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  • Nginx + Haproxy + Thin + Rails - 503 Service Unavailable -

    - by Luca G. Soave
    I don't know how troubleshoot this. I get "503 Service Unavailable" http error for all "nginx upstreams" proxy passing calls to haproxy fast_thin and slow_thin ( server 127.0.0.1:3100 and server 127.0.0.1:3200 ), which loadbalance on 6 Thin servers ( 127.0.0.1:3000 .. 3005 ). Static files like /blog are currently fine. The falldown is: nginx on port 80 - haproxy on 3100 and 3200 - thin on 3000 .. 3005 and then Rails. Here it is /etc/nginx/nginx.conf : user nginx; worker_processes 2; pid /var/run/nginx.pid; events { worker_connections 1024; } http { include /etc/nginx/mime.types; default_type application/octet-stream; log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" ' '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" ' '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"'; sendfile on; tcp_nopush on; keepalive_timeout 65; tcp_nodelay on; include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf; } then /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf upstream fast_thin { server 127.0.0.1:3100; } upstream slow_thin { server 127.0.0.1:3200; } server { listen 80; server_name www.gitwatcher.com; rewrite ^/(.*) http://gitwatcher.com/$1 permanent; } server { listen 80; server_name gitwatcher.com; access_log /var/www/gitwatcher/log/access.log; error_log /var/www/gitwatcher/log/error.log; root /var/www/gitwatcher/public; # index index.html; location /about { proxy_pass http://fast_thin; break; } location /trends { proxy_pass http://slow_thin; break; } location /categories { proxy_pass http://slow_thin; break; } location /signout { proxy_pass http://slow_thin; break; } location /auth/github { proxy_pass http://slow_thin; break; } location / { proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; proxy_set_header Host $http_host; proxy_redirect off; if (-f $request_filename/index.html) { rewrite (.*) $1/index.html break; } if (-f $request_filename.html) { rewrite (.*) $1.html break; } if (!-f $request_filename) { proxy_pass http://slow_thin; break; } } } then haproxy config file /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg : global log 127.0.0.1 local0 log 127.0.0.1 local1 notice #log loghost local0 info maxconn 4096 #chroot /usr/share/haproxy user haproxy group haproxy daemon #debug #quiet nbproc 1 # number of processing cores defaults log global retries 3 maxconn 2000 contimeout 5000 mode http clitimeout 60000 # maximum inactivity time on the client side srvtimeout 30000 # maximum inactivity time on the server side timeout connect 4000 # maximum time to wait for a connection attempt to a server to succeed option httplog option dontlognull option redispatch option httpclose # disable keepalive (HAProxy does not yet support the HTTP keep-alive mode) option abortonclose # enable early dropping of aborted requests from pending queue option httpchk # enable HTTP protocol to check on servers health option forwardfor # enable insert of X-Forwarded-For headers balance roundrobin # each server is used in turns, according to assigned weight stats enable # enable web-stats at /haproxy?stats stats auth haproxy:pr0xystats # force HTTP Auth to view stats stats refresh 5s # refresh rate of stats page listen rails_proxy 127.0.0.1:3100 # - equal weights on all servers # - maxconn will queue requests at HAProxy if limit is reached # - minconn dynamically scales the connection concurrency (bound my maxconn) depending on size of HAProxy queue # - check health every 20000 microseconds server web1 127.0.0.1:3000 weight 1 minconn 3 maxconn 6 check inter 20000 server web1 127.0.0.1:3001 weight 1 minconn 3 maxconn 6 check inter 20000 server web1 127.0.0.1:3002 weight 1 minconn 3 maxconn 6 check inter 20000 listen slow_proxy 127.0.0.1:3200 # cluster for slow requests, lower the queues, check less frequently server slow1 127.0.0.1:3003 weight 1 minconn 1 maxconn 3 check inter 40000 server slow2 127.0.0.1:3004 weight 1 minconn 1 maxconn 3 check inter 40000 server slow3 127.0.0.1:3005 weight 1 minconn 1 maxconn 3 check inter 40000 and the Thin config file /etc/thin/gitwatcher.yml : --- chdir: /var/www/gitwatcher environment: production address: 0.0.0.0 port: 3000 timeout: 30 log: log/thin.log pid: tmp/pids/thin.pid max_conns: 1024 max_persistent_conns: 100 require: [] wait: 30 servers: 6 daemonize: true if I look into open listen ports, I got the following : root@fullness:/var/www/gitwatcher# lsof | grep TCP | egrep "nginx|haproxy|thin" nginx 834 root 8u IPv4 921 0t0 TCP *:http (LISTEN) nginx 835 nginx 8u IPv4 921 0t0 TCP *:http (LISTEN) nginx 837 nginx 8u IPv4 921 0t0 TCP *:http (LISTEN) haproxy 1908 haproxy 4u IPv4 11699 0t0 TCP localhost:3100 (LISTEN) haproxy 1908 haproxy 6u IPv4 11701 0t0 TCP localhost:3200 (LISTEN) root@fullness:/var/www/gitwatcher# iptables -L get me the following : Chain INPUT (policy DROP) target prot opt source destination ACCEPT all -- anywhere anywhere state RELATED,ESTABLISHED ACCEPT all -- anywhere anywhere state RELATED,ESTABLISHED ACCEPT tcp -- anywhere anywhere tcp dpt:22222 ACCEPT tcp -- anywhere anywhere tcp dpt:http ACCEPT tcp -- anywhere anywhere tcp dpt:https ACCEPT all -- anywhere anywhere DROP all -- anywhere anywhere Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT) target prot opt source destination Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT) target prot opt source destination ACCEPT all -- anywhere anywhere Any help ?

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  • Installing Windows on HP Proliant Servers without SmartStart

