL Min Server Memory and SQL Max Server Memory for each instance in the VM. And make sure that: ·         Dynamic Memory Startup Memory is greater than the sum of SQL Min Server Memory values for the instances in the VM ·         Dynamic Memory Maximum Memory is greater than the sum of SQL Max Server Memory values for the instances in the VM Q4 – I’m using Large Page Memory Model for my SQL Server. Can I still use Dynamic Memory? The short answer is no. SQL Server does not dynamically change its memory size when configured with Large Page Memory Model. In virtualized environments Hyper-V provides large page support by default. Most of the time, Large Page Memory Model doesn’t bring any benefits to a SQL Server if it’s running in virtualized environments. Q5 – How do I monitor SQL performance when I’m trying Dynamic Memory on my VMs? Use the performance counters below to monitor memory performance for SQL Server: Process - Working Set: This counter is available in the VM via process performance counters. It represents the actual amount of physical memory being used by SQL Server process in the VM. SQL Server – Buffer Cache Hit Ratio: This counter is available in the VM via SQL Server counters. This represents the paging being done by SQL Server. A rate of 90% or higher is desirable. Conclusion These blog posts are a quick start to a story that will be developing more in the near future. We’re still continuing our testing and investigations to provide more detailed configuration guidelines with example performance numbers with a white paper in the upcoming months. Now it’s time to give SQL Server and Hyper-V Dynamic Memory a try. Use this guidelines to kick-start your environment. See what you think about it and let us know of your experiences. - Serdar Sutay Originally posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlosteam/

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• Setting up a local AI server - easy with Solaris 11

