sysadmin basics - Page 77

Validation in Silverlight

- by Timmy Kokke

Getting started with the basics Validation in Silverlight can get very complex pretty easy. The DataGrid control is the only control that does data validation automatically, but often you want to validate your own entry form. Values a user may enter in this form can be restricted by the customer and have to fit an exact fit to a list of requirements or you just want to prevent problems when saving the data to the database. Showing a message to the user when a value is entered is pretty straight forward as I’ll show you in the following example. This (default) Silverlight textbox is data-bound to a simple data class. It has to be bound in “Two-way” mode to be sure the source value is updated when the target value changes. The INotifyPropertyChanged interface must be implemented by the data class to get the notification system to work. When the property changes a simple check is performed and when it doesn’t match some criteria an ValidationException is thrown. The ValidatesOnExceptions binding attribute is set to True to tell the textbox it should handle the thrown ValidationException. Let’s have a look at some code now. The xaml should contain something like below. The most important part is inside the binding. In this case the Text property is bound to the “Name” property in TwoWay mode. It is also told to validate on exceptions. This property is false by default. <StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal"> <TextBox Width="150" x:Name="Name" Text="{Binding Path=Name, Mode=TwoWay, ValidatesOnExceptions=True}"/> <TextBlock Text="Name"/> </StackPanel> The data class in this first example is a very simplified person class with only one property: string Name. The INotifyPropertyChanged interface is implemented and the PropertyChanged event is fired when the Name property changes. When the property changes a check is performed to see if the new string is null or empty. If this is the case a ValidationException is thrown explaining that the entered value is invalid. public class PersonData:INotifyPropertyChanged { private string _name; public string Name { get { return _name; } set { if (_name != value) { if(string.IsNullOrEmpty(value)) throw new ValidationException("Name is required"); _name = value; if (PropertyChanged != null) PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs("Name")); } } } public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged=delegate { }; } The last thing that has to be done is letting binding an instance of the PersonData class to the DataContext of the control. This is done in the code behind file. public partial class Demo1 : UserControl { public Demo1() { InitializeComponent(); this.DataContext = new PersonData() {Name = "Johnny Walker"}; } } Error Summary In many cases you would have more than one entry control. A summary of errors would be nice in such case. With a few changes to the xaml an error summary, like below, can be added. First, add a namespace to the xaml so the control can be used. Add the following line to the header of the .xaml file. xmlns:Controls="clr-namespace:System.Windows.Controls;assembly=System.Windows.Controls.Data.Input" Next, add the control to the layout. To get the result as in the image showed earlier, add the control right above the StackPanel from the first example. It’s got a small margin to separate it from the textbox a little. <Controls:ValidationSummary Margin="8"/> The ValidationSummary control has to be notified that an ValidationException occurred. This can be done with a small change to the xaml too. Add the NotifyOnValidationError to the binding expression. By default this value is set to false, so nothing would be notified. Set the property to true to get it to work. <TextBox Width="150" x:Name="Name" Text="{Binding Name, Mode=TwoWay, ValidatesOnExceptions=True, NotifyOnValidationError=True}"/> Data annotation Validating data in the setter is one option, but not my personal favorite. It’s the easiest way if you have a single required value you want to check, but often you want to validate more. Besides, I don’t consider it best practice to write logic in setters. The way used by frameworks like WCF Ria Services is the use of attributes on the properties. Instead of throwing exceptions you have to call the static method ValidateProperty on the Validator class. This call stays always the same for a particular property, not even when you change the attributes on the property. To mark a property “Required” you can use the RequiredAttribute. This is what the Name property is going to look like: [Required] public string Name { get { return _name; } set { if (_name != value) { Validator.ValidateProperty(value, new ValidationContext(this, null, null){ MemberName = "Name" }); _name = value; if (PropertyChanged != null) PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs("Name")); } } } The ValidateProperty method takes the new value for the property and an instance of ValidationContext. The properties passed to the constructor of the ValidationContextclass are very straight forward. This part is the same every time. The only thing that changes is the MemberName property of the ValidationContext. Property has to hold the name of the property you want to validate. It’s the same value you provide the PropertyChangedEventArgs with. The System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotation contains eight different validation attributes including a base class to create your own. They are: RequiredAttribute Specifies that a value must be provided. RangeAttribute The provide value must fall in the specified range. RegularExpressionAttribute Validates is the value matches the regular expression. StringLengthAttribute Checks if the number of characters in a string falls between a minimum and maximum amount. CustomValidationAttribute Use a custom method to validate the value. DataTypeAttribute Specify a data type using an enum or a custom data type. EnumDataTypeAttribute Makes sure the value is found in a enum. ValidationAttribute A base class for custom validation attributes All of these will ensure that an validation exception is thrown, except the DataTypeAttribute. This attribute is used to provide some additional information about the property. You can use this information in your own code. [Required] [Range(0,125,ErrorMessage = "Value is not a valid age")] public int Age { It’s no problem to stack different validation attributes together. For example, when an Age is required and must fall in the range from 0 to 125: [Required, StringLength(255,MinimumLength = 3)] public string Name { Or in one row like this, for a required Name with at least 3 characters and a maximum of 255: Delayed validation Having properties marked as required can be very useful. The only downside to the technique described earlier is that you have to change the value in order to get it validated. What if you start out with empty an empty entry form? All fields are empty and thus won’t be validated. With this small trick you can validate at the moment the user click the submit button. <TextBox Width="150" x:Name="NameField" Text="{Binding Name, Mode=TwoWay, ValidatesOnExceptions=True, NotifyOnValidationError=True, UpdateSourceTrigger=Explicit}"/> By default, when a TwoWay bound control looses focus the value is updated. When you added validation like I’ve shown you earlier, the value is validated. To overcome this, you have to tell the binding update explicitly by setting the UpdateSourceTrigger binding property to Explicit: private void SubmitButtonClick(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { NameField.GetBindingExpression(TextBox.TextProperty).UpdateSource(); } This way, the binding is in two direction but the source is only updated, thus validated, when you tell it to. In the code behind you have to call the UpdateSource method on the binding expression, which you can get from the TextBox. Conclusion Data validation is something you’ll probably want on almost every entry form. I always thought it was hard to do, but it wasn’t. If you can throw an exception you can do validation. If you want to know anything more in depth about something I talked about in this article let me know. I might write an entire post to that.

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I’m sorry RPGs, it’s not you, it’s me: The birth of my game idea

- by George Clingerman

One of the things I’ve had to give up in order to have some development time at night is gaming. It’s something I refused to admit for years but I’ve just had to face the facts. I’m no longer a gamer. I just don’t have hours and hours of free time to pour into gaming and when I do have hours and hours of free time I want to pour them into game development. That doesn’t mean I don’t game at all! I play games pretty much every day. It just means I’ve moved more into the casual game realm. It’s all I have time for when juggling priorities in my life. That means that games like Gears of War 2 sit shrink wrapped on my shelf and although I popped Dragon Age into my Xbox 360 one time, I barely made it through the opening sequence and haven’t had time to sit down and play again. Instead I’m playing short games like Jamestown, Atom Zombie Smasher, Fortix or if I have time to jump in and play a few rounds maybe some Monday Night Combat or Team Fortress 2. These are games I can instantly get into and play for just a short period of time and then walk away. Breath of Death VII saved my life: Back in the day (way, way back in the day) I used to be a pretty big RPG fan. Not big by a lot of RPG gamers' standards (most of the RPGs RPG fans about I’ve never heard of) but I used to LOVE to play them on the NES, SNES and Genesis and considered that my genre. Final Fantasy, Shining in the Darkness, Bard’s Tale, Faxanadu, Shadowrun, Ultima, Dragon Warrior, Chrono Trigger, Phantasy Star, Shining Force and well the list could go on but those are the ones I remember off the top of my head. I loved playing RPGs and they were my games of choice. After my first son was born (this was just about 12 years ago), I tried to continue playing RPGs and purchased games like Baldur’s Gate I & II, Neverwinter Nights, Fable, then a few of the Final Fantasy’s then Kingdom Hearts. I kept buying these games and then only playing for about fifteen minutes and never getting back to them. I still loved RPGs but they just no longer fit into my life (I still haven’t accepted that since I still purchased Dragon Age II for some reason and convinced myself I’d find the time). Adding three more sons to the mix (that’s 4 total) didn’t help much to finding more RPG time (except for Breath of Death VII and other XBLIG RPG titles, thanks guys!) All work and no RPG: A few months ago as I was sitting thinking about the lack of RPGs in my life and talking to my wife about why I wish RPGs were different and easier for a dad like me to get into. She seemed like she was listening, so I started listing all the things that made them impossible for me to play. Here’s a short list I came up with. They take 15 billion hours to complete I have a few minutes at a time I can grab to play them if I want to have time to code. At that rate it would take me 9 trillion years to beat just one RPG. There’s such long spans of times between when I can play them I forget what I was even doing so I have to spend most of the playtime I have just figuring that out and then my play time is over. Repeat. I’ll never finish one and since it takes so long to get to the fun part in an RPG, I’m never having fun. RPGs aren’t fun if you don’t have hours to play them at a time. As you can see based on my science and math, RPGs aren’t fun for me any more. From there my brain started toying around with ideas of RPGs that would work for me. They would have to be a short RPG, you know one you could beat in a single play session. A dad sized play session. I started thinking, wouldn’t it be awesome if there was a fifteen minute RPG? That got me laughing and I took that as a good sign that it sounded fun and so I thought about it a little more. I immediately discarded the idea of doing a real RPG. I’m sure a short RPG like that could be done but it wasn’t the vibe that I had in my head. No this was going to be something that just had the core essence of an RPG. In reality what I’d be making would be more of an arcade style game. One with high scores and lots of crazy action on the screen. And that’s when it hit me. It would be a speed run RPG. That’s the basics of the game I’m working on. The Elevator Pitch: It’s a 2D top down RPG themed arcade game focused on speed. It sounds like an RPG, smells like an RPG but it’s merely emulating an RPG. The game is focused on fun and mayhem in RPG form with players leveling up in seconds instead of hours and rushing to finish quests as quickly as possible because they’ve only got fifteen minutes before EVIL overtakes the world. If the player takes longer than fifteen minutes, it’s game over man. One to four player co-operative play to really see just how fast players can level up and beat the game. Gamers will compete on leaderboards for bragging rights for fastest 1, 2, 3, and 4 player speed runs, lowest leveled characters to beat the game, highest leveled characters to beat the game and so on. Times will be tracked for everything from how long a player sat distributing stats, equipping items, talking to NPCs to running around the level. These stats will be shown at the end of each quest/level so the players can work on improving their speed run for that part of the game next time around. It’s the perfect RPG for those of us who only have fifteen minutes of game time! Where I’m at: I’m still at the prototyping stage attempting to but all the basic framework pieces in place that will at minimum give me one level to rush through. I’ve been working on this prototype for about a month now though so I’m going to have to step it up a bit or I’m not going to get finished in time (remember I’ve only got 85 days left!) Lots of the game code is in place (although pretty sloppy) but I still can’t play through that first quest/level just yet. That’s my goal to finish up by the end of next Sunday (3/25/2012). You can all hold me to that and cheer me on or heckle me throughout the week. Either way that should help me stay a bit more motivated and focused. In my head this feels like it’s going to be a fun game so I’m looking forward to seeing how it actually plays!

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Multi-tenant ASP.NET MVC - Views

- by zowens

Part I – Introduction Part II – Foundation Part III – Controllers So far we have covered the basic premise of tenants and how they will be delegated. Now comes a big issue with multi-tenancy, the views. In some applications, you will not have to override views for each tenant. However, one of my requirements is to add extra views (and controller actions) along with overriding views from the core structure. This presents a bit of a problem in locating views for each tenant request. I have chosen quite an opinionated approach at the present but will coming back to the “views” issue in a later post. What’s the deal? The path I’ve chosen is to use precompiled Spark views. I really love Spark View Engine and was planning on using it in my project anyways. However, I ran across a really neat aspect of the source when I was having a look under the hood. There’s an easy way to hook in embedded views from your project. There are solutions that provide this, but they implement a special Virtual Path Provider. While I think this is a great solution, I would rather just have Spark take care of the view resolution. The magic actually happens during the compilation of the views into a bin-deployable DLL. After the views are compiled, the are simply pulled out of the views DLL. Each tenant has its own views DLL that just has “.Views” appended after the assembly name as a convention. The list of reasons for this approach are quite long. The primary motivation is performance. I’ve had quite a few performance issues in the past and I would like to increase my application’s performance in any way that I can. My customized build of Spark removes insignificant whitespace from the HTML output so I can some some bandwidth and load time without having to deal with whitespace removal at runtime. How to setup Tenants for the Host In the source, I’ve provided a single tenant as a sample (Sample1). This will serve as a template for subsequent tenants in your application. The first step is to add a “PostBuildStep” installer into the project. I’ve defined one in the source that will eventually change as we focus more on the construction of dependency containers. The next step is to tell the project to run the installer and copy the DLL output to a folder in the host that will pick up as a tenant. Here’s the code that will achieve it (this belongs in Post-build event command line field in the Build Events tab of settings) %systemroot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\installutil "$(TargetPath)" copy /Y "$(TargetDir)$(TargetName)*.dll" "$(SolutionDir)Web\Tenants\" copy /Y "$(TargetDir)$(TargetName)*.pdb" "$(SolutionDir)Web\Tenants\" The DLLs with a name starting with the target assembly name will be copied to the “Tenants” folder in the web project. This means something like MultiTenancy.Tenants.Sample1.dll and MultiTenancy.Tenants.Sample1.Views.dll will both be copied along with the debug symbols. This is probably the simplest way to go about this, but it is a tad inflexible. For example, what if you have dependencies? The preferred method would probably be to use IL Merge to merge your dependencies with your target DLL. This would have to be added in the build events. Another way to achieve that would be to simply bypass Visual Studio events and use MSBuild. I also got a question about how I was setting up the controller factory. Here’s the basics on how I’m setting up tenants inside the host (Global.asax) protected void Application_Start() { RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes); // create a container just to pull in tenants var topContainer = new Container(); topContainer.Configure(config => { config.Scan(scanner => { scanner.AssembliesFromPath(Path.Combine(Server.MapPath("~/"), "Tenants")); scanner.AddAllTypesOf<IApplicationTenant>(); }); }); // create selectors var tenantSelector = new DefaultTenantSelector(topContainer.GetAllInstances<IApplicationTenant>()); var containerSelector = new TenantContainerResolver(tenantSelector); // clear view engines, we don't want anything other than spark ViewEngines.Engines.Clear(); // set view engine ViewEngines.Engines.Add(new TenantViewEngine(tenantSelector)); // set controller factory ControllerBuilder.Current.SetControllerFactory(new ContainerControllerFactory(containerSelector)); } The code to setup the tenants isn’t actually that hard. I’m utilizing assembly scanners in StructureMap as a simple way to pull in DLLs that are not in the AppDomain. Remember that there is a dependency on the host in the tenants and a tenant cannot simply be referenced by a host because of circular dependencies. Tenant View Engine TenantViewEngine is a simple delegator to the tenant’s specified view engine. You might have noticed that a tenant has to define a view engine. public interface IApplicationTenant { .... IViewEngine ViewEngine { get; } } The trick comes in specifying the view engine on the tenant side. Here’s some of the code that will pull views from the DLL. protected virtual IViewEngine DetermineViewEngine() { var factory = new SparkViewFactory(); var file = GetType().Assembly.CodeBase.Without("file:///").Replace(".dll", ".Views.dll").Replace('/', '\\'); var assembly = Assembly.LoadFile(file); factory.Engine.LoadBatchCompilation(assembly); return factory; } This code resides in an abstract Tenant where the fields are setup in the constructor. This method (inside the abstract class) will load the Views assembly and load the compilation into Spark’s “Descriptors” that will be used to determine views. There is some trickery on determining the file location… but it works just fine. Up Next There’s just a few big things left such as StructureMap configuring controllers with a convention instead of specifying types directly with container construction and content resolution. I will also try to find a way to use the Web Forms View Engine in a multi-tenant way we achieved with the Spark View Engine without using a virtual path provider. I will probably not use the Web Forms View Engine personally, but I’m sure some people would prefer using WebForms because of the maturity of the engine. As always, I love to take questions by email or on twitter. Suggestions are always welcome as well! (Oh, and here’s another link to the source code).