    - by Fitzroy
    I have a PXE server for deploying Windows XP and Windows 7 to workstations. The process is as follows: Boot the workstation from the NIC. Workstation sends a DHCP request. DHCP server responds with an IP address and the location of the PXE server. Workstation downloads WinPE image file from PXE server via TFTP Workstation stores WinPE image file in memory and executes it. Once booted into WinPE, I connect to a network share to gain access to either the Windows XP or Windows 7 installation files. A custom script is launched to guide you through the process of formatting and partitioning the hard drive(s) (using DISKPART and FORMAT). Another custom script asks for details such as the hostname to assign to the workstation. The answers provided are used to build an unattended answer file (SIF [Setup Information File] for WinXP and XML for Win7). The Windows setup EXE is launched, passing the unattended answer file to it as a parameter. The Windows XP and Windows 7 installation sources have been customised to include the drivers for our Dell workstations. They also run a number of scripts upon first booting up to install software packages. This process works very well for our workstations and I would now like to use it for building our servers too. The vast majority of our servers are HP Proliant DL360 G6, DL380 G5 and DL380 G6. They’re running Windows Server 2003 (various editions) or 2008 (various editions). To date, we have always built the HP Proliant servers using the SmartStart CD provided. SmartStart does three useful things for us: Setup RAID with HP Array Configuration Utility (ACU). Installs and configures SNMP Installs various HP Tools for Windows (HP Array Configuration Utility, HP Array Diagnostic Utility, HP Proliant Integrated Management Log Viewer, etc) Using SmartStart I have never had to manually download and install Windows drivers for network, sound, video, etc. I'm not sure if this is because SmartStart copies drivers from the CD during setup, or whether Windows just has the drivers natively in its driver CAB. If I abandon the SmartStart CD in favour of my PXE server I would have to do the following: As I wont have access to ACU, I'll configure the RAID (before booting to the PXE server) by pressing F8 (during the boot process) to access Option ROM Configuration for Arrays (ORCA). Installation of SNMP and the HP Tools will have to be installed once the Windows installation is complete using the Proliant Support Pack. Is this method OK? Is there anything that the SmartStart CD does that I'll be unable to do by other means? Are there any disadvantages to not using the SmartStart CD? Many thanks. UPDATE 05/01/12 I’ve been reading through the SmartStart Scripting Toolkit documentation. The scripting toolkit contains command line tools which work within WinPE and can such things as configure BIOS settings, configure an array and setup ILO. I’m personally not too bothered about configuring BIOS settings as I rarely deviate from the defaults (unless the server is to be a Hyper-V host). I’m not too fussed about being able to configure the array from within WinPE, as I’m happy to just press F8 and use Option ROM Configuration for Arrays (ORCA). Although, if it’s easy enough to do, I will explore this further, as it saves time if everything can be configured from within WinPE. One of the nice features all the tools possess is that you can pass input files to them. EG. Configure one server to your requirements, capture its configuration to a file (using the appropriate tool), you can then use the tool on other servers passing the input file with the captured configuration. Array controller drivers appear to be included with the toolkit along with example of how to incorporate them within a WinPE build. I suppose WinPE won’t be able to see logical volumes (I.E 2x physical disks in a RAID 1 configuration) without the array controller drivers? I mentioned in my post that SmartStart normally installs a bunch of Windows HP tools for you. I’ve had a look today, and if you run the SmartStart CD from within Windows all the tools can be installed. Therefore I can do this after the Windows installation is complete. The SmartStart CD appears to contain a lot Windows drivers. I can customise my Windows 2008 source to incorporate these drivers. However, I understand that incorporating an array controller driver is a little different to most drivers. I believe that you have to provide the driver during the very early stages of the Windows setup. I’m working through the Scripting Toolkit documentation to try and work this out...

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  • Bad disks in ancient server

    - by Joel Coel
    I have a 1998-era Netware 3.12 server that runs everything on our campus: general ledger, purchasing, payroll, student information, grades, you name it. The server has an Adaptec RAID controller with two volumes: RAID 1, 2 17GB scsi disks, Seagate ST318417W RAID 5, 3 4GB scsi disks, 2 Seagate ST34573W and 1 ST34572W. We are currently in the early stages of a project to replace this system, but you don't just jump into a new system like that and so I need to keep this server running until at least November 2011. This week we had not one but two hard drives fail. Thankfully they are from different volumes and we're able to keep running for the moment, but given the close nature of these failures I have serious doubts that I'll be able to avoid catastrophic failure from this server through the November target as is without restoring the RAID redundancy — it'll only take one more drive failure anywhere and I'm completely hosed. We are fortunate enough to have exact match "spares" lying around for both drives, but the spares are in unknown condition. I tried swapping just them in, but the RAID controller isn't smart enough to handle this and it renders the system unbootable. As for the RAID controller itself, there is utility I can get into during POST via a Ctrl-A shortcut, but I can't do much useful from there. To actually manage volumes I must first boot in to Netware, at which point I can use CI/O Array Management Software Version 2.0 to actually look at volume information. I suspect that the normal way to manage things is to boot from a special floppy with the controller software on it, but that floppy is long gone. Going through the options in the RAID software, I think the only supported way to replace a disk in an existing RAID volume is to physically add the disk, boot up and configure it as a "spare" for a volume, force the volume to use the spare to replace an existing down disk (and at this point I'm only guessing) so that the down disk becomes the spare, repair the volume, remove the spare from the volume, and then shut down and remove the disk. Then start all over for the other failed disk. All this amounts to a lot of downtime, assuming I can even make it work and that my spares are any good. As for finding reliable spares, I have no clue where to even begin looking to find a new 4GB scsi drive, or even which exact scsi system I'm looking for, as it's gone through a few different iterations over time. Another option is to migrate this to a virtual machine (hyper-v), but all previous attempts we've made in this area have failed to get very far. When this machine was installed I was just graduating from high school, and so it requires lower level knowledge of netware and dos than I ever developed, or if I did have since forgotten (I'm not exactly a dos neophyte, either). Part of my problem is this is a high-use server, and taking it down for a few days to figure things out isn't gonna fly very well. As for the question, I'm looking for anything that might be helpful in this situation: a recommendation on a place to find good spares from this era, personal experience repairing RAID volumes using a similar controller or building a hyper-v vm from an old netware server, a line on a floppy with better software for the RAID controller, recommendation on a good Novell consultant in Nebraska that would be able to put things right, a whole other option I haven't considered yet, etc. Update: For backups, we have good (recently verified via restore) backups of the data only -- nothing for the software that actually runs things. Update 2: Just a progress report that I currently have a working Netware 3.12 install in VMWare Virtual Server 2.0, thanks largely to the guide I found here: http://cerbulescubogdan.blogspot.com/2010/11/novell-netware-312-on-vmware.html The next steps are preparing empty netware volumes to match the additional volumes on my existing server, taking a dump of everything on the C:\ drive and netware volumes on my existing server, and figuring out from that information what modules need added to netware, installing my licenses (we do still have that disk, if it's any good), and moving data over. I have approval to bring the server down for a week after the first of the year (sadly not before), so, aside from creating empty volumes, the rest of the work will have to wait until then. Final Update (Jan 5, 2011): I was able to get spares working in both raid arrays without data loss this week. Both are now listed by the controller as "FAULT TOLLERANT" (yay!). I was also able to build on the progress from my last update and now have a functional "spare" server in VMWare Server 2.0. The spare can run and use our erp software, but I can't put it into production because I can't (yet) print from that box (and I have no idea why). Even so, this VM will do in a pinch if I have no other choice, and between it and the repaired RAID arrays I'm comfortable pushing on until I can junk the machine in November.

