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  • Are specific types still necessary?

    - by MKO
    One thing that occurred to me the other day, are specific types still necessary or a legacy that is holding us back. What I mean is: do we really need short, int, long, bigint etc etc. I understand the reasoning, variables/objects are kept in memory, memory needs to be allocated and therefore we need to know how big a variable can be. But really, shouldn't a modern programming language be able to handle "adaptive types", ie, if something is only ever allocated in the shortint range it uses fewer bytes, and if something is suddenly allocated a very big number the memory is allocated accordinly for that particular instance. Float, real and double's are a bit trickier since the type depends on what precision you need. Strings should however be able to take upp less memory in many instances (in .Net) where mostly ascii is used buth strings always take up double the memory because of unicode encoding. One argument for specific types might be that it's part of the specification, ie for example a variable should not be able to be bigger than a certain value so we set it to shortint. But why not have type constraints instead? It would be much more flexible and powerful to be able to set permissible ranges and values on variables (and properties). I realize the immense problem in revamping the type architecture since it's so tightly integrated with underlying hardware and things like serialization might become tricky indeed. But from a programming perspective it should be great no?

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  • How to ask developers to think about high resolution screens

    - by WhiteWind
    I just got a ASUS N56VZ laptop, and it`s all good, but the screen resolution 1920x1080px. I am not asking, how to scale ui elements. If someone is interested I have found some tricks: increase font size in system settings increase unity dock size in MyUnity or system settings in modern Ubuntu versions. tweak userChrome.js of FireFox to make buttons|panels|icons larger add DefaultZoomLevel extension to FireFox to make it zoom pages initially. But all of it is miserable, because there are some big bugs: window decoration elements are way too small to pick them with mouse. I can't scale window easily and I can't position my cursor fast on the close|maximize buttons. Tuning lines like in sound volume dialog are hardly clickable at all. Unity top panel (status panel & tray) hardly can contain the bigger font, so it looks ugly, but icons are still the same. Sometimes I can`t read text, as it is cropped (and I cant scale some dialogs as it has fixed size) Chromium is not usable at all (ok, it's not Ubuntu problem, but the problem still exists) JAVA applications are not scalable (same as above) In FF I am able to get descent results in most cases, but multiplication of system font increase and browser font increase makes system controls (combobox, lists, drop down lists) extremely big, so I cant even control the zoom level on the page. IMHO, we should post a bug report (but what kind of bug?) and vote for it! The problem is even deeper, but at least we should ask developers to think about it. So my question is: how can I post a report (the right words and right place) and how can we (who already has that problem, or who want it to be solved before hardware upgrade) vote for faster solution. Any ideas?

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  • Deal Registration is moving to OPS– Guest Post

    - by Kristin Rose
    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:"Times New Roman","serif";} We have listened to, contemplated around, and agreed with your feedback when it comes to our current deal registration system, and now we are proud to announce that deal registration is moving to the Oracle Partner Store! If you missed the live announcement at Oracle OpenWorld, watch below as Titina Ott, VP of  Worldwide Alliances & Channels, presents on this upcoming and exciting functionality. Some benefits of this move include: Simplified Registration Form Easier and Faster Product Selection Expanded Browser Support Shared Registration Visibility Between VAD and VAR Downloadable tracking and reporting Shared Customer Selection From Partner Ordering Functions As you may already be aware, the Oracle Partner Store is a very popular, feature rich application for partners like you, that handles software and hardware ordering, including configurations, additional discount requests and product and price information. This big move is set to go live November 19th 2012, but don’t wait until then! If you don’t already have an Oracle Partner Store account, register today  and get ready for the big move! Best Regards, Simon Davis Senior Director Ww A&C Quote To Order

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  • Open Source Highlight: namebench

    - by eddraper
    DNS is a big deal.  Even small incremental changes to improve its performance can yield significant value due to the vast quantity of look-ups required when using the internet.  Until now, It’s always been one of those things I had to kinda take on faith… was my ISP doing a good job?  Are those public DNS server really that much faster?  What about security and privacy concerns? Let me introduce you to namebench.  This is the kinda tool I really love – one that immediately delivers value and is almost over-the-top OCD in its attention to detail. Trust me, this tool is utterly ruthless in it’s quest for getting it right – you’re not left with a big question mark after it presents its data.  The results are conclusive and actionable.  Here’s what is does: It hunts down the fastest DNS servers from your desktop that it can find using thousands of requests.  No, it doesn’t pop up this little dialog in 10 seconds to give you some “off the cuff” answer from a handful of providers.  It takes the better part of 10-15 minutes to run.  When it finishes, it presents you with a veritable horn-o-plenty of data.  Mean response duration, response distribution, bad data,  no stone is left un-turned. Check it out.  You’ll dig it.

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  • How to avoid the GameManager god object?

    - by lorancou
    I just read an answer to a question about structuring game code. It made me wonder about the ubiquitous GameManager class, and how it often becomes an issue in a production environment. Let me describe this. First, there's prototyping. Nobody cares about writing great code, we just try to get something running to see if the gameplay adds up. Then there's a greenlight, and in an effort to clean things up, somebody writes a GameManager. Probably to hold a bunch of GameStates, maybe to store a few GameObjects, nothing big, really. A cute, little, manager. In the peaceful realm of pre-production, the game is shaping up nicely. Coders have proper nights of sleep and plenty of ideas to architecture the thing with Great Design Patterns. Then production starts and soon, of course, there is crunch time. Balanced diet is long gone, the bug tracker is cracking with issues, people are stressed and the game has to be released yesterday. At that point, usually, the GameManager is a real big mess (to stay polite). The reason for that is simple. After all, when writing a game, well... all the source code is actually here to manage the game. It's easy to just add this little extra feature or bugfix in the GameManager, where everything else is already stored anyway. When time becomes an issue, no way to write a separate class, or to split this giant manager into sub-managers. Of course this is a classical anti-pattern: the god object. It's a bad thing, a pain to merge, a pain to maintain, a pain to understand, a pain to transform. What would you suggest to prevent this from happening?

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  • Top down or bottom up approach?

    - by george_zakharov
    this is the closest I think I can get to define my problem. I'm an interface designer and now I'm working with a team of programmers to develop a new CMS for a heavy media site. I'm sorry if it's a very, very dumb question to ask here, but I really need some help. As I've started developing a specification list for a prototype it turned out a very big one. I do realize now that the client-side will be JS heavy, with lots of DnD and other "cool designer stuff". The CMS will even include a small project management system for its users, nothing big like Basecamp, but with a live feed of comments etc. The problem is the the team has now separated. Someone is proposing the existing backend solution used in other CMS, someone is proposing to rewrite everything from scratch. The point to keep the code is that it is faster, the point to rewrite is to make it better for the proposed design (include Node.js and other stuff I don't actually get). The question is — can the UI specs influence back-end? The guys that propose to use the existing solution did everything with the Yii framework (as far as I know), and they say that everything on server is not affected by this "interface coolness". Others say that it does, that even autosave can't work without server load. Please, if this is really incomprehensible, again, I'm sorry, and I'll happy to clarify it after your questions. Thanks in advance

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  • Problem with understanding how to start

    - by Coolface
    Okay, this might be a little off-topic but i try anyway. Sorry to bother. So i'm working as sysadmin for at least 5 years now and i quite enjoy IT field in general. Somehow i was never interested in programming much but always want to learn something at least easy and for personal usage. As sysadmin i need scripting skills so learn shell scripting without much problems, i also try to learn pascal, delphi, basic over time and must recent was python. Well, my problem is when i try to learn programming i just can't apply what i learn from the books to the real word. What i mean is i understand there are data structures, algorithms, variables, lib's, if-then logic, etc. but i just can't understand how to apply this things when i want to do real things. Like i want to get a something simple as parse web page, i draw a quick algorithm like get a web page, find a word on it and write a to file, on the paper everything look simple but when i get to the coding i just stuck pretty much from the start. I try read code of the real programs that just totally confusing especially big parts with many classes so i'm just quickly lost a trail what this code do. I think i just lack some fundamentals to see a big picture but don't really know what this might be? Or maybe i just don't have a passion to programming at all... My best bet was a shell scripting so i have really no problems to write complex scripts but this just not enough. Recently i was read around 5 or 6 python books because everyone say it's so easy even kid can code something but still no much luck, python is good and easy but i can't make something harder then a prodecurial style code like in bash for easy things but when i want harder things i'm still stuck. In college i was also not a math and tech guy and like to study non-tech stuff mostly like economy, psychology maybe that my problem? Anyway any advice would be greatly appriciated.

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  • Oracle Open World 2012?????

    - by Liu Maclean(???)
    Oracle Open World 2012?????: ???.. Oracle OpenWorld 2012 sessions????:Search Content Catalog for Oracle OpenWorld 2012 sessions ?????????session??? Open World 2012??: Larry ??Exadata X3 OOW 2012???Exadata X3,?? X3-2 ?Expansion Rack X3-2?X3-8 Exadata X3????:http://www.oracle.com/us/products/database/exadata/overview/index.html  ORACLE EXADATA Database MACHINE X3-8 sheetORACLE EXADATA Database MACHINE X3-2 sheet Exadata X3-2???????: X3-2?compute db node?????????8?Intel Xeon E5-2690??? ??????????12????16?,???33%????? ???96GB???128GB,????256GB ??????????50% X3-2 cell node??????????????Intel Xeon ??????flash card flash card??????4?,??flash card?????????40%? ???X3-2???22.4TB?flash ,??????flash????????????????????,???10????? CPU???6?,????????Intel Xeon model ????????X2-2??,???600GB???????3TB?????? ??Exadata X3-2?????????,??????????1/4?????,1/8????????????????? Exadata X3-8???????: X3-8???X2-8?????,???X3-8??????????X3-2??,??X3-8?????22.4TB?????? ???CEO??  Engineered to Work Together OOW????? Oracle Open World 2012 ????? Open World 2012 ??:http://www.oracle.com/openworld/index.htmlOpen World 2012 ????:http://www.oracle.com/openworld/register/packages/index.html ??: Sept. 30 – Oct. 4, 2012 9?30?? 10?4? ??:Moscone Center, San Francisco (747 Howard Street, San Francisco, California 94103). ?????Mark Hurd??OOW 2012: How big is oow OOW 2012?????????: Focus On Database Technologies Focus On Real Application Clusters Focus On Exadata Focus On Oracle Database Appliance Focus On Oracle Database Application Development Focus On Oracle Database Security Focus On Big Data Focus On Data Warehousing Focus On High Availability Focus On Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c (and Private Cloud) Focus On Oracle Spatial and Graph Focus On Oracle Database Utilities Focus On Oracle Database Upgrade Focus On Oracle Database Private Cloud Focus On .Net Focus On Oracle Database on Windows Focus On Engineered Systems Focus On Sunday Users Forum

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  • Can an Employer turn you down if you have said the fact about current work culture being bad [closed]

    - by MansonRix
    I had recently an interview where I scored good in 1st two round of technical interview . Then in the 3rd round was the managerial round where the guy started about my experience and whether I have vaptured any requirement and handled and trained any teams. This went pretty well for around 50 mins . Then there was the awkward question , Interviewer: why amI looking for a change? Me: coz I want to explore my carrier options? Interviewer: But your current company is big enough and you can explore options over there? (This was supposedly the trap) Me: Apart from that I am missing the flexibilty of working with Us and Europe based company as my current company is not that flexible. Interviewer: What exactly you don't find flexible. Me: The login time . Even if you get late by 1sec you might have to explin. Though this is not a big problem , still I will prefer flexibilty as we are working really hard. Interviewer: Allright ( Then couple of more questions) , Hope to C U Ya , that's pretty much it . Now I called up HR and they say , they are yet to get the feedback from Interviewer. Did I screw it? I mean does some one really have to pretend always by saying positive things about company and manager though not saying negative things?