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SharePoint 2010 Replaceable Parameter, some observations…

- by svdoever

SharePoint Tools for Visual Studio 2010 provides a rudimentary mechanism for replaceable parameters that you can use in files that are not compiled, like ascx files and your project property settings. The basics on this can be found in the documentation at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee231545.aspx. There are some quirks however. For example: My Package name is MacawMastSP2010Templates, as defined in my Package properties: I want to use the $SharePoint.Package.Name$ replaceable parameter in my feature properties. But this parameter does not work in the “Deployment Path” property, while other parameters work there, while it works in the “Image Url” property. It just does not get expanded. So I had to resort to explicitly naming the first path of the deployment path: : You also see a special property for the “Receiver Class” in the format $SharePoint.Type.<GUID>.FullName$. The documentation gives the following description:The full name of the type matching the GUID in the token. The format of the GUID is lowercase and corresponds to the Guid.ToString(“D”) format (that is, xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx). Not very clear. After some searching it happened to be the guid as declared in my feature receiver code: In other properties you see a different set of replaceable parameters: We use a similar mechanism for replaceable parameter for years in our Macaw Solutions Factory for SharePoint 2007 development, where each replaceable parameter is a PowerShell function. This provides so much more power. For example in a feature declaration we can say: Code Snippet <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>  <Feature Id="[[$Feature.SampleFeature.ID]]" Title="MAST [[$MastSolutionName]] Sample Feature" Description="The MAST [[$MastSolutionName]] Sample Feature, where all possible elements in a feature are showcased" Version="1.0.0.0" Scope="Site" Hidden="FALSE" ImageUrl="[[FeatureImage]]" ReceiverAssembly="[[FeatureReceiverAssemblySignature]]" ReceiverClass="[[FeatureReceiverClass]]" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/"> <ElementManifests> <ElementManifest Location="ExampleCustomActions.xml" /> <ElementManifest Location="ExampleSiteColumns.xml" /> <ElementManifest Location="ExampleContentTypes.xml" /> <ElementManifest Location="ExampleDocLib.xml" /> <ElementManifest Location="ExampleMasterPages.xml" />  [[GenerateXmlNodesForFiles -path 'ExampleDocLib\*.*' -node 'ElementFile' -attributes @{Location = { RelativePathToExpansionSourceFile -path $_ }}]] [[GenerateXmlNodesForFiles -path 'ExampleMasterPages\*.*' -node 'ElementFile' -attributes @{Location = { RelativePathToExpansionSourceFile -path $_ }}]] [[GenerateXmlNodesForFiles -path 'Resources\*.resx' -node 'ElementFile' -attributes @{Location = { RelativePathToExpansionSourceFile -path $_ }}]] </ElementManifests> </Feature> We have a solution level PowerShell script file named TemplateExpansionConfiguration.ps1 where we declare our variables (starting with a $) and include helper functions: Code Snippet # ============================================================================================== # NAME: product:\src\Wss3\Templates\TemplateExpansionConfiguration.ps1 # # AUTHOR: Serge van den Oever, Macaw # DATE : May 24, 2007 # # COMMENT: # Nota bene: define variable and function definitions global to be visible during template expansion. # # ============================================================================================== Set-PSDebug -strict -trace 0 #variables must have value before usage $global:ErrorActionPreference = 'Stop' # Stop on errors $global:VerbosePreference = 'Continue' # set to SilentlyContinue to get no verbose output # Load template expansion utility functions . product:\tools\Wss3\MastDeploy\TemplateExpansionUtil.ps1 # If exists add solution expansion utility functions $solutionTemplateExpansionUtilFile = $MastSolutionDir + "\TemplateExpansionUtil.ps1" if ((Test-Path -Path $solutionTemplateExpansionUtilFile)) { . $solutionTemplateExpansionUtilFile } # ============================================================================================== # Expected: $Solution.ID; Unique GUID value identifying the solution (DON'T INCLUDE BRACKETS). # function: guid:UpperCaseWithoutCurlies -guid '{...}' ensures correct syntax $global:Solution = @{ ID = GuidUpperCaseWithoutCurlies -guid '{d366ced4-0b98-4fa8-b256-c5a35bcbc98b}'; } # DON'T INCLUDE BRACKETS for feature id's!!! # function: GuidUpperCaseWithoutCurlies -guid '{...}' ensures correct syntax $global:Feature = @{ SampleFeature = @{ ID = GuidUpperCaseWithoutCurlies -guid '{35de59f4-0c8e-405e-b760-15234fe6885c}'; } } $global:SiteDefinition = @{ TemplateBlankSite = @{ ID = '12346'; } } # To inherit from this content type add the delimiter (00) and then your own guid # ID: <base>00<newguid> $global:ContentType = @{ ExampleContentType = @{ ID = '0x01008e5e167ba2db4bfeb3810c4a7ff72913'; } } # INCLUDE BRACKETS for column id's and make them LOWER CASE!!! # function: GuidLowerCaseWithCurlies -guid '{...}' ensures correct syntax $global:SiteColumn = @{ ExampleChoiceField = @{ ID = GuidLowerCaseWithCurlies -guid '{69d38ce4-2771-43b4-a861-f14247885fe9}'; }; ExampleBooleanField = @{ ID = GuidLowerCaseWithCurlies -guid '{76f794e6-f7bd-490e-a53e-07efdf967169}'; }; ExampleDateTimeField = @{ ID = GuidLowerCaseWithCurlies -guid '{6f176e6e-22d2-453a-8dad-8ab17ac12387}'; }; ExampleNumberField = @{ ID = GuidLowerCaseWithCurlies -guid '{6026947f-f102-436b-abfd-fece49495788}'; }; ExampleTextField = @{ ID = GuidLowerCaseWithCurlies -guid '{23ca1c29-5ef0-4b3d-93cd-0d1d2b6ddbde}'; }; ExampleUserField = @{ ID = GuidLowerCaseWithCurlies -guid '{ee55b9f1-7b7c-4a7e-9892-3e35729bb1a5}'; }; ExampleNoteField = @{ ID = GuidLowerCaseWithCurlies -guid '{f9aa8da3-1f30-48a6-a0af-aa0a643d9ed4}'; }; } This gives so much more possibilities, like for example the elements file expansion where a PowerShell function iterates through a folder and generates the required XML nodes. I think I will bring back this mechanism, so it can work together with the built-in replaceable parameters, there are hooks to define you custom replacements as described by Waldek in this blog post.

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SQL SERVER – Introduction to SQL Server 2014 In-Memory OLTP

- by Pinal Dave

In SQL Server 2014 Microsoft has introduced a new database engine component called In-Memory OLTP aka project “Hekaton” which is fully integrated into the SQL Server Database Engine. It is optimized for OLTP workloads accessing memory resident data. In-memory OLTP helps us create memory optimized tables which in turn offer significant performance improvement for our typical OLTP workload. The main objective of memory optimized table is to ensure that highly transactional tables could live in memory and remain in memory forever without even losing out a single record. The most significant part is that it still supports majority of our Transact-SQL statement. Transact-SQL stored procedures can be compiled to machine code for further performance improvements on memory-optimized tables. This engine is designed to ensure higher concurrency and minimal blocking. In-Memory OLTP alleviates the issue of locking, using a new type of multi-version optimistic concurrency control. It also substantially reduces waiting for log writes by generating far less log data and needing fewer log writes. Points to remember Memory-optimized tables refer to tables using the new data structures and key words added as part of In-Memory OLTP. Disk-based tables refer to your normal tables which we used to create in SQL Server since its inception. These tables use a fixed size 8 KB pages that need to be read from and written to disk as a unit. Natively compiled stored procedures refer to an object Type which is new and is supported by in-memory OLTP engine which convert it into machine code, which can further improve the data access performance for memory –optimized tables. Natively compiled stored procedures can only reference memory-optimized tables, they can’t be used to reference any disk –based table. Interpreted Transact-SQL stored procedures, which is what SQL Server has always used. Cross-container transactions refer to transactions that reference both memory-optimized tables and disk-based tables. Interop refers to interpreted Transact-SQL that references memory-optimized tables. Using In-Memory OLTP In-Memory OLTP engine has been available as part of SQL Server 2014 since June 2013 CTPs. Installation of In-Memory OLTP is part of the SQL Server setup application. The In-Memory OLTP components can only be installed with a 64-bit edition of SQL Server 2014 hence they are not available with 32-bit editions. Creating Databases Any database that will store memory-optimized tables must have a MEMORY_OPTIMIZED_DATA filegroup. This filegroup is specifically designed to store the checkpoint files needed by SQL Server to recover the memory-optimized tables, and although the syntax for creating the filegroup is almost the same as for creating a regular filestream filegroup, it must also specify the option CONTAINS MEMORY_OPTIMIZED_DATA. Here is an example of a CREATE DATABASE statement for a database that can support memory-optimized tables: CREATE DATABASE InMemoryDB ON PRIMARY(NAME = [InMemoryDB_data], FILENAME = 'D:\data\InMemoryDB_data.mdf', size=500MB), FILEGROUP [SampleDB_mod_fg] CONTAINS MEMORY_OPTIMIZED_DATA (NAME = [InMemoryDB_mod_dir], FILENAME = 'S:\data\InMemoryDB_mod_dir'), (NAME = [InMemoryDB_mod_dir], FILENAME = 'R:\data\InMemoryDB_mod_dir') LOG ON (name = [SampleDB_log], Filename='L:\log\InMemoryDB_log.ldf', size=500MB) COLLATE Latin1_General_100_BIN2; Above example code creates files on three different drives (D: S: and R:) for the data files and in memory storage so if you would like to run this code kindly change the drive and folder locations as per your convenience. Also notice that binary collation was specified as Windows (non-SQL). BIN2 collation is the only collation support at this point for any indexes on memory optimized tables. It is also possible to add a MEMORY_OPTIMIZED_DATA file group to an existing database, use the below command to achieve the same. ALTER DATABASE AdventureWorks2012 ADD FILEGROUP hekaton_mod CONTAINS MEMORY_OPTIMIZED_DATA; GO ALTER DATABASE AdventureWorks2012 ADD FILE (NAME='hekaton_mod', FILENAME='S:\data\hekaton_mod') TO FILEGROUP hekaton_mod; GO Creating Tables There is no major syntactical difference between creating a disk based table or a memory –optimized table but yes there are a few restrictions and a few new essential extensions. Essentially any memory-optimized table should use the MEMORY_OPTIMIZED = ON clause as shown in the Create Table query example. DURABILITY clause (SCHEMA_AND_DATA or SCHEMA_ONLY) Memory-optimized table should always be defined with a DURABILITY value which can be either SCHEMA_AND_DATA or SCHEMA_ONLY the former being the default. A memory-optimized table defined with DURABILITY=SCHEMA_ONLY will not persist the data to disk which means the data durability is compromised whereas DURABILITY= SCHEMA_AND_DATA ensures that data is also persisted along with the schema. Indexing Memory Optimized Table A memory-optimized table must always have an index for all tables created with DURABILITY= SCHEMA_AND_DATA and this can be achieved by declaring a PRIMARY KEY Constraint at the time of creating a table. The following example shows a PRIMARY KEY index created as a HASH index, for which a bucket count must also be specified. CREATE TABLE Mem_Table ( [Name] VARCHAR(32) NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY NONCLUSTERED HASH WITH (BUCKET_COUNT = 100000), [City] VARCHAR(32) NULL, [State_Province] VARCHAR(32) NULL, [LastModified] DATETIME NOT NULL, ) WITH (MEMORY_OPTIMIZED = ON, DURABILITY = SCHEMA_AND_DATA); Now as you can see in the above query example we have used the clause MEMORY_OPTIMIZED = ON to make sure that it is considered as a memory optimized table and not just a normal table and also used the DURABILITY Clause= SCHEMA_AND_DATA which means it will persist data along with metadata and also you can notice this table has a PRIMARY KEY mentioned upfront which is also a mandatory clause for memory-optimized tables. We will talk more about HASH Indexes and BUCKET_COUNT in later articles on this topic which will be focusing more on Row and Index storage on Memory-Optimized tables. So stay tuned for that as well. Now as we covered the basics of Memory Optimized tables and understood the key things to remember while using memory optimized tables, let’s explore more using examples to understand the Performance gains using memory-optimized tables. I will be using the database which i created earlier in this article i.e. InMemoryDB in the below Demo Exercise. USE InMemoryDB GO -- Creating a disk based table CREATE TABLE dbo.Disktable ( Id INT IDENTITY, Name CHAR(40) ) GO CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX IX_ID ON dbo.Disktable (Id) GO -- Creating a memory optimized table with similar structure and DURABILITY = SCHEMA_AND_DATA CREATE TABLE dbo.Memorytable_durable ( Id INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY NONCLUSTERED Hash WITH (bucket_count =1000000), Name CHAR(40) ) WITH (MEMORY_OPTIMIZED = ON, DURABILITY = SCHEMA_AND_DATA) GO -- Creating an another memory optimized table with similar structure but DURABILITY = SCHEMA_Only CREATE TABLE dbo.Memorytable_nondurable ( Id INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY NONCLUSTERED Hash WITH (bucket_count =1000000), Name CHAR(40) ) WITH (MEMORY_OPTIMIZED = ON, DURABILITY = SCHEMA_only) GO -- Now insert 100000 records in dbo.Disktable and observe the Time Taken DECLARE @i_t bigint SET @i_t =1 WHILE @i_t<= 100000 BEGIN INSERT INTO dbo.Disktable(Name) VALUES('sachin' + CONVERT(VARCHAR,@i_t)) SET @i_t+=1 END -- Do the same inserts for Memory table dbo.Memorytable_durable and observe the Time Taken DECLARE @i_t bigint SET @i_t =1 WHILE @i_t<= 100000 BEGIN INSERT INTO dbo.Memorytable_durable VALUES(@i_t, 'sachin' + CONVERT(VARCHAR,@i_t)) SET @i_t+=1 END -- Now finally do the same inserts for Memory table dbo.Memorytable_nondurable and observe the Time Taken DECLARE @i_t bigint SET @i_t =1 WHILE @i_t<= 100000 BEGIN INSERT INTO dbo.Memorytable_nondurable VALUES(@i_t, 'sachin' + CONVERT(VARCHAR,@i_t)) SET @i_t+=1 END The above 3 Inserts took 1.20 minutes, 54 secs, and 2 secs respectively to insert 100000 records on my machine with 8 Gb RAM. This proves the point that memory-optimized tables can definitely help businesses achieve better performance for their highly transactional business table and memory- optimized tables with Durability SCHEMA_ONLY is even faster as it does not bother persisting its data to disk which makes it supremely fast. Koenig Solutions is one of the few organizations which offer IT training on SQL Server 2014 and all its updates. Now, I leave the decision on using memory_Optimized tables on you, I hope you like this article and it helped you understand the fundamentals of IN-Memory OLTP . Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Koenig

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Creating A SharePoint Parent/Child List Relationship– SharePoint 2010 Edition

- by Mark Rackley

Hey blog readers… It has been almost 2 years since I posted my most read blog on creating a Parent/Child list relationship in SharePoint 2007: Creating a SharePoint List Parent / Child Relationship - Out of the Box And then a year ago I improved on my method and redid the blog post… still for SharePoint 2007: Creating a SharePoint List Parent/Child Relationship – VIDEO REMIX Since then many of you have been asking me how to get this to work in SharePoint 2010, and frankly I have just not had time to look into it. I wish I could have jumped into this sooner, but have just recently began to look at it. Well.. after all this time I have actually come up with two solutions that work, neither of them are as clean as I’d like them to be, but I wanted to get something in your hands that you can start using today. Hopefully in the coming weeks and months I’ll be able to improve upon this further and give you guys some better options. For the most part, the process is identical to the 2007 process, but you have probably found out that the list view web parts in 2010 behave differently, and getting the Parent ID to your new child form can be a pain in the rear (at least that’s what I’ve discovered). Anyway, like I said, I have found a couple of solutions that work. If you know of a better one, please let us know as it bugs me that this not as eloquent as my 2007 implementation. Getting on the same page First thing I’d recommend is recreating this blog: Creating a SharePoint List Parent/Child Relationship – VIDEO REMIX in SharePoint 2010… There are some vague differences, but it’s basically the same… Here’s a quick video of me doing this in SP 2010: Creating Lists necessary for this blog post Now that you have the lists created, lets set up the New Time form to use a QueryString variable to populate the Parent ID field: Creating parameters in Child’s new item form to set parent ID Did I talk fast enough through both of those videos? Hopefully by now that stuff is old hat to you, but I wanted to make sure everyone could get on the same page. Okay… let’s get started. Solution 1 – XSLTListView with Javascript This solution is the more elegant of the two, however it does require the use of a little javascript. The other solution does not use javascript, but it also doesn’t use the pretty new SP 2010 pop-ups. I’ll let you decide which you like better. The basic steps of this solution are: Inserted a Related Item View Insert a ContentEditorWebPart Insert script in ContentEditorWebPart that pulls the ID from the Query string and calls the method to insert a new item on the child entry form Hide the toolbar from data view to remove “add new item” link. Again, you don’t HAVE to use a CEWP, you could just put the javascript directly in the page using SPD. Anyway, here is how I did it: Using Related Item View / JavaScript Here’s the JavaScript I used in my Content Editor Web Part: <script type="text/javascript"> function NewTime() { // Get the Query String values and split them out into the vals array var vals = new Object(); var qs = location.search.substring(1, location.search.length); var args = qs.split("&"); for (var i=0; i < args.length; i++) { var nameVal = args[i].split("="); var temp = unescape(nameVal[1]).split('+'); nameVal[1] = temp.join(' '); vals[nameVal[0]] = nameVal[1]; } var issueID = vals["ID"]; //use this to bring up the pretty pop up NewItem2(event,"http://sp2010dev:1234/Lists/Time/NewForm.aspx?IssueID=" + issueID); //use this to open a new window //window.location="http://sp2010dev:1234/Lists/Time/NewForm.aspx?IssueID=" + issueID; } </script> Solution 2 – DataFormWebPart and exact same 2007 Process This solution is a little more of a hack, but it also MUCH more close to the process we did in SP 2007. So, if you don’t mind not having the pretty pop-up and prefer the comforts of what you are used to, you can give this one a try. The basics steps are: Insert a DataFormWebPart instead of the List Data View Create a Parameter on DataFormWebPart to store “ID” Query String Variable Filter DataFormWebPart using Parameter Insert a link at bottom of DataForm Web part that points to the Child’s new item form and passes in the Parent Id using the Parameter. See.. like I told you, exact same process as in 2007 (except using the DataFormWeb Part). The DataFormWebPart also requires a lot more work to make it look “pretty” but it’s just table rows and cells, and can be configured pretty painlessly. Here is that video: Using DataForm Web Part One quick update… if you change the link in this solution from: <tr> <td><a href="http://sp2010dev:1234/Lists/Time/NewForm.aspx?IssueID={$IssueIDParam}">Click here to create new item...</a> </td> </tr> to: <tr> <td> <a href="javascript:NewItem2(event,'http://sp2010dev:1234/Lists/Time/NewForm.aspx?IssueID={$IssueIDParam}');">Click here to create new item...</a> </td> </tr> It will open up in the pretty pop up and act the same as solution one… So… both Solutions will now behave the same to the end user. Just depends on which you want to implement. That’s all for now… Remember in both solutions when you have them working, you can make the “IssueID” invisible to users by using the “ms-hidden” class (it’s my previous blog post on the subject up there). That’s basically all there is to it! No pithy or witty closing this time… I am sorry it took me so long to dive into this and I hope your questions are answered. As I become more polished myself I will try to come up with a cleaner solution that will make everyone happy… As always, thanks for taking the time to stop by.