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  • Small performance test on a web service

    - by vtortola
    Hi, I'm trying to develop a small application that test how many requests per second can my service support but I think I'm doing something wrong. The service is in an early development stage, but I'd like to have this test handy in order to check in time to time I'm not doing something that decrease the performance. The problem is that I cannot get the web server or the database server go to the 100% of CPU. I'm using three different computers, in one is the web server (WinSrv Standard 2008 x64 IIS7), in other the database (Win 2K - SQL Server 2005) and the last is my computer (Win7 x64 ultimate), where I'll run the test. The computers are connected through a 100 ethernet switch. The request POST is 9 bytes and the response will be 842 bytes. The test launches several threads, and each thread has a "while" loop, in each loop it creates a WebRequest object, performs a call, increment a common counter and waits between 1 and 5 millisencods, then it do it again: static Int32 counter = 0; static void Main(string[] args) { ServicePointManager.DefaultConnectionLimit = 250; Console.WriteLine("Ready. Press any key..."); Console.ReadKey(); Console.WriteLine("Running..."); String localhost = "localhost"; String linuxmono = "192.168.1.74"; String server= "192.168.1.5:8080"; DateTime start = DateTime.Now; Random r = new Random(DateTime.Now.Millisecond); for (int i = 0; i < 50; i++) { new Thread(new ParameterizedThreadStart(Test)).Start(server); Thread.Sleep(r.Next(1, 3)); } Thread.Sleep(2000); while (true) { Console.WriteLine("Request per second :" + counter/DateTime.Now.Subtract(start).TotalSeconds ); Thread.Sleep(3000); } } public static void Test(Object ip) { Guid guid = Guid.NewGuid(); Random r = new Random(DateTime.Now.Millisecond); while (true) { String test = "<lalala/>"; WebRequest req = WebRequest.Create("http://" + (String)ip + "/WebApp/"+guid.ToString()+"/Data/Tables=whatever"); req.Method = "POST"; req.ContentType = "application/xml"; req.Credentials = new NetworkCredential("aaa", "aaa","domain"); Byte[] array = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(test); req.ContentLength = array.Length; using (Stream reqStream = req.GetRequestStream()) { reqStream.Write(array, 0, array.Length); reqStream.Close(); } using (Stream responseStream = req.GetResponse().GetResponseStream()) { String response = new StreamReader(responseStream).ReadToEnd(); if (response.Length != 842) Console.Write(" EEEE "); } Interlocked.Increment(ref counter); Thread.Sleep(r.Next(1,5)); } } If I run the test neither of the computers do an excesive CPU usage. Let's say I get a X requests per second, if I run the console application two times at the same moment, I get X/2 request per second in each one... but still the web server is on 30% of CPU, the database server on 25%... I've tried to remove the thread.sleep in the loop, but it doesn't make a big difference. I'd like to put the machines to the maximun, to check how may requests per second they can provide. I guessed that I could do it in this way... but apparently I'm missing something here... What is the problem? Kind regards.

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  • Point in polygon OR point on polygon using LINQ

    - by wageoghe
    As noted in an earlier question, How to Zip enumerable with itself, I am working on some math algorithms based on lists of points. I am currently working on point in polygon. I have the code for how to do that and have found several good references here on SO, such as this link Hit test. So, I can figure out whether or not a point is in a polygon. As part of determining that, I want to determine if the point is actually on the polygon. This I can also do. If I can do all of that, what is my question you might ask? Can I do it efficiently using LINQ? I can already do something like the following (assuming a Pairwise extension method as described in my earlier question as well as in links to which my question/answers links, and assuming a Position type that has X and Y members). I have not tested much, so the lambda might not be 100% correct. Also, it does not take very small differences into account. public static PointInPolygonLocation PointInPolygon(IEnumerable<Position> pts, Position pt) { int numIntersections = pts.Pairwise( (p1, p2) => { if (p1.Y != p2.Y) { if ((p1.Y >= pt.Y && p2.Y < pt.Y) || (p1.Y < pt.Y && p2.Y >= pt.Y)) { if (p1.X < p1.X && p2.X < pt.X) { return 1; } if (p1.X < pt.X || p2.X < pt.X) { if (((pt.Y - p1.Y) * ((p1.X - p2.X) / (p1.Y - p2.Y)) * p1.X) < pt.X) { return 1; } } } } return 0; }).Sum(); if (numIntersections % 2 == 0) { return PointInPolygonLocation.Outside; } else { return PointInPolygonLocation.Inside; } } This function, PointInPolygon, takes the input Position, pt, iterates over the input sequence of position values, and uses the Jordan Curve method to determine how many times a ray extended from pt to the left intersects the polygon. The lambda expression will yield, into the "zipped" list, 1 for every segment that is crossed, and 0 for the rest. The sum of these values determines if pt is inside or outside of the polygon (odd == inside, even == outside). So far, so good. Now, for any consecutive pairs of position values in the sequence (i.e. in any execution of the lambda), we can also determine if pt is ON the segment p1, p2. If that is the case, we can stop the calculation because we have our answer. Ultimately, my question is this: Can I perform this calculation (maybe using Aggregate?) such that we will only iterate over the sequence no more than 1 time AND can we stop the iteration if we encounter a segment that pt is ON? In other words, if pt is ON the very first segment, there is no need to examine the rest of the segments because we have the answer. It might very well be that this operation (particularly the requirement/desire to possibly stop the iteration early) does not really lend itself well to the LINQ approach. It just occurred to me that maybe the lambda expression could yield a tuple, the intersection value (1 or 0 or maybe true or false) and the "on" value (true or false). Maybe then I could use TakeWhile(anontype.PointOnPolygon == false). If I Sum the tuples and if ON == 1, then the point is ON the polygon. Otherwise, the oddness or evenness of the sum of the other part of the tuple tells if the point is inside or outside.

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  • W3WP crashes when initializing a collection

    - by asbjornu
    I've created an ASP.NET MVC application that has an initializer attached to the PreApplicationStartMethodAttribute. When initializing, a collection is instantiated that implements an interface I've defined. When I instantiate this collection, w3wp.exe crashes with the following two incomprehensible entries in the event log: Faulting application name: w3wp.exe, version: 7.5.7600.16385, time stamp: 0x4a5bd0eb Faulting module name: clr.dll, version: 4.0.30319.1, time stamp: 0x4ba21eeb Exception code: 0xc00000fd Fault offset: 0x0000000000001177 Faulting process id: 0x1348 Faulting application start time: 0x01cb0224882f4723 Faulting application path: c:\windows\system32\inetsrv\w3wp.exe Faulting module path: C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\clr.dll Report Id: c6a0941e-6e17-11df-864d-000acd16dcdb And: Fault bucket , type 0 Event Name: APPCRASH Response: Not available Cab Id: 0 Problem signature: P1: w3wp.exe P2: 7.5.7600.16385 P3: 4a5bd0eb P4: clr.dll P5: 4.0.30319.1 P6: 4ba21eeb P7: c00000fd P8: 0000000000001177 P9: P10: Attached files: These files may be available here: Analysis symbol: Rechecking for solution: 0 Report Id: c6a0941e-6e17-11df-864d-000acd16dcdb Report Status: 0 If I remove the instantiation of the collection, the application starts normally. If I leave the instantiation, w3wp crashes. If I modify the interface, w3wp still crashes. I've tried every variation I could come up with on the theme of keeping the instantiation but doing everything else differently, but w3wp still crashes. My biggest issue here is that I have absolutely no idea why w3wp is crashing. It's not a StackOverflowException or anything concrete like that, all I get is the unintelligent junk cited above. I've tried to use DebugDiag and IISState to debug the w3wp process, but DebugDiag is only available for post-dump analysis in x64 (I'm running on Windows 7 x64, so the w3wp process is thus 64 bit) and IISStat says the following when I try to run it: D:\Programs\iisstate>IISState.exe -p 9204 -d Symbol search path is: SRV*D:\Programs\iisstate\symbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols IISState is limited to processes associated with IIS. If you require a generic debugger, please use WinDBG or CDB. They are available for download from http://www.microsoft.com/ddk/debugging. This error may also occur if a debugger is already attached to the process being checked. Incorrect Process Attachment I've double-checked 10 times that the process ID of my w3wp process is correct. I'm suspecting that IISState too only can debug x86 processes. Setting a breakpoint anywhere in the application does absolutely nothing. The break point isn't hit and w3wp crashes as soon as the request comes through to IIS from the browser. Starting the application with F5 in Visual Studio 2010 or starting another application to get the w3wp process up and running and then attaching the VS2010 debugger to it and then visiting the faulting application doesn't help. I've also tried to add an HTTP module as described in KB-911816 as well as add this to my web.config file: <configuration> <runtime> <legacyUnhandledExceptionPolicy enabled="true" /> </runtime> </configuration> Needless to say, it makes absolutely no difference. So I'm left with no way to debug the w3wp process, no way to extract any information from it and complete garbage dumped in my event log. If anybody has any idea on how to debug this problem, please let me know! Update My collection was initialized based on RouteTable.Routes which might have thrown an exception (perhaps by not being initialized itself yet in such an early stage of the ASP.NET lifecycle). Postponing the communication with RouteTable.Routes until a later stage solved the problem. While I don't really need an answer to this question anymore, I still find it so obscure that I'll leave it for anyone to comment on and answer, because I found no existing posts on this problem anywhere, so it might be of good reference in the future.

