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• Azure Diagnostics: The Bad, The Ugly, and a Better Way

  - by jasont

  If you’re a .Net web developer today, no doubt you’ve enjoyed watching Windows Azure grow up over the past couple of years. The platform has scaled, stabilized (mostly), and added on a slew of great (and sometimes overdue) features. What was once just an endpoint to host a solution, developers today have tremendous flexibility and options in the platform. Organizations are building new solutions and offerings on the platform, and others have, or are in the process of, migrating existing applications out of their own data centers into the Azure cloud. Whether new application development or migrating legacy, every development shop and IT organization needs to monitor their applications in the cloud, the same as they do on premises. Azure Diagnostics has some capabilities, but what I constantly hear from users is that it’s either (a) not enough, or (b) too cumbersome to set up. Today, Stackify is happy to announce that we fully support Azure deployments, just the same as your on-premises deployments. Let’s take a look below and compare and contrast the options. Azure Diagnostics Let’s crack open the Windows Azure documentation on Azure Diagnostics and see just how easy it is to use. The high level steps are:   Step 1: Import the Diagnostics Oh, I’ve already deployed my app without the diagnostics module. Guess I can’t do anything until I do this and re-deploy. Step 2: Configure the Diagnostics (and multiple sub-steps) Do I want it all? Or just pieces of it? Whoops, forgot to include a specific performance counter, I guess I’ll have to deploy again. Wait a minute… I have to specifically code these performance counters into my role’s OnStart() method, compile and deploy again? And query and consume it myself? Step 3: (Optional) Permanently store diagnostic data Lucky for me, Azure storage has gotten pretty cheap. But how often should I move the data into storage? I want to see real-time data, so I guess that’s out now as well. Step 4: (Optional) View stored diagnostic data Optional? Of course I want to see it. Conveniently, Microsoft recommends 3 tools to do this with. Un-conveniently, none of these are web based and they all just give you access to raw data, and very little charting or real-time intelligence. Just….. data. Nevermind that one product seems to have gotten stale since a recent acquisition, and doesn’t even have screenshots!   So, let’s summarize: lots of diagnostics data is available, but think realistically. Think Dev Ops. What happens when you are in the middle of a major production performance issue and you don’t have the diagnostics you need? You are redeploying an application (and thankfully you have a great branching strategy, so you feel perfectly safe just willy-nilly launching code into prod, don’t you?) to get data, then shipping it to storage, and then digging through that data to find a needle in a haystack. Would you like to be able to troubleshoot a performance issue in the middle of the night, or on a weekend, from your iPad or home computer’s web browser? Forget it: the best you get is this spark line in the Azure portal. If it’s real pointy, you probably have an issue; but since there is no alert based on a threshold your customers have likely already let you know. And high CPU, Memory, I/O, or Network doesn’t tell you anything about where the problem is. The Better Way – Stackify Stackify supports application and server monitoring in real time, all through a great web interface. All of the things that Azure Diagnostics provides, Stackify provides for your on-premises deployments, and you don’t need to know ahead of time that you’ll need it. It’s always there, it’s always on. Azure deployments are essentially no different than on-premises. It’s a Windows Server (or Linux) in the cloud. It’s behind a different firewall than your corporate servers. That’s it. Stackify can provide the same powerful tools to your Azure deployments in two simple steps. Step 1 Add a startup task to your web or worker role and deploy. If you can’t deploy and need it right now, no worries! Remote Desktop to the Azure instance and you can execute a Powershell script to download / install Stackify.   Step 2 Log in to your account at www.stackify.com and begin monitoring as much as you want, as often as you want and see the results instantly. WMI? It’s there Event Viewer? You’ve got it. File System Access? Yes, please! Would love to make sure my web.config is correct.   IIS / App Pool Info? Yep. You can even restart it. Running Services? All of them. Start and Stop them to your heart’s content. SQL Database access? You bet’cha. Alerts and Notification? Of course! You should know before your customers let you know. … and so much more.   Conclusion Microsoft has shown, consistently, that they love developers, developers, developers. What every developer needs to realize from this is that they’ve given you a canvas, which is exactly what Azure is. It’s great infrastructure that is readily available, easy to manage, and fairly cost effective. However, the tooling is your responsibility. What you get, at best, is bare bones. App and server diagnostics should be available when you need them. While we, as developers, try to plan for and think of everything ahead of time, there will come times where we need to get data that just isn’t available. And having to go through a lot of cumbersome steps to get that data, and then have to find a friendlier way to consume it…. well, that just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I’d rather spend my time writing and developing features and completing bug fixes for my applications, than to be writing code to monitor and diagnose.

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• SQL Sentry First Impressions

  - by AjarnMark

  After struggling to defend my SQL Servers from a political attack recently, I realized that I needed better tools to back me up, and SQL Sentry is the leading candidate. A couple of weeks ago, seemingly from out of nowhere, complaints from the business users started coming in that one of the core internal applications was running dramatically slower than normal, and fingers were being pointed at the SQL Server.  Unfortunately, we don’t have a production DBA whose entire job is to monitor and maintain our SQL Servers.  The responsibility falls to me to do the best I can, investing only a small portion of my time, because there are so many other responsibilities to take care of, and our industry is still deep in recession.  I inherited these SQL Servers and have made significant improvements in process and procedure, but I had not yet made the time to take real baseline measurements or keep a really close eye on the performance.  Like many DBAs, I wrote several of my own tools and used the “built-in tools” like Profiler, PerfMon, and sp_who2 (did I mention most of our instances are SQL Server 2000?).  These have all served me well for in-the-moment troubleshooting and maintenance, but they really fell down on the job when I was called upon to “prove” that SQL Server performance was acceptable and more importantly had not degraded recently (i.e. historical comparisons).  I really didn’t have anything from a historical comparison perspective, but I was able to show that current performance was acceptable, and deflect attention back onto other components (which in fact turned out to be the real culprit). That experience dramatically illustrated the need for better monitoring tools.  Coincidentally, I had been talking recently to my boss about the mini nightmare of monitoring several critical and interdependent overnight jobs that operate on separate instances of SQL Server.  Among other tools, I had been using Idera’s SQL Job Manager which is a free tool and did a nice job of showing me job schedules and histories in a nice calendar view.  This worked fairly well, and for the money (did I mention it was free?) it couldn’t be beat.  But it is based on the stored job history in MSDB, and there were other performance problems that we ran into when we started changing the settings for how much job history to retain, in order to be able to look back a month or more in the calendar view.  Another coincidence (if you believe in such things) was that when we had some of those performance challenges, I posted a couple of questions to the #sqlhelp hashtag on Twitter and Greg Gonzalez (@SQLSensei) suggested I check out SQL Sentry’s Event Manager.  At the time, I just thought he worked there, but later found out that he founded the company.  When I took a quick look at the features & benefits, the one that really jumped out at me is Chaining and Queueing which sounded like it would really help with our “interdependent jobs on different servers” issue. I know that is a lot of background story and coincidences, but hopefully you have stuck with me so far, and now we have arrived at the point where last week I downloaded and installed the 30-day trial of the SQL Sentry Power Suite, which is Event Manager plus Performance Advisor.  And I must say that I really like what I see so far.  Here are a few highlights: Great Support.  I had two issues getting the trial setup and monitoring a handful of our servers.  One of which was entirely my fault (missed a security setting in SQL 2008) and the other was mostly my fault (late change to some config settings that were apparently cached and did not get refreshed properly).  In both cases, the support staff at SQL Sentry were very responsive and rather quickly figured out what the cause and fix was for each of them.  This left me with a great impression of the company.  Kudos to them! Chaining and Queueing.  While I have not yet activated this feature, I am very excited about the possibilities.  We have jobs on three different instances of SQL Server that have to be run in a certain order, and each has to finish before the next can successfully begin, and I believe this feature will ensure just that.  It has been a real pain in the backside when one of those jobs runs just a little too long and does not finish before the job on another instance starts, thus triggering a chain reaction of either outright job failures, or worse, successful completion of completely invalid processing. Calendar View.  I really, really like the Event Manager calendar view where I can see all jobs and events across all instances and identify potential resource contention as well as windows of opportunity for maintenance activity.  Very well done, and based on Event Manager’s own database of accumulated historical information rather than querying the source instances every time. Performance Advisor Dashboard History View.  This view let’s me quickly select a date and time range and it displays graphs of key SQL Server and Windows metrics.  This is exactly the thing I needed to answer the “has performance changed recently” question at the beginning of this post. Reporting Services Subscription Jobs with Report Name.  This was a big and VERY pleasant surprise.  If you have ever looked at the list of SQL Server jobs that SQL Server Reporting Services creates when you make a Subscription, you will notice that they all have some sort of GUID as the name of the job.  This is really ugly, and really annoying because when you are just looking at the SQL Agent and Job Activity Monitor, if you see that Job X failed, you really do not have any indication in the name or the properties of the Job itself, as to what Report that was for.  But with SQL Sentry Event Manager you do.  The Jobs list in the Navigator pane in SQL Sentry, amazingly, displays the name of the Report that the Subscription Job is for.  And when you open it to see more details, it shows you the full Reporting Services path to that Report, so you can immediately track it down in the Report Manager in case you want to identify/notify the owner or edit the Subscription information.  I did not expect this at all, but I sure do like it.  HOORAY! That is just my first impressions from using the tools for a few days.  And I haven’t even gotten into how it showed me where I was completely mistaken about one aspect of my SQL Server disk configurations.  I’ll share that lesson in another blog entry.  But I have to say it again, the combination of Event Manager and Performance Advisor working together have really made me a fan.

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• Communities - The importance of exchange and discussion