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  • ???: Oracle NoSQL Database??

    - by zhangqm
    ?????????Oracle?????Oracle NoSQL Database,?????NoSQL Database ??????????Oracle NoSQL Database??2???,Community Edition ?Enterprise Edition?????????NoSQL Database 11g R2 (11gR2.1.2.123). ?????????????????: Oracle NoSQL Database OTN portal (includes download facility) Oracle NoSQL Database OTN documentation Oracle NoSQL Database license information ??Oracle NoSQL Database ???????????,????,?????(key-value)???TB????,????????????(???)????,??????????????????????????,????,??????????? ?Oracle NoSQL Database?,???????????key-value???,??key???????:??????????key?(?????string),????????(??????????bytes)??????key-value ??primary key?hash?,????????????????????????????????,???????,????????????????????????? ???????????????????Java API??????Oracle NoSQL Database driver ????????,?????key-value????????????????Oracle NoSQL Database ?????Create, Read, Update and Delete (CRUD)??,???????durability??????????????????????:?????web console???command line??? Oracle Berkeley DB Java Edition Oracle NoSQL Database?? Oracle Berkeley DB Java Edition ????????,??????????????????????????????,?????????????????? ????????????Oracle NoSQL Database Driver?????key-value????????????Oracle NoSQL Database Driver??:?????????hash??????????????????,?????????????????????? ????????Oracle NoSQL Database Oracle NoSQL Database????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????: ???? ???? ???? ?????? ???? ?????? ????,??,?? ???? ???? ??? (sub-millisecond) ???????? ????? ??????? ????????  ?????Oracle?????? ???? (Oracle Big Data Appliance) ???? ?????????????????????????????????,???“??”???????????,Oracle NoSQL Database???????????Oracle NoSQL Database?????(Cloud)??,????????(TB?PB??)???Oracle NoSQL Database ??????ETL??(??MapReduce, Hadoop)??,??acquire-organize-analyze ?????????? ???????Oracle NoSQL Database?????: • Large schema-less data repositories• Web?? (click-through capture)• ????• ????• ?????????? • Sensor/statistics/network capture (?????, ?????)• ?????????• ???? (MMS, SMS, routing)• ???? Oracle NoSQL Database (Community Edition ??)??????????? Oracle Big Data Appliance???

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  • Best way to add an extra (nested) form in the middle of a tabbed form

    - by Scharrels
    I've got a web application, consisting mainly of a big form with information. The form is split into multiple tabs, to make it more readable for the user: <form> <div id="tabs"> <ul> <li><a href="#tab1">Tab1</a></li> <li><a href="#tab2">Tab2</a></li> </ul> <div id="tab1">A big table with a lot of input rows</div> <div id="tab2">A big table with a lot of input rows</div> </div> </form> The form is dynamically extended (extra rows are added to the tables). Every 10 seconds the form is serialized and synchronized with the server. I now want to add an interactive form on one of the tabs: when a user enters a name in a field, this information is sent to the server and an id associated with that name is returned. This id is used as an identifier for some dynamically added form fields. A quick sketchup of such a page would look like this: <form action="bigform.php"> <div id="tabs"> <ul> <li><a href="#tab1">Tab1</a></li> <li><a href="#tab2">Tab2</a></li> </ul> <div id="tab1">A big table with a lot of input rows</div> <div id="tab2"> <div class="associatedinfo"> <p>Information for Joe</p> <ul> <li><input name="associated[26][]" /></li> <li><input name="associated[26][]" /></li> </ul> </div> <div class="associatedinfo"> <p>Information for Jill</p> <ul> <li><input name="associated[12][]" /></li> <li><input name="associated[12][]" /></li> </ul> </div> <div id="newperson"> <form action="newform.php"> <p>Add another person:</p> <input name="extra" /><input type="submit" value="Add" /> </form> </div> </div> </div> </form> The above will not work: nested forms are not allowed in HTML. However, I really need to display the form on that tab: it's part of the functionality of that page. I also want the behaviour of a separate form: when the user hits return in the form field, the "Add" submit button is pressed and a submit action is triggered on the partial form. What is the best way to solve this problem?

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  • Upload File to Windows Azure Blob in Chunks through ASP.NET MVC, JavaScript and HTML5

    - by Shaun
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/shaunxu/archive/2013/07/01/upload-file-to-windows-azure-blob-in-chunks-through-asp.net.aspxMany people are using Windows Azure Blob Storage to store their data in the cloud. Blob storage provides 99.9% availability with easy-to-use API through .NET SDK and HTTP REST. For example, we can store JavaScript files, images, documents in blob storage when we are building an ASP.NET web application on a Web Role in Windows Azure. Or we can store our VHD files in blob and mount it as a hard drive in our cloud service. If you are familiar with Windows Azure, you should know that there are two kinds of blob: page blob and block blob. The page blob is optimized for random read and write, which is very useful when you need to store VHD files. The block blob is optimized for sequential/chunk read and write, which has more common usage. Since we can upload block blob in blocks through BlockBlob.PutBlock, and them commit them as a whole blob with invoking the BlockBlob.PutBlockList, it is very powerful to upload large files, as we can upload blocks in parallel, and provide pause-resume feature. There are many documents, articles and blog posts described on how to upload a block blob. Most of them are focus on the server side, which means when you had received a big file, stream or binaries, how to upload them into blob storage in blocks through .NET SDK.  But the problem is, how can we upload these large files from client side, for example, a browser. This questioned to me when I was working with a Chinese customer to help them build a network disk production on top of azure. The end users upload their files from the web portal, and then the files will be stored in blob storage from the Web Role. My goal is to find the best way to transform the file from client (end user’s machine) to the server (Web Role) through browser. In this post I will demonstrate and describe what I had done, to upload large file in chunks with high speed, and save them as blocks into Windows Azure Blob Storage.   Traditional Upload, Works with Limitation The simplest way to implement this requirement is to create a web page with a form that contains a file input element and a submit button. 1: @using (Html.BeginForm("About", "Index", FormMethod.Post, new { enctype = "multipart/form-data" })) 2: { 3: <input type="file" name="file" /> 4: <input type="submit" value="upload" /> 5: } And then in the backend controller, we retrieve the whole content of this file and upload it in to the blob storage through .NET SDK. We can split the file in blocks and upload them in parallel and commit. The code had been well blogged in the community. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public ActionResult About(HttpPostedFileBase file) 3: { 4: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 5: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 6: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(file.FileName); 7: var blockDataList = new Dictionary<string, byte[]>(); 8: using (var stream = file.InputStream) 9: { 10: var blockSizeInKB = 1024; 11: var offset = 0; 12: var index = 0; 13: while (offset < stream.Length) 14: { 15: var readLength = Math.Min(1024 * blockSizeInKB, (int)stream.Length - offset); 16: var blockData = new byte[readLength]; 17: offset += stream.Read(blockData, 0, readLength); 18: blockDataList.Add(Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)), blockData); 19:  20: index++; 21: } 22: } 23:  24: Parallel.ForEach(blockDataList, (bi) => 25: { 26: blob.PutBlock(bi.Key, new MemoryStream(bi.Value), null); 27: }); 28: blob.PutBlockList(blockDataList.Select(b => b.Key).ToArray()); 29:  30: return RedirectToAction("About"); 31: } This works perfect if we selected an image, a music or a small video to upload. But if I selected a large file, let’s say a 6GB HD-movie, after upload for about few minutes the page will be shown as below and the upload will be terminated. In ASP.NET there is a limitation of request length and the maximized request length is defined in the web.config file. It’s a number which less than about 4GB. So if we want to upload a really big file, we cannot simply implement in this way. Also, in Windows Azure, a cloud service network load balancer will terminate the connection if exceed the timeout period. From my test the timeout looks like 2 - 3 minutes. Hence, when we need to upload a large file we cannot just use the basic HTML elements. Besides the limitation mentioned above, the simple HTML file upload cannot provide rich upload experience such as chunk upload, pause and pause-resume. So we need to find a better way to upload large file from the client to the server.   Upload in Chunks through HTML5 and JavaScript In order to break those limitation mentioned above we will try to upload the large file in chunks. This takes some benefit to us such as - No request size limitation: Since we upload in chunks, we can define the request size for each chunks regardless how big the entire file is. - No timeout problem: The size of chunks are controlled by us, which means we should be able to make sure request for each chunk upload will not exceed the timeout period of both ASP.NET and Windows Azure load balancer. It was a big challenge to upload big file in chunks until we have HTML5. There are some new features and improvements introduced in HTML5 and we will use them to implement our solution.   In HTML5, the File interface had been improved with a new method called “slice”. It can be used to read part of the file by specifying the start byte index and the end byte index. For example if the entire file was 1024 bytes, file.slice(512, 768) will read the part of this file from the 512nd byte to 768th byte, and return a new object of interface called "Blob”, which you can treat as an array of bytes. In fact,  a Blob object represents a file-like object of immutable, raw data. The File interface is based on Blob, inheriting blob functionality and expanding it to support files on the user's system. For more information about the Blob please refer here. File and Blob is very useful to implement the chunk upload. We will use File interface to represent the file the user selected from the browser and then use File.slice to read the file in chunks in the size we wanted. For example, if we wanted to upload a 10MB file with 512KB chunks, then we can read it in 512KB blobs by using File.slice in a loop.   Assuming we have a web page as below. User can select a file, an input box to specify the block size in KB and a button to start upload. 1: <div> 2: <input type="file" id="upload_files" name="files[]" /><br /> 3: Block Size: <input type="number" id="block_size" value="512" name="block_size" />KB<br /> 4: <input type="button" id="upload_button_blob" name="upload" value="upload (blob)" /> 5: </div> Then we can have the JavaScript function to upload the file in chunks when user clicked the button. 1: <script type="text/javascript"> 1: 2: $(function () { 3: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 4: }); 5: });</script> Firstly we need to ensure the client browser supports the interfaces we are going to use. Just try to invoke the File, Blob and FormData from the “window” object. If any of them is “undefined” the condition result will be “false” which means your browser doesn’t support these premium feature and it’s time for you to get your browser updated. FormData is another new feature we are going to use in the future. It could generate a temporary form for us. We will use this interface to create a form with chunk and associated metadata when invoked the service through ajax. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: if (window.File && window.Blob && window.FormData) { 4: alert("Your brwoser is awesome, let's rock!"); 5: } 6: else { 7: alert("Oh man plz update to a modern browser before try is cool stuff out."); 8: return; 9: } 10: }); Each browser supports these interfaces by their own implementation and currently the Blob, File and File.slice are supported by Chrome 21, FireFox 13, IE 10, Opera 12 and Safari 5.1 or higher. After that we worked on the files the user selected one by one since in HTML5, user can select multiple files in one file input box. 1: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 2: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 3: var file = files[i]; 4: var fileSize = file.size; 5: var fileName = file.name; 6: } Next, we calculated the start index and end index for each chunks based on the size the user specified from the browser. We put them into an array with the file name and the index, which will be used when we upload chunks into Windows Azure Blob Storage as blocks since we need to specify the target blob name and the block index. At the same time we will store the list of all indexes into another variant which will be used to commit blocks into blob in Azure Storage once all chunks had been uploaded successfully. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10:  11: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 12: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 13: var blockSizeInKB = $("#block_size").val(); 14: var blockSize = blockSizeInKB * 1024; 15: var blocks = []; 16: var offset = 0; 17: var index = 0; 18: var list = ""; 19: while (offset < fileSize) { 20: var start = offset; 21: var end = Math.min(offset + blockSize, fileSize); 22:  23: blocks.push({ 24: name: fileName, 25: index: index, 26: start: start, 27: end: end 28: }); 29: list += index + ","; 30:  31: offset = end; 32: index++; 33: } 34: } 35: }); Now we have all chunks’ information ready. The next step should be upload them one by one to the server side, and at the server side when received a chunk it will upload as a block into Blob Storage, and finally commit them with the index list through BlockBlobClient.PutBlockList. But since all these invokes are ajax calling, which means not synchronized call. So we need to introduce a new JavaScript library to help us coordinate the asynchronize operation, which named “async.js”. You can download this JavaScript library here, and you can find the document here. I will not explain this library too much in this post. We will put all procedures we want to execute as a function array, and pass into the proper function defined in async.js to let it help us to control the execution sequence, in series or in parallel. Hence we will define an array and put the function for chunk upload into this array. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4:  5: // start to upload each files in chunks 6: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 7: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 8: var file = files[i]; 9: var fileSize = file.size; 10: var fileName = file.name; 11: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 12: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 13: ... ... 14:  15: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 16: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 17: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 18: }); 19: }); 20: } 21: }); 22: }); As you can see, I used File.slice method to read each chunks based on the start and end byte index we calculated previously, and constructed a temporary HTML form with the file name, chunk index and chunk data through another new feature in HTML5 named FormData. Then post this form to the backend server through jQuery.ajax. This is the key part of our solution. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 15: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 16: // load blob based on the start and end index for each chunks 17: var blob = file.slice(block.start, block.end); 18: // put the file name, index and blob into a temporary from 19: var fd = new FormData(); 20: fd.append("name", block.name); 21: fd.append("index", block.index); 22: fd.append("file", blob); 23: // post the form to backend service (asp.net mvc controller action) 24: $.ajax({ 25: url: "/Home/UploadInFormData", 26: data: fd, 27: processData: false, 28: contentType: "multipart/form-data", 29: type: "POST", 30: success: function (result) { 31: if (!result.success) { 32: alert(result.error); 33: } 34: callback(null, block.index); 35: } 36: }); 37: }); 38: }); 39: } 40: }); Then we will invoke these functions one by one by using the async.js. And once all functions had been executed successfully I invoked another ajax call to the backend service to commit all these chunks (blocks) as the blob in Windows Azure Storage. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.series(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: }); That’s all in the client side. The outline of our logic would be - Calculate the start and end byte index for each chunks based on the block size. - Defined the functions of reading the chunk form file and upload the content to the backend service through ajax. - Execute the functions defined in previous step with “async.js”. - Commit the chunks by invoking the backend service in Windows Azure Storage finally.   Save Chunks as Blocks into Blob Storage In above we finished the client size JavaScript code. It uploaded the file in chunks to the backend service which we are going to implement in this step. We will use ASP.NET MVC as our backend service, and it will receive the chunks, upload into Windows Azure Bob Storage in blocks, then finally commit as one blob. As in the client side we uploaded chunks by invoking the ajax call to the URL "/Home/UploadInFormData", I created a new action under the Index controller and it only accepts HTTP POST request. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: } 8: catch (Exception e) 9: { 10: error = e.ToString(); 11: } 12:  13: return new JsonResult() 14: { 15: Data = new 16: { 17: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 18: error = error 19: } 20: }; 21: } Then I retrieved the file name, index and the chunk content from the Request.Form object, which was passed from our client side. And then, used the Windows Azure SDK to create a blob container (in this case we will use the container named “test”.) and create a blob reference with the blob name (same as the file name). Then uploaded the chunk as a block of this blob with the index, since in Blob Storage each block must have an index (ID) associated with so that finally we can put all blocks as one blob by specifying their block ID list. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 8: var index = int.Parse(Request.Form["index"]); 9: var file = Request.Files[0]; 10: var id = Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)); 11:  12: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 13: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 14: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 15: blob.PutBlock(id, file.InputStream, null); 16: } 17: catch (Exception e) 18: { 19: error = e.ToString(); 20: } 21:  22: return new JsonResult() 23: { 24: Data = new 25: { 26: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 27: error = error 28: } 29: }; 30: } Next, I created another action to commit the blocks into blob once all chunks had been uploaded. Similarly, I retrieved the blob name from the Request.Form. I also retrieved the chunks ID list, which is the block ID list from the Request.Form in a string format, split them as a list, then invoked the BlockBlob.PutBlockList method. After that our blob will be shown in the container and ready to be download. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult Commit() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 8: var list = Request.Form["list"]; 9: var ids = list 10: .Split(',') 11: .Where(id => !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(id)) 12: .Select(id => Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(int.Parse(id)))) 13: .ToArray(); 14:  15: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 16: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 17: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 18: blob.PutBlockList(ids); 19: } 20: catch (Exception e) 21: { 22: error = e.ToString(); 23: } 24:  25: return new JsonResult() 26: { 27: Data = new 28: { 29: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 30: error = error 31: } 32: }; 33: } Now we finished all code we need. The whole process of uploading would be like this below. Below is the full client side JavaScript code. 1: <script type="text/javascript" src="~/Scripts/async.js"></script> 2: <script type="text/javascript"> 3: $(function () { 4: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 5: // assert the browser support html5 6: if (window.File && window.Blob && window.FormData) { 7: alert("Your brwoser is awesome, let's rock!"); 8: } 9: else { 10: alert("Oh man plz update to a modern browser before try is cool stuff out."); 11: return; 12: } 13:  14: // start to upload each files in chunks 15: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 16: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 17: var file = files[i]; 18: var fileSize = file.size; 19: var fileName = file.name; 20:  21: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 22: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 23: var blockSizeInKB = $("#block_size").val(); 24: var blockSize = blockSizeInKB * 1024; 25: var blocks = []; 26: var offset = 0; 27: var index = 0; 28: var list = ""; 29: while (offset < fileSize) { 30: var start = offset; 31: var end = Math.min(offset + blockSize, fileSize); 32:  33: blocks.push({ 34: name: fileName, 35: index: index, 36: start: start, 37: end: end 38: }); 39: list += index + ","; 40:  41: offset = end; 42: index++; 43: } 44:  45: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 46: var putBlocks = []; 47: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 48: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 49: // load blob based on the start and end index for each chunks 50: var blob = file.slice(block.start, block.end); 51: // put the file name, index and blob into a temporary from 52: var fd = new FormData(); 53: fd.append("name", block.name); 54: fd.append("index", block.index); 55: fd.append("file", blob); 56: // post the form to backend service (asp.net mvc controller action) 57: $.ajax({ 58: url: "/Home/UploadInFormData", 59: data: fd, 60: processData: false, 61: contentType: "multipart/form-data", 62: type: "POST", 63: success: function (result) { 64: if (!result.success) { 65: alert(result.error); 66: } 67: callback(null, block.index); 68: } 69: }); 70: }); 71: }); 72:  73: // invoke the functions one by one 74: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 75: async.series(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 76: var data = { 77: name: fileName, 78: list: list 79: }; 80: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 81: if (!result.success) { 82: alert(result.error); 83: } 84: else { 85: alert("done!"); 86: } 87: }); 88: }); 89: } 90: }); 91: }); 92: </script> And below is the full ASP.NET MVC controller code. 1: public class HomeController : Controller 2: { 3: private CloudStorageAccount _account; 4: private CloudBlobClient _client; 5:  6: public HomeController() 7: : base() 8: { 9: _account = CloudStorageAccount.Parse(CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting("DataConnectionString")); 10: _client = _account.CreateCloudBlobClient(); 11: } 12:  13: public ActionResult Index() 14: { 15: ViewBag.Message = "Modify this template to jump-start your ASP.NET MVC application."; 16:  17: return View(); 18: } 19:  20: [HttpPost] 21: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 22: { 23: var error = string.Empty; 24: try 25: { 26: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 27: var index = int.Parse(Request.Form["index"]); 28: var file = Request.Files[0]; 29: var id = Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)); 30:  31: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 32: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 33: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 34: blob.PutBlock(id, file.InputStream, null); 35: } 36: catch (Exception e) 37: { 38: error = e.ToString(); 39: } 40:  41: return new JsonResult() 42: { 43: Data = new 44: { 45: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 46: error = error 47: } 48: }; 49: } 50:  51: [HttpPost] 52: public JsonResult Commit() 53: { 54: var error = string.Empty; 55: try 56: { 57: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 58: var list = Request.Form["list"]; 59: var ids = list 60: .Split(',') 61: .Where(id => !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(id)) 62: .Select(id => Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(int.Parse(id)))) 63: .ToArray(); 64:  65: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 66: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 67: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 68: blob.PutBlockList(ids); 69: } 70: catch (Exception e) 71: { 72: error = e.ToString(); 73: } 74:  75: return new JsonResult() 76: { 77: Data = new 78: { 79: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 80: error = error 81: } 82: }; 83: } 84: } And if we selected a file from the browser we will see our application will upload chunks in the size we specified to the server through ajax call in background, and then commit all chunks in one blob. Then we can find the blob in our Windows Azure Blob Storage.   Optimized by Parallel Upload In previous example we just uploaded our file in chunks. This solved the problem that ASP.NET MVC request content size limitation as well as the Windows Azure load balancer timeout. But it might introduce the performance problem since we uploaded chunks in sequence. In order to improve the upload performance we could modify our client side code a bit to make the upload operation invoked in parallel. The good news is that, “async.js” library provides the parallel execution function. If you remembered the code we invoke the service to upload chunks, it utilized “async.series” which means all functions will be executed in sequence. Now we will change this code to “async.parallel”. This will invoke all functions in parallel. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.parallel(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: }); In this way all chunks will be uploaded to the server side at the same time to maximize the bandwidth usage. This should work if the file was not very large and the chunk size was not very small. But for large file this might introduce another problem that too many ajax calls are sent to the server at the same time. So the best solution should be, upload the chunks in parallel with maximum concurrency limitation. The code below specified the concurrency limitation to 4, which means at the most only 4 ajax calls could be invoked at the same time. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.parallelLimit(putBlocks, 4, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: });   Summary In this post we discussed how to upload files in chunks to the backend service and then upload them into Windows Azure Blob Storage in blocks. We focused on the frontend side and leverage three new feature introduced in HTML 5 which are - File.slice: Read part of the file by specifying the start and end byte index. - Blob: File-like interface which contains the part of the file content. - FormData: Temporary form element that we can pass the chunk alone with some metadata to the backend service. Then we discussed the performance consideration of chunk uploading. Sequence upload cannot provide maximized upload speed, but the unlimited parallel upload might crash the browser and server if too many chunks. So we finally came up with the solution to upload chunks in parallel with the concurrency limitation. We also demonstrated how to utilize “async.js” JavaScript library to help us control the asynchronize call and the parallel limitation.   Regarding the chunk size and the parallel limitation value there is no “best” value. You need to test vary composition and find out the best one for your particular scenario. It depends on the local bandwidth, client machine cores and the server side (Windows Azure Cloud Service Virtual Machine) cores, memory and bandwidth. Below is one of my performance test result. The client machine was Windows 8 IE 10 with 4 cores. I was using Microsoft Cooperation Network. The web site was hosted on Windows Azure China North data center (in Beijing) with one small web role (1.7GB 1 core CPU, 1.75GB memory with 100Mbps bandwidth). The test cases were - Chunk size: 512KB, 1MB, 2MB, 4MB. - Upload Mode: Sequence, parallel (unlimited), parallel with limit (4 threads, 8 threads). - Chunk Format: base64 string, binaries. - Target file: 100MB. - Each case was tested 3 times. Below is the test result chart. Some thoughts, but not guidance or best practice: - Parallel gets better performance than series. - No significant performance improvement between parallel 4 threads and 8 threads. - Transform with binaries provides better performance than base64. - In all cases, chunk size in 1MB - 2MB gets better performance.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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  • Book Review: Oracle ADF Real World Developer’s Guide

    - by Frank Nimphius
    Recently PACKT Publishing published "Oracle ADF Real World Developer’s Guide" by Jobinesh Purushothaman, a product manager in our team. Though already the sixth book dedicated to Oracle ADF, it has a lot of great information in it that none of the previous books covered, making it a safe buy even for those who own the other books published by Oracle Press (McGrwHill) and PACKT Publishing. More than the half of the "Oracle ADF Real World Developer’s Guide" book is dedicated to Oracle ADF Business Components in a depth and clarity that allows you to feel the expertise that Jobinesh gained in this area. If you enjoy Jobinesh blog (http://jobinesh.blogspot.co.uk/) about Oracle ADF, then, no matter what expert you are in Oracle ADF, this book makes you happy as it provides you with detail information you always wished to have. If you are new to Oracle ADF, then this book alone doesn't get you flying, but, if you have some Java background, accelerates your learning big, big, big times. Chapter 1 is an introduction to Oracle ADF and not only explains the layers but also how it compares to plain Java EE solutions (page 13). If you are new to Oracle JDeveloper and ADF, then at the end of this chapter you know how to start JDeveloper and begin your ADF development Chapter 2 starts with what Jobinesh really is good at: ADF Business Components. In this chapter you learn about the architecture ingredients of ADF Business Components: View Objects, View Links, Associations, Entities, Row Sets, Query Collections and Application Modules. This chapter also provides a introduction to ADFBC SDO services, as well as sequence diagrams for what happens when you execute queries or commit updates. Chapter 3 is dedicated to entity objects and  is one of many chapters in this book you will enjoy and never want to miss. Jobinesh explains the artifacts that make up an entity object, how to work with entities and resource bundles, and many advanced topics, including inheritance, change history tracking, custom properties, validation and cursor handling.  Chapter 4 - you guessed it - is all about View objects. Comparable to entities, you learn about the XM files and classes that make a view object, as well as how to define and work with queries. List-of-values, inheritance, polymorphism, bind variables and data filtering are interesting - and important topics that follow. Again the chapter provides helpful sequence diagrams for you to understand what happens internally within a view object. Chapter 5 focuses on advanced view object and entity object topics, like lifecycle callback methods and when you want to override them. This chapter is a good digest of Jobinesh's blog entries (which most ADF developers have in their bookmark list). Really worth reading ! Chapter 6 then is bout Application Modules. Beside of what application modules are, this chapter covers important topics like properties, passivation, activation, application module pooling, how and where to write custom logic. In addition you learn about the AM lifecycle and request sequence. Chapter 7 is about the ADF binding layer. If you are new to Oracle ADF and got lost in the more advanced ADF Business Components chapters, then this chapter is where you get back into the game. In very easy terms, Jobinesh explains what the ADF binding is, how it fits into the JSF request lifecycle and what are the metadata file involved. Chapter 8 then goes into building data bound web user interfaces. In this chapter you get the basics of JavaServer Faces (e.g. managed beans) and learn about the interaction between the JSF UI and the ADF binding layer. Later this chapter provides advanced solutions for working with tree components and list of values. Chapter 9 introduces bounded task flows and ADF controller. This is a chapter you want to read if you are new to ADF of have started. Experts don't find anything new here, which doesn't mean that it is not worth reading it (I for example, enjoyed the controller talk very much) Chapter 10 is an advanced coverage of bounded task flow and talks about contextual events  Chapter 11 is another highlight and explains error handling, trains, transactions and more. I can only recommend you read this chapter. I am aware of many documents that cover exception handling in Oracle ADF (and my Oracle Magazine article for January/February 2013 does the same), but none that covers it in such a great depth. Chapter 12 covers ADF best practices, which is a great round-up of all the tips provided in this book (without Jobinesh to repeat himself). Its all cool stuff that helps you with your ADF projects. In summary, "Oracle ADF Real World Developer’s Guide" by Jobinesh Purushothaman is a great book and addition for all Oracle ADF developers and those who want to become one. Frank

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  • Drupal Modules for SEO & Content

    - by Aditi
    When we talk about Drupal SEO, there are two things to consider one is about the relevant SEO practices and about appropriate Drupal Modules available. Optimizing your website for search engines is one of the most important aspect of launching & promoting your website especially if ranking matters to you. Understanding SEO For starters, you have begin with Keyword research and then optimize your content according to your findings by tagging, meta tags etc, Drupal modules once installed help you manage a lot of such parameters. Identifying the target keywords Using the Page Title and Token modules PathAuto configuration <H1> heading tags Optimizing Drupal’s default robots.txt file Etc. While Drupal gives you a lot of ability to make your website content worthy & search engine friendly it is important for you to make sure you are not crossing the line or you could get penalized. Modules Overview Drupal Power is at its best when you have these modules & great brain working together. The basic SEO improvements can be achieved easily with the modules enlisted below, but you can win magical rankings if you use them logically & wisely. Understanding your keyword competition & enhancing your content is the basic key to success and ofcourse the modules: Pathauto Automatically create search enging friendly readable URLS from tokens. A token is a piece of data from content, say the author’s username, or the content’s title. For example mysite.com/an-article, rather than mysite.com/node/114 for every node you make. NodeWords Amazingly useful drupal module that allows you to create custom meta tags and descriptions for your nodes, which gives you the ability to target specific keywords and phrases. Page Title Enables you to set an alternative title for the <title></title> tags and for the <h1></h1> tags on a node. Global Redirect Manage content duplication, 301 redirects, and URL validation with this small, but powerful module. Taxonomy manager Make large additions, or changes to taxonomy very easy. This module provides a powerful interface for managing taxonomies. A vocabulary gets displayed in a dynamic tree view, where parent terms can be expanded to list their nested child terms or can be collapsed. robotstxt A robots.txt file is vital for ensuring that search engine spiders don’t index the unwanted areas of your site. This Drupal module gives you the ability to manage your robots.txt file through the CMS admin. xmlsitemap An XML Sitemap lets the search engines index your website content. This module helps in generating and maintaining a complete sitemap for your website and gives you control over exactly which parts of the site you want to be included in the index. It even gives you the ability to automatically submit your sitemap to Google, Yahoo!, Ask.com and Windows Live every time you update a node or at specific interval. Node Import This module allows you to import a set of nodes from a Comma Seperated Values (CSV) or Tab Seperated Values (TSV) text file. Makes it easy to import hundreds-thousands of csv rows and you get to tie up these rows to CCK fields (or locations), and it can file it under the right taxonomy hierarchy. This is Super life saver module.

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  • Record and Play your WebLogic Console Tasks Like a DVR

    - by james.bayer
    Automation using WebLogic Scripting Tool Today on the Oracle internal mailing list for WebLogic Server questions someone asked how to automate the configuration of the thread model for WebLogic Server and they were having trouble with the jython scripting syntax.  I’ve previously written about this feature called Work Managers and the associated constraints.  However, I did not show how to automate the process of configuring this without the console using WebLogic Scripting Tool – the jython scripting automation environment abbreviated as WLST.  I’ve written some very basic introductions to WLST before and there is also an Oracle By Example on the subject, but this is a bit more advanced.  Fear not because there is a really easy-to-use feature of the WLS console that lets you “Record” user actions just like a DVR.  Using these recordings of the web-based console, you can easily create a script even if you are unfamiliar with the WLST syntax and API.  I’m a big fan of both DVR’s and automation as can be evidenced with this old Halloween picture taken during simpler times.  Obviously the Cast Away and The Big Labowski references show some age.  I was a big Tivo fan-boy back in the day and I still think it’s the best DVR. I strongly believe that WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) is an absolutely essential tool for automating administration tasks in anything beyond a development environment.  Even in development environments you can make a case that it makes sense to start the automation for environments downstream.  I promise you that once you start using it for any tasks that you do even semi-regularly, you won’t go back to clicking through the console.  It’s simply so much more efficient and less error-prone to run a script. Let’s say you need to create a Work Manager and MaxThreadsConstraint – the easy way to do it is configure it in the WLS console first while capturing the commands with a recording.  See the images for the simple steps – click to enlarge. Record Console Configurations to a File Review the Recordings and Make Slight Modifications In order to make the recorded .py file directly callable as a stand-alone script I added calls to the connect() and edit() functions at the beginning and calls to disconnect() and exit() at the end – otherwise the main section of the script was provided by the console recording.  Below is the resulting file I saved as d:/temp/wm.py connect('weblogic','welcome1', 't3://localhost:7001') edit() startEdit()   cd('/SelfTuning/wl_server') cmo.createMaxThreadsConstraint('MaxThreadsConstraint-0')   cd('/SelfTuning/wl_server/MaxThreadsConstraints/MaxThreadsConstraint-0') set('Targets',jarray.array([ObjectName('com.bea:Name=examplesServer,Type=Server')], ObjectName)) cmo.setCount(5) cmo.unSet('ConnectionPoolName')   cd('/SelfTuning/wl_server') cmo.createWorkManager('WorkManager-0') cd('/SelfTuning/wl_server/WorkManagers/WorkManager-0') set('Targets',jarray.array([ObjectName('com.bea:Name=examplesServer,Type=Server')], ObjectName))   cmo.setMaxThreadsConstraint(getMBean('/SelfTuning/wl_server/MaxThreadsConstraints/MaxThreadsConstraint-0')) cmo.setIgnoreStuckThreads(false)   activate() disconnect() exit() Run the Script If you want to test it be sure to delete the Work Manager and MaxThreadConstraint that you had previously created in the console.  Do something like the following - set up the environment and tell WLST to execute the script which happens in the first 2 lines, the rest doesn’t require any user input: D:\Oracle\wls11g\wlserver_10.3\samples\domains\wl_server\bin>setDomainEnv.cmd D:\Oracle\wls11g\wlserver_10.3\samples\domains\wl_server>java weblogic.WLST d:\temp\wm.py   Initializing WebLogic Scripting Tool (WLST) ...   Welcome to WebLogic Server Administration Scripting Shell   Type help() for help on available commands   Connecting to t3://localhost:7001 with userid weblogic ... Successfully connected to Admin Server 'examplesServer' that belongs to domain 'wl_server'.   Warning: An insecure protocol was used to connect to the server. To ensure on-the-wire security, the SSL port or Admin port should be used instead.   Location changed to edit tree. This is a writable tree with DomainMBean as the root. To make changes you will need to start an edit session via startEdit().   For more help, use help(edit)   Starting an edit session ... Started edit session, please be sure to save and activate your changes once you are done. Activating all your changes, this may take a while ... The edit lock associated with this edit session is released once the activation is completed. Activation completed Disconnected from weblogic server: examplesServer     Exiting WebLogic Scripting Tool.   Now if you go back and look in the console the changes have been made and we now have a compete script.  Of course there is a full MBean reference and you can learn the nuances of jython and WLST, but why not the WLS console do most of the work for you!  Happy scripting.

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  • Going to the Score Cards - Exceptional DBA Awards 2011

    - by Rodney
    This year marks my 4th year as a judge for the Exceptional DBA Awards, founded by Red Gate in 2008 to "recognize the essential but often overlooked contributions of DBAs, the unsung heroes of the IT community." As a professional DBA myself I have been honored to participate as a judge. It is not an easy job because there is a voluminous amount of nominees from all over the world. Each judge has to read through every word of the nominee's answers, deciding what makes each person special and stand out amongst their peers. What drives them? What single element of their submission will shine above all others? It is my hope that what I am about to divulge to you as a judge will prompt you to think about yourself or someone you know and decide that you may be the exceptional DBA who can take home the gold at this year's award ceremony in Seattle. We are more than a few weeks into the nomination process and there are quite a number of submissions already. I can not tell you how many as that would not be fair. I can say it is not 1 million or more. I can also say that it is not 100,000. But that is all I can say about that. However, I can tell you that it is enough this year that we are breaking records on the number of people who have been influenced, inspired or intrigued by the awards in the past. I remember them all like it were yesterday. fuzzy thought cloud here. It was a rainy day in Seattle (all memories for each award ceremony will start thusly) and I was in the hotel going over my notes on what I wanted to say about the winner of the 2008 Red Gate Exceptional DBA Award. The notes were on index cards that I had either bought or stolen from my wife, I do not recall, but I was nervous which was unlike me. This was, after all, a big night for the winner. Of course, we, the judges and the SQL community, had already decided the winner and now all that remained was to present the award. The room was packed. It was Casino night, sponsored by sqlservercentral.com. Money (fake), drinks (not fake) and camaraderie flowed through the room. Dan McClain won the award that year. He worked for Anheuser-Busch at the time. I promise that did not influence my decision. We presented Dan with the award. He was very proud of this achievement, rightfully so, as was the SQL community for him. I spoke with Dan throughout the conference and realized how huge this award was for him, not just personally but professionally. It was a rainy day in Seattle in 2009 and I was nervous. I was asked to speak to a group of people again as a judge for the Exceptional DBA Awards. This year, Josef Richberg would be the recipient of the award, but he would not be able to attend. We all prayed for him as he fought through an illness and congratulated him for his accomplishments as a DBA for his company. He got better and sallied forth and continued to give back to the SQL community that he saw as one big family. In 2010, and I am getting ahead of myself, he was asked to be a judge himself for the very award he had just received the year before. It was a sunny day in Seattle and I missed it, because it was in July and I was not there. It was a rainy day in Seattle and it is 2010 and Tracy Hamlin enters a submission that blows this judge away. She is managing a 50 Terabyte distributed database ("50 Gigabytes! Are you kidding me!!!", Rodney jokes.)  and loves her daily job as a DBA working with developers, mentoring them and teaching them best practices with kindness and patience. She is a people person who just happens to have 10+ years experience with RDBMS'. She wins the award and goes on to be recognized as famous at PASS. It will be a rainy day in Seattle this year when I sit amongst my old constituent judges and friends, Brad McGehee, http://www.simple-talk.com/books/sql-books/how-to-become-an-exceptional-dba,-2nd-edition/, Steve Jones, whom we all know and love at http://www.sqlservercentral.com and a young upstart to the SQL Community, this cat named Brent Ozar to announce the 2011 winner. I personally have not heard of Brent but I am told I have interviewed him for a DBA position several years ago and turned him down, http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2011/05/exceptional-dba-contest/ . I hope that did not jeopardize his future in the SQL world. I am a big hearted oaf and would feel horrible. Hopefully I will meet him at PASS and we can work this all out and I can help him get a DBA job. The rain has stopped and a new year is upon us. The stakes are high...the competition is fierce...the rewards are incredible. The entry form awaits you. http://www.exceptionaldba.com/ I very much look forward to meeting you and presenting the award to you in front of hundreds of your envious but proud peers as the new Exceptional DBA for 2011 at the PASS Summit. Here is what you could win: The Exceptional DBA of the Year receives full conference registration for the 2011 PSS Summit in Seattle, where the awards ceremony will take place, four nights' hotel accommodation, and $300 towards travel expenses. They will also be featured on Simple-Talk. Are you ready? Are you nervous?

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  • An MCM exam, Rob? Really?

    - by Rob Farley
    I took the SQL 2008 MCM Knowledge exam while in Seattle for the PASS Summit ten days ago. I wasn’t planning to do it, but I got persuaded to try. I was meaning to write this post to explain myself before the result came out, but it seems I didn’t get typing quickly enough. Those of you who know me will know I’m a big fan of certification, to a point. I’ve been involved with Microsoft Learning to help create exams. I’ve kept my certifications current since I first took an exam back in 1998, sitting many in beta, across quite a variety of topics. I’ve probably become quite good at them – I know I’ve definitely passed some that I really should’ve failed. I’ve also written that I don’t think exams are worth studying for. (That’s probably not entirely true, but it depends on your motivation. If you’re doing learning, I would encourage you to focus on what you need to know to do your job better. That will help you pass an exam – but the two skills are very different. I can coach someone on how to pass an exam, but that’s a different kind of teaching when compared to coaching someone about how to do a job. For example, the real world includes a lot of “it depends”, where you develop a feel for what the influencing factors might be. In an exam, its better to be able to know some of the “Don’t use this technology if XYZ is true” concepts better.) As for the Microsoft Certified Master certification… I’m not opposed to the idea of having the MCM (or in the future, MCSM) cert. But the barrier to entry feels quite high for me. When it was first introduced, the nearest testing centres to me were in Kuala Lumpur and Manila. Now there’s one in Perth, but that’s still a big effort. I know there are options in the US – such as one about an hour’s drive away from downtown Seattle, but it all just seems too hard. Plus, these exams are more expensive, and all up – I wasn’t sure I wanted to try them, particularly with the fact that I don’t like to study. I used to study for exams. It would drive my wife crazy. I’d have some exam scheduled for some time in the future (like the time I had two booked for two consecutive days at TechEd Australia 2005), and I’d make sure I was ready. Every waking moment would be spent pouring over exam material, and it wasn’t healthy. I got shaken out of that, though, when I ended up taking four exams in those two days in 2005 and passed them all. I also worked out that if I had a Second Shot available, then failing wasn’t a bad thing at all. Even without Second Shot, I’m much more okay about failing. But even just trying an MCM exam is a big effort. I wouldn’t want to fail one of them. Plus there’s the illusion to maintain. People have told me for a long time that I should just take the MCM exams – that I’d pass no problem. I’ve never been so sure. It was almost becoming a pride-point. Perhaps I should fail just to demonstrate that I can fail these things. Anyway – boB Taylor (@sqlboBT) persuaded me to try the SQL 2008 MCM Knowledge exam at the PASS Summit. They set up a testing centre in one of the room there, so it wasn’t out of my way at all. I had to squeeze it in between other commitments, and I certainly didn’t have time to even see what was on the syllabus, let alone study. In fact, I was so exhausted from the week that I fell asleep at least once (just for a moment though) during the actual exam. Perhaps the questions need more jokes, I’m not sure. I knew if I failed, then I might disappoint some people, but that I wouldn’t’ve spent a great deal of effort in trying to pass. On the other hand, if I did pass I’d then be under pressure to investigate the MCM Lab exam, which can be taken remotely (therefore, a much smaller amount of effort to make happen). In some ways, passing could end up just putting a bunch more pressure on me. Oh, and I did.

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  • #MIX Day 2 Keynote: Put the Phone Down and Listen

    - by andrewbrust
    MIX day 1’s keynote was all about Windows Phone 7 (WP7).  MIX day 2’s was a reminder that Microsoft has much more going on than a new mobile platform.  Steven Sinofsky, Scott Guthrie, Doug Purdy and others showed us lots of other good things coming from Microsoft, mostly in the developer stack, that we certainly shouldn’t overlook.  These included the forthcoming IE9, its new JavaScript compiling engine and support for HTML 5 that takes full advantage of the local PC resources, including the Graphics Processing Unit.  The announcements also included important additions to ASP.NET (and one subtraction, in the form of lighter-weight ViewState technology) including almost-obsessive jQuery support.  That support is so good that John Resig, creator of the jQuery project, came on stage to tell us so.  Then Scott Guthrie told us that Microsoft would be contributing code to Open Source jQuery project. This is not your father’s Microsoft, it would seem. But to me, the crown jewel in today’s keynote were the numerous announcements around the Open Data Protocol (OData).  OData is nothing more than the protocol side of “Astoria” (now known as WCF Data Services, and until recently called ADO.NET Data Services) separated out and opened up as a platform-neutral standard.  The 2009 Professional Developers Conference (PDC) was Microsoft’s vehicle for first announcing OData, as well as project “Dallas,” an Azure-based cloud platform for publishing commercial OData feeds.  And we had already known about “bridges” for Astoria (and thus OData) for PHP and Java.  We also knew that PowerPivot, Microsoft’s forthcoming self-service BI plug-in for Excel 2010, will consume OData feeds and then facilitate drill-down analysis of their data.  And we recently found out that SQL Reporting Services reports (in the forthcoming SQL Server 2008 R2) and SharePoint 2010 lists will be consumable in OData format as well. So what was left to announce?  How about OData clients for Palm webOS and Apple iPhone/Objective C?  How about the release to Open Source of .NET’s OData client?  Or the ability to publish any SQL Azure database as an OData service by simply checking a checkbox at deployment?  Maybe even a Silverlight tool (code-named “Houston”) to create SQL Azure databases (and then publish them as OData) right in the browser?  And what if you you could get at NetFlix’s entire catalog in OData format?  You can – just go to http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog/ and see for yourself.  Douglas Purdy, who made these announcements said “we want OData to work on as many devices and platforms as possible.”  After all the cross-platform OData announcements made in about a half year’s time, it’s hard to dispute this. When Microsoft plays the data card, and plays it well, watch out, because data programmability is the company’s heritage.  I’ll be discussing OData at length in my April Redmond Review column.  I wrote that column two weeks ago, and was convinced then that OData was a big deal. Today upped the ante even more.  And following the Windows Phone 7 euphoria of yesterday was, I think, smart timing.  The phone, if it’s successful, will be because it’s a good developer platform play.  And developer platforms (as well as their creators) are most successful when they have a good data strategy.  OData is very Silverlight-friendly, and that means it’s WP7-friendly too.  Phone plus service-oriented data is a one-two punch.  A phone platform without data would have been a phone with no signal.

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  • Silverlight Cream for February 22, 2011 -- #1050

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Robby Ingebretsen, Victor Gaudioso, Andrea Boschin(-2-), Rudi Grobler(-2-), Michael Crump, Deborah Kurata, Dennis Delimarsky, Pete Vickers, Yochay Kiriaty, Peter Kuhn, WindowsPhoneGeek, and Jesse Liberty(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Silverlight Simple MVVM Printing" Deborah Kurata WP7: "Creating theme friendly UI in WP7 using OpacityMask" WindowsPhoneGeek Tools: "KAXAML v1.8" Robby Ingebretsen Shoutouts: Peter Foot posted Silverlight for Windows Phone Toolkit–Feb 2011 Rudi Grobler posts his top requested features for WP7, Silverlight, and WCF: vNext ... see you in Seattle, Rudi! From SilverlightCream.com: KAXAML v1.8 Robby Ingebretsen just posted KAXML v1.8 that now supports .NET 4.0, WPF, and Silferlight4 ... go grab it. Learn how to use Blend to create a Data Store, Add Properties to it, etc... Victor Gaudioso has 3 new Silverlight and/or Expression Blend video tutorials up... first is this one on Creating a Data store, adding properties to it, oh... read the title :), Next up is: Send async messages across UserControls or even applications, followed by the latest: Create a Sketchflow Animation using the Sketchflow Animation Panel A base class for threaded Application Services Andrea Boschin continues his IApplicationServices series with this one on a base class he created to develop Application Services that runs a thread. Windows Phone 7 - Part #6: Taking advantage of the phone Andrea Boschin also has part 6 of his series at SilverlightShow on WP7... this one is covering a bunch of items... Capabilities, Launchers/Choosers, and gestures... plus the source for a fun game. {homebrew} Skype for WP7 Rudi Grobler posted about the availability of (some features of) Skype for WP7 being available. The XDA guys have working contacts and the ability to chat going, plus they're looking for poeple to join in... Follow Rudi's link, and let them know you're up for it! Simple menu for your WP7 application Rudi Grobler has another post up about a very simple menu control for WP7 that he produced that is also very easy to use. Attaching a Command to the WP7 Application Bar Michael Crump shows how to bind the application bar to a Relay Command with the use of MVVMLight in 7 Easy Steps :) Silverlight Simple MVVM Printing Deborah Kurata continues her MVVM series with this one on printing what your user sees on the page... but doing so within the MVVM pattern. Enhancing the general Zune experience on Windows Phone 7 with Zune web API Dennis Delimarsky apparently likes the Zune as much as I do, and has ratted out tons of information about the Zune API for use in WP7 apps... and lots of code... Validating input forms in Windows Phone 7 Pete Vickers takes a great detailed spin through validation on the WP7... the rules have changed, but Pete explains with some code examples. Windows Phone Shake Gestures Library Yochay Kiriaty discusses Shake Gestures for the WP7 device and then describes the "Windows Phone Shake Gesture Library" that detects shake gestures in 3D space... and after a great description has the link for downloading. What difference does a sprite sheet make? Peter Kuhn is writing a series at SilverlightShow on XNA for Silverlight Devs that I've highlighted. An outshoot of that is this discussion of the use of sprite sheets and game development. Creating theme friendly UI in WP7 using OpacityMask WindowsPhoneGeek has a new post up today on using Opacity Masks in WP7 to enable using one set of icons for either the dark or light theme.. too cool, you'll wanna check this out! Linq to XML Jesse Liberty continues with Linq with regard to WP7 with this post on Linq to XML... and why XML? crap... I was just saving/loading XML today! :) Lambda–Not as weird as it sounds Jesse Liberty then jumps into Lambda expressions... maybe it's a chance for me to learn WTF the lambdas really do that I use all the time! Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • Announcing the ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2 Release Candidate

    - by ScottGu
    This week the ASP.NET and Visual Web Developer teams delivered the Release Candidate of the ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2 update (formerly ASP.NET Fall 2012 Update BUILD Prerelease). This update extends the existing ASP.NET runtime and adds new web tooling to Visual Studio 2012. Whether you use Web Forms, MVC, Web API, or any other ASP.NET technology, there is something cool in this update for you. You can download and install the RC today: http://www.asp.net/vnext. Great ASP.NET Enhancements This update adds new ASP.NET templates and features, including: New ASP.NET MVC templates. Creating Facebook applications just became easier using the new Facebook Application template. In just a few easy steps you can create a Facebook application that gets data from the logged in user as well as integrates with their friends. A new Single Page Application template allows developers to build interactive client-side web apps using Knockout, jQuery, and ASP.NET Web API. Real-time communication support with ASP.NET SignalR.  This enables you to easily take advantage of the new WebSocket support in .NET 4.5, while also automatically degrading to long-polling and other protocols for older clients.  If you haven’t tried SignalR yet you should – it is awesome. New ASP.NET Web API functionality, including support for OData, integrated tracing, and automatically generating help page documentation for your API. New ASP.NET Friendly URL functionality. This new feature makes it very easy for Web Forms developers to generate cleaner looking URLs (without the .aspx extension). The Friendly URLs feature also makes it easier for developers to add mobile support to their applications with support for mobile .ASPX pages and  supporting switching between desktop and mobile views. It can be used with existing ASP.NET v4.0 applications. Visual Studio 2012 Web publishing enhancements. Web site projects now have the same publish experience as web application projects (including to Windows Azure Web Sites), and you can selectively publish files, see the differences between local and remote files, and update local to remote files or vice versa. Visual Studio 2012 Page Inspector enhancements. JavaScript selection mapping is now supported, and you can CSS updates in real-time. Visual Studio 2012 editor support for Knockout IntelliSense and pasting JSON as a .NET class (which makes it even easier to consume Web APIs from others). Visual Studio 2012 Project Template updates, including the latest versions of jQuery, jQuery UI, jQuery Validation, Modernirz, Knockout and more… How it is delivered You can download and install an integrated setup that contains the above enhancements today from http://www.asp.net/vnext. The new runtime functionality is delivered to ASP.NET via additional NuGet packages. This means that installing this update does not make any changes to the existing ASP.NET binaries, and thus does not cause any compatibility issues with existing projects. New projects will contain the new functionality and existing projects can be updated with the new NuGet packages. Summary Web development is changing, and ASP.NET is rapidly delivering new capabilities to developers that help them take full advantage of new capabilities.  The ASP.NET and Web Tools 2012.2 update installs in minutes without altering the current ASP.NET run time components. For a complete description see the Release Notes. Next week I plan to publish a tutorial showing how to build a cool Facebook application using the new Facebook template. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu

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  • MvcExtensions - PerRequestTask

    - by kazimanzurrashid
    In the previous post, we have seen the BootstrapperTask which executes when the application starts and ends, similarly there are times when we need to execute some custom logic when a request starts and ends. Usually, for this kind of scenario we create HttpModule and hook the begin and end request events. There is nothing wrong with this approach, except HttpModules are not at all IoC containers friendly, also defining the HttpModule execution order is bit cumbersome, you either have to modify the machine.config or clear the HttpModules and add it again in web.config. Instead, you can use the PerRequestTask which is very much container friendly as well as supports execution orders. Lets few examples where it can be used. Remove www Subdomain Lets say we want to remove the www subdomain, so that if anybody types http://www.mydomain.com it will automatically redirects to http://mydomain.com. public class RemoveWwwSubdomain : PerRequestTask { public RemoveWww() { Order = DefaultOrder - 1; } protected override TaskContinuation ExecuteCore(PerRequestExecutionContext executionContext) { const string Prefix = "http://www."; Check.Argument.IsNotNull(executionContext, "executionContext"); HttpContextBase httpContext = executionContext.HttpContext; string url = httpContext.Request.Url.ToString(); bool startsWith3W = url.StartsWith(Prefix, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase); bool shouldContinue = true; if (startsWith3W) { string newUrl = "http://" + url.Substring(Prefix.Length); HttpResponseBase response = httpContext.Response; response.StatusCode = (int)HttpStatusCode.MovedPermanently; response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently"; response.RedirectLocation = newUrl; response.SuppressContent = true; shouldContinue = false; } return shouldContinue ? TaskContinuation.Continue : TaskContinuation.Break; } } As you can see, first, we are setting the order so that we do not have to execute the remaining tasks of the chain when we are redirecting, next in the ExecuteCore, we checking the whether www is present, if present we are sending a permanently moved http status code and breaking the task execution chain otherwise we are continuing with the chain. Blocking IP Address Lets take another scenario, your application is hosted in a shared hosting environment where you do not have the permission to change the IIS setting and you want to block certain IP addresses from visiting your application. Lets say, you maintain a list of IP address in database/xml files which you want to block, you have a IBannedIPAddressRepository service which is used to match banned IP Address. public class BlockRestrictedIPAddress : PerRequestTask { protected override TaskContinuation ExecuteCore(PerRequestExecutionContext executionContext) { bool shouldContinue = true; HttpContextBase httpContext = executionContext.HttpContext; if (!httpContext.Request.IsLocal) { string ipAddress = httpContext.Request.UserHostAddress; HttpResponseBase httpResponse = httpContext.Response; if (executionContext.ServiceLocator.GetInstance<IBannedIPAddressRepository>().IsMatching(ipAddress)) { httpResponse.StatusCode = (int)HttpStatusCode.Forbidden; httpResponse.StatusDescription = "IPAddress blocked."; shouldContinue = false; } } return shouldContinue ? TaskContinuation.Continue : TaskContinuation.Break; } } Managing Database Session Now, let see how it can be used to manage NHibernate session, assuming that ISessionFactory of NHibernate is already registered in our container. public class ManageNHibernateSession : PerRequestTask { private ISession session; protected override TaskContinuation ExecuteCore(PerRequestExecutionContext executionContext) { ISessionFactory factory = executionContext.ServiceLocator.GetInstance<ISessionFactory>(); session = factory.OpenSession(); return TaskContinuation.Continue; } protected override void DisposeCore() { session.Close(); session.Dispose(); } } As you can see PerRequestTask can be used to execute small and precise tasks in the begin/end request, certainly if you want to execute other than begin/end request there is no other alternate of HttpModule. That’s it for today, in the next post, we will discuss about the Action Filters, so stay tuned.

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  • C++ Little Wonders: The C++11 auto keyword redux

    - by James Michael Hare
    I’ve decided to create a sub-series of my Little Wonders posts to focus on C++.  Just like their C# counterparts, these posts will focus on those features of the C++ language that can help improve code by making it easier to write and maintain.  The index of the C# Little Wonders can be found here. This has been a busy week with a rollout of some new website features here at my work, so I don’t have a big post for this week.  But I wanted to write something up, and since lately I’ve been renewing my C++ skills in a separate project, it seemed like a good opportunity to start a C++ Little Wonders series.  Most of my development work still tends to focus on C#, but it was great to get back into the saddle and renew my C++ knowledge.  Today I’m going to focus on a new feature in C++11 (formerly known as C++0x, which is a major move forward in the C++ language standard).  While this small keyword can seem so trivial, I feel it is a big step forward in improving readability in C++ programs. The auto keyword If you’ve worked on C++ for a long time, you probably have some passing familiarity with the old auto keyword as one of those rarely used C++ keywords that was almost never used because it was the default. That is, in the code below (before C++11): 1: int foo() 2: { 3: // automatic variables (allocated and deallocated on stack) 4: int x; 5: auto int y; 6:  7: // static variables (retain their value across calls) 8: static int z; 9:  10: return 0; 11: } The variable x is assumed to be auto because that is the default, thus it is unnecessary to specify it explicitly as in the declaration of y below that.  Basically, an auto variable is one that is allocated and de-allocated on the stack automatically.  Contrast this to static variables, that are allocated statically and exist across the lifetime of the program. Because auto was so rarely (if ever) used since it is the norm, they decided to remove it for this purpose and give it new meaning in C++11.  The new meaning of auto: implicit typing Now, if your compiler supports C++ 11 (or at least a good subset of C++11 or 0x) you can take advantage of type inference in C++.  For those of you from the C# world, this means that the auto keyword in C++ now behaves a lot like the var keyword in C#! For example, many of us have had to declare those massive type declarations for an iterator before.  Let’s say we have a std::map of std::string to int which will map names to ages: 1: std::map<std::string, int> myMap; And then let’s say we want to find the age of a given person: 1: // Egad that's a long type... 2: std::map<std::string, int>::const_iterator pos = myMap.find(targetName); Notice that big ugly type definition to declare variable pos?  Sure, we could shorten this by creating a typedef of our specific map type if we wanted, but now with the auto keyword there’s no need: 1: // much shorter! 2: auto pos = myMap.find(targetName); The auto now tells the compiler to determine what type pos should be based on what it’s being assigned to.  This is not dynamic typing, it still determines the type as if it were explicitly declared and once declared that type cannot be changed.  That is, this is invalid: 1: // x is type int 2: auto x = 42; 3:  4: // can't assign string to int 5: x = "Hello"; Once the compiler determines x is type int it is exactly as if we typed int x = 42; instead, so don’t' confuse it with dynamic typing, it’s still very type-safe. An interesting feature of the auto keyword is that you can modify the inferred type: 1: // declare method that returns int* 2: int* GetPointer(); 3:  4: // p1 is int*, auto inferred type is int 5: auto *p1 = GetPointer(); 6:  7: // ps is int*, auto inferred type is int* 8: auto p2 = GetPointer(); Notice in both of these cases, p1 and p2 are determined to be int* but in each case the inferred type was different.  because we declared p1 as auto *p1 and GetPointer() returns int*, it inferred the type int was needed to complete the declaration.  In the second case, however, we declared p2 as auto p2 which means the inferred type was int*.  Ultimately, this make p1 and p2 the same type, but which type is inferred makes a difference, if you are chaining multiple inferred declarations together.  In these cases, the inferred type of each must match the first: 1: // Type inferred is int 2: // p1 is int* 3: // p2 is int 4: // p3 is int& 5: auto *p1 = GetPointer(), p2 = 42, &p3 = p2; Note that this works because the inferred type was int, if the inferred type was int* instead: 1: // syntax error, p1 was inferred to be int* so p2 and p3 don't make sense 2: auto p1 = GetPointer(), p2 = 42, &p3 = p2; You could also use const or static to modify the inferred type: 1: // inferred type is an int, theAnswer is a const int 2: const auto theAnswer = 42; 3:  4: // inferred type is double, Pi is a static double 5: static auto Pi = 3.1415927; Thus in the examples above it inferred the types int and double respectively, which were then modified to const and static. Summary The auto keyword has gotten new life in C++11 to allow you to infer the type of a variable from it’s initialization.  This simple little keyword can be used to cut down large declarations for complex types into a much more readable form, where appropriate.   Technorati Tags: C++, C++11, Little Wonders, auto

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  • An MCM exam, Rob? Really?

    - by Rob Farley
    I took the SQL 2008 MCM Knowledge exam while in Seattle for the PASS Summit ten days ago. I wasn’t planning to do it, but I got persuaded to try. I was meaning to write this post to explain myself before the result came out, but it seems I didn’t get typing quickly enough. Those of you who know me will know I’m a big fan of certification, to a point. I’ve been involved with Microsoft Learning to help create exams. I’ve kept my certifications current since I first took an exam back in 1998, sitting many in beta, across quite a variety of topics. I’ve probably become quite good at them – I know I’ve definitely passed some that I really should’ve failed. I’ve also written that I don’t think exams are worth studying for. (That’s probably not entirely true, but it depends on your motivation. If you’re doing learning, I would encourage you to focus on what you need to know to do your job better. That will help you pass an exam – but the two skills are very different. I can coach someone on how to pass an exam, but that’s a different kind of teaching when compared to coaching someone about how to do a job. For example, the real world includes a lot of “it depends”, where you develop a feel for what the influencing factors might be. In an exam, its better to be able to know some of the “Don’t use this technology if XYZ is true” concepts better.) As for the Microsoft Certified Master certification… I’m not opposed to the idea of having the MCM (or in the future, MCSM) cert. But the barrier to entry feels quite high for me. When it was first introduced, the nearest testing centres to me were in Kuala Lumpur and Manila. Now there’s one in Perth, but that’s still a big effort. I know there are options in the US – such as one about an hour’s drive away from downtown Seattle, but it all just seems too hard. Plus, these exams are more expensive, and all up – I wasn’t sure I wanted to try them, particularly with the fact that I don’t like to study. I used to study for exams. It would drive my wife crazy. I’d have some exam scheduled for some time in the future (like the time I had two booked for two consecutive days at TechEd Australia 2005), and I’d make sure I was ready. Every waking moment would be spent pouring over exam material, and it wasn’t healthy. I got shaken out of that, though, when I ended up taking four exams in those two days in 2005 and passed them all. I also worked out that if I had a Second Shot available, then failing wasn’t a bad thing at all. Even without Second Shot, I’m much more okay about failing. But even just trying an MCM exam is a big effort. I wouldn’t want to fail one of them. Plus there’s the illusion to maintain. People have told me for a long time that I should just take the MCM exams – that I’d pass no problem. I’ve never been so sure. It was almost becoming a pride-point. Perhaps I should fail just to demonstrate that I can fail these things. Anyway – boB Taylor (@sqlboBT) persuaded me to try the SQL 2008 MCM Knowledge exam at the PASS Summit. They set up a testing centre in one of the room there, so it wasn’t out of my way at all. I had to squeeze it in between other commitments, and I certainly didn’t have time to even see what was on the syllabus, let alone study. In fact, I was so exhausted from the week that I fell asleep at least once (just for a moment though) during the actual exam. Perhaps the questions need more jokes, I’m not sure. I knew if I failed, then I might disappoint some people, but that I wouldn’t’ve spent a great deal of effort in trying to pass. On the other hand, if I did pass I’d then be under pressure to investigate the MCM Lab exam, which can be taken remotely (therefore, a much smaller amount of effort to make happen). In some ways, passing could end up just putting a bunch more pressure on me. Oh, and I did.

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  • Code Metrics: Number of IL Instructions

    - by DigiMortal
    In my previous posting about code metrics I introduced how to measure LoC (Lines of Code) in .NET applications. Now let’s take a step further and let’s take a look how to measure compiled code. This way we can somehow have a picture about what compiler produces. In this posting I will introduce you code metric called number of IL instructions. NB! Number of IL instructions is not something you can use to measure productivity of your team. If you want to get better idea about the context of this metric and LoC then please read my first posting about LoC. What are IL instructions? When code written in some .NET Framework language is compiled then compiler produces assemblies that contain byte code. These assemblies are executed later by Common Language Runtime (CLR) that is code execution engine of .NET Framework. The byte code is called Intermediate Language (IL) – this is more common language than C# and VB.NET by example. You can use ILDasm tool to convert assemblies to IL assembler so you can read them. As IL instructions are building blocks of all .NET Framework binary code these instructions are smaller and highly general – we don’t want very rich low level language because it executes slower than more general language. For every method or property call in some .NET Framework language corresponds set of IL instructions. There is no 1:1 relationship between line in high level language and line in IL assembler. There are more IL instructions than lines in C# code by example. How much instructions there are? I have no common answer because it really depends on your code. Here you can see some metrics from my current community project that is developed on SharePoint Server 2007. As average I have about 7 IL instructions per line of code. This is not metric you should use, it is just illustrative example so you can see the differences between numbers of lines and IL instructions. Why should I measure the number of IL instructions? Just take a look at chart above. Compiler does something that you cannot see – it compiles your code to IL. This is not intuitive process because you usually cannot say what is exactly the end result. You know it at greater plain but you don’t know it exactly. Therefore we can expect some surprises and that’s why we should measure the number of IL instructions. By example, you may find better solution for some method in your source code. It looks nice, it works nice and everything seems to be okay. But on server under load your fix may be way slower than previous code. Although you minimized the number of lines of code it ended up with increasing the number of IL instructions. How to measure the number of IL instructions? My choice is NDepend because Visual Studio is not able to measure this metric. Steps to make are easy. Open your NDepend project or create new and add all your application assemblies to project (you can also add Visual Studio solution to project). Run project analysis and wait until it is done. You can see over-all stats form global summary window. This is the same window I used to read the LoC and the number of IL instructions metrics for my chart. Meanwhile I made some changes to my code (enabled advanced caching for events and event registrations module) and then I ran code analysis again to get results for this section of this posting. NDepend is also able to tell you exactly what parts of code have problematically much IL instructions. The code quality section of CQL Query Explorer shows you how much problems there are with members in analyzed code. If you click on the line Methods too big (NbILInstructions) you can see all the problematic members of classes in CQL Explorer shown in image on right. In my case if have 10 methods that are too big and two of them have horrible number of IL instructions – just take a look at first two methods in this TOP10. Also note the query box. NDepend has easy and SQL-like query language to query code analysis results. You can modify these queries if you like and also you can define your own ones if default set is not enough for you. What is good result? As you can see from query window then the number of IL instructions per member should have maximally 200 IL instructions. Of course, like always, the less instructions you have, the better performing code you have. I don’t mean here little differences but big ones. By example, take a look at my first method in warnings list. The number of IL instructions it has is huge. And believe me – this method looks awful. Conclusion The number of IL instructions is useful metric when optimizing your code. For analyzing code at general level to find out too long methods you can use the number of LoC metric because it is more intuitive for you and you can therefore handle the situation more easily. Also you can use NDepend as code metrics tool because it has a lot of metrics to offer.

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  • Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition Recap and Photos

    - by Brian Jackett
    If you’ve noticed my blogging activity has reduced in frequency and technical content lately it’s primarily due to all of the conferences I’ve been attending, speaking at, or planning in the past few months.  This past Friday myself and six other dedicated individuals put on Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition as the culmination of a few months of hard work.  For those unfamiliar, Stir Trek is a web developer conference that was founded last year as an event to showcase content from Microsoft’s MIX conference and end the day with a private showing of the then just-released Star Trek movie.  This year’s conference expanded from 2 to 4 content tracks and upped the number of tickets from 350 to 600.  Even more amazing was the fact that we had 592 people show up day of the event for the lowest drop-off percentage of any conference I’ve been to before.   Nerd Dinner and Swag Bags     The night before Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition we hosted a nerd dinner at the Polaris Shopping mall food court with about 30 in attendance.  Nerd dinners are a great time to meet others passionate about technology and socialize before the whirlwind of the conference hits.  After the nerd dinner 20+ volunteers headed to the conference location and helped us stuff swag bags.  This in and of itself was a monumental task of putting together 600 swag bags with numerous leaflets, sponsor items, and t-shirts.  A big thanks goes out to all who assisted us that night so that we could finish in just under 2 hours instead of taking all night.  My sleep schedule also thanks you. Morning of Stir Trek     After getting a decent amount of sleep I arrived at Marcus Crosswoods theater at 6am to begin setting up for the day.  Myself and Jody Morgan were in charge of registration so we got tables set up, laid out swag bags, and organized our volunteer crew to assist with checking-in attendees.  Despite having 600+ people registration went fairly smoothly and got the day off to a great start.  I especially appreciated the 3+ cups of coffee from Crimson Cup, a local coffee shop.  For any of you that know me you’ll know that I rarely drink coffee except a few times a year when I really need the energy, so that says a lot about how good their coffee is.   Conference Starts     Once registration was completed the day kicked off with Molly Holzschlag keynoting.  Unfortunately Molly suffered from an ear infection and wasn’t able to fly so she had a virtual keynote and a session later in the day.  I was working behind the scenes on various tasks so I was only able to drop in very briefly on the keynote and rest of the morning sessions.  Throughout the day I tried to grab at least 1 or 2 pics of each presenter.  See my album below for the full set of pics.      For lunch we ordered around 150 pizzas from Mellow Mushroom, a local pizza place (notice the theme of supporting local businesses.)  Early on we were concerned about Mellow Mushroom being able to supply that many pizzas and get them delivered (still hot) to the theater, but they did an excellent job day of the event.  I wish I had gotten some pictures of the old school VW van they delivered the pizza in, but I was just a bit busy running around trying to get theaters ready for lunch.  We had attendees from last year who specifically requested that we have Mellow Mushroom supply lunch this year and I’m glad everything worked out being able to use them again.     During the afternoon I was able to attend a few sessions and hear some great content from various speakers.  It was also nice to just sit down and get off my feet for a bit.  After the last sessions the day concluded with a raffle.  There were a few logistical and technical issues that hampered our ability to smoothly conduct the raffle.  To those of you that agree the raffle wasn’t the smoothest experience I would like to say that the Stir Trek planning committee has already begun meeting to discuss ways of improving the conference for next year.  We are also accepting feedback (both positive and negative) at the following link: click here.  If you don’t wish to use the Joind In site you can also email me directly and I’ll be sure to pass along the feedback.   Iron Man 2 Movie     Last but not least, what Stir Trek event would be complete without the feature movie.  This year’s movie was Iron Man 2.  The theater had some really cool props and promotions (see pic below) for the movie.  I really enjoyed Iron Man 2, but I would recommend brushing up on the Iron Man comics and Marvel’s plans for future movies to understand some of the plot elements that come up.  Also make sure you stay through to the end of the movie credits to see a sneak peak of something special, that’s all I’ll say. Conclusion     Again a big thanks goes out to all of the speakers, sponsors, attendees, movie theater staff, volunteers, and everyone else involved in making this event great.  Also big thanks to my fellow Stir Trek planning committee members: Jeff Blankenburg, Matt Casto, Carey Payette, Jody Morgan, Rick Kierner, and Sarah Dutkiewitcz.  I am grateful for everything I learned while helping plan this event and look forward to being involved again next year.  For those interested we are currently targeting Thor as our movie theme for 2011 and then The Avengers for 2012.  These are tentative based on release dates that could shift as we get closer, but for now look solid.   Photos Pics on Facebook (includes tagging)     Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition photos on Facebook Pics on Live site (higher res)      View Full Album         -Frog Out

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