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  • Diagramming Software for a Developer/Designer

    - by Craig Walker
    For a long time I've been looking for a good diagramming/vector-based drawing program that meets my needs as a developer. I'd like to: Draw database diagrams Draw flow charts Draw object-modeling diagrams (UML being the standard) Draw other free-form diagrams (basically boxes & arrows with the occasional clipart) Draw mockups of user interfaces and web pages EDIT: I want good-looking electronic-format diagrams that I can show to 3rd parties, not just something for my own internal use. EDIT 2: I'm also looking for Windows software, although I'm toying with the idea of switching to Mac, so a really good Mac-only product might get me to switch. Basically I need a good vector graphic program (with decent grouping, connecting lines, and ideally auto-routing). I'd prefer a diagramming tool that can also be used for drawing (for the UI mockups) rather than a drawing tool that can also be used for diagrams. I've tried Visio on several occasions, and every time I've been disappointed. The interface always seems to get in my way at some point. It's pretty close to what I want, and the latest version (I got the trail from MS) seems to be better than previous ones in terms of usability, but I really don't want to plunk down that sort of cash for a mediocre product. I've tried Dia and Inkscape, and while initially promising and with the right price tag, I found both of them to be lacking in several ways (including some recurring bugs). I've toyed with getting Adobe Illustrator, but I've never used it before, and I have a feeling that it wouldn't handle the diagramming aspect very well, and I don't want to buy a copy just to find out it doesn't meet my needs. So far, the product that I've had the most success with is, sadly, OpenOffice Draw. It's free of course (which lowers my expectations and thus improves my view of it) and its usability is pretty good, but in the end I'd like something more suited to diagramming. I'm willing to spend real money (in the $500-$1K range) for a really good piece of software if it does everything I want it to. The front runner is of course Visio but I'm hoping for more. Does anybody have any recommendations? CONCLUSION: @dlamblin had the most informative post, but the part I gained the most from was his/her (and others) mention of OmniGraffle, not Gliffy. I gave Gliffy a try, and it seemed neet for occational use, but since it's a Flash app (note: not AJAX as dlamblin mentioned) it's still a bit of a pain to use (no keyboard shortcuts for copy/paste was pretty much a deal breaker for me). I also tried SmartDraw, but it had 3-strikes-you're-out against it: The trial period was only 7 days long. It used some nonstandard (and visually jarring) GUI widget toolkit for its UI. At the very least it makes me suspicious (how do I know it will actually work & support the standard Windows features?) It crashed on me early into my trial. OmniGraffle looks like exactly what I want... except that it's Mac-only (so I couldn't give it a try). However, it got good reviews from my Mac-owning coworker, and I hope to try it on a friend's Mac soon. If it's good enough then I might spring for a new MacBook.

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  • Designing interfaces: predict methods needed, discipline yourself and deal with code that comes to m

    - by fireeyedboy
    Was: Design by contract: predict methods needed, discipline yourself and deal with code that comes to mind I like the idea of designing by contract a lot (at least, as far as I understand the principal). I believe it means you define intefaces first before you start implementing actual code, right? However, from my limited experience (3 OOP years now) I usually can't resist the urge to start coding pretty early, for several reasons: because my limited experience has shown me I am unable to predict what methods I will be needing in the interface, so I might as well start coding right away. or because I am simply too impatient to write out the whole interfaces first. or when I do try it, I still wind up implementing bits of code already, because I fear I might forget this or that imporant bit of code, that springs to mind when I am designing the interfaces. As you see, especially with the last two points, this leads to a very disorderly way of doing things. Tasks get mixed up. I should draw a clear line between designing interfaces and actual coding. If you, unlike me, are a good/disciplined planner, as intended above, how do you: ...know the majority of methods you will be needing up front so well? Especially if it's components that implement stuff you are not familiar with yet. ...resist the urge to start coding right away? ...deal with code that comes to mind when you are designing the interfaces? UPDATE: Thank you for the answers so far. Valuable insights! And... I stand corrected; it seems I misinterpreted the idea of Design By Contract. For clarity, what I actually meant was: "coming up with interface methods before implementing the actual components". An additional thing that came up in my mind is related to point 1): b) How do you know the majority of components you will be needing. How do you flesh out these things before you start actually coding? For arguments sake, let's say I'm a novice with the MVC pattern, and I wanted to implement such a component/architecture. A naive approach would be to think of: a front controller some abstract action controller some abstract view ... and be done with it, so to speak. But, being more familiar with the MVC pattern, I know now that it makes sense to also have: a request object a router a dispatcher a response object view helpers etc.. etc.. If you map this idea to some completely new component you want to develop, with which you have no experience yet; how do you come up with these sort of additional components without actually coding the thing, and stuble upon the ideas that way? How would you know up front how fine grained some components should be? Is this a matter of disciplining yourself to think it out thoroughly? Or is it a matter of being good at thinking in abstractions?