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Video on Architecture and Code Quality using Visual Studio 2012–interview with Marcel de Vries and Terje Sandstrom by Adam Cogan

- by terje

Find the video HERE. Adam Cogan did a great Web TV interview with Marcel de Vries and myself on the topics of architecture and code quality. It was real fun participating in this session. Although we know each other from the MVP ALM community, Marcel, Adam and I haven’t worked together before. It was very interesting to see how we agreed on so many terms, and how alike we where thinking. The basics of ensuring you have a good architecture and how you could document it is one thing. Also, the same agreement on the importance of having a high quality code base, and how we used the Visual Studio 2012 tools, and some others (NDepend for example) to measure and ensure that the code quality was where it should be. As the tools, methods and thinking popped up during the interview it was a lot of “Hey ! I do that too!”. The tools are not only for “after the fact” work, but we use them during the coding. That way the tools becomes an integrated part of our coding work, and helps us to find issues we may have overlooked. The video has a bunch of call outs, pinpointing important things to remember. These are also listed on the corresponding web page. I haven’t seen that touch before, but really liked this way of doing it – it makes it much easier to spot the highlights. Titus Maclaren and Raj Dhatt from SSW have done a terrific job producing this video. And thanks to Lei Xu for doing the camera and recording job. Thanks guys ! Also, if you are at TechEd Amsterdam 2012, go and listen to Adam Cogan in his session on “A modern architecture review: Using the new code review tools” Friday 29th, 10.15-11.30 and Marcel de Vries session on “Intellitrace, what is it and how can I use it to my benefit” Wednesday 27th, 5-6.15 The highlights points out some important practices. I’ll elaborate on a few of them here: Add instructions on how to compile the solution. You do this by adding a text file with instructions to the solution, and keep it under source control. These instructions should contain what is needed on top of a standard install of Visual Studio. I do a lot of code reviews, and more often that not, I am not even able to compile the program, because they have used some tool or library that needs to be installed. The same applies to any new developer who enters into the team, so do this to increase your productivity when the team changes, or a team member switches computer. Don’t forget to document what you have to configure on the computer, the IIS being a common one. The more automatic you can do this, the better. Use NuGet to get down libraries. When the text document gets more than say, half a page, with a bunch of different things to do, convert it into a powershell script instead. The metrics warning levels. These are very conservatively set by Microsoft. You rarely see anything but green, and besides, you should have color scales for each of the metrics. I have a blog post describing a more appropriate set of levels, based on both research work and industry “best practices”. The essential limits are: Cyclomatic complexity and coupling: Higher numbers are worse On method levels: Green : From 0 to 10 Yellow: From 10 to 20 (some say 15). Acceptable, but have a look to see if there is something unneeded here. Red: From 20 to 40: Action required, get these down. Bleeding Red: Above 40 This is the real red alert. Immediate action! (My invention, as people have asked what do I do when I have cyclomatic complexity of 150. The only answer I could think of was: RUN! ) Maintainability index: Lower numbers are worse, scale from 0 to 100. On method levels: Green: 60 to 100 Yellow: 40 – 60. You will always have methods here too, accept the higher ones, take a look at those who are down to the lower limit. Check up against the other metrics.) Red: 20 – 40: Action required, fix these. Bleeding red: Below 20. Immediate action required. When doing metrics analysis, you should leave the generated code out. You do this by adding attributes, unfortunately Microsoft has “forgotten” to add these to all their stuff, so you might have to add them to some of the code. It most cases it can be done so that it is not overwritten by a new round of code generation. Take a look a my blog post here for details on how to do that. Class level metrics might also be useful, at least for coupling and maintenance. But it is much more difficult to set any fixed limits on those. Any metric aggregations on higher level tend to be pretty useless, as the number of methods vary pretty much, and there are little science on what number of methods can be regarded as good or bad. NDepend have a recommendation, but they say it may vary too. And in these days of data binding, the number might be pretty high, as properties counts as methods. However, if you take the worst case situations, classes with more than 20 methods are suspicious, and coupling and cyclomatic complexity go red above 20, so any classes with more than 20x20 = 400 for these measures should be checked over. In the video we mention the SOLID principles, coined by “Uncle Bob” (Richard Martin). One of them, the Dependency Inversion principle we discuss in the video. It is important to note that this principle is NOT on whether you should use a Dependency Inversion Container or not, it is about how you design the interfaces and interactions between your classes. The Dependency Inversion Container is just one technique which is based on this principle, but which main purpose is to isolate things you would like to change at runtime, for example if you implement a plug in architecture. Overuse of a Dependency Inversion Container is however, NOT a good thing. It should be used for a purpose and not as a general DI solution. The general DI solution and thinking however is useful far beyond the DIC. You should always “program to an abstraction”, and not to the concreteness. We also talk a bit about the GRASP patterns, a term coined by Craig Larman in his book Applying UML and design patterns. GRASP patterns stand for General Responsibility Assignment Software Patterns and describe fundamental principles of object design and responsibility assignment. What I find great with these patterns is that they is another way to focus on the responsibility of a class. One of the things I most often found that is broken in software designs, is that the class lack responsibility, and as a result there are a lot of classes mucking around in the internals of the other classes. We also discuss the term “Code Smells”. This term was invented by Kent Beck and Martin Fowler when they worked with Fowler’s “Refactoring” book. A code smell is a set of “bad” coding practices, which are the drivers behind a corresponding set of refactorings. Here is a good list of the smells, and their corresponding refactor patterns. See also this.

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Increase samba space on open suse 12.1

- by Kapil Sharma

I know linux basics but not an expert. IT guy left the job here and there is some time before new hire. So sorry if question is very basic. We have local testing server based on Open SUSE 12.1, which also act as shared drive between dev/mgmt team here and using Samba for that. Now we are running out of space on samba, even though server's 2*1TB harddisk is nearly 90% free. My question is, what is limiting Samba and how can I increase its limit? We need around at least 500 GB as shared drive but currently its just 25 GB. I don't need step by step answer, just a link to any helpful article would be sufficient. Probably I'm putting wrong keywords in google so not getting any helpful link. EDIT: Output of commands in the first comment. All commands were run as root user df -h (getting error with df -ht) Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on rootfs 30G 5.1G 23G 19% / devtmpfs 2.0G 36K 2.0G 1% /dev tmpfs 2.0G 1.1M 2.0G 1% /dev/shm tmpfs 2.0G 676K 2.0G 1% /run /dev/sda2 30G 5.1G 23G 19% / tmpfs 2.0G 0 2.0G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup tmpfs 2.0G 676K 2.0G 1% /var/run tmpfs 2.0G 0 2.0G 0% /media tmpfs 2.0G 676K 2.0G 1% /var/lock /dev/sda3 36G 31G 3.3G 91% /home fdisk -l /dev/[hmsv]d* Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders, total 156301488 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x2d4a2d49 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 2048 16771071 8384512 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda2 * 16771072 79681535 31455232 83 Linux /dev/sda3 79681536 156301311 38309888 83 Linux Disk /dev/sda1: 8585 MB, 8585740288 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1043 cylinders, total 16769024 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000000 Disk /dev/sda1 doesn't contain a valid partition table Disk /dev/sda2: 32.2 GB, 32210157568 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3915 cylinders, total 62910464 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000000 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System Disk /dev/sda3: 39.2 GB, 39229325312 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4769 cylinders, total 76619776 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000000 Disk /dev/sda3 doesn't contain a valid partition table vgs No volume groups found lvs No volume groups found output of vi /etc/samba/smb.conf # smb.conf is the main Samba configuration file. You find a full commented # version at /usr/share/doc/packages/samba/examples/smb.conf.SUSE if the # samba-doc package is installed. # Date: 2011-11-02 [global] workgroup = WORKGROUP passdb backend = tdbsam printing = cups printcap name = cups printcap cache time = 750 cups options = raw map to guest = Bad User include = /etc/samba/dhcp.conf logon path = \\%L\profiles\.msprofile logon home = \\%L\%U\.9xprofile logon drive = P: usershare allow guests = Yes [homes] comment = Home Directories valid users = %S, %D%w%S browseable = No read only = No inherit acls = Yes [profiles] comment = Network Profiles Service path = %H read only = No store dos attributes = Yes create mask = 0600 directory mask = 0700 [users] comment = All users path = /home read only = No inherit acls = Yes veto files = /aquota.user/groups/shares/ [groups] comment = All groups path = /home/groups read only = No inherit acls = Yes [printers] comment = All Printers path = /var/tmp printable = Yes create mask = 0600 browseable = No [print$] comment = Printer Drivers path = /var/lib/samba/drivers write list = @ntadmin root force group = ntadmin create mask = 0664 directory mask = 0775 [allusers] comment = All Users path = /home/shares/allusers valid users = @users force group = users create mask = 0660 directory mask = 0771 writable = yes

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The DOS DEBUG Environment

- by MarkPearl

Today I thought I would go back in time and have a look at the DEBUG command that has been available since the beginning of dawn in DOS, MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. up to today I always knew it was there, but had no clue on how to use it so for those that are interested this might be a great geek party trick to pull out when you want the awe the younger generation and want to show them what “real” programming is about. But wait, you will have to do it relatively quickly as it seems like DEBUG was finally dumped from the Windows group in Windows 7. Not to worry, pull out that Windows XP box which will get you even more geek points and you can still poke DEBUG a bit. So, for those that are interested and want to find out a bit about the history of DEBUG read the wiki link here. That all put aside, lets get our hands dirty.. How to Start DEBUG in Windows Make sure your version of Windows supports DEBUG. Open up a console window Make a directory where you want to play with debug – in my instance I called it C221 Enter the directory and type Debug You will get a response with a – as illustrated in the image below… The commands available in DEBUG There are several commands available in DEBUG. The most common ones are A (Assemble) R (Register) T (Trace) G (Go) D (Dump or Display) U (Unassemble) E (Enter) P (Proceed) N (Name) L (Load) W (Write) H (Hexadecimal) I (Input) O (Output) Q (Quit) I am not going to cover all these commands, but what I will do is go through a few of them briefly. A is for Assemble Command (to write code) The A command translates assembly language statements into machine code. It is quite useful for writing small assembly programs. Below I have written a very basic assembly program. The code typed out is as follows mov ax,0015 mov cx,0023 sub cx,ax mov [120],al mov cl,[120]A nop R is for Register (to jump to a point in memory) The r command turns out to be one of the most frequent commands you will use in DEBUG. It allows you to view the contents of registers and to change their values. It can be used with the following combinations… R – Displays the contents of all the registers R f – Displays the flags register R register_name – Displays the contents of a specific register All three methods are illustrated in the image above T is for Trace (To execute a program step by step) The t command allows us to execute the program step by step. Before we can trace the program we need to point back to the beginning of the program. We do this by typing in r ip, which moves us back to memory point 100. We then type trace which executes the first line of code (line 100) (As shown in the image below starting from the red arrow). You can see from the above image that the register AX now contains 0015 as per our instruction mov ax,0015 You can also see that the IP points to line 0103 which has the MOV CX,0023 command If we type t again it will now execute the second line of the program which moves 23 in the cx register. Again, we can see that the line of code was executed and that the CX register now holds the value of 23. What I would like to highlight now is the section underlined in red. These are the status flags. The ones we are going to look at now are 1st (NV), 4th (PL), 5th (NZ) & 8th (NC) NV means no overflow, the alternate would be OV PL means that the sign of the previous arithmetic operation was Plus, the alternate would be NG (Negative) NZ means that the results of the previous arithmetic operation operation was Not Zero, the alternate would be ZR NC means that No final Carry resulted from the previous arithmetic operation. CY means that there was a final Carry. We could now follow this process of entering the t command until the entire program is executed line by line. G is for Go (To execute a program up to a certain line number) So we have looked at executing a program line by line, which is fine if your program is minuscule BUT totally unpractical if we have any decent sized program. A quicker way to run some lines of code is to use the G command. The ‘g’ command executes a program up to a certain specified point. It can be used in connection with the the reset IP command. You would set your initial point and then run the G command with the line you want to end on. P is for Proceed (Similar to trace but slightly more streamlined) Another command similar to trace is the proceed command. All that the p command does is if it is called and it encounters a CALL, INT or LOOP command it terminates the program execution. In the example below I modified our example program to include an int 20 at the end of it as illustrated in the image below… Then when executing the code when I encountered the int 20 command I typed the P command and the program terminated normally (illustrated below). D is for Dump (or for those more polite Display) So, we have all these assembly lines of code, but if you have ever opened up an exe or com file in a text/hex editor, it looks nothing like assembly code. The D command is a way that we can see what our code looks like in memory (or in a hex editor). If we examined the image above, we can see that Debug is storing our assembly code with each instruction following immediately after the previous one. For instance in memory address 110 we have int and 111 we have 20. If we examine the dump of memory we can see at memory point 110 CD is stored and at memory point 111 20 is stored. U is for Unassemble (or Convert Machine code to Assembly Code) So up to now we have gone through a bunch of commands, but probably one of the most useful is the U command. Let’s say we don’t understand machine code so well and so instead we want to see it in its equivalent assembly code. We can type the U command followed by the start memory point, followed by the end memory point and it will show us the assembly code equivalent of the machine code. E is for a bunch of things… The E command can be used for a bunch of things… One example is to enter data or machine code instructions directly into memory. It can also be used to display the contents of memory locations. I am not going to worry to much about it in this post. N / L / W is for Name, Load & Write So we have written out assembly code in debug, and now we want to save it to disk, or write it as a com file or load it. This is where the N, L & W command come in handy. The n command is used to give a name to the executable program file and is pretty simple to use. The w command is a bit trickier. It saves to disk all the memory between point bx and point cx so you need to specify the bx memory address and the cx memory address for it to write your code. Let’s look at an example illustrated below. You do this by calling the r command followed by the either bx or cx. We can then go to the directory where we were working and will see the new file with the name we specified. The L command is relatively simple. You would first specify the name of the file you would like to load using the N command, and then call the L command. Q is for Quit The last command that I am going to write about in this post is the Q command. Simply put, calling the Q command exits DEBUG. Commands we did not Cover Out of the standard DEBUG commands we covered A, T, G, D, U, E, P, R, N, L & W. The ones we did not cover were H, I & O – I might make mention of these in a later post, but for the basics they are not really needed. Some Useful Resources Please note this post is based on the COS2213 handouts for UNISA A Guide to DEBUG - http://mirror.href.com/thestarman/asm/debug/debug.htm#NT

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Scripting with the Sun ZFS Storage 7000 Appliance

- by Geoff Ongley

The Sun ZFS Storage 7000 appliance has a user friendly and easy to understand graphical web based interface we call the "BUI" or "Browser User Interface".This interface is very useful for many tasks, but in some cases a script (or workflow) may be more appropriate, such as:Repetitive tasksTasks which work on (or obtain information about) a large number of shares or usersTasks which are triggered by an alert threshold (workflows)Tasks where you want a only very basic input, but a consistent output (workflows)The appliance scripting language is based on ECMAscript 3 (close to javascript). I'm not going to cover ECMAscript 3 in great depth (I'm far from an expert here), but I would like to show you some neat things you can do with the appliance, to get you started based on what I have found from my own playing around.I'm making the assumption you have some sort of programming background, and understand variables, arrays, functions to some extent - but of course if something is not clear, please let me know so I can fix it up or clarify it.Variable Declarations and ArraysVariablesECMAScript is a dynamically and weakly typed language. If you don't know what that means, google is your friend - but at a high level it means we can just declare variables with no specific type and on the fly.For example, I can declare a variable and use it straight away in the middle of my code, for example:projects=list();Which makes projects an array of values that are returned from the list(); function (which is usable in most contexts). With this kind of variable, I can do things like:projects.length (this property on array tells you how many objects are in it, good for for loops etc). Alternatively, I could say:projects=3;and now projects is just a simple number.Should we declare variables like this so loosely? In my opinion, the answer is no - I feel it is a better practice to declare variables you are going to use, before you use them - and given them an initial value. You can do so as follows:var myVariable=0;To demonstrate the ability to just randomly assign and change the type of variables, you can create a simple script at the cli as follows (bold for input):fishy10:> script("." to run)> run("cd /");("." to run)> run ("shares");("." to run)> var projects;("." to run)> projects=list();("." to run)> printf("Number of projects is: %d\n",projects.length);("." to run)> projects=152;("." to run)> printf("Value of the projects variable as an integer is now: %d\n",projects);("." to run)> .Number of projects is: 7Value of the projects variable as an integer is now: 152You can also confirm this behaviour by checking the typeof variable we are dealing with:fishy10:> script("." to run)> run("cd /");("." to run)> run ("shares");("." to run)> var projects;("." to run)> projects=list();("." to run)> printf("var projects is of type %s\n",typeof(projects));("." to run)> projects=152;("." to run)> printf("var projects is of type %s\n",typeof(projects));("." to run)> .var projects is of type objectvar projects is of type numberArraysSo you likely noticed that we have already touched on arrays, as the list(); (in the shares context) stored an array into the 'projects' variable.But what if you want to declare your own array? Easy! This is very similar to Java and other languages, we just instantiate a brand new "Array" object using the keyword new:var myArray = new Array();will create an array called "myArray".A quick example:fishy10:> script("." to run)> testArray = new Array();("." to run)> testArray[0]="This";("." to run)> testArray[1]="is";("." to run)> testArray[2]="just";("." to run)> testArray[3]="a";("." to run)> testArray[4]="test";("." to run)> for (i=0; i < testArray.length; i++)("." to run)> {("." to run)> printf("Array element %d is %s\n",i,testArray[i]);("." to run)> }("." to run)> .Array element 0 is ThisArray element 1 is isArray element 2 is justArray element 3 is aArray element 4 is testWorking With LoopsFor LoopFor loops are very similar to those you will see in C, java and several other languages. One of the key differences here is, as you were made aware earlier, we can be a bit more sloppy with our variable declarations.The general way you would likely use a for loop is as follows:for (variable; test-case; modifier for variable){}For example, you may wish to declare a variable i as 0; and a MAX_ITERATIONS variable to determine how many times this loop should repeat:var i=0;var MAX_ITERATIONS=10;And then, use this variable to be tested against some case existing (has i reached MAX_ITERATIONS? - if not, increment i using i++);for (i=0; i < MAX_ITERATIONS; i++){ // some work to do}So lets run something like this on the appliance:fishy10:> script("." to run)> var i=0;("." to run)> var MAX_ITERATIONS=10;("." to run)> for (i=0; i < MAX_ITERATIONS; i++)("." to run)> {("." to run)> printf("The number is %d\n",i);("." to run)> }("." to run)> .The number is 0The number is 1The number is 2The number is 3The number is 4The number is 5The number is 6The number is 7The number is 8The number is 9While LoopWhile loops again are very similar to other languages, we loop "while" a condition is met. For example:fishy10:> script("." to run)> var isTen=false;("." to run)> var counter=0;("." to run)> while(isTen==false)("." to run)> {("." to run)> if (counter==10) ("." to run)> { ("." to run)> isTen=true; ("." to run)> } ("." to run)> printf("Counter is %d\n",counter);("." to run)> counter++; ("." to run)> }("." to run)> printf("Loop has ended and Counter is %d\n",counter);("." to run)> .Counter is 0Counter is 1Counter is 2Counter is 3Counter is 4Counter is 5Counter is 6Counter is 7Counter is 8Counter is 9Counter is 10Loop has ended and Counter is 11So what do we notice here? Something has actually gone wrong - counter will technically be 11 once the loop completes... Why is this?Well, if we have a loop like this, where the 'while' condition that will end the loop may be set based on some other condition(s) existing (such as the counter has reached 10) - we must ensure that we terminate this iteration of the loop when the condition is met - otherwise the rest of the code will be followed which may not be desirable. In other words, like in other languages, we will only ever check the loop condition once we are ready to perform the next iteration, so any other code after we set "isTen" to be true, will still be executed as we can see it was above.We can avoid this by adding a break into our loop once we know we have set the condition - this will stop the rest of the logic being processed in this iteration (and as such, counter will not be incremented). So lets try that again:fishy10:> script("." to run)> var isTen=false;("." to run)> var counter=0;("." to run)> while(isTen==false)("." to run)> {("." to run)> if (counter==10) ("." to run)> { ("." to run)> isTen=true; ("." to run)> break;("." to run)> } ("." to run)> printf("Counter is %d\n",counter);("." to run)> counter++; ("." to run)> }("." to run)> printf("Loop has ended and Counter is %d\n", counter);("." to run)> .Counter is 0Counter is 1Counter is 2Counter is 3Counter is 4Counter is 5Counter is 6Counter is 7Counter is 8Counter is 9Loop has ended and Counter is 10Much better!Methods to Obtain and Manipulate DataGet MethodThe get method allows you to get simple properties from an object, for example a quota from a user. The syntax is fairly simple:var myVariable=get('property');An example of where you may wish to use this, is when you are getting a bunch of information about a user (such as quota information when in a shares context):var users=list();for(k=0; k < users.length; k++){ user=users[k]; run('select ' + user); var username=get('name'); var usage=get('usage'); var quota=get('quota');...Which you can then use to your advantage - to print or manipulate infomation (you could change a user's information with a set method, based on the information returned from the get method). The set method is explained next.Set MethodThe set method can be used in a simple manner, similar to get. The syntax for set is:set('property','value'); // where value is a string, if it was a number, you don't need quotesFor example, we could set the quota on a share as follows (first observing the initial value):fishy10:shares default/test-geoff> script("." to run)> var currentQuota=get('quota');("." to run)> printf("Current Quota is: %s\n",currentQuota);("." to run)> set('quota','30G');("." to run)> run('commit');("." to run)> currentQuota=get('quota');("." to run)> printf("Current Quota is: %s\n",currentQuota);("." to run)> .Current Quota is: 0Current Quota is: 32212254720This shows us using both the get and set methods as can be used in scripts, of course when only setting an individual share, the above is overkill - it would be much easier to set it manually at the cli using 'set quota=3G' and then 'commit'.List MethodThe list method can be very powerful, especially in more complex scripts which iterate over large amounts of data and manipulate it if so desired. The general way you will use list is as follows:var myVar=list();Which will make "myVar" an array, containing all the objects in the relevant context (this could be a list of users, shares, projects, etc). You can then gather or manipulate data very easily.We could list all the shares and mountpoints in a given project for example:fishy10:shares another-project> script("." to run)> var shares=list();("." to run)> for (i=0; i < shares.length; i++)("." to run)> {("." to run)> run('select ' + shares[i]);("." to run)> var mountpoint=get('mountpoint');("." to run)> printf("Share %s discovered, has mountpoint %s\n",shares[i],mountpoint);("." to run)> run('done');("." to run)> }("." to run)> .Share and-another discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-project/and-anotherShare another-share discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-project/another-shareShare bob discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-projectShare more-shares-for-all discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-project/more-shares-for-allShare yep discovered, has mountpoint /export/another-project/yepWriting More Complex and Re-Usable CodeFunctionsThe best way to be able to write more complex code is to use functions to split up repeatable or reusable sections of your code. This also makes your more complex code easier to read and understand for other programmers.We write functions as follows:function functionName(variable1,variable2,...,variableN){}For example, we could have a function that takes a project name as input, and lists shares for that project (assuming we're already in the 'project' context - context is important!):function getShares(proj){ run('select ' + proj); shares=list(); printf("Project: %s\n", proj); for(j=0; j < shares.length; j++) { printf("Discovered share: %s\n",shares[i]); } run('done'); // exit selected project}Commenting your CodeLike any other language, a large part of making it readable and understandable is to comment it. You can use the same comment style as in C and Java amongst other languages.In other words, sngle line comments use://at the beginning of the comment.Multi line comments use:/*at the beginning, and:*/ at the end.For example, here we will use both:fishy10:> script("." to run)> // This is a test comment("." to run)> printf("doing some work...\n");("." to run)> /* This is a multi-line("." to run)> comment which I will span across("." to run)> three lines in total */("." to run)> printf("doing some more work...\n");("." to run)> .doing some work...doing some more work...Your comments do not have to be on their own, they can begin (particularly with single line comments this is handy) at the end of a statement, for examplevar projects=list(); // The variable projects is an array containing all projects on the system.Try and Catch StatementsYou may be used to using try and catch statements in other languages, and they can (and should) be utilised in your code to catch expected or unexpected error conditions, that you do NOT wish to stop your code from executing (if you do not catch these errors, your script will exit!):try{ // do some work}catch(err) // Catch any error that could occur{ // do something here under the error condition}For example, you may wish to only execute some code if a context can be reached. If you can't perform certain actions under certain circumstances, that may be perfectly acceptable.For example if you want to test a condition that only makes sense when looking at a SMB/NFS share, but does not make sense when you hit an iscsi or FC LUN, you don't want to stop all processing of other shares you may not have covered yet.For example we may wish to obtain quota information on all shares for all users on a share (but this makes no sense for a LUN):function getShareQuota(shar) // Get quota for each user of this share{ run('select ' + shar); printf(" SHARE: %s\n", shar); try { run('users'); printf(" %20s %11s %11s %3s\n","Username","Usage(G)","Quota(G)","Quota(%)"); printf(" %20s %11s %11s %4s\n","--------","--------","--------","----"); users=list(); for(k=0; k < users.length; k++) { user=users[k]; getUserQuota(user); } run('done'); // exit user context } catch(err) { printf(" SKIPPING %s - This is NOT a NFS or CIFs share, not looking for users\n", shar); } run('done'); // done with this share}Running Scripts Remotely over SSHAs you have likely noticed, writing and running scripts for all but the simplest jobs directly on the appliance is not going to be a lot of fun.There's a couple of choices on what you can do here:Create scripts on a remote system and run them over sshCreate scripts, wrapping them in workflow code, so they are stored on the appliance and can be triggered under certain circumstances (like a threshold being reached)We'll cover the first one here, and then cover workflows later on (as these are for the most part just scripts with some wrapper information around them).Creating a SSH Public/Private SSH Key PairLog on to your handy Solaris box (You wouldn't be using any other OS, right? :P) and use ssh-keygen to create a pair of ssh keys. I'm storing this separate to my normal key:[geoff@lightning ~] ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 1024Generating public/private rsa key pair.Enter file in which to save the key (/export/home/geoff/.ssh/id_rsa): /export/home/geoff/.ssh/nas_key_rsaEnter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): Enter same passphrase again: Your identification has been saved in /export/home/geoff/.ssh/nas_key_rsa.Your public key has been saved in /export/home/geoff/.ssh/nas_key_rsa.pub.The key fingerprint is:7f:3d:53:f0:2a:5e:8b:2d:94:2a:55:77:66:5c:9b:14 geoff@lightningInstalling the Public Key on the ApplianceOn your Solaris host, observe the public key:[geoff@lightning ~] cat .ssh/nas_key_rsa.pub ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAIEAvYfK3RIaAYmMHBOvyhKM41NaSmcgUMC3igPN5gUKJQvSnYmjuWG6CBr1CkF5UcDji7v19jG3qAD5lAMFn+L0CxgRr8TNaAU+hA4/tpAGkjm+dKYSyJgEdMIURweyyfUFXoerweR8AWW5xlovGKEWZTAfvJX9Zqvh8oMQ5UJLUUc= geoff@lightningNow, copy and paste everything after "ssh-rsa" and before "user@hostname" - in this case, geoff@lightning. That is, this bit:AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAIEAvYfK3RIaAYmMHBOvyhKM41NaSmcgUMC3igPN5gUKJQvSnYmjuWG6CBr1CkF5UcDji7v19jG3qAD5lAMFn+L0CxgRr8TNaAU+hA4/tpAGkjm+dKYSyJgEdMIURweyyfUFXoerweR8AWW5xlovGKEWZTAfvJX9Zqvh8oMQ5UJLUUc=Logon to your appliance and get into the preferences -> keys area for this user (root):[geoff@lightning ~] ssh [email protected]: Last login: Mon Dec 6 17:13:28 2010 from 192.168.0.2fishy10:> configuration usersfishy10:configuration users> select rootfishy10:configuration users root> preferences fishy10:configuration users root preferences> keysOR do it all in one hit:fishy10:> configuration users select root preferences keysNow, we create a new public key that will be accepted for this user and set the type to RSA:fishy10:configuration users root preferences keys> createfishy10:configuration users root preferences key (uncommitted)> set type=RSASet the key itself using the string copied previously (between ssh-rsa and user@host), and set the key ensuring you put double quotes around it (eg. set key="<key>"):fishy10:configuration users root preferences key (uncommitted)> set key="AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAIEAvYfK3RIaAYmMHBOvyhKM41NaSmcgUMC3igPN5gUKJQvSnYmjuWG6CBr1CkF5UcDji7v19jG3qAD5lAMFn+L0CxgRr8TNaAU+hA4/tpAGkjm+dKYSyJgEdMIURweyyfUFXoerweR8AWW5xlovGKEWZTAfvJX9Zqvh8oMQ5UJLUUc="Now set the comment for this key (do not use spaces):fishy10:configuration users root preferences key (uncommitted)> set comment="LightningRSAKey" Commit the new key:fishy10:configuration users root preferences key (uncommitted)> commitVerify the key is there:fishy10:configuration users root preferences keys> lsKeys:NAME MODIFIED TYPE COMMENT key-000 2010-10-25 20:56:42 RSA cycloneRSAKey key-001 2010-12-6 17:44:53 RSA LightningRSAKey As you can see, we now have my new key, and a previous key I have created on this appliance.Running your Script over SSH from a Remote SystemHere I have created a basic test script, and saved it as test.ecma3:[geoff@lightning ~] cat test.ecma3 script// This is a test script, By Geoff Ongley 2010.printf("Testing script remotely over ssh\n");.Now, we can run this script remotely with our keyless login:[geoff@lightning ~] ssh -i .ssh/nas_key_rsa root@fishy10 < test.ecma3Pseudo-terminal will not be allocated because stdin is not a terminal.Testing script remotely over sshPutting it Together - An Example Completed Quota Gathering ScriptSo now we have a lot of the basics to creating a script, let us do something useful, like, find out how much every user is using, on every share on the system (you will recognise some of the code from my previous examples): script/************************************** Quick and Dirty Quota Check script ** Written By Geoff Ongley ** 25 October 2010 **************************************/function getUserQuota(usr){ run('select ' + usr); var username=get('name'); var usage=get('usage'); var quota=get('quota'); var usage_g=usage / 1073741824; // convert bytes to gigabytes var quota_g=quota / 1073741824; // as above var quota_percent=0 if (quota > 0) { quota_percent=(usage / quota)*(100/1); } printf(" %20s %8.2f %8.2f %d%%\n",username,usage_g,quota_g,quota_percent); run('done'); // done with this selected user}function getShareQuota(shar){ //printf("DEBUG: selecting share %s\n", shar); run('select ' + shar); printf(" SHARE: %s\n", shar); try { run('users'); printf(" %20s %11s %11s %3s\n","Username","Usage(G)","Quota(G)","Quota(%)"); printf(" %20s %11s %11s %4s\n","--------","--------","--------","--------"); users=list(); for(k=0; k < users.length; k++) { user=users[k]; getUserQuota(user); } run('done'); // exit user context } catch(err) { printf(" SKIPPING %s - This is NOT a NFS or CIFs share, not looking for users\n", shar); } run('done'); // done with this share}function getShares(proj){ //printf("DEBUG: selecting project %s\n",proj); run('select ' + proj); shares=list(); printf("Project: %s\n", proj); for(j=0; j < shares.length; j++) { share=shares[j]; getShareQuota(share); } run('done'); // exit selected project}function getProjects(){ run('cd /'); run('shares'); projects=list(); for (i=0; i < projects.length; i++) { var project=projects[i]; getShares(project); } run('done'); // exit context for all projects}getProjects();.Which can be run as follows, and will print information like this:[geoff@lightning ~/FISHWORKS_SCRIPTS] ssh -i ~/.ssh/nas_key_rsa root@fishy10 < get_quota_utilisation.ecma3Pseudo-terminal will not be allocated because stdin is not a terminal.Project: another-project SHARE: and-another Username Usage(G) Quota(G) Quota(%) -------- -------- -------- -------- nobody 0.00 0.00 0% geoffro 0.05 0.00 0% Billy 0.10 0.00 0% root 0.00 0.00 0% testing-user 0.05 0.00 0% SHARE: another-share Username Usage(G) Quota(G) Quota(%) -------- -------- -------- -------- root 0.00 0.00 0% nobody 0.00 0.00 0% geoffro 0.05 0.49 9% testing-user 0.05 0.02 249% Billy 0.10 0.29 33% SHARE: bob Username Usage(G) Quota(G) Quota(%) -------- -------- -------- -------- nobody 0.00 0.00 0% root 0.00 0.00 0% SHARE: more-shares-for-all Username Usage(G) Quota(G) Quota(%) -------- -------- -------- -------- Billy 0.10 0.00 0% testing-user 0.05 0.00 0% nobody 0.00 0.00 0% root 0.00 0.00 0% geoffro 0.05 0.00 0% SHARE: yep Username Usage(G) Quota(G) Quota(%) -------- -------- -------- -------- root 0.00 0.00 0% nobody 0.00 0.00 0% Billy 0.10 0.01 999% testing-user 0.05 0.49 9% geoffro 0.05 0.00 0%Project: default SHARE: Test-LUN SKIPPING Test-LUN - This is NOT a NFS or CIFs share, not looking for users SHARE: test-geoff Username Usage(G) Quota(G) Quota(%) -------- -------- -------- -------- geoffro 0.05 0.00 0% root 3.18 10.00 31% uucp 0.00 0.00 0% nobody 0.59 0.49 119%^CKilled by signal 2.Creating a WorkflowWorkflows are scripts that we store on the appliance, and can have the script execute either on request (even from the BUI), or on an event such as a threshold being met.Workflow BasicsA workflow allows you to create a simple process that can be executed either via the BUI interface interactively, or by an alert being raised (for some threshold being reached, for example).The basics parameters you will have to set for your "workflow object" (notice you're creating a variable, that embodies ECMAScript) are as follows (parameters is optional):name: A name for this workflowdescription: A Description for the workflowparameters: A set of input parameters (useful when you need user input to execute the workflow)execute: The code, the script itself to execute, which will be function (parameters)With parameters, you can specify things like this (slightly modified sample taken from the System Administration Guide): ...parameters: variableParam1: { label: 'Name of Share', type: 'String' }, variableParam2 { label: 'Share Size', type: 'size' },execute: ....}; Note the commas separating the sections of name, parameters, execute, and so on. This is important!Also - there is plenty of properties you can set on the parameters for your workflow, these are described in the Sun ZFS Storage System Administration Guide.Creating a Basic Workflow from a Basic ScriptTo make a basic script into a basic workflow, you need to wrap the following around your script to create a 'workflow' object:var workflow = {name: 'Get User Quotas',description: 'Displays Quota Utilisation for each user on each share',execute: function() {// (basic script goes here, minus the "script" at the beginning, and "." at the end)}};However, it appears (at least in my experience to date) that the workflow object may only be happy with one function in the execute parameter - either that or I'm doing something wrong. As far as I can tell, after execute: you should only have a basic one function context like so:execute: function(){}To deal with this, and to give an example similar to our script earlier, I have created another simple quota check, to show the same basic functionality, but in a workflow format:var workflow = {name: 'Get User Quotas',description: 'Displays Quota Utilisation for each user on each share',execute: function () { run('cd /'); run('shares'); projects=list(); for (i=0; i < projects.length; i++) { run('select ' + projects[i]); shares=list('filesystem'); printf("Project: %s\n", projects[i]); for(j=0; j < shares.length; j++) { run('select ' +shares[j]); try { run('users'); printf(" SHARE: %s\n", shares[j]); printf(" %20s %11s %11s %3s\n","Username","Usage(G)","Quota(G)","Quota(%)"); printf(" %20s %11s %11s %4s\n","--------","--------","--------","-------"); users=list(); for(k=0; k < users.length; k++) { run('select ' + users[k]); username=get('name'); usage=get('usage'); quota=get('quota'); usage_g=usage / 1073741824; // convert bytes to gigabytes quota_g=quota / 1073741824; // as above quota_percent=0 if (quota > 0) { quota_percent=(usage / quota)*(100/1); } printf(" %20s %8.2f %8.2f %d%%\n",username,usage_g,quota_g,quota_percent); run('done'); } run('done'); // exit user context } catch(err) { // printf(" %s is a LUN, Not looking for users\n", shares[j]); } run('done'); // exit selected share context } run('done'); // exit project context } }};SummaryThe Sun ZFS Storage 7000 Appliance offers lots of different and interesting features to Sun/Oracle customers, including the world renowned Analytics. Hopefully the above will help you to think of new creative things you could be doing by taking advantage of one of the other neat features, the internal scripting engine!Some references are below to help you continue learning more, I'll update this post as I do the same! Enjoy...More information on ECMAScript 3A complete reference to ECMAScript 3 which will help you learn more of the details you may be interested in, can be found here:http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST-ARCH/ECMA-262,%203rd%20edition,%20December%201999.pdfMore Information on Administering the Sun ZFS Storage 7000The Sun ZFS Storage 7000 System Administration guide can be a useful reference point, and can be found here:http://wikis.sun.com/download/attachments/186238602/2010_Q3_2_ADMIN.pdf

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How to configure VPN in Windows XP

- by SAMIR BHOGAYTA

VPN Overview A VPN is a private network created over a public one. It’s done with encryption, this way, your data is encapsulated and secure in transit – this creates the ‘virtual’ tunnel. A VPN is a method of connecting to a private network by a public network like the Internet. An internet connection in a company is common. An Internet connection in a Home is common too. With both of these, you could create an encrypted tunnel between them and pass traffic, safely - securely. If you want to create a VPN connection you will have to use encryption to make sure that others cannot intercept the data in transit while traversing the Internet. Windows XP provides a certain level of security by using Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) or Layer Two Tunneling Protocol (L2TP). They are both considered tunneling protocols – simply because they create that virtual tunnel just discussed, by applying encryption. Configure a VPN with XP If you want to configure a VPN connection from a Windows XP client computer you only need what comes with the Operating System itself, it's all built right in. To set up a connection to a VPN, do the following: 1. On the computer that is running Windows XP, confirm that the connection to the Internet is correctly configured. • You can try to browse the internet • Ping a known host on the Internet, like yahoo.com, something that isn’t blocking ICMP 2. Click Start, and then click Control Panel. 3. In Control Panel, double click Network Connections 4. Click Create a new connection in the Network Tasks task pad 5. In the Network Connection Wizard, click Next. 6. Click Connect to the network at my workplace, and then click Next. 7. Click Virtual Private Network connection, and then click Next. 8. If you are prompted, you need to select whether you will use a dialup connection or if you have a dedicated connection to the Internet either via Cable, DSL, T1, Satellite, etc. Click Next. 9. Type a host name, IP or any other description you would like to appear in the Network Connections area. You can change this later if you want. Click Next. 10. Type the host name or the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the computer that you want to connect to, and then click Next. 11. You may be asked if you want to use a Smart Card or not. 12. You are just about done, the rest of the screens just verify your connection, click Next. 13. Click to select the Add a shortcut to this connection to my desktop check box if you want one, if not, then leave it unchecked and click finish. 14. You are now done making your connection, but by default, it may try to connect. You can either try the connection now if you know its valid, if not, then just close it down for now. 15. In the Network Connections window, right-click the new connection and select properties. Let’s take a look at how you can customize this connection before it’s used. 16. The first tab you will see if the General Tab. This only covers the name of the connection, which you can also rename from the Network Connection dialog box by right clicking the connection and selecting to rename it. You can also configure a First connect, which means that Windows can connect the public network (like the Internet) before starting to attempt the ‘VPN’ connection. This is a perfect example as to when you would have configured the dialup connection; this would have been the first thing that you would have to do. It's simple, you have to be connected to the Internet first before you can encrypt and send data over it. This setting makes sure that this is a reality for you. 17. The next tab is the Options Tab. It is The Options tab has a lot you can configure in it. For one, you have the option to connect to a Windows Domain, if you select this check box (unchecked by default), then your VPN client will request Windows logon domain information while starting to work up the VPN connection. Also, you have options here for redialing. Redial attempts are configured here if you are using a dial up connection to get to the Internet. It is very handy to redial if the line is dropped as dropped lines are very common. 18. The next tab is the Security Tab. This is where you would configure basic security for the VPN client. This is where you would set any advanced IPSec configurations other security protocols as well as requiring encryption and credentials. 19. The next tab is the Networking Tab. This is where you can select what networking items are used by this VPN connection. 20. The Last tab is the Advanced Tab. This is where you can configure options for configuring a firewall, and/or sharing. Connecting to Corporate Now that you have your XP VPN client all set up and ready, the next step is to attempt a connection to the Remote Access or VPN server set up at the corporate office. To use the connection follow these simple steps. To open the client again, go back to the Network Connections dialog box. 1. One you are in the Network Connection dialog box, double-click, or right click and select ‘Connect’ from the menu – this will initiate the connection to the corporate office. 2. Type your user name and password, and then click Connect. Properties bring you back to what we just discussed in this article, all the global settings for the VPN client you are using. 3. To disconnect from a VPN connection, right-click the icon for the connection, and then click “Disconnect” Summary In this article we covered the basics of building a VPN connection using Windows XP. This is very handy when you have a VPN device but don’t have the ‘client’ that may come with it. If the VPN Server doesn’t use highly proprietary protocols, then you can use the XP client to connect with. In a future article I will get into the nuts and bolts of both IPSec and more detail on how to configure the advanced options in the Security tab of this client. 678: The remote computer did not respond. 930: The authentication server did not respond to authentication requests in a timely fashion. 800: Unable to establish the VPN connection. 623: The system could not find the phone book entry for this connection. 720: A connection to the remote computer could not be established. More on : http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles/Configure-VPN-Connection-Windows-XP.html

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Installing a DHCP Service On Win2k8 ( Windows Server 2008 )

- by Akshay Deep Lamba

Introduction Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a core infrastructure service on any network that provides IP addressing and DNS server information to PC clients and any other device. DHCP is used so that you do not have to statically assign IP addresses to every device on your network and manage the issues that static IP addressing can create. More and more, DHCP is being expanded to fit into new network services like the Windows Health Service and Network Access Protection (NAP). However, before you can use it for more advanced services, you need to first install it and configure the basics. Let’s learn how to do that. Installing Windows Server 2008 DHCP Server Installing Windows Server 2008 DCHP Server is easy. DHCP Server is now a “role” of Windows Server 2008 – not a windows component as it was in the past. To do this, you will need a Windows Server 2008 system already installed and configured with a static IP address. You will need to know your network’s IP address range, the range of IP addresses you will want to hand out to your PC clients, your DNS server IP addresses, and your default gateway. Additionally, you will want to have a plan for all subnets involved, what scopes you will want to define, and what exclusions you will want to create. To start the DHCP installation process, you can click Add Roles from the Initial Configuration Tasks window or from Server Manager à Roles à Add Roles. Figure 1: Adding a new Role in Windows Server 2008 When the Add Roles Wizard comes up, you can click Next on that screen. Next, select that you want to add the DHCP Server Role, and click Next. Figure 2: Selecting the DHCP Server Role If you do not have a static IP address assigned on your server, you will get a warning that you should not install DHCP with a dynamic IP address. At this point, you will begin being prompted for IP network information, scope information, and DNS information. If you only want to install DHCP server with no configured scopes or settings, you can just click Next through these questions and proceed with the installation. On the other hand, you can optionally configure your DHCP Server during this part of the installation. In my case, I chose to take this opportunity to configure some basic IP settings and configure my first DHCP Scope. I was shown my network connection binding and asked to verify it, like this: Figure 3: Network connection binding What the wizard is asking is, “what interface do you want to provide DHCP services on?” I took the default and clicked Next. Next, I entered my Parent Domain, Primary DNS Server, and Alternate DNS Server (as you see below) and clicked Next. Figure 4: Entering domain and DNS information I opted NOT to use WINS on my network and I clicked Next. Then, I was promoted to configure a DHCP scope for the new DHCP Server. I have opted to configure an IP address range of 192.168.1.50-100 to cover the 25+ PC Clients on my local network. To do this, I clicked Add to add a new scope. As you see below, I named the Scope WBC-Local, configured the starting and ending IP addresses of 192.168.1.50-192.168.1.100, subnet mask of 255.255.255.0, default gateway of 192.168.1.1, type of subnet (wired), and activated the scope. Figure 5: Adding a new DHCP Scope Back in the Add Scope screen, I clicked Next to add the new scope (once the DHCP Server is installed). I chose to Disable DHCPv6 stateless mode for this server and clicked Next. Then, I confirmed my DHCP Installation Selections (on the screen below) and clicked Install. Figure 6: Confirm Installation Selections After only a few seconds, the DHCP Server was installed and I saw the window, below: Figure 7: Windows Server 2008 DHCP Server Installation succeeded I clicked Close to close the installer window, then moved on to how to manage my new DHCP Server. How to Manage your new Windows Server 2008 DHCP Server Like the installation, managing Windows Server 2008 DHCP Server is also easy. Back in my Windows Server 2008 Server Manager, under Roles, I clicked on the new DHCP Server entry. Figure 8: DHCP Server management in Server Manager While I cannot manage the DHCP Server scopes and clients from here, what I can do is to manage what events, services, and resources are related to the DHCP Server installation. Thus, this is a good place to go to check the status of the DHCP Server and what events have happened around it. However, to really configure the DHCP Server and see what clients have obtained IP addresses, I need to go to the DHCP Server MMC. To do this, I went to Start à Administrative Tools à DHCP Server, like this: Figure 9: Starting the DHCP Server MMC When expanded out, the MMC offers a lot of features. Here is what it looks like: Figure 10: The Windows Server 2008 DHCP Server MMC The DHCP Server MMC offers IPv4 & IPv6 DHCP Server info including all scopes, pools, leases, reservations, scope options, and server options. If I go into the address pool and the scope options, I can see that the configuration we made when we installed the DHCP Server did, indeed, work. The scope IP address range is there, and so are the DNS Server & default gateway. Figure 11: DHCP Server Address Pool Figure 12: DHCP Server Scope Options So how do we know that this really works if we do not test it? The answer is that we do not. Now, let’s test to make sure it works. How do we test our Windows Server 2008 DHCP Server? To test this, I have a Windows Vista PC Client on the same network segment as the Windows Server 2008 DHCP server. To be safe, I have no other devices on this network segment. I did an IPCONFIG /RELEASE then an IPCONFIG /RENEW and verified that I received an IP address from the new DHCP server, as you can see below: Figure 13: Vista client received IP address from new DHCP Server Also, I went to my Windows 2008 Server and verified that the new Vista client was listed as a client on the DHCP server. This did indeed check out, as you can see below: Figure 14: Win 2008 DHCP Server has the Vista client listed under Address Leases With that, I knew that I had a working configuration and we are done!

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CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 23, 2010

CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, March 23, 2010New Projects.NET StarCraft II Replay Parser: A .NET 3.5 Library used to parse StarCraft II replays. Developed in C# 3.5.BackToBasics "B2B" Chat: With technology and software getting more and more complicated, why not get back to basics with BackToBasicsChat. B2B allows you to chat over a ser...Dark Neuron Game Engine: Dark Neuron allows you to easily create fun and interesting games with no need of developing basic game components. This engine is developed for C#...DeepZoom Pivot Constructor: Library to make building DeepZoom images and Pivot displays simpler.ePaper reader: The project is aimed at creating a tool which helps in reading electronic editions of news papers(pdf/flash)FSharpPageProvider for EPiServer CMS 6: This project starts as the port of EPiServer XmlPageProvider to F# programming language. Hammock for REST: Hammock is a REST library for .NET that greatly simplifies consuming and wrapping RESTful services.Kirill Osenkov: Various small projects, tools, utilities and samples by Kirill OsenkovliveDB: liveDB - web client for sql serverLucilla Framework: lucilla frameworkMVC Foolproof Validation: MVC Foolproof Validation aims to extend the Data Annotation validation provided in ASP.NET MVC. Initial efforts are focused on adding contingent va...MVC2Forums: MVC2Forums is simply a forum system based upon MVC2.Mvvm Foundation Silverlight: Mvvm Foundation Silverlight is a library of classes that are helpful when building Silverlight applications based in the MVVM pattern. This librar...MyPersonalWebsite: This is my personal web site developed using ASP.NET MVC 2Planner: Planner makes it easier for all peoples to plan your tasks. It's developed in Delphi.Prose: Prose is an playground for an experimental JavaScript like language compiler. Eventually it will implement 0-CFA, CFA2, and a Tracing JITQuestTracker: QuestTracker is a todo list presented in the format of a quest tracking list such as the one in World of Warcraft.SevenZipLib: SevenZipLib is a C# interface to the 7-zip library.SimpleGeo .Net: .Net Client library for the SimpleGeo.com serviceNew ReleasesAutenticar no OpenLDAP utilizando pGIna: DLL LDAPAuth Plus: New Group: No LoginBMap.NET: BMap.NET 2: This is the 2nd version of BMap.NET. It has included these tags: Bing Maps, and "About BMap.NET".Cronos: Version 2.04: This is primarily a bug-fix release. Several numerical issues have been resolved, and a resource leak (of MS Windows graphics objects) has been fi...EV Dashboard: v1.0: This release includes support for an App.config file and Auto Connect, which will connect to the specified BMS at startup. Note: You still have to ...GKO Libraries: GKO Libraries 0.1 Beta: 0.1 Beta Added More utilities and functions RefactoringsGLB Virtual Player Builder: 0.4.2 Beta: Beta build that includes a new player creator.HKGolden Express: HKGoldenExpress (Build 201003222215): New features: (None) Bug fix: Fixed bugs of unable to parse XML file stream returned from HKGolden API, as the encoding of XML file stream chang...jQuery Web Controls ASP.Net: jQueryWebControls 1.1.1.2: En esta versión se han corregido problemas existentes en la ejecución de los scripts de jquery cuando se utilizaban MasterPage y/o Ajax Control Too...LightKit: Version 0.2.2: Fixed: fixed bug when CollectionItemsEditor ditermines IsChanged property incorrectly fixed ObjectEditor`a thisstring propertyName method wrong l...LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter Beta v2.0.8: New items added since v1.1 include: Support for OAuth (via DotNetOpenAuth), secure communication via https, VB language support, serialization of ...MapWindow6: MapWindow 6.0 msi (March 22): This version fixes the icons for the desktop installer and changes the install directory to Program Files\MapWindow instead of Program Files\ISU.Math.NET Numerics: 2010.3.22.1334 Build: Latest alpha buildMiniCalendar Web Part: MiniCalendar Web Part 1.8: A small web part to display links to events stored in a list (or document library) in a mini calendar (in month view mode). It shows tooltips for t...OCInject: Release Two: This release brings some missing features such as Singleton support, Func<T> factories and child containers. It, also, has an updated constructor ...Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 2.0 (March 2010): Installer of the latest binaries of Phalanger 2.0 (March 2010) and its integration into Visual Studio 2008. Easy installer with automatic IIS int...Planner: Planner: firstQuestTracker: QuestTracker 0.1: This is the preliminary release of QuestTracker. There's not much documentation or many features yet, but it is functional. Any feedback would be a...QuestTracker: QuestTracker 0.1.1: Bugfix for QuestTracker 0.1QuestTracker: QuestTracker 0.1.2: Fixes an issue with saving the quest list.Rawr: Rawr 2.3.13: We're pleased to announce that, after long last, Rawr3 has entered public beta. You're still welcome to continue using Rawr2 (that's what you're re...Single Web Session: Alpha Model Plugin: !How to use Single Web Session add following line into your web config <httpModules> <add name="SingleSession" type="SingleWebSession.Model.W...SMIL - SharePoint Map Integration Layer: SMIL 1.0: Custom data field Extracts Lat/Lon from EXIF from images being uploaded. Map Web Part Filter with SharePoint views Filter by connecting to...sTASKedit: sTASKedit 42532 (Developer Alpha): This release is only to verify the currently decoded task structure... Supported files: tasks.data (v1.3.6 client)VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30322.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVisual Studio DSite: Advanced Notepad (Visual C++ 2008): An notepad written in c that can save in a rich text file format.Wallpaper Rotator: Wallpaper Rotator 0.5: Wallpaper Rotator 0.5 This version includes the following improvements: Saving the choice of "Random Order (Shuffle Mode)" Updating the configu...Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpRawrWBFS ManagerSilverlight ToolkitASP.NET Ajax LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseAJAX Control ToolkitLiveUpload to FacebookWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMost Active ProjectsRawrjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesBlogEngine.NETLINQ to TwitterPHPExcelFarseer Physics EngineFacebook Developer ToolkitNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Modulepatterns & practices: Composite WPF and SilverlightN2 CMS

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CI Deployment Of Azure Web Roles Using TeamCity

- by srkirkland

After recently migrating an important new website to use Windows Azure “Web Roles” I wanted an easier way to deploy new versions to the Azure Staging environment as well as a reliable process to rollback deployments to a certain “known good” source control commit checkpoint. By configuring our JetBrains’ TeamCity CI server to utilize Windows Azure PowerShell cmdlets to create new automated deployments, I’ll show you how to take control of your Azure publish process. Step 0: Configuring your Azure Project in Visual Studio Before we can start looking at automating the deployment, we should make sure manual deployments from Visual Studio are working properly. Detailed information for setting up deployments can be found at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ff683672.aspx#PublishAzure or by doing some quick Googling, but the basics are as follows: Install the prerequisite Windows Azure SDK Create an Azure project by right-clicking on your web project and choosing “Add Windows Azure Cloud Service Project” (or by manually adding that project type) Configure your Role and Service Configuration/Definition as desired Right-click on your azure project and choose “Publish,” create a publish profile, and push to your web role You don’t actually have to do step #4 and create a publish profile, but it’s a good exercise to make sure everything is working properly. Once your Windows Azure project is setup correctly, we are ready to move on to understanding the Azure Publish process. Understanding the Azure Publish Process The actual Windows Azure project is fairly simple at its core—it builds your dependent roles (in our case, a web role) against a specific service and build configuration, and outputs two files: ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg: This is just the file containing your package configuration info, for example Instance Count, OsFamily, ConnectionString and other Setting information. ProjectName.Azure.cspkg: This is the package file that contains the guts of your deployment, including all deployable files. When you package your Azure project, these two files will be created within the directory ./[ProjectName].Azure/bin/[ConfigName]/app.publish/. If you want to build your Azure Project from the command line, it’s as simple as calling MSBuild on the “Publish” target: msbuild.exe /target:Publish Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets The last pieces of the puzzle that make CI automation possible are the Azure PowerShell Cmdlets (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj156055.aspx). These cmdlets are what will let us create deployments without Visual Studio or other user intervention. Preparing TeamCity for Azure Deployments Now we are ready to get our TeamCity server setup so it can build and deploy Windows Azure projects, which we now know requires the Azure SDK and the Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets. Installing the Azure SDK is easy enough, just go to https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/ and click “Install” Once this SDK is installed, I recommend running a test build to make sure your project is building correctly. You’ll want to setup your build step using MSBuild with the “Publish” target against your solution file. Mine looks like this: Assuming the build was successful, you will now have the two *.cspkg and *cscfg files within your build directory. If the build was red (failed), take a look at the build logs and keep an eye out for “unsupported project type” or other build errors, which will need to be addressed before the CI deployment can be completed. With a successful build we are now ready to install and configure the Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets: Follow the instructions at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj554332 to install the Cmdlets and configure PowerShell After installing the Cmdlets, you’ll need to get your Azure Subscription Info using the Get-AzurePublishSettingsFile command. Store the resulting *.publishsettings file somewhere you can get to easily, like C:\TeamCity, because you will need to reference it later from your deploy script. Scripting the CI Deploy Process Now that the cmdlets are installed on our TeamCity server, we are ready to script the actual deployment using a TeamCity “PowerShell” build runner. Before we look at any code, here’s a breakdown of our deployment algorithm: Setup your variables, including the location of the *.cspkg and *cscfg files produced in the earlier MSBuild step (remember, the folder is something like [ProjectName].Azure/bin/[ConfigName]/app.publish/ Import the Windows Azure PowerShell Cmdlets Import and set your Azure Subscription information (this is basically your authentication/authorization step, so protect your settings file Now look for a current deployment, and if you find one Upgrade it, else Create a new deployment Pretty simple and straightforward. Now let’s look at the code (also available as a gist here: https://gist.github.com/3694398): $subscription = "[Your Subscription Name]" $service = "[Your Azure Service Name]" $slot = "staging" #staging or production $package = "[ProjectName]\bin\[BuildConfigName]\app.publish\[ProjectName].cspkg" $configuration = "[ProjectName]\bin\[BuildConfigName]\app.publish\ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg" $timeStampFormat = "g" $deploymentLabel = "ContinuousDeploy to $service v%build.number%" Write-Output "Running Azure Imports" Import-Module "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Azure\PowerShell\Azure\*.psd1" Import-AzurePublishSettingsFile "C:\TeamCity\[PSFileName].publishsettings" Set-AzureSubscription -CurrentStorageAccount $service -SubscriptionName $subscription function Publish(){ $deployment = Get-AzureDeployment -ServiceName $service -Slot $slot -ErrorVariable a -ErrorAction silentlycontinue if ($a[0] -ne $null) { Write-Output "$(Get-Date -f $timeStampFormat) - No deployment is detected. Creating a new deployment. " } if ($deployment.Name -ne $null) { #Update deployment inplace (usually faster, cheaper, won't destroy VIP) Write-Output "$(Get-Date -f $timeStampFormat) - Deployment exists in $servicename. Upgrading deployment." UpgradeDeployment } else { CreateNewDeployment } } function CreateNewDeployment() { write-progress -id 3 -activity "Creating New Deployment" -Status "In progress" Write-Output "$(Get-Date -f $timeStampFormat) - Creating New Deployment: In progress" $opstat = New-AzureDeployment -Slot $slot -Package $package -Configuration $configuration -label $deploymentLabel -ServiceName $service $completeDeployment = Get-AzureDeployment -ServiceName $service -Slot $slot $completeDeploymentID = $completeDeployment.deploymentid write-progress -id 3 -activity "Creating New Deployment" -completed -Status "Complete" Write-Output "$(Get-Date -f $timeStampFormat) - Creating New Deployment: Complete, Deployment ID: $completeDeploymentID" } function UpgradeDeployment() { write-progress -id 3 -activity "Upgrading Deployment" -Status "In progress" Write-Output "$(Get-Date -f $timeStampFormat) - Upgrading Deployment: In progress" # perform Update-Deployment $setdeployment = Set-AzureDeployment -Upgrade -Slot $slot -Package $package -Configuration $configuration -label $deploymentLabel -ServiceName $service -Force $completeDeployment = Get-AzureDeployment -ServiceName $service -Slot $slot $completeDeploymentID = $completeDeployment.deploymentid write-progress -id 3 -activity "Upgrading Deployment" -completed -Status "Complete" Write-Output "$(Get-Date -f $timeStampFormat) - Upgrading Deployment: Complete, Deployment ID: $completeDeploymentID" } Write-Output "Create Azure Deployment" Publish Creating the TeamCity Build Step The only thing left is to create a second build step, after your MSBuild “Publish” step, with the build runner type “PowerShell”. Then set your script to “Source Code,” the script execution mode to “Put script into PowerShell stdin with “-Command” arguments” and then copy/paste in the above script (replacing the placeholder sections with your values). This should look like the following: Wrap Up After combining the MSBuild /target:Publish step (which creates the necessary Windows Azure *.cspkg and *.cscfg files) and a PowerShell script step which utilizes the Azure PowerShell Cmdlets, we have a fully deployable build configuration in TeamCity. You can configure this step to run whenever you’d like using build triggers – for example, you could even deploy whenever a new master branch deploy comes in and passes all required tests. In the script I’ve hardcoded that every deployment goes to the Staging environment on Azure, but you could deploy straight to Production if you want to, or even setup a deployment configuration variable and set it as desired. After your TeamCity Build Configuration is complete, you’ll see something that looks like this: Whenever you click the “Run” button, all of your code will be compiled, published, and deployed to Windows Azure! One additional enormous benefit of automating the process this way is that you can easily deploy any specific source control changeset by clicking the little ellipsis button next to "Run.” This will bring up a dialog like the one below, where you can select the last change to use for your deployment. Since Azure Web Role deployments don’t have any rollback functionality, this is a critical feature. Enjoy!

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Underwriting in a New Frontier: Spurring Innovation

- by [email protected]

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";} Susan Keuer, product strategy manager for Oracle Insurance, shares her experiences and insight from the 2010 Association of Home Office Underwriters (AHOU) Annual Conference, April 11-14, in San Antonio, Texas How can I be more innovative in underwriting? It's a common question I hear from insurance carriers, producers and others, so it was no surprise that it was the key theme at the recent 2010 AHOU Annual Conference. This year's event drew more than 900 insurance professionals involved in the underwriting process across life and annuities, property and casualty and reinsurance from around the globe, including the U.S., Canada, Australia, Bahamas, and more, to San Antonio - a Texas city where innovation transformed a series of downtown drainage canals into its premiere River Walk tourist destination. CNN's Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta kicked off the conference with a phenomenal opening session that drove home the theme of the conference, "Underwriting in a New Frontier: Spurring Innovation." Drawing from his own experience as a neurosurgeon treating critically injured medical patients in the field in Iraq, Gupta inspired audience members to think outside the box during the underwriting process. He shared a compelling story of operating on a soldier who had suffered a head-related trauma in a field hospital. With minimal supplies available Gupta used a Black and Decker saw to operate on the soldier's head and reduce pressure on his swelling brain. Drawing from this example, Gupta encouraged underwriters to think creatively, be innovative, and consider new tools and sources of information, such as social networking sites, during the underwriting process. So as you are looking at risk take into consideration all resources you have available. Gupta also stressed the concept of IKIGAI - noting that individuals who believe that their life is worth living are less likely to die than are their counterparts without this belief. How does one quantify this approach to life or thought process when evaluating risk? Could this be something to consider as a "category" in the near future? How can this same belief in your own work spur innovation? The role of technology was a hot topic of discussion throughout the conference. Sessions delved into the latest in underwriting software to the rise of social media and how it is being increasingly integrated into underwriting process and solutions. In one session a trio of panelists representing the carrier, producer and vendor communities stressed the importance to underwriters of leveraging new technology and the plethora of online information sources, which all could be used to accurately, honestly and consistently evaluate the risk throughout the underwriting process. Another focused on the explosion of social media noting: 1. Social media is growing exponentially - About eight percent of Americans used social media five years ago. Today about 46 percent of Americans do so, with 85 percent of financial services professionals using social media in their work. 2. It will impact your business - Underwriters reconfirmed over and over that they are increasingly using "free" tools that are available in cyberspace in lieu of more costly solutions, such as inspection reports conducted by individuals in the field. 3. Information is instantly available on the Web, anytime, anywhere - LinkedIn was mentioned as a way to connect to peers in the underwriting community and producers alike. Many carriers and agents also are using Facebook to promote their company to customers - and as a point-of-entry to allow them to perform some functionality - such as accessing product marketing information versus directing users to go to the carrier's own proprietary website. Other carriers have released their tight brand marketing to allow their producers to drive more business to their personal Facebook site where they offer innovative tools such as Application Capture or asking medical information in a more relaxed fashion. Other key topics at the conference included the economy, ongoing industry consolidation, real-estate valuations as an asset and input into the underwriting process, and producer trends. All stressed a "back to basics" approach for low cost, term products. Finally, Connie Merritt, RN, PHN, entertained the large group of atttendees with audience-engaging insight on how to "Tame the Lions in Your Life - Dealing with Complainers, Bullies, Grump and Curmudgeon." Merritt noted "we are too busy for our own good." She shared how her overachieving personality had impacted her life. Audience members then were asked to pick red, yellow, blue, or green shapes, without knowing that each one represented a specific personality trait. For example, those who picked blue were the peacemakers. Those who choose yellow were social - the hint was to "Be Quiet Longer." She then offered these "lion taming" steps: 1. Admit It 2. Accept It 3. Let Go 4. Be Present (which paralleled Gupta's IKIGAI concept) When thinking about underwriting I encourage you to be present in the moment and think creatively, but don't be afraid to look ahead to the future and be an innovator. I hope to see you at next year's AHOU Annual Conference, May 1-4, 2011 at The Mirage in Las Vegas, Nev. Susan Keuer is the product strategy manager for new business underwriting. She brings more than 20 years of insurance industry experience working with leading insurance carriers and technology companies to her role on the product strategy team for life/annuities solutions within the Oracle Insurance Global Business Unit

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XBRL US Conference Highlights

- by john.orourke(at)oracle.com

Back in early November I had an opportunity to attend the XBRL US National Conference in Philadelphia. At the event, XBRL US announced that Oracle had joined the initiative, so I had a chance to participate in a press conference and attend a number of sessions. Oracle joined XBRL US so we can stay ahead of the standard and leverage it in our products, and to help drive awareness with customers and improve adoption of XBRL. There were roughly 250 attendees at the event, about half of which were vendors and consultants and the rest financial reporting staff from corporate filers. Event sponsors included Ernst & Young, SWIFT and Fujitsu. There were also a number of XBRL technology and service providers exhibiting at the conference. On Monday Nov. 8th, the XBRL US Steering Committee meetings and Annual Members meeting and reception were held. At the Annual Members meeting the big news was that current XBRL US President, Mark Bolgiano, is moving to a new position at Howard Hughes Medical Center. Campbell Pryde, who had led the Taxonomy Development for XBRL US, is taking over as XBRL US President. Other items that were highlighted at the members meeting included: The US GAAP XBRL taxonomy is being used by over 1500 SEC filers and has now been handed over to the FASB to maintain and enhance 16 filer training events were held in 2010 XBRL Global Magazine was launched Corporate Actions proposal was submitted to the SEC with SWIFT in May XBRL Labs for iPhone, XBRL US Consistency Suite launched ISO 2022 Corporate Actions Alignment with XBRL achieved The XBRL Credit Rating taxonomy was accepted Tuesday Nov. 9th included Keynotes, General Sessions, Innovation Workshop for Governments and Securities Professionals, and an Opening Reception. General sessions included: Lessons Learned from the SEC's rollout of XBRL. More than 18,000 errors were identified in reviews of filings between June 2009 and September 2010. Most of these related to negative values being used where they shouldn't have. Also, the SEC feels there are too many taxonomy extensions being created - mostly in the Cash Flow Statements. They emphasize using existing elements in the US GAAP taxonomy and advise filers not to create extensions to improve the visual formatting of XBRL filings. Investors and XBRL - Setting the Standard for Data Quality. In this panel discussion, the key learning was that CFA's, academics and the financial community are not using XBRL as expected. The issues raised include the accuracy and completeness of filings, number of taxonomy extensions, and limited number of tools available to help analyze XBRL data. Another big issue that was raised is the lack of historic results in XBRL - most analysts need 10 quarters of historic data. On the positive side, XBRL has the potential to eliminate re-keying of data and errors here and can improve analytic capabilities for financial analysts once more historic data is available and more companies are providing detailed tagging of their filings. A US Roadmap for XBRL Financial Reporting. This was a panel discussion featuring Jeff Neumann(SEC), Campbell Pryde(XBRL US), and Louis Matherne(FASB). Key points included the fact that XBRL is currently used by 1500 companies, with 8000 more companies coming in 2011. XBRL for Mutual Fund Reporting will start in 2011 for 8000 funds, and a Credit Rating Taxonomy has now been submitted for review. The XBRL tagging/filing process is improving each quarter - more education is helping here. The FASB is looking at extensions to date, and potential additions to US GAAP taxonomy, while the SEC is evaluating filings for accuracy, consistency in tagging, and tools for analyzing data. The big news is that the FASB 2011 US GAAP Taxonomy has been completed and reviewed by SEC. The 2011 US GAAP Taxonomy supports new FASB accounting standards issued since 2009, has new taxonomy elements for certain industries (i.e airlines) and the elimination of 500 concepts. (meaning they can't be used going forward but are still supported for historical comparison) The 2011 US GAAP Taxonomy will be available for usage with Q2 2011 SEC filings. More information about this can be found on the FASB web site. http://www.fasb.org/home Accounting Firms and XBRL. This session covered the Role of Audit Firms, which includes awareness and education, validation of XBRL filings, and in-house transition planning. The main advice provided was that organizations should document XBRL mapping process, perform peer comparisons, and risk assessments on a regular basis. Wednesday Nov. 10th included more Keynotes, General Sessions on Corporate Actions, and XBRL Essentials Workshop Training for corporate filers. The XBRL Essentials Training included: Getting Started Once you Have the Basics Detailed Footnote Tagging and Handling Tables Quality Control and Trust in the XBRL Process Bringing XBRL In-House: What are the Options, What should you consider? The US GAAP Financial Reporting Taxonomy - Overview of the 2011 release The XBRL Essentials Training was well-attended with about 80 people. This included a good overview of the SEC's XBRL mandate, limited liability issue, tagging levels, recommended planning process, internal vs. outsourced approach, and how to manage service providers. I learned a lot from the session on detailed tagging. This is the requirement that kicks in during a company's second year of XBRL filing with the SEC and applies to financial statements, footnotes and disclosures (it does not apply to MD&A, executive communications and other information). The review of the Linkbase model, or dimensional table structure, was very interesting and can be complex to understand. The key takeaway here is that using dimensional tables in XBRL filings can help limit the number of taxonomy extensions that are required. The slides from this session are posted on the XBRL US web site. (http://xbrl.us/events/Pages/archive.aspx) For me, the main summary points and takeaways from the XBRL US conference are: XBRL for financial reporting has turned the corner and gone mainstream - with 1500 companies currently using it and 8000 more coming in 2011 The expected value is not being achieved by filers or consumers of XBRL data - this will improve when more companies are filing in XBRL, more history is available, and more software tools are available for analysis (hmm, sounds like an opportunity for Oracle) XBRL is becoming the global standard for all business communications beyond just the financials - i.e. adoption for mutual funds, corporate actions and others planned for the future If you would like to learn more about XBRL and the various training programs, services and software tools that are available check out the XBRL US web site and even better - become a member. Here's a link: http://xbrl.us/Pages/default.aspx

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Silverlight MEF – Download On Demand

- by PeterTweed

Take the Slalom Challenge at www.slalomchallenge.com! A common challenge with building complex applications in Silverlight is the initial download size of the xap file. MEF enables us to build composable applications that allows us to build complex composite applications. Wouldn’t it be great if we had a mechanism to spilt out components into different Silverlight applications in separate xap files and download the separate xap file only if needed? MEF gives us the ability to do this. This post will cover the basics needed to build such a composite application split between different silerlight applications and download the referenced silverlight application only when needed. Steps: 1. Create a Silverlight 4 application 2. Add references to the following assemblies: System.ComponentModel.Composition.dll System.ComponentModel.Composition.Initialization.dll 3. Add a new Silverlight 4 application called ExternalSilverlightApplication to the solution that was created in step 1. Ensure the new application is hosted in the web application for the solution and choose to not create a test page for the new application. 4. Delete the App.xaml and MainPage.xaml files – they aren’t needed. 5. Add references to the following assemblies in the ExternalSilverlightApplication project: System.ComponentModel.Composition.dll System.ComponentModel.Composition.Initialization.dll 6. Ensure the two references above have their Copy Local values set to false. As we will have these two assmblies in the original Silverlight application, we will have no need to include them in the built ExternalSilverlightApplication build. 7. Add a new user control called LeftControl to the ExternalSilverlightApplication project. 8. Replace the LayoutRoot Grid with the following xaml: <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="Beige" Margin="40" > <Button Content="Left Content" Margin="30"></Button> </Grid> 9. Add the following statement to the top of the LeftControl.xaml.cs file using System.ComponentModel.Composition; 10. Add the following attribute to the LeftControl class [Export(typeof(LeftControl))] This attribute tells MEF that the type LeftControl will be exported – i.e. made available for other applications to import and compose into the application. 11. Add a new user control called RightControl to the ExternalSilverlightApplication project. 12. Replace the LayoutRoot Grid with the following xaml: <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="Green" Margin="40" > <TextBlock Margin="40" Foreground="White" Text="Right Control" FontSize="16" VerticalAlignment="Center" HorizontalAlignment="Center" ></TextBlock> </Grid> 13. Add the following statement to the top of the RightControl.xaml.cs file using System.ComponentModel.Composition; 14. Add the following attribute to the RightControl class [Export(typeof(RightControl))] 15. In your original Silverlight project add a reference to the ExternalSilverlightApplication project. 16. Change the reference to the ExternalSilverlightApplication project to have it’s Copy Local value = false. This will ensure that the referenced ExternalSilverlightApplication Silverlight application is not included in the original Silverlight application package when it it built. The ExternalSilverlightApplication Silverlight application therefore has to be downloaded on demand by the original Silverlight application for it’s controls to be used. 1. In your original Silverlight project add the following xaml to the LayoutRoot Grid in MainPage.xaml: <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition Height="65*" /> <RowDefinition Height="235*" /> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <Button Name="LoaderButton" Content="Download External Controls" Click="Button_Click"></Button> <StackPanel Grid.Row="1" Orientation="Horizontal" HorizontalAlignment="Center" > <Border Name="LeftContent" Background="Red" BorderBrush="Gray" CornerRadius="20"></Border> <Border Name="RightContent" Background="Red" BorderBrush="Gray" CornerRadius="20"></Border> </StackPanel> The borders will hold the controls that will be downlaoded, imported and composed via MEF when the button is clicked. 2. Add the following statement to the top of the MainPage.xaml.cs file using System.ComponentModel.Composition; 3. Add the following properties to the MainPage class: [Import(typeof(LeftControl))] public LeftControl LeftUserControl { get; set; } [Import(typeof(RightControl))] public RightControl RightUserControl { get; set; } This defines properties accepting LeftControl and RightControl types. The attrributes are used to tell MEF the discovered type that should be applied to the property when composition occurs. 17. Add the following event handler for the button click to the MainPage.xaml.cs file: private void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) { DeploymentCatalog deploymentCatalog = new DeploymentCatalog("ExternalSilverlightApplication.xap"); CompositionHost.Initialize(deploymentCatalog); deploymentCatalog.DownloadCompleted += (s, i) => { if (i.Error == null) { CompositionInitializer.SatisfyImports(this); LeftContent.Child = LeftUserControl; RightContent.Child = RightUserControl; LoaderButton.IsEnabled = false; } }; deploymentCatalog.DownloadAsync(); } This is where the magic happens! The deploymentCatalog object is pointed to the ExternalSilverlightApplication.xap file. It is then associated with the CompositionHost initialization. As the download will be asynchronous, an eventhandler is created for the DownloadCompleted event. The deploymentCatalog object is then told to start the asynchronous download. The event handler that executes when the download is completed uses the CompositionInitializer.SatisfyImports() function to tell MEF to satisfy the Imports for the current class. It is at this point that the LeftUserControl and RightUserControl properties are initialized with composed objects from the downloaded ExternalSilverlightApplication.xap package. 18. Run the application click the Download External Controls button and see the controls defined in the ExternalSilverlightApplication application loaded into the original Silverlight application. Congratulations! You have implemented download on demand capabilities for composite applications using the MEF DeploymentCatalog class. You are now able to segment your applications into separate xap file for deployment.

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Using Sitecore RenderingContext Parameters as MVC controller action arguments

- by Kyle Burns

I have been working with the Technical Preview of Sitecore 6.6 on a project and have been for the most part happy with the way that Sitecore (which truly is an MVC implementation unto itself) has been expanded to support ASP.NET MVC. That said, getting up to speed with the combined platform has not been entirely without stumbles and today I want to share one area where Sitecore could have really made things shine from the "it just works" perspective. A couple days ago I was asked by a colleague about the usage of the "Parameters" field that is defined on Sitecore's Controller Rendering data template. Based on the standard way that Sitecore handles a field named Parameters, I was able to deduce that the field expected key/value pairs separated by the "&" character, but beyond that I wasn't sure and didn't see anything from a documentation perspective to guide me, so it was time to dig and find out where the data in the field was made available. My first thought was that it would be really nice if Sitecore handled the parameters in this field consistently with the way that ASP.NET MVC handles the various parameter collections on the HttpRequest object and automatically maps them to parameters of the action method executing. Being the hopeful sort, I configured a name/value pair on one of my renderings, added a parameter with matching name to the controller action and fired up the bugger to see... that the parameter was not populated. Having established that the field's value was not going to be presented to me the way that I had hoped it would, the next assumption that I would work on was that Sitecore would handle this field similar to how they handle other similar data and would plug it into some ambient object that I could reference from within the controller method. After a considerable amount of guessing, testing, and cracking code open with Redgate's Reflector (a must-have companion to Sitecore documentation), I found that the most direct way to access the parameter was through the ambient RenderingContext object using code similar to: string myArgument = string.Empty; var rc = Sitecore.Mvc.Presentation.RenderingContext.CurrentOrNull; if (rc != null) { var parms = rc.Rendering.Parameters; myArgument = parms["myArgument"]; } At this point, we know how this field is used out of the box from Sitecore and can provide information from Sitecore's Content Editor that will be available when the controller action is executing, but it feels a little dirty. In order to properly test the action method I would have to do a lot of setup work and possible use an isolation framework such as Pex and Moles to get at a value that my action method is dependent upon. Notice I said that my method is dependent upon the value but in order to meet that dependency I've accepted another dependency upon Sitecore's RenderingContext. I'm a big believer in, when possible, ensuring that any piece of code explicitly advertises dependencies using the method signature, so I found myself still wanting this to work the same as if the parameters were in the request route, querystring, or form by being able to add a myArgument parameter to the action method and have this parameter populated by the framework. Lucky for us, the ASP.NET MVC framework is extremely flexible and provides some easy to grok and use extensibility points. ASP.NET MVC is able to provide information from the request as input parameters to controller actions because it uses objects which implement an interface called IValueProvider and have been registered to service the application. The most basic statement of responsibility for an IValueProvider implementation is "I know about some data which is indexed by key. If you hand me the key for a piece of data that I know about I give you that data". When preparing to invoke a controller action, the framework queries registered IValueProvider implementations with the name of each method argument to see if the ValueProvider can supply a value for the parameter. (the rest of this post will assume you're working along and make a lot more sense if you do) Let's pull Sitecore out of the equation for a second to simplify things and create an extremely simple IValueProvider implementation. For this example, I first create a new ASP.NET MVC3 project in Visual Studio, selecting "Internet Application" and otherwise taking defaults (I'm assuming that anyone reading this far in the post either already knows how to do this or will need to take a quick run through one of the many available basic MVC tutorials such as the MVC Music Store). Once the new project is created, go to the Index action of HomeController. This action sets a Message property on the ViewBag to "Welcome to ASP.NET MVC!" and invokes the View, which has been coded to display the Message. For our example, we will remove the hard coded message from this controller (although we'll leave it just as hard coded somewhere else - this is sample code). For the first step in our exercise, add a string parameter to the Index action method called welcomeMessage and use the value of this argument to set the ViewBag.Message property. The updated Index action should look like: public ActionResult Index(string welcomeMessage) { ViewBag.Message = welcomeMessage; return View(); } This represents the entirety of the change that you will make to either the controller or view. If you run the application now, the home page will display and no message will be presented to the user because no value was supplied to the Action method. Let's now write a ValueProvider to ensure this parameter gets populated. We'll start by creating a new class called StaticValueProvider. When the class is created, we'll update the using statements to ensure that they include the following: using System.Collections.Specialized; using System.Globalization; using System.Web.Mvc; With the appropriate using statements in place, we'll update the StaticValueProvider class to implement the IValueProvider interface. The System.Web.Mvc library already contains a pretty flexible dictionary-like implementation called NameValueCollectionValueProvider, so we'll just wrap that and let it do most of the real work for us. The completed class looks like: public class StaticValueProvider : IValueProvider { private NameValueCollectionValueProvider _wrappedProvider; public StaticValueProvider(ControllerContext controllerContext) { var parameters = new NameValueCollection(); parameters.Add("welcomeMessage", "Hello from the value provider!"); _wrappedProvider = new NameValueCollectionValueProvider(parameters, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture); } public bool ContainsPrefix(string prefix) { return _wrappedProvider.ContainsPrefix(prefix); } public ValueProviderResult GetValue(string key) { return _wrappedProvider.GetValue(key); } } Notice that the only entry in the collection matches the name of the argument to our HomeController's Index action. This is the important "secret sauce" that will make things work. We've got our new value provider now, but that's not quite enough to be finished. Mvc obtains IValueProvider instances using factories that are registered when the application starts up. These factories extend the abstract ValueProviderFactory class by initializing and returning the appropriate implementation of IValueProvider from the GetValueProvider method. While I wouldn't do so in production code, for the sake of this example, I'm going to add the following class definition within the StaticValueProvider.cs source file: public class StaticValueProviderFactory : ValueProviderFactory { public override IValueProvider GetValueProvider(ControllerContext controllerContext) { return new StaticValueProvider(controllerContext); } } Now that we have a factory, we can register it by adding the following line to the end of the Application_Start method in Global.asax.cs: ValueProviderFactories.Factories.Add(new StaticValueProviderFactory()); If you've done everything right to this point, you should be able to run the application and be presented with the home page reading "Hello from the value provider!". Now that you have the basics of the IValueProvider down, you have everything you need to enhance your Sitecore MVC implementation by adding an IValueProvider that exposes values from the ambient RenderingContext's Parameters property. I'll provide the code for the IValueProvider implementation (which should look VERY familiar) and you can use the work we've already done as a reference to create and register the factory: public class RenderingContextValueProvider : IValueProvider { private NameValueCollectionValueProvider _wrappedProvider = null; public RenderingContextValueProvider(ControllerContext controllerContext) { var collection = new NameValueCollection(); var rc = RenderingContext.CurrentOrNull; if (rc != null && rc.Rendering != null) { foreach(var parameter in rc.Rendering.Parameters) { collection.Add(parameter.Key, parameter.Value); } } _wrappedProvider = new NameValueCollectionValueProvider(collection, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture); } public bool ContainsPrefix(string prefix) { return _wrappedProvider.ContainsPrefix(prefix); } public ValueProviderResult GetValue(string key) { return _wrappedProvider.GetValue(key); } } In this post I've discussed the MVC IValueProvider used to map data to controller action method arguments and how this can be integrated into your Sitecore 6.6 MVC solution.

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Securing an ADF Application using OES11g: Part 1

- by user12587121

Future releases of the Oracle stack should allow ADF applications to be secured natively with Oracle Entitlements Server (OES). In a sequence of postings here I explore one way to achive this with the current technology, namely OES 11.1.1.5 and ADF 11.1.1.6. ADF Security Basics ADF Bascis The Application Development Framework (ADF) is Oracle’s preferred technology for developing GUI based Java applications. It can be used to develop a UI for Swing applications or, more typically in the Oracle stack, for Web and J2EE applications. ADF is based on and extends the Java Server Faces (JSF) technology. To get an idea, Oracle provides an online demo to showcase ADF components. ADF can be used to develop just the UI part of an application, where, for example, the data access layer is implemented using some custom Java beans or EJBs. However ADF also has it’s own data access layer, ADF Business Components (ADF BC) that will allow rapid integration of data from data bases and Webservice interfaces to the ADF UI component. In this way ADF helps implement the MVC approach to building applications with UI and data components. The canonical tutorial for ADF is to open JDeveloper, define a connection to a database, drag and drop a table from the database view to a UI page, build and deploy. One has an application up and running very quickly with the ability to quickly integrate changes to, for example, the DB schema. ADF allows web pages to be created graphically and components like tables, forms, text fields, graphs and so on to be easily added to a page. On top of JSF Oracle have added drag and drop tooling with JDeveloper and declarative binding of the UI to the data layer, be it database, WebService or Java beans. An important addition is the bounded task flow which is a reusable set of pages and transitions. ADF adds some steps to the page lifecycle defined in JSF and adds extra widgets including powerful visualizations. It is worth pointing out that the Oracle Web Center product (portal, content management and so on) is based on and extends ADF. ADF Security ADF comes with it’s own security mechanism that is exposed by JDeveloper at development time and in the WLS Console and Enterprise Manager (EM) at run time. The security elements that need to be addressed in an ADF application are: authentication, authorization of access to web pages, task-flows, components within the pages and data being returned from the model layer. One typically relies on WLS to handle authentication and because of this users and groups will also be handled by WLS. Typically in a Dev environment, users and groups are stored in the WLS embedded LDAP server. One has a choice when enabling ADF security (Application->Secure->Configure ADF Security) about whether to turn on ADF authorization checking or not: In the case where authorization is enabled for ADF one defines a set of roles in which we place users and then we grant access to these roles to the different ADF elements (pages or task flows or elements in a page). An important notion here is the difference between Enterprise Roles and Application Roles. The idea behind an enterprise role is that is defined in terms of users and LDAP groups from the WLS identity store. “Enterprise” in the sense that these are things available for use to all applications that use that store. The other kind of role is an Application Role and the idea is that a given application will make use of Enterprise roles and users to build up a set of roles for it’s own use. These application roles will be available only to that application. The general idea here is that the enterprise roles are relatively static (for example an Employees group in the LDAP directory) while application roles are more dynamic, possibly depending on time, location, accessed resource and so on. One of the things that OES adds that is that we can define these dynamic membership conditions in Role Mapping Policies. To make this concrete, here is how, at design time in Jdeveloper, one assigns these rights in Jdeveloper, which puts them into a file called jazn-data.xml: When the ADF app is deployed to a WLS this JAZN security data is pushed to the system-jazn-data.xml file of the WLS deployment for the policies and application roles and to the WLS backing LDAP for the users and enterprise roles. Note the difference here: after deploying the application we will see the users and enterprise roles show up in the WLS LDAP server. But the policies and application roles are defined in the system-jazn-data.xml file. Consult the embedded WLS LDAP server to manage users and enterprise roles by going to the domain console and then Security Realms->myrealm->Users and Groups: For production environments (or in future to share this data with OES) one would then perform the operation of “reassociating” this security policy and application role data to a DB schema (or an LDAP). This is done in the EM console by reassociating the Security Provider. This blog posting has more explanations and references on this reassociation process. If ADF Authentication and Authorization are enabled then the Security Policies for a deployed application can be managed in EM. Our goal is to be able to manage security policies for the applicaiton rather via OES and it's console. Security Requirements for an ADF Application With this package tour of ADF security we can see that to secure an ADF application with we would expect to be able to take care of at least the following items: Authentication, including a user and user-group store Authorization for page access Authorization for bounded Task Flow access. A bounded task flow has only one point of entry and so if we protect that entry point by calling to OES then all the pages in the flow are protected. Authorization for viewing data coming from the data access layer In the next posting we will describe a sample ADF application and required security policies. References ADF Dev Guide: Fusion Middleware Fusion Developer's Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework: Enabling ADF Security in a Fusion Web Application Oracle tutorial on securing a sample ADF application, appears to require ADF 11.1.2 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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Issues configuring Exchange 2010 as well as SSL problems.

- by Eric Smith

Possibly-Relevant Background Info: I've recently moved up from icky shared hosting to a glorious, Remote Desktop-administrated VPS server running Windows Server 2008 R2. Even though I'm only 21 now and a computer science major, I've tried to play with every Windows Server release since '03, just to learn new things. What usually happens is inevitably I'll do something wrong and pretty much ruin the install. You're dealing with an amateur here :) Through the past few months of working with my new server, I've mastered DNS, IIS, got Team Foundation Server running (yay!), and can install all of the other basics like SQL Server and Active Directory. The Problem: Now, these last few weeks I've been trying to install Exchange Server 2010 (SP1). To make a long story short, it took me several attempts, and I even had to get my server wiped just so I could start fresh since Exchange decided uninstalling properly was for sissies (cost me $20, bah). Today, at long last, I got Exchange mostly working. There were two main problems left, however, that left me unsatisfied: Exchange installed itself and all of its child sites into Default Web Site. I wanted to access Exchange via mail.domain.com, but instead everything was configured to domain.com. My limited server admin knowledge was not enough to configure IIS or Exchange to move itself over to the website I had set up for it, appropriately titled 'mail.domain.com', which I had bound to a dedicated IP address (I was told this was necessary, but he may have been wrong). I have two SSL certificates: one for my main domain and one for my mail subdomain. For whatever reason, I had issues geting Exchange to use my mail certificate, even though I had assigned the proper roles in the MMC. I did, at one point, get it to work (or mostly work, anyways. Frankly, my memory of today is clouded by intense frustration). Additionally, I was confused which type of SSL certificate I should be using for Exchange. My SSL provider, GoDaddy, allows me to request a new certificate whenever, so I can use either the certificate request provided by IIS or the more complicated and specific request you can create with Exchange. Which type should I be using, the IIS or Exchange certificate? If I must use the Exchange certificate, will that 1) cause issues when I bind that certificate to my mail.domain.com subdomain or 2) is that an unnecessary step? The SSL Certificate Strikes Back When I thought I had the proper SSL certificate assigned for those brief, sweet moments, Google Chrome reported the correct mail.domain.com certificate when browsing https://mail.domain.com. However, Outlook 2010 threw up an error when trying to configure my email account claiming that the certificate didn't match the domain of "mail.domain.com". Is this an issue that will be resolved by problem #2 or is it a separate one entirely? Apologies for the massive wall of text, but I wanted to provide as much info as I possibly could. Exchange is the last thing I'd like installed on my server, and naturally it's turning out to be the hardest. Thanks for any info at all. Even a point in a vague direction would be a huge help at this point. Thanks! -Eric P.S.: The reason I keep ruining my install is that when I attempt to uninstall Exchange, something invariably goes wrong. The last time the uninstaller complained that there was still a mailbox active and it couldn't proceed until I deleted it. ... The only mailbox left was the Administrator account, the built-in one I couldn't delete. So I attempted to manually uninstall it following several guides online only to now be stuck unable to launch the installer and have to get my system wiped AGAIN for the second time today ($40 down the drain, bah!). I do not understand at all why "uninstall" just can't mean "hey, you, delete everything and go away". There's not even a force uninstall option, only a "recover system" option that just fails to fix anything and makes it so I can't even use the GUI uninstaller. </rant>

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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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Retrieving a list of eBay categories using the .NET SDK and GetCategoriesCall

- by Bill Osuch

eBay offers a .Net SDK for its Trading API - this post will show you the basics of making an API call and retrieving a list of current categories. You'll need the category ID(s) for any apps that post or search eBay. To start, download the latest SDK from https://www.x.com/developers/ebay/documentation-tools/sdks/dotnet and create a new console app project. Add a reference to the eBay.Service DLL, and a few using statements: using eBay.Service.Call; using eBay.Service.Core.Sdk; using eBay.Service.Core.Soap; I'm assuming at this point you've already joined the eBay Developer Network and gotten your app IDs and user tokens. If not: Join the developer program Generate tokens Next, add an app.config file that looks like this: <?xml version="1.0"?> <configuration> <appSettings> <add key="Environment.ApiServerUrl" value="https://api.ebay.com/wsapi"/> <add key="UserAccount.ApiToken" value="YourBigLongToken"/> </appSettings> </configuration> And then add the code to get the xml list of categories: ApiContext apiContext = GetApiContext(); GetCategoriesCall apiCall = new GetCategoriesCall(apiContext); apiCall.CategorySiteID = "0"; //Leave this commented out to retrieve all category levels (all the way down): //apiCall.LevelLimit = 4; //Uncomment this to begin at a specific parent category: //StringCollection parentCategories = new StringCollection(); //parentCategories.Add("63"); //apiCall.CategoryParent = parentCategories; apiCall.DetailLevelList.Add(DetailLevelCodeType.ReturnAll); CategoryTypeCollection cats = apiCall.GetCategories(); using (StreamWriter outfile = new StreamWriter(@"C:\Temp\EbayCategories.xml")) { outfile.Write(apiCall.SoapResponse); } GetApiContext() (provided in the sample apps in the SDK) is required for any call: static ApiContext GetApiContext() { //apiContext is a singleton, //to avoid duplicate configuration reading if (apiContext != null) { return apiContext; } else { apiContext = new ApiContext(); //set Api Server Url apiContext.SoapApiServerUrl = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["Environment.ApiServerUrl"]; //set Api Token to access eBay Api Server ApiCredential apiCredential = new ApiCredential(); apiCredential.eBayToken = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["UserAccount.ApiToken"]; apiContext.ApiCredential = apiCredential; //set eBay Site target to US apiContext.Site = SiteCodeType.US; return apiContext; } } Running this will give you a large (4 or 5 megs) XML file that looks something like this: <soapenv:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"> <soapenv:Body> <GetCategoriesResponse > <Timestamp>2012-06-06T16:03:46.158Z</Timestamp> <Ack>Success</Ack> <CorrelationID>d02dd9e3-295a-4268-9ea5-554eeb2e0e18</CorrelationID> <Version>775</Version> <Build>E775_CORE_BUNDLED_14891042_R1</Build> - <CategoryArray> <Category> <BestOfferEnabled>true</BestOfferEnabled> <AutoPayEnabled>true</AutoPayEnabled> <CategoryID>20081</CategoryID> <CategoryLevel>1</CategoryLevel> <CategoryName>Antiques</CategoryName> <CategoryParentID>20081</CategoryParentID> </Category> <Category> <BestOfferEnabled>true</BestOfferEnabled> <AutoPayEnabled>true</AutoPayEnabled> <CategoryID>37903</CategoryID> <CategoryLevel>2</CategoryLevel> <CategoryName>Antiquities</CategoryName> <CategoryParentID>20081</CategoryParentID> </Category> (etc.) You could work with this, but I wanted a nicely nested view, like this: <CategoryArray> <Category Name='Antiques' ID='20081' Level='1'> <Category Name='Antiquities' ID='37903' Level='2'/> </CategoryArray> ...so I transformed the xml: private void TransformXML(CategoryTypeCollection cats) { XmlElement topLevelElement = null; XmlElement childLevelElement = null; XmlNode parentNode = null; string categoryString = ""; XmlDocument returnDoc = new XmlDocument(); XmlElement root = returnDoc.CreateElement("CategoryArray"); returnDoc.AppendChild(root); XmlNode rootNode = returnDoc.SelectSingleNode("/CategoryArray"); //Loop through CategoryTypeCollection foreach (CategoryType category in cats) { if (category.CategoryLevel == 1) { //Top-level category, so we know we can just add it topLevelElement = returnDoc.CreateElement("Category"); topLevelElement.SetAttribute("Name", category.CategoryName); topLevelElement.SetAttribute("ID", category.CategoryID); rootNode.AppendChild(topLevelElement); } else { // Level number will determine how many Category nodes we are deep categoryString = ""; for (int x = 1; x < category.CategoryLevel; x++) { categoryString += "/Category"; } parentNode = returnDoc.SelectSingleNode("/CategoryArray" + categoryString + "[@ID='" + category.CategoryParentID[0] + "']"); childLevelElement = returnDoc.CreateElement("Category"); childLevelElement.SetAttribute("Name", category.CategoryName); childLevelElement.SetAttribute("ID", category.CategoryID); parentNode.AppendChild(childLevelElement); } } returnDoc.Save(@"C:\Temp\EbayCategories-Modified.xml"); } Yes, there are probably much cleaner ways of dealing with it, but I'm not an xml expert… Keep in mind, eBay categories do not change on a regular basis, so you should be able to cache this data (either in a file or database) for some time. The xml returns a CategoryVersion node that you can use to determine if the category list has changed. Technorati Tags: Csharp, eBay

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Building an Infrastructure Cloud with Oracle VM for x86 + Enterprise Manager 12c

- by Richard Rotter

Cloud Computing? Everyone is talking about Cloud these days. Everyone is explaining how the cloud will help you to bring your service up and running very fast, secure and with little effort. You can find these kinds of presentations at almost every event around the globe. But what is really behind all this stuff? Is it really so simple? And the answer is: Yes it is! With the Oracle SW Stack it is! In this post, I will try to bring this down to earth, demonstrating how easy it could be to build a cloud infrastructure with Oracle's solution for cloud computing.But let me cover some basics first: How fast can you build a cloud?How elastic is your cloud so you can provide new services on demand? How much effort does it take to monitor and operate your Cloud Infrastructure in order to meet your SLAs?How easy is it to chargeback for your services provided? These are the critical success factors of Cloud Computing. And Oracle has an answer to all those questions. By using Oracle VM for X86 in combination with Enterprise Manager 12c you can build and control your cloud environment very fast and easy. What are the fundamental building blocks for your cloud? Oracle Cloud Building Blocks #1 Hardware Surprise, surprise. Even the cloud needs to run somewhere, hence you will need hardware. This HW normally consists of servers, storage and networking. But Oracles goes beyond that. There are Optimized Solutions available for your cloud infrastructure. This is a cookbook to build your HW cloud platform. For example, building your cloud infrastructure with blades and our network infrastructure will reduce complexity in your datacenter (Blades with switch network modules, splitter cables to reduce the amount of cables, TOR (Top Of the Rack) switches which are building the interface to your infrastructure environment. Reducing complexity even in the cabling will help you to manage your environment more efficient and with less risk. Of course, our engineered systems fit into the cloud perfectly too. Although they are considered as a PaaS themselves, having the database SW (for Exadata) and the application development environment (for Exalogic) already deployed on them, in general they are ideal systems to enable you building your own cloud and PaaS infrastructure. #2 Virtualization The next missing link in the cloud setup is virtualization. For me personally, it's one of the most hidden "secret", that oracle can provide you with a complete virtualization stack in terms of a hypervisor on both architectures: X86 and Sparc CPUs. There is Oracle VM for X86 and Oracle VM for Sparc available at no additional license costs if your are running this virtualization stack on top of Oracle HW (and with Oracle Premier Support for HW). This completes the virtualization portfolio together with Solaris Zones introduced already with Solaris 10 a few years ago. Let me explain how Oracle VM for X86 works: Oracle VM for x86 consists of two main parts: - The Oracle VM Server: Oracle VM Server is installed on bare metal and it is the hypervisor which is able to run virtual machines. It has a very small footprint. The ISO-Image of Oracle VM Server is only 200MB large. It is very small but efficient. You can install a OVM-Server in less than 5 mins by booting the Server with the ISO-Image assigned and providing the necessary configuration parameters (like installing an Linux distribution). After the installation, the OVM-Server is ready to use. That's all. - The Oracle VM-Manager: OVM-Manager is the central management tool where you can control your OVM-Servers. OVM-Manager provides the graphical user interface, which is an Application Development Framework (ADF) application, with a familiar web-browser based interface, to manage Oracle VM Servers, virtual machines, and resources. The Oracle VM Manager has the following capabilities: Create virtual machines Create server pools Power on and off virtual machines Manage networks and storage Import virtual machines, ISO files, and templates Manage high availability of Oracle VM Servers, server pools, and virtual machines Perform live migration of virtual machines I want to highlight one of the goodies which you can use if you are running Oracle VM for X86: Preconfigured, downloadable Virtual Machine Templates form edelivery With these templates, you can download completely preconfigured Virtual Machines in your environment, boot them up, configure them at first time boot and use it. There are templates for almost all Oracle SW and Applications (like Fusion Middleware, Database, Siebel, etc.) available. #3) Cloud Management The management of your cloud infrastructure is key. This is a day-to-day job. Acquiring HW, installing a virtualization layer on top of it is done just at the beginning and if you want to expand your infrastructure. But managing your cloud, keeping it up and running, deploying new services, changing your chargeback model, etc, these are the daily jobs. These jobs must be simple, secure and easy to manage. The Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud provides this functionality from one management cockpit. Enterprise Manager 12c uses Oracle VM Manager to control OVM Serverpools. Once you registered your OVM-Managers in Enterprise Manager, then you are able to setup your cloud infrastructure and manage everything from Enterprise Manager. What you need to do in EM12c is: ">Register your OVM Manager in Enterprise ManagerAfter Registering your OVM Manager, all the functionality of Oracle VM for X86 is also available in Enterprise Manager. Enterprise Manager works as a "Manger" of the Manager. You can register as many OVM-Managers you want and control your complete virtualization environment Create Roles and Users for your Self Service Portal in Enterprise ManagerWith this step you allow users to logon on the Enterprise Manager Self Service Portal. Users can request Virtual Machines in this portal. Setup the Cloud InfrastructureSetup the Quotas for your self service users. How many VMs can they request? How much of your resources ( cpu, memory, storage, network, etc. etc.)? Which SW components (templates, assemblys) can your self service users request? In this step, you basically set up the complete cloud infrastructure. Setup ChargebackOnce your cloud is set up, you need to configure your chargeback mechanism. The Enterprise Manager collects the resources metrics, which are used in a very deep level. Almost all collected Metrics could be used in the chargeback module. You can define chargeback plans based on configurations (charge for the amount of cpu, memory, storage is assigned to a machine, or for a specific OS which is installed) or chargeback on resource consumption (% of cpu used, storage used, etc). Or you can also define a combination of configuration and consumption chargeback plans. The chargeback module is very flexible. Here is a overview of the workflow how to handle infrastructure cloud in EM: Summary As you can see, setting up an Infrastructure Cloud Service with Oracle VM for X86 and Enterprise Manager 12c is really simple. I personally configured a complete cloud environment with three X86 servers and a small JBOD san box in less than 3 hours. There is no magic in it, it is all straightforward. Of course, you have to have some experience with Oracle VM and Enterprise Manager. Experience in setting up Linux environments helps as well. I plan to publish a technical cookbook in the next few weeks. I hope you found this post useful and will see you again here on our blog. Any hints, comments are welcome!

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Behavior Driven Development (BDD) and DevExpress XAF

- by Patrick Liekhus

So in my previous posts I showed you how I used EDMX to quickly build my business objects within XPO and XAF. But how do you test whether your business objects are actually doing what you want and verify that your business logic is correct? Well I was reading my monthly MSDN magazine last last year and came across an article about using SpecFlow and WatiN to build BDD tests. So why not use these same techniques to write SpecFlow style scripts and have them generate EasyTest scripts for use with XAF. Let me outline and show a few things below. I plan on releasing this code in a short while, I just wanted to preview what I was thinking. Before we begin… First, if you have not read the article in MSDN, here is the link to the article that I found my inspiration. It covers the overview of BDD vs. TDD, how to write some of the SpecFlow syntax and how use the “Steps” logic to create your own tests. Second, if you have not heard of EasyTest from DevExpress I strongly recommend you review it here. It basically takes the power of XAF and the beauty of your application and allows you to create text based files to execute automated commands within your application. Why would we do this? Because as you will see below, the cucumber syntax is easier for business analysts to interpret and digest the business rules from. You can find most of the information you will need on Cucumber syntax within The Secret Ninja Cucumber Scrolls located here. The basics of the syntax are that Given X When Y Then Z. For example, Given I am at the login screen When I enter my login credentials Then I expect to see the home screen. Pretty easy syntax to follow. Finally, we will need to download and install SpecFlow. You can find it on their website here. Once you have this installed then let’s write our first test. Let’s get started… So where to start. Create a new testing project within your solution. I typically call this with a similar naming convention as used by XAF, my project name .FunctionalTests (i.e. AlbumManager.FunctionalTests). Remove the basic test that is created for you. We will not use the default test but rather create our own SpecFlow “Feature” files. Add a new item to your project and select the SpecFlow Feature file under C#. Name your feature file as you do your class files after the test they are performing. Now you can crack open your new feature file and write the actual test. Make sure to have your Ninja Scrolls from above as it provides valuable resources on how to write your test syntax. In this test below you can see how I defined the documentation in the Feature section. This is strictly for our purposes of readability and do not effect the test. The next section is the Scenario Outline which is considered a test template. You can see the brackets <> around the fields that will be filled in for each test. So in the example below you can see that Given I am starting a new test and the application is open. This means I want a new EasyTest file and the windows application generated by XAF is open. Next When I am at the Albums screen tells XAF to navigate to the Albums list view. And I click the New:Album button, tells XAF to click the new button on the list grid. And I enter the following information tells XAF which fields to complete with the mapped values. And I click the Save and Close button causes the record to be saved and the detail form to be closed. Then I verify results tests the input data against what is visible in the grid to ensure that your record was created. The Scenarios section gives each test a unique name and then fills in the values for each test. This way you can use the same test to make multiple passes with different data. Almost there. Now we must save the feature file and the BDD tests will be written using standard unit test syntax. This is all handled for you by SpecFlow so just save the file. What you will see in your Test List Editor is a unit test for each of the above scenarios you just built. You can now use standard unit testing frameworks to execute the test as you desire. As you would expect then, these BDD SpecFlow tests can be automated into your build process to ensure that your business requirements are satisfied each and every time. How does it work? What we have done is to intercept the testing logic at runtime to interpret the SpecFlow syntax into EasyTest syntax. This is the basic StepDefinitions that we are working on now. We expect to put these on CodePlex within the next few days. You can always override and make your own rules as you see fit for your project. Follow the MSDN magazine above to start your own. You can see part of our implementation below. As you can gather from the MSDN article and the code sample below, we have created our own common rules to build the above syntax. The code implementation for these rules basically saves your information from the feature file into an EasyTest file format. It then executes the EasyTest file and parses the XML results of the test. If the test succeeds the test is passed. If the test fails, the EasyTest failure message is logged and the screen shot (as captured by EasyTest) is saved for your review. Again we are working on getting this code ready for mass consumption, but at this time it is not ready. We will post another message when it is ready with all details about usage and setup. Thanks

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Translating Your Customizations

- by Richard Bingham

This blog post explains the basics of translating the customizations you can make to Fusion Applications products, with the inclusion of information for both composer-based customizations and the generic design-time customizations done via JDeveloper. Introduction Like most Oracle Applications, Fusion Applications installs on-premise with a US-English base language that is, in Release 7, supported by the option to add up to a total of 22 additional language packs (In Oracle Cloud production environments languages are pre-installed already). As such many organizations offer their users the option of working with their local language, and logically that should also apply for any customizations as well. Composer-based UI Customizations Customizations made in Page Composer take into consideration the session LOCALE, as set in the user preferences screen, during all customization work, and stores the customization in the MDS repository accordingly. As such the actual new or changed values used will only apply for the same language under which the customization was made, and text for any other languages requires a separate upload. See the Resource Bundles section below, which incidentally also applies to custom UI changes done in JDeveloper. You may have noticed this when you select the “Select Text Resource” menu option when editing the text on a page. Using this ensures that the resource bundles are used, whereas if you define a static value in Expression Builder it will never be available for translation. Notice in the screenshot below the “What’s New” custom value I have already defined using the ‘Select Text Resource’ feature is internally using the adfBundle groovy function to pull the custom value for my key (RT_S_1) from the ComposerOverrideBundle. Figure 1 – Page Composer showing the override bundle being used. Business Objects Customizing the Business Objects available in the Applications Composer tool for the CRM products, such as adding additional fields, also operates using the session language. Translating these additional values for these fields into other installed languages requires loading additional resource bundles, again as described below. Reports and Analytics Most customizations to Reports and BI Analytics are just essentially reorganizations and visualizations of existing number and text data from the system, and as such will use the appropriate values based on the users session language. Where a translated value or string exists for that session language, it will be used without the need for additional work. Extending through the addition of brand new reports and analytics requires another method of loading the translated strings, as part of what is known as ‘Localizing’ the BI Catalog and Metadata. This time it is via an export/import of XML data through the BI Administrators console, and is described in the OBIEE Admin Guide. Fusion Applications reports based on BI Publisher are already defined in template-per-locale, and in addition provide an extra process for getting the data for translation and reloading. This again uses the standard resource bundle format. Loading a custom report is illustrated in this video from our YouTube channel which shows the screen for both setting the template local and running an export for translation. Fusion Applications Menus Whilst the seeded Navigator and Global Menu values are fully translated when the additional language is installed, if they are customized then the change or new menu item will apply universally, not currently per language. This is set to change in a future release with the new UI Text Editor feature described below. More on Resource Bundles As mentioned above, to provide translations for most of your customizations you need to add values to a resource bundle. This is an industry open standard (OASIS) format XML file with the extension .xliff, and store translated values for the strings used by ADF at run-time. The general process is that these values are exported from the MDS repository, manually edited, and then imported back in again.This needs to be done by an administrator, via either WLST commands or through Enterprise Manager as per the screenshot below. This is detailed out in the Fusion Applications Extensibility Guide. For SaaS environments the Cloud Operations team can assist. Figure 2 – Enterprise Manager’s MDS export used getting resource bundles for manual translation and re-imported on the same screen. All customized strings are stored in an override bundle (xliff file) for each locale, suffixed with the language initials, with English ones being saved to the default. As such each language bundle can be easily identified and updated. Similarly if you used JDeveloper to create your own applications as extensions to Fusion Applications you would use the native support for resource bundles, and add them into the faces-config.xml file for inclusion in your application. An example is this ADF customization video from our YouTube channel. JDeveloper also supports automatic synchronization between your underlying resource bundles and any translatable strings you add – very handy. For more information see chapters on “Using Automatic Resource Bundle Integration in JDeveloper” and “Manually Defining Resource Bundles and Locales” in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Web User Interface Developer’s Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework. FND Messages and Look-ups FND Messages, as defined here, are not used for UI labels (they are known as ‘strings’), but are the responses back to users as a result of an action, such as from a page submit. Each ‘message’ is defined and stored in the related database table (FND_MESSAGES_B), with another (FND_MESSAGES_TL) holding any language-specific values. These come seeded with the additional language installs, however if you customize the messages via the “Manage Messages” task in Functional Setup Manager, or add new ones, then currently (in Release 7) you’ll need to repeat it for each language. Figure 3 – An FND Message defined in an English user session. Similarly Look-ups are stored in a translation table (FND_LOOKUP_VALUES_TL) where appropriate, and can be customized by setting the users session language and making the change in the Setup and Maintenance task entitled “Manage [Standard|Common] Look-ups”. Online Help Yes, in fact all the seeded help is applied as part of each language pack install as part of the post-install provisioning process. If you are editing or adding custom online help then the Create Help screen provides a drop-down of which language your help customization will apply to. This is shown in the video below from our YouTube channel, and obviously you’ll need to it for each language in use. What is Coming for Translations? Currently planned for Release 8 is something called the User Interface (UI) Text Editor. This tool will allow the editing of all the text shown on the pages and forms of Fusion Application. This will provide a search based on a particular term or word, say “Worker”, and will allow it to be adjusted, say to “Employee”, which then updates all the Resource Bundles that contain it. In the case of multi-language environments, it will use the users session language (locale) to know which Resource Bundles to apply the change to. This capability will also support customization sandboxes, to help ensure changes can be tested and approved. It is also interesting to note that the design currently allows any page-specific customizations done using Page Composer or Application Composer to over-write the global changes done via the UI Text Editor, allowing for special context-sensitive values to still be used. Further Reading and Resources The following short list provides the mains resources for digging into more detail on translation support for both Composer and JDeveloper customization projects. There is a dedicated chapter entitled “Translating Custom Text” in the Fusion Applications Extensibility Guide. This has good examples and steps for many tasks, especially administering resource bundles. Using localization formatting (numbers, dates etc) for design-time changes is well documented in the Fusion Applications Developer Guide. For more guidelines on general design-time globalization, see either the ‘Internationalizing and Localizing Pages’ chapter in the Oracle Fusion Middleware Web User Interface Developer’s Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle Fusion Applications Edition) or the general Oracle Database Globalization Support Guide. The Oracle Architecture ‘A-Team’ provided a recent post on customizing the user session timeout popup, using design-time changes to resource bundles. It has detailed step-by-step examples which can be a useful illustration.

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