  - by Stefan Hinker

  Many things are new in Solaris 11, Autoinstall is one of them.  If, like me, you've known Jumpstart for the last 2 centuries or so, you'll have to start from scratch.  Well, almost, as the concepts are similar, and it's not all that difficult.  Just new. I wanted to have an AI server that I could use for demo purposes, on the train if need be.  That answers the question of hardware requirements: portable.  But let's start at the beginning. First, you need an OS image, of course.  In the new world of Solaris 11, it is now called a repository.  The original can be downloaded from the Solaris 11 page at Oracle.   What you want is the "Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 Repository Image", which comes in two parts that can be combined using cat.  MD5 checksums for these (and all other downloads from that page) are available closer to the top of the page. With that, building the repository is quick and simple: # zfs create -o mountpoint=/export/repo rpool/ai/repo # zfs create rpool/ai/repo/s11 # mount -o ro -F hsfs /tmp/sol-11-1111-repo-full.iso /mnt # rsync -aP /mnt/repo /export/repo/s11 # umount /mnt # pkgrepo rebuild -s /export/repo/sol11/repo # zfs snapshot rpool/ai/repo/sol11@fcs # pkgrepo info -s /export/repo/sol11/repo PUBLISHER PACKAGES STATUS UPDATED solaris 4292 online 2012-03-12T20:47:15.378639Z That's all there's to it.  Let's make a snapshot, just to be on the safe side.  You never know when one will come in handy.  To use this repository, you could just add it as a file-based publisher: # pkg set-publisher -g file:///export/repo/sol11/repo solaris In case I'd want to access this repository through a (virtual) network, i'll now quickly activate the repository-service: # svccfg -s application/pkg/server \ setprop pkg/inst_root=/export/repo/sol11/repo # svccfg -s application/pkg/server setprop pkg/readonly=true # svcadm refresh application/pkg/server # svcadm enable application/pkg/server That's all you need - now point your browser to http://localhost/ to view your beautiful repository-server. Step 1 is done.  All of this, by the way, is nicely documented in the README file that's contained in the repository image. Of course, we already have updates to the original release.  You can find them in MOS in the Oracle Solaris 11 Support Repository Updates (SRU) Index.  You can simply add these to your existing repository or create separate repositories for each SRU.  The individual SRUs are self-sufficient and incremental - SRU4 includes all updates from SRU2 and SRU3.  With ZFS, you can also get both: A full repository with all updates and at the same time incremental ones up to each of the updates: # mount -o ro -F hsfs /tmp/sol-11-1111-sru4-05-incr-repo.iso /mnt # pkgrecv -s /mnt/repo -d /export/repo/sol11/repo '*' # umount /mnt # pkgrepo rebuild -s /export/repo/sol11/repo # zfs snapshot rpool/ai/repo/sol11@sru4 # zfs set snapdir=visible rpool/ai/repo/sol11 # svcadm restart svc:/application/pkg/server:default The normal repository is now updated to SRU4.  Thanks to the ZFS snapshots, there is also a valid repository of Solaris 11 11/11 without the update located at /export/repo/sol11/.zfs/snapshot/fcs . If you like, you can also create another repository service for each update, running on a separate port. But now lets continue with the AI server.  Just a little bit of reading in the dokumentation makes it clear that we will need to run a DHCP server for this.  Since I already have one active (for my SunRay installation) and since it's a good idea to have these kinds of services separate anyway, I decided to create this in a Zone.  So, let's create one first: # zfs create -o mountpoint=/export/install rpool/ai/install # zfs create -o mountpoint=/zones rpool/zones # zonecfg -z ai-server zonecfg:ai-server> create create: Using system default template 'SYSdefault' zonecfg:ai-server> set zonepath=/zones/ai-server zonecfg:ai-server> add dataset zonecfg:ai-server:dataset> set name=rpool/ai/install zonecfg:ai-server:dataset> set alias=install zonecfg:ai-server:dataset> end zonecfg:ai-server> commit zonecfg:ai-server> exit # zoneadm -z ai-server install # zoneadm -z ai-server boot ; zlogin -C ai-server Give it a hostname and IP address at first boot, and there's the Zone.  For a publisher for Solaris packages, it will be bound to the "System Publisher" from the Global Zone.  The /export/install filesystem, of course, is intended to be used by the AI server.  Let's configure it now: #zlogin ai-server root@ai-server:~# pkg install install/installadm root@ai-server:~# installadm create-service -n x86-fcs -a i386 \ -s pkg://solaris/install-image/[email protected],5.11-0.175.0.0.0.2.1482 \ -d /export/install/fcs -i 192.168.2.20 -c 3 With that, the core AI server is already done.  What happened here?  First, I installed the AI server software.  IPS makes that nice and easy.  If necessary, it'll also pull in the required DHCP-Server and anything else that might be missing.  Watch out for that DHCP server software.  In Solaris 11, there are two different versions.  There's the one you might know from Solaris 10 and earlier, and then there's a new one from ISC.  The latter is the one we need for AI.  The SMF service names of both are very similar.  The "old" one is "svc:/network/dhcp-server:default". The ISC-server comes with several SMF-services. We at least need "svc:/network/dhcp/server:ipv4".  The command "installadm create-service" creates the installation-service. It's called "x86-fcs", serves the "i386" architecture and gets its boot image from the repository of the system publisher, using version 5.11,5.11-0.175.0.0.0.2.1482, which is Solaris 11 11/11.  (The option "-a i386" in this example is optional, since the installserver itself runs on a x86 machine.) The boot-environment for clients is created in /export/install/fcs and the DHCP-server is configured for 3 IP-addresses starting at 192.168.2.20.  This configuration is stored in a very human readable form in /etc/inet/dhcpd4.conf.  An AI-service for SPARC systems could be created in the very same way, using "-a sparc" as the architecture option. Now we would be ready to register and install the first client.  It would be installed with the default "solaris-large-server" using the publisher "http://pkg.oracle.com/solaris/release" and would query it's configuration interactively at first boot.  This makes it very clear that an AI-server is really only a boot-server.  The true source of packets to install can be different.  Since I don't like these defaults for my demo setup, I did some extra config work for my clients. The configuration of a client is controlled by manifests and profiles.  The manifest controls which packets are installed and how the filesystems are layed out.  In that, it's very much like the old "rules.ok" file in Jumpstart.  Profiles contain additional configuration like root passwords, primary user account, IP addresses, keyboard layout etc.  Hence, profiles are very similar to the old sysid.cfg file. The easiest way to get your hands on a manifest is to ask the AI server we just created to give us it's default one.  Then modify that to our liking and give it back to the installserver to use: root@ai-server:~# mkdir -p /export/install/configs/manifests root@ai-server:~# cd /export/install/configs/manifests root@ai-server:~# installadm export -n x86-fcs -m orig_default \ -o orig_default.xml root@ai-server:~# cp orig_default.xml s11-fcs.small.local.xml root@ai-server:~# vi s11-fcs.small.local.xml root@ai-server:~# more s11-fcs.small.local.xml <!DOCTYPE auto_install SYSTEM "file:///usr/share/install/ai.dtd.1"> <auto_install> <ai_instance name="S11 Small fcs local"> <target> <logical> <zpool name="rpool" is_root="true"> <filesystem name="export" mountpoint="/export"/> <filesystem name="export/home"/> <be name="solaris"/> </zpool> </logical> </target> <software type="IPS"> <destination> <image> <!-- Specify locales to install --> <facet set="false">facet.locale.*</facet> <facet set="true">facet.locale.de</facet> <facet set="true">facet.locale.de_DE</facet> <facet set="true">facet.locale.en</facet> <facet set="true">facet.locale.en_US</facet> </image> </destination> <source> <publisher name="solaris"> <origin name="http://192.168.2.12/"/> </publisher> </source> <!-- By default the latest build available, in the specified IPS repository, is installed. If another build is required, the build number has to be appended to the 'entire' package in the following form: <name>pkg:/[email protected]#</name> --> <software_data action="install"> <name>pkg:/[email protected],5.11-0.175.0.0.0.2.0</name> <name>pkg:/group/system/solaris-small-server</name> </software_data> </software> </ai_instance> </auto_install> root@ai-server:~# installadm create-manifest -n x86-fcs -d \ -f ./s11-fcs.small.local.xml root@ai-server:~# installadm list -m -n x86-fcs Manifest Status Criteria -------- ------ -------- S11 Small fcs local Default None orig_default Inactive None The major points in this new manifest are: Install "solaris-small-server" Install a few locales less than the default.  