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  • How to get IMediaControl.Run() to start a file playing with no delay

    - by MusiGenesis
    I am attempting to use DirectShow to play two AVI files consecutively (one after the other) so that there is no interruption in the audio or video when the player transitions from one file to the next. I have two custom controls on my form. Each one is pre-loaded with an AVI file, and before playback begins I set up all the DirectShow interfaces, set the video windows and resize them, call IMediaControl.Run(), then IMediaControl.Pause(), then IMediaSeeking.SetPositions to reset to frame 0, on both controls. On the form, you can see that both files are paused at their initial frames. I then call IMediaControl.Run() on the first control, and wait for it to complete before calling Run() on the second control. Initially, I hooked into the first video's EC_COMPLETE notification message, and used this to start the second. Thinking that this event might be slow to arrive (turns out it is, but for a weird reason), I tried two other approaches: Check the first video's current position inside a timer that goes off every second or so (using IMediaPosition.get_CurrentPosition). When the current position is within a second of the video's stop time (known in advance from IMediaPosition.get_StopTime), I go into a tight while loop and wait for the current position to equal the stop time, and then call Run() on the second video. Same as the first, except I replace the while loop with a call to timeSetEvent from winmm.dll, with a delay set so that it fires right when the first file is supposed to end. I use the callback to Run() the second file. Either of these two methods substantially cuts down the delay between the end of the first file and the beginning of the second, indicating that the EC_COMPLETE message doesn't arrive immediately after the file is complete (I also tried hooking the EC_SEGMENT_COMPLETE message, which is supposed to be used for looping within a file, but apparently nobody supports this - it never occurs on my machine, at least). Doing all of the above has cut the transition delay from as much as a second, down to a barely perceptible glitch; about a third of the time the files transition with no interruption at all, which suggests there's no fundamental reason I can't get this to work all the time. The slight delay is still unacceptable, unfortunately. I assume (and I could easily be wrong) that the remaining delay is due to a slight variable delay between the call to IMediaControl.Run() and when the video actually starts playing. Does anybody know anything I can do to eliminate this little lag? It would also help to be told this is fundamentally impossible for whatever reason, which wouldn't surprise me. I've never encountered a video player in Windows that doesn't have this problem, so it may not be doable. More info: the AVI files I'm playing are completely uncompressed (video and audio are uncompressed), so I don't think the lag is due to DirectShow's having to uncompress the video ahead of play start, although it may still buffer ahead as matter of course (and this may be the source of the problem). I would have though that starting play, pausing and then rewinding to the beginning would fix this. Also, the way I'm handling the transition is to actually have the second control underneath the first; when the first completes playing, I start the second and then call BringToFront on it, creating the appearance of a single video transitioning between the two originals. I don't think the glitch is due to this, because it works perfectly some of the time, and even if this were problematic, it wouldn't explain the matching audio glitch. Even more: I just tried starting the second video 30-50 milliseconds "early" and that seemed to eliminate even more of the gap, so I'm guessing that the lag in Run() is about that long. It appears to be variable, though, so this is still not where I need it to be.

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  • What is the coolest thing you can do in <10 lines of simple code? Help me inspire beginners!

    - by Tom Ritter
    I'm looking for the coolest thing you can do in a few lines of simple code. I'm sure you can write a Mandelbrot set in Haskell in 15 lines but it's difficult to follow. My goal is to inspire students that programming is cool. We know that programming is cool because you can create anything you imagine - it's the ultimate creative outlet. I want to inspire these beginners and get them over as many early-learning humps as I can. Now, my reasons are selfish. I'm teaching an Intro to Computing course to a group of 60 half-engineering, half business majors; all freshmen. They are the students who came from underprivileged High schools. From my past experience, the group is generally split as follows: a few rock-stars, some who try very hard and kind of get it, the few who try very hard and barely get it, and the few who don't care. I want to reach as many of these groups as effectively as I can. Here's an example of how I'd use a computer program to teach: Here's an example of what I'm looking for: a 1-line VBS script to get your computer to talk to you: CreateObject("sapi.spvoice").Speak InputBox("Enter your text","Talk it") I could use this to demonstrate order of operations. I'd show the code, let them play with it, then explain that There's a lot going on in that line, but the computer can make sense of it, because it knows the rules. Then I'd show them something like this: 4(5*5) / 10 + 9(.25 + .75) And you can see that first I need to do is (5*5). Then I can multiply for 4. And now I've created the Object. Dividing by 10 is the same as calling Speak - I can't Speak before I have an object, and I can't divide before I have 100. Then on the other side I first create an InputBox with some instructions for how to display it. When I hit enter on the input box it evaluates or "returns" whatever I entered. (Hint: 'oooooo' makes a funny sound) So when I say Speak, the right side is what to Speak. And I get that from the InputBox. So when you do several things on a line, like: x = 14 + y; You need to be aware of the order of things. First we add 14 and y. Then we put the result (what it evaluates to, or returns) into x. That's my goal, to have a bunch of these cool examples to demonstrate and teach the class while they have fun. I tried this example on my roommate and while I may not use this as the first lesson, she liked it and learned something. Some cool mathematica programs that make beautiful graphs or shapes that are easy to understand would be good ideas and I'm going to look into those. Here are some complicated actionscript examples but that's a bit too advanced and I can't teach flash. What other ideas do you have?

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  • ASP.NET MVC 2 / Localization / Dynamic Default Value?

    - by cyberblast
    Hello In an ASP.NET MVC 2 application, i'm having a route like this: routes.MapRoute( "Default", // Route name "{lang}/{controller}/{action}/{id}", // URL with parameters new // Parameter defaults { controller = "Home", action = "Index", lang = "de", id = UrlParameter.Optional }, new { lang = new AllowedValuesRouteConstraint(new string[] { "de", "en", "fr", "it" }, StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase) } Now, basically I would like to set the thread's culture according the language passed in. But there is one exception: If the user requests the page for the first time, like calling "http://www.mysite.com" I want to set the initial language if possible to the one "preferred by the browser". How can I distinguish in an early procesing stage (like global.asax), if the default parameter has been set because of the default value or mentioned explicit through the URL? (I would prefer a solution where the request URL is not getting parsed). Is there a way to dynamically provide a default-value for a paramter? Something like a hook? Or where can I override the default value (good application event?). This is the code i'm actually experimenting with: protected void Application_AcquireRequestState(object sender, EventArgs e) { string activeLanguage; string[] validLanguages; string defaultLanguage; string browsersPreferredLanguage; try { HttpContextBase contextBase = new HttpContextWrapper(Context); RouteData activeRoute = RouteTable.Routes.GetRouteData(new HttpContextWrapper(Context)); if (activeRoute == null) { return; } activeLanguage = activeRoute.GetRequiredString("lang"); Route route = (Route)activeRoute.Route; validLanguages = ((AllowedValuesRouteConstraint)route.Constraints["lang"]).AllowedValues; defaultLanguage = route.Defaults["lang"].ToString(); browsersPreferredLanguage = GetBrowsersPreferredLanguage(); //TODO: Better way than parsing the url bool defaultInitialized = contextBase.Request.Url.ToString().IndexOf(string.Format("/{0}/", defaultLanguage), StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase) > -1; string languageToActivate = defaultLanguage; if (!defaultInitialized) { if (validLanguages.Contains(browsersPreferredLanguage, StringComparer.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase)) { languageToActivate = browsersPreferredLanguage; } } //TODO: Where and how to overwrtie the default value that it gets passed to the controller? contextBase.RewritePath(contextBase.Request.Path.Replace("/de/", "/en/")); SetLanguage(languageToActivate); } catch (Exception ex) { //TODO: Log Console.WriteLine(ex.Message); } } protected string GetBrowsersPreferredLanguage() { string acceptedLang = string.Empty; if (HttpContext.Current.Request.UserLanguages != null && HttpContext.Current.Request.UserLanguages.Length > 0) { acceptedLang = HttpContext.Current.Request.UserLanguages[0].Substring(0, 2); } return acceptedLang; } protected void SetLanguage(string languageToActivate) { CultureInfo cultureInfo = new CultureInfo(languageToActivate); if (!Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture.TwoLetterISOLanguageName.Equals(languageToActivate, StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase)) { Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = cultureInfo; } if (!Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.TwoLetterISOLanguageName.Equals(languageToActivate, StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase)) { Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture(cultureInfo.Name); } } The RouteConstraint to reproduce the sample: public class AllowedValuesRouteConstraint : IRouteConstraint { private string[] _allowedValues; private StringComparison _stringComparism; public string[] AllowedValues { get { return _allowedValues; } } public AllowedValuesRouteConstraint(string[] allowedValues, StringComparison stringComparism) { _allowedValues = allowedValues; _stringComparism = stringComparism; } public AllowedValuesRouteConstraint(string[] allowedValues) { _allowedValues = allowedValues; _stringComparism = StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase; } public bool Match(HttpContextBase httpContext, Route route, string parameterName, RouteValueDictionary values, RouteDirection routeDirection) { if (_allowedValues != null) { return _allowedValues.Any(a => a.Equals(values[parameterName].ToString(), _stringComparism)); } else { return false; } } } Can someone help me out with that problem? Thanks, Martin

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  • What's the most unsound program you've had to maintain?

    - by Robert Rossney
    I periodically am called upon to do maintenance work on a system that was built by a real rocket surgeon. There's so much wrong with it that it's hard to know where to start. No, wait, I'll start at the beginning: in the early days of the project, the designer was told that the system would need to scale, and he'd read that a source of scalability problems was traffic between the application and database servers, so he made sure to minimize this traffic. How? By putting all of the application logic in SQL Server stored procedures. Seriously. The great bulk of the application functions by the HTML front end formulating XML messages. When the middle tier receives an XML message, it uses the document element's tag name as the name of the stored procedure it should call, and calls the SP, passing it the entire XML message as a parameter. It takes the XML message that the SP returns and returns it directly back to the front end. There is no other logic in the application tier. (There was some code in the middle tier to validate the incoming XML messages against a library of schemas. But I removed it, after ascertaining that 1) only a small handful of messages had corresponding schemas, 2) the messages didn't actually conform to these schemas, and 3) after validating the messages, if any errors were encountered, the method discarded them. "This fuse box is a real time-saver - it comes from the factory with pennies pre-installed!") I've seen software that does the wrong thing before. Lots of it. I've written quite a bit. But I've never seen anything like the steely-eyed determination to do the wrong thing, at every possible turn, that's embodied in the design and programming of this system. Well, at least he went with what he knew, right? Um. Apparently, what he knew was Access. And he didn't really understand Access. Or databases. Here's a common pattern in this code: SELECT @TestCodeID FROM TestCode WHERE TestCode = @TestCode SELECT @CountryID FROM Country WHERE CountryAbbr = @CountryAbbr SELECT Invoice.*, TestCode.*, Country.* FROM Invoice JOIN TestCode ON Invoice.TestCodeID = TestCode.ID JOIN Country ON Invoice.CountryID = Country.ID WHERE Invoice.TestCodeID = @TestCodeID AND Invoice.CountryID = @CountryID Okay, fine. You don't trust the query optimizer either. But how about this? (Originally, I was going to post this in What's the best comment in source code you have ever encountered? but I realized that there was so much more to write about than just this one comment, and things just got out of hand.) At the end of many of the utility stored procedures, you'll see code that looks like the following: -- Fix NULLs SET @TargetValue = ISNULL(@TargetValue, -9999) Yes, that code is doing exactly what you can't allow yourself to believe it's doing lest you be driven mad. If the variable contains a NULL, he's alerting the caller by changing its value to -9999. Here's how this number is commonly used: -- Get target value EXEC ap_GetTargetValue @Param1, @Param2, OUTPUT @TargetValue -- Check target value for NULL value IF @TargetValue = -9999 ... Really. For another dimension of this system, see the article on thedailywtf.com entitled I Think I'll Call Them "Transactions". I'm not making any of this up. I swear. I'm often reminded, when I work on this system, of Wolfgang Pauli's famous response to a student: "That isn't right. It isn't even wrong." This can't really be the very worst program ever. It's definitely the worst one I've worked

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  • Evidence-Based-Scheduling - are estimations only as accurate as the work-plan they're based on?

    - by Assaf Lavie
    I've been using FogBugz's Evidence Based Scheduling (for the uninitiated, Joel explains) for a while now and there's an inherent problem I can't seem to work around. The system is good at telling me the probability that a given project will be delivered at some date, given the detailed list of tasks that comprise the project. However, it does not take into account the fact that during development additional tasks always pop up. Now, there's the garbage-can approach of creating a generic task/scheduled-item for "last minute hacks" or "integration tasks", or what have you, but that clearly goes against the idea of aggregating the estimates of many small cases. It's often the case that during the development stage of a project you realize that there's a whole area your planning didn't cover, because, well, that's the nature of developing stuff that hasn't been developed before. So now your ~3 month project may very well turn into a 6 month project, but not because your estimations were off (you could be the best estimator in the world, for those task the comprised your initial work plan); rather because you ended up adding a whole bunch of new tasks that weren't there to begin with. EBS doesn't help you with that. It could, theoretically (I guess). It could, perhaps, measure the amount of work you add to a project over time and take that into consideration when estimating the time remaining on a given project. Just a thought. In other words, EBS works on a task basis, but not on a project/release basis - but the latter is what's important. It's what your boss typically cares about - delivery date, not the time it takes to finish each task along the way, and not the time it would have taken, if your planning was perfect. So the question is (yes, there's a question here, don't close it): What's your methodology when it comes to using EBS in FogBugz and how do you solve the problem above, which seems to be a main cause of schedule delays and mispredictions? Edit Some more thoughts after reading a few answers: If it comes down to having to choose which delivery date you're comfortable presenting to your higher-ups by squinting at the delivery-probability graph and choosing 80%, or 95%, or 60% (based on what, exactly?) then we've resorted to plain old buffering/factoring of our estimates. In which case, couldn't we have skipped the meticulous case by case hour-sized estimation effort step? By forcing ourselves to break down tasks that take more than a day into smaller chunks of work haven't we just deluded ourselves into thinking our planning is as tight and thorough as it could be? People may be consistently bad estimators that do not even learn from their past mistakes. In that respect, having an EBS system is certainly better than not having one. But what can we do about the fact that we're not that good in planning as well? I'm not sure it's a problem that can be solved by a similar system. Our estimates are wrong because of tendencies to be overly optimistic/pessimistic about certain tasks, and because of neglect to account for systematic delays (e.g. sick days, major bug crisis) - and usually not because we lack knowledge about the work that needs to be done. Our planning, on the other hand, is often incomplete because we simply don't have enough knowledge in this early stage; and I don't see how an EBS-like system could fill that gap. So we're back to methodology. We need to find a way to accommodate bad or incomplete work plans that's better than voodoo-multiplication.

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  • Error when opening .tar.gz via Shell to install Apache Maven

    - by adamsquared
    Thank you in advance for the help. My Goal: To install apache maven per its websites instructions (http://maven.apache.org/download.html), in order to install the JUNG package according to its install instructions (http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/jung/wiki/JUNGManual), so I can use the JUNG classes in various Java GUIs. The Problem: I get an error message when I try to extract the apache-maven .gz (install?) file in shell. Background: I'm trying to install the JUNG (http://jung.sourceforge.net/index.html) package to my system's Java, so I can write object-oriented code using various GUIs (Ecliplse, Dr. Java) using the classes in JUNG. I don't understand how the building/installing process works, and how I can get what I build/install to work on various GUIs and the command line. I'm new to shell and the command line, and mostly have experience using a simple IDE (DrJava, Python IDLE, R GUI) to write and compile object-oriented code. Machine: Mac OSX 10.5.8 32-bit. The Instructions: For the maven building Extract the distribution archive, i.e. apache-maven-3.0.4-bin.tar.gz to the directory you wish to install Maven 3.0.4. These instructions assume you chose /usr/local/apache-maven. The subdirectory apache-maven-3.0.4 will be created from the archive. ... for the JUNG installation Appendix: How to Build JUNG This is a brief intro to building JUNG jars with maven2 (the build system that JUNG currently uses). First, ensure that you have a JDK of at least version 1.5: JUNG 2.0+ requires Java 1.5+. Ensure that your JAVA_HOME variable is set to the location of the JDK. On a Windows platform, you may have a separate JRE (Java Runtime Environment) and JDK (Java Development Kit). The JRE has no capability to compile Java source files, so you must have a JDK installed. If your JAVA_HOME variable is set to the location of the JRE, and not the location of the JDK, you will be unable to compile. Get Maven Download and install maven2 from maven.apache.org: http://maven.apache.org/download.html At time of writing (early December 2009), the latest version was maven-2.2.1. Install the downloaded maven2 (there are installation instructions on the Maven website). Follow the installation instructions and confirm a successful installation by typing 'mvn --version' in a command terminal window. Get JUNG ... What I Did: I downloaded the file apache-maven-2.2.1-bin.tar.gz. The JUNG website specified to use apache maven 2. I wanted to stick to the recommended installation instructions, but I couldn't get to /usr on my GUI (i've noticed you click on the MacHD symbol on the desktop its missing several directories/folders that you can see using the shell using the ls command at root directory I couldn't find a way to access the file using my mac GUI. Therefore, I used the shell to navigate to the root directory and then to /usr/local, and used the mkdir command to make the directory apache-maven and entered it. I then moved the file using the mv command. Next I tried extracting the file using tar -zxvf apache-maven-2.2.1-bin.tar.gz. The Error Message: tar: apache-maven-2.2.1/direcoryandfile: Cannot open: No such file or directory ... apache-maven-2.2.1/lib/ext: Cannot mkdir: No such file or directory apache-maven-2.2.1/lib/ext/README.txt tar: apache-maven-2.2.1/lib/ext/README.txt: Cannot open: No such file or directory tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors From what I can tell the archive file is missing some directories or something. I tried deleting the file, redownloading the .tar.gz file from a different mirror and repeating the process. Same result. Thanks again for the help

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  • When to draw/layout child controls in UserControl

    - by Ted Elliott
    I have a list-type UserControl (like a ListBox). The items inside the control are another complex UserControl containing a few other controls (ComboBox, TextBox, etc). I'm wondering what the preferred or best method would be to override to draw/layout the child controls. I basically want to trigger this method any time the list changes. I originally had a RedrawItems method that I just called whenever I needed to redraw which added or removed Controls from the Controls collection. But it was getting triggered too early in the lifecycle of the code from some of the designer code. Now I've switched to overriding OnLayout and doing my stuff there. I call PerformLayout when I want to trigger a redraw, such as when the DataSource property changes or when it fires a changed event. Is OnLayout the best place for this? Here is the code: [ComplexBindingProperties("DataSource")] public partial class CustomList : UserControl { private object _dataSource; private CustomListItem _newRow; public CustomList() { InitializeComponent(); } protected override void OnCreateControl() { base.OnCreateControl(); _newRow = new CustomListItem(); Controls.Add(_newRow); } public object DataSource { get { return _dataSource; } set { bool register = _dataSource != value; if (_dataSource != null && _dataSource != value) { UnregisterDataSource(_dataSource); } _dataSource = value; if (_dataSource != null) RegisterDataSource(_dataSource); PerformLayout(); } } public CustomListItem ItemTemplate { get { return _newRow; } } protected override void OnLayout(LayoutEventArgs e) { base.OnLayout(e); int ctrlCount = this.Controls.AsEnumerable().OfType<CustomListItem>().Count(); ctrlCount--; // subtract 1 for the add row var ds = this.DataSource as System.Collections.IList; int itemCount = ds == null? 0 : ds.Count; int maxCount = Math.Max(ctrlCount,itemCount); if (maxCount == 0) return; this.SuspendLayout(); // temporarily remove the template Controls.RemoveAt(Controls.Count-1); for (int i = 0; i < maxCount; i++) { CustomListItem item; if (i >= itemCount) { Controls.RemoveAt(i); } else { if (i >= ctrlCount) { item = ItemTemplate.Copy(); this.Controls.Add(item); item.Location = new Point(0, item.Height * i); item.TabIndex = i + 1; item.ViewMode = true; } else { item = (CustomListItem) Controls[i]; } item.Data = ds[i]; } } this.Controls.Add(ItemTemplate); ItemTemplate.Location = new Point(0, ItemTemplate.Height * maxCount); ItemTemplate.TabIndex = maxCount + 1; this.ResumeLayout(true); } private void RegisterDataSource(object dataSource) { IBindingList ds = dataSource as IBindingList; if (ds != null) { ds.ListChanged += new ListChangedEventHandler(DataSource_ListChanged); } } void DataSource_ListChanged(object sender, ListChangedEventArgs e) { switch (e.ListChangedType) { case ListChangedType.ItemAdded: PerformLayout(); break; case ListChangedType.ItemChanged: break; case ListChangedType.ItemDeleted: PerformLayout(); break; case ListChangedType.ItemMoved: PerformLayout(); break; case ListChangedType.Reset: PerformLayout(); break; default: break; } } private void UnregisterDataSource(object dataSource) { IBindingList ds = dataSource as IBindingList; if (ds != null) { ds.ListChanged -= new ListChangedEventHandler(DataSource_ListChanged); } } }

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  • ASP.NET MVC 3 embrace dynamic type - CSDN.NET - CSDN Software Development Channel

    - by user559071
    About a decade ago, Microsoft will all bet on the WebForms and static types. With the complete package from scattered to the continuous development, and now almost every page can be viewed as its own procedure. Subsequent years, the industry continued to move in another direction, love is better than separation package, better than the late binding early binding to the idea. This leads to two very interesting questions. The first is the problem of terminology. Consider the original Smalltalk MVC model, view and controller is not only tightly coupled together, and usually in pairs. Most of the framework is that Microsoft, including the classic VB, WinForms, WebForms, WPF and Silverlight, they both use the code behind file to store the controller logic. But said "MVC" usually refers to the view and controller are loosely coupled framework. This is especially true for the Web framework, HTML form submission mechanism allows any views submitted to any of the controller. Since this article was mainly talking about Web technologies, so we need to use the modern definition. The second question is "If you're Microsoft, how to change orbit without causing too much pressure to the developer?" So far, the answer is: new releases each year, until the developers meet up. ASP.NET MVC's first product was released last March. Released in March this year, ASP.NET MVC 2.0. 3.0 RC 2 is currently in phase, expected to be released next March. December 10, Microsoft released ASP.NET MVC 3.0 Release Candidate 2. RC 2 is built on top of Microsoft's commitment to the jQuery: The default project template into jQuery 1.4.4, jQuery Validation 1.7 and jQuery UI. Although people think that Microsoft will focus shifted away from server-side controls to be a joke, but the introduction of Microsoft's jQuery UI is that this is the real thing. For those worried about the scalability of the developers, there are many excellent control can replace the session state. With SessionState property, you can tell the controller session state is read-only, read-write, or can be completely ignored in the. This site is no single server, but if a server needs to access another server session state, then this approach can provide a great help. MVC 3 contains Razor view engine. By default, the engine will be encoded HTML output, so that we can easily output on the screen the text of the original. HTML injection attacks even without the risk of encoded text can not easily prevent the page rendering. For many C # developers in the end do what is most shocking that MVC 3 for the controller and view and embrace the dynamic type. ViewBag property will open a dynamic object, developers can run on top of the object to add attributes. In general, it is used to send the view from the controller non-mode data. Scott Guthrie provides state of the sample contains text (such as the current time) and used to assemble the list box entries. Asked Link: http://www.infoq.com/cn/news/2010/12/ASPNET-MVC-3-RC-2; jsessionid = 3561C3B7957F1FB97848950809AD9483

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  • MVC design in Cocoa - are all 3 always necessary? Also: naming conventions, where to put Controller

    - by Nektarios
    I'm new to MVC although I've read a lot of papers and information on the web. I know it's somewhat ambiguous and there are many different interpretations of MVC patterns.. but the differences seem somewhat minimal My main question is - are M, V, and C always going to be necessary to be doing this right? I haven't seen anyone address this in anything I've read. Examples (I'm working in Cocoa/Obj-c although that shouldn't much matter).. 1) If I have a simple image on my GUI, or a text entry field that is just for a user's convenience and isn't saved or modified, these both would be V (view) but there's no M (no data and no domain processing going on), and no C to bridge them. So I just have some aspects that are "V" - seems fine 2) I have 2 different and visible windows that each have a button on them labeled as "ACTIVATE FOO" - when a user clicks the button on either, both buttons press in and change to say "DEACTIVATE FOO" and a third window appears with label "FOO". Clicking the button again will change the button on both windows to "ACTIVATE FOO" and will remove the third "FOO" window. In this case, my V consists of the buttons on both windows, and I guess also the third window (maybe all 3 windows). I definitely have a C, my Controller object will know about these buttons and windows and will get their clicks and hold generic states regarding windows and buttons. However, whether I have 1 button or 10 button, my window is called "FOO" or my window is called "BAR", this doesn't matter. There's no domain knowledge or data here - just control of views. So in this example, I really have "V" and "C" but no "M" - is that ok? 3) Final example, which I am running in to the most. I have a text entry field as my View. When I enter text in this, say a number representing gravity, I keep it in a Model that may do things like compute physics of a ball while taking in to account my gravity parameter. Here I have a V and an M, but I don't understand why I would need to add a C - a controller would just accept the signals from the View and pass it along to the Model, and vice versa. Being as the C is just a pure passthrough, it's really "junk" code and isn't making things any more reusable in my opinion. In most situations, when something changes I will need to change the C and M both in nearly identical ways. I realize it's probably an MVC beginner's mistake to think most situations call for only V and M.. leads me in to next subject 4) In Cocoa / Xcode / IB, I guess my Controllers should always be an instantiated object in IB? That is, I lay all of my "V" components in IB, and for each collection of View objects (things that are related) I should have an instantiated Controller? And then perhaps my Models should NOT be found in IB, and instead only found as classes in Xcode that tie in with Controller code found there. Is this accurate? This could explain why you'd have a Controller that is not really adding value - because you are keeping consistent.. 5) What about naming these things - for my above example about FOO / BAR maybe something that ends in Controller would be the C, like FancyWindowOpeningController, etc? And for models - should I suffix them with like GravityBallPhysicsModel etc, or should I just name those whatever I like? I haven't seen enough code to know what's out there in the wild and I want to get on the right track early on Thank you in advance for setting me straight or letting me know I'm on the right track. I feel like I'm starting to get it and most of what I say here makes sense, but validation of my guessing would help me feel confident..

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  • How to play audio in Java Application

    - by user577829
    I'm making a java application and I need to play audio. I'm playing mainly small sound files of my cannon firing (its a cannon shooting game) and the projectiles exploding, though I plan on having looping background music. I have found two different methods to accomplish this, but both don't work how I want. The first method is literally a method: public void playSoundFile(File file) {//http://java.ittoolbox.com/groups/technical-functional/java-l/sound-in-an-application-90681 try { //get an AudioInputStream AudioInputStream ais = AudioSystem.getAudioInputStream(file); //get the AudioFormat for the AudioInputStream AudioFormat audioformat = ais.getFormat(); System.out.println("Format: " + audioformat.toString()); System.out.println("Encoding: " + audioformat.getEncoding()); System.out.println("SampleRate:" + audioformat.getSampleRate()); System.out.println("SampleSizeInBits: " + audioformat.getSampleSizeInBits()); System.out.println("Channels: " + audioformat.getChannels()); System.out.println("FrameSize: " + audioformat.getFrameSize()); System.out.println("FrameRate: " + audioformat.getFrameRate()); System.out.println("BigEndian: " + audioformat.isBigEndian()); //ULAW format to PCM format conversion if ((audioformat.getEncoding() == AudioFormat.Encoding.ULAW) || (audioformat.getEncoding() == AudioFormat.Encoding.ALAW)) { AudioFormat newformat = new AudioFormat(AudioFormat.Encoding.PCM_SIGNED, audioformat.getSampleRate(), audioformat.getSampleSizeInBits() * 2, audioformat.getChannels(), audioformat.getFrameSize() * 2, audioformat.getFrameRate(), true); ais = AudioSystem.getAudioInputStream(newformat, ais); audioformat = newformat; } //checking for a supported output line DataLine.Info datalineinfo = new DataLine.Info(SourceDataLine.class, audioformat); if (!AudioSystem.isLineSupported(datalineinfo)) { //System.out.println("Line matching " + datalineinfo + " is not supported."); } else { //System.out.println("Line matching " + datalineinfo + " is supported."); //opening the sound output line SourceDataLine sourcedataline = (SourceDataLine) AudioSystem.getLine(datalineinfo); sourcedataline.open(audioformat); sourcedataline.start(); //Copy data from the input stream to the output data line int framesizeinbytes = audioformat.getFrameSize(); int bufferlengthinframes = sourcedataline.getBufferSize() / 8; int bufferlengthinbytes = bufferlengthinframes * framesizeinbytes; byte[] sounddata = new byte[bufferlengthinbytