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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, February 19, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, February 19, 2011Popular ReleasesAdvanced Explorer for Wp7: Advanced Explorer for Wp7 Version 1.4 Test8: Added option to run under Lockscreen. Fixed a bug when you open a pdf/mobi file without starting adobe reader/amazon kindle first boost loading time for folders added \Windows directory (all devices) you can now interact with the filesystem while it is loading!Game Files Open - Map Editor: Game Files Open - Map Editor Beta 2 v1.0.0.0: The 2° beta release of the Map Editor, we have fixed a big bug of the files regen.Document.Editor: 2011.6: Whats new for Document.Editor 2011.6: New Left to Right and Left to Right support New Indent more/less support Improved Home tab Improved Tooltips/shortcut keys Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsCatel - WPF and Silverlight MVVM library: 1.2: Catel history ============= (+) Added (*) Changed (-) Removed (x) Error / bug (fix) For more information about issues or new feature requests, please visit: http://catel.codeplex.com =========== Version 1.2 =========== Release date: ============= 2011/02/17 Added/fixed: ============ (+) DataObjectBase now supports Isolated Storage out of the box: Person.Save(myStream) stores a whole object graph in Silverlight (+) DataObjectBase can now be converted to Json via Person.ToJson(); (+)...??????????: All-In-One Code Framework ??? 2011-02-18: ?????All-In-One Code Framework?2011??????????！！http://i3.codeplex.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=1code&DownloadId=128165 ?????，?????AzureBingMaps??????，??Azure，WCF, Silverlight, Window Phone????????，????????????????????????。 ???： Windows Azure SQL Azure Windows Azure AppFabric Windows Live Messenger Connect Bing Maps ?????： ??????HTML??? ??Windows PC?Mac?Silverlight??? ??Windows Phone?Silverlight??? ?????：http://blog.csdn.net/sjb5201/archive/2011...Image.Viewer: 2011: First version of 2011Silverlight Toolkit: Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit - Feb 2011: Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit OverviewSilverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit offers developers additional controls for Windows Phone application development, designed to match the rich user experience of the Windows Phone 7. Suggestions? Features? Questions? Ask questions in the Create.msdn.com forum. Add bugs or feature requests to the Issue Tracker. Help us shape the Silverlight Toolkit with your feedback! Please clearly indicate that the work items and issues are for the phone t...VsTortoise - a TortoiseSVN add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio: VsTortoise Build 29 Beta: Note: This release does not work with custom VsTortoise toolbars. These get removed every time when you shutdown Visual Studio. (#7940) Build 29 (beta)New: Added VsTortoise Solution Explorer integration for Web Project Folder, Web Folder and Web Item. Fix: TortoiseProc was called with invalid parameters, when using TSVN 1.4.x or older #7338 (thanks psifive) Fix: Add-in does not work, when "TortoiseSVN/bin" is not added to PATH environment variable #7357 Fix: Missing error message when ...Sense/Net CMS - Enterprise Content Management: SenseNet 6.0.3 Community Edition: Sense/Net 6.0.3 Community Edition We are happy to introduce you the latest version of Sense/Net with integrated ECM Workflow capabilities! In the past weeks we have been working hard to migrate the product to .Net 4 and include a workflow framework in Sense/Net built upon Windows Workflow Foundation 4. This brand new feature enables developers to define and develop workflows, and supports users when building and setting up complicated business processes involving content creation and response...thinktecture WSCF.blue: WSCF.blue V1 Update (1.0.11): Features Added a new option that allows properties on data contract types to be marked as virtual. Bug Fixes Fixed a bug caused by certain project properties not being available on Web Service Software Factory projects. Fixed a bug that could result in the WrapperName value of the MessageContractAttribute being incorrect when the Adjust Casing option is used. The menu item code now caters for CommandBar instances that are not available. For example the Web Item CommandBar does not exist ...Terminals: Version 2 - RC1: The "Clean Install" will overwrite your log4net configuration (if you have one). If you run in a Portable Environment, you can use the "Clean Install" and target your portable folder. Tested and it works fine. Changes for this release: Re-worked on the Toolstip settings are done, just to avoid the vs.net clash with auto-generating files for .settings files. renamed it to .settings.config Packged both log4net and ToolStripSettings files into the installer Upgraded the version inform...AllNewsManager.NET: AllNewsManager.NET 1.3: AllNewsManager.NET 1.3. This new version provide several new features, improvements and bug fixes. Some new features: Online Users. Avatars. Copy function (to create a new article from another one). SEO improvements (friendly urls). New admin buttons. And more...Facebook Graph Toolkit: Facebook Graph Toolkit 0.8: Version 0.8 (15 Feb 2011)moved to Beta stage publish photo feature "email" field of User object added new Graph Api object: Group, Event new Graph Api connection: likes, groups, eventsDJME - The jQuery extensions for ASP.NET MVC: DJME2 -The jQuery extensions for ASP.NET MVC beta2: The source code and runtime library for DJME2. For more product info you can goto http://www.dotnetage.com/djme.html What is new ?The Grid extension added The ModelBinder added which helping you create Bindable data Action. The DnaFor() control factory added that enabled Model bindable extensions. Enhance the ListBox , ComboBox data binding.Jint - Javascript Interpreter for .NET: Jint - 0.9.0: New CLR interoperability features Many bugfixesBuild Version Increment Add-In Visual Studio: Build Version Increment v2.4.11046.2045: v2.4.11046.2045 Fixes and/or Improvements:Major: Added complete support for VC projects including .vcxproj & .vcproj. All padding issues fixed. A project's assembly versions are only changed if the project has been modified. Minor Order of versioning style values is now according to their respective positions in the attributes i.e. Major, Minor, Build, Revision. Fixed issue with global variable storage with some projects. Fixed issue where if a project item's file does not exist, a ...Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.1: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.1 release. Bug fixes and minor feature requests addedTV4Home - The all-in-one TV solution!: 0.1.0.0 Preview: This is the beta preview release of the TV4Home software.Finestra Virtual Desktops: 1.2: Fixes a few minor issues with 1.1 including the broken per-desktop backgrounds Further improves the speed of switching desktops A few UI performance improvements Added donations linksNuGet: NuGet 1.1: NuGet is a free, open source developer focused package management system for the .NET platform intent on simplifying the process of incorporating third party libraries into a .NET application during development. This release is a Visual Studio 2010 extension and contains the the Package Manager Console and the Add Package Dialog. The URL to the package OData feed is: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=206669 To see the list of issues fixed in this release, visit this our issues list A...New ProjectsComplexityEvolution: Research projectCRM 2011 Metadata Browser: The CRM 2011 Metadata Browser is a Silverlight 4 application that is packaged as a Managed CRM Solution. This tool allows you to view metadata including Entities, Attributes and Relationships. The 2011 SOAP endpoint is used to connect to CRM using the Organization.svc/web serviceEFCFvsNH3: A sample project that shows the main differences between Entity Framework Code First and Nhibernate 3: -Mapping -Configuration -DB Initialization -Query API -Session & Transaction -ValidationE-Teacher for IELTS preparation: E-teacher helps IELTS students prepare for the IELTS Academic and General Training test. Qualified English Teachers can register to the e-community and helps candidates to understand what they really need to improve for the IELTS exam and how to reach for the maximum band score.FIM CM Extensions: Extensions for Forefront Identity Manager 2010 to enable integration between the FIM Service workflow and the FIM Certificate Management workflow. Game Files Open - Map Editor: This is a map editor for the metin2 clients, it's very simple edit or create a map with this tool.Garbage Collection Sample Code: Garbage collection sample code demonstrates the differences between the large and small object heaps. This code supports the blog post at http://www.deepcode.co.ukGardenersWorld: The aim of gardenersWorld community website is to provide a platform for budding gardenening enthusiasts, hobbyists and professionals to share information. Harvester - Debug Monitor for Log4Net and NLog: Harvester enables you to monitor all Win32 debug output from all applications running on your machine. Watch real time Log4Net and NLog output across multiple applications at the same time. Trace a call from client to server and back without having to look at multiple log files.Hjelp! Jeg skal ha farmakokinetikk-eksamen!: Sliter du med å pugge formler til farmakokinetikk-eksamenen? Da er redningen din her! :DMercury Business Framework: Mercury Business Framework is a project set up to define basic objects used by the vast majority of business and non business software. The idea is to define the low level objects required by most applications on the web and desktop.MyDistrictBuilder: MyDistrictBuilder allows anybody to build legislative districts and submit to the Florida House of Rep. It is built on Bing Maps, Silverlight and AZURE. Written in C#. It is written to allow anyone to adapt for any states census geography. www.floridaredistricting.cloudapp.netMySchoolApp: MySchoolApp is a customizable application written in Visual Basic and C# for the Windows Mobile Phone 7 platform using Visual Studio Professional 2010. The application combines links to RSS and Web sites about a school, and displays a map and local weather. Osm Parser Community Edition: Osm Parser parse highways in open street maps to generate routable roads network in spatialite.PRBox Cloud Website: This is the website base for PRBox.com SEO Reporter : open source search engine optimization software: SEO Reporter is an open source search engine optimization application for detecting HTML related SEO violations, gathering data about a Web page and analyzing its keywords strategy. It's a Windows navigation application developed in F#. Setting timeout for SharePoint 2010 Silverlight web part: This web part overwrites 5sec hard-coded timeout for SharePoint 2010 Silverlight web part.SharePoint 2010 Central Administration Automatic Resources Link Generator: This feature will automatically generate the resources links list (Quick Links) in your SharePoint 2010 Central Administration site making it easier for SharePoint Admins to navigate through the common Central Administration activities without populating it themselves - VS2010/c#SharePoint Holiday Loader: SharePoint Holiday Loader allows you to quickly import public holidays into a SharePoint calendar from the standard .HOL format.Sohu?????: ?????????WPF?????????????，????????????（??、??、???），??、??、???????，????????????，??????????????。 ??V1????????，V2?????????????????。SP2010 Form Manipulator: This project will hopefully make it easier to manipulate the list form in SharePoint 2010.SPRotator: A jQuery powered web part for SharePoint that cycles through any type of list.SQL Script to Create a Website Directory: Here you can download sql script to create a website directory using SQL Server. * This is only the easy directory sql script to develop your website. Directory software may publish in future.Sri Hits Zone: This is an online repository which used to share Sri Lankan music. This is to provide Sri Lankans who living abroad to being touches with Sri Lankan artist and their music. testz: testzTime domain dissipative acoustic problem: tddapWindows Azure Hosted Services VM Manager: Windows Azure Hosted Services VM Manager is a Windows Service that can manage the number of hosted services running in Azure by either a time based schedule or by CPU load. This allows your service to scale for either dynamic load or a known schedule. Z80TR: Z80TR

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• Load and Web Performance Testing using Visual Studio Ultimate 2010-Part 3

  - by Tarun Arora

  Welcome back once again, in Part 1 of Load and Web Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 I talked about why Performance Testing the application is important, the test tools available in Visual Studio Ultimate 2010 and various test rig topologies, in Part 2 of Load and Web Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 I discussed the details of web performance & load tests as well as why it’s important to follow a goal based pattern while performance testing your application. In part 3 I’ll be discussing Test Result Analysis, Test Result Drill through, Test Report Generation, Test Run Comparison, Asp.net Profiler and some closing thoughts. Test Results – I see some creepy worms! In Part 2 we put together a web performance test and a load test, lets run the test to see load test to see how the Web site responds to the load simulation. While the load test is running you will be able to see close to real time analysis in the Load Test Analyser window. You can use the Load Test Analyser to conduct load test analysis in three ways: Monitor a running load test - A condensed set of the performance counter data is maintained in memory. To prevent the results memory requirements from growing unbounded, up to 200 samples for each performance counter are maintained. This includes 100 evenly spaced samples that span the current elapsed time of the run and the most recent 100 samples.         After the load test run is completed - The test controller spools all collected performance counter data to a database while the test is running. Additional data, such as timing details and error details, is loaded into the database when the test completes. The performance data for a completed test is loaded from the database and analysed by the Load Test Analyser. Below you can see a screen shot of the summary view, this provides key results in a format that is compact and easy to read. You can also print the load test summary, this is generated after the test has completed or been stopped.         Analyse the load test results of a previously run load test – We’ll see this in the section where i discuss comparison between two test runs. The performance counters can be plotted on the graphs. You also have the option to highlight a selected part of the test and view details, drill down to the user activity chart where you can hover over to see more details of the test run.   Generate Report => Test Run Comparisons The level of reports you can generate using the Load Test Analyser is astonishing. You have the option to create excel reports and conduct side by side analysis of two test results or to track trend analysis. The tools also allows you to export the graph data either to MS Excel or to a CSV file. You can view the ASP.NET profiler report to conduct further analysis as well. View Data and Diagnostic Attachments opens the Choose Diagnostic Data Adapter Attachment dialog box to select an adapter to analyse the result type. For example, you can select an IntelliTrace adapter, click OK and open the IntelliTrace summary for the test agent that was used in the load test.   Compare results This creates a set of reports that compares the data from two load test results using tables and bar charts. I have taken these screen shots from the MSDN documentation, I would highly recommend exploring the wealth of knowledge available on MSDN. Leaving Thoughts While load testing the application with an excessive load for a longer duration of time, i managed to bring the IIS to its knees by piling up a huge queue of requests waiting to be processed. This clearly means that the IIS had run out of threads as all the threads were busy processing existing request, one easy way of fixing this is by increasing the default number of allocated threads, but this might escalate the problem. The better suggestion is to try and drill down to the actual root cause of the problem. When ever the garbage collection runs it stops processing any pages so all requests that come in during that period are queued up, but realistically the garbage collection completes in fraction of a a second. To understand this better lets look at the .net heap, it is divided into large heap and small heap, anything greater than 85kB in size will be allocated to the Large object heap, the Large object heap is non compacting and remember large objects are expensive to move around, so if you are allocating something in the large object heap, make sure that you really need it! The small object heap on the other hand is divided into generations, so all objects that are supposed to be short-lived are suppose to live in Gen-0 and the long living objects eventually move to Gen-2 as garbage collection goes through.  As you can see in the picture below all < 85 KB size objects are first assigned to Gen-0, when Gen-0 fills up and a new object comes in and finds Gen-0 full, the garbage collection process is started, the process checks for all the dead objects and assigns them as the valid candidate for deletion to free up memory and promotes all the remaining objects in Gen-0 to Gen-1. So in the future when ever you clean up Gen-1 you have to clean up Gen-0 as well. When you fill up Gen – 0 again, all of Gen – 1 dead objects are drenched and rest are moved to Gen-2 and Gen-0 objects are moved to Gen-1 to free up Gen-0, but by this time your Garbage collection process has started to take much more time than it usually takes. Now as I mentioned earlier when garbage collection is being run all page requests that come in during that period are queued up. Does this explain why possibly page requests are getting queued up, apart from this it could also be the case that you are waiting for a long running database process to complete.      Lets explore the heap a bit more… What is really a case of crisis is when the objects are living long enough to make it to Gen-2 and then dying, this is definitely a high cost operation. But sometimes you need objects in memory, for example when you cache data you hold on to the objects because you need to use them right across the user session, which is acceptable. But if you wanted to see what extreme caching can do to your server then write a simple application that chucks in a lot of data in cache, run a load test over it for about 10-15 minutes, forcing a lot of data in memory causing the heap to run out of memory. If you get to such a state where you start running out of memory the IIS as a mode of recovery restarts the worker process. It is great way to free up all your memory in the heap but this would clear the cache. The problem with this is if the customer had 10 items in their shopping basket and that data was stored in the application cache, the user basket will now be empty forcing them either to get frustrated and go to a competitor website or if the customer is really patient, give it another try! How can you address this, well two ways of addressing this; 1. Workaround – A x86 bit processor only allows a maximum of 4GB of RAM, this means the machine effectively has around 3.4 GB of RAM available, the OS needs about 1.5 GB of RAM to run efficiently, the IIS and .net framework also need their share of memory, leaving you a heap of around 800 MB to play with. Because Team builds by default build your application in ‘Compile as any mode’ it means the application is build such that it will run in x86 bit mode if run on a x86 bit processor and run in a x64 bit mode if run on a x64 but processor. The problem with this is not all applications are really x64 bit compatible specially if you are using com objects or external libraries. So, as a quick win if you compiled your application in x86 bit mode by changing the compile as any selection to compile as x86 in the team build, you will be able to run your application on a x64 bit machine in x86 bit mode (WOW – By running Windows on Windows) and what that means is, you could use 8GB+ worth of RAM, if you take away everything else your application will roughly get a heap size of at least 4 GB to play with, which is immense. If you need a heap size of more than 4 GB you have either build a software for NASA or there is something fundamentally wrong in your application. 2. Solution – Now that you have put a workaround in place the IIS will not restart the worker process that regularly, which means you can take a breather and start working to get to the root cause of this memory leak. But this begs a question “How do I Identify possible memory leaks in my application?” Well i won’t say that there is one single tool that can tell you where the memory leak is, but trust me, ‘Performance Profiling’ is a great start point, it definitely gets you started in the right direction, let’s have a look at how. Performance Wizard - Start the Performance Wizard and select Instrumentation, this lets you measure function call counts and timings. Before running the performance session right click the performance session settings and chose properties from the context menu to bring up the Performance session properties page and as shown in the screen shot below, check the check boxes in the group ‘.NET memory profiling collection’ namely ‘Collect .NET object allocation information’ and ‘Also collect the .NET Object lifetime information’.    Now if you fire off the profiling session on your pages you will notice that the results allows you to view ‘Object Lifetime’ which shows you the number of objects that made it to Gen-0, Gen-1, Gen-2, Large heap, etc. Another great feature about the profile is that if your application has > 5% cases where objects die right after making to the Gen-2 storage a threshold alert is generated to alert you. Since you have the option to also view the most expensive methods and by capturing the IntelliTrace data you can drill in to narrow down to the line of code that is the root cause of the problem. Well now that we have seen how crucial memory management is and how easy Visual Studio Ultimate 2010 makes it for us to identify and reproduce the problem with the best of breed tools in the product. Caching One of the main ways to improve performance is Caching. Which basically means you tell the web server that instead of going to the database for each request you keep the data in the webserver and when the user asks for it you serve it from the webserver itself. BUT that can have consequences! Let’s look at some code, trust me caching code is not very intuitive, I define a cache key for almost all searches made through the common search page and cache the results. The approach works fine, first time i get the data from the database and second time data is served from the cache, significant performance improvement, EXCEPT when two users try to do the same operation and run into each other. But it is easy to handle this by adding the lock as you can see in the snippet below. So, as long as a user comes in and finds that the cache is empty, the user locks and starts to get the cache no more concurrency issues. But lets say you are processing 10 requests per second, by the time i have locked the operation to get the results from the database, 9 other users came in and found that the cache key is null so after i have come out and populated the cache they will still go in to get the results again. The application will still be faster because the next set of 10 users and so on would continue to get data from the cache. BUT if we added another null check after locking to build the cache and before actual call to the db then the 9 users who follow me would not make the extra trip to the database at all and that would really increase the performance, but didn’t i say that the code won’t be very intuitive, may be you should leave a comment you don’t want another developer to come in and think what a fresher why is he checking for the cache key null twice !!! The downside of caching is, you are storing the data outside of the database and the data could be wrong because the updates applied to the database would make the data cached at the web server out of sync. So, how do you invalidate the cache? Well if you only had one way of updating the data lets say only one entry point to the data update you can write some logic to say that every time new data is entered set the cache object to null. But this approach will not work as soon as you have several ways of feeding data to the system or your system is scaled out across a farm of web servers. The perfect solution to this is Micro Caching which means you cache the query for a set time duration and invalidate the cache after that set duration. The advantage is every time the user queries for that data with in the time span for which you have cached the results there are no calls made to the database and the data is served right from the server which makes the response immensely quick. Now figuring out the appropriate time span for which you micro cache the query results really depends on the application. Lets say your website gets 10 requests per second, if you retain the cache results for even 1 minute you will have immense performance gains. You would reduce 90% hits to the database for searching. Ever wondered why when you go to e-bookers.com or xpedia.com or yatra.com to book a flight and you click on the book button because the fare seems too exciting and you get an error message telling you that the fare is not valid any more. Yes, exactly => That is a cache failure! These travel sites or price compare engines are not going to hit the database every time you hit the compare button instead the results will be served from the cache, because the query results are micro cached, its a perfect trade-off, by micro caching the results the site gains 100% performance benefits but every once in a while annoys a customer because the fare has expired. But the trade off works in the favour of these sites as they are still able to process up to 30+ page requests per second which means cater to the site traffic by may be losing 1 customer every once in a while to a competitor who is also using a similar caching technique what are the odds that the user will not come back to their site sooner or later? Recap   Resources Below are some Key resource you might like to review. I would highly recommend the documentation, walkthroughs and videos available on MSDN. You can always make use of Fiddler to debug Web Performance Tests. Some community test extensions and plug ins available on Codeplex might also be of interest to you. The Road Ahead Thank you for taking the time out and reading this blog post, you may also want to read Part I and Part II if you haven’t so far. If you enjoyed the post, remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. Questions/Feedback/Suggestions, etc please leave a comment. Next ‘Load Testing in the cloud’, I’ll be working on exploring the possibilities of running Test controller/Agents in the Cloud. See you on the other side! Thank You!   Share this post : CodeProject

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• Dynamic XAP loading in Task-It - Part 1

  Download Source Code NOTE 1: The source code provided is running against the RC versions of Silverlight 4 and VisualStudio 2010, so you will need to update to those bits to run it. NOTE 2: After downloading the source, be sure to set the .Web project as the StartUp Project, and Default.aspx as the Start Page In my MEF into post, MEF to the rescue in Task-It, I outlined a couple of issues I was facing and explained why I chose MEF (the Managed Extensibility Framework) to solve these issues. Other posts to check out There are a few other resources out there around dynamic XAP loading that you may want to review (by the way, Glenn Block is the main dude when it comes to MEF): Glenn Blocks 3-part series on a dynamically loaded dashboard Glenn and John Papas Silverlight TV video on dynamic xap loading These provide some great info, but didnt exactly cover the scenario I wanted to achieve in Task-Itand that is dynamically loading each of the apps pages the first time the user enters a page. The code In the code I provided for download above, I created a simple solution that shows the technique I used for dynamic XAP loading in Task-It, but without all of the other code that surrounds it. Taking all that other stuff away should make it easier to grasp. Having said that, there is still a fair amount of code involved. I am always looking for ways to make things simpler, and to achieve the desired result with as little code as possible, so if I find a better/simpler way I will blog about it, but for now this technique works for me. When I created this solution I started by creating a new Silverlight Navigation Application called DynamicXAP Loading. I then added the following line to my UriMappings in MainPage.xaml: <uriMapper:UriMapping Uri="/{assemblyName};component/{path}" MappedUri="/{assemblyName};component/{path}"/> In the section of MainPage.xaml that produces the page links in the upper right, I kept the Home link, but added a couple of new ones (page1 and page 2). These are the pages that will be dynamically (lazy) loaded: <StackPanel x:Name="LinksStackPanel" Style="{StaticResource LinksStackPanelStyle}">      <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" NavigateUri="/Home" TargetName="ContentFrame" Content="home"/>      <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource DividerStyle}"/>      <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" Content="page 1" Command="{Binding NavigateCommand}" CommandParameter="{Binding ModulePage1}"/>      <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource DividerStyle}"/>      <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" Content="page 2" Command="{Binding NavigateCommand}" CommandParameter="{Binding ModulePage2}"/>  </StackPanel> In App.xaml.cs I added a bit of MEF code. In Application_Startup I call a method called InitializeContainer, which creates a PackageCatalog (a MEF thing), then I create a CompositionContainer and pass it to the CompositionHost.Initialize method. This is boiler-plate MEF stuff that allows you to do 'composition' and import 'packages'. You're welcome to do a bit more MEF research on what is happening here if you'd like, but for the purpose of this example you can just trust that it works. :-) private void Application_Startup(object sender, StartupEventArgs e) {     InitializeContainer();     this.RootVisual = new MainPage(); }   private static void InitializeContainer() {     var catalog = new PackageCatalog();     catalog.AddPackage(Package.Current);     var container = new CompositionContainer(catalog);     container.ComposeExportedValue(catalog);     CompositionHost.Initialize(container); } Infrastructure In the sample code you'll notice that there is a project in the solution called DynamicXAPLoading.Infrastructure. This is simply a Silverlight Class Library project that I created just to move stuff I considered application 'infrastructure' code into a separate place, rather than cluttering the main Silverlight project (DynamicXapLoading). I did this same thing in Task-It, as the amount of this type of code was starting to clutter up the Silverlight project, and it just seemed to make sense to move things like Enums, Constants and the like off to a separate place. In the DynamicXapLoading.Infrastructure project you'll see 3 classes: Enums - There is only one enum in here called ModuleEnum. We'll use these later. PageMetadata - We will use this class later to add metadata to a new dynamically loaded project. ViewModelBase - This is simply a base class for view models that we will use in this, as well as future samples. As mentioned in my MVVM post, I will be using the MVVM pattern throughout my code for reasons detailed in the post. By the way, the ViewModelExtension class in there allows me to do strongly-typed property changed notification, so rather than OnPropertyChanged("MyProperty"), I can do this.OnPropertyChanged(p => p.MyProperty). It's just a less error-prown approach, because if you don't spell "MyProperty" correctly using the first method, nothing will break, it just won't work. Adding a new page We currently have a couple of pages that are being dynamically (lazy) loaded, but now let's add a third page. 1. First, create a new Silverlight Application project: In this example I call it Page3. In the future you may prefer to use a different name, like DynamicXAPLoading.Page3, or even DynamicXAPLoading.Modules.Page3. It can be whatever you want. In my Task-It application I used the latter approach (with 'Modules' in the name). I do think of these application as 'modules', but Prism uses the same term, so some folks may not like that. Use whichever naming convention you feel is appropriate, but for now Page3 will do. When you change the name to Page3 and click OK, you will be presented with the Add New Project dialog: It is important that you leave the 'Host the Silverlight application in a new or existing Web site in the solution' checked, and the .Web project will be selected in the dropdown below. This will create the .xap file for this project under ClientBin in the .Web project, which is where we want it. 2. Uncheck the 'Add a test page that references the application' checkbox, and leave everything else as is. 3. Once the project is created, you can delete App.xaml and MainPage.xaml. 4. You will need to add references your new project to the following: DynamicXAPLoading.Infrastructure.dll (this is a Project reference) DynamicNavigation.dll (this is in the Libs directory under the DynamicXAPLoading project) System.ComponentModel.Composition.dll System.ComponentModel.Composition.Initialization.dll System.Windows.Controls.Navigation.dll If you have installed the latest RC bits you will find the last 3 dll's under the .NET tab in the Add Referenced dialog. They live in the following location, or if you are on a 64-bit machine like me, it will be Program Files (x86).       C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v4.0\Libraries\Client Now let's create some UI for our new project. 5. First, create a new Silverlight User Control called Page3.dyn.xaml 6. Paste the following code into the xaml: <dyn:DynamicPageShim xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"     xmlns:dyn="clr-namespace:DynamicNavigation;assembly=DynamicNavigation"     xmlns:my="clr-namespace:Page3;assembly=Page3">     <my:Page3Host /> </dyn:DynamicPageShim> This is just a 'shim', part of David Poll's technique for dynamic loading. 7. Expand the icon next to Page3.dyn.xaml and delete the code-behind file (Page3.dyn.xaml.cs). 8. Next we will create a control that will 'host' our page. Create another Silverlight User Control called Page3Host.xaml and paste in the following XAML: <dyn:DynamicPage x:Class="Page3.Page3Host"     xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"     xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"     xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"     xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"     xmlns:dyn="clr-namespace:DynamicNavigation;assembly=DynamicNavigation"     xmlns:Views="clr-namespace:Page3.Views"      mc:Ignorable="d"     d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="400"     Title="Page 3">       <Views:Page3/>   </dyn:DynamicPage> 9. Now paste the following code into the code-behind for this control: using DynamicXAPLoading.Infrastructure;   namespace Page3 {     [PageMetadata(NavigateUri = "/Page3;component/Page3.dyn.xaml", Module = Enums.Page3)]     public partial class Page3Host     {         public Page3Host()         {             InitializeComponent();         }     } } Notice that we are now using that PageMetadata custom attribute class that we created in the Infrastructure project, and setting its two properties. NavigateUri - This tells it that the assembly is called Page3 (with a slash beforehand), and the page we want to load is Page3.dyn.xaml...our 'shim'. That line we added to the UriMapper in MainPage.xaml will use this information to load the page. Module - This goes back to that ModuleEnum class in our Infrastructure project. However, setting the Module to ModuleEnum.Page3 will cause a compilation error, so... 10. Go back to that Enums.cs under the Infrastructure project and add a 3rd entry for Page3: public enum ModuleEnum {     Page1,     Page2,     Page3 } 11. Now right-click on the Page3 project and add a folder called Views. 12. Right-click on the Views folder and create a new Silverlight User Control called Page3.xaml. We won't bother creating a view model for this User Control as I did in the Page 1 and Page 2 projects, just for the sake of simplicity. Feel free to add one if you'd like though, and copy the code from one of those other projects. Right now those view models aren't really doing anything anyway...though they will in my next post. :-) 13. Now let's replace the xaml for Page3.xaml with the following: <dyn:DynamicPage x:Class="Page3.Views.Page3"     xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"     xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"     xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"     xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"     xmlns:dyn="clr-namespace:DynamicNavigation;assembly=DynamicNavigation"     mc:Ignorable="d"     d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="400"     Style="{StaticResource PageStyle}">       <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">         <ScrollViewer x:Name="PageScrollViewer" Style="{StaticResource PageScrollViewerStyle}">             <StackPanel x:Name="ContentStackPanel">                 <TextBlock x:Name="HeaderText" Style="{StaticResource HeaderTextStyle}" Text="Page 3"/>                 <TextBlock x:Name="ContentText" Style="{StaticResource ContentTextStyle}" Text="Page 3 content"/>             </StackPanel>         </ScrollViewer>     </Grid>   </dyn:DynamicPage> 14. And in the code-behind remove the inheritance from UserControl, so it should look like this: namespace Page3.Views {     public partial class Page3     {         public Page3()         {             InitializeComponent();         }     } } One thing you may have noticed is that the base class for the last two User Controls we created is DynamicPage. Once again, we are using the infrastructure that David Poll created. 15. OK, a few last things. We need a link on our main page so that we can access our new page. In MainPage.xaml let's update our links to look like this: <StackPanel x:Name="LinksStackPanel" Style="{StaticResource LinksStackPanelStyle}">     <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" NavigateUri="/Home" TargetName="ContentFrame" Content="home"/>     <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource DividerStyle}"/>     <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" Content="page 1" Command="{Binding NavigateCommand}" CommandParameter="{Binding ModulePage1}"/>     <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource DividerStyle}"/>     <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" Content="page 2" Command="{Binding NavigateCommand}" CommandParameter="{Binding ModulePage2}"/>     <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource DividerStyle}"/>     <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" Content="page 3" Command="{Binding NavigateCommand}" CommandParameter="{Binding ModulePage3}"/> </StackPanel> 16. Next, we need to add the following at the bottom of MainPageViewModel in the ViewModels directory of our DynamicXAPLoading project: public ModuleEnum ModulePage3 {     get { return ModuleEnum.Page3; } } 17. And at last, we need to add a case for our new page to the switch statement in MainPageViewModel: switch (module) {     case ModuleEnum.Page1:         DownloadPackage("Page1.xap");         break;     case ModuleEnum.Page2:         DownloadPackage("Page2.xap");         break;     case ModuleEnum.Page3:         DownloadPackage("Page3.xap");         break;     default:         break; } Now fire up the application and click the page 1, page 2 and page 3 links. What you'll notice is that there is a 2-second delay the first time you hit each page. That is because I added the following line to the Navigate method in MainPageViewModel: Thread.Sleep(2000); // Simulate a 2 second initial loading delay The reason I put this in there is that I wanted to simulate a delay the first time the page loads (as the .xap is being downloaded from the server). You'll notice that after the first hit to the page though that there is no delay...that's because the .xap has already been downloaded. Feel free to comment out this 2-second delay, or remove it if you'd like. I just wanted to show how subsequent hits to the page would be quicker than the initial one. By the way, you may want to display some sort of BusyIndicator while the .xap is loading. I have that in my Task-It appplication, but for the sake of simplicity I did not include it here. In the future I'll blog about how I show and hide the BusyIndicator using events (I'm currently using the eventing framework in Prism for that, but may move to the one in the MVVM Light Toolkit some time soon). Whew, that felt like a lot of steps, but it does work quite nicely. As I mentioned earlier, I'll try to find ways to simplify the code (I'd like to get away from having things like hard-coded .xap file names) and will blog about it in the future if I find a better way. In my next post, I'll talk more about what is actually happening with the code that makes this all work.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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• MVVM in Task-It

  As I'm gearing up to write a post about dynamic XAP loading with MEF, I'd like to first talk a bit about MVVM, the Model-View-ViewModel pattern, as I will be leveraging this pattern in my future posts. Download Source Code Why MVVM? Your first question may be, "why do I need this pattern? I've been using a code-behind approach for years and it works fine." Well, you really don't have to make the switch to MVVM, but let me first explain some of the benefits I see for doing so. MVVM Benefits Testability - This is the one you'll probably hear the most about when it comes to MVVM. Moving most of the code from your code-behind to a separate view model class means you can now write unit tests against the view model without any knowledge of a view (UserControl). Multiple UIs - Let's just say that you've created a killer app, it's running in the browser, and maybe you've even made it run out-of-browser. Now what if your boss comes to you and says, "I heard about this new Windows Phone 7 device that is coming out later this year. Can you start porting the app to that device?". Well, now you have to create a new UI (UserControls, etc.) because you have a lot less screen real estate to work with. So what do you do, copy all of your existing UserControls, paste them, rename them, and then start changing the code? Hmm, that doesn't sound so good. But wait, if most of the code that makes your browser-based app tick lives in view model classes, now you can create new view (UserControls) for Windows Phone 7 that reference the same view model classes as your browser-based app. Page state - In Silverlight you're at some point going to be faced with the same issue you dealt with for years in ASP.NET, maintaining page state. Let's say a user hits your Products page, does some stuff (filters record, etc.), then leaves the page and comes back later. It would be best if the Products page was in the same state as when they left it right? Well, if you've thrown away your view (UserControl or Page) and moved off to another part of the UI, when you come back to Products you're probably going to re-instantiate your view...which will put it right back in the state it was when it started. Hmm, not good. Well, with a little help from MEF you can store the state in your view model class, MEF will keep that view model instance hanging around in memory, and then you simply rebind your view to the view model class. I made that sound easy, but it's actually a bit of work to properly store and restore the state. At least it can be done though, which will make your users a lot happier! I'll talk more about this in an upcoming blog post. No event handlers? Another nice thing about MVVM is that you can bind your UserControls to the view model, which may eliminate the need for event handlers in your code-behind. So instead of having a Click handler on a Button (or RadMenuItem), for example, you can now bind your control's Command property to a DelegateCommand in your view model (I'll talk more about Commands in an upcoming post). Instead of having a SelectionChanged event handler on your RadGridView you can now bind its SelectedItem property to a property in your view model, and each time the user clicks a row, the view model property's setter will be called. Now through the magic of binding we can eliminate the need for traditional code-behind based event handlers on our user interface controls, and the best thing is that the view model knows about everything that's going on...which means we can test things without a user interface. The brains of the operation So what we're seeing here is that the view is now just a dumb layer that binds to the view model, and that the view model is in control of just about everything, like what happens when a RadGridView row is selected, or when a RadComboBoxItem is selected, or when a RadMenuItem is clicked. It is also responsible for loading data when the page is hit, as well as kicking off data inserts, updates and deletions. Once again, all of this stuff can be tested without the need for a user interface. If the test works, then it'll work regardless of whether the user is hitting the browser-based version of your app, or the Windows Phone 7 version. Nice! The database Before running the code for this app you will need to create the database. First, create a database called MVVMProject in SQL Server, then run MVVMProject.sql in the MVVMProject/Database directory of your downloaded .zip file. This should give you a Task table with 3 records in it. When you fire up the solution you will also need to update the connection string in web.config to point to your database instead of IBM12\SQLSERVER2008. The code One note about this code is that it runs against the latest Silverlight 4 RC and WCF RIA Services code. Please see my first blog post about updating to the RC bits. Beta to RC - Part 1 At the top of this post is a link to a sample project that demonstrates a sample application with a Tasks page that uses the MVVM pattern. This is a simplified version of how I have implemented the Tasks page in the Task-It application. Youll notice that Tasks.xaml has very little code to it. Just a TextBlock that displays the page title and a ContentControl. <StackPanel>     <TextBlock Text="Tasks" Style="{StaticResource PageTitleStyle}"/>     <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource StandardSpacerStyle}"/>     <ContentControl x:Name="ContentControl1"/> </StackPanel> In List.xaml we have a RadGridView. Notice that the ItemsSource is bound to a property in the view model class call Tasks, SelectedItem is bound to a property in the view model called SelectedItem, and IsBusy is bound to a property in the view model called IsLoading. <Grid>     <telerikGridView:RadGridView ItemsSource="{Binding Tasks}" SelectedItem="{Binding SelectedItem, Mode=TwoWay}"                                  IsBusy="{Binding IsLoading}" AutoGenerateColumns="False" IsReadOnly="True" RowIndicatorVisibility="Collapsed"                IsFilteringAllowed="False" ShowGroupPanel="False">         <telerikGridView:RadGridView.Columns>             <telerikGridView:GridViewDataColumn Header="Name" DataMemberBinding="{Binding Name}" Width="3*"/>             <telerikGridView:GridViewDataColumn Header="Due" DataMemberBinding="{Binding DueDate}" DataFormatString="{}{0:d}" Width="*"/>         </telerikGridView:RadGridView.Columns>     </telerikGridView:RadGridView> </Grid> In Details.xaml we have a Save button that is bound to a property called SaveCommand in our view model. We also have a simple form (Im using a couple of controls here from Silverlight.FX for the form layout, FormPanel and Label simply because they make for a clean XAML layout). Notice that the FormPanel is also bound to the SelectedItem in the view model (the same one that the RadGridView is). The two form controls, the TextBox and RadDatePicker) are bound to the SelectedItem's Name and DueDate properties. These are properties of the Task object that WCF RIA Services creates. <StackPanel>     <Button Content="Save" Command="{Binding SaveCommand}" HorizontalAlignment="Left"/>     <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource StandardSpacerStyle}"/>     <fxui:FormPanel DataContext="{Binding SelectedItem}" Style="{StaticResource FormContainerStyle}">         <fxui:Label Text="Name:"/>         <TextBox Text="{Binding Name, Mode=TwoWay}"/>         <fxui:Label Text="Due:"/>         <telerikInput:RadDatePicker SelectedDate="{Binding DueDate, Mode=TwoWay}"/>     </fxui:FormPanel> </StackPanel> In the code-behind of the Tasks control, Tasks.xaml.cs, I created an instance of the view model class (TasksViewModel) in the constructor and set it as the DataContext for the control. The Tasks page will load one of two child UserControls depending on whether you are viewing the list of tasks (List.xaml) or the form for editing a task (Details.xaml). // Set the DataContext to an instance of the view model class var viewModel = new TasksViewModel(); DataContext = viewModel;   // Child user controls (inherit DataContext from this user control) List = new List(); // RadGridView Details = new Details(); // Form When the page first loads, the List is loaded into the ContentControl. // Show the RadGridView first ContentControl1.Content = List; In the code-behind we also listen for a couple of the view models events. The ItemSelected event will be fired when the user clicks on a record in the RadGridView in the List control. The SaveCompleted event will be fired when the user clicks Save in the Details control (the form). Here the view model is in control, and is letting the view know when something needs to change. // Listeners for the view model's events viewModel.ItemSelected += OnItemSelected; viewModel.SaveCompleted += OnSaveCompleted; The event handlers toggle the view between the RadGridView (List) and the form (Details). void OnItemSelected(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) {     // Show the form     ContentControl1.Content = Details; }   void OnSaveCompleted(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) {     // Show the RadGridView     ContentControl1.Content = List; } In TasksViewModel, we instantiate a DataContext object and a SaveCommand in the constructor. DataContext is a WCF RIA Services object that well use to retrieve the list of Tasks and to save any changes to a task. Ill talk more about this and Commands in future post, but for now think of the SaveCommand as an event handler that is called when the Save button in the form is clicked. DataContext = new DataContext(); SaveCommand = new DelegateCommand(OnSave); When the TasksViewModel constructor is called we also make a call to LoadTasks. This sets IsLoading to true (which causes the RadGridViews busy indicator to appear) and retrieves the records via WCF RIA Services.         public LoadOperation<Task> LoadTasks()         {             // Show the loading message             IsLoading = true;             // Get the data via WCF RIA Services. When the call has returned, called OnTasksLoaded.             return DataContext.Load(DataContext.GetTasksQuery(), OnTasksLoaded, false);         } When the data is returned, OnTasksLoaded is called. This sets IsLoading to false (which hides the RadGridViews busy indicator), and fires property changed notifications to the UI to let it know that the IsLoading and Tasks properties have changed. This property changed notification basically tells the UI to rebind. void OnTasksLoaded(LoadOperation<Task> lo) {     // Hide the loading message     IsLoading = false;       // Notify the UI that Tasks and IsLoading properties have changed     this.OnPropertyChanged(p => p.Tasks);     this.OnPropertyChanged(p => p.IsLoading); } Next lets look at the view models SelectedItem property. This is the one thats bound to both the RadGridView and the form. When the user clicks a record in the RadGridView its setter gets called (set a breakpoint and see what I mean). The other code in the setter lets the UI know that the SelectedItem has changed (so the form displays the correct data), and fires the event that notifies the UI that a selection has occurred (which tells the UI to switch from List to Details). public Task SelectedItem {     get { return _selectedItem; }     set     {         _selectedItem = value;           // Let the UI know that the SelectedItem has changed (forces it to re-bind)         this.OnPropertyChanged(p => p.SelectedItem);         // Notify the UI, so it can switch to the Details (form) page         NotifyItemSelected();     } } One last thing, saving the data. When the Save button in the form is clicked it fires the SaveCommand, which calls the OnSave method in the view model (once again, set a breakpoint to see it in action). public void OnSave() {     // Save the changes via WCF RIA Services. When the save is complete, call OnSaveCompleted.     DataContext.SubmitChanges(OnSaveCompleted, null); } In OnSave, we tell WCF RIA Services to submit any changes, which there will be if you changed either the Name or the Due Date in the form. When the save is completed, it calls OnSaveCompleted. This method fires a notification back to the UI that the save is completed, which causes the RadGridView (List) to show again. public virtual void OnSaveCompleted(SubmitOperation so) {     // Clear the item that is selected in the grid (in case we want to select it again)     SelectedItem = null;     // Notify the UI, so it can switch back to the List (RadGridView) page     NotifySaveCompleted(); } 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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• A jQuery Plug-in to monitor Html Element CSS Changes

  - by Rick Strahl

  Here's a scenario I've run into on a few occasions: I need to be able to monitor certain CSS properties on an HTML element and know when that CSS element changes. The need for this arose out of wanting to build generic components that could 'attach' themselves to other objects and monitor changes on the ‘parent’ object so the dependent object can adjust itself accordingly. What I wanted to create is a jQuery plug-in that allows me to specify a list of CSS properties to monitor and have a function fire in response to any change to any of those CSS properties. The result are the .watch() and .unwatch() jQuery plug-ins. Here’s a simple example page of this plug-in that demonstrates tracking changes to an element being moved with draggable and closable behavior: http://www.west-wind.com/WestWindWebToolkit/samples/Ajax/jQueryPluginSamples/WatcherPlugin.htm Try it with different browsers – IE and FireFox use the DOM event handlers and Chrome, Safari and Opera use setInterval handlers to manage this behavior. It should work in all of them but all but IE and FireFox will show a bit of lag between the changes in the main element and the shadow. The relevant HTML for this example is this fragment of a main <div> (#notebox) and an element that is to mimic a shadow (#shadow). <div class="containercontent"> <div id="notebox" style="width: 200px; height: 150px;position: absolute; z-index: 20; padding: 20px; background-color: lightsteelblue;"> Go ahead drag me around and close me! </div> <div id="shadow" style="background-color: Gray; z-index: 19;position:absolute;display: none;"> </div> </div> The watcher plug in is then applied to the main <div> and shadow in sync with the following plug-in code: <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function () { var counter = 0; $("#notebox").watch("top,left,height,width,display,opacity", function (data, i) { var el = $(this); var sh = $("#shadow"); var propChanged = data.props[i]; var valChanged = data.vals[i]; counter++; showStatus("Prop: " + propChanged + " value: " + valChanged + " " + counter); var pos = el.position(); var w = el.outerWidth(); var h = el.outerHeight(); sh.css({ width: w, height: h, left: pos.left + 5, top: pos.top + 5, display: el.css("display"), opacity: el.css("opacity") }); }) .draggable() .closable() .css("left", 10); }); </script> When you run this page as you drag the #notebox element the #shadow element will maintain and stay pinned underneath the #notebox element effectively keeping the shadow attached to the main element. Likewise, if you hide or fadeOut() the #notebox element the shadow will also go away – show the #notebox element and the shadow also re-appears because we are assigning the display property from the parent on the shadow. Note we’re attaching the .watch() plug-in to the #notebox element and have it fire whenever top,left,height,width,opacity or display CSS properties are changed. The passed data element contains a props[] and vals[] array that holds the properties monitored and their current values. An index passed as the second parm tells you which property has changed and what its current value is (propChanged/valChanged in the code above). The rest of the watcher handler code then deals with figuring out the main element’s position and recalculating and setting the shadow’s position using the jQuery .css() function. Note that this is just an example to demonstrate the watch() behavior here – this is not the best way to create a shadow. If you’re interested in a more efficient and cleaner way to handle shadows with a plug-in check out the .shadow() plug-in in ww.jquery.js (code search for fn.shadow) which uses native CSS features when available but falls back to a tracked shadow element on browsers that don’t support it, which is how this watch() plug-in came about in the first place :-) How does it work? The plug-in works by letting the user specify a list of properties to monitor as a comma delimited string and a handler function: el.watch("top,left,height,width,display,opacity", function (data, i) {}, 100, id) You can also specify an interval (if no DOM event monitoring isn’t available in the browser) and an ID that identifies the event handler uniquely. The watch plug-in works by hooking up to DOMAttrModified in FireFox, to onPropertyChanged in Internet Explorer, or by using a timer with setInterval to handle the detection of changes for other browsers. Unfortunately WebKit doesn’t support DOMAttrModified consistently at the moment so Safari and Chrome currently have to use the slower setInterval mechanism. In response to a changed property (or a setInterval timer hit) a JavaScript handler is fired which then runs through all the properties monitored and determines if and which one has changed. The DOM events fire on all property/style changes so the intermediate plug-in handler filters only those hits we’re interested in. If one of our monitored properties has changed the specified event handler function is called along with a data object and an index that identifies the property that’s changed in the data.props/data.vals arrays. The jQuery plugin to implement this functionality looks like this: (function($){ $.fn.watch = function (props, func, interval, id) { /// <summary> /// Allows you to monitor changes in a specific /// CSS property of an element by polling the value. /// when the value changes a function is called. /// The function called is called in the context /// of the selected element (ie. this) /// </summary> /// <param name="prop" type="String">CSS Properties to watch sep. by commas</param> /// <param name="func" type="Function"> /// Function called when the value has changed. /// </param> /// <param name="interval" type="Number"> /// Optional interval for browsers that don't support DOMAttrModified or propertychange events. /// Determines the interval used for setInterval calls. /// </param> /// <param name="id" type="String">A unique ID that identifies this watch instance on this element</param> /// <returns type="jQuery" /> if (!interval) interval = 100; if (!id) id = "_watcher"; return this.each(function () { var _t = this; var el$ = $(this); var fnc = function () { __watcher.call(_t, id) }; var data = { id: id, props: props.split(","), vals: [props.split(",").length], func: func, fnc: fnc, origProps: props, interval: interval, intervalId: null }; // store initial props and values $.each(data.props, function (i) { data.vals[i] = el$.css(data.props[i]); }); el$.data(id, data); hookChange(el$, id, data); }); function hookChange(el$, id, data) { el$.each(function () { var el = $(this); if (typeof (el.get(0).onpropertychange) == "object") el.bind("propertychange." + id, data.fnc); else if ($.browser.mozilla) el.bind("DOMAttrModified." + id, data.fnc); else data.intervalId = setInterval(data.fnc, interval); }); } function __watcher(id) { var el$ = $(this); var w = el$.data(id); if (!w) return; var _t = this; if (!w.func) return; // must unbind or else unwanted recursion may occur el$.unwatch(id); var changed = false; var i = 0; for (i; i < w.props.length; i++) { var newVal = el$.css(w.props[i]); if (w.vals[i] != newVal) { w.vals[i] = newVal; changed = true; break; } } if (changed) w.func.call(_t, w, i); // rebind event hookChange(el$, id, w); } } $.fn.unwatch = function (id) { this.each(function () { var el = $(this); var data = el.data(id); try { if (typeof (this.onpropertychange) == "object") el.unbind("propertychange." + id, data.fnc); else if ($.browser.mozilla) el.unbind("DOMAttrModified." + id, data.fnc); else clearInterval(data.intervalId); } // ignore if element was already unbound catch (e) { } }); return this; } })(jQuery); Note that there’s a corresponding .unwatch() plug-in that can be used to stop monitoring properties. The ID parameter is optional both on watch() and unwatch() – a standard name is used if you don’t specify one, but it’s a good idea to use unique names for each element watched to avoid overlap in event ids especially if you’re monitoring many elements. The syntax is: $.fn.watch = function(props, func, interval, id) props A comma delimited list of CSS style properties that are to be watched for changes. If any of the specified properties changes the function specified in the second parameter is fired. func The function fired in response to a changed styles. Receives this as the element changed and an object parameter that represents the watched properties and their respective values. The first parameter is passed in this structure: { id: watcherId, props: [], vals: [], func: thisFunc, fnc: internalHandler, origProps: strPropertyListOnWatcher }; A second parameter is the index of the changed property so data.props[i] or data.vals[i] gets the property and changed value. interval The interval for setInterval() for those browsers that don't support property watching in the DOM. In milliseconds. id An optional id that identifies this watcher. Required only if multiple watchers might be hooked up to the same element. The default is _watcher if not specified. It’s been a Journey I started building this plug-in about two years ago and had to make many modifications to it in response to changes in jQuery and also in browser behaviors. I think the latest round of changes made should make this plug-in fairly future proof going forward (although I hope there will be better cross-browser change event notifications in the future). One of the big problems I ran into had to do with recursive change notifications – it looks like starting with jQuery 1.44 and later, jQuery internally modifies element properties on some calls to some .css()  property retrievals and things like outerHeight/Width(). In IE this would cause nasty lock up issues at times. In response to this I changed the code to unbind the events when the handler function is called and then rebind when it exits. This also makes user code less prone to stack overflow recursion as you can actually change properties on the base element. It also means though that if you change one of the monitors properties in the handler the watch() handler won’t fire in response – you need to resort to a setTimeout() call instead to force the code to run outside of the handler: $("#notebox") el.watch("top,left,height,width,display,opacity", function (data, i) { var el = $(this); … // this makes el changes work setTimeout(function () { el.css("top", 10) },10); }) Since I’ve built this component I’ve had a lot of good uses for it. The .shadow() fallback functionality is one of them. Resources The watch() plug-in is part of ww.jquery.js and the West Wind West Wind Web Toolkit. You’re free to use this code here or the code from the toolkit. West Wind Web Toolkit Latest version of ww.jquery.js (search for fn.watch) watch plug-in documentation © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in ASP.NET  JavaScript  jQuery  

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• The Incremental Architect&acute;s Napkin - #2 - Balancing the forces

  - by Ralf Westphal

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/theArchitectsNapkin/archive/2014/06/02/the-incremental-architectacutes-napkin---2---balancing-the-forces.aspxCategorizing requirements is the prerequisite for ecconomic architectural decisions. Not all requirements are created equal. However, to truely understand and describe the requirement forces pulling on software development, I think further examination of the requirements aspects is varranted. Aspects of Functionality There are two sides to Functionality requirements. It´s about what a software should do. I call that the Operations it implements. Operations are defined by expressions and control structures or calls to frameworks of some sort, i.e. (business) logic statements. Operations calculate, transform, aggregate, validate, send, receive, load, store etc. Operations are about behavior; they take input and produce output by considering state. I´m not using the term “function” here, because functions - or methods or sub-programs - are not necessary to implement Operations. Functions belong to a different sub-aspect of requirements (see below). Operations alone are not enough, though, to make a customer happy with regard to his/her Functionality requirements. Only correctly implemented Operations provide full value. This should make clear, why testing is so important. And not just manual tests during development of some operational feature, but automated tests. Because only automated tests scale when over time the number of operations increases. Without automated tests there is no guarantee formerly correct operations are still correct after more got added. To retest all previous operations manually is infeasible. So whoever relies just on manual tests is not really balancing the two forces Operations and Correctness. With manual tests more weight is put on the side of the scale of Operations. That might be ok for a short period of time - but in the long run it will bite you. You need to plan for Correctness in the long run from the first day of your project on. Aspects of Quality As important as Functionality is, it´s not the driver for software development. No software has ever been written to just implement some operation in code. We don´t need computers just to do something. All computers can do with software we can do without them. Well, at least given enough time and resources. We could calculate the most complex formulas without computers. We could do auctions with millions of people without computers. The only reason we want computers to help us with this and a million other Operations is… We don´t want to wait for the results very long. Or we want less errors. Or we want easier accessability to complicated solutions. So the main reason for customers to buy/order software is some Quality. They want some Functionality with a higher Quality (e.g. performance, scalability, usability, security…) than without the software. But Qualities come in at least two flavors: Most important are Primary Qualities. That´s the Qualities software truely is written for. Take an online auction website for example. Its Primary Qualities are performance, scalability, and usability, I´d say. Auctions should come within reach of millions of people; setting up an auction should be very easy; finding a suitable auction and bidding on it should be as fast as possible. Only if those Qualities have been implemented does security become relevant. A secure auction website is important - but not as important as a fast auction website. Nobody would want to use the most secure auction website if it was unbearably slow. But there would be people willing to use the fastest auction website even it was lacking security. That´s why security - with regard to online auction software - is not a Primary Quality, but just a Secondary Quality. It´s a supporting quality, so to speak. It does not deliver value by itself. With a password manager software this might be different. There security might be a Primary Quality. Please get me right: I don´t want to denigrate any Quality. There´s a long list of non-functional requirements at Wikipedia. They are all created equal - but that does not mean they are equally important for all software projects. When confronted with Quality requirements check with the customer which are primary and which are secondary. That will help to make good economical decisions when in a crunch. Resources are always limited - but requirements are a bottomless ocean. Aspects of Security of Investment Functionality and Quality are traditionally the requirement aspects cared for most - by customers and developers alike. Even today, when pressure rises in a project, tunnel vision will focus on them. Any measures to create and hold up Security of Investment (SoI) will be out of the window pretty quickly. Resistance to customers and/or management is futile. As long as SoI is not placed on equal footing with Functionality and Quality it´s bound to suffer under pressure. To look closer at what SoI means will help to become more conscious about it and make customers and management aware of the risks of neglecting it. SoI to me has two facets: Production Efficiency (PE) is about speed of delivering value. Customers like short response times. Short response times mean less money spent. So whatever makes software development faster supports this requirement. This must not lead to duct tape programming and banging out features by the dozen, though. Because customers don´t just want Operations and Quality, but also Correctness. So if Correctness gets compromised by focussing too much on Production Efficiency it will fire back. Customers want PE not just today, but over the whole course of a software´s lifecycle. That means, it´s not just about coding speed, but equally about code quality. If code quality leads to rework the PE is on an unsatisfactory level. Also if code production leads to waste it´s unsatisfactory. Because the effort which went into waste could have been used to produce value. Rework and waste cost money. Rework and waste abound, however, as long as PE is not addressed explicitly with management and customers. Thanks to the Agile and Lean movements that´s increasingly the case. Nevertheless more could and should be done in many teams. Each and every developer should keep in mind that Production Efficiency is as important to the customer as Functionality and Quality - whether he/she states it or not. Making software development more efficient is important - but still sooner or later even agile projects are going to hit a glas ceiling. At least as long as they neglect the second SoI facet: Evolvability. Delivering correct high quality functionality in short cycles today is good. But not just any software structure will allow this to happen for an indefinite amount of time.[1] The less explicitly software was designed the sooner it´s going to get stuck. Big ball of mud, monolith, brownfield, legacy code, technical debt… there are many names for software structures that have lost the ability to evolve, to be easily changed to accomodate new requirements. An evolvable code base is the opposite of a brownfield. It´s code which can be easily understood (by developers with sufficient domain expertise) and then easily changed to accomodate new requirements. Ideally the costs of adding feature X to an evolvable code base is independent of when it is requested - or at least the costs should only increase linearly, not exponentially.[2] Clean Code, Agile Architecture, and even traditional Software Engineering are concerned with Evolvability. However, it seems no systematic way of achieving it has been layed out yet. TDD + SOLID help - but still… When I look at the design ability reality in teams I see much room for improvement. As stated previously, SoI - or to be more precise: Evolvability - can hardly be measured. Plus the customer rarely states an explicit expectation with regard to it. That´s why I think, special care must be taken to not neglect it. Postponing it to some large refactorings should not be an option. Rather Evolvability needs to be a core concern for every single developer day. This should not mean Evolvability is more important than any of the other requirement aspects. But neither is it less important. That´s why more effort needs to be invested into it, to bring it on par with the other aspects, which usually are much more in focus. In closing As you see, requirements are of quite different kinds. To not take that into account will make it harder to understand the customer, and to make economic decisions. Those sub-aspects of requirements are forces pulling in different directions. To improve performance might have an impact on Evolvability. To increase Production Efficiency might have an impact on security etc. No requirement aspect should go unchecked when deciding how to allocate resources. Balancing should be explicit. And it should be possible to trace back each decision to a requirement. Why is there a null-check on parameters at the start of the method? Why are there 5000 LOC in this method? Why are there interfaces on those classes? Why is this functionality running on the threadpool? Why is this function defined on that class? Why is this class depending on three other classes? These and a thousand more questions are not to mean anything should be different in a code base. But it´s important to know the reason behind all of these decisions. Because not knowing the reason possibly means waste and having decided suboptimally. And how do we ensure to balance all requirement aspects? That needs practices and transparency. Practices means doing things a certain way and not another, even though that might be possible. We´re dealing with dangerous tools here. Like a knife is a dangerous tool. Harm can be done if we use our tools in just any way at the whim of the moment. Over the centuries rules and practices have been established how to use knifes. You don´t put them in peoples´ legs just because you´re feeling like it. You hand over a knife with the handle towards the receiver. You might not even be allowed to cut round food like potatos or eggs with it. The same should be the case for dangerous tools like object-orientation, remote communication, threads etc. We need practices to use them in a way so requirements are balanced almost automatically. In addition, to be able to work on software as a team we need transparency. We need means to share our thoughts, to work jointly on mental models. So far our tools are focused on working with code. Testing frameworks, build servers, DI containers, intellisense, refactoring support… That´s all nice and well. I don´t want to miss any of that. But I think it´s not enough. We´re missing mental tools, tools for making thinking and talking about software (independently of code) easier. You might think, enough of such tools already exist like all those UML diagram types or Flow Charts. But then, isn´t it strange, hardly any team is using them to design software? Or is that just due to a lack of education? I don´t think so. It´s a matter value/weight ratio: the current mental tools are too heavy weight compared to the value they deliver. So my conclusion is, we need lightweight tools to really be able to balance requirements. Software development is complex. We need guidance not to forget important aspects. That´s like with flying an airplane. Pilots don´t just jump in and take off for their destination. Yes, there are times when they are “flying by the seats of their pants”, when they are just experts doing thing intuitively. But most of the time they are going through honed practices called checklist. See “The Checklist Manifesto” for very enlightening details on this. Maybe then I should say it like this: We need more checklists for the complex businss of software development.[3] But that´s what software development mostly is about: changing software over an unknown period of time. It needs to be corrected in order to finally provide promised operations. It needs to be enhanced to provide ever more operations and qualities. All this without knowing when it´s going to stop. Probably never - until “maintainability” hits a wall when the technical debt is too large, the brownfield too deep. Software development is not a sprint, is not a marathon, not even an ultra marathon. Because to all this there is a foreseeable end. Software development is like continuously and foreever running… ? And sometimes I dare to think that costs could even decrease over time. Think of it: With each feature a software becomes richer in functionality. So with each additional feature the chance of there being already functionality helping its implementation increases. That should lead to less costs of feature X if it´s requested later than sooner. X requested later could stand on the shoulders of previous features. Alas, reality seems to be far from this despite 20+ years of admonishing developers to think in terms of reusability.[1] ? Please don´t get me wrong: I don´t want to bog down the “art” of software development with heavyweight practices and heaps of rules to follow. The framework we need should be lightweight. It should not stand in the way of delivering value to the customer. It´s purpose is even to make that easier by helping us to focus and decreasing waste and rework. ?

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• Using TPL and PLINQ to raise performance of feed aggregator

  - by DigiMortal

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

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• Abstracting functionality

  - by Ralf Westphal

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/theArchitectsNapkin/archive/2014/08/22/abstracting-functionality.aspxWhat is more important than data? Functionality. Yes, I strongly believe we should switch to a functionality over data mindset in programming. Or actually switch back to it. Focus on functionality Functionality once was at the core of software development. Back when algorithms were the first thing you heard about in CS classes. Sure, data structures, too, were important - but always from the point of view of algorithms. (Niklaus Wirth gave one of his books the title “Algorithms + Data Structures” instead of “Data Structures + Algorithms” for a reason.) The reason for the focus on functionality? Firstly, because software was and is about doing stuff. Secondly because sufficient performance was hard to achieve, and only thirdly memory efficiency. But then hardware became more powerful. That gave rise to a new mindset: object orientation. And with it functionality was devalued. Data took over its place as the most important aspect. Now discussions revolved around structures motivated by data relationships. (John Beidler gave his book the title “Data Structures and Algorithms: An Object Oriented Approach” instead of the other way around for a reason.) Sure, this data could be embellished with functionality. But nevertheless functionality was second. When you look at (domain) object models what you mostly find is (domain) data object models. The common object oriented approach is: data aka structure over functionality. This is true even for the most modern modeling approaches like Domain Driven Design. Look at the literature and what you find is recommendations on how to get data structures right: aggregates, entities, value objects. I´m not saying this is what object orientation was invented for. But I´m saying that´s what I happen to see across many teams now some 25 years after object orientation became mainstream through C++, Delphi, and Java. But why should we switch back? Because software development cannot become truly agile with a data focus. The reason for that lies in what customers need first: functionality, behavior, operations. To be clear, that´s not why software is built. The purpose of software is to be more efficient than the alternative. Money mainly is spent to get a certain level of quality (e.g. performance, scalability, security etc.). But without functionality being present, there is nothing to work on the quality of. What customers want is functionality of a certain quality. ASAP. And tomorrow new functionality needs to be added, existing functionality needs to be changed, and quality needs to be increased. No customer ever wanted data or structures. Of course data should be processed. Data is there, data gets generated, transformed, stored. But how the data is structured for this to happen efficiently is of no concern to the customer. Ask a customer (or user) whether she likes the data structured this way or that way. She´ll say, “I don´t care.” But ask a customer (or user) whether he likes the functionality and its quality this way or that way. He´ll say, “I like it” (or “I don´t like it”). Build software incrementally From this very natural focus of customers and users on functionality and its quality follows we should develop software incrementally. That´s what Agility is about. Deliver small increments quickly and often to get frequent feedback. That way less waste is produced, and learning can take place much easier (on the side of the customer as well as on the side of developers). An increment is some added functionality or quality of functionality.[1] So as it turns out, Agility is about functionality over whatever. But software developers’ thinking is still stuck in the object oriented mindset of whatever over functionality. Bummer. I guess that (at least partly) explains why Agility always hits a glass ceiling in projects. It´s a clash of mindsets, of cultures. Driving software development by demanding small increases in functionality runs against thinking about software as growing (data) structures sprinkled with functionality. (Excuse me, if this sounds a bit broad-brush. But you get my point.) The need for abstraction In the end there need to be data structures. Of course. Small and large ones. The phrase functionality over data does not deny that. It´s not functionality instead of data or something. It´s just over, i.e. functionality should be thought of first. It´s a tad more important. It´s what the customer wants. That´s why we need a way to design functionality. Small and large. We need to be able to think about functionality before implementing it. We need to be able to reason about it among team members. We need to be able to communicate our mental models of functionality not just by speaking about them, but also on paper. Otherwise reasoning about it does not scale. We learned thinking about functionality in the small using flow charts, Nassi-Shneiderman diagrams, pseudo code, or UML sequence diagrams. That´s nice and well. But it does not scale. You can use these tools to describe manageable algorithms. But it does not work for the functionality triggered by pressing the “1-Click Order” on an amazon product page for example. There are several reasons for that, I´d say. Firstly, the level of abstraction over code is negligible. It´s essentially non-existent. Drawing a flow chart or writing pseudo code or writing actual code is very, very much alike. All these tools are about control flow like code is.[2] In addition all tools are computationally complete. They are about logic which is expressions and especially control statements. Whatever you code in Java you can fully (!) describe using a flow chart. And then there is no data. They are about control flow and leave out the data altogether. Thus data mostly is assumed to be global. That´s shooting yourself in the foot, as I hope you agree. Even if it´s functionality over data that does not mean “don´t think about data”. Right to the contrary! Functionality only makes sense with regard to data. So data needs to be in the picture right from the start - but it must not dominate the thinking. The above tools fail on this. Bottom line: So far we´re unable to reason in a scalable and abstract manner about functionality. That´s why programmers are so driven to start coding once they are presented with a problem. Programming languages are the only tool they´ve learned to use to reason about functional solutions. Or, well, there might be exceptions. Mathematical notation and SQL may have come to your mind already. Indeed they are tools on a higher level of abstraction than flow charts etc. That´s because they are declarative and not computationally complete. They leave out details - in order to deliver higher efficiency in devising overall solutions. We can easily reason about functionality using mathematics and SQL. That´s great. Except for that they are domain specific languages. They are not general purpose. (And they don´t scale either, I´d say.) Bummer. So to be more precise we need a scalable general purpose tool on a higher than code level of abstraction not neglecting data. Enter: Flow Design. Abstracting functionality using data flows I believe the solution to the problem of abstracting functionality lies in switching from control flow to data flow. Data flow very naturally is not about logic details anymore. There are no expressions and no control statements anymore. There are not even statements anymore. Data flow is declarative by nature. With data flow we get rid of all the limiting traits of former approaches to modeling functionality. In addition, nomen est omen, data flows include data in the functionality picture. With data flows, data is visibly flowing from processing step to processing step. Control is not flowing. Control is wherever it´s needed to process data coming in. That´s a crucial difference and needs some rewiring in your head to be fully appreciated.[2] Since data flows are declarative they are not the right tool to describe algorithms, though, I´d say. With them you don´t design functionality on a low level. During design data flow processing steps are black boxes. They get fleshed out during coding. Data flow design thus is more coarse grained than flow chart design. It starts on a higher level of abstraction - but then is not limited. By nesting data flows indefinitely you can design functionality of any size, without losing sight of your data. Data flows scale very well during design. They can be used on any level of granularity. And they can easily be depicted. Communicating designs using data flows is easy and scales well, too. The result of functional design using data flows is not algorithms (too low level), but processes. Think of data flows as descriptions of industrial production lines. Data as material runs through a number of processing steps to be analyzed, enhances, transformed. On the top level of a data flow design might be just one processing step, e.g. “execute 1-click order”. But below that are arbitrary levels of flows with smaller and smaller steps. That´s not layering as in “layered architecture”, though. Rather it´s a stratified design à la Abelson/Sussman. Refining data flows is not your grandpa´s functional decomposition. That was rooted in control flows. Refining data flows does not suffer from the limits of functional decomposition against which object orientation was supposed to be an antidote. Summary I´ve been working exclusively with data flows for functional design for the past 4 years. It has changed my life as a programmer. What once was difficult is now easy. And, no, I´m not using Clojure or F#. And I´m not a async/parallel execution buff. Designing the functionality of increments using data flows works great with teams. It produces design documentation which can easily be translated into code - in which then the smallest data flow processing steps have to be fleshed out - which is comparatively easy. Using a systematic translation approach code can mirror the data flow design. That way later on the design can easily be reproduced from the code if need be. And finally, data flow designs play well with object orientation. They are a great starting point for class design. But that´s a story for another day. To me data flow design simply is one of the missing links of systematic lightweight software design. There are also other artifacts software development can produce to get feedback, e.g. process descriptions, test cases. But customers can be delighted more easily with code based increments in functionality. ? No, I´m not talking about the endless possibilities this opens for parallel processing. Data flows are useful independently of multi-core processors and Actor-based designs. That´s my whole point here. Data flows are good for reasoning and evolvability. So forget about any special frameworks you might need to reap benefits from data flows. None are necessary. Translating data flow designs even into plain of Java is possible. ?

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• XNA 3D model collision is inaccurate

  - by Daniel Lopez

  I am creating a classic game in 3d that deals with asteriods and you have to shoot them and avoid being hit from them. I can generate the asteroids just fine and the ship can shoot bullets just fine. But the asteroids always hit the ship even it doesn't look they are even close. I know 2D collision very well but not 3D so can someone please shed some light to my problem. Thanks in advance. Code For ModelRenderer: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.GamerServices; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Media; namespace _3D_Asteroids { class ModelRenderer { private float aspectratio; private Model model; private Vector3 camerapos; private Vector3 modelpos; private Matrix rotationy; float radiansy = 0; private bool isalive; public ModelRenderer(Model m, float AspectRatio, Vector3 initial_pos, Vector3 initialcamerapos) { isalive = true; model = m; if (model.Meshes.Count == 0) { throw new Exception("Invalid model because it contains zero meshes!"); } modelpos = initial_pos; camerapos = initialcamerapos; aspectratio = AspectRatio; return; } public float RadiusOfSphere { get { return model.Meshes[0].BoundingSphere.Radius; } } public BoundingBox BoxBounds { get { return BoundingBox.CreateFromSphere(model.Meshes[0].BoundingSphere); } } public BoundingSphere SphereBounds { get { return model.Meshes[0].BoundingSphere; } } public Vector3 CameraPosition { set { camerapos = value; } get { return camerapos; } } public bool IsAlive { get { return isalive; } } public Vector3 ModelPosition { set { modelpos = value; } get { return modelpos; } } public void RotateY(float radians) { radiansy += radians; rotationy = Matrix.CreateRotationY(radiansy); } public Matrix RotationY { set { rotationy = value; } get { return rotationy; } } public float AspectRatio { set { aspectratio = value; } get { return aspectratio; } } public void Kill() { isalive = false; } public void Draw(float scale) { Matrix world; if (rotationy == new Matrix(0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)) { world = Matrix.CreateScale(scale) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(modelpos); } else { world = rotationy * Matrix.CreateScale(scale) * Matrix.CreateTranslation(modelpos); } Matrix view = Matrix.CreateLookAt(camerapos, Vector3.Zero, Vector3.Up); Matrix projection = Matrix.CreatePerspectiveFieldOfView(MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f), this.AspectRatio, 1f, 100000f); foreach (ModelMesh mesh in model.Meshes) { foreach (BasicEffect effect in mesh.Effects) { effect.World = world; effect.View = view; effect.Projection = projection; } mesh.Draw(); } } public void Draw() { Matrix world; if (rotationy == new Matrix(0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)) { world = Matrix.CreateTranslation(modelpos); } else { world = rotationy * Matrix.CreateTranslation(modelpos); } Matrix view = Matrix.CreateLookAt(camerapos, Vector3.Zero, Vector3.Up); Matrix projection = Matrix.CreatePerspectiveFieldOfView(MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f), this.AspectRatio, 1f, 100000f); foreach (ModelMesh mesh in model.Meshes) { foreach (BasicEffect effect in mesh.Effects) { effect.World = world; effect.View = view; effect.Projection = projection; } mesh.Draw(); } } } Code For Game1: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Audio; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Content; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.GamerServices; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Graphics; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Input; using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Media; namespace _3D_Asteroids { /// <summary> /// This is the main type for your game /// </summary> public class Game1 : Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game { GraphicsDeviceManager graphics; int score = 0, lives = 5; SpriteBatch spriteBatch; GameState gstate = GameState.OnMenuScreen; Menu menu = new Menu(Color.Yellow, Color.White); SpriteFont font; Texture2D background; ModelRenderer ship; Model b, a; List<ModelRenderer> bullets = new List<ModelRenderer>(); List<ModelRenderer> asteriods = new List<ModelRenderer>(); float time = 0.0f; int framecount = 0; SoundEffect effect; public Game1() { graphics = new GraphicsDeviceManager(this); graphics.PreferredBackBufferWidth = 1280; graphics.PreferredBackBufferHeight = 796; graphics.ApplyChanges(); Content.RootDirectory = "Content"; } /// <summary> /// Allows the game to perform any initialization it needs to before starting to run. /// This is where it can query for any required services and load any non-graphic /// related content. Calling base.Initialize will enumerate through any components /// and initialize them as well. /// </summary> protected override void Initialize() { // TODO: Add your initialization logic here base.Initialize(); } /// <summary> /// LoadContent will be called once per game and is the place to load /// all of your content. /// </summary> protected override void LoadContent() { // Create a new SpriteBatch, which can be used to draw textures. spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice); font = Content.Load<SpriteFont>("Fonts\\Lucida Console"); background = Content.Load<Texture2D>("Textures\\B1_stars"); Model p1 = Content.Load<Model>("Models\\p1_wedge"); b = Content.Load<Model>("Models\\pea_proj"); a = Content.Load<Model>("Models\\asteroid1"); effect = Content.Load<SoundEffect>("Audio\\tx0_fire1"); ship = new ModelRenderer(p1, GraphicsDevice.Viewport.AspectRatio, new Vector3(0, 0, 0), new Vector3(0, 0, 9000)); } /// <summary> /// UnloadContent will be called once per game and is the place to unload /// all content. /// </summary> protected override void UnloadContent() { } /// <summary> /// Allows the game to run logic such as updating the world, /// checking for collisions, gathering input, and playing audio. /// </summary> /// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param> protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) { KeyboardState state = Keyboard.GetState(PlayerIndex.One); switch (gstate) { case GameState.OnMenuScreen: { if (state.IsKeyDown(Keys.Enter)) { switch (menu.SelectedChoice) { case MenuChoices.Play: { gstate = GameState.GameStarted; break; } case MenuChoices.Exit: { this.Exit(); break; } } } if (state.IsKeyDown(Keys.Down)) { menu.MoveSelectedMenuChoiceDown(gameTime); } else if(state.IsKeyDown(Keys.Up)) { menu.MoveSelectedMenuChoiceUp(gameTime); } else { menu.KeysReleased(); } break; } case GameState.GameStarted: { foreach (ModelRenderer bullet in bullets) { if (bullet.ModelPosition.X < (ship.ModelPosition.X + 4000) && bullet.ModelPosition.Z < (ship.ModelPosition.X + 4000) && bullet.ModelPosition.X > (ship.ModelPosition.Z - 4000) && bullet.ModelPosition.Z > (ship.ModelPosition.Z - 4000)) { bullet.ModelPosition += (bullet.RotationY.Forward * 120); } else if (collidedwithasteriod(bullet)) { bullet.Kill(); } else { bullet.Kill(); } } foreach (ModelRenderer asteroid in asteriods) { if (ship.SphereBounds.Intersects(asteroid.BoxBounds)) { lives -= 1; asteroid.Kill(); // This always hits no matter where the ship goes. } else { asteroid.ModelPosition -= (asteroid.RotationY.Forward * 50); } } for (int index = 0; index < asteriods.Count; index++) { if (asteriods[index].IsAlive == false) { asteriods.RemoveAt(index); } } for (int index = 0; index < bullets.Count; index++) { if (bullets[index].IsAlive == false) { bullets.RemoveAt(index); } } if (state.IsKeyDown(Keys.Left)) { ship.RotateY(0.1f); if (state.IsKeyDown(Keys.Space)) { if (time < 17) { firebullet(); //effect.Play(); } } else { time = 0; } } else if (state.IsKeyDown(Keys.Right)) { ship.RotateY(-0.1f); if (state.IsKeyDown(Keys.Space)) { if (time < 17) { firebullet(); //effect.Play(); } } else { time = 0; } } else if (state.IsKeyDown(Keys.Up)) { ship.ModelPosition += (ship.RotationY.Forward * 50); if (state.IsKeyDown(Keys.Space)) { if (time < 17) { firebullet(); //effect.Play(); } } else { time = 0; } } else if (state.IsKeyDown(Keys.Space)) { time += gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.Milliseconds; if (time < 17) { firebullet(); //effect.Play(); } } else { time = 0.0f; } if ((framecount % 60) == 0) { createasteroid(); framecount = 0; } framecount++; break; } } base.Update(gameTime); } void firebullet() { if (bullets.Count < 3) { ModelRenderer bullet = new ModelRenderer(b, GraphicsDevice.Viewport.AspectRatio, ship.ModelPosition, new Vector3(0, 0, 9000)); bullet.RotationY = ship.RotationY; bullets.Add(bullet); } } void createasteroid() { if (asteriods.Count < 2) { Random random = new Random(); float z = random.Next(-13000, -11000); float x = random.Next(-9000, -8000); Random random2 = new Random(); int degrees = random.Next(0, 45); float radians = MathHelper.ToRadians(degrees); ModelRenderer asteroid = new ModelRenderer(a, GraphicsDevice.Viewport.AspectRatio, new Vector3(x, 0, z), new Vector3(0,0, 9000)); asteroid.RotateY(radians); asteriods.Add(asteroid); } } /// <summary> /// This is called when the game should draw itself. /// </summary> /// <param name="gameTime">Provides a snapshot of timing values.</param> protected override void Draw(GameTime gameTime) { GraphicsDevice.Clear(Color.CornflowerBlue); switch (gstate) { case GameState.OnMenuScreen: { spriteBatch.Begin(); spriteBatch.Draw(background, Vector2.Zero, Color.White); menu.DrawMenu(ref spriteBatch, font, new Vector2(GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Width / 2, GraphicsDevice.Viewport.Height / 2) - new Vector2(50f), 100f); spriteBatch.End(); break; } case GameState.GameStarted: { spriteBatch.Begin(); spriteBatch.Draw(background, Vector2.Zero, Color.White); spriteBatch.DrawString(font, "Score: " + score.ToString() + "\nLives: " + lives.ToString(), Vector2.Zero, Color.White); spriteBatch.End(); ship.Draw(); foreach (ModelRenderer bullet in bullets) { bullet.Draw(); } foreach (ModelRenderer asteroid in asteriods) { asteroid.Draw(0.1f); } break; } } base.Draw(gameTime); } bool collidedwithasteriod(ModelRenderer bullet) { foreach (ModelRenderer asteroid in asteriods) { if (bullet.SphereBounds.Intersects(asteroid.BoxBounds)) { score += 10; asteroid.Kill(); return true; } } return false; } } } }

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• Project Management Helps AmeriCares Deliver International Aid

  - by Sylvie MacKenzie, PMP

  Excerpt from PROFIT - ORACLE - by Alison Weiss Handle with Care Sound project management helps AmeriCares bring international aid to those in need. The stakes are always high for AmeriCares. On a mission to restore health and save lives during times of disaster, the nonprofit international relief and humanitarian aid organization delivers donated medicines, medical supplies, and humanitarian aid to people in the U.S. and around the globe. Founded in 1982 with the express mission of responding as quickly and efficiently as possible to help people in need, the Stamford, Connecticut-based AmeriCares has delivered more than US$10.5 billion in aid to 147 countries over the past three decades. Launch the Slideshow “It’s critically important to us that we steward all the donations and that the medical supplies and medicines get to people as quickly as possible with no loss,” says Kate Sears, senior vice president for finance and technology at AmeriCares. “Whether we’re shipping IV solutions to victims of cholera in Haiti or antibiotics to Somali famine victims, we need to get the medicines there sooner because it means more people will be helped and lives improved or even saved.” Ten years ago, the tracking systems used by AmeriCares associates were paper-based. In recent years, staff started using spreadsheets, but the tracking processes were not standardized between teams. “Every team was tracking completely different information,” says Megan McDermott, senior associate, Sub-Saharan Africa partnerships, at AmeriCares. “It was just a few key things. For example, we tracked the date a shipment was supposed to arrive and the date we got reports from our partner that a hospital received aid on their end.” While the data was accurate, much detail was being lost in the process. AmeriCares management knew it could do a better job of tracking this enterprise data and in 2011 took a significant step by implementing Oracle’s Primavera P6 Professional Project Management. “It’s a comprehensive solution that has helped us improve the monitoring and controlling processes. It has allowed us to do our distribution better,” says Sears. In addition, the implementation effort has been a change agent, helping AmeriCares leadership rethink project management across the entire organization. Initially, much of the focus was on standardizing processes, but staff members also learned the importance of thinking proactively to prevent possible problems and evaluating results to determine if goals and objectives are truly being met. Such data about process efficiency and overall results is critical not only to AmeriCares staff but also to the donors supporting the organization’s life-saving missions. Efficiency Saves Lives One of AmeriCares’ core operations is to gather product donations from the private sector, establish where the most-urgent needs are, and solicit monetary support to send the aid via ocean cargo or airlift to welfare- and health-oriented nongovernmental organizations, hospitals, health networks, and government ministries based in areas in need. In 2011 alone, AmeriCares sent more than 3,500 shipments to 95 countries in response to both ongoing humanitarian needs and more than two dozen emergencies, including deadly tornadoes and storms in the U.S. and the devastating tsunami in Japan. When it comes to nonprofits in general, donors want to know that the charitable organizations they support are using funds wisely. Typically, nonprofits are evaluated by donors in terms of efficiency, an area where AmeriCares has an excellent reputation: 98 percent of expenses go directly to supporting programs and less than 2 percent represent administrative and fundraising costs. Donors, however, should look at more than simple efficiency, says Peter York, senior partner and chief research and learning officer at TCC Group, a nonprofit consultancy headquartered in New York, New York. They should also look at whether organizations have the systems in place to sustain their missions and continue to thrive. An expert on nonprofit organizational management, York has spent years studying sustainable charitable organizations. He defines them as nonprofits that are able to achieve the ongoing financial support to stay relevant and continue doing core mission work. In his analysis of well over 2,500 larger nonprofits, York has found that many are not sustaining, and are actually scaling back in size. “One of the biggest challenges of nonprofit sustainability is the general public’s perception that every dollar donated has to go only to the delivery of service,” says York. “What our data shows is that there are some fundamental capacities that have to be there in order for organizations to sustain and grow.” York’s research highlights the importance of data-driven leadership at successful nonprofits. “You’ve got to have the tools, the systems, and the technologies to get objective information on what you do, the people you serve, and the results you’re achieving,” says York. “If leaders don’t have the knowledge and the data, they can’t make the strategic decisions about programs to take organizations to the next level.” Historically, AmeriCares associates have used time-tested and cost-effective strategies to ship and then track supplies from donation to delivery to their destinations in designated time frames. When disaster strikes, AmeriCares ships by air and generally pulls out all the stops to deliver the most urgently needed aid within the first few days and weeks. Then, as situations stabilize, AmeriCares turns to delivering sea containers for the postemergency and ongoing aid so often needed over the long term. According to McDermott, getting a shipment out the door is fairly complicated, requiring as many as five different AmeriCares teams collaborating together. The entire process can take months—from when products are received in the warehouse and deciding which recipients to allocate supplies to, to getting customs and governmental approvals in place, actually shipping products, and finally ensuring that the products are received in-country. Delivering that aid is no small affair. “Our volume exceeds half a billion dollars a year worth of donated medicines and medical supplies, so it’s a sizable logistical operation to bring these products in and get them out to the right place quickly to have the most impact,” says Sears. “We really pride ourselves on our controls and efficiencies.” Adding to that complexity is the fact that the longer it takes to deliver aid, the more dire the human need can be. Any time AmeriCares associates can shave off the complicated aid delivery process can translate into lives saved. “It’s really being able to track information consistently that will help us to see where are the bottlenecks and where can we work on improving our processes,” says McDermott. Setting a Standard Productivity and information management improvements were key objectives for AmeriCares when staff began the process of implementing Oracle’s Primavera solution. But before configuring the software, the staff needed to take the time to analyze the systems already in place. According to Greg Loop, manager of database systems at AmeriCares, the organization received guidance from several consultants, including Rich D’Addario, consulting project manager in the Primavera Global Business Unit at Oracle, who was instrumental in shepherding the critical requirements-gathering phase. D’Addario encouraged staff to begin documenting shipping processes by considering the order in which activities occur and which ones are dependent on others to get accomplished. This exercise helped everyone realize that to be more efficient, they needed to keep track of shipments in a more standard way. “The staff didn’t recognize formal project management methodology,” says D’Addario. “But they did understand what the most important things are and that if they go wrong, an entire project can go off course.” Before, if a boatload of supplies was being sent to Haiti and there was a problem somewhere, a lot of time was taken up finding out where the problem was—because staff was not tracking things in a standard way. As a result, even more time was needed to find possible solutions to the problem and alert recipients that the aid might be delayed. “For everyone to put on the project manager hat and standardize the way every single thing is done means that now the whole organization is on the same page as to what needs to occur from the time a hurricane hits Haiti and when a boat pulls in to unload supplies,” says D’Addario. With so much care taken to put a process foundation firmly in place, configuring the Primavera solution was actually quite simple. Specific templates were set up for different types of shipments, and dashboards were implemented to provide executives with clear overviews of every project in the system. AmeriCares’ Loop reports that system planning, refining, and testing, followed by writing up documentation and training, took approximately four months. The system went live in spring 2011 at AmeriCares’ Connecticut headquarters. While the nonprofit has an international presence, with warehouses in Europe and offices in Haiti, India, Japan, and Sri Lanka, most donated medicines come from U.S. entities and are shipped from the U.S. out to the rest of the world. In addition, all shipments are tracked from the U.S. office. AmeriCares doesn’t expect the Primavera system to take months off the shipping time, especially for sea containers. However, any time saved is still important because it will allow aid to be delivered to people more quickly at a lower overall cost. “If we can trim a day or two here or there, that can translate into lives that we’re saving, especially in emergency situations,” says Sears. A Cultural Change Beyond the measurable benefits that come with IT-driven process improvement, AmeriCares management is seeing a change in culture as a result of the Primavera project. One change has been treating every shipment of aid as a project, and everyone involved with facilitating shipments as a project manager. “This is a revolutionary concept for us,” says McDermott. “Before, we were used to thinking we were doing logistics—getting a container from point A to point B without looking at it as one project and really understanding what it meant to manage it.” AmeriCares staff is also happy to report that collaboration within the organization is much more efficient. When someone creates a shipment in the Primavera system, the same shared template is used, which means anyone can log in to the system to see the status of a shipment. Knowledgeable staff can access a shipment project to help troubleshoot a problem. Management can easily check the status of projects across the organization. “Dashboards are really useful,” says McDermott. “Instead of going into the details of each project, you can just see the high-level real-time information at a glance.” The new system is helping team members focus on proactively managing shipments rather than simply reacting when problems occur. For example, when a container is shipped, documents must be included for customs clearance. Now, the shipping template has built-in reminders to prompt team members to ask for copies of these documents from freight forwarders and to follow up with partners to discover if a shipment is on time. In the past, staff may not have worked on securing these documents until they’d been notified a shipment had arrived in-country. Another benefit of capturing and adopting best practices within the Primavera system is that staff training is easier. “Capturing the processes in documented steps and milestones allows us to teach new staff members how to do their jobs faster,” says Sears. “It provides them with the knowledge of their predecessors so they don’t have to keep reinventing the wheel.” With the Primavera system already generating positive results, management is eager to take advantage of advanced capabilities. Loop is working on integrating the company’s proprietary inventory management system with the Primavera system so that when logistics or warehousing operators input data, the information will automatically go into the Primavera system. In the past, this information had to be manually keyed into spreadsheets, often leading to errors. Mining Historical Data Another feature on the horizon for AmeriCares is utilizing Primavera P6 Professional Project Management reporting capabilities. As the system begins to include more historical data, management soon will be able to draw on this information to conduct analysis that has not been possible before and create customized reports. For example, at the beginning of the shipment process, staff will be able to use historical data to more accurately estimate how long the approval process should take for a particular country. This could help ensure that food and medicine with limited shelf lives do not get stuck in customs or used beyond their expiration dates. The historical data in the Primavera system will also help AmeriCares with better planning year to year. The nonprofit’s staff has always put together a plan at the beginning of the year, but this has been very challenging simply because it is impossible to predict disasters. Now, management will be able to look at historical data and see trends and statistics as they set current objectives and prepare for future need. In addition, this historical data will provide AmeriCares management with the ability to review year-end data and compare actual project results with goals set at the beginning of the year—to see if desired outcomes were achieved and if there are areas that need improvement. It’s this type of information that is so valuable to donors. And, according to York, project management software can play a critical role in generating the data to help nonprofits sustain and grow. “It is important to invest in systems to help replicate, expand, and deliver services,” says York. “Project management software can help because it encourages nonprofits to examine program or service changes and how to manage moving forward.” Sears believes that AmeriCares donors will support the return on investment the organization will achieve with the Primavera solution. “It won’t be financial returns, but rather how many more people we can help for a given dollar or how much more quickly we can respond to a need,” says Sears. “I think donors are receptive to such arguments.” And for AmeriCares, it is all about the future and increasing results. The project management environment currently may be quite simple, but IT staff plans to expand the complexity and functionality as the organization grows in its knowledge of project management and the goals it wants to achieve. “As we use the system over time, we’ll continue to refine our best practices and accumulate more data,” says Sears. “It will advance our ability to make better data-driven decisions.”

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• How to shoot yourself in the foot (DO NOT Read in the office)

  - by TATWORTH

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TATWORTH/archive/2013/06/21/how-to-shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-do-not-read.aspxLet me make it absolutely clear - the following is:merely collated by your Geek from http://www.codeproject.com/Lounge.aspx?msg=3917012#xx3917012xxvery, very very funny so you read it in the presence of others at your own riskso here is the list - you have been warned!C You shoot yourself in the foot.   C++ You accidently create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot them all in the foot. Providing emergency medical assistance is impossible since you can't tell which are bitwise copies and which are just pointing at others and saying "That's me, over there."   FORTRAN You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out of toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of bullets, you continue anyway because you have no exception-handling facility.   Modula-2 After realizing that you can't actually accomplish anything in this language, you shoot yourself in the head.   COBOL USEing a COLT 45 HANDGUN, AIM gun at LEG.FOOT, THEN place ARM.HAND.FINGER on HANDGUN.TRIGGER and SQUEEZE. THEN return HANDGUN to HOLSTER. CHECK whether shoelace needs to be retied.   Lisp You shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds...   BASIC Shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol. On big systems, continue until entire lower body is waterlogged.   Forth Foot yourself in the shoot.   APL You shoot yourself in the foot; then spend all day figuring out how to do it in fewer characters.   Pascal The compiler won't let you shoot yourself in the foot.   Snobol If you succeed, shoot yourself in the left foot. If you fail, shoot yourself in the right foot.   HyperTalk Put the first bullet of the gun into foot left of leg of you. Answer the result.   Prolog You tell your program you want to be shot in the foot. The program figures out how to do it, but the syntax doesn't allow it to explain.   370 JCL You send your foot down to MIS with a 4000-page document explaining how you want it to be shot. Three years later, your foot comes back deep-fried.   FORTRAN-77 You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out of toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of bullets, you continue anyway because you still can't do exception-processing.   Modula-2 (alternative) You perform a shooting on what might be currently a foot with what might be currently a bullet shot by what might currently be a gun.   BASIC (compiled) You shoot yourself in the foot with a BB using a SCUD missile launcher.   Visual Basic You'll really only appear to have shot yourself in the foot, but you'll have so much fun doing it that you won't care.   Forth (alternative) BULLET DUP3 * GUN LOAD FOOT AIM TRIGGER PULL BANG! EMIT DEAD IF DROP ROT THEN (This takes about five bytes of memory, executes in two to ten clock cycles on any processor and can be used to replace any existing function of the language as well as in any future words). (Welcome to bottom up programming - where you, too, can perform compiler pre-processing instead of writing code)   APL (alternative) You hear a gunshot and there's a hole in your foot, but you don't remember enough linear algebra to understand what happened. or @#&^$%&%^ foot   Pascal (alternative) Same as Modula-2 except that the bullet is not the right type for the gun and your hand is blown off.   Snobol (alternative) You grab your foot with your hand, then rewrite your hand to be a bullet. The act of shooting the original foot then changes your hand/bullet into yet another foot (a left foot).   Prolog (alternative) You attempt to shoot yourself in the foot, but the bullet, failing to find its mark, backtracks to the gun, which then explodes in your face.   COMAL You attempt to shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol, but the bore is clogged, and the pressure build-up blows apart both the pistol and your hand. or draw_pistol aim_at_foot(left) pull_trigger hop(swearing)   Scheme As Lisp, but none of the other appendages are aware of this happening.   Algol You shoot yourself in the foot with a musket. The musket is aesthetically fascinating and the wound baffles the adolescent medic in the emergency room.   Ada If you are dumb enough to actually use this language, the United States Department of Defense will kidnap you, stand you up in front of a firing squad and tell the soldiers, "Shoot at the feet." or The Department of Defense shoots you in the foot after offering you a blindfold and a last cigarette. or After correctly packaging your foot, you attempt to concurrently load the gun, pull the trigger, scream and shoot yourself in the foot. When you try, however, you discover that your foot is of the wrong type. or After correctly packing your foot, you attempt to concurrently load the gun, pull the trigger, scream, and confidently aim at your foot knowing it is safe. However the cordite in the round does an Unchecked Conversion, fires and shoots you in the foot anyway.   Eiffel   You create a GUN object, two FOOT objects and a BULLET object. The GUN passes both the FOOT objects a reference to the BULLET. The FOOT objects increment their hole counts and forget about the BULLET. A little demon then drives a garbage truck over your feet and grabs the bullet (both of it) on the way. Smalltalk You spend so much time playing with the graphics and windowing system that your boss shoots you in the foot, takes away your workstation and makes you develop in COBOL on a character terminal. or You send the message shoot to gun, with selectors bullet and myFoot. A window pops up saying Gunpowder doesNotUnderstand: spark. After several fruitless hours spent browsing the methods for Trigger, FiringPin and IdealGas, you take the easy way out and create ShotFoot, a subclass of Foot with an additional instance variable bulletHole. Object Oriented Pascal You perform a shooting on what might currently be a foot with what might currently be a bullet fired from what might currently be a gun.   PL/I You consume all available system resources, including all the offline bullets. The Data Processing & Payroll Department doubles its size, triples its budget, acquires four new mainframes and drops the original one on your foot. Postscript foot bullets 6 locate loadgun aim gun shoot showpage or It takes the bullet ten minutes to travel from the gun to your foot, by which time you're long since gone out to lunch. The text comes out great, though.   PERL You stab yourself in the foot repeatedly with an incredibly large and very heavy Swiss Army knife. or You pick up the gun and begin to load it. The gun and your foot begin to grow to huge proportions and the world around you slows down, until the gun fires. It makes a tiny hole, which you don't feel. Assembly Language You crash the OS and overwrite the root disk. The system administrator arrives and shoots you in the foot. After a moment of contemplation, the administrator shoots himself in the foot and then hops around the room rabidly shooting at everyone in sight. or You try to shoot yourself in the foot only to discover you must first reinvent the gun, the bullet, and your foot.or The bullet travels to your foot instantly, but it took you three weeks to load the round and aim the gun.   BCPL You shoot yourself somewhere in the leg -- you can't get any finer resolution than that. Concurrent Euclid You shoot yourself in somebody else's foot.   Motif You spend days writing a UIL description of your foot, the trajectory, the bullet and the intricate scrollwork on the ivory handles of the gun. When you finally get around to pulling the trigger, the gun jams.   Powerbuilder While attempting to load the gun you discover that the LoadGun system function is buggy; as a work around you tape the bullet to the outside of the gun and unsuccessfully attempt to fire it with a nail. In frustration you club your foot with the butt of the gun and explain to your client that this approximates the functionality of shooting yourself in the foot and that the next version of Powerbuilder will fix it.   Standard ML By the time you get your code to typecheck, you're using a shoot to foot yourself in the gun.   MUMPS You shoot 583149 AK-47 teflon-tipped, hollow-point, armour-piercing bullets into even-numbered toes on odd-numbered feet of everyone in the building -- with one line of code. Three weeks later you shoot yourself in the head rather than try to modify that line.   Java You locate the Gun class, but discover that the Bullet class is abstract, so you extend it and write the missing part of the implementation. Then you implement the ShootAble interface for your foot, and recompile the Foot class. The interface lets the bullet call the doDamage method on the Foot, so the Foot can damage itself in the most effective way. Now you run the program, and call the doShoot method on the instance of the Gun class. First the Gun creates an instance of Bullet, which calls the doFire method on the Gun. The Gun calls the hit(Bullet) method on the Foot, and the instance of Bullet is passed to the Foot. But this causes an IllegalHitByBullet exception to be thrown, and you die.   Unix You shoot yourself in the foot or % ls foot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o % rm * .o rm: .o: No such file or directory % ls %   370 JCL (alternative) You shoot yourself in the head just thinking about it.   DOS JCL You first find the building you're in in the phone book, then find your office number in the corporate phone book. Then you have to write this down, then describe, in cubits, your exact location, in relation to the door (right hand side thereof). Then you need to write down the location of the gun (loading it is a proprietary utility), then you load it, and the COBOL program, and run them, and, with luck, it may be run tonight.   VMS   $ MOUNT/DENSITY=.45/LABEL=BULLET/MESSAGE="BYE" BULLET::BULLET$GUN SYS$BULLET $ SET GUN/LOAD/SAFETY=OFF/SIGHT=NONE/HAND=LEFT/CHAMBER=1/ACTION=AUTOMATIC/ LOG/ALL/FULL SYS$GUN_3$DUA3:[000000]GUN.GNU $ SHOOT/LOG/AUTO SYS$GUN SYS$SYSTEM:[FOOT]FOOT.FOOT   %DCL-W-ACTIMAGE, error activating image GUN -CLI-E-IMGNAME, image file $3$DUA240:[GUN]GUN.EXE;1 -IMGACT-F-NOTNATIVE, image is not an OpenVMS Alpha AXP image or %SYS-F-FTSHT, foot shot (fifty lines of traceback omitted) sh,csh, etc You can't remember the syntax for anything, so you spend five hours reading manual pages, then your foot falls asleep. You shoot the computer and switch to C.   Apple System 7 Double click the gun icon and a window giving a selection for guns, target areas, plus balloon help with medical remedies, and assorted sound effects. Click "shoot" button and a small bomb appears with note "Error of Type 1 has occurred."   Windows 3.1 Double click the gun icon and wait. Eventually a window opens giving a selection for guns, target areas, plus balloon help with medical remedies, and assorted sound effects. Click "shoot" button and a small box appears with note "Unable to open Shoot.dll, check that path is correct."   Windows 95 Your gun is not compatible with this OS and you must buy an upgrade and install it before you can continue. Then you will be informed that you don't have enough memory.   CP/M I remember when shooting yourself in the foot with a BB gun was a big deal.   DOS You finally found the gun, but can't locate the file with the foot for the life of you.   MSDOS You shoot yourself in the foot, but can unshoot yourself with add-on software.   Access You try to point the gun at your foot, but it shoots holes in all your Borland distribution diskettes instead.   Paradox Not only can you shoot yourself in the foot, your users can too.   dBase You squeeze the trigger, but the bullet moves so slowly that by the time your foot feels the pain, you've forgotten why you shot yourself anyway. or You buy a gun. Bullets are only available from another company and are promised to work so you buy them. Then you find out that the next version of the gun is the one scheduled to actually shoot bullets.   DBase IV, V1.0 You pull the trigger, but it turns out that the gun was a poorly designed hand grenade and the whole building blows up.   SQL You cut your foot off, send it out to a service bureau and when it returns, it has a hole in it but will no longer fit the attachment at the end of your leg. or Insert into Foot Select Bullet >From Gun.Hand Where Chamber = 'LOADED' And Trigger = 'PULLED'   Clipper You grab a bullet, get ready to insert it in the gun so that you can shoot yourself in the foot and discover that the gun that the bullets fits has not yet been built, but should be arriving in the mail _REAL_SOON_NOW_. Oracle The menus for coding foot_shooting have not been implemented yet and you can't do foot shooting in SQL.   English You put your foot in your mouth, then bite it off. (For those who don't know, English is a McDonnell Douglas/PICK query language which allegedly requires 110% of system resources to run happily.) Revelation [an implementation of the PICK Operating System] You'll be able to shoot yourself in the foot just as soon as you figure out what all these bullets are for.   FlagShip Starting at the top of your head, you aim the gun at yourself repeatedly until, half an hour later, the gun is finally pointing at your foot and you pull the trigger. A new foot with a hole in it appears but you can't work out how to get rid of the old one and your gun doesn't work anymore.   FidoNet You put your foot in your mouth, then echo it internationally.   PicoSpan [a UNIX-based computer conferencing system] You can't shoot yourself in the foot because you're not a host. or (host variation) Whenever you shoot yourself in the foot, someone opens a topic in policy about it.   Internet You put your foot in your mouth, shoot it, then spam the bullet so that everybody gets shot in the foot.   troff rmtroff -ms -Hdrwp | lpr -Pwp2 & .*place bullet in footer .B .NR FT +3i .in 4 .bu Shoot! .br .sp .in -4 .br .bp NR HD -2i .*   Genetic Algorithms You create 10,000 strings describing the best way to shoot yourself in the foot. By the time the program produces the optimal solution, humans have evolved wings and the problem is moot.   CSP (Communicating Sequential Processes) You only fail to shoot everything that isn't your foot.   MS-SQL Server MS-SQL Server’s gun comes pre-loaded with an unlimited supply of Teflon coated bullets, and it only has two discernible features: the muzzle and the trigger. If that wasn't enough, MS-SQL Server also puts the gun in your hand, applies local anesthetic to the skin of your forefinger and stitches it to the gun's trigger. Meanwhile, another process has set up a spinal block to numb your lower body. It will then proceeded to surgically remove your foot, cryogenically freeze it for preservation, and attach it to the muzzle of the gun so that no matter where you aim, you will shoot your foot. In order to avoid shooting yourself in the foot, you need to unstitch your trigger finger, remove your foot from the muzzle of the gun, and have it surgically reattached. Then you probably want to get some crutches and go out to buy a book on SQL Server Performance Tuning.   Sybase Sybase's gun requires assembly, and you need to go out and purchase your own clip and bullets to load the gun. Assembly is complicated by the fact that Sybase has hidden the gun behind a big stack of reference manuals, but it hasn't told you where that stack is. While you were off finding the gun, assembling it, buying bullets, etc., Sybase was also busy surgically removing your foot and cryogenically freezing it for preservation. Instead of attaching it to the muzzle of the gun, though, it packed your foot on dry ice and sent it UPS-Ground to an unnamed hookah bar somewhere in the middle east. In order to shoot your foot, you must modify your gun with a GPS system for targeting and hire some guy named "Indy" to find the hookah bar and wire the coordinates back to you. By this time, you've probably become so daunted at the tasks stand between you and shooting your foot that you hire a guy who's read all the books on Sybase to help you shoot your foot. If you're lucky, he'll be smart enough both to find your foot and to stop you from shooting it.   Magic software You spend 1 week looking up the correct syntax for GUN. When you find it, you realise that GUN will not let you shoot in your own foot. It will allow you to shoot almost anything but your foot. You then decide to build your own gun. You can't use the standard barrel since this will only allow for standard bullets, which will not fire if the barrel is pointed at your foot. After four weeks, you have created your own custom gun. It blows up in your hand without warning, because you failed to initialise the safety catch and it doesn't know whether the initial state is "0", 0, NULL, "ZERO", 0.0, 0,0, "0.0", or "0,00". You fix the problem with your remaining hand by nesting 12 safety catches, and then decide to build the gun without safety catch. You then shoot the management and retire to a happy life where you code in languages that will allow you to shoot your foot in under 10 days.FirefoxLets you shoot yourself in as many feet as you'd like, while using multiple great addons! IEA moving target in terms of standard ammunition size and doesn't always work properly with non-Microsoft ammunition, so sometimes you shoot something other than your foot. However, it's the corporate world's standard foot-shooting apparatus. Hackers seem to enjoy rigging websites up to trigger cascading foot-shooting failures. Windows 98 About the same as Windows 95 in terms of overall bullet capacity and triggering mechanisms. Includes updated DirectShot API. A new version was released later on to support USB guns, Windows 98 SE.WPF:You get your baseball glove and a ball and you head out to your backyard, where you throw balls to your pitchback. Then your unkempt-haired-cargo-shorts-and-sandals-with-white-socks-wearing neighbor uses XAML to sculpt your arm into a gun, the ball into a bullet and the pitchback into your foot. By now, however, only the neighbor can get it to work and he's only around from 6:30 PM - 3:30 AM. LOGO: You very carefully lay out the trajectory of the bullet. Then you start the gun, which fires very slowly. You walk precisely to the point where the bullet will travel and wait, but just before it gets to you, your class time is up and one of the other kids has already used the system to hack into Sony's PS3 network. Flash: Someone has designed a beautiful-looking gun that anyone can shoot their feet with for free. It weighs six hundred pounds. All kinds of people are shooting themselves in the feet, and sending the link to everyone else so that they can too. That is, except for the criminals, who are all stealing iOS devices that the gun won't work with.APL: Its (mostly) all greek to me. Lisp: Place ((gun in ((hand sight (foot then shoot))))) (Lots of Insipid Stupid Parentheses)Apple OS/X and iOS Once a year, Steve Jobs returns from sick leave to tell millions of unwavering fans how they will be able to shoot themselves in the foot differently this year. They retweet and blog about it ad nauseam, and wait in line to be the first to experience "shoot different".Windows ME Usually fails, even at shooting you in the foot. Yo dawg, I heard you like shooting yourself in the foot. So I put a gun in your gun, so you can shoot yourself in the foot while you shoot yourself in the foot. (Okay, I'm not especially proud of this joke.) Windows 2000 Now you really do have to log in, before you are allowed to shoot yourself in the foot.Windows XPYou thought you learned your lesson: Don't use Windows ME. Then, along came this new creature, built on top of Windows NT! So you spend the next couple days installing antivirus software, patches and service packs, just so you can get that driver to install, and then proceed to shoot yourself in the foot. Windows Vista Newer! Glossier! Shootier! Windows 7 The bullets come out a lot smoother. Active Directory Each bullet now has an attached Bullet Identifier, and can be uniquely identified. Policies can be applied to dictate fragmentation, and the gun will occasionally have a confusing delay after the trigger has been pulled. PythonYou try to use import foot; foot.shoot() only to realize that's only available in 3.0, to which you can't yet upgrade from 2.7 because of all those extension libs lacking support. Solaris Shoots best when used on SPARC hardware, but still runs the trigger GUI under Java. After weeks of learning the appropriate STOP command to prevent the trigger from automatically being pressed on boot, you think you've got it under control. Then the one time you ever use dtrace, it hits a bug that fires the gun. MySQL The feature that allows you to shoot yourself in the foot has been in development for about 6 years, and they are adding it into the next version, which is coming out REAL SOON NOW, promise! But you can always check it out of source control and try it yourself (just not in any environment where data integrity is important because it will probably explode.) PostgreSQLAllows you to have a smug look on your face while you shoot yourself in the foot, because those MySQL guys STILL don't have that feature. NoSQL Barrel? Who needs a barrel? Just put the bullet on your foot, and strike it with a hammer. See? It's so much simpler and more efficient that way. You can even strike multiple bullets in one swing if you swing with a good enough arc, because hammers are easy to use. Getting them to synchronize is a little difficult, though.Eclipse There are about a dozen different packages for shooting yourself in the foot, with weird interdependencies on outdated components. Once you finally navigate the morass and get one installed, you then have something to look at while you shoot yourself in the foot with that package: You can watch the screen redraw.Outlook Makes it really easy to let everyone know you shot yourself in the foot!Shooting yourself in the foot using delegates.You really need to shoot yourself in the foot but you hate firearms (you don't want any dependency on the specifics of shooting) so you delegate it to somebody else. You don't care how it is done as long is shooting your foot. You can do it asynchronously in case you know you may faint so you are called back/slapped in the face by your shooter/friend (or background worker) when everything is done.C#You prepare the gun and the bullet, carefully modeling all of the physics of a bullet traveling through a foot. Just before you're about to pull the trigger, you stumble on System.Windows.BodyParts.Foot.ShootAt(System.Windows.Firearms.IGun gun) in the extended framework, realize you just wasted the entire afternoon, and shoot yourself in the head.PHP<?phprequire("foot_safety_check.php");?><!DOCTYPE HTML><html><head> <!--Lower!--><title>Shooting me in the foot</title></head> <body> <!--LOWER!!!--><leg> <!--OK, I made this one up...--><footer><?php echo (dungSift($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], "ie"))?("Your foot is safe, but you might want to wear a hard hat!"):("<div class=\"shot\">BANG!</div>"); ?></footer></leg> </body> </html>

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• From HttpRuntime.Cache to Windows Azure Caching (Preview)

  - by Jeff

  I don’t know about you, but the announcement of Windows Azure Caching (Preview) (yes, the parentheses are apparently part of the interim name) made me a lot more excited about using Azure. Why? Because one of the great performance tricks of any Web app is to cache frequently used data in memory, so it doesn’t have to hit the database, a service, or whatever. When you run your Web app on one box, HttpRuntime.Cache is a sweet and stupid-simple solution. Somewhere in the data fetching pieces of your app, you can see if an object is available in cache, and return that instead of hitting the data store. I did this quite a bit in POP Forums, and it dramatically cuts down on the database chatter. The problem is that it falls apart if you run the app on many servers, in a Web farm, where one server may initiate a change to that data, and the others will have no knowledge of the change, making it stale. Of course, if you have the infrastructure to do so, you can use something like memcached or AppFabric to do a distributed cache, and achieve the caching flavor you desire. You could do the same thing in Azure before, but it would cost more because you’d need to pay for another role or VM or something to host the cache. Now, you can use a portion of the memory from each instance of a Web role to act as that cache, with no additional cost. That’s huge. So if you’re using a percentage of memory that comes out to 100 MB, and you have three instances running, that’s 300 MB available for caching. For the uninitiated, a Web role in Azure is essentially a VM that runs a Web app (worker roles are the same idea, only without the IIS part). You can spin up many instances of the role, and traffic is load balanced to the various instances. It’s like adding or removing servers to a Web farm all willy-nilly and at your discretion, and it’s what the cloud is all about. I’d say it’s my favorite thing about Windows Azure. The slightly annoying thing about developing for a Web role in Azure is that the local emulator that’s launched by Visual Studio is a little on the slow side. If you’re used to using the built-in Web server, you’re used to building and then alt-tabbing to your browser and refreshing a page. If you’re just changing an MVC view, you’re not even doing the building part. Spinning up the simulated Azure environment is too slow for this, but ideally you want to code your app to use this fantastic distributed cache mechanism. So first off, here’s the link to the page showing how to code using the caching feature. If you’re used to using HttpRuntime.Cache, this should be pretty familiar to you. Let’s say that you want to use the Azure cache preview when you’re running in Azure, but HttpRuntime.Cache if you’re running local, or in a regular IIS server environment. Through the magic of dependency injection, we can get there pretty quickly. First, design an interface to handle the cache insertion, fetching and removal. Mine looks like this: public interface ICacheProvider {     void Add(string key, object item, int duration);     T Get<T>(string key) where T : class;     void Remove(string key); } Now we’ll create two implementations of this interface… one for Azure cache, one for HttpRuntime: public class AzureCacheProvider : ICacheProvider {     public AzureCacheProvider()     {         _cache = new DataCache("default"); // in Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching, see how-to      }         private readonly DataCache _cache;     public void Add(string key, object item, int duration)     {         _cache.Add(key, item, new TimeSpan(0, 0, 0, 0, duration));     }     public T Get<T>(string key) where T : class     {         return _cache.Get(key) as T;     }     public void Remove(string key)     {         _cache.Remove(key);     } } public class LocalCacheProvider : ICacheProvider {     public LocalCacheProvider()     {         _cache = HttpRuntime.Cache;     }     private readonly System.Web.Caching.Cache _cache;     public void Add(string key, object item, int duration)     {         _cache.Insert(key, item, null, DateTime.UtcNow.AddMilliseconds(duration), System.Web.Caching.Cache.NoSlidingExpiration);     }     public T Get<T>(string key) where T : class     {         return _cache[key] as T;     }     public void Remove(string key)     {         _cache.Remove(key);     } } Feel free to expand these to use whatever cache features you want. I’m not going to go over dependency injection here, but I assume that if you’re using ASP.NET MVC, you’re using it. Somewhere in your app, you set up the DI container that resolves interfaces to concrete implementations (Ninject call is a “kernel” instead of a container). For this example, I’ll show you how StructureMap does it. It uses a convention based scheme, where if you need to get an instance of IFoo, it looks for a class named Foo. You can also do this mapping explicitly. The initialization of the container looks something like this: ObjectFactory.Initialize(x =>             {                 x.Scan(scan =>                         {                             scan.AssembliesFromApplicationBaseDirectory();                             scan.WithDefaultConventions();                         });                 if (Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime.RoleEnvironment.IsAvailable)                     x.For<ICacheProvider>().Use<AzureCacheProvider>();                 else                     x.For<ICacheProvider>().Use<LocalCacheProvider>();             }); If you use Ninject or Windsor or something else, that’s OK. Conceptually they’re all about the same. The important part is the conditional statement that checks to see if the app is running in Azure. If it is, it maps ICacheProvider to AzureCacheProvider, otherwise it maps to LocalCacheProvider. Now when a request comes into your MVC app, and the chain of dependency resolution occurs, you can see to it that the right caching code is called. A typical design may have a call stack that goes: Controller –> BusinessLogicClass –> Repository. Let’s say your repository class looks like this: public class MyRepo : IMyRepo {     public MyRepo(ICacheProvider cacheProvider)     {         _context = new MyDataContext();         _cache = cacheProvider;     }     private readonly MyDataContext _context;     private readonly ICacheProvider _cache;     public SomeType Get(int someTypeID)     {         var key = "somename-" + someTypeID;         var cachedObject = _cache.Get<SomeType>(key);         if (cachedObject != null)         {             _context.SomeTypes.Attach(cachedObject);             return cachedObject;         }         var someType = _context.SomeTypes.SingleOrDefault(p => p.SomeTypeID == someTypeID);         _cache.Add(key, someType, 60000);         return someType;     } ... // more stuff to update, delete or whatever, being sure to remove // from cache when you do so  When the DI container gets an instance of the repo, it passes an instance of ICacheProvider to the constructor, which in this case will be whatever implementation was specified when the container was initialized. The Get method first tries to hit the cache, and of course doesn’t care what the underlying implementation is, Azure, HttpRuntime, or otherwise. If it finds the object, it returns it right then. If not, it hits the database (this example is using Entity Framework), and inserts the object into the cache before returning it. The important thing not pictured here is that other methods in the repo class will construct the key for the cached object, in this case “somename-“ plus the ID of the object, and then remove it from cache, in any method that alters or deletes the object. That way, no matter what instance of the role is processing the request, it won’t find the object if it has been made stale, that is, updated or outright deleted, forcing it to attempt to hit the database. So is this good technique? Well, sort of. It depends on how you use it, and what your testing looks like around it. Because of differences in behavior and execution of the two caching providers, for example, you could see some strange errors. For example, I immediately got an error indicating there was no parameterless constructor for an MVC controller, because the DI resolver failed to create instances for the dependencies it had. In reality, the NuGet packaged DI resolver for StructureMap was eating an exception thrown by the Azure components that said my configuration, outlined in that how-to article, was wrong. That error wouldn’t occur when using the HttpRuntime. That’s something a lot of people debate about using different components like that, and how you configure them. I kinda hate XML config files, and like the idea of the code-based approach above, but you should be darn sure that your unit and integration testing can account for the differences.

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• How to find and fix issue with Pound and HAProxy

  - by javano

  Pound sits in front of HAProxy (on the same box) to perform SSL off-load. Requests are passed to 127.0.0.1:80 where HAProxy then balances the requests across backend servers for a hosted ASP .NET web app. A user is getting HTTP error 500 (Internal Server Error) returned to their browser this morning and I can see it is comming from Pound. They see no log entry in their web app (IIS) server logs, so its not hitting the back end servers. I think the problem is possibly with HAProxy. Lets review the logs: Initialy the users (1.2.3.4) hits Pound on the load balancer: Nov 12 10:02:24 lb1 pound: a-website.com 1.2.3.4 - - [12/Nov/2012:10:02:23 +0000] "POST /eventmanagement/EditEvent.aspx?eventOid=623fc423-2329-4cab-8be5-72a97709570d HTTP/1.1" 200 155721 "https://a-website.com/eventmanagement/EditEvent.aspx?eventOid=623fc423-2329-4cab-8be5-72a97709570d" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/22.0.1229.96 Safari/537.4" Nov 12 10:02:24 lb1 pound: a-website.com 1.2.3.4 - - [12/Nov/2012:10:02:24 +0000] "GET /Controls/ReferringOrganisationLogoImageHandler.ashx HTTP/1.1" 200 142 "https://a-website.com/eventmanagement/EditEvent.aspx?eventOid=623fc423-2329-4cab-8be5-72a97709570d" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/22.0.1229.96 Safari/537.4" Nov 12 10:02:24 lb1 pound: a-website.com 1.2.3.4 - - [12/Nov/2012:10:02:24 +0000] "GET /eventmanagement/WebCoreModule.ashx?__ac=1&__ac_wcmid=RAWCIL&__ac_lib=Radactive.WebControls.ILoad&__ac_key=RAWVCO_11&__ac_sid=fnoz2hmvirfivb2btbubbw45&__ac_cn=&__ac_cp=BVDXDWFLDWFMHDFJBOEGBDFLFOD5EEFD&__ac_fr=634883113445054092&__ac_ssid= HTTP/1.1" 200 11206 "https://a-website.com/eventmanagement/EditEvent.aspx?eventOid=623fc423-2329-4cab-8be5-72a97709570d" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/22.0.1229.96 Safari/537.4" Nov 12 10:02:24 lb1 pound: a-website.com 1.2.3.4 - - [12/Nov/2012:10:02:24 +0000] "GET /eventmanagement/WebCoreModule.ashx?__ac=1&__ac_wcmid=RAWCIL&__ac_lib=Radactive.WebControls.ILoad&__ac_key=RAWCCIL_11&__ac_sid=fnoz2hmvirfivb2btbubbw45&__ac_cn=&__ac_cp=BVDXDWFLDWFMHDFJBOEGBDFLFOD5EEFD&__ac_fr=634883113445054092 HTTP/1.1" 200 43496 "https://a-website.com/eventmanagement/EditEvent.aspx?eventOid=623fc423-2329-4cab-8be5-72a97709570d" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/22.0.1229.96 Safari/537.4" Nov 12 10:02:42 lb1 pound: (7f819fff8700) e500 for 1.2.3.4 response error read from 127.0.0.1:80/POST /eventmanagement/EditEvent.aspx?eventOid=623fc423-2329-4cab-8be5-72a97709570d HTTP/1.1: Connection timed out (15.121 secs) Above we can see the request comming in from the user at IP address 1.2.3.4, eventually Pound returns error 500 with the message "Connection timed out (15.121 secs)". Running HAProxy in debug mode, we can see the request come in; user@box:/var/log$ sudo /etc/init.d/haproxy restart Restarting haproxy: haproxy[WARNING] 316/100042 (19218) : <debug> mode incompatible with <quiet> and <daemon>. Keeping <debug> only. Available polling systems : sepoll : pref=400, test result OK epoll : pref=300, test result OK poll : pref=200, test result OK select : pref=150, test result OK Total: 4 (4 usable), will use sepoll. Using sepoll() as the polling mechanism. ....... 00000008:iis-servers.srvrep[0008:0009]: HTTP/1.1 200 OK 00000008:iis-servers.srvhdr[0008:0009]: Cache-Control: private 00000008:iis-servers.srvhdr[0008:0009]: Pragma: no-cache 00000008:iis-servers.srvhdr[0008:0009]: Content-Length: 22211 00000008:iis-servers.srvhdr[0008:0009]: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 00000008:iis-servers.srvhdr[0008:0009]: Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.0 00000008:iis-servers.srvhdr[0008:0009]: X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727 00000008:iis-servers.srvhdr[0008:0009]: X-Powered-By: ASP.NET 00000008:iis-servers.srvhdr[0008:0009]: Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2012 10:01:25 GMT 00000009:iis-servers.accept(0004)=000a from [127.0.0.1:53556] 00000009:iis-servers.clireq[000a:ffff]: GET /Logoff.aspx HTTP/1.1 00000009:iis-servers.clihdr[000a:ffff]: Host: a-website.com 00000009:iis-servers.clihdr[000a:ffff]: Connection: keep-alive 00000009:iis-servers.clihdr[000a:ffff]: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/22.0.1229.96 Safari/537.4 00000009:iis-servers.clihdr[000a:ffff]: Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8 00000009:iis-servers.clihdr[000a:ffff]: Referer: https://a-website.com/eventmanagement/eventmanagement.aspx 00000009:iis-servers.clihdr[000a:ffff]: Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch 00000009:iis-servers.clihdr[000a:ffff]: Accept-Language: en-GB,en;q=0.8,it;q=0.6 00000009:iis-servers.clihdr[000a:ffff]: Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3 00000009:iis-servers.clihdr[000a:ffff]: Cookie: ASP.NET_SessionId=fnoz2hmvirfivb2btbubbw45; apps=apps2; AuthHint=true; __utma=190546871.552451749.1340295610.1352454675.1352711624.159; __utmb=190546871.2.10.1352711624; __utmc=190546871; __utmz=190546871.1349966519.143.3.utmcsr=en.wikipedia.org|utmccn=(referral)|utmcmd=referral|utmcct=/wiki/Single_transferable_vote; Sequence=162; SessionId=80e603f9-7e73-474b-8b7c-e198b2f11218; SecureSessionId=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000; __utma=58336506.1016936529.1332752550.1352454680.1352711626.456; __utmb=58336506.28.10.1352711626; __utmc=58336506; __utmz=58336506.1352711626.456.155.utmcsr=a-website.com|utmccn=(referral)|utmcmd=referral|utmcct=/ 00000009:iis-servers.clihdr[000a:ffff]: X-SSL-cipher: RC4-SHA SSLv3 Kx=RSA Au=RSA Enc=RC4(128) Mac=SHA1 00000009:iis-servers.clihdr[000a:ffff]: X-Forwarded-For: 1.2.3.4 00000008:iis-servers.srvcls[0008:0009] 00000008:iis-servers.clicls[0008:0009] 00000008:iis-servers.closed[0008:0009] ....... 0000000e:iis-servers.srvrep[0008:0009]: HTTP/1.1 200 OK 0000000e:iis-servers.srvhdr[0008:0009]: Cache-Control: no-cache 0000000e:iis-servers.srvhdr[0008:0009]: Pragma: no-cache 0000000e:iis-servers.srvhdr[0008:0009]: Content-Length: 12805 0000000e:iis-servers.srvhdr[0008:0009]: Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 0000000e:iis-servers.srvhdr[0008:0009]: Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.0 0000000e:iis-servers.srvhdr[0008:0009]: X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727 0000000e:iis-servers.srvhdr[0008:0009]: X-Powered-By: ASP.NET 0000000e:iis-servers.srvhdr[0008:0009]: Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2012 10:02:22 GMT 0000000f:iis-servers.accept(0004)=000c from [127.0.0.1:53609] 0000000f:iis-servers.clireq[000c:ffff]: GET /Controls/ReferringOrganisationLogoImageHandler.ashx HTTP/1.1 0000000f:iis-servers.clihdr[000c:ffff]: Host: a-website.com 0000000f:iis-servers.clihdr[000c:ffff]: Connection: keep-alive 0000000f:iis-servers.clihdr[000c:ffff]: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/22.0.1229.96 Safari/537.4 0000000f:iis-servers.clihdr[000c:ffff]: Accept: */* 0000000f:iis-servers.clihdr[000c:ffff]: Referer: https://a-website.com/eventmanagement/EditEvent.aspx?eventOid=623fc423-2329-4cab-8be5-72a97709570d 0000000f:iis-servers.clihdr[000c:ffff]: Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate,sdch 0000000f:iis-servers.clihdr[000c:ffff]: Accept-Language: en-GB,en;q=0.8,it;q=0.6 0000000f:iis-servers.clihdr[000c:ffff]: Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.3 0000000f:iis-servers.clihdr[000c:ffff]: Cookie: ASP.NET_SessionId=fnoz2hmvirfivb2btbubbw45; apps=apps2; __utma=190546871.552451749.1340295610.1352454675.1352711624.159; __utmb=190546871.2.10.1352711624; __utmc=190546871; __utmz=190546871.1349966519.143.3.utmcsr=en.wikipedia.org|utmccn=(referral)|utmcmd=referral|utmcct=/wiki/Single_transferable_vote; AuthHint=true; __utma=58336506.1016936529.1332752550.1352454680.1352711626.456; __utmb=58336506.33.10.1352711626; __utmc=58336506; __utmz=58336506.1352711626.456.155.utmcsr=a-website.com|utmccn=(referral)|utmcmd=referral|utmcct=/; SessionId=69cd415c-2f4e-4ace-b8f7-926d054f87c2; SecureSessionId=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000; Sequence=170 0000000f:iis-servers.clihdr[000c:ffff]: X-SSL-cipher: RC4-SHA SSLv3 Kx=RSA Au=RSA Enc=RC4(128) Mac=SHA1 0000000f:iis-servers.clihdr[000c:ffff]: X-Forwarded-For: 1.2.3.4 0000000f:iis-servers.srvrep[000c:000d]: HTTP/1.1 200 OK 0000000f:iis-servers.srvhdr[000c:000d]: Cache-Control: private 0000000f:iis-servers.srvhdr[000c:000d]: Content-Length: 142 0000000f:iis-servers.srvhdr[000c:000d]: Content-Type: image/png 0000000f:iis-servers.srvhdr[000c:000d]: Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.0 0000000f:iis-servers.srvhdr[000c:000d]: X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727 0000000f:iis-servers.srvhdr[000c:000d]: Set-Cookie: SessionId=69cd415c-2f4e-4ace-b8f7-926d054f87c2; path=/ 0000000f:iis-servers.srvhdr[000c:000d]: Set-Cookie: SecureSessionId=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000; path=/; secure 0000000f:iis-servers.srvhdr[000c:000d]: X-Powered-By: ASP.NET 0000000f:iis-servers.srvhdr[000c:000d]: Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2012 10:02:25 GMT 0000000e:iis-servers.srvcls[0008:0009] 0000000e:iis-servers.clicls[0008:0009] 0000000e:iis-servers.closed[0008:0009] 0000000f:iis-servers.srvcls[000c:000d] 0000000f:iis-servers.clicls[000c:000d] 0000000f:iis-servers.closed[000c:000d] 00000009:iis-servers.srvcls[000a:000b] 00000009:iis-servers.clicls[000a:000b] 00000009:iis-servers.closed[000a:000b] Where in the chain is the issue here?

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• Cannot Start Nginx Compiled from Source

  - by Jason Alan Kennedy

  I am trying to compile Nginx from source based on the original compiled Nginx server running on my DigitalOcean server ( Ubuntu-14.04 64x ) but with a few extra modules. I can get everything installed smoothly but I can not get it to start. I am sure the ini is correct because I copied the original source off the current running Nginx server [ Even though I see that Nginx now adds the ini when compiling fron source ]. Below is the [ lengthy process ] that I am performing - add sorry but I wanted to be thorough for those who are in need of the info ]. Because I am a newB to Nginx, I am sure I am missing something or just have it all wrong. If you may look over what I have done and see if you spot anything I need/need to change, I will greatly appreciate it. Thnx! With the original Nginx server still running: I check the current/running Nginx configuration so I can build the new Nginx instance the same but with the added modules: nginx -V # The out-put: configure arguments: --with-cc-opt='-g -O2 -fstack-protector --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -Wformat -Werror=format-security -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2' --with-ld-opt='-Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions -Wl,-z,relro' --prefix=/usr/share/nginx --conf-path=/etc/nginx/nginx.conf --http-log-path=/var/log/nginx/access.log --error-log-path=/var/log/nginx/error.log --lock-path=/var/lock/nginx.lock --pid-path=/run/nginx.pid --http-client-body-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/body --http-fastcgi-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/fastcgi --http-proxy-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/proxy --http-scgi-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/scgi --http-uwsgi-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/uwsgi --with-debug --with-pcre-jit --with-ipv6 --with-http_ssl_module --with-http_stub_status_module --with-http_realip_module --with-http_addition_module --with-http_dav_module --with-http_geoip_module --with-http_gzip_static_module --with-http_image_filter_module --with-http_spdy_module --with-http_sub_module --with-http_xslt_module NOTE: The configure arguments below return errors during 'make' so I removed them. I don't know what they are - could this be related to my issue??? --with-cc-opt='-g -O2 -fstack-protector --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -Wformat -Werror=format-security -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2' --with-ld-opt='-Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions -Wl,-z,relro' Moving on: # So I don't have to sudo every line: sudo bash # Check for updates first thing: apt-get update # Install various prerequisites needed to compile Nginx: apt-get install build-essential libgd2-xpm-dev lsb-base zlib1g-dev libpcre3 libpcre3-dev libbz2-dev libxslt1-dev libxml2 libssl-dev libgeoip-dev tar unzip openssl # Create System users [ if it doesn't exist - but I see its there on DigitalOceans' Droplets all-ready ]: adduser --system --no-create-home --disabled-login --disabled-password --group www-data # Download NGINX wget http://nginx.org/download/nginx-1.7.4.tar.gz tar -xvzf nginx-1.7.4.tar.gz # Then Google PageSpeed: wget https://github.com/pagespeed/ngx_pagespeed/archive/release-1.8.31.4-beta.zip unzip release-1.8.31.4-beta.zip # cd into the PageSpeed Directory cd ngx_pagespeed-release-1.8.31.4-beta/ # and add the PSOL files in there: wget https://dl.google.com/dl/page-speed/psol/1.8.31.4.tar.gz tar -xzvf 1.8.31.4.tar.gz # Get back to the root directory: cd # I add the ngx_cache_purge module and will install the Nginx Helper plugin for WP later: wget https://github.com/FRiCKLE/ngx_cache_purge/archive/2.1.zip unzip 2.1.zip # Add the headers-more-nginx-module: wget https://github.com/openresty/headers-more-nginx-module/archive/v0.25.zip unzip v0.25.zip # and the naxsi module for added security: wget https://github.com/nbs-system/naxsi/archive/0.53-2.tar.gz tar -xvzf 0.53-2.tar.gz # cd to the new Nginx directory cd nginx-1.7.4 # Set up the configuration build based on the current running Nginx config args and add my additional modules: ./configure \ --add-module=$HOME/naxsi-0.53-2/naxsi_src \ --prefix=/usr/share/nginx \ --conf-path=/etc/nginx/nginx.conf \ --http-log-path=/var/log/nginx/access.log \ --error-log-path=/var/log/nginx/error.log \ --lock-path=/var/lock/nginx.lock \ --pid-path=/run/nginx.pid \ --http-client-body-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/body \ --http-fastcgi-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/fastcgi \ --http-proxy-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/proxy \ --http-scgi-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/scgi \ --http-uwsgi-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/uwsgi \ --user=www-data \ --group=www-data \ --with-debug \ --with-pcre-jit \ --with-ipv6 \ --with-http_ssl_module \ --with-http_stub_status_module \ --with-http_realip_module \ --with-http_addition_module \ --with-http_dav_module \ --with-http_geoip_module \ --with-http_gzip_static_module \ --with-http_image_filter_module \ --with-http_spdy_module \ --with-http_sub_module \ --with-http_xslt_module \ --with-mail \ --with-mail_ssl_module \ --add-module=$HOME/ngx_pagespeed-release-1.8.31.4-beta \ --add-module=$HOME/ngx_cache_purge-2.1 \ --add-module=$HOME/headers-more-nginx-module-0.25 [ENTER] Configuration Summary: Configuration summary + using system PCRE library + using system OpenSSL library + md5: using OpenSSL library + sha1: using OpenSSL library + using system zlib library nginx path prefix: "/usr/share/nginx" nginx binary file: "/usr/share/nginx/sbin/nginx" nginx configuration prefix: "/etc/nginx" nginx configuration file: "/etc/nginx/nginx.conf" nginx pid file: "/run/nginx.pid" nginx error log file: "/var/log/nginx/error.log" nginx http access log file: "/var/log/nginx/access.log" nginx http client request body temporary files: "/var/lib/nginx/body" nginx http proxy temporary files: "/var/lib/nginx/proxy" nginx http fastcgi temporary files: "/var/lib/nginx/fastcgi" nginx http uwsgi temporary files: "/var/lib/nginx/uwsgi" nginx http scgi temporary files: "/var/lib/nginx/scgi" Next step: I cd to root and I check the old Nginx folder locations and double checked the 'make' output to see that they are the same: whereis nginx #Output: nginx: /usr/sbin/nginx /etc/nginx /usr/share/nginx NOTE: Not sure about the '/usr/sbin/nginx' - Possible issue??? Next I copy the old /etc/nginx/nginx.conf, /etc/nginx/sites-available/default, /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default, /etc/init.d/nginx to a text file locally for safe keeping to use in the new Nginx server. Then stop the running Nginx server: service nginx stop , verify it's stopped: service --status-all and the output is: [ - ] nginx To verify that there are two Nginx directories, I cd to: cd nginx* and the output is an error indicating there are two nginx folders - Cool Beans! :) Now Install the new Nginx server: cd nginx-1.7.4 make install # INSTALL OUTPUT ######################################## make -f objs/Makefile install make[1]: Entering directory `/home/walkingfish/nginx-1.7.4' test -d '/usr/share/nginx' || mkdir -p '/usr/share/nginx' test -d '/usr/share/nginx/sbin' || mkdir -p '/usr/share/nginx/sbin' test ! -f '/usr/share/nginx/sbin/nginx' || mv '/usr/share/nginx/sbin/nginx' '/usr/share/nginx/sbin/nginx.old' cp objs/nginx '/usr/share/nginx/sbin/nginx' test -d '/etc/nginx' || mkdir -p '/etc/nginx' cp conf/koi-win '/etc/nginx' cp conf/koi-utf '/etc/nginx' cp conf/win-utf '/etc/nginx' test -f '/etc/nginx/mime.types' || cp conf/mime.types '/etc/nginx' cp conf/mime.types '/etc/nginx/mime.types.default' test -f '/etc/nginx/fastcgi_params' || cp conf/fastcgi_params '/etc/nginx' cp conf/fastcgi_params '/etc/nginx/fastcgi_params.default' test -f '/etc/nginx/fastcgi.conf' || cp conf/fastcgi.conf '/etc/nginx' cp conf/fastcgi.conf '/etc/nginx/fastcgi.conf.default' test -f '/etc/nginx/uwsgi_params' || cp conf/uwsgi_params '/etc/nginx' cp conf/uwsgi_params '/etc/nginx/uwsgi_params.default' test -f '/etc/nginx/scgi_params' || cp conf/scgi_params '/etc/nginx' cp conf/scgi_params '/etc/nginx/scgi_params.default' test -f '/etc/nginx/nginx.conf' || cp conf/nginx.conf '/etc/nginx/nginx.conf' cp conf/nginx.conf '/etc/nginx/nginx.conf.default' test -d '/run' || mkdir -p '/run' test -d '/var/log/nginx' || mkdir -p '/var/log/nginx' test -d '/usr/share/nginx/html' || cp -R html '/usr/share/nginx' test -d '/var/log/nginx' || mkdir -p '/var/log/nginx' ######################################################### I copy/create the files that I saved earlier to txt files in sites-available, the config, default and ini files then symlink them to sites-enabled, and so on. And now to start the server: service nginx start And this is where s#!+ hits the fan - Nada. I check to see if Nginx is running with service --status-all and its not. Also with nginx -V and its not installed??? I reboot the system too and still nothing. So I am not sure what is wrong here. The ini was copied over from the old server along with all the other config files after deleting the old files. When I opened the new compiled files, the nginx default data was present so I replaced them with my old original data prior to starting the new server for the first time. Also to be safe, I rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default and symlinked with ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/default /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default with no errors and I verified that the data was in the sites-enabled/default file. I don't think the server really/fully installed because of the nginx -V result: The program 'nginx' can be found in the following packages: * nginx-core * nginx-extras * nginx-full * nginx-light * nginx-naxsi Try: apt-get install <selected package> Do/should I apt-get install nginx-1.7.4 ?? Or what package do I use being that its a custom package and make install earlier did nothing?? If you need to see the conf files I copied over from the old to the custom server, LMK and I'll post them. Again your help here would be appreciated!

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• Spam Assassin on windows

  - by ebeworld

  I just installed spam assassin and run for its sample ham mail as spamassassin sample-nonspam.txt, but it ended up marking it as a spam. What configuration am i missing to change? Result of the check is: From: Keith Dawson To: [email protected] Subject: **SPAM** TBTF ping for 2001-04-20: Reviving Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 16:59:58 -0400 Message-Id: X-Spam-Flag: YES X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.2.3 (2007-08-08) on ebeworld-PC X-Spam-Level: **** X-Spam-Status: Yes, score=10.5 required=6.3 tests=DCC_CHECK,DIGEST_MULTIPLE, DNS_FROM_OPENWHOIS,RAZOR2_CF_RANGE_51_100,RAZOR2_CF_RANGE_E4_51_100, RAZOR2_CHECK shortcircuit=no autolearn=no version=3.2.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="----------=_4BF17E8E.BF8E0000" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------------=_4BF17E8E.BF8E0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit This mail is probably spam. The original message has been attached intact in RFC 822 format. Content preview: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- TBTF ping for 2001-04-20: Reviving T a s t y B i t s f r o m t h e T e c h n o l o g y F r o n t [...] Content analysis details: (10.5 points, 6.3 required) 2.4 DNS_FROM_OPENWHOIS RBL: Envelope sender listed in bl.open-whois.org. 1.5 RAZOR2_CF_RANGE_E4_51_100 Razor2 gives engine 4 confidence level above 50% [cf: 58] 2.5 RAZOR2_CHECK Listed in Razor2 (http://razor.sf.net/) 0.5 RAZOR2_CF_RANGE_51_100 Razor2 gives confidence level above 50% [cf: 58] 3.6 DCC_CHECK Listed in DCC (http://rhyolite.com/anti-spam/dcc/) 0.0 DIGEST_MULTIPLE Message hits more than one network digest check ------------=_4BF17E8E.BF8E0000 Content-Type: message/rfc822; x-spam-type=original Content-Description: original message before SpamAssassin Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Return-Path: Delivered-To: [email protected] Received: from europe.std.com (europe.std.com [199.172.62.20]) by mail.netnoteinc.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 392E1114061 for ; Fri, 20 Apr 2001 21:34:46 +0000 (Eire) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by europe.std.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id RAA09630 for tbtf-outgoing; Fri, 20 Apr 2001 17:31:18 -0400 (EDT) Received: from sgi04-e.std.com (sgi04-e.std.com [199.172.62.134]) by europe.std.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA08749 for ; Fri, 20 Apr 2001 17:24:31 -0400 (EDT) Received: from world.std.com (world-f.std.com [199.172.62.5]) by sgi04-e.std.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA8278330 for ; Fri, 20 Apr 2001 17:24:31 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from dawson@localhost) by world.std.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id RAA26781 for [email protected]; Fri, 20 Apr 2001 17:24:31 -0400 (EDT) Received: from sgi04-e.std.com (sgi04-e.std.com [199.172.62.134]) by europe.std.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA07541 for ; Fri, 20 Apr 2001 17:12:06 -0400 (EDT) Received: from world.std.com (world-f.std.com [199.172.62.5]) by sgi04-e.std.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA8416421 for ; Fri, 20 Apr 2001 17:12:06 -0400 (EDT) Received: from [208.192.102.193] (ppp0c199.std.com [208.192.102.199]) by world.std.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA14226 for ; Fri, 20 Apr 2001 17:12:04 -0400 (EDT) Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 16:59:58 -0400 To: [email protected] From: Keith Dawson Subject: TBTF ping for 2001-04-20: Reviving Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: [email protected] Precedence: list Reply-To: [email protected] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- TBTF ping for 2001-04-20: Reviving T a s t y B i t s f r o m t h e T e c h n o l o g y F r o n t Timely news of the bellwethers in computer and communications technology that will affect electronic commerce -- since 1994 Your Host: Keith Dawson ISSN: 1524-9948 This issue: < http://tbtf.com/archive/2001-04-20.html > To comment on this issue, please use this forum at Quick Topic: < http://www.quicktopic.com/tbtf/H/kQGJR2TXL6H > ________________________________________________________________________ Q u o t e O f T h e M o m e n t Even organizations that promise "privacy for their customers" rarely if ever promise "continued privacy for their former customers..." Once you cancel your account with any business, their promises of keeping the information about their customers private no longer apply... you're not a customer any longer. This is in the large category of business behaviors that individuals would consider immoral and deceptive -- and businesses know are not illegal. -- "_ankh," writing on the XNStalk mailing list ________________________________________________________________________ ..TBTF's long hiatus is drawing to a close Hail subscribers to the TBTF mailing list. Some 2,000 [1] of you have signed up since the last issue [2] was mailed on 2000-07-20. This brief note is the first of several I will send to this list to excise the dead addresses prior to resuming regular publication. While you time the contractions of the newsletter's rebirth, I in- vite you to read the TBTF Log [3] and sign up for its separate free subscription. Send "subscribe" (no quotes) with any subject to [email protected] . I mail out collected Log items on Sun- days. If you need to stay more immediately on top of breaking stories, pick up the TBTF Log's syndication file [4] or read an aggregator that does. Examples are Slashdot's Cheesy Portal [5], Userland [6], and Sitescooper [7]. If your news obsession runs even deeper and you own an SMS-capable cell phone or PDA, sign up on TBTF's WebWire- lessNow portal [8]. A free call will bring you the latest TBTF Log headline, Jargon Scout [9] find, or Siliconium [10]. Two new columnists have bloomed on TBTF since last summer: Ted By- field's roving_reporter [11] and Gary Stock's UnBlinking [12]. Late- ly Byfield has been writing in unmatched depth about ICANN, but the roving_reporter nym's roots are in commentary at the intersection of technology and culture. Stock's UnBlinking latches onto topical sub- jects and pursues them to the ends of the Net. These writers' voices are compelling and utterly distinctive. [1] http://tbtf.com/growth.html [2] http://tbtf.com/archive/2000-07-20.html [3] http://tbtf.com/blog/ [4] http://tbtf.com/tbtf.rdf [5] http://www.slashdot.org/cheesyportal.shtml [6] http://my.userland.com/ [7] http://www.sitescooper.org/ [8] http://tbtf.com/pull-wwn/ [9] http://tbtf.com/jargon-scout.html [10] http://tbtf.com/siliconia.html [11] http://tbtf.com/roving_reporter/ [12] http://tbtf.com/unblinking/ ________________________________________________________________________ S o u r c e s For a complete list of TBTF's email and Web sources, see http://tbtf.com/sources.html . ________________________________________ B e n e f a c t o r s TBTF is free. If you get value from this publication, please visit the TBTF Benefactors page < http://tbtf.com/the-benefactors.html > and consider contributing to its upkeep. ________________________________________________________________________ TBTF home and archive at http://tbtf.com/ . To unsubscribe send the message "unsubscribe" to [email protected]. TBTF is Copy- right 1994-2000 by Keith Dawson, <[email protected]>. Commercial use prohibited. For non-commercial purposes please forward, post, and link as you see fit. _______________________________________________ Keith Dawson [email protected] Layer of ash separates morning and evening milk. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPfreeware 6.5.2 for non-commercial use http://www.pgp.com iQCVAwUBOuCi3WAMawgf2iXRAQHeAQQA3YSePSQ0XzdHZUVskFDkTfpE9XS4fHQs WaT6a8qLZK9PdNcoz3zggM/Jnjdx6CJqNzxPEtxk9B2DoGll/C/60HWNPN+VujDu Xav65S0P+Px4knaQcCIeCamQJ7uGcsw+CqMpNbxWYaTYmjAfkbKH1EuLC2VRwdmD wQmwrDp70v8= =8hLB -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ------------=_4BF17E8E.BF8E0000--

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• Why is Windows Update trying to install an update I don't need?

  - by Oliver Salzburg

  I have a Windows 7 system that currently has a single update pending: Windows Internet Explorer 9 for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems If I try to install the update, Windows Update will: Create a restore point Fail with the error: Code 9C48 Windows Update encountered an error. The event log for the event reads: Installation Failure: Windows failed to install the following update with error 0x80070643: Windows Internet Explorer 9 for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems. If you search the web for that error, there are many other people with the exact same issue. Sadly, I am unable to apply the proposed solutions to my case, because I just installed this system. There is nothing on it, except Windows 7. I installed the system and ran through the updates. I also did the exact same process with this machine several times over the past few days due to a long-term test we just started. I didn't have any problems with any Windows Update on the previous installation runs and I know I didn't do anything different this time because I followed the installation procedures instructions which are to be used during the test. How did this happen and how do I solve it? Further Investigation So, as I always like to do, I ran the update again while running Process Monitor and dug up further details. WindowsUpdate.log First of all, there is a Windows Update log file located at C:\Windows\WindowsUpdate.log which I didn't know about. But I fail to see any significant entry in it, maybe you're more lucky: 2012-04-10 22:46:58:017 956 728 AU AU received approval from Ux for 1 updates 2012-04-10 22:46:58:017 956 728 AU AU setting pending client directive to 'Progress Ux' 2012-04-10 22:46:58:095 956 728 AU BeginInteractiveInstall invoked for Download 2012-04-10 22:46:58:095 956 728 AU Auto-approving update for download, updateId = {B33ACEC1-3265-4D01-9C37-AC0892E95ED9}.100, ForUx=1, IsOwnerUx=1, HasDeadline=0, IsMinor=0 2012-04-10 22:46:58:095 956 728 AU Auto-approved 1 update(s) for download (for Ux) 2012-04-10 22:46:58:110 956 728 AU UpdateDownloadProperties: 0 download(s) are still in progress. 2012-04-10 22:46:58:110 956 728 AU ############# 2012-04-10 22:46:58:110 956 728 AU ## START ## AU: Download updates 2012-04-10 22:46:58:110 956 728 AU ######### 2012-04-10 22:46:58:110 956 728 AU # Approved updates = 1 2012-04-10 22:46:58:110 956 728 AU AU initiated download, updateId = {B33ACEC1-3265-4D01-9C37-AC0892E95ED9}.100, callId = {35DF928B-B428-4BAC-8C63-55295967EFBB} 2012-04-10 22:46:58:110 956 728 AU Setting AU scheduled install time to 2012-04-11 01:00:00 2012-04-10 22:46:58:110 956 728 AU Successfully wrote event for AU health state:0 2012-04-10 22:46:58:110 956 728 AU Currently showing Progress UX client - so not launching any other client 2012-04-10 22:46:58:110 956 bb8 DnldMgr ************* 2012-04-10 22:46:58:110 956 bb8 DnldMgr ** START ** DnldMgr: Downloading updates [CallerId = AutomaticUpdatesWuApp] 2012-04-10 22:46:58:110 956 bb8 DnldMgr ********* 2012-04-10 22:46:58:110 956 bb8 DnldMgr * Call ID = {35DF928B-B428-4BAC-8C63-55295967EFBB} 2012-04-10 22:46:58:110 956 bb8 DnldMgr * Priority = 3, Interactive = 1, Owner is system = 0, Explicit proxy = 0, Proxy session id = 1, ServiceId = {9482F4B4-E343-43B6-B170-9A65BC822C77} 2012-04-10 22:46:58:110 956 bb8 DnldMgr * Updates to download = 1 2012-04-10 22:46:58:110 956 bb8 Agent * Title = Windows Internet Explorer 9 for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems 2012-04-10 22:46:58:110 956 bb8 Agent * UpdateId = {B33ACEC1-3265-4D01-9C37-AC0892E95ED9}.100 2012-04-10 22:46:58:110 956 bb8 Agent * Bundles 1 updates: 2012-04-10 22:46:58:110 956 bb8 Agent * {6D9A90B7-FAF9-4A47-9EFE-A506264873B3}.100 2012-04-10 22:46:58:110 956 bb8 DnldMgr *********** DnldMgr: New download job [UpdateId = {6D9A90B7-FAF9-4A47-9EFE-A506264873B3}.100] *********** 2012-04-10 22:46:58:110 956 728 AU Successfully wrote event for AU health state:0 2012-04-10 22:46:58:110 956 728 AU # Pending download calls = 1 2012-04-10 22:46:58:110 956 728 AU ## RESUMED ## AU: Download update [UpdateId = {B33ACEC1-3265-4D01-9C37-AC0892E95ED9}, succeeded] 2012-04-10 22:46:58:313 956 bb8 Agent ** END ** Agent: Downloading updates [CallerId = AutomaticUpdatesWuApp] 2012-04-10 22:46:58:313 956 bb8 Agent ************* 2012-04-10 22:46:58:313 956 718 AU ######### 2012-04-10 22:46:58:313 956 718 AU ## END ## AU: Download updates 2012-04-10 22:46:58:313 956 718 AU ############# 2012-04-10 22:46:58:313 956 718 AU Setting AU scheduled install time to 2012-04-11 01:00:00 2012-04-10 22:46:58:313 956 718 AU Successfully wrote event for AU health state:0 2012-04-10 22:46:58:313 956 718 AU Currently showing Progress UX client - so not launching any other client 2012-04-10 22:46:58:313 956 718 AU Successfully wrote event for AU health state:0 2012-04-10 22:46:58:313 956 aac AU Getting featured update notifications. fIncludeDismissed = true 2012-04-10 22:46:58:313 956 aac AU No featured updates available. 2012-04-10 22:47:00:107 956 aac AU BeginInteractiveInstall invoked for Install 2012-04-10 22:47:00:107 956 aac AU Auto-approving update for install, updateId = {B33ACEC1-3265-4D01-9C37-AC0892E95ED9}.100, ForUx=1, IsOwnerUx=1, HasDeadline=0, IsMinor=0 2012-04-10 22:47:00:107 956 aac AU Auto-approved 1 update(s) for install (for Ux), installType=1 2012-04-10 22:47:00:107 956 aac AU ############# 2012-04-10 22:47:00:107 956 aac AU ## START ## AU: Install updates 2012-04-10 22:47:00:107 956 aac AU ######### 2012-04-10 22:47:00:107 956 aac AU # Initiating manual install 2012-04-10 22:47:00:107 956 aac AU # Approved updates = 1 2012-04-10 22:47:00:107 956 aac AU ## RESUMED ## AU: Installing update [UpdateId = {B33ACEC1-3265-4D01-9C37-AC0892E95ED9}] 2012-04-10 22:47:13:773 2232 9fc Handler : WARNING: Exit code = 0x8024200B 2012-04-10 22:47:13:773 956 718 AU # WARNING: Install failed, error = 0x80070643 / 0x00009C48 2012-04-10 22:47:13:773 2232 9fc Handler ::::::::: 2012-04-10 22:47:13:773 2232 9fc Handler :: END :: Handler: Command Line Install 2012-04-10 22:47:13:773 2232 9fc Handler ::::::::::::: 2012-04-10 22:47:13:851 956 a7c Agent ********* 2012-04-10 22:47:13:851 956 a7c Agent ** END ** Agent: Installing updates [CallerId = AutomaticUpdates] 2012-04-10 22:47:13:851 956 718 AU Install call completed. 2012-04-10 22:47:13:851 956 a7c Agent ************* 2012-04-10 22:47:13:851 956 718 AU # WARNING: Install call completed, reboot required = No, error = 0x00000000 2012-04-10 22:47:13:851 956 718 AU ######### 2012-04-10 22:47:13:851 956 718 AU ## END ## AU: Installing updates [CallId = {FCFF2A5C-25AB-4FB9-AB2B-35C65CCA6A9F}] 2012-04-10 22:47:13:851 956 718 AU ############# 2012-04-10 22:47:13:851 956 718 AU Install complete for all calls, reboot NOT needed 2012-04-10 22:47:13:851 956 718 AU Setting AU scheduled install time to 2012-04-11 01:00:00 2012-04-10 22:47:13:851 956 718 AU Successfully wrote event for AU health state:0 2012-04-10 22:47:13:851 956 498 AU Getting featured update notifications. fIncludeDismissed = true 2012-04-10 22:47:13:851 956 498 AU No featured updates available. 2012-04-10 22:47:14:366 956 168 AU No featured updates notifications to show 2012-04-10 22:47:14:366 956 168 AU UpdateDownloadProperties: 0 download(s) are still in progress. 2012-04-10 22:47:14:366 956 168 AU Triggering Offline detection (non-interactive) 2012-04-10 22:47:14:366 956 168 AU AU setting pending client directive to 'Install Complete Ux' 2012-04-10 22:47:14:366 956 168 AU Changing existing AU client directive from 'Progress Ux' to 'Install Complete Ux', session id = 0x1 2012-04-10 22:47:14:366 956 168 AU Successfully wrote event for AU health state:0 2012-04-10 22:47:14:366 956 b78 AU ############# 2012-04-10 22:47:14:366 956 b78 AU ## START ## AU: Search for updates 2012-04-10 22:47:14:366 956 b78 AU ######### 2012-04-10 22:47:14:366 956 b78 AU ## RESUMED ## AU: Search for updates [CallId = {0198DD3A-D7B0-48F5-A77D-795F8A1BDCE8}] 2012-04-10 22:47:16:097 956 718 AU # 1 updates detected 2012-04-10 22:47:16:097 956 718 AU ######### 2012-04-10 22:47:16:097 956 718 AU ## END ## AU: Search for updates [CallId = {0198DD3A-D7B0-48F5-A77D-795F8A1BDCE8}] 2012-04-10 22:47:16:097 956 718 AU ############# 2012-04-10 22:47:16:097 956 718 AU No featured updates notifications to show 2012-04-10 22:47:16:097 956 718 AU Setting AU scheduled install time to 2012-04-11 01:00:00 2012-04-10 22:47:16:097 956 718 AU Successfully wrote event for AU health state:0 2012-04-10 22:47:16:097 956 718 AU Successfully wrote event for AU health state:0 2012-04-10 22:47:16:113 956 55c AU Getting featured update notifications. fIncludeDismissed = true 2012-04-10 22:47:16:113 956 55c AU No featured updates available. 2012-04-10 22:47:18:780 956 bb8 Report REPORT EVENT: {27479C66-E930-4F9C-AFF2-27EDD76DED8F} 2012-04-10 22:47:13:773+0200 1 182 101 {B33ACEC1-3265-4D01-9C37-AC0892E95ED9} 100 80070643 AutomaticUpdates Failure Content Install Installation Failure: Windows failed to install the following update with error 0x80070643: Windows Internet Explorer 9 for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems. 2012-04-10 22:47:18:780 956 bb8 Report CWERReporter::HandleEvents - WER report upload completed with status 0x8 2012-04-10 22:47:18:780 956 bb8 Report WER Report sent: 7.5.7601.17514 0x80070643 B33ACEC1-3265-4D01-9C37-AC0892E95ED9 Install 101 Unmanaged 2012-04-10 22:47:18:780 956 bb8 Report CWERReporter finishing event handling. (00000000) WU-IE9-Windows7-x64.exe The actual update that is executed is downloaded and stored at the following location: C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download\Install\WU-IE9-Windows7-x64.exe Executing that file manually, results in the following error message: IE9_main.log The IE9 installer/updater also creates an own log file located at C:\Windows\IE9_main.log For the update session in question, the installer logged: 00:00.000: ==================================================================== 00:00.016: Started: 2012/04/10 (Y/M/D) 23:10:53.897 (local) 00:00.032: Time Format in this log: MM:ss.mmm (minutes:seconds.milliseconds) 00:00.063: Command line: "C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download\Install\WU-IE9-Windows7-x64.exe" 00:00.078: INFO: Setup installer for Internet Explorer: 9.0.8112.16421 00:00.094: INFO: Previous version of Internet Explorer: 9.0.8112.16443 00:00.110: INFO: Checking if iexplore.exe's current version is between 9.0.6001.0... 00:00.125: INFO: ...and 9.1.0.0... 00:00.141: INFO: Maximum version on which to run IEAK branding is: 9.1.0.0... 00:00.156: ERROR: A newer version of Internet Explorer is already installed on the system. 00:00.188: ERROR: Internet Explorer version check failed. 01:03.789: INFO: Setup exit code: 0x00009C48 (40008) - A more recent version of Internet Explorer is installed. 01:03.820: INFO: Scheduling upload to IE SQM server: http://sqm.microsoft.com/sqm/ie/sqmserver.dll 01:03.852: INFO: SQM Upload returned 403 01:03.867: INFO: Cleaning up temporary files in: C:\Windows\TEMP\IE978E.tmp 01:03.883: INFO: Unable to remove directory C:\Windows\TEMP\IE978E.tmp, marking for deletion on reboot. 01:03.898: INFO: Released Internet Explorer Installer Mutex Which pretty much confirms what the error message says when executing the update manually; it's simply already installed or even obsolete because a newer version is installed. So, why does it try to keep installing the update? Possible solutions? Uninstalling Windows Internet Explorer 9 and manually installing the cached C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download\Install\WU-IE9-Windows7-x64.exe will result in the same error after applying all pending updates. Applying the FixIt for the issue You receive “0x80070643” or “0x643” error codes when you try to install .NET Framework updates through Windows Update or Microsoft Updates will not resolve the issue. Applying the suggested solution for the issue Error message when you try to install updates by using the Windows Update or Microsoft Update Web site: "0x80070003" will not resolve the issue. Running the FixIt Automatically diagnose and fix common problems with Windows Update does report having resolved issues with Windows Update, but didn't resolve the issue. Running the FixIt for the issue How to troubleshoot Windows Update or Microsoft Update when you are repeatedly offered an update does not resolve the issue. Neither with normal nor with aggressive settings.

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• Varnish default.vcl grace period

  - by Vladimir

  These are my settings for a grace period (/etc/varnish/default.vcl) sub vcl_recv { .... set req.grace = 360000s; ... } sub vcl_fetch { ... set beresp.grace = 360000s; ... } I tested Varnish using localhost and nodejs as a server. I started localhost, the site was up. Then I disconnected server and the site got disconnected in less than 2 min. It says: Error 503 Service Unavailable Service Unavailable Guru Meditation: XID: 1890127100 Varnish cache server Could you tell me what could be the problem? sub vcl_fetch { if (beresp.ttl < 120s) { ##std.log("Adjusting TTL"); set beresp.ttl = 36000s; ##120s; } # Do not cache the object if the backend application does not want us to. if (beresp.http.Cache-Control ~ "(no-cache|no-store|private|must-revalidate)") { return(hit_for_pass); } # Do not cache the object if the status is not in the 200s if (beresp.status >= 300) { # Remove the Set-Cookie header #remove beresp.http.Set-Cookie; return(hit_for_pass); } # # Everything below here should be cached # # Remove the Set-Cookie header ####remove beresp.http.Set-Cookie; # Set the grace time ## set beresp.grace = 1s; //change this to minutes in case of app shutdown set beresp.grace = 360000s; ## 10 hour - reduce if it has negative impact # Static assets - browser caches tpiphem for a long time. if (req.url ~ "\.(css|js|.js|jpg|jpeg|gif|ico|png)\??\d*$") { /* Remove Expires from backend, it's not long enough */ unset beresp.http.expires; /* Set the clients TTL on this object */ set beresp.http.cache-control = "public, max-age=31536000"; /* marker for vcl_deliver to reset Age: */ set beresp.http.magicmarker = "1"; } else { set beresp.http.Cache-Control = "private, max-age=0, must-revalidate"; set beresp.http.Pragma = "no-cache"; } if (req.url ~ "\.(css|js|min|)\??\d*$") { set beresp.do_gzip = true; unset beresp.http.expires; set beresp.http.cache-control = "public, max-age=31536000"; set beresp.http.expires = beresp.ttl; set beresp.http.age = "0"; } ##do not duplicate these settings if (req.url ~ ".css") { set beresp.do_gzip = true; unset beresp.http.expires; set beresp.http.cache-control = "public, max-age=31536000"; set beresp.http.expires = beresp.ttl; set beresp.http.age = "0"; } if (req.url ~ ".js") { set beresp.do_gzip = true; unset beresp.http.expires; set beresp.http.cache-control = "public, max-age=31536000"; set beresp.http.expires = beresp.ttl; set beresp.http.age = "0"; } if (req.url ~ ".min") { set beresp.do_gzip = true; unset beresp.http.expires; set beresp.http.cache-control = "public, max-age=31536000"; set beresp.http.expires = beresp.ttl; set beresp.http.age = "0"; } ## If the request to the backend returns a code other than 200, restart the loop ## If the number of restarts reaches the value of the parameter max_restarts, ## the request will be error'ed. max_restarts defaults to 4. This prevents ## an eternal loop in the event that, e.g., the object does not exist at all. if (beresp.status != 200 && beresp.status != 403 && beresp.status != 404) { return(restart); } if (beresp.status == 302) { return(deliver); } # Never cache posts if (req.url ~ "\/post\/" || req.url ~ "\/submit\/" || req.url ~ "\/ask\/" || req.url ~ "\/add\/") { return(hit_for_pass); } ##check this setting to ensure that it does not cause issues for browsers with no gzip if (beresp.http.content-type ~ "text") { set beresp.do_gzip = true; } if (beresp.http.Set-Cookie) { return(deliver); } ##if (req.url == "/index.html") { set beresp.do_esi = true; ##} ## check if this is needed or should be used # return(deliver); the object return(deliver); } sub vcl_recv { ##avoid leeching of images call hot_link; set req.grace = 360000s; ##2m ## if one backend is down - use another if (req.restarts == 0) { set req.backend = cache_director; ##we can specify individual VMs } else if (req.restarts == 1) { set req.backend = cache_director; } ## post calls should not be cached - add cookie for these requests if using micro-caching # Pass requests that are not GET or HEAD if (req.request != "GET" && req.request != "HEAD") { return(pass); ## return(pass) goes to backend - not cache } # Don't cache the result of a redirect if (req.http.Referer ~ "redir" || req.http.Origin ~ "jumpto") { return(pass); } # Don't cache the result of a redirect (asking for logon) if (req.http.Referer ~ "post" || req.http.Referer ~ "submit" || req.http.Referer ~ "add" || req.http.Referer ~ "ask") { return(pass); } # Never cache posts - ensure that we do not use these strings in our URLs' that need to be cached if (req.url ~ "\/post\/" || req.url ~ "\/submit\/" || req.url ~ "\/ask\/" || req.url ~ "\/add\/") { return(pass); } ## if (req.http.Authorization || req.http.Cookie) { if (req.http.Authorization) { /* Not cacheable by default */ return (pass); } # Handle compression correctly. Different browsers send different # "Accept-Encoding" headers, even though they mostly all support the same # compression mechanisms. By consolidating these compression headers into # a consistent format, we can reduce the size of the cache and get more hits. # @see: http:// varnish.projects.linpro.no/wiki/FAQ/Compression if (req.http.Accept-Encoding) { if (req.url ~ "\.(jpg|png|gif|gz|tgz|bz2|tbz|mp3|ogg|ico)$") { # No point in compressing these remove req.http.Accept-Encoding; } else if (req.http.Accept-Encoding ~ "gzip") { # If the browser supports it, we'll use gzip. set req.http.Accept-Encoding = "gzip"; } else if (req.http.Accept-Encoding ~ "deflate") { # Next, try deflate if it is supported. set req.http.Accept-Encoding = "deflate"; } else { # Unknown algorithm. Remove it and send unencoded. unset req.http.Accept-Encoding; } } # lookup graphics, css, js & ico files in the cache if (req.url ~ "\.(png|gif|jpg|jpeg|css|.js|ico)$") { return(lookup); } ##added on 0918 - check if it causes issues with user specific content if (req.request == "GET" && req.http.cookie) { return(lookup); } # Pipe requests that are non-RFC2616 or CONNECT which is weird. if (req.request != "GET" && req.request != "HEAD" && req.request != "PUT" && req.request != "POST" && req.request != "TRACE" && req.request != "OPTIONS" && req.request != "DELETE") { ##closing connection and calling pipe return(pipe); } ##purge content via localhost only if (req.request == "PURGE") { if (!client.ip ~ purge) { error 405 "Not allowed."; } return(lookup); } ## do we need this? ## return(lookup); }

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• Multiple routers, subnets, gateways etc

  - by allentown

  My current setup is: Cable modem dishes out 13 static IP's (/28), a GB switch is plugged into the cable modem, and has access to those 13 static IP's, I have about 6 "servers" in use right now. The cable modem is also a firewall, DHCP server, and 3 port 10/100 switch. I am using it as a firewall, but not currently as a DHCP server. I have plugged into the cable modem, two network cables, one which goes to the WAN port of a Linksys Dual Band Wireless 10/100/1000 router/switch. Into the linksys are a few workstations, a few printers, and some laptops connecting to wifi. I set the Linksys to use take static IP, and enabled DHCP for the workstations, printers, etc in 192.168.1.1/24. The network for the Linksys is mostly self contained, backups go to a SAN, on that network, it all happens through that switch, over GB. But I also get internet access from it as well via the cable modem using one static IP. This all works, however, I can not "see" the static IP machines when I am on the Linksys. I can get to them via ssh and other protocols, and if I want to from "outside", I open holes, like 80, 25, 587, 143, 22, etc. The second wire, from the cable modem/fireall/switch just uplinks to the managed GB switch. What are the pros and cons of this? I do not like giving up the static IP to the Linksys. I basically have a mixed network of public servers, and internal workstations. I want the public servers on public IP's because I do not want to mess with port forwarding and mappings. Is it correct also, that if someone breaches the Linksys wifi, they still would have a hard time getting to the static IP range, just by nature of the network topology? Today, just for a test, I toggled on the DHCP in the firewall/cable modem at 10.1.10.1/24 range, the Linksys is n the 192.168.1.100/24 range. At that point, all the static IP machines still had in and out access, but Linksys was unreachable. The cable modem only has 10/100 ports, so I will not plug anything but the network drop into it, which is 50Mb/10Mb. Which makes me think this could be less than ideal, as transfers from the workstation network to the server network will be bottlenecked at 100Mb when I have 1000Mb available. I may not need to solve that, if isolation is better though. I do not move a lot of data, if any, from Linsys network to server network, so for it to pretend to be remote is ok. Should I approach this any different? I could enable DHCP on the cable modem/firewall, it should still send out the statics to the GB switch, but will also be a DHCP in 10.1.10.1/24 range? I can then plug the Linksys into the GB switch, which is now picking up statics and the 10.1.10.1/24 ranges, tell the Linksys to use 10.1.10.5 or so. Now, do I disable DHCP on the Linksys, and the cable modem/firewall will pass through the statics and 10.0.10.1/24 ranges as well? Or, could I open a second DHCP pool on the Linksys? I guess doing so gives me network isolation again, but it is just the reverse of what I have now. But I get out of the bottleneck, not that the Linksys could ever really touch real GB speeds anyway, but the managed switch certainly can. This is all because 13 statics are not that many. Right now, 6 "servers", the Linksys, a managed switch, a few SSL certs, and I am running out. I do not want to waste a static IP on the managed GB switch, or the Linksys, unless it provides me some type of benefit. Final question, under my current setup, if I am on a workstation, sitting at 192.168.1.109, the Linksys, with GB, and I send a file over ssh to the static IP machine, is that literally leaving the internet, and coming back in, or does it stay local? To me it seems like: Workstation (192.168.1.109) -> Linksys DHCP -> Linksys Static IP -> Cable Modem -> Server ( and it hits the 10/100 ports on the cable modem, slowing me down. But does it round trip the network, leave and come back in, limiting me to the 50/10 internet speeds? *These are all made up numbers, I do not use default router IP's as I will one day add a VPN, and do not want collisions. I need some recommendations, do I want one big network, or two isolated ones. Printers these days need an IP, everything does, I can not get autoconf/bonjour to be reliable on most printers. but I am also not sure I want the "server" side of my operation to be polluted by the workstation side of my operation. Unless there is some magic subetting I have not learned yet, here is what I am thinking: Cable modem 10/100, has 13 static IP, publicly accessible -> Enable DHCP on the cable modem -> Cable modem plugs into managed switch -> Managed switch gets 10.1.10.1 ssh, telnet, https admin management address -> Managed switch sends static IP's to to servers -> Plug Linksys into managed switch, giving it 10.1.10.2 static internally in Linksys admin -> Linksys gets assigned 10.1.10.x as its DHCP sending range -> Local printers, workstations, iPhones etc, connect to this -> ( Do I enable DHCP or disable it on the Linksys, just define a non over lapping range, or create an entirely new DHCP at 10.1.50.0/24, I think I am back isolated again with that method too? ) Thank you for any suggestions. This is the first time I have had to deal with less than a /24, and most are larger than that, but it is just a drop to a cabinet. Otherwise, it's a router, a few repeaters, and soho stuff that is simple, with one IP. I know a few may suggest going all DHCP on the servers, and I may one day, just not now, there has been too much moving of gear for me to be interested in that, and I would want something in the Catalyst series to deal with that.

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• Optimize php-fpm and varnish for a powerfull server

  - by Jim

  My setup is: Intel® Core™ i7-2600 and RAM 16 GB DDR3 RAM varnish+nginx+php-fpm+apc for a not very heavy WordPress blog with W3 Total Cache and CDN My problem is that after 55 hits per second according to blitz.io varnish starts giving out timeouts. CPU usage at this time is hardly 1%. Free memory at all time remains 10GB+. I tried benchmarking php-fpm directly with result of 150hits/s without any timeouts. But after that the CPU usage goes 100% and it stops responding. Can you help me optimize it to handle more? As i understand nginx has nothing to do over here so i dont put its config. php-fpm config listen = /tmp/php5-fpm.sock listen.allowed_clients = 127.0.0.1 user = nginx group = nginx pm = dynamic pm.max_children = 150 pm.start_servers = 7 pm.min_spare_servers = 2 pm.max_spare_servers = 15 pm.max_requests = 500 slowlog = /var/log/php-fpm/www-slow.log php_admin_value[error_log] = /var/log/php-fpm/www-error.log php_admin_flag[log_errors] = on apc extension = apc.so apc.enabled=1 apc.shm_size=512MB apc.num_files_hint=0 apc.user_entries_hint=0 apc.ttl=7200 apc.use_request_time=1 apc.user_ttl=7200 apc.gc_ttl=3600 apc.cache_by_default=1 apc.filters apc.mmap_file_mask=/tmp/apc.XXXXXX apc.file_update_protection=2 apc.enable_cli=0 apc.max_file_size=1M apc.stat=1 apc.stat_ctime=0 apc.canonicalize=0 apc.write_lock=1 apc.report_autofilter=0 apc.rfc1867=0 apc.rfc1867_prefix =upload_ apc.rfc1867_name=APC_UPLOAD_PROGRESS apc.rfc1867_freq=0 apc.rfc1867_ttl=3600 apc.include_once_override=0 apc.lazy_classes=0 apc.lazy_functions=0 apc.coredump_unmap=0 apc.file_md5=0 apc.preload_path Varnish VCL backend default { .host = "127.0.0.1"; .port = "8080"; .connect_timeout = 6s; .first_byte_timeout = 6s; .between_bytes_timeout = 60s; } acl purgehosts { "localhost"; "127.0.0.1"; } # Called after a document has been successfully retrieved from the backend. sub vcl_fetch { # Uncomment to make the default cache "time to live" is 5 minutes, handy # but it may cache stale pages unless purged. (TODO) # By default Varnish will use the headers sent to it by Apache (the backend server) # to figure out the correct TTL. # WP Super Cache sends a TTL of 3 seconds, set in wp-content/cache/.htaccess set beresp.ttl = 24h; # Strip cookies for static files and set a long cache expiry time. if (req.url ~ "\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|css|zip|tgz|gz|rar|bz2|pdf|txt|tar|wav|bmp|rtf|js|flv|swf|html|htm)$") { unset beresp.http.set-cookie; set beresp.ttl = 24h; } # If WordPress cookies found then page is not cacheable if (req.http.Cookie ~"(wp-postpass|wordpress_logged_in|comment_author_)") { # set beresp.cacheable = false;#versions less than 3 #beresp.ttl>0 is cacheable so 0 will not be cached set beresp.ttl = 0s; } else { #set beresp.cacheable = true; set beresp.ttl=24h;#cache for 24hrs } # Varnish determined the object was not cacheable #if ttl is not > 0 seconds then it is cachebale if (!beresp.ttl > 0s) { # set beresp.http.X-Cacheable = "NO:Not Cacheable"; } else if ( req.http.Cookie ~"(wp-postpass|wordpress_logged_in|comment_author_)" ) { # You don't wish to cache content for logged in users set beresp.http.X-Cacheable = "NO:Got Session"; return(hit_for_pass); #previously just pass but changed in v3+ } else if ( beresp.http.Cache-Control ~ "private") { # You are respecting the Cache-Control=private header from the backend set beresp.http.X-Cacheable = "NO:Cache-Control=private"; return(hit_for_pass); } else if ( beresp.ttl < 1s ) { # You are extending the lifetime of the object artificially set beresp.ttl = 300s; set beresp.grace = 300s; set beresp.http.X-Cacheable = "YES:Forced"; } else { # Varnish determined the object was cacheable set beresp.http.X-Cacheable = "YES"; if (beresp.status == 404 || beresp.status >= 500) { set beresp.ttl = 0s; } # Deliver the content return(deliver); } sub vcl_hash { # Each cached page has to be identified by a key that unlocks it. # Add the browser cookie only if a WordPress cookie found. if ( req.http.Cookie ~"(wp-postpass|wordpress_logged_in|comment_author_)" ) { #set req.hash += req.http.Cookie; hash_data(req.http.Cookie); } } # vcl_recv is called whenever a request is received sub vcl_recv { # remove ?ver=xxxxx strings from urls so css and js files are cached. # Watch out when upgrading WordPress, need to restart Varnish or flush cache. set req.url = regsub(req.url, "\?ver=.*$", ""); # Remove "replytocom" from requests to make caching better. set req.url = regsub(req.url, "\?replytocom=.*$", ""); remove req.http.X-Forwarded-For; set req.http.X-Forwarded-For = client.ip; # Exclude this site because it breaks if cached if ( req.http.host == "sr.ituts.gr" ) { return( pass ); } # Serve objects up to 2 minutes past their expiry if the backend is slow to respond. set req.grace = 120s; # Strip cookies for static files: if (req.url ~ "\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|css|zip|tgz|gz|rar|bz2|pdf|txt|tar|wav|bmp|rtf|js|flv|swf|html|htm)$") { unset req.http.Cookie; return(lookup); } # Remove has_js and Google Analytics __* cookies. set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, "(^|;\s*)(__[a-z]+|has_js)=[^;]*", ""); # Remove a ";" prefix, if present. set req.http.Cookie = regsub(req.http.Cookie, "^;\s*", ""); # Remove empty cookies. if (req.http.Cookie ~ "^\s*$") { unset req.http.Cookie; } if (req.request == "PURGE") { if (!client.ip ~ purgehosts) { error 405 "Not allowed."; } #previous version ban() was purge() ban("req.url ~ " + req.url + " && req.http.host == " + req.http.host); error 200 "Purged."; } # Pass anything other than GET and HEAD directly. if (req.request != "GET" && req.request != "HEAD") { return( pass ); } /* We only deal with GET and HEAD by default */ # remove cookies for comments cookie to make caching better. set req.http.cookie = regsub(req.http.cookie, "1231111111111111122222222333333=[^;]+(; )?", ""); # never cache the admin pages, or the server-status page, or your feed? you may want to..i don't if (req.request == "GET" && (req.url ~ "(wp-admin|bb-admin|server-status|feed)")) { return(pipe); } # don't cache authenticated sessions if (req.http.Cookie && req.http.Cookie ~ "(wordpress_|PHPSESSID)") { return(lookup); } # don't cache ajax requests if(req.http.X-Requested-With == "XMLHttpRequest" || req.url ~ "nocache" || req.url ~ "(control.php|wp-comments-post.php|wp-login.php|bb-login.php|bb-reset-password.php|register.php)") { return (pass); } return( lookup ); } Varnish Daemon options DAEMON_OPTS="-a :80 \ -T 127.0.0.1:6082 \ -f /etc/varnish/ituts.vcl \ -u varnish -g varnish \ -S /etc/varnish/secret \ -p thread_pool_add_delay=2 \ -p thread_pools=8 \ -p thread_pool_min=100 \ -p thread_pool_max=1000 \ -p session_linger=50 \ -p session_max=150000 \ -p sess_workspace=262144 \ -s malloc,5G" Im not sure where to start, should i for start optimize php-fpm and then go to varnish or php-fpm is at its max right now so i should start looking for the problem in varnish?

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• Slow filesystem access

  - by danneh3826

  I'm trying to diagnose a slow filesystem issue on a server I look after. It's been ongoing for quite some time, and I've run out of ideas as to what I can try. Here's the thick of it. The server itself is a Dell Poweredge T310. It has 4 SAS hard drives in it, configured at RAID5, and is running Citrix XenServer 5.6. The VM is a (relatively) old Debian 5.0.6 installation. It's given 4 cores, and 4Gb's of RAM. It has 3 volumes. A 10Gb volume (ext3) for the system, 980Gb volume (xfs) for data (~94% full), and another 200Gb volume (xfs) for data (~13% full). Now here's the weird thing. Read/write access to the 980Gb volume is really slow. I might get 5Mb/s out of it if I'm lucky. At first I figured it was actually disk access in the system, or at a hypervisor level, but ruled that out entirely as other VMs on the same host are running perfectly fine (a good couple hundred Mb/s disk r/w access). So then I started to target this particular VM. I started thinking it was XFS, but to prove it I wasn't going to attempt to change the filesystem on the 980Gb drive, with years and years of billions of files on there. So I provisioned the 200Gb drive, and did the same read/write test (basically dd), and got a good couple hundred Mb/s r/w access to it. So that ruled out the VM, the hardware, and the filesystem type. There's also a lot of these in /var/log/kern.log; (sorry, this is quite long) Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564689] httpd: page allocation failure. order:5, mode:0x4020 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564693] Pid: 7318, comm: httpd Not tainted 2.6.32-4-686-bigmem #1 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564696] Call Trace: Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564705] [<c1092a4d>] ? __alloc_pages_nodemask+0x476/0x4e0 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564711] [<c1092ac3>] ? __get_free_pages+0xc/0x17 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564716] [<c10b632e>] ? __kmalloc+0x30/0x128 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564722] [<c11dd774>] ? pskb_expand_head+0x4f/0x157 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564727] [<c11ddbbf>] ? __pskb_pull_tail+0x41/0x1fb Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564732] [<c11e4882>] ? dev_queue_xmit+0xe4/0x38e Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564738] [<c1205902>] ? ip_finish_output+0x0/0x5c Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564742] [<c12058c7>] ? ip_finish_output2+0x187/0x1c2 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564747] [<c1204dc8>] ? ip_local_out+0x15/0x17 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564751] [<c12055a9>] ? ip_queue_xmit+0x31e/0x379 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564758] [<c1279a90>] ? _spin_lock_bh+0x8/0x1e Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564767] [<eda15a8d>] ? __nf_ct_refresh_acct+0x66/0xa4 [nf_conntrack] Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564773] [<c103bf42>] ? _local_bh_enable_ip+0x16/0x6e Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564779] [<c1214593>] ? tcp_transmit_skb+0x595/0x5cc Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564785] [<c1005c4f>] ? xen_restore_fl_direct_end+0x0/0x1 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564791] [<c12165ea>] ? tcp_write_xmit+0x7a3/0x874 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564796] [<c121203a>] ? tcp_ack+0x1611/0x1802 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564801] [<c10055ec>] ? xen_force_evtchn_callback+0xc/0x10 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564806] [<c121392f>] ? tcp_established_options+0x1d/0x8b Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564811] [<c1213be4>] ? tcp_current_mss+0x38/0x53 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564816] [<c1216701>] ? __tcp_push_pending_frames+0x1e/0x50 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564821] [<c1212246>] ? tcp_data_snd_check+0x1b/0xd2 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564825] [<c1212de3>] ? tcp_rcv_established+0x5d0/0x626 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564831] [<c121902c>] ? tcp_v4_do_rcv+0x15f/0x2cf Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564835] [<c1219561>] ? tcp_v4_rcv+0x3c5/0x5c0 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564841] [<c120197e>] ? ip_local_deliver_finish+0x10c/0x18c Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564846] [<c12015a4>] ? ip_rcv_finish+0x2c4/0x2d8 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564852] [<c11e3b71>] ? netif_receive_skb+0x3bb/0x3d6 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564864] [<ed823efc>] ? xennet_poll+0x9b8/0xafc [xen_netfront] Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564869] [<c11e40ee>] ? net_rx_action+0x96/0x194 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564874] [<c103bd4c>] ? __do_softirq+0xaa/0x151 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564878] [<c103be24>] ? do_softirq+0x31/0x3c Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564883] [<c103befa>] ? irq_exit+0x26/0x58 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564890] [<c118ff9f>] ? xen_evtchn_do_upcall+0x12c/0x13e Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564896] [<c1008c3f>] ? xen_do_upcall+0x7/0xc Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564899] Mem-Info: Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564902] DMA per-cpu: Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564905] CPU 0: hi: 0, btch: 1 usd: 0 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564908] CPU 1: hi: 0, btch: 1 usd: 0 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564911] CPU 2: hi: 0, btch: 1 usd: 0 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564914] CPU 3: hi: 0, btch: 1 usd: 0 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564916] Normal per-cpu: Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564919] CPU 0: hi: 186, btch: 31 usd: 175 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564922] CPU 1: hi: 186, btch: 31 usd: 165 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564925] CPU 2: hi: 186, btch: 31 usd: 30 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564928] CPU 3: hi: 186, btch: 31 usd: 140 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564931] HighMem per-cpu: Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564933] CPU 0: hi: 186, btch: 31 usd: 159 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564936] CPU 1: hi: 186, btch: 31 usd: 22 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564939] CPU 2: hi: 186, btch: 31 usd: 24 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564942] CPU 3: hi: 186, btch: 31 usd: 13 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564947] active_anon:485974 inactive_anon:121138 isolated_anon:0 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564948] active_file:75215 inactive_file:79510 isolated_file:0 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564949] unevictable:0 dirty:516 writeback:15 unstable:0 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564950] free:230770 slab_reclaimable:36661 slab_unreclaimable:21249 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564952] mapped:20016 shmem:29450 pagetables:5600 bounce:0 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564958] DMA free:2884kB min:72kB low:88kB high:108kB active_anon:0kB inactive_anon:0kB active_file:5692kB inactive_file:724kB unevictable:0kB isolated(anon):0kB isolated(file):0kB present:15872kB mlocked:0kB dirty:8kB writeback:0kB mapped:0kB shmem:0kB slab_reclaimable:5112kB slab_unreclaimable:156kB kernel_stack:56kB pagetables:0kB unstable:0kB bounce:0kB writeback_tmp:0kB pages_scanned:0 all_unreclaimable? no Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564964] lowmem_reserve[]: 0 698 4143 4143 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564977] Normal free:143468kB min:3344kB low:4180kB high:5016kB active_anon:56kB inactive_anon:2068kB active_file:131812kB inactive_file:131728kB unevictable:0kB isolated(anon):0kB isolated(file):0kB present:715256kB mlocked:0kB dirty:156kB writeback:0kB mapped:308kB shmem:4kB slab_reclaimable:141532kB slab_unreclaimable:84840kB kernel_stack:1928kB pagetables:22400kB unstable:0kB bounce:0kB writeback_tmp:0kB pages_scanned:0 all_unreclaimable? no Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564983] lowmem_reserve[]: 0 0 27559 27559 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.564995] HighMem free:776728kB min:512kB low:4636kB high:8760kB active_anon:1943840kB inactive_anon:482484kB active_file:163356kB inactive_file:185588kB unevictable:0kB isolated(anon):0kB isolated(file):0kB present:3527556kB mlocked:0kB dirty:1900kB writeback:60kB mapped:79756kB shmem:117796kB slab_reclaimable:0kB slab_unreclaimable:0kB kernel_stack:0kB pagetables:0kB unstable:0kB bounce:0kB writeback_tmp:0kB pages_scanned:0 all_unreclaimable? no Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.565001] lowmem_reserve[]: 0 0 0 0 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.565011] DMA: 385*4kB 16*8kB 3*16kB 9*32kB 6*64kB 2*128kB 1*256kB 0*512kB 0*1024kB 0*2048kB 0*4096kB = 2900kB Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.565032] Normal: 21505*4kB 6508*8kB 273*16kB 24*32kB 3*64kB 0*128kB 0*256kB 0*512kB 0*1024kB 0*2048kB 0*4096kB = 143412kB Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.565054] HighMem: 949*4kB 8859*8kB 7063*16kB 6186*32kB 4631*64kB 727*128kB 6*256kB 0*512kB 0*1024kB 0*2048kB 0*4096kB = 776604kB Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.565076] 198980 total pagecache pages Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.565079] 14850 pages in swap cache Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.565082] Swap cache stats: add 2556273, delete 2541423, find 82961339/83153719 Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.565085] Free swap = 250592kB Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.565087] Total swap = 385520kB Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.575454] 1073152 pages RAM Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.575458] 888834 pages HighMem Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.575461] 11344 pages reserved Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.575463] 1090481 pages shared Sep 4 10:16:59 uriel kernel: [32571790.575465] 737188 pages non-shared Now, I've no idea what this means. There's plenty of free memory; total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 4247232 3455904 791328 0 5348 736412 -/+ buffers/cache: 2714144 1533088 Swap: 385520 131004 254516 Though now I see the swap is relatively low in size, but would that matter? I've been starting to think about fragmentation, or inode usage on that large partition, but a recent fsck on it showed is as only like 0.5% fragmented. Which leaves me with inode usage, but how much of an effect really would a large inode table or filesystem TOC have? I've love to hear people's opinions on this. It's driving me potty! df -h output; Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/xvda1 9.5G 6.6G 2.4G 74% / tmpfs 2.1G 0 2.1G 0% /lib/init/rw udev 10M 520K 9.5M 6% /dev tmpfs 2.1G 0 2.1G 0% /dev/shm /dev/xvdb 980G 921G 59G 94% /data

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• Why is Varnish not caching?

  - by Justin

  I am troubleshooting the setup of Varnish 3.x on my Ubuntu server. I'm running Drupal 7 on two sites set up on the box, via named-based vhosts. Before trying to get Varnish to play nice with Drupal I'm trying to just get Varnish to a PNG from cache. Here are the headers I get from a curl -I request of the PNG file: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: Apache/2.2.22 (Ubuntu) Last-Modified: Sun, 07 Oct 2012 21:18:59 GMT ETag: "a57c2-3850-4cb7ea73db6c0" Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 14416 Cache-Control: max-age=1209600 Expires: Thu, 25 Oct 2012 22:55:14 GMT Content-Type: image/png Accept-Ranges: bytes Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2012 22:55:14 GMT X-Varnish: 1766703058 Age: 0 Via: 1.1 varnish Connection: keep-alive X-Varnish-Cache: MISS Here is the Varnish VCL file I'm using (It's a default VCL configuration designed for Drupal): # Default backend definition. Set this to point to your content # server. # backend default { .host = "127.0.0.1"; .port = "8080"; } # Respond to incoming requests. sub vcl_recv { # Use anonymous, cached pages if all backends are down. if (!req.backend.healthy) { unset req.http.Cookie; } # Allow the backend to serve up stale content if it is responding slowly. set req.grace = 6h; # Pipe these paths directly to Apache for streaming. #if (req.url ~ "^/admin/content/backup_migrate/export") { # return (pipe); #} # Do not cache these paths. if (req.url ~ "^/status\.php$" || req.url ~ "^/update\.php$" || req.url ~ "^/admin$" || req.url ~ "^/admin/.*$" || req.url ~ "^/flag/.*$" || req.url ~ "^.*/ajax/.*$" || req.url ~ "^.*/ahah/.*$") { return (pass); } # Do not allow outside access to cron.php or install.php. #if (req.url ~ "^/(cron|install)\.php$" && !client.ip ~ internal) { # Have Varnish throw the error directly. # error 404 "Page not found."; # Use a custom error page that you've defined in Drupal at the path "404". # set req.url = "/404"; #} # Always cache the following file types for all users. This list of extensions # appears twice, once here and again in vcl_fetch so make sure you edit both # and keep them equal. if (req.url ~ "(?i)\.(pdf|asc|dat|txt|doc|xls|ppt|tgz|csv|png|gif|jpeg|jpg|ico|swf|css|js)(\?.*)?$") { unset req.http.Cookie; } # Remove all cookies that Drupal doesn't need to know about. We explicitly # list the ones that Drupal does need, the SESS and NO_CACHE. If, after # running this code we find that either of these two cookies remains, we # will pass as the page cannot be cached. if (req.http.Cookie) { # 1. Append a semi-colon to the front of the cookie string. # 2. Remove all spaces that appear after semi-colons. # 3. Match the cookies we want to keep, adding the space we removed # previously back. (\1) is first matching group in the regsuball. # 4. Remove all other cookies, identifying them by the fact that they have # no space after the preceding semi-colon. # 5. Remove all spaces and semi-colons from the beginning and end of the # cookie string. set req.http.Cookie = ";" + req.http.Cookie; set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, "; +", ";"); set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, ";(SESS[a-z0-9]+|SSESS[a-z0-9]+|NO_CACHE)=", "; \1="); set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, ";[^ ][^;]*", ""); set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, "^[; ]+|[; ]+$", ""); if (req.http.Cookie == "") { # If there are no remaining cookies, remove the cookie header. If there # aren't any cookie headers, Varnish's default behavior will be to cache # the page. unset req.http.Cookie; } else { # If there is any cookies left (a session or NO_CACHE cookie), do not # cache the page. Pass it on to Apache directly. return (pass); } } } # Set a header to track a cache HIT/MISS. sub vcl_deliver { if (obj.hits > 0) { set resp.http.X-Varnish-Cache = "HIT"; } else { set resp.http.X-Varnish-Cache = "MISS"; } } # Code determining what to do when serving items from the Apache servers. # beresp == Back-end response from the web server. sub vcl_fetch { # We need this to cache 404s, 301s, 500s. Otherwise, depending on backend but # definitely in Drupal's case these responses are not cacheable by default. if (beresp.status == 404 || beresp.status == 301 || beresp.status == 500) { set beresp.ttl = 10m; } # Don't allow static files to set cookies. # (?i) denotes case insensitive in PCRE (perl compatible regular expressions). # This list of extensions appears twice, once here and again in vcl_recv so # make sure you edit both and keep them equal. if (req.url ~ "(?i)\.(pdf|asc|dat|txt|doc|xls|ppt|tgz|csv|png|gif|jpeg|jpg|ico|swf|css|js)(\?.*)?$") { unset beresp.http.set-cookie; } # Allow items to be stale if needed. set beresp.grace = 6h; } # In the event of an error, show friendlier messages. sub vcl_error { # Redirect to some other URL in the case of a homepage failure. #if (req.url ~ "^/?$") { # set obj.status = 302; # set obj.http.Location = "http://backup.example.com/"; #} # Otherwise redirect to the homepage, which will likely be in the cache. set obj.http.Content-Type = "text/html; charset=utf-8"; synthetic {" <html> <head> <title>Page Unavailable</title> <style> body { background: #303030; text-align: center; color: white; } #page { border: 1px solid #CCC; width: 500px; margin: 100px auto 0; padding: 30px; background: #323232; } a, a:link, a:visited { color: #CCC; } .error { color: #222; } </style> </head> <body onload="setTimeout(function() { window.location = '/' }, 5000)"> <div id="page"> <h1 class="title">Page Unavailable</h1> <p>The page you requested is temporarily unavailable.</p> <p>We're redirecting you to the <a href="/">homepage</a> in 5 seconds.</p> <div class="error">(Error "} + obj.status + " " + obj.response + {")</div> </div> </body> </html> "}; return (deliver); } I'm getting a MISS and age 0 every time. If I'm understanding correctly, this means the file isn't being returned from Varnish's cache. Is there a problem with my Varnish config?

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• How to improve Varnish performance?

  - by Darkseal

  We're experiencing a strange problem with our current Varnish configuration. 4x Web Servers (IIS 6.5 on Windows 2003 Server, each installed on a Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5450 @ 3.00GHz Quad Core, 4GB RAM) 3x Varnish Servers (varnish-3.0.3 revision 9e6a70f on Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS - 64 bit/precise, Kernel Linux 3.2.0-29-generic, each installed on a Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5450 @ 3.00GHz Quad Core, 4GB RAM) The Varnish Servers performance are awfully bad in general, to the point that if we shut down one of them the other two are unable to fullfill all the requests and start to skip beats resulting in pending requests, timeouts, 404, etc. What can we do to improve our Varnish performance? Considering that we're getting less than 5k request per seconds during our max peak, we should be able to serve our pages even with a single one of them without any problem. We use a standard, vanilla CFG, as shown by this varnishadm param.show output: acceptor_sleep_decay 0.900000 [] acceptor_sleep_incr 0.001000 [s] acceptor_sleep_max 0.050000 [s] auto_restart on [bool] ban_dups on [bool] ban_lurker_sleep 0.010000 [s] between_bytes_timeout 60.000000 [s] cc_command "exec gcc -std=gnu99 -g -O2 -pthread -fpic -shared - Wl,-x -o %o %s" cli_buffer 8192 [bytes] cli_timeout 20 [seconds] clock_skew 10 [s] connect_timeout 0.700000 [s] critbit_cooloff 180.000000 [s] default_grace 10.000000 [seconds] default_keep 0.000000 [seconds] default_ttl 120.000000 [seconds] diag_bitmap 0x0 [bitmap] esi_syntax 0 [bitmap] expiry_sleep 1.000000 [seconds] fetch_chunksize 128 [kilobytes] fetch_maxchunksize 262144 [kilobytes] first_byte_timeout 60.000000 [s] group varnish (113) gzip_level 6 [] gzip_memlevel 8 [] gzip_stack_buffer 32768 [Bytes] gzip_tmp_space 0 [] gzip_window 15 [] http_gzip_support off [bool] http_max_hdr 64 [header lines] http_range_support on [bool] http_req_hdr_len 8192 [bytes] http_req_size 32768 [bytes] http_resp_hdr_len 8192 [bytes] http_resp_size 32768 [bytes] idle_send_timeout 60 [seconds] listen_address :80 listen_depth 1024 [connections] log_hashstring on [bool] log_local_address off [bool] lru_interval 2 [seconds] max_esi_depth 5 [levels] max_restarts 4 [restarts] nuke_limit 50 [allocations] pcre_match_limit 10000 [] pcre_match_limit_recursion 10000 [] ping_interval 3 [seconds] pipe_timeout 60 [seconds] prefer_ipv6 off [bool] queue_max 100 [%] rush_exponent 3 [requests per request] saintmode_threshold 10 [objects] send_timeout 600 [seconds] sess_timeout 5 [seconds] sess_workspace 16384 [bytes] session_linger 50 [ms] session_max 100000 [sessions] shm_reclen 255 [bytes] shm_workspace 8192 [bytes] shortlived 10.000000 [s] syslog_cli_traffic on [bool] thread_pool_add_delay 2 [milliseconds] thread_pool_add_threshold 2 [requests] thread_pool_fail_delay 200 [milliseconds] thread_pool_max 2000 [threads] thread_pool_min 5 [threads] thread_pool_purge_delay 1000 [milliseconds] thread_pool_stack unlimited [bytes] thread_pool_timeout 300 [seconds] thread_pool_workspace 65536 [bytes] thread_pools 2 [pools] thread_stats_rate 10 [requests] user varnish (106) vcc_err_unref on [bool] vcl_dir /etc/varnish vcl_trace off [bool] vmod_dir /usr/lib/varnish/vmods waiter default (epoll, poll) This is our default.vcl file: LINK sub vcl_recv { # BASIC recv COMMANDS: # # lookup -> search the item in the cache # pass -> always serve a fresh item (no-caching) # pipe -> like pass but ensures a direct-connection with the backend (no-cache AND no-proxy) # Allow the backend to serve up stale content if it is responding slow. # This defines when Varnish should use a stale object if it has one in the cache. set req.grace = 30s; if (client.ip == "127.0.0.1") { # request from NGINX - do not alter X-Forwarded-For set req.http.HTTPS = "on"; } else { # Add an X-Forwarded-For to keep track of original request unset req.http.HTTPS; unset req.http.X-Forwarded-For; set req.http.X-Forwarded-For = client.ip; } set req.backend = www_director; # Strip all cookies to force an anonymous request when the back-end servers are down. if (!req.backend.healthy) { unset req.http.Cookie; } ## HHTP Accept-Encoding if (req.http.Accept-Encoding) { if (req.http.Accept-Encoding ~ "gzip") { set req.http.Accept-Encoding = "gzip"; } else if (req.http.Accept-Encoding ~ "deflate") { set req.http.Accept-Encoding = "deflate"; } else { unset req.http.Accept-Encoding; } } if (req.request != "GET" && req.request != "HEAD" && req.request != "PUT" && req.request != "POST" && req.request != "TRACE" && req.request != "OPTIONS" && req.request != "DELETE") { /* non-RFC2616 or CONNECT */ return (pipe); } if (req.request != "GET" && req.request != "HEAD") { /* only deal with GET and HEAD by default */ return (pass); } if (req.http.Authorization) { return (pass); } if (req.http.HTTPS ~ "on") { return (pass); } ###################################################### # COOKIE HANDLING ###################################################### # METHOD 1: do not remove cookies, but pass the page if they contain TB_NC if (!(req.url ~ "(?i)\.(png|gif|ipeg|jpg|ico|swf|css|js)(\?[a-z0-9]+)?$")) { if (req.http.Cookie && req.http.Cookie ~ "TB_NC") { return (pass); } } return (lookup); } # Code determining what to do when serving items from the IIS Server sub vcl_fetch { unset beresp.http.Server; set beresp.http.Server = "Server-1"; # Allow items to be stale if needed. This is the maximum time Varnish should keep an object. set beresp.grace = 1h; if (req.url ~ "(?i)\.(png|gif|ipeg|jpg|ico|swf|css|js)(\?[a-z0-9]+)?$") { unset beresp.http.set-cookie; } # Default Varnish VCL logic if (!beresp.cacheable || beresp.ttl <= 0s || beresp.http.Set-Cookie || beresp.http.Vary == "*") { set beresp.ttl = 120 s; return(hit_for_pass); } # Not Cacheable if it has specific TB_NC no-caching cookie if (req.http.Cookie && req.http.Cookie ~ "TB_NC") { set beresp.http.X-Cacheable = "NO:Got Cookie"; set beresp.ttl = 120 s; return(hit_for_pass); } # Not Cacheable if it has Cache-Control private else if (beresp.http.Cache-Control ~ "private") { set beresp.http.X-Cacheable = "NO:Cache-Control=private"; set beresp.ttl = 120 s; return(hit_for_pass); } # Not Cacheable if it has Cache-Control no-cache or Pragma no-cache else if (beresp.http.Cache-Control ~ "no-cache" || beresp.http.Pragma ~ "no-cache") { set beresp.http.X-Cacheable = "NO:Cache-Control=no-cache (or pragma no-cache)"; set beresp.ttl = 120 s; return(hit_for_pass); } # If we reach to this point, the object is cacheable. # Cacheable but with not enough ttl: we need to extend the lifetime of the object artificially # NOTE: Varnish default TTL is set in /etc/sysconfig/varnish # and can be checked using the following command: # varnishadm param.show default_ttl else if (beresp.ttl < 1s) { set beresp.ttl = 5s; set beresp.grace = 5s; set beresp.http.X-Cacheable = "YES:FORCED"; } # Cacheable and with valid TTL. else { set beresp.http.X-Cacheable = "YES"; } # DEBUG INFO (Cookies) # set beresp.http.X-Cookie-Debug = "Request cookie: " + req.http.Cookie; return(deliver); } sub vcl_error { set obj.http.Content-Type = "text/html; charset=utf-8"; if (obj.status == 404) { synthetic {" <!-- Markup for the 404 page goes here --> "}; } else if (obj.status == 500) { synthetic {" <!-- Markup for the 500 page goes here --> "}; } else if (obj.status == 503) { if (req.restarts < 4) { return(restart); } else { synthetic {" <!-- Markup for the 503 page goes here --> "}; } } else { synthetic {" <!-- Markup for a generic error page goes here --> "}; } } sub vcl_deliver { if (obj.hits > 0) { set resp.http.X-Cache = "HIT"; } else { set resp.http.X-Cache = "MISS"; } } Thanks in advance,

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• SL3/SL4 - Ado.Net Data Services Error during new DataServiceCollection<T>(queryResponse)

  - by Soulhuntre

  Hey all, I have two functions in a SL project (VS2010) that do almost exactly the same thing, yet one throws an error and the other does not. It seems to be related to the projections, but I am unsure about the best way to resolve. The function that works is... public void LoadAllChunksExpandAll(DataHelperReturnHandler handler, string orderby) { DataServiceCollection<CmsChunk> data = null; DataServiceQuery<CmsChunk> theQuery = _dataservice .CmsChunks .Expand("CmsItemState") .AddQueryOption("$orderby", orderby); theQuery.BeginExecute( delegate(IAsyncResult asyncResult) { _callback_dispatcher.BeginInvoke( () => { try { DataServiceQuery<CmsChunk> query = asyncResult.AsyncState as DataServiceQuery<CmsChunk>; if (query != null) { //create a tracked DataServiceCollection from the result of the asynchronous query. QueryOperationResponse<CmsChunk> queryResponse = query.EndExecute(asyncResult) as QueryOperationResponse<CmsChunk>; data = new DataServiceCollection<CmsChunk>(queryResponse); handler(data); } } catch { handler(data); } } ); }, theQuery ); } This compiles and runs as expected. A very, very similar function (shown below) fails... public void LoadAllPagesExpandAll(DataHelperReturnHandler handler, string orderby) { DataServiceCollection<CmsPage> data = null; DataServiceQuery<CmsPage> theQuery = _dataservice .CmsPages .Expand("CmsChildPages") .Expand("CmsParentPage") .Expand("CmsItemState") .AddQueryOption("$orderby", orderby); theQuery.BeginExecute( delegate(IAsyncResult asyncResult) { _callback_dispatcher.BeginInvoke( () => { try { DataServiceQuery<CmsPage> query = asyncResult.AsyncState as DataServiceQuery<CmsPage>; if (query != null) { //create a tracked DataServiceCollection from the result of the asynchronous query. QueryOperationResponse<CmsPage> queryResponse = query.EndExecute(asyncResult) as QueryOperationResponse<CmsPage>; data = new DataServiceCollection<CmsPage>(queryResponse); handler(data); } } catch { handler(data); } } ); }, theQuery ); } Clearly the issue is the Expand projections that involve a self referencing relationship (pages can contain other pages). This is under SL4 or SL3 using ADONETDataServices SL3 Update CTP3. I am open to any work around or pointers to goo information, a Google search for the error results in two hits, neither particularly helpful that I can decipher. The short error is "An item could not be added to the collection. When items in a DataServiceCollection are tracked by the DataServiceContext, new items cannot be added before items have been loaded into the collection." The full error is... System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException was caught Message=Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. StackTrace: at System.RuntimeMethodHandle.InvokeMethodFast(IRuntimeMethodInfo method, Object target, Object[] arguments, SignatureStruct& sig, MethodAttributes methodAttributes, RuntimeType typeOwner) at System.Reflection.RuntimeMethodInfo.Invoke(Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, Binder binder, Object[] parameters, CultureInfo culture, Boolean skipVisibilityChecks) at System.Reflection.RuntimeMethodInfo.Invoke(Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, Binder binder, Object[] parameters, CultureInfo culture) at System.Reflection.MethodBase.Invoke(Object obj, Object[] parameters) at System.Data.Services.Client.ClientType.ClientProperty.SetValue(Object instance, Object value, String propertyName, Boolean allowAdd) at System.Data.Services.Client.AtomMaterializer.ApplyItemsToCollection(AtomEntry entry, ClientProperty property, IEnumerable items, Uri nextLink, ProjectionPlan continuationPlan) at System.Data.Services.Client.AtomMaterializer.ApplyFeedToCollection(AtomEntry entry, ClientProperty property, AtomFeed feed, Boolean includeLinks) at System.Data.Services.Client.AtomMaterializer.MaterializeResolvedEntry(AtomEntry entry, Boolean includeLinks) at System.Data.Services.Client.AtomMaterializer.Materialize(AtomEntry entry, Type expectedEntryType, Boolean includeLinks) at System.Data.Services.Client.AtomMaterializer.DirectMaterializePlan(AtomMaterializer materializer, AtomEntry entry, Type expectedEntryType) at System.Data.Services.Client.AtomMaterializerInvoker.DirectMaterializePlan(Object materializer, Object entry, Type expectedEntryType) at System.Data.Services.Client.ProjectionPlan.Run(AtomMaterializer materializer, AtomEntry entry, Type expectedType) at System.Data.Services.Client.AtomMaterializer.Read() at System.Data.Services.Client.MaterializeAtom.MoveNextInternal() at System.Data.Services.Client.MaterializeAtom.MoveNext() at System.Linq.Enumerable.d_b11.MoveNext() at System.Data.Services.Client.DataServiceCollection1.InternalLoadCollection(IEnumerable1 items) at System.Data.Services.Client.DataServiceCollection1.StartTracking(DataServiceContext context, IEnumerable1 items, String entitySet, Func2 entityChanged, Func2 collectionChanged) at System.Data.Services.Client.DataServiceCollection1..ctor(DataServiceContext context, IEnumerable1 items, TrackingMode trackingMode, String entitySetName, Func2 entityChangedCallback, Func2 collectionChangedCallback) at System.Data.Services.Client.DataServiceCollection1..ctor(IEnumerable1 items) at Phinli.Dashboard.Silverlight.Helpers.DataHelper.<>c__DisplayClass44.<>c__DisplayClass46.<LoadAllPagesExpandAll>b__43() InnerException: System.InvalidOperationException Message=An item could not be added to the collection. When items in a DataServiceCollection are tracked by the DataServiceContext, new items cannot be added before items have been loaded into the collection. StackTrace: at System.Data.Services.Client.DataServiceCollection1.InsertItem(Int32 index, T item) at System.Collections.ObjectModel.Collection`1.Add(T item) InnerException: Thanks for any help!

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• What is the best Battleship AI?

  - by John Gietzen

  Battleship! Back in 2003, (when I was 17,) I competed in a Battleship AI coding competition. Even though I lost that tournament, I had a lot of fun and learned a lot from it. Now, I would like to resurrect this competition, in the search of the best battleship AI. Here is the framework: Battleship.zip The winner will be awarded +450 reputation! The competition will be held starting on the 17th of November, 2009. No entries or edits later than zero-hour on the 17th will be accepted. (Central Standard Time) Submit your entries early, so you don't miss your opportunity! To keep this OBJECTIVE, please follow the spirit of the competition. Rules of the game: The game is be played on a 10x10 grid. Each competitor will place each of 5 ships (of lengths 2, 3, 3, 4, 5) on their grid. No ships may overlap, but they may be adjacent. The competitors then take turns firing single shots at their opponent. A variation on the game allows firing multiple shots per volley, one for each surviving ship. The opponent will notify the competitor if the shot sinks, hits, or misses. Game play ends when all of the ships of any one player are sunk. Rules of the competition: The spirit of the competition is to find the best Battleship algorithm. Anything that is deemed against the spirit of the competition will be grounds for disqualification. Interfering with an opponent is against the spirit of the competition. Multithreading may be used under the following restrictions: No more than one thread may be running while it is not your turn. (Though, any number of threads may be in a "Suspended" state). No thread may run at a priority other than "Normal". Given the above two restrictions, you will be guaranteed at least 3 dedicated CPU cores during your turn. A limit of 1 second of CPU time per game is allotted to each competitor on the primary thread. Running out of time results in losing the current game. Any unhandled exception will result in losing the current game. Network access and disk access is allowed, but you may find the time restrictions fairly prohibitive. However, a few set-up and tear-down methods have been added to alleviate the time strain. Code should be posted on stack overflow as an answer, or, if too large, linked. Max total size (un-compressed) of an entry is 1 MB. Officially, .Net 2.0 / 3.5 is the only framework requirement. Your entry must implement the IBattleshipOpponent interface. Scoring: Best 51 games out of 101 games is the winner of a match. All competitors will play matched against each other, round-robin style. The best half of the competitors will then play a double-elimination tournament to determine the winner. (Smallest power of two that is greater than or equal to half, actually.) I will be using the TournamentApi framework for the tournament. The results will be posted here. If you submit more than one entry, only your best-scoring entry is eligible for the double-elim. Good luck! Have fun! EDIT 1: Thanks to Freed, who has found an error in the Ship.IsValid function. It has been fixed. Please download the updated version of the framework. EDIT 2: Since there has been significant interest in persisting stats to disk and such, I have added a few non-timed set-up and tear-down events that should provide the required functionality. This is a semi-breaking change. That is to say: the interface has been modified to add functions, but no body is required for them. Please download the updated version of the framework. EDIT 3: Bug Fix 1: GameWon and GameLost were only getting called in the case of a time out. Bug Fix 2: If an engine was timing out every game, the competition would never end. Please download the updated version of the framework. EDIT 4: Results!

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• How do I rotate only some views when working with a uinavigationcontroller as a tab of a uitabbarcon

  - by maxpower

  Here is a flow that I can not figure out how to work. ( when I state (working) it means that in that current state the rules for orientation for that view are working correctly) First View: TableView on the stack of a UINavigationController that is a tab of UITabBarController. TableView is only allowed to be portrait. (working) When you rotate the TableView to landscape a modal comes up with a custom UIView that is like a coverflow (which i'll explain the problem there in a moment). A Selection made on tableview pushes a UIScrollview on to the stack. UIScrollView is allowed all orientations. (working) When UIScrollView is in landscape mode and the user hits back they are taken to the custom UIView that is like the coverflow and only allows landscape. The problem is here. Because the UIScrollView allows full rotation it permitted the TableView to rotate as well to landscape. I have a method attached to a notification "UIDeviceOrientationDidChangeNotification" that checks to see if the custom view is the current controller and if it is and if the user has rotated back to portrait I need to pop the custom view and show the table view. The table view has to rotate back to portrait, which really is okay as long as the user doesn't see it. When I create custom animations it works pretty good except for some odd invisible black box that seems to rotate with the device right before I fade out the customview to the tableview. Further inorder to ensure that my tableview will rotate to portrait I have to allow the customview to support all orientations because the system looks to the current view (in my code) as to whether or not that app is allowed to rotate to a certain orientation. Because of this I many proposed solutions will show the customview rotating to portrait as the table view comes back to focus. My other problem is very similar. If you are viewing the tableview and rotate the modalview of the customview is presented. When you make a selection on this view it pushes the UIScrollview onto the stack, but because the Tableview only supports portrait the UIScrollview comes in in portrait while the device is in landscape mode. How can I overcome these awful blocks? This is my current attempt: When it comes to working with UITabBarController the system really only cares what the tabbarcontroller has to say about rotation. Currently whenever a view loads it reports it supported orientations. TabBarController.m - (BOOL)shouldAutorotateToInterfaceOrientation:(UIInterfaceOrientation)interfaceOrientation { switch (self.supportedOrientation) { case SupportPortraitOrientation: [[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarHidden:NO animated:YES]; return (interfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait); break; case SupportPortraitUpsideDownOrientation: [[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarHidden:NO animated:YES]; return (interfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortraitUpsideDown); break; case SupportPortraitAllOrientation: [[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarHidden:NO animated:YES]; return (interfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait || interfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortraitUpsideDown); break; case SupportLandscapeLeftOrientation: [[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarHidden:YES animated:YES]; return (interfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeLeft); break; case SupportLandscapeRightOrienation: [[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarHidden:YES animated:YES]; return (interfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight); break; case SupportLandscapeAllOrientation: [[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarHidden:YES animated:YES]; return (interfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeLeft || interfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight); break; case SupportAllOrientation: if (interfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeLeft || interfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight) { [[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarHidden:YES animated:YES]; }else { //[[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarHidden:NO animated:YES]; } return YES; break; default: return (interfaceOrientation == UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait); break; } } This block of code is part of my UINavigationController and is in a method that responds to the UIDeviceOrientationDidChangeNotification Notification. It is responsible for poping the customview and showing the tableview. There are two different versions in place that originally were for two different versions of the SDK but both are pretty close to solutions. The reason the first is not supported on 3.0 is for some reason you can't have a view showing and then showen as a modal view. Not sure if that is a bug or a feature. The second solution works pretty good except that I see an outer box rotating around the iphone. if ([[self topViewController] isKindOfClass:FlowViewController.class]) { NSString *iphoneVersion = [[UIDevice currentDevice] systemVersion]; double version = [iphoneVersion doubleValue]; if(version > 3.0){ //1st solution //if the delivered app is not built with the 3.1 SDK I don't think this will happen anyway //we need to test this [self presentModalViewController:self.flowViewController animated:NO]; //[self toInterfaceOrientation:UIDeviceOrientationPortrait animated:NO]; [self popViewControllerAnimated:NO]; [self setNavigationBarHidden:NO animated:NO]; [self dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:YES]; }else{ //2nd solution DLog(@"3.0!!"); //[self toInterfaceOrientation:UIDeviceOrientationPortrait animated:NO]; CATransition *transition = [CATransition animation]; transition.duration = 0.50; transition.timingFunction = [CAMediaTimingFunction functionWithName:kCAMediaTimingFunctionEaseInEaseOut]; transition.type = kCATransitionPush; transition.subtype = kCATransitionFade; CATransition *tabBarControllerLayer = [CATransition animation]; tabBarControllerLayer.duration = 0.50; tabBarControllerLayer.timingFunction = [CAMediaTimingFunction functionWithName:kCAMediaTimingFunctionEaseInEaseOut]; tabBarControllerLayer.type = kCATransitionPush; tabBarControllerLayer.subtype = kCATransitionFade; [self.tabBarController.view.layer addAnimation:transition forKey:kCATransition]; [self.view.layer addAnimation:transition forKey:kCATransition]; [self popViewControllerAnimated:NO]; [self setNavigationBarHidden:NO animated:NO]; } [self performSelector:@selector(resetFlow) withObject:nil afterDelay:0.75]; } I'm near convinced there is no solution except for manual rotation which messes up the keyboard rotation. Any advice would be appreciated! Thanks.

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