I'm not that fluid in French or Japanese... Use my own package service as publisher, running on IP address 192.168.2.12 Install the initial release of Solaris 11:  pkg:/[email protected],5.11-0.175.0.0.0.2.0 Using a similar approach, I'll create a default profile interactively and use it as a template for a few customized building blocks, each defining a part of the overall system configuration.  The modular approach makes it easy to configure numerous clients later on: root@ai-server:~# mkdir -p /export/install/configs/profiles root@ai-server:~# cd /export/install/configs/profiles root@ai-server:~# sysconfig create-profile -o default.xml root@ai-server:~# cp default.xml general.xml; cp default.xml mars.xml root@ai-server:~# cp default.xml user.xml root@ai-server:~# vi general.xml mars.xml user.xml root@ai-server:~# more general.xml mars.xml user.xml :::::::::::::: general.xml :::::::::::::: <!DOCTYPE service_bundle SYSTEM "/usr/share/lib/xml/dtd/service_bundle.dtd.1"> <service_bundle type="profile" name="sysconfig"> <service version="1" type="service" name="system/timezone"> <instance enabled="true" name="default"> <property_group type="application" name="timezone"> <propval type="astring" name="localtime" value="Europe/Berlin"/> </property_group> </instance> </service> <service version="1" type="service" name="system/environment"> <instance enabled="true" name="init"> <property_group type="application" name="environment"> <propval type="astring" name="LANG" value="C"/> </property_group> </instance> </service> <service version="1" type="service" name="system/keymap"> <instance enabled="true" name="default"> <property_group type="system" name="keymap"> <propval type="astring" name="layout" value="US-English"/> </property_group> </instance> </service> <service version="1" type="service" name="system/console-login"> <instance enabled="true" name="default"> <property_group type="application" name="ttymon"> <propval type="astring" name="terminal_type" value="vt100"/> </property_group> </instance> </service> <service version="1" type="service" name="network/physical"> <instance enabled="true" name="default"> <property_group type="application" name="netcfg"> <propval type="astring" name="active_ncp" value="DefaultFixed"/> </property_group> </instance> </service> <service version="1" type="service" name="system/name-service/switch"> <property_group type="application" name="config"> <propval type="astring" name="default" value="files"/> <propval type="astring" name="host" value="files dns"/> <propval type="astring" name="printer" value="user files"/> </property_group> <instance enabled="true" name="default"/> </service> <service version="1" type="service" name="system/name-service/cache"> <instance enabled="true" name="default"/> </service> <service version="1" type="service" name="network/dns/client"> <property_group type="application" name="config"> <property type="net_address" name="nameserver"> <net_address_list> <value_node value="192.168.2.1"/> </net_address_list> </property> </property_group> <instance enabled="true" name="default"/> </service> </service_bundle> :::::::::::::: mars.xml :::::::::::::: <!DOCTYPE service_bundle SYSTEM "/usr/share/lib/xml/dtd/service_bundle.dtd.1"> <service_bundle type="profile" name="sysconfig"> <service version="1" type="service" name="network/install"> <instance enabled="true" name="default"> <property_group type="application" name="install_ipv4_interface"> <propval type="astring" name="address_type" value="static"/> <propval type="net_address_v4" name="static_address" value="192.168.2.100/24"/> <propval type="astring" name="name" value="net0/v4"/> <propval type="net_address_v4" name="default_route" value="192.168.2.1"/> </property_group> <property_group type="application" name="install_ipv6_interface"> <propval type="astring" name="stateful" value="yes"/> <propval type="astring" name="stateless" value="yes"/> <propval type="astring" name="address_type" value="addrconf"/> <propval type="astring" name="name" value="net0/v6"/> </property_group> </instance> </service> <service version="1" type="service" name="system/identity"> <instance enabled="true" name="node"> <property_group type="application" name="config"> <propval type="astring" name="nodename" value="mars"/> </property_group> </instance> </service> </service_bundle> :::::::::::::: user.xml :::::::::::::: <!DOCTYPE service_bundle SYSTEM "/usr/share/lib/xml/dtd/service_bundle.dtd.1"> <service_bundle type="profile" name="sysconfig"> <service version="1" type="service" name="system/config-user"> <instance enabled="true" name="default"> <property_group type="application" name="root_account"> <propval type="astring" name="login" value="root"/> <propval type="astring" name="password" value="noIWillNotTellYouMyPasswordNotEvenEncrypted"/> <propval type="astring" name="type" value="role"/> </property_group> <property_group type="application" name="user_account"> <propval type="astring" name="login" value="stefan"/> <propval type="astring" name="password" value="noIWillNotTellYouMyPasswordNotEvenEncrypted"/> <propval type="astring" name="type" value="normal"/> <propval type="astring" name="description" value="Stefan Hinker"/> <propval type="count" name="uid" value="12345"/> <propval type="count" name="gid" value="10"/> <propval type="astring" name="shell" value="/usr/bin/bash"/> <propval type="astring" name="roles" value="root"/> <propval type="astring" name="profiles" value="System Administrator"/> <propval type="astring" name="sudoers" value="ALL=(ALL) ALL"/> </property_group> </instance> </service> </service_bundle> root@ai-server:~# installadm create-profile -n x86-fcs -f general.xml root@ai-server:~# installadm create-profile -n x86-fcs -f user.xml root@ai-server:~# installadm create-profile -n x86-fcs -f mars.xml \ -c ipv4=192.168.2.100 root@ai-server:~# installadm list -p Service Name Profile ------------ ------- x86-fcs general.xml mars.xml user.xml root@ai-server:~# installadm list -n x86-fcs -p Profile Criteria ------- -------- general.xml None mars.xml ipv4 = 192.168.2.100 user.xml None Here's the idea behind these files: "general.xml" contains settings valid for all my clients.  Stuff like DNS servers, for example, which in my case will always be the same. "user.xml" only contains user definitions.  That is, a root password and a primary user.Both of these profiles will be valid for all clients (for now). "mars.xml" defines network settings for an individual client.  This profile is associated with an IP-Address.  For this to work, I'll have to tweak the DHCP-settings in the next step: root@ai-server:~# installadm create-client -e 08:00:27:AA:3D:B1 -n x86-fcs root@ai-server:~# vi /etc/inet/dhcpd4.conf root@ai-server:~# tail -5 /etc/inet/dhcpd4.conf host 080027AA3DB1 { hardware ethernet 08:00:27:AA:3D:B1; fixed-address 192.168.2.100; filename "01080027AA3DB1"; } This completes the client preparations.  I manually added the IP-Address for mars to /etc/inet/dhcpd4.conf.  This is needed for the "mars.xml" profile.  Disabling arbitrary DHCP-replies will shut up this DHCP server, making my life in a shared environment a lot more peaceful ;-)Now, I of course want this installation to be completely hands-off.  For this to work, I'll need to modify the grub boot menu for this client slightly.  You can find it in /etc/netboot.  "installadm create-client" will create a new boot menu for every client, identified by the client's MAC address.  The template for this can be found in a subdirectory with the name of the install service, /etc/netboot/x86-fcs in our case.  If you don't want to change this manually for every client, modify that template to your liking instead. root@ai-server:~# cd /etc/netboot root@ai-server:~# cp menu.lst.01080027AA3DB1 menu.lst.01080027AA3DB1.org root@ai-server:~# vi menu.lst.01080027AA3DB1 root@ai-server:~# diff menu.lst.01080027AA3DB1 menu.lst.01080027AA3DB1.org 1,2c1,2 < default=1 < timeout=10 --- > default=0 > timeout=30 root@ai-server:~# more menu.lst.01080027AA3DB1 default=1 timeout=10 min_mem64=0 title Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 Text Installer and command line kernel$ /x86-fcs/platform/i86pc/kernel/$ISADIR/unix -B install_media=htt p://$serverIP:5555//export/install/fcs,install_service=x86-fcs,install_svc_addre ss=$serverIP:5555 module$ /x86-fcs/platform/i86pc/$ISADIR/boot_archive title Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 Automated Install kernel$ /x86-fcs/platform/i86pc/kernel/$ISADIR/unix -B install=true,inst all_media=http://$serverIP:5555//export/install/fcs,install_service=x86-fcs,inst all_svc_address=$serverIP:5555,livemode=text module$ /x86-fcs/platform/i86pc/$ISADIR/boot_archive Now just boot the client off the network using PXE-boot.  For my demo purposes, that's a client from VirtualBox, of course.  That's all there's to it.  And despite the fact that this blog entry is a little longer - that wasn't that hard now, was it?

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• TFS, G.I. Joe and Under-doing

  If I were to rank the most consistently irritating parts of my work day, using TFS would come in first by a wide margin. Even repeated network outages this week seem like a pleasant reprieve from this monolithic beast. This is not a reflexive anti-Microsoft feeling, that attitude just wouldnt work for a consultant who does .NET development. It is also not an utter dismissal of TFS as worthless; Ive seen people use it effectively on several projects. So why? Ill start with a laundry list of shortcomings. An out of the box UI for work items that is insultingly bad, a source control system that is confoundingly fragile when handling merges, folder renames and long file names, the arcane XML wizardry necessary to customize a template and a build system that adds an extra layer of oddness on top of msbuild. Im sure my legion of readers will soon point out to me how I can work around all these issues, how this is fixed in TFS 2010 or with this add-in, and how once you have everything set up, youre fine. And theyd be right, any one of these problems could be worked around. If not dirty laundry, what else? I thought about it for a while, and came to the conclusion that TFS is so irritating to me because it represents a vision of software development that I find unappealing. To expand upon this, lets start with some wisdom from those great PSAs at the end of the G.I. Joe cartoons of the 80s: Now you know, and knowing is half the battle. In software development, Id go further and say knowing is more than half the battle. Understanding the dimensions of the problem you are trying to solve, the needs of the users, the value that your software can provide are more than half the battle. Implementation of this understanding is not easy, but it is not even possible without this knowledge. Assuming we have a fixed amount of time and mental energy for any project, why does this spell trouble for TFS? If you think about what TFS is doing, its offering you a huge array of options to track the day to day implementation of your project. From tasks, to code churn, to test coverage. All valuable metrics, but only in exchange for valuable time to get it all working. In addition, when you have a shiny toy like TFS, the temptation is to feel obligated to use it. So the push from TFS is to encourage a project manager and team to focus on process and metrics around process. You can get great visibility, and graphs to show your project stakeholders, but none of that is important if you are not implementing the right product. Not just unimportant, these activities can be harmful as they drain your time and sap your creativity away from the rest of the project. To be more concrete, lets suppose your organization has invested the time to create a template for your projects and trained people in how to use it, so there is no longer a big investment of time for each project to get up and running. First, Id challenge if that template could be specific enough to be full featured and still applicable for any project. Second, the very existence of this template would be a indication to a project manager that the success of their project was somehow directly related to fitting management of that project into this format. Again, while the capabilities are wonderful, the mirage is there; just get everything into TFS and your project will run smoothly. Ill close the loop on this first topic by proposing a thought experiment. Think of the projects youve worked on. How many times have you been chagrined to discover youve implemented the wrong feature, misunderstood how a feature should work or just plain spent too much time on a screen that nobody uses? That sounds like a really worthwhile area to invest time in improving. How about going back to these projects and thinking about how many times you wished you had optimized the state change flow of your tasks or been embarrassed to not have a code churn report linked back to the latest changeset? With thanks to the Real American Heroes, Ill move on to a more current influence, that of the developers at 37signals, and their philosophy towards software development. This philosophy, fully detailed in the books Getting Real and Rework, is a vision of software that under does the competition. This is software that is deliberately limited in functionality in order to concentrate fully on making sure ever feature that is there is awesome and needed. Why is this relevant? Well, in one of those fun seeming paradoxes in life, constraints can be a spark for creativity. Think Twitter, the small screen of an iPhone, the limitations of HTML for applications, the low memory limits of older or embedded system. As long as there is some freedom within those constraints, amazing things emerge. For project management, some of the most respected people in the industry recommend using just index cards, pens and tape. They argue that with change the constant in software development, your process should be as limited (yet rigorous) as possible. Looking at TFS, this is not a system designed to under do anybody. It is a big jumble of components and options, with every feature you could think of. Predictably this means many basic functions are hard to use. For task management, many people just use an Excel spreadsheet linked up to TFS. Not a stirring endorsement of the tooling there. TFS as a whole would be far more appealing to me if there was less of it, but better. Id cut 50% of the features to make the other half really amaze and inspire me. And thats really the heart of the matter. TFS has great promise and I want to believe it can work better. But ultimately it focuses your attention on a lot of stuff that doesnt really matter and then clamps down your creativity in a mess of forms and dialogs obscuring what does.   --- Relevant Links --- All those great G.I. Joe PSAs are on YouTube, including lots of mashed up versions. A simple Google search will get you on the right track.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• T4 Template error - Assembly Directive cannot locate referenced assembly in Visual Studio 2010 proje

  - by CodeSniper

  I ran into the following error recently in Visual Studio 2010 while trying to port Phil Haack’s excellent T4CSS template which was originally built for Visual Studio 2008.   The Problem Error Compiling transformation: Metadata file 'dotless.Core' could not be found In “T4 speak”, this simply means that you have an Assembly directive in your T4 template but the T4 engine was not able to locate or load the referenced assembly. In the case of the T4CSS Template, this was a showstopper for making it work in Visual Studio 2010. On a side note: The T4CSS template is a sweet little wrapper to allow you to use DotLessCss to generate static .css files from .less files rather than using their default HttpHandler or command-line tool.    If you haven't tried DotLessCSS yet, go check it out now!  In short, it is a tool that allows you to templatize and program your CSS files so that you can use variables, expressions, and mixins within your CSS which enables rapid changes and a lot of developer-flexibility as you evolve your CSS and UI. Back to our regularly scheduled program… Anyhow, this post isn't about DotLessCss, its about the T4 Templates and the errors I ran into when converting them from Visual Studio 2008 to Visual Studio 2010. In VS2010, there were quite a few changes to the T4 Template Engine; most were excellent changes, but this one bit me with T4CSS: “Project assemblies are no longer used to resolve template assembly directives.” In VS2008, if you wanted to reference a custom assembly in your T4 Template (.tt file) you would simply right click on your project, choose Add Reference and select that assembly.  Afterwards you were allowed to use the following syntax in your T4 template to tell it to look at the local references: <#@ assembly name="dotless.Core.dll" #> This told the engine to look in the “usual place” for the assembly, which is your project references. However, this is exactly what they changed in VS2010.  They now basically sandbox the T4 Engine to keep your T4 assemblies separate from your project assemblies.  This can come in handy if you want to support different versions of an assembly referenced both by your T4 templates and your project. Who broke the build?  Oh, Microsoft Did! In our case, this change causes a problem since the templates are no longer compatible when upgrading to VS 2010 – thus its a breaking change.  So, how do we make this work in VS 2010? Luckily, Microsoft now offers several options for referencing assemblies from T4 Templates: GAC your assemblies and use Namespace Reference or Fully Qualified Type Name Use a hard-coded Fully Qualified UNC path Copy assembly to Visual Studio "Public Assemblies Folder" and use Namespace Reference or Fully Qualified Type Name.  Use or Define a Windows Environment Variable to build a Fully Qualified UNC path. Use a Visual Studio Macro to build a Fully Qualified UNC path. Option #1 & 2 were already supported in Visual Studio 2008, so if you want to keep your templates compatible with both Visual Studio versions, then you would have to adopt one of these approaches. Yakkety Yak, use the GAC! Option #1 requires an additional pre-build step to GAC the referenced assembly, which could be a pain.  But, if you go that route, then after you GAC, all you need is a simple type name or namespace reference such as: <#@ assembly name="dotless.Core" #> Hard Coding aint that hard! The other option of using hard-coded paths in Option #2 is pretty impractical in most situations since each developer would have to use the same local project folder paths, or modify this setting each time for their local machines as well as for production deployment.  However, if you want to go that route, simply use the following assembly directive style: <#@ assembly name="C:\Code\Lib\dotless.Core.dll" #> Lets go Public! Option #3, the Visual Studio Public Assemblies Folder, is the recommended place to put commonly used tools and libraries that are only needed for Visual Studio.  Think of it like a VS-only GAC.  This is likely the best place for something like dotLessCSS and is my preferred solution.  However, you will need to either use an installer or a pre-build action to copy the assembly to the right folder location.   Normally this is located at:  C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\PublicAssemblies Once you have copied your assembly there, you use the type name or namespace syntax again: <#@ assembly name="dotless.Core" #> Save the Environment! Option #4, using a Windows Environment Variable, is interesting for enterprise use where you may have standard locations for files, but less useful for demo-code, frameworks, and products where you don't have control over the local system.  The syntax for including a environment variable in your assembly directive looks like the following, just as you would expect: <#@ assembly name="%mypath%\dotless.Core.dll" #> “mypath” is a Windows environment variable you setup that points to some fully qualified UNC path on your system.  In the right situation this can be a great solution such as one where you use a msi installer for deployment, or where you have a pre-existing environment variable you can re-use. OMG Macros! Finally, Option #5 is a very nice option if you want to keep your T4 template’s assembly reference local and relative to the project or solution without muddying-up your dev environment or GAC with extra deployments.  An example looks like this: <#@ assembly name="$(SolutionDir)lib\dotless.Core.dll" #> In this example, I’m using the “SolutionDir” VS macro so I can reference an assembly in a “/lib” folder at the root of the solution.   This is just one of the many macros you can use.  If you are familiar with creating Pre/Post-build Event scripts, you can use its dialog to look at all of the different VS macros available. This option gives the best solution for local assemblies without the hassle of extra installers or other setup before the build.   However, its still not compatible with Visual Studio 2008, so if you have a T4 Template you want to use with both, then you may have to create multiple .tt files, one for each IDE version, or require the developer to set a value in the .tt file manually.   I’m not sure if T4 Templates support any form of compiler switches like “#if (VS2010)”  statements, but it would definitely be nice in this case to switch between this option and one of the ones more compatible with VS 2008. Conclusion As you can see, we went from 3 options with Visual Studio 2008, to 5 options (plus one problem) with Visual Studio 2010.  As a whole, I think the changes are great, but the short-term growing pains during the migration may be annoying until we get used to our new found power. Hopefully this all made sense and was helpful to you.  If nothing else, I’ll just use it as a reference the next time I need to port a T4 template to Visual Studio 2010.  Happy T4 templating, and “May the fourth be with you!”

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, September 30, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, September 30, 2012Popular ReleasesCAPTCHA Solver: Initial Release: This is the initial Release :) Still very much a WIP.MCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.2.17: Reccomended update to 2.2.16 Changelog for 2.2.17 (32bit and 64bit) 1. Fixed bugs around thread synchronization with new remote model (fixes cause the app to crash or hang) 2. Updated UPnP code base, faster and more reliable now 3. Now you can get audio/video properties for multiple files on main page. Selected multiple files and right click, all selected files properties will be shown. 4. Fix a bug, not able to enter a conversion task name in the GUIAggravation: Version 1.0: This version 1.0 release is pretty stable. You need the Silverlight 4 runtime, developer tools, and Experssion Blend 4 installed.Readable Passphrase Generator: KeePass Plugin 0.7.1: See the KeePass Plugin Step By Step Guide for instructions on how to install the plugin. Changes Built against KeePass 2.20Windows 8 Toolkit - Charts and More: Beta 1.0: The First Compiled Version of my LibraryPDF.NET: PDF.NET.Ver4.5-OpenSourceCode: PDF.NET Ver4.5 ????，????Web??????。 PDF.NET Ver4.5 Open Source Code,include a sample Web application project.D3 Loot Tracker: 1.4: Session name is displayed in the UI. Changes data directory for clickonce deployment so that sessions files are persisted between versions. Added a delete button in the sessions list window. Allow opening of the sessions local folder from the session list widow. Display the session name in the main window Ability to select which diablo process to hook up to when pressing new () function BUT only if multi-process support is selected in the generals settings tab menu. Session picker...CRM 2011 Visual Ribbon Editor: Visual Ribbon Editor 1.1 Beta: Visual Ribbon Editor 1.1 Beta What's New: Fixed scrolling issue in UnHide dialog Added support for connecting via ADFS / IFD Added support for more than one action for a button Added support for empty StringParameter for Javascript functions Fixed bug in rule CrmClientTypeRule when selecting Outlook option Extended Prefix field in New Button dialogVisual Studio Icon Patcher: Version 1.5.2: This version contains no new images from v1.5.1 Contains the following improvements: Better support for detecting the installed languages The extract & inject commands won’t run if Visual Studio is running You may now run in extract or inject mode The p/invoke code was cleaned up based on Code Analysis recommendations When a p/invoke method fails the Win32 error message is now displayed Error messages use red text Status messages use green textZXing.Net: ZXing.Net 0.9.0.0: On the way to a release 1.0 the API should be stable now with this version. sync with rev. 2393 of the java version improved api better Unity support Windows RT binaries Windows CE binaries new Windows Service demo new WPF demo WindowsCE Hotfix: Fixes an error with ISO8859-1 encoding and scannning of QR-Codes. The hotfix is only needed for the WindowsCE platform.C.B.R. : Comic Book Reader: CBR 0.7: Synthesis since 0.6 : ePUB : Complete refactoring Add a new dedicated feed viewer for opds stream PDF conversion : improved with image merge Make all backstage panel scrollable Integrate the new AvalonDock 2 library. Support multi-document. Library explorer and Table of content are now toolboxes Designer for dynamic books is now mvvm and much better New BrowserForControl Customized xps viewer to suppress toolbars and bind it to cbr commands Add quick start manual and button ...menu4web: menu4web 1.0 - free javascript menu for web sites: menu4web 1.0 has been tested with all major browsers: Firefox, Chrome, IE, Opera and Safari. Minified m4w.js library is less than 9K. Includes 21 menu examples of different styles. Can be freely distributed under The MIT License (MIT).Rawr: Rawr 5.0.0: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...Coevery - Free CRM: Coevery 1.0.0.26: The zh-CN issue has been solved. We also add a project management module.VidCoder: 1.4.1 Beta: Updated to HandBrake 4971. This should fix some issues with stuck PGS subtitles. Fixed build break which prevented pre-compiled XML serializers from showing up. Fixed problem where a preset would get errantly marked as modified when re-opening the encode settings window or importing a new preset.Snake!: Snake 1.0: Version 1 StablePaging SharePoint ListItems using listitems position: Paginglistitems V1.0: This is a console application which has two methods both on CSOM and SOM to display the listitems in a paged manner.SharePoint Move Discussion Threads: SharePoint Move Discussion Threads ver 0.1: ver 0.1NTCPMSG: V1.1.1.0: increase the performance. Support .net framework 4.0.BlackJumboDog: Ver5.7.2: 2012.09.23 Ver5.7.2 (1)InetTest?? (2)HTTP?????????????????100???????????New Projects2D Sprite Editor: This is a 2d sprite editor. Import your sprite sheet, trace your animations frame and export the coordinates points in a simple txt file, ready to import.caifenweb1: test project.CatchThatException: This is a small logging library We created at developerpath.com to help us log exceptions. It write it to a text file and you can easilay open that txt.FsxWs - WebServices for Microsoft FSX: WebServices for MS Flight Simulator. Get flights data as JSON, KML. !! Still in SetUp phase - be patient !!GetTPB: Some training in downloading and parsing web pages, with multithreading too.JSON-RPC Client Generator (for XBMC): The goal of this project is to provide a .Net client for the XBMC JSONRPC API. The main part is not XBMC dependent and may be used for any JSON-RPC client.matlab-silhouette-pose-wtf: Whatevermfp: this is random codeMVC Grid: MVC Grid ExampleMyWebSocketTry: sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssNetduino Console: Netduino Console is an interface with built in messaging layers that allows you as a developer to dynamically create plugins following a provided interface to iSharePoint ASP.NET Verifier: Project will allow to verify SharePoint 2010 components using ASP.NET web applicationSharepoint Custom Upload: This is a SharePoint solution that allows an administrator to customize the upload page individually for each document library in a site.. It allows you to makeWinWeb Browser Deluxe: WinWeb Browser Deluxe es un navegador web de código abierto basado en Internet Explorer hecho en Visual Basic .NET. Descargalo ya!writethatoutput: This is the official release page for WriteThatOutPut from developerpath.com

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• Getting MySQL work with Entity Framework 4.0

  - by DigiMortal

  Does MySQL work with Entity Framework 4.0? The answer is: yes, it works! I just put up one experimental project to play with MySQL and Entity Framework 4.0 and in this posting I will show you how to get MySQL data to EF. Also I will give some suggestions how to deploy your applications to hosting and cloud environments. MySQL stuff As you may guess you need MySQL running somewhere. I have MySQL installed to my development machine so I can also develop stuff when I’m offline. The other thing you need is MySQL Connector for .NET Framework. Currently there is available development version of MySQL Connector/NET 6.3.5 that supports Visual Studio 2010. Before you start download MySQL and Connector/NET: MySQL Community Server Connector/NET 6.3.5 If you are not big fan of phpMyAdmin then you can try out free desktop client for MySQL – HeidiSQL. I am using it and I am really happy with this program. NB! If you just put up MySQL then create also database with couple of table there. To use all features of Entity Framework 4.0 I suggest you to use InnoDB or other engine that has support for foreign keys. Connecting MySQL to Entity Framework 4.0 Now create simple console project using Visual Studio 2010 and go through the following steps. 1. Add new ADO.NET Entity Data Model to your project. For model insert the name that is informative and that you are able later recognize. Now you can choose how you want to create your model. Select “Generate from database” and click OK. 2. Set up database connection Change data connection and select MySQL Database as data source. You may also need to set provider – there is only one choice. Select it if data provider combo shows empty value. Click OK and insert connection information you are asked about. Don’t forget to click test connection button to see if your connection data is okay. If everything works then click OK. 3. Insert context name Now you should see the following dialog. Insert your data model name for application configuration file and click OK. Click next button. 4. Select tables for model Now you can select tables and views your classes are based on. I have small database with events data. Uncheck the checkbox “Include foreign key columns in the model” – it is damn annoying to get them away from model later. Also insert informative and easy to remember name for your model. Click finish button. 5. Define your classes Now it’s time to define your classes. Here you can see what Entity Framework generated for you. Relations were detected automatically – that’s why we needed foreign keys. The names of classes and their members are not nice yet. After some modifications my class model looks like on the following diagram. Note that I removed attendees navigation property from person class. Now my classes look nice and they follow conventions I am using when naming classes and their members. NB! Don’t forget to see properties of classes (properties windows) and modify their set names if set names contain numbers (I changed set name for Entity from Entity1 to Entities). 6. Let’s test! Now let’s write simple testing program to see if MySQL data runs through Entity Framework 4.0 as expected. My program looks for events where I attended. using(var context = new MySqlEntities()) {     var myEvents = from e in context.Events                     from a in e.Attendees                     where a.Person.FirstName == "Gunnar" &&                             a.Person.LastName == "Peipman"                     select e;       Console.WriteLine("My events: ");       foreach(var e in myEvents)     {         Console.WriteLine(e.Title);     } }   Console.ReadKey(); And when I run it I get the result shown on screenshot on right. I checked out from database and these results are correct. At first run connector seems to work slow but this is only the effect of first run. As connector is loaded to memory by Entity Framework it works fast from this point on. Now let’s see what we have to do to get our program work in hosting and cloud environments where MySQL connector is not installed. Deploying application to hosting and cloud environments If your hosting or cloud environment has no MySQL connector installed you have to provide MySQL connector assemblies with your project. Add the following assemblies to your project’s bin folder and include them to your project (otherwise they are not packaged by WebDeploy and Azure tools): MySQL.Data MySQL.Data.Entity MySQL.Web You can also add references to these assemblies and mark references as local so these assemblies are copied to binary folder of your application. If you have references to these assemblies then you don’t have to include them to your project from bin folder. Also add the following block to your application configuration file. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <configuration> ...   <system.data>     <DbProviderFactories>         <add              name=”MySQL Data Provider”              invariant=”MySql.Data.MySqlClient”              description=”.Net Framework Data Provider for MySQL”              type=”MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlClientFactory, MySql.Data,                   Version=6.2.0.0, Culture=neutral,                   PublicKeyToken=c5687fc88969c44d”          />     </DbProviderFactories>   </system.data> ... </configuration> Conclusion It was not hard to get MySQL connector installed and MySQL connected to Entity Framework 4.0. To use full power of Entity Framework we used InnoDB engine because it supports foreign keys. It was also easy to query our model. To get our project online we needed some easy modifications to our project and configuration files.

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• Interface contracts – forcing code contracts through interfaces

  - by DigiMortal

  Sometimes we need a way to make different implementations of same interface follow same rules. One option is to duplicate contracts to all implementation but this is not good option because we have duplicated code then. The other option is to force contracts to all implementations at interface level. In this posting I will show you how to do it using interface contracts and contracts class. Using code from previous example about unit testing code with code contracts I will go further and force contracts at interface level. Here is the code from previous example. Take a careful look at it because I will talk about some modifications to this code soon. public interface IRandomGenerator {     int Next(int min, int max); }   public class RandomGenerator : IRandomGenerator {     private Random _random = new Random();       public int Next(int min, int max)     {         return _random.Next(min, max);     } }    public class Randomizer {     private IRandomGenerator _generator;       private Randomizer()     {         _generator = new RandomGenerator();     }       public Randomizer(IRandomGenerator generator)     {         _generator = generator;     }       public int GetRandomFromRangeContracted(int min, int max)     {         Contract.Requires<ArgumentOutOfRangeException>(             min < max,             "Min must be less than max"         );           Contract.Ensures(             Contract.Result<int>() >= min &&             Contract.Result<int>() <= max,             "Return value is out of range"         );           return _generator.Next(min, max);     } } If we look at the GetRandomFromRangeContracted() method we can see that contracts set in this method are applicable to all implementations of IRandomGenerator interface. Although we can write new implementations as we want these implementations need exactly the same contracts. If we are using generators somewhere else then code contracts are not with them anymore. To solve the problem we will force code contracts at interface level. NB! To make the following code work you must enable Contract Reference Assembly building from project settings. Interface contracts and contracts class Interface contains no code – only definitions of members that implementing type must have. But code contracts must be defined in body of member they are part of. To get over this limitation, code contracts are defined in separate contracts class. Interface is bound to this class by special attribute and contracts class refers to interface through special attribute. Here is the IRandomGenerator with contracts and contracts class. Also I write simple fake so we can test contracts easily based only on interface mock. [ContractClass(typeof(RandomGeneratorContracts))] public interface IRandomGenerator {     int Next(int min, int max); }   [ContractClassFor(typeof(IRandomGenerator))] internal sealed class RandomGeneratorContracts : IRandomGenerator {     int IRandomGenerator.Next(int min, int max)     {         Contract.Requires<ArgumentOutOfRangeException>(                 min < max,                 "Min must be less than max"             );           Contract.Ensures(             Contract.Result<int>() >= min &&             Contract.Result<int>() <= max,             "Return value is out of range"         );           return default(int);     } }   public class RandomFake : IRandomGenerator {     private int _testValue;       public RandomGen(int testValue)     {         _testValue = testValue;     }       public int Next(int min, int max)     {         return _testValue;     } } To try out these changes use the following code. var gen = new RandomFake(3);   try {     gen.Next(10, 1); } catch(Exception ex) {     Debug.WriteLine(ex.Message); }   try {     gen.Next(5, 10); } catch(Exception ex) {     Debug.WriteLine(ex.Message); } Now we can force code contracts to all types that implement our IRandomGenerator interface and we must test only the interface to make sure that contracts are defined correctly.

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

  - by ScottGu

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

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