  Communication with your environment is an essential part of everyone's life. And it doesn't matter whether you are actually living in a rural area in the middle of nowhere, within the pulsating heart of a big city, or in my case on a wonderful island in the Indian Ocean. The ability to exchange your thoughts, your experience and your worries with another person helps you to get different points of view and new ideas on how to resolve an issue you might be confronted with. Benefits of community work What happens to be common sense in your daily life, also applies to your work environment. Working in IT, or ICT as it is called in Mauritius, requires a lot of reading and learning. Not only during your lectures at the university but with your colleagues in a project assignment and hopefully with 'unknown' pals in the universe of online communities. At least I can say that I learned quite a lot from other developers code, their responses in various forums, their numerous blog articles, and while attending local user group meetings. When I started to work as a professional software developer (or engineer some may say) years ago I immediately checked the existence of communities on the programming language, the database technology and other vital information on software development in general. Luckily, it wasn't too difficult to find. My employer had a subscription of the monthly magazines and newsletters of a national organisation which also run the biggest forum in that area. Getting in touch with other developers and reading their common problems but also solutions was a huge benefit to my growth. Image courtesy of Michael Kappel (CC BY-NC 2.0) Active participation and regular contribution to this community gave me some nice advantages, too. Within three years I was listed as a conference speaker at the annual developer's conference and provided several sessions on different topics during consecutive years. Back in 2004, I took over the responsibility and management of the monthly meetings of a regional user group, and organised it for more than two years. Furthermore, I was invited to the newly-founded community program of Microsoft Germany (Community Leader/Insider Program - CLIP). My website on Active FoxPro Pages was nominated in the second batch of online communities. Due to my community work and providing advice to others, I had the honour to be awarded as Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) - Visual Developer for Visual FoxPro in the years 2006 and 2007. It was a great experience to meet with other like-minded people and I'm really grateful for that. Just in case, more details are listed in my Curriculum Vitae. But this all changed when I moved to Mauritius... Cyber island Mauritius? During the first months in Mauritius I was way too busy to think about community activities at all. First of all, there was the new company that had to be set up, the new staff had to be trained and of course the communication work-flows and so on with the project managers back in Germany had to be sorted out, too. Second, I had to get a grip of my private matters like getting the basics for my new household or exploring the neighbourhood, and last but not least I needed a break from the hectic and intensive work prior to my departure. As soon as the sea literally calmed down, I started to have conversations with my colleagues about communities and user groups. Sadly, it turned out that there were none, or at least no one was aware of any at that time. Oh oh, what did I do? Anyway, having this kind of background and very positive experience with off-line and on-line activities I decided for myself that some day I'm going to found a community in Mauritius for all kind of IT/ICT-related fields. The main focus might be on software development but not on a certain technology or methodology. It was clear to me that it should be an open infrastructure and anyone is welcome to join, to experience, to share and to contribute if they would like to. That was the idea at that time... Ok, fast-forward to recent events. At the end of October 2012 I was invited to an event called Open Days organised by Microsoft Indian Ocean Islands together with other local partners and resellers. There I got in touch with local Technical Evangelist Arnaud Meslier and we had a good conversation on communities during the breaks. Eventually, I left a good impression on him, as we are having chats on Facebook or Skype irregularly. Well, seeing that my personal and professional surroundings have been settled and running smooth, having that great exchange and contact with Microsoft IOI (again), and being really eager to re-animate my intentions from 2007, I recently founded a new community: Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community - #MSCC It took me a while to settle down with the name but it was obvious that the community should not be attached to one single technology, like ie. .NET user group, Oracle developers, or Joomla friends (these are fictitious names). There are several other reasons why I came up with 'Craftsmanship' as the core topic of this community. The expression of 'engineering' didn't feel right with the fields covered. Software development in all kind of facets is a craft, and therefore demands a lot of practice but also guidance from more experienced developers. It also includes the process of designing, modelling and drafting the ideas. Has to deal with various types of tests and test methodologies, and of course should be focused on flexible and agile ways of acting. In order to meet and to excel a customer's request for a solution. Next, I was looking for an easy way to handle the organisation of events and meeting appointments. Using all kind of social media platforms like Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook, Xing, etc. I was never really confident about their features of event handling. More by chance I stumbled upon Meetup.com and in combination with the other entities (G+ Communities, FB Pages or in Groups) I am looking forward to advertise and manage all future activities here: Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community This is a community for those who care and are proud of what they do. For those developers, regardless how experienced they are, who want to improve and master their craft. This is a community for those who believe that being average is just not good enough. I know, there are not many 'craftsmen' yet but it's a start... Let's see how it looks like by the end of the year. There are free smartphone apps for Android and iOS from Meetup.com that allow you to keep track of meetings and to stay informed on latest updates. And last but not least, there will be a Trello workspace to collect and share ideas and provide downloads of slides, etc. Sharing is caring! As mentioned, the #MSCC is present in various social media networks in order to cover as many people as possible here in Mauritius. Following is an overview of the current networks: Twitter - Latest updates and quickies Google+ - Community channel Facebook - Community Page LinkedIn - Community Group Trello - Collaboration workspace to share and develop ideas Hopefully, this covers the majority of computer-related people in Mauritius. Please spread the word about the #MSCC between your colleagues, your friends and other interested 'geeks'. Your future looks bright Running and participating in a user group or any kind of community usually provides quite a number of advantages for anyone. On the one side it is very joyful for me to organise appointments and get in touch with people that might be interested to present a little demo of their projects or their recent problems they had to tackle down, and on the other side there are lots of companies that have various support programs or sponsorships especially tailored for user groups. At the moment, I already have a couple of gimmicks that I would like to hand out in small contests or raffles during one of the upcoming meetings, and as said, companies provide all kind of goodies, books free of charge, or sometimes even licenses for communities. Meeting other software developers or IT guys also opens up your point of view on the local market and there might be interesting projects or job offers available, too. A community like the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community is great for freelancers, self-employed, students and of course employees. Meetings will be organised on a regular basis, and I'm open to all kind of suggestions from you. Please leave a comment here in blog or join the conversations in the above mentioned social networks. Let's get this community up and running, my fellow Mauritians!

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• Free Document/Content Management System Using SharePoint 2010

  - by KunaalKapoor

  That’s right, it’s true. You can use the free version of SharePoint 2010 to meet your document and content management needs and even run your public facing website or an internal knowledge bank.  SharePoint Foundation 2010 is free. It may not have all the features that you get in the enterprise license but it still has enough to cater to your needs to build a document management system and replace age old file shares or folders. I’ve built a dozen content management sites for internal and public use exploiting SharePoint. There are hundreds of web content management systems out there (see CMS Matrix).  On one hand we have commercial platforms like SharePoint, SiteCore, and Ektron etc. which are the most frequently used and on the other hand there are free options like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and Plone etc. which are pretty common popular as well. But I would be very surprised if anyone was able to find a single CMS platform that is all things to all people. Infact not a lot of people consider SharePoint’s free version under the free CMS side but its high time organizations benefit from this. Through this blog post I wanted to present SharePoint Foundation as an option for running a FREE CMS platform. Even if you knew that there is a free version of SharePoint, what most people don’t realize is that SharePoint Foundation is a great option for running web sites of all kinds – not just team sites. It is a great option for many reasons, but in reality it is supported by Microsoft, and above all it is FREE (yay!), and it is extremely easy to get started.  From a functionality perspective – it’s hard to beat SharePoint. Even the free version, SharePoint Foundation, offers simple data connectivity (through BCS), cross browser support, accessibility, support for Office Web Apps, blogs, wikis, templates, document support, health analyzer, support for presence, and MUCH more.I often get asked: “Can I use SharePoint 2010 as a document management system?” The answer really depends on ·          What are your specific requirements? ·          What systems you currently have in place for managing documents. ·          And of course how much money you have J Benefits? Not many large organizations have benefited from SharePoint yet. For some it has been an IT project to see what they can achieve with it, for others it has been used as a collaborative platform or in many cases an extended intranet. SharePoint 2010 has changed the game slightly as the improvements that Microsoft have made have been noted by organizations, and we are seeing a lot of companies starting to build specific business applications using SharePoint as the basis, and nearly every business process will require documents at some stage. If you require a document management system and have SharePoint in place then it can be a relatively straight forward decision to use SharePoint, as long as you have reviewed the considerations just discussed. The collaborative nature of SharePoint 2010 is also a massive advantage, as specific departmental or project sites can be created quickly and easily that allow workers to interact in a variety of different ways using one source of information.  This also benefits an organization with regards to how they manage the knowledge that they have, as if all of their information is in one source then it is naturally easier to search and manage. Is SharePoint right for your organization? As just discussed, this can only be determined after defining your requirements and also planning a longer term strategy for how you will manage your documents and information. A key factor to look at is how the users would interact with the system and how much value would it get for your organization. The amount of data and documents that organizations are creating is increasing rapidly each year. Therefore the ability to archive this information, whilst keeping the ability to know what you have and where it is, is vital to any organizations management of their information life cycle. SharePoint is best used for the initial life of business documents where they need to be referenced and accessed after time. It is often beneficial to archive these to overcome for storage and performance issues. FREE CMS – SharePoint, Really? In order to show some of the completely of what comes with this free version of SharePoint 2010, I thought it would make sense to use Wikipedia (since every one trusts it as a credible source). Wikipedia shows that a web content management system typically has the following components: Document Management:   -       CMS software may provide a means of managing the life cycle of a document from initial creation time, through revisions, publication, archive, and document destruction. SharePoint is king when it comes to document management.  Version history, exclusive check-out, security, publication, workflow, and so much more.  Content Virtualization:   -       CMS software may provide a means of allowing each user to work within a virtual copy of the entire Web site, document set, and/or code base. This enables changes to multiple interdependent resources to be viewed and/or executed in-context prior to submission. Through the use of versioning, each content manager can preview, publish, and roll-back content of pages, wiki entries, blog posts, documents, or any other type of content stored in SharePoint.  The idea of each user having an entire copy of the website virtualized is a bit odd to me – not sure why anyone would need that for anything but the simplest of websites. Automated Templates:   -       Create standard output templates that can be automatically applied to new and existing content, allowing the appearance of all content to be changed from one central place. Through the use of Master Pages and Themes, SharePoint provides the ability to change the entire look and feel of site.  Of course, the older brother version of SharePoint – SharePoint Server 2010 – also introduces the concept of Page Layouts which allows page template level customization and even switching the layout of an individual page using different page templates.  I think many organizations really think they want this but rarely end up using this bit of functionality.  Easy Edits:   -       Once content is separated from the visual presentation of a site, it usually becomes much easier and quicker to edit and manipulate. Most WCMS software includes WYSIWYG editing tools allowing non-technical individuals to create and edit content. This is probably easier described with a screen cap of a vanilla SharePoint Foundation page in edit mode.  Notice the page editing toolbar, the multiple layout options…  It’s actually easier to use than Microsoft Word. Workflow management: -       Workflow is the process of creating cycles of sequential and parallel tasks that must be accomplished in the CMS. For example, a content creator can submit a story, but it is not published until the copy editor cleans it up and the editor-in-chief approves it. Workflow, it’s in there. In fact, the same workflow engine is running under SharePoint Foundation that is running under the other versions of SharePoint.  The primary difference is that with SharePoint Foundation – you need to configure the workflows yourself.   Web Standards: -       Active WCMS software usually receives regular updates that include new feature sets and keep the system up to current web standards. SharePoint is in the fourth major iteration under Microsoft with the 2010 release.  In addition to the innovation that Microsoft continuously adds, you have the entire global ecosystem available. Scalable Expansion:   -       Available in most modern WCMSs is the ability to expand a single implementation (one installation on one server) across multiple domains. SharePoint Foundation can run multiple sites using multiple URLs on a single server install.  Even more powerful, SharePoint Foundation is scalable and can be part of a multi-server farm to ensure that it will handle any amount of traffic that can be thrown at it. Delegation & Security:  -       Some CMS software allows for various user groups to have limited privileges over specific content on the website, spreading out the responsibility of content management. SharePoint Foundation provides very granular security capabilities. Read @ http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee537811.aspx Content Syndication:  -       CMS software often assists in content distribution by generating RSS and Atom data feeds to other systems. They may also e-mail users when updates are available as part of the workflow process. SharePoint Foundation nails it.  With RSS syndication and email alerts available out of the box, content syndication is already in the platform. Multilingual Support: -       Ability to display content in multiple languages. SharePoint Foundation 2010 supports more than 40 languages. Read More Read more @ http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd776256(v=office.12).aspxYou can download the free version from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5970

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• General Purpose ASP.NET Data Source Control

  - by Ricardo Peres

  OK, you already know about the ObjectDataSource control, so what’s wrong with it? Well, for once, it doesn’t pass any context to the SelectMethod, you only get the parameters supplied on the SelectParameters plus the desired ordering, starting page and maximum number of rows to display. Also, you must have two separate methods, one for actually retrieving the data, and the other for getting the total number of records (SelectCountMethod). Finally, you don’t get a chance to alter the supplied data before you bind it to the target control. I wanted something simple to use, and more similar to ASP.NET 4.5, where you can have the select method on the page itself, so I came up with CustomDataSource. Here’s how to use it (I chose a GridView, but it works equally well with any regular data-bound control): 1: <web:CustomDataSourceControl runat="server" ID="datasource" PageSize="10" OnData="OnData" /> 2: <asp:GridView runat="server" ID="grid" DataSourceID="datasource" DataKeyNames="Id" PageSize="10" AllowPaging="true" AllowSorting="true" /> The OnData event handler receives a DataEventArgs instance, which contains some properties that describe the desired paging location and size, and it’s where you return the data plus the total record count. Here’s a quick example: 1: protected void OnData(object sender, DataEventArgs e) 2: { 3: //just return some data 4: var data = Enumerable.Range(e.StartRowIndex, e.PageSize).Select(x => new { Id = x, Value = x.ToString(), IsPair = ((x % 2) == 0) }); 5: e.Data = data; 6: //the total number of records 7: e.TotalRowCount = 100; 8: } Here’s the code for the DataEventArgs: 1: [Serializable] 2: public class DataEventArgs : EventArgs 3: { 4: public DataEventArgs(Int32 pageSize, Int32 startRowIndex, String sortExpression, IOrderedDictionary parameters) 5: { 6: this.PageSize = pageSize; 7: this.StartRowIndex = startRowIndex; 8: this.SortExpression = sortExpression; 9: this.Parameters = parameters; 10: } 11:  12: public IEnumerable Data 13: { 14: get; 15: set; 16: } 17:  18: public IOrderedDictionary Parameters 19: { 20: get; 21: private set; 22: } 23:  24: public String SortExpression 25: { 26: get; 27: private set; 28: } 29:  30: public Int32 StartRowIndex 31: { 32: get; 33: private set; 34: } 35:  36: public Int32 PageSize 37: { 38: get; 39: private set; 40: } 41:  42: public Int32 TotalRowCount 43: { 44: get; 45: set; 46: } 47: } As you can guess, the StartRowIndex and PageSize receive the starting row and the desired page size, where the page size comes from the PageSize property on the markup. There’s also a SortExpression, which gets passed the sorted-by column and direction (if descending) and a dictionary containing all the values coming from the SelectParameters collection, if any. All of these are read only, and it is your responsibility to fill in the Data and TotalRowCount. The code for the CustomDataSource is very simple: 1: [NonVisualControl] 2: public class CustomDataSourceControl : DataSourceControl 3: { 4: public CustomDataSourceControl() 5: { 6: this.SelectParameters = new ParameterCollection(); 7: } 8:  9: protected override DataSourceView GetView(String viewName) 10: { 11: return (new CustomDataSourceView(this, viewName)); 12: } 13:  14: internal void GetData(DataEventArgs args) 15: { 16: this.OnData(args); 17: } 18:  19: protected virtual void OnData(DataEventArgs args) 20: { 21: EventHandler<DataEventArgs> data = this.Data; 22:  23: if (data != null) 24: { 25: data(this, args); 26: } 27: } 28:  29: [Browsable(false)] 30: [DesignerSerializationVisibility(DesignerSerializationVisibility.Visible)] 31: [PersistenceMode(PersistenceMode.InnerProperty)] 32: public ParameterCollection SelectParameters 33: { 34: get; 35: private set; 36: } 37:  38: public event EventHandler<DataEventArgs> Data; 39:  40: public Int32 PageSize 41: { 42: get; 43: set; 44: } 45: } Also, the code for the accompanying internal – as there is no need to use it from outside of its declaring assembly - data source view: 1: sealed class CustomDataSourceView : DataSourceView 2: { 3: private readonly CustomDataSourceControl dataSourceControl = null; 4:  5: public CustomDataSourceView(CustomDataSourceControl dataSourceControl, String viewName) : base(dataSourceControl, viewName) 6: { 7: this.dataSourceControl = dataSourceControl; 8: } 9:  10: public override Boolean CanPage 11: { 12: get 13: { 14: return (true); 15: } 16: } 17:  18: public override Boolean CanRetrieveTotalRowCount 19: { 20: get 21: { 22: return (true); 23: } 24: } 25:  26: public override Boolean CanSort 27: { 28: get 29: { 30: return (true); 31: } 32: } 33:  34: protected override IEnumerable ExecuteSelect(DataSourceSelectArguments arguments) 35: { 36: IOrderedDictionary parameters = this.dataSourceControl.SelectParameters.GetValues(HttpContext.Current, this.dataSourceControl); 37: DataEventArgs args = new DataEventArgs(this.dataSourceControl.PageSize, arguments.StartRowIndex, arguments.SortExpression, parameters); 38:  39: this.dataSourceControl.GetData(args); 40:  41: arguments.TotalRowCount = args.TotalRowCount; 42: arguments.MaximumRows = this.dataSourceControl.PageSize; 43: arguments.AddSupportedCapabilities(DataSourceCapabilities.Page | DataSourceCapabilities.Sort | DataSourceCapabilities.RetrieveTotalRowCount); 44: arguments.RetrieveTotalRowCount = true; 45:  46: if (!(args.Data is ICollection)) 47: { 48: return (args.Data.OfType<Object>().ToList()); 49: } 50: else 51: { 52: return (args.Data); 53: } 54: } 55: } As always, looking forward to hearing from you!

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• Why people don't patch and upgrade?!?

  - by Mike Dietrich

  Discussing the topic "Why Upgrade" or "Why not Upgrade" is not always fun. Actually the arguments repeat from customer to customer. Typically we hear things such as: A PSU or Patch Set introduces new bugs A new PSU or Patch Set introduces new features which lead to risk and require application verification  Patching means risk Patching changes the execution plans Patching requires too much testing Patching is too much work for our DBAs Patching costs a lot of money and doesn't pay out And to be very honest sometimes it's hard for me to stay calm in such discussions. Let's discuss some of these points a bit more in detail. A PSU or Patch Set introduces new bugsWell, yes, that is true as no software containing more than some lines of code is bug free. This applies to Oracle's code as well as too any application or operating system code. But first of all, does that mean you never patch your OS because the patch may introduce new flaws? And second, what is the point of saying "it introduces new bugs"? Does that mean you will never get rid of the mean issues we know about and we fixed already? Scroll down from MOS Note:161818.1 to the patch release you are on, no matter if it's 10.2.0.4 or 11.2.0.3 and check for the Known Issues And Alerts.Will you take responsibility to know about all these issues and refuse to upgrade to 11.2.0.4? I won't. A new PSU or Patch Set introduces new featuresOk, we can discuss that. Offering new functionality within a database patch set is a dubious thing. It has advantages such as in 11.2.0.4 where we backported Database Redaction to. But this is something you will only use once you have an Advanced Security license. I interpret that statement I've heard quite often from customers in a different way: People don't want to get surprises such as new behaviour. This certainly gives everybody a hard time. And we've had many examples in the past (SESSION_CACHED_CURSROS in 10.2.0.4,  _DATAFILE_WRITE_ERRORS_CRASH_INSTANCE in 11.2.0.2 and others) where those things weren't documented, not even in the README. Thanks to many friends out there I learned about those as well. So new behaviour is the topic people consider as risky - not really new features. And just to point this out: A PSU never brings in new features or new behaviour by definition! Patching means riskDoes it really mean risk? Yes, there were issues in the past (and sometimes in the present as well) where a patch didn't get installed correctly. But personally I consider it way more risky to not patch. Keep that in mind: The day Oracle publishes an PSU (or CPU) containing security fixes all the great security experts out there go public with their findings as well. So from that day on even my grandma can find out about those issues and try to attack somebody. Now a lot of people say: "My database does not face the internet." And I will answer: "The enemy is sitting already behind your firewalls. And knows potentially about these things." My statement: Not patching introduces way more risk to your environment than patching. Seriously! Patching changes the execution plansDo they really? I agree - there's a very small risk for this happening with Patch Sets. But not with PSUs or CPUs as they contain no optimizer fixes changing behaviour (but they may contain fixes curing wrong-query-result-bugs). But what's the point of a changing execution plan? In Oracle Database 11g it is so simple to be prepared. SQL Plan Management is a free EE feature - so once that occurs you'll put the plan into the Plan Baseline. Basta! Yes, you wouldn't like to get such surprises? Than please use the SQL Performance Analyzer (SPA) from Real Application Testing and you'll detect that easily upfront in minutes. And not to forget this, a plan change can also be very positive!Yes, there's a little risk with a database patchset - and we have many possibilites to detect this before patching. Patching requires too much testingWell, does it really? I have seen in the past 12 years how people test. There are very different efforts and approaches on this. I have seen people spending a hell of money on licenses or on project team staffing. And I have seen people sailing blindly without any tests just going the John-Wayne-approach.Proper tools will allow you to test easily without too much efforts. See the paragraph above. We have used Real Application Testing in so many customer projects reducing the amount of work spend on testing by over 50%. But apart from that at some point you will have to stop testing. If you don't you'll get lost and you'll burn money. There's no 100% guaranty. You will have to deal with a little risk as reaching the final 5% of certainty will cost you the same as it did cost to reach 95%. And doing this will lead to abnormal long product cycles that you'll run behind forever. And this will cost even more money. Patching is too much work for our DBAsPatching is a lot of work. I agree. And it's no fun work. It's boring, annoying. You don't learn much from that. That's why you should try to automate this task. Use the Database's Lifecycle Management Pack. And don't cry about the fact that it costs money. Yes it does. But it will ease the process and you'll save a lot of costs as you don't waste your valuable time with patching. Or use Oracle Database 12c Oracle Multitenant and patch either by unplug/plug or patch an entire container database with all PDBs with one patch in one task. We have customer reference cases proofing it saved them 75% of time, effort and cost since they've used Lifecycle Management Pack. So why don't you use it? Patching costs a lot of money and doesn't pay outWell, see my statements in the paragraph above. And it pays out as flying with a database with 100 known critical flaws in it which are already fixed by Oracle (such as in the Oct 2013 PSU for Oracle Database 12c) will cost ways more in case of failure or even data loss. Bet with me? Let me finally ask you some questions. What cell phone are you using and which OS does it run? Do you have an iPhone 5 and did you upgrade already to iOS 7.0.3? I've just encountered on mine that the alarm (which I rely on when traveling) has gotten now a dependency on the physical switch "sound on/off". If it is switched to "off" physically the alarm rings "silently". What a wonderful example of a behaviour change coming in with a patch set. Will this push you to stay with iOS5 or iOS6? No, because those have security flaws which won't be fixed anymore. What browser are you surfing with? Do you use Mozilla 3.6? Well, congratulations to all the hackers. It will be easy for them to attack you and harm your system. I'd guess you have the auto updater on.  Same for Google Chrome, Safari, IE. Right? -Mike The T.htmtableborders, .htmtableborders td, .htmtableborders th {border : 1px dashed lightgrey ! important;} html, body { border: 0px; } body { background-color: #ffffff; } img, hr { cursor: default }

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• Disaster, or Migration?

  - by Rob Farley

  This post is in two parts – technical and personal. And I should point out that it’s prompted in part by this month’s T-SQL Tuesday, hosted by Allen Kinsel. First, the technical: I’ve had a few conversations with people recently about migration – moving a SQL Server database from one box to another (sometimes, but not primarily, involving an upgrade). One question that tends to come up is that of downtime. Obviously there will be some period of time between the old server being available and the new one. The way that most people seem to think of migration is this: Build a new server. Stop people from using the old server. Take a backup of the old server Restore it on the new server. Reconfigure the client applications (or alternatively, configure the new server to use the same address as the old) Make the new server online. There are other things involved, such as testing, of course. But this is essentially the process that people tell me they’re planning to follow. The bit that I want to look at today (as you’ve probably guessed from my title) is the “backup and restore” section. If a SQL database is using the Simple Recovery Model, then the only restore option is the last database backup. This backup could be full or differential. The transaction log never gets backed up in the Simple Recovery Model. Instead, it truncates regularly to stay small. One that’s using the Full Recovery Model (or Bulk-Logged) won’t truncate its log – the log must be backed up regularly. This provides the benefit of having a lot more option available for restores. It’s a requirement for most systems of High Availability, because if you’re making sure that a spare box is up-and-running, ready to take over, then you have to be interested in the logs that are happening on the current box, rather than truncating them all the time. A High Availability system such as Mirroring, Replication or Log Shipping will initialise the spare machine by restoring a full database backup (and maybe a differential backup if available), and then any subsequent log backups. Once the secondary copy is close, transactions can be applied to keep the two in sync. The main aspect of any High Availability system is to have a redundant system that is ready to take over. So the similarity for migration should be obvious. If you need to move a database from one box to another, then introducing a High Availability mechanism can help. By turning on the Full Recovery Model and then taking a backup (so that the now-interesting logs have some context), logs start being kept, and are therefore available for getting the new box ready (even if it’s an upgraded version). When the migration is ready to occur, a failover can be done, letting the new server take over the responsibility of the old, just as if a disaster had happened. Except that this is a planned failover, not a disaster at all. There’s a fine line between a disaster and a migration. Failovers can be useful in patching, upgrading, maintenance, and more. Hopefully, even an unexpected disaster can be seen as just another failover, and there can be an opportunity there – perhaps to get some work done on the principal server to increase robustness. And if I’ve just set up a High Availability system for even the simplest of databases, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. :) So now the personal: It’s been an interesting time recently... June has been somewhat odd. A court case with which I was involved got resolved (through mediation). I can’t go into details, but my lawyers tell me that I’m allowed to say how I feel about it. The answer is ‘lousy’. I don’t regret pursuing it as long as I did – but in the end I had to make a decision regarding the commerciality of letting it continue, and I’m going to look forward to the days when the kind of money I spent on my lawyers is small change. Mind you, if I had a similar situation with an employer, I’d do the same again, but that doesn’t really stop me feeling frustrated about it. The following day I had to fly to country Victoria to see my grandmother, who wasn’t expected to last the weekend. She’s still around a week later as I write this, but her 92-year-old body has basically given up on her. She’s been a Christian all her life, and is looking forward to eternity. We’ll all miss her though, and it’s hard to see my family grieving. Then on Tuesday, I was driving back to the airport with my family to come home, when something really bizarre happened. We were travelling down the freeway, just pulled out to go past a truck (farm-truck sized, not a semi-trailer), when a car-sized mass of metal fell off it. It was something like an industrial air-conditioner, but from where I was sitting, it was just a mass of spinning metal, like something out of a movie (one friend described it as “holidays by Michael Bay”). Somehow, and I’m really don’t know how, the part of it nearest us bounced high enough to clear the car, and there wasn’t even a scratch. We pulled over the check, and I was just thanking God that we’d changed lanes when we had, and that we remained unharmed. I had all kinds of thoughts about what could’ve happened if we’d had something that size land on the windscreen... All this has drilled home that while I feel that I haven’t provided as well for the family as I could’ve done (like by pursuing an expensive legal case), I shouldn’t even consider that I have proper control over things. I get to live life, and make decisions based on what I feel is right at the time. But I’m not going to get everything right, and there will be things that feel like disasters, some which could’ve been in my control and some which are very much beyond my control. The case feels like something I could’ve pursued differently, a disaster that could’ve been avoided in some way. Gran dying is lousy of course. An accident on the freeway would have been awful. I need to recognise that the worst disasters are ones that I can’t affect, and that I need to look at things in context – perhaps seeing everything that happens as a migration instead. Life is never the same from one day to the next. Every event has a before and an after – sometimes it’s clearly positive, sometimes it’s not. I remember good events in my life (such as my wedding), and bad (such as the loss of my father when I was ten, or the back injury I had eight years ago). I’m not suggesting that I know how to view everything from the “God works all things for good” perspective, but I am trying to look at last week as a migration of sorts. Those things are behind me now, and the future is in God’s hands. Hopefully I’ve learned things, and will be able to live accordingly. I’ve come through this time now, and even though I’ll miss Gran, I’ll see her again one day, and the future is bright.

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• Why do we (really) program to interfaces?

  - by Kyle Burns

  One of the earliest lessons I was taught in Enterprise development was "always program against an interface".  This was back in the VB6 days and I quickly learned that no code would be allowed to move to the QA server unless my business objects and data access objects each are defined as an interface and have a matching implementation class.  Why?  "It's more reusable" was one answer.  "It doesn't tie you to a specific implementation" a slightly more knowing answer.  And let's not forget the discussion ending "it's a standard".  The problem with these responses was that senior people didn't really understand the reason we were doing the things we were doing and because of that, we were entirely unable to realize the intent behind the practice - we simply used interfaces and had a bunch of extra code to maintain to show for it. It wasn't until a few years later that I finally heard the term "Inversion of Control".  Simply put, "Inversion of Control" takes the creation of objects that used to be within the control (and therefore a responsibility of) of your component and moves it to some outside force.  For example, consider the following code which follows the old "always program against an interface" rule in the manner of many corporate development shops: 1: ICatalog catalog = new Catalog(); 2: Category[] categories = catalog.GetCategories(); In this example, I met the requirement of the rule by declaring the variable as ICatalog, but I didn't hit "it doesn't tie you to a specific implementation" because I explicitly created an instance of the concrete Catalog object.  If I want to test the functionality of the code I just wrote I have to have an environment in which Catalog can be created along with any of the resources upon which it depends (e.g. configuration files, database connections, etc) in order to test my functionality.  That's a lot of setup work and one of the things that I think ultimately discourages real buy-in of unit testing in many development shops. So how do I test my code without needing Catalog to work?  A very primitive approach I've seen is to change the line the instantiates catalog to read: 1: ICatalog catalog = new FakeCatalog();   once the test is run and passes, the code is switched back to the real thing.  This obviously poses a huge risk for introducing test code into production and in my opinion is worse than just keeping the dependency and its associated setup work.  Another popular approach is to make use of Factory methods which use an object whose "job" is to know how to obtain a valid instance of the object.  Using this approach, the code may look something like this: 1: ICatalog catalog = CatalogFactory.GetCatalog();   The code inside the factory is responsible for deciding "what kind" of catalog is needed.  This is a far better approach than the previous one, but it does make projects grow considerably because now in addition to the interface, the real implementation, and the fake implementation(s) for testing you have added a minimum of one factory (or at least a factory method) for each of your interfaces.  Once again, developers say "that's too complicated and has me writing a bunch of useless code" and quietly slip back into just creating a new Catalog and chalking any test failures up to "it will probably work on the server". This is where software intended specifically to facilitate Inversion of Control comes into play.  There are many libraries that take on the Inversion of Control responsibilities in .Net and most of them have many pros and cons.  From this point forward I'll discuss concepts from the standpoint of the Unity framework produced by Microsoft's Patterns and Practices team.  I'm primarily focusing on this library because it questions about it inspired this posting. At Unity's core and that of most any IoC framework is a catalog or registry of components.  This registry can be configured either through code or using the application's configuration file and in the most simple terms says "interface X maps to concrete implementation Y".  It can get much more complicated, but I want to keep things at the "what does it do" level instead of "how does it do it".  The object that exposes most of the Unity functionality is the UnityContainer.  This object exposes methods to configure the catalog as well as the Resolve<T> method which is used to obtain an instance of the type represented by T.  When using the Resolve<T> method, Unity does not necessarily have to just "new up" the requested object, but also can track dependencies of that object and ensure that the entire dependency chain is satisfied. There are three basic ways that I have seen Unity used within projects.  Those are through classes directly using the Unity container, classes requiring injection of dependencies, and classes making use of the Service Locator pattern. The first usage of Unity is when classes are aware of the Unity container and directly call its Resolve method whenever they need the services advertised by an interface.  The up side of this approach is that IoC is utilized, but the down side is that every class has to be aware that Unity is being used and tied directly to that implementation. Many developers don't like the idea of as close a tie to specific IoC implementation as is represented by using Unity within all of your classes and for the most part I agree that this isn't a good idea.  As an alternative, classes can be designed for Dependency Injection.  Dependency Injection is where a force outside the class itself manipulates the object to provide implementations of the interfaces that the class needs to interact with the outside world.  This is typically done either through constructor injection where the object has a constructor that accepts an instance of each interface it requires or through property setters accepting the service providers.  When using dependency, I lean toward the use of constructor injection because I view the constructor as being a much better way to "discover" what is required for the instance to be ready for use.  During resolution, Unity looks for an injection constructor and will attempt to resolve instances of each interface required by the constructor, throwing an exception of unable to meet the advertised needs of the class.  The up side of this approach is that the needs of the class are very clearly advertised and the class is unaware of which IoC container (if any) is being used.  The down side of this approach is that you're required to maintain the objects passed to the constructor as instance variables throughout the life of your object and that objects which coordinate with many external services require a lot of additional constructor arguments (this gets ugly and may indicate a need for refactoring). The final way that I've seen and used Unity is to make use of the ServiceLocator pattern, of which the Patterns and Practices team has also provided a Unity-compatible implementation.  When using the ServiceLocator, your class calls ServiceLocator.Retrieve in places where it would have called Resolve on the Unity container.  Like using Unity directly, it does tie you directly to the ServiceLocator implementation and makes your code aware that dependency injection is taking place, but it does have the up side of giving you the freedom to swap out the underlying IoC container if necessary.  I'm not hugely concerned with hiding IoC entirely from the class (I view this as a "nice to have"), so the single biggest problem that I see with the ServiceLocator approach is that it provides no way to proactively advertise needs in the way that constructor injection does, allowing more opportunity for difficult to track runtime errors. This blog entry has not been intended in any way to be a definitive work on IoC, but rather as something to spur thought about why we program to interfaces and some ways to reach the intended value of the practice instead of having it just complicate your code.  I hope that it helps somebody begin or continue a journey away from being a "Cargo Cult Programmer".

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• Super constructor must be a first statement in Java constructor [closed]

  - by Val

  I know the answer: "we need rules to prevent shooting into your own foot". Ok, I make millions of programming mistakes every day. To be prevented, we need one simple rule: prohibit all JLS and do not use Java. If we explain everything by "not shooting your foot", this is reasonable. But there is not much reason is such reason. When I programmed in Delphy, I always wanted the compiler to check me if I read uninitializable. I have discovered myself that is is stupid to read uncertain variable because it leads unpredictable result and is errorenous obviously. By just looking at the code I could see if there is an error. I wished if compiler could do this job. It is also a reliable signal of programming error if function does not return any value. But I never wanted it do enforce me the super constructor first. Why? You say that constructors just initialize fields. Super fields are derived; extra fields are introduced. From the goal point of view, it does not matter in which order you initialize the variables. I have studied parallel architectures and can say that all the fields can even be assigned in parallel... What? Do you want to use the unitialized fields? Stupid people always want to take away our freedoms and break the JLS rules the God gives to us! Please, policeman, take away that person! Where do I say so? I'm just saying only about initializing/assigning, not using the fields. Java compiler already defends me from the mistake of accessing notinitialized. Some cases sneak but this example shows how this stupid rule does not save us from the read-accessing incompletely initialized in construction: public class BadSuper { String field; public String toString() { return "field = " + field; } public BadSuper(String val) { field = val; // yea, superfirst does not protect from accessing // inconstructed subclass fields. Subclass constr // must be called before super()! System.err.println(this); } } public class BadPost extends BadSuper { Object o; public BadPost(Object o) { super("str"); this. o = o; } public String toString() { // superconstructor will boom here, because o is not initialized! return super.toString() + ", obj = " + o.toString(); } public static void main(String[] args) { new BadSuper("test 1"); new BadPost(new Object()); } } It shows that actually, subfields have to be inilialized before the supreclass! Meantime, java requirement "saves" us from writing specializing the class by specializing what the super constructor argument is, public class MyKryo extends Kryo { class MyClassResolver extends DefaultClassResolver { public Registration register(Registration registration) { System.out.println(MyKryo.this.getDepth()); return super.register(registration); } } MyKryo() { // cannot instantiate MyClassResolver in super super(new MyClassResolver(), new MapReferenceResolver()); } } Try to make it compilable. It is always pain. Especially, when you cannot assign the argument later. Initialization order is not important for initialization in general. I could understand that you should not use super methods before initializing super. But, the requirement for super to be the first statement is different. It only saves you from the code that does useful things simply. I do not see how this adds safety. Actually, safety is degraded because we need to use ugly workarounds. Doing post-initialization, outside the constructors also degrades safety (otherwise, why do we need constructors?) and defeats the java final safety reenforcer. To conclude Reading not initialized is a bug. Initialization order is not important from the computer science point of view. Doing initalization or computations in different order is not a bug. Reenforcing read-access to not initialized is good but compilers fail to detect all such bugs Making super the first does not solve the problem as it "Prevents" shooting into right things but not into the foot It requires to invent workarounds, where, because of complexity of analysis, it is easier to shoot into the foot doing post-initialization outside the constructors degrades safety (otherwise, why do we need constructors?) and that degrade safety by defeating final access modifier When there was java forum alive, java bigots attecked me for these thoughts. Particularly, they dislaked that fields can be initialized in parallel, saying that natural development ensures correctness. When I replied that you could use an advanced engineering to create a human right away, without "developing" any ape first, and it still be an ape, they stopped to listen me. Cos modern technology cannot afford it. Ok, Take something simpler. How do you produce a Renault? Should you construct an Automobile first? No, you start by producing a Renault and, once completed, you'll see that this is an automobile. So, the requirement to produce fields in "natural order" is unnatural. In case of alarmclock or armchair, which are still chair and clock, you may need first develop the base (clock and chair) and then add extra. So, I can have examples where superfields must be initialized first and, oppositely, when they need to be initialized later. The order does not exist in advance. So, the compiler cannot be aware of the proper order. Only programmer/constructor knows is. Compiler should not take more responsibility and enforce the wrong order onto programmer. Saying that I cannot initialize some fields because I did not ininialized the others is like "you cannot initialize the thing because it is not initialized". This is a kind of argument we have. So, to conclude once more, the feature that "protects" me from doing things in simple and right way in order to enforce something that does not add noticeably to the bug elimination at that is a strongly negative thing and it pisses me off, altogether with the all the arguments to support it I've seen so far. It is "a conceptual question about software development" Should there be the requirement to call super() first or not. I do not know. If you do or have an idea, you have place to answer. I think that I have provided enough arguments against this feature. Lets appreciate the ones who benefit form it. Let it just be something more than simple abstract and stupid "write your own language" or "protection" kind of argument. Why do we need it in the language that I am going to develop?

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• Integrating POP3 client functionality into a C# application?

  - by flesh

  I have a web application that requires a server based component to periodically access POP3 email boxes and retrieve emails. The service then needs to process the emails which will involve: Validating the email against some business rules (does it contain a valid reference in the subject line, which user sent the mail, etc.) Analysing and saving any attachments to disk Take the email body and attachment details and create a new item in the database Or update an existing item where the reference matches the incoming email subject line What is the best way to approach this? I really don't want to have to write a POP3 client from scratch, but I need to be able to customize the processing of emails. Ideally I would be able to plug in some component that does the access and retrieval for me, returning arrays of attachments, body text, subject line, etc. ready for my processing... [ UPDATE: Reviews ] OK, so I have spent a fair amount of time looking into (mainly free) .NET POP3 libraries so I thought I'd provide a short review of some of those mentioned below and a few others: Pop3.net - free - works OK, very basic in terms of functionality provided. This is pretty much just the POP3 commands and some base64 encoding, but it's very straight forward - probably a good introduction Pop3 Wizard - commercial / some open source code - couldn't get this to build, missing DLLs, I wouldn't bother with this C#Mail - free - works well, comes with Mime parser and SMTP client, however the comments are in Japanese (not a big deal) and it didn't work with SSL 'out of the box' - I had to change the SslStream constructor after which it worked no problem OpenPOP - free - hasn't been updated for about 5 years so it's current state is .NET 1.0, doesn't support SSL but that was no problem to resolve - I just replaced the existing stream with an SslStream and it worked. Comes with Mime parser. Of the free libraries, I'd go for C#Mail or OpenPOP. I looked at a few commercial libraries: Chillkat, Rebex, RemObjects, JMail.net. Based on features, price and impression of the company I would probably go for Rebex and may in the future if my requirements change or I run into production issues with either of C#Mail or OpenPOP. In case anyone's needs it, this is the replacement SslStream constructor that I used to enable SSL with C#Mail and OpenPOP: SslStream stream = new SslStream(clientSocket.GetStream(), false, delegate(object sender, X509Certificate cert, X509Chain chain, SslPolicyErrors errors) { return true; });

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• AbcPDF renders the same page multiple times

  - by Steven

  I need to retrieve several pages and output this in a PDF document. I have the following page structure: Page 1 Sub 1 Sub 2 Sub 3 On page one, I have a link which executes the below code. What it does, is to retrieve child pages (one level) and put them in a page collection. Then I loop trough the page collection and retrieve each sub pages URL. This works. I've tested and seen that it retrieves 3 different URL's. The problem is that my PDF gets three pages of Page 1. It does not render Sub 1 to 3. Why isn't docID = document.AddImageUrl(pageLink) retrieving the pages? Websupergoo refers to a caching problem which may occur. But their solution did not help me. Any good suggestions anyone? protected void linkBtnCreateMultipagePDF_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { string baseURL = Request.Url.ToString(); PageDataCollection pdc = GetChildren(CurrentPageLink); //Create PDF document Doc document = new Doc(); document.Rect.Inset(10, 20); int docID; string pageLink = string.Empty; foreach (PageData pd in pdc) { //This lops goes through the different pages and retrieves that pages URL pageLink = baseURL + pd.LinkURL; document.Page = document.AddPage(); // But for some reason, the same page is added here. docID = document.AddImageUrl(pageLink); //Chain pages together while (true) { if (!document.Chainable(docID)) break; document.Page = document.AddPage(); docID = document.AddImageToChain(docID); } } //Flatten file for (int i = 1; i <= document.PageCount; i++) { document.PageNumber = i; document.Flatten(); } byte[] theData = document.GetData(); Response.Clear(); Response.ContentType = "application/pdf"; Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", "inline; filename=MyPDF.PDF"); Response.AddHeader("content-length", theData.Length.ToString()); Response.BinaryWrite(theData); Response.End(); }

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• Macro doesn't work in the function.

  - by avp

  I have problems with following code: http://lisper.ru/apps/format/96 The problem is in "normalize" function, which does not work. It fails on the fifth line: (zero-p a indexes i) (defun normalize (a &optional indexes i) "Returns normalized A." (pragma (format t "Data=~A ~A ~A" a indexes i) (if (zero-p a indexes i) a ;; cannot normalize empty vector (let* ((mmm (format t "Zero?=~a" (zero-p a indexes i))) (L (sqrt (+ (do-op-on * a :x a :x indexes i indexes i) (do-op-on * a :y a :y indexes i indexes i) (do-op-on * a :z a :z indexes i indexes i)))) (mmm (format t "L=~a" L)) (L (/ 1D0 L)) (mmm (format t "L=~a" L))) ; L=1/length(A) (make-V3 (* (ref-of a :x indexes i) l) (* (ref-of a :y indexes i) l) (* (ref-of a :z indexes i) l)))))) in function "normalize" I call the macro "zero-p", which in turn calls macro "ref-of", which is the last in the chain. (defmacro zero-p (v &optional indexes index) "Checks if the vector is 'almost' zero length." `(and (< (ref-of ,v :x ,indexes ,index) *min+*) (< (ref-of ,v :y ,indexes ,index) *min+*) (< (ref-of ,v :z ,indexes ,index) *min+*) (> (ref-of ,v :x ,indexes ,index) *min-*) (> (ref-of ,v :y ,indexes ,index) *min-*) (> (ref-of ,v :z ,indexes ,index) *min-*))) Here is ref-of: (defmacro ref-of (values coordinate &optional indexes index) "Please see DATA STRUCTURE for details." (if indexes (cond ((eq coordinate :x) `(aref ,values (aref ,indexes ,index))) ((eq coordinate :y) `(aref ,values (+ 1 (aref ,indexes ,index)))) ((eq coordinate :z) `(aref ,values (+ 2 (aref ,indexes ,index)))) (T (error "The symbol ~S is not :X, :Y or :Z." coordinate))) (cond ((eq coordinate :x) `(aref ,values 0)) ((eq coordinate :y) `(aref ,values 1)) ((eq coordinate :z) `(aref ,values 2)) (T (error "The symbol ~S is not :X, :Y or :Z." coordinate))))) Also, in "normalize" I call the macro "do-op-on", which calls "ref-of" as well. (defmacro do-op-on (op name1 coord1 name2 coord2 &optional is1 i1 is2 i2) "Example: (do-op-on * A :x B :y i n) == A[i[n]].x*B.y" `(,op (ref-of ,name1 ,coord1 ,is1 ,i1) (ref-of ,name2 ,coord2 ,is2 ,i2))) As a result, instead of having this: (aref some-array 0) I have (aref NIL NIL) which is created in "ref-of". I suppose that I lose the symbol A from the call (normalize A). I just feel that the symbol does not survive the macroexpanson. The thing is, macroexpansoin works in REPL for each macro independently. Can anyone explain where is the mistake?

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• Infinite loop using Spring Security - Login page is protected even though it should allow anonymous

  - by Tai Squared

  I have a Spring application (Spring version 2.5.6.SEC01, Spring Security version 2.0.5) with the following setup: web.xml <welcome-file-list> <welcome-file> index.jsp </welcome-file> </welcome-file-list> The index.jsp page is in the WebContent directory and simply contains a redirect: <c:redirect url="/login.htm"/> In the appname-servlet.xml, there is a view resolver to point to the jsp pages in WEB-INF/jsp <bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver"> <property name="viewClass" value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.JstlView" /> <property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/jsp/" /> <property name="suffix" value=".jsp" /> </bean> In the security-config.xml file, I have the following configuration: <http> <!-- Restrict URLs based on role --> <intercept-url pattern="/WEB-INF/jsp/login.jsp*" access="ROLE_ANONYMOUS" /> <intercept-url pattern="/WEB-INF/jsp/header.jsp*" access="ROLE_ANONYMOUS" /> <intercept-url pattern="/WEB-INF/jsp/footer.jsp*" access="ROLE_ANONYMOUS" /> <intercept-url pattern="/login*" access="ROLE_ANONYMOUS" /> <intercept-url pattern="/index.jsp" access="ROLE_ANONYMOUS" /> <intercept-url pattern="/logoutSuccess*" access="ROLE_ANONYMOUS" /> <intercept-url pattern="/css/**" filters="none" /> <intercept-url pattern="/images/**" filters="none" /> <intercept-url pattern="/**" access="ROLE_ANONYMOUS" /> <form-login login-page="/login.jsp"/> </http> <authentication-provider> <jdbc-user-service data-source-ref="dataSource" /> </authentication-provider> However, I can't even navigate to the login page and get the following error in the log: WARNING: The login page is being protected by the filter chain, but you don't appear to have anonymous authentication enabled. This is almost certainly an error. I've tried changing the ROLE_ANONYMOUS to IS_AUTHENTICATED_ANONYMOUSLY, changing the login-page to index.jsp, login.htm, and adding different intercept-url values, but I can't get it so the login page is accesible and security applies to the other pages. What do I have to change to avoid this loop?

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• .NET RegEx "Memory Leak" investigation

  - by Kevin Pullin

  I recently looked into some .NET "memory leaks" (i.e. unexpected, lingering GC rooted objects) in a WinForms app. After loading and then closing a huge report, the memory usage did not drop as expected even after a couple of gen2 collections. Assuming that the reporting control was being kept alive by a stray event handler I cracked open WinDbg to see what was happening... Using WinDbg, the !dumpheap -stat command reported a large amount of memory was consumed by string instances. Further refining this down with the !dumpheap -type System.String command I found the culprit, a 90MB string used for the report, at address 03be7930. The last step was to invoke !gcroot 03be7930 to see which object(s) were keeping it alive. My expectations were incorrect - it was not an unhooked event handler hanging onto the reporting control (and report string), but instead it was held on by a System.Text.RegularExpressions.RegexInterpreter instance, which itself is a descendant of a System.Text.RegularExpressions.CachedCodeEntry. Now, the caching of Regexs is (somewhat) common knowledge as this helps to reduce the overhead of having to recompile the Regex each time it is used. But what then does this have to do with keeping my string alive? Based on analysis using Reflector, it turns out that the input string is stored in the RegexInterpreter whenever a Regex method is called. The RegexInterpreter holds onto this string reference until a new string is fed into it by a subsequent Regex method invocation. I'd expect similar behaviour by hanging onto Regex.Match instances and perhaps others. The chain is something like this: Regex.Split, Regex.Match, Regex.Replace, etc Regex.Run RegexScanner.Scan (RegexScanner is the base class, RegexInterpreter is the subclass described above). The offending Regex is only used for reporting, rarely used, and therefore unlikely to be used again to clear out the existing report string. And even if the Regex was used at a later point, it would probably be processing another large report. This is a relatively significant problem and just plain feels dirty. All that said, I found a few options on how to resolve, or at least work around, this scenario. I'll let the community respond first and if no takers come forward I will fill in any gaps in a day or two.

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• JBOSS 7.1 started hanging after 6 months of deployment

  - by PVR

  My application is been live from 6 months. The application is host on jboss 7.1 server. From last few days I am finding numerous problem of hanging of jboss server. Though I restart the jboss server again, it does not invoke. I need to restart the server machine itself. Can anyone please let me know what could be the cause of these problems and the workable resolutions or any suggestion ? Kindly dont degrade the question as I am facing a lot problems due to this hanging issue. Also for the information, the application is based on Java, GWT, Hibernate 3. Please find the standalone.xml file in case if it helps. <extensions> <extension module="org.jboss.as.clustering.infinispan"/> <extension module="org.jboss.as.configadmin"/> <extension module="org.jboss.as.connector"/> <extension module="org.jboss.as.deployment-scanner"/> <extension module="org.jboss.as.ee"/> <extension module="org.jboss.as.ejb3"/> <extension module="org.jboss.as.jaxrs"/> <extension module="org.jboss.as.jdr"/> <extension module="org.jboss.as.jmx"/> <extension module="org.jboss.as.jpa"/> <extension module="org.jboss.as.logging"/> <extension module="org.jboss.as.mail"/> <extension module="org.jboss.as.naming"/> <extension module="org.jboss.as.osgi"/> <extension module="org.jboss.as.pojo"/> <extension module="org.jboss.as.remoting"/> <extension module="org.jboss.as.sar"/> <extension module="org.jboss.as.security"/> <extension module="org.jboss.as.threads"/> <extension module="org.jboss.as.transactions"/> <extension module="org.jboss.as.web"/> <extension module="org.jboss.as.webservices"/> <extension module="org.jboss.as.weld"/> </extensions> <system-properties> <property name="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol.COMPRESSION" value="on"/> <property name="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol.COMPRESSION_MIME_TYPES" value="text/javascript,text/css,text/html,text/xml,text/json"/> </system-properties> <management> <security-realms> <security-realm name="ManagementRealm"> <authentication> <properties path="mgmt-users.properties" relative-to="jboss.server.config.dir"/> </authentication> </security-realm> <security-realm name="ApplicationRealm"> <authentication> <properties path="application-users.properties" relative-to="jboss.server.config.dir"/> </authentication> </security-realm> </security-realms> <management-interfaces> <native-interface security-realm="ManagementRealm"> <socket-binding native="management-native"/> </native-interface> <http-interface security-realm="ManagementRealm"> <socket-binding http="management-http"/> </http-interface> </management-interfaces> </management> <profile> <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:logging:1.1"> <console-handler name="CONSOLE"> <level name="INFO"/> <formatter> <pattern-formatter pattern="%d{HH:mm:ss,SSS} %-5p [%c] (%t) %s%E%n"/> </formatter> </console-handler> <periodic-rotating-file-handler name="FILE"> <formatter> <pattern-formatter pattern="%d{HH:mm:ss,SSS} %-5p [%c] (%t) %s%E%n"/> </formatter> <file relative-to="jboss.server.log.dir" path="server.log"/> <suffix value=".yyyy-MM-dd"/> <append value="true"/> </periodic-rotating-file-handler> <logger category="com.arjuna"> <level name="WARN"/> </logger> <logger category="org.apache.tomcat.util.modeler"> <level name="WARN"/> </logger> <logger category="sun.rmi"> <level name="WARN"/> </logger> <logger category="jacorb"> <level name="WARN"/> </logger> <logger category="jacorb.config"> <level name="ERROR"/> </logger> <root-logger> <level name="INFO"/> <handlers> <handler name="CONSOLE"/> <handler name="FILE"/> </handlers> </root-logger> </subsystem> <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:configadmin:1.0"/> <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:datasources:1.0"> <datasources> <datasource jndi-name="java:jboss/datasources/ExampleDS" pool-name="ExampleDS" enabled="true" use-java-context="true"> <connection-url>jdbc:h2:mem:test;DB_CLOSE_DELAY=-1</connection-url> <driver>h2</driver> <security> <user-name>sa</user-name> <password>sa</password> </security> </datasource> <drivers> <driver name="h2" module="com.h2database.h2"> <xa-datasource-class>org.h2.jdbcx.JdbcDataSource</xa-datasource-class> </driver> </drivers> </datasources> </subsystem> <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:deployment-scanner:1.1"> <deployment-scanner path="deployments" relative-to="jboss.server.base.dir" scan-interval="5000"/> </subsystem> <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:ee:1.0"/> <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:ejb3:1.2"> <session-bean> <stateless> <bean-instance-pool-ref pool-name="slsb-strict-max-pool"/> </stateless> <stateful default-access-timeout="5000" cache-ref="simple"/> <singleton default-access-timeout="5000"/> </session-bean> <pools> <bean-instance-pools> <strict-max-pool name="slsb-strict-max-pool" max-pool-size="20" instance-acquisition-timeout="5" instance-acquisition-timeout-unit="MINUTES"/> <strict-max-pool name="mdb-strict-max-pool" max-pool-size="20" instance-acquisition-timeout="5" instance-acquisition-timeout-unit="MINUTES"/> </bean-instance-pools> </pools> <caches> <cache name="simple" aliases="NoPassivationCache"/> <cache name="passivating" passivation-store-ref="file" aliases="SimpleStatefulCache"/> </caches> <passivation-stores> <file-passivation-store name="file"/> </passivation-stores> <async thread-pool-name="default"/> <timer-service thread-pool-name="default"> <data-store path="timer-service-data" relative-to="jboss.server.data.dir"/> </timer-service> <remote connector-ref="remoting-connector" thread-pool-name="default"/> <thread-pools> <thread-pool name="default"> <max-threads count="10"/> <keepalive-time time="100" unit="milliseconds"/> </thread-pool> </thread-pools> </subsystem> <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:infinispan:1.2" default-cache-container="hibernate"> <cache-container name="hibernate" default-cache="local-query"> <local-cache name="entity"> <transaction mode="NON_XA"/> <eviction strategy="LRU" max-entries="10000"/> <expiration max-idle="100000"/> </local-cache> <local-cache name="local-query"> <transaction mode="NONE"/> <eviction strategy="LRU" max-entries="10000"/> <expiration max-idle="100000"/> </local-cache> <local-cache name="timestamps"> <transaction mode="NONE"/> <eviction strategy="NONE"/> </local-cache> </cache-container> </subsystem> <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:jaxrs:1.0"/> <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:jca:1.1"> <archive-validation enabled="true" fail-on-error="true" fail-on-warn="false"/> <bean-validation enabled="true"/> <default-workmanager> <short-running-threads> <core-threads count="50"/> <queue-length count="50"/> <max-threads count="50"/> <keepalive-time time="10" unit="seconds"/> </short-running-threads> <long-running-threads> <core-threads count="50"/> <queue-length count="50"/> <max-threads count="50"/> <keepalive-time time="100" unit="seconds"/> </long-running-threads> </default-workmanager> <cached-connection-manager/> </subsystem> <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:jdr:1.0"/> <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:jmx:1.1"> <show-model value="true"/> <remoting-connector/> </subsystem> <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:jpa:1.0"> <jpa default-datasource=""/> </subsystem> <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:mail:1.0"> <mail-session jndi-name="java:jboss/mail/Default"> <smtp-server outbound-socket-binding-ref="mail-smtp"/> </mail-session> </subsystem> <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:naming:1.1"/> <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:osgi:1.2" activation="lazy"> <properties> <property name="org.osgi.framework.startlevel.beginning"> 1 </property> </properties> <capabilities> <capability name="javax.servlet.api:v25"/> <capability name="javax.transaction.api"/> <capability name="org.apache.felix.log" startlevel="1"/> <capability name="org.jboss.osgi.logging" startlevel="1"/> <capability name="org.apache.felix.configadmin" startlevel="1"/> <capability name="org.jboss.as.osgi.configadmin" startlevel="1"/> </capabilities> </subsystem> <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:pojo:1.0"/> <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:remoting:1.1"> <connector name="remoting-connector" socket-binding="remoting" security-realm="ApplicationRealm"/> </subsystem> <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:resource-adapters:1.0"/> <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:sar:1.0"/> <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:security:1.1"> <security-domains> <security-domain name="other" cache-type="default"> <authentication> <login-module code="Remoting" flag="optional"> <module-option name="password-stacking" value="useFirstPass"/> </login-module> <login-module code="RealmUsersRoles" flag="required"> <module-option name="usersProperties" value="${jboss.server.config.dir}/application-users.properties"/> <module-option name="rolesProperties" value="${jboss.server.config.dir}/application-roles.properties"/> <module-option name="realm" value="ApplicationRealm"/> <module-option name="password-stacking" value="useFirstPass"/> </login-module> </authentication> </security-domain> <security-domain name="jboss-web-policy" cache-type="default"> <authorization> <policy-module code="Delegating" flag="required"/> </authorization> </security-domain> <security-domain name="jboss-ejb-policy" cache-type="default"> <authorization> <policy-module code="Delegating" flag="required"/> </authorization> </security-domain> </security-domains> </subsystem> <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:threads:1.1"/> <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:transactions:1.1"> <core-environment> <process-id> <uuid/> </process-id> </core-environment> <recovery-environment socket-binding="txn-recovery-environment" status-socket-binding="txn-status-manager"/> <coordinator-environment default-timeout="300"/> </subsystem> <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:web:1.1" default-virtual-server="default-host" native="false"> <connector name="http" protocol="HTTP/1.1" scheme="http" socket-binding="http"/> <virtual-server name="default-host" enable-welcome-root="false"> <alias name="localhost"/> <alias name="nextenders.com"/> </virtual-server> </subsystem> <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:webservices:1.1"> <modify-wsdl-address>true</modify-wsdl-address> <wsdl-host>${jboss.bind.address:127.0.0.1}</wsdl-host> <endpoint-config name="Standard-Endpoint-Config"/> <endpoint-config name="Recording-Endpoint-Config"> <pre-handler-chain name="recording-handlers" protocol-bindings="##SOAP11_HTTP ##SOAP11_HTTP_MTOM ##SOAP12_HTTP ##SOAP12_HTTP_MTOM"> <handler name="RecordingHandler" class="org.jboss.ws.common.invocation.RecordingServerHandler"/> </pre-handler-chain> </endpoint-config> </subsystem> <subsystem xmlns="urn:jboss:domain:weld:1.0"/> </profile> <interfaces> <interface name="management"> <inet-address value="${jboss.bind.address.management:127.0.0.1}"/> </interface> <interface name="public"> <inet-address value="${jboss.bind.address:127.0.0.1}"/> </interface> <interface name="unsecure"> <inet-address value="${jboss.bind.address.unsecure:127.0.0.1}"/> </interface> </interfaces> <socket-binding-group name="standard-sockets" default-interface="public" port-offset="${jboss.socket.binding.port-offset:0}"> <socket-binding name="management-native" interface="management" port="${jboss.management.native.port:9999}"/> <socket-binding name="management-http" interface="management" port="${jboss.management.http.port:9990}"/> <socket-binding name="management-https" interface="management" port="${jboss.management.https.port:9443}"/> <socket-binding name="ajp" port="8009"/> <socket-binding name="http" port="80"/> <socket-binding name="https" port="443"/> <socket-binding name="osgi-http" interface="management" port="8090"/> <socket-binding name="remoting" port="4447"/> <socket-binding name="txn-recovery-environment" port="4712"/> <socket-binding name="txn-status-manager" port="4713"/> <outbound-socket-binding name="mail-smtp"> <remote-destination host="localhost" port="25"/> </outbound-socket-binding> </socket-binding-group>

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• Contract developer trying to get outsourcing contract with current client.

  - by Mike

  I work for a major bank as a contract software developer. I've been there a few months, and without exception this place has the worst software practices I've ever seen. The software my team makes has no formal testing, terrible code (not reusable, hard to read, etc), minimal documentation, no defined development process and an absolutely sickening amount of waste due to bureaucratic overhead. Part of my contract is to maintain a group of thousands of very poorly written batch jobs. When one of the jobs fails (read: crashes), it's a developers job to look at the source, figure out what's wrong, fix it, and check it in. There is no quality assurance process or auditing of the results whatsoever. Once the developer says "it works" a manager signs off and it goes into production. What's disturbing is that these jobs essentially grab market data and put it into a third-party risk management system, which provides the bank with critical intelligence. I've discovered the disturbing truth that this has been happening since the 90s and nobody really has evidence the system is getting the correct data! Without going into details, an issue arose on Friday that was so horrible I actually stormed out of the place. I was ready to quit, but I decided to just get out to calm my nerves and possibly go back Monday. I've been reflecting today on how to handle this. I have realized that, in probably less than 6 months, I could (with 2 other developers) remake a large component of this system. The new system would provide them with, as primary benefits, a maintainable codebase less prone to error and a solid QA framework. To do it properly I would have to be outside the bank, the internal bureaucracy is just too much. And moreover, I think a bank is fundamentally not a place that can make good software. This is my plan. Write a report explaining in depth all the problems with their current system Explain why their software practices fail and generate a tremendous amount of error and waste. Use this as the basis for claiming the project must be developed externally. Write a high level development plan, including what resources I will require Hand 1,2,3 to my manager, hopefully he passes it up the chain. Worst case he fires me, but this isn't so bad. Convinced Executive decides to award my company a contract for the new system I have 8 years experience as a software contractor and have delivered my share of successful software products, but all working in-house for small/medium sized companies. When I read this over, I think I have a dynamite plan. But since this is the first time doing something this bold so I have my doubts. My question is, is this a good idea? If you think not, please spare no detail.

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• Git for Websites / post-receive / Separation of Test and Production Sites

  - by Walt W

  Hi all, I'm using Git to manage my website's source code and deployment, and currently have the test and live sites running on the same box. Following this resource http://toroid.org/ams/git-website-howto originally, I came up with the following post-receive hook script to differentiate between pushes to my live site and pushes to my test site: while read ref do #echo "Ref updated:" #echo $ref -- would print something like example at top of file result=`echo $ref | gawk -F' ' '{ print $3 }'` if [ $result != "" ]; then echo "Branch found: " echo $result case $result in refs/heads/master ) git --work-tree=c:/temp/BLAH checkout -f master echo "Updated master" ;; refs/heads/testbranch ) git --work-tree=c:/temp/BLAH2 checkout -f testbranch echo "Updated testbranch" ;; * ) echo "No update known for $result" ;; esac fi done echo "Post-receive updates complete" However, I have doubts that this is actually safe :) I'm by no means a Git expert, but I am guessing that Git probably keeps track of the current checked-out branch head, and this approach probably has the potential to confuse it to no end. So a few questions: IS this safe? Would a better approach be to have my base repository be the test site repository (with corresponding working directory), and then have that repository push changes to a new live site repository, which has a corresponding working directory to the live site base? This would also allow me to move the production to a different server and keep the deployment chain intact. Is there something I'm missing? Is there a different, clean way to differentiate between test and production deployments when using Git for managing websites? As an additional note in light of Vi's answer, is there a good way to do this that would handle deletions without mucking with the file system much? Thank you, -Walt PS - The script I came up with for the multiple repos (and am using unless I hear better) is as follows: sitename=`basename \`pwd\`` while read ref do #echo "Ref updated:" #echo $ref -- would print something like example at top of file result=`echo $ref | gawk -F' ' '{ print $3 }'` if [ $result != "" ]; then echo "Branch found: " echo $result case $result in refs/heads/master ) git checkout -q -f master if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then echo "Test Site checked out properly" else echo "Failed to checkout test site!" fi ;; refs/heads/live-site ) git push -q ../Live/$sitename live-site:master if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then echo "Live Site received updates properly" else echo "Failed to push updates to Live Site" fi ;; * ) echo "No update known for $result" ;; esac fi done echo "Post-receive updates complete" And then the repo in ../Live/$sitename (these are "bare" repos with working trees added after init) has the basic post-receive: git checkout -f if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then echo "Live site `basename \`pwd\`` checked out successfully" else echo "Live site failed to checkout" fi

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• What is "Either the application has not called WSAStartup, or WSAStartup failed"

  - by Am1rr3zA

  I develop a program which connect to a web-server through network every thing works fine until I try to use some dongle to protect my software. the dongle has network feature too and it's API work under network infrastructure. when I added the Dongle checking code to my program I got this error: "Either the application has not called WSAStartup, or WSAStartup failed" I don't have any idea what is going on? I put the block of code which encounter exception here. the scenario I got the exception is I log in to the program (everything works fine) the plug out the dongle then the program stop and ask for dongle and I plug in the dongle again and try to log in bu I got exception on line response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse(); DongleService unikey = new DongleService(); checkDongle = unikey.isConnectedNow(); if (checkDongle) { isPass = true; this.username = txtbxUser.Text; this.pass = txtbxPass.Text; this.IP = combobxServer.Text; string uri = @"https://" + combobxServer.Text + ":5002num_events=1"; request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(uri); request.Proxy = null; request.Credentials = new NetworkCredential(this.username, this.pass); ServicePointManager.ServerCertificateValidationCallback = ((sender, certificate, chain, sslPolicyErrors) => true); response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse(); Properties.Settings.Default.User = txtbxUser.Text; int index = _servers.FindIndex(p => p == combobxServer.Text); if (index == -1) { _servers.Add(combobxServer.Text); Config_Save.SaveServers(_servers); _servers = Config_Save.LoadServers(); } Properties.Settings.Default.Server = combobxServer.Text; // also save the password if (checkBox1.CheckState.ToString() == "Checked") Properties.Settings.Default.Pass = txtbxPass.Text; Properties.Settings.Default.settingLoginUsername = this.username; Properties.Settings.Default.settingLoginPassword = this.pass; Properties.Settings.Default.settingLoginPort = "5002"; Properties.Settings.Default.settingLoginIP = this.IP; Properties.Settings.Default.isLogin = "guest"; Properties.Settings.Default.Save(); response.Close(); request.Abort(); this.isPass = true; this.Close(); } else { MessageBox.Show("Please Insert Correct Dongle!", "Dongle Error", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Stop); }

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• Scared of Calculus - Required to pass Differential Calculus as part of my Computer science major

  - by ke3pup

  Hi guys I'm finishing my Computer science degree in university but my fear of maths (lack of background knowledge) made me to leave all my maths units til' the very end which is now. i either take them on and pass or have to give up. I've passed all my programming units easily but knowing my poor maths skills won't do i've been staying clear of the maths units. I have to pass Differential Calculus and Linear Algebra first. With a help of book named "Linear Algebra: A Modern Introduction" i'm finding myself on track and i think i can pass the Linear Algebra unit. But with differential calculus i can't find a book to help me. They're either too advanced or just too simple for what i have to learn. The things i'm required to know for this units are: Set notation, the real number line, Complex numbers in cartesian form. Complex plane, modulus. Complex numbers in polar form. De Moivre’s Theorem. Complex powers and nth roots. Definition of ei? and ez for z complex. Applications to trigonometry. Revision of domain and range of a function Working in R3. Curves and surfaces. Functions of 2 variables. Level curves.Partial derivatives and tangent planes. The derivative as a difference quotient. Geometric significance of the derivative. Discussion of limit. Higher order partial derivatives. Limits of f(x,y). Continuity. Maxima and minima of f(x,y). The chain rule. Implicit differentiation. Directional derivatives and the gradient. Limit laws, l’Hoˆpital’s rule, composition law. Definition of sinh and cosh and their inverses. Taylor polynomials. The remainder term. Taylor series. Is there a book to help me get on track with the above? Being a student i can't buy too many books hence why i'm looking for a book that covers topics I need to know. The University library has a fairly limited collection which i took as loan but didn't find useful as it was too complex.

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• Problem with ColdFusion communicating with MySQL database

  - by Greg

  Hi, I have been working to migrate a non-profit website from a local server (running Windows XP) to a GoDaddy hosting account (running Linux). Most of the pages are written in ColdFusion. Things have gone smoothly, up until this point. There is a flash form within the site (see this page: http://www.preservenet.cornell.edu/employ/submitjob.cfm) which, when completed, takes the visitor to this page: submitjobaction.cfm . I'm not quite sure what to make of this error, since I copied exactly what had been in the old MySQL database, and the .cfm files are exactly as they had been when they worked on the old server. Am I missing something? Below is the code from the database that the error seems to be referring to. When I change "Positionlat" to some default value in the database as it suggests in the error, it says that another field needs a default value, and it's a neverending chain of errors as I try to correct it. This is probably a stupid error that I'm missing, but I've been working at it for days and can't find what I'm missing. I would really appreciate any help. Thanks! -Greg DROP TABLE IF EXISTS employopp; CREATE TABLE employopp ( POSTID int(10) NOT NULL auto_increment, USERID varchar(10) collate latin1_general_ci default NULL, STATUS varchar(10) collate latin1_general_ci NOT NULL default 'ACTIVE', TYPE varchar(50) collate latin1_general_ci default 'professional', JOBTITLE varchar(70) collate latin1_general_ci default NULL, NUMBER varchar(30) collate latin1_general_ci default NULL, SALARY varchar(40) collate latin1_general_ci default NULL, ORGNAME varchar(70) collate latin1_general_ci default NULL, DEPTNAME varchar(70) collate latin1_general_ci default NULL, ORGDETAILS mediumtext character set utf8 collate utf8_unicode_ci, ORGWEBSITE varchar(200) collate latin1_general_ci default NULL, ADDRESS varchar(60) collate latin1_general_ci default 'none given', ADDRESS2 varchar(60) collate latin1_general_ci default NULL, CITY varchar(30) collate latin1_general_ci default NULL, STATE varchar(30) collate latin1_general_ci default NULL, COUNTRY varchar(3) collate latin1_general_ci default 'USA', POSTALCODE varchar(10) collate latin1_general_ci default NULL, EMAIL varchar(75) collate latin1_general_ci default NULL, NOMAIL varchar(5) collate latin1_general_ci default NULL, PHONE varchar(20) collate latin1_general_ci default NULL, FAX varchar(20) collate latin1_general_ci default NULL, WEBSITE varchar(200) collate latin1_general_ci default NULL, POSTDATE varchar(10) collate latin1_general_ci default NULL, POSTUNTIL varchar(20) collate latin1_general_ci default 'select date', POSTUNTILFILLED varchar(20) collate latin1_general_ci NOT NULL default 'until filled', texteHTML mediumtext character set utf8 collate utf8_unicode_ci, HOWTOAPPLY mediumtext character set utf8 collate utf8_unicode_ci, CONFIRSTNM varchar(30) collate latin1_general_ci default NULL, CONLASTNM varchar(60) collate latin1_general_ci default NULL, POSITIONCITY varchar(30) collate latin1_general_ci default NULL, POSITIONSTATE varchar(30) collate latin1_general_ci default NULL, POSITIONCOUNTRY varchar(3) collate latin1_general_ci default 'USA', POSITIONLAT varchar(50) collate latin1_general_ci NOT NULL, POSITIONLNG varchar(50) collate latin1_general_ci NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (POSTID) ) ENGINE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=2007 DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 COLLATE=latin1_general_ci;

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• Experienced developer trying to get outsourcing contract with current client.

  - by Mike

  I work for a major bank as a contract software developer. I've been there a few months, and without exception this place has the worst software practices I've ever seen. The software my team makes has no formal testing, terrible code (not reusable, hard to read, etc), minimal documentation, no defined development process and an absolutely sickening amount of waste due to bureaucratic overhead. Part of my contract is to maintain a group of thousands of very poorly written batch jobs. When one of the jobs fails (read: crashes), it's a developers job to look at the source, figure out what's wrong, fix it, and check it in. There is no quality assurance process or auditing of the results whatsoever. Once the developer says "it works" a manager signs off and it goes into production. What's disturbing is that these jobs essentially grab market data and put it into a third-party risk management system, which provides the bank with critical intelligence. I've discovered the disturbing truth that this has been happening since the 90s and nobody really has evidence the system is getting the correct data! Without going into details, an issue arose on Friday that was so horrible I actually stormed out of the place. I was ready to quit, but I decided to just get out to calm my nerves and possibly go back Monday. I've been reflecting today on how to handle this. I have realized that, in probably less than 6 months, I could (with 2 other developers) remake a large component of this system. The new system would provide them with, as primary benefits, a maintainable codebase less prone to error and a solid QA framework. To do it properly I would have to be outside the bank, the internal bureaucracy is just too much. And moreover, I think a bank is fundamentally not a place that can make good software. This is my plan. Write a report explaining in depth all the problems with their current system Explain why their software practices fail and generate a tremendous amount of error and waste. Use this as the basis for claiming the project must be developed externally. Write a high level development plan, including what resources I will require Hand 1,2,3 to my manager, hopefully he passes it up the chain. Worst case he fires me, but this isn't so bad. Convinced Executive decides to award my company a contract for the new system I have 8 years experience as a software contractor and have delivered my share of successful software products, but all working in-house for small/medium sized companies. When I read this over, I think I have a dynamite plan. But since this is the first time doing something this bold so I have my doubts. My question is, is this a good idea? If you think not, please spare no detail.

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• facebook login problem

  - by khoyendra

  This is the code which is use for login in facebook but it is go to the finaly block and show my facebook link in browser. i am show from which it go to the finaly block in program. how to login without open browser this example is yack from http://code.google.com/p/facebook-java-api/wiki/Examples try{ MDC.put(ipAddress, req.getRemoteAddr()); HttpServletRequest request = (HttpServletRequest) req; HttpServletResponse response = (HttpServletResponse) res; HttpSession session = request.getSession(true); IFacebookRestClient<Document> userClient = getUserClient(session); if (userClient == null) { logger.debug("User session doesn't have a Facebook API client setup yet. Creating one and storing it in the user's session."); userClient = new FacebookXmlRestClient(api_key, secret); session.setAttribute(FACEBOOK_USER_CLIENT, userClient); } logger.trace("Creating a FacebookWebappHelper, which copies fb_ request param data into the userClient"); FacebookWebappHelper<Document> facebook = new FacebookWebappHelper<Document>(request, response, api_key, secret, userClient); String nextPage = request.getRequestURI(); nextPage = nextPage.substring(nextPage.indexOf("/", 1) + 1); //cut out the first /, the context path and the 2nd / logger.trace(nextPage); boolean redirectOccurred = facebook.requireLogin(nextPage); if (redirectOccurred) { return; //from this pt. send to finaly block and open my facebook page } redirectOccurred = facebook.requireFrame(nextPage); if (redirectOccurred) { return; } long facebookUserID; try { facebookUserID = userClient.users_getLoggedInUser(); } catch (FacebookException ex) { response.sendError(HttpServletResponse.SC_INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR, "Error while fetching user's facebook ID"); logger.error("Error while getting cached (supplied by request params) value " + "of the user's facebook ID or while fetching it from the Facebook service " + "if the cached value was not present for some reason. Cached value = {}", userClient.getCacheUserId()); return; } MDC.put(facebookUserId, String.valueOf(facebookUserID)); chain.doFilter(request, response); } finally { MDC.remove(ipAddress); MDC.remove(facebookUserId); }

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• Unit finalization order for application, compiled with run-time packages?

  - by Alexander

  I need to execute my code after finalization of SysUtils unit. I've placed my code in separate unit and included it first in uses clause of dpr-file, like this: project Project1; uses MyUnit, // <- my separate unit SysUtils, Classes, SomeOtherUnits; procedure Test; begin // end; begin SetProc(Test); end. MyUnit looks like this: unit MyUnit; interface procedure SetProc(AProc: TProcedure); implementation var Test: TProcedure; procedure SetProc(AProc: TProcedure); begin Test := AProc; end; initialization finalization Test; end. Note that MyUnit doesn't have any uses. This is usual Windows exe, no console, without forms and compiled with default run-time packages. MyUnit is not part of any package (but I've tried to use it from package too). I expect that finalization section of MyUnit will be executed after finalization section of SysUtils. This is what Delphi's help tells me. However, this is not always the case. I have 2 test apps, which differs a bit by code in Test routine/dpr-file and units, listed in uses. MyUnit, however, is listed first in all cases. One application is run as expected: Halt0 - FinalizeUnits - ...other units... - SysUtils's finalization - MyUnit's finalization - ...other units... But the second is not. MyUnit's finalization is invoked before SysUtils's finalization. The actual call chain looks like this: Halt0 - FinalizeUnits - ...other units... - SysUtils's finalization (skipped) - MyUnit's finalization - ...other units... - SysUtils's finalization (executed) Both projects have very similar settings. I tried a lot to remove/minimize their differences, but I still do not see a reason for this behaviour. I've tried to debug this and found out that: it seems that every unit have some kind of reference counting. And it seems that InitTable contains multiply references to the same unit. When SysUtils's finalization section is called first time - it change reference counter and do nothing. Then MyUnit's finalization is executed. And then SysUtils is called again, but this time ref-count reaches zero and finalization section is executed: Finalization: // SysUtils' finalization 5003B3F0 55 push ebp // here and below is some form of stub 5003B3F1 8BEC mov ebp,esp 5003B3F3 33C0 xor eax,eax 5003B3F5 55 push ebp 5003B3F6 688EB50350 push $5003b58e 5003B3FB 64FF30 push dword ptr fs:[eax] 5003B3FE 648920 mov fs:[eax],esp 5003B401 FF05DCAD1150 inc dword ptr [$5011addc] // here: some sort of reference counter 5003B407 0F8573010000 jnz $5003b580 // <- this jump skips execution of finalization for first call 5003B40D B8CC4D0350 mov eax,$50034dcc // here and below is actual SysUtils' finalization section ... Can anyone can shred light on this issue? Am I missing something?

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• Avoiding stack overflows in wrapper DLLs

  - by peachykeen

  I have a program to which I'm adding fullscreen post-processing effects. I do not have the source for the program (it's proprietary, although a developer did send me a copy of the debug symbols, .map format). I have the code for the effects written and working, no problems. My issue now is linking the two. I've tried two methods so far: Use Detours to modify the original program's import table. This works great and is guaranteed to be stable, but the user's I've talked to aren't comfortable with it, it requires installation (beyond extracting an archive), and there's some question if patching the program with Detours is valid under the terms of the EULA. So, that option is out. The other option is the traditional DLL-replacement. I've wrapped OpenGL (opengl32.dll), and I need the program to load my DLL instead of the system copy (just drop it in the program folder with the right name, that's easy). I then need my DLL to load the Cg framework and runtime (which relies on OpenGL) and a few other things. When Cg loads, it calls some of my functions, which call Cg functions, and I tend to get stack overflows and infinite loops. I need to be able to either include the Cg DLLs in a subdirectory and still use their functions (not sure if it's possible to have my DLLs import table point to a DLL in a subdirectory) or I need to dynamically link them (which I'd rather not do, just to simplify the build process), something to force them to refer to the system's file (not my custom replacement). The entire chain is: Program loads DLL A (named opengl32.dll). DLL A loads Cg.dll and dynamically links (GetProcAddress) to sysdir/opengl32.dll. I now need Cg.dll to also refer to sysdir/opengl32.dll, not DLL A. How would this be done? Edit: How would this be done easily without using GetProcAddress? If nothing else works, I'm willing to fall back to that, but I'd rather not if at all possible. Edit2: I just stumbled across the function SetDllDirectory in the MSDN docs (on a totally unrelated search). At first glance, that looks like what I need. Is that right, or am I misjudging? (off to test it now) Edit3: I've solved this problem by doing thing a bit differently. Instead of dropping an OpenGL32.dll, I've renamed my DLL to DInput.dll. Not only does it have the advantage of having to export one function instead of well over 120 (for the program, Cg, and GLEW), I don't have to worry about functions running back in (I can link to OpenGL as usual). To get into the calls I need to intercept, I'm using Detours. All in all, it works much better. This question, though, is still an interesting problem (and hopefully will be useful for anyone else trying to do crazy things in the future). Both the answers are good, so I'm not sure yet which to pick...

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• cannot retrieve effect.fx file

  - by numerical25

  I am having issues loading my effect.fx from directx. When I step into my application, my ID3D10Effect *m_pDefaultEffect; pointer remains empty. the address remains at 0x000000 below is my code #pragma once #include "stdafx.h" #include "resource.h" #include "d3d10.h" #include "d3dx10.h" #include "dinput.h" #define MAX_LOADSTRING 100 class RenderEngine { protected: RECT m_screenRect; //direct3d Members ID3D10Device *m_pDevice; // The IDirect3DDevice10 // interface ID3D10Texture2D *m_pBackBuffer; // Pointer to the back buffer ID3D10RenderTargetView *m_pRenderTargetView; // Pointer to render target view IDXGISwapChain *m_pSwapChain; // Pointer to the swap chain RECT m_rcScreenRect; // The dimensions of the screen ID3D10Texture2D *m_pDepthStencilBuffer; ID3D10DepthStencilState *m_pDepthStencilState; ID3D10DepthStencilView *m_pDepthStencilView; //transformation matrixs D3DXMATRIX g_mtxWorld; D3DXMATRIX g_mtxView; D3DXMATRIX g_mtxProj; //Effect members ID3D10Effect *m_pDefaultEffect; ID3D10EffectTechnique *m_pDefaultTechnique; ID3DX10Font *m_pFont; // The font used for rendering text // Sprites used to hold font characters ID3DX10Sprite *m_pFontSprite; ATOM RegisterEngineClass(); void DoFrame(float); bool LoadEffects(); public: static HINSTANCE m_hInst; HWND m_hWnd; int m_nCmdShow; TCHAR m_szTitle[MAX_LOADSTRING]; // The title bar text TCHAR m_szWindowClass[MAX_LOADSTRING]; // the main window class name void DrawTextString(int x, int y, D3DXCOLOR color, const TCHAR *strOutput); //static functions static LRESULT CALLBACK WndProc(HWND hWnd, UINT message, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam); static INT_PTR CALLBACK About(HWND hDlg, UINT message, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam); bool InitWindow(); bool InitDirectX(); bool InitInstance(); int Run(); void ShutDown(); RenderEngine() { m_screenRect.right = 800; m_screenRect.bottom = 600; } }; below is the implementation bool RenderEngine::LoadEffects() { HRESULT hr; ID3D10Blob *pErrors = 0; // Create the default rendering effect hr = D3DX10CreateEffectFromFile(L"effect.fx", NULL, NULL, "fx_4_0", D3D10_SHADER_DEBUG, 0, m_pDevice, NULL, NULL, &m_pDefaultEffect, &pErrors, NULL); if(pErrors)// at this point, m_pDefaultEffect is still empty but pErrors returns data which means there is {//errors return false; //ends here } //m_pDefaultTechnique = m_pDefaultEffect->GetTechniqueByName("DefaultTechnique"); return true; } My directx Device does work. My effect.fx file is in the same folder as my solution files (.cpp and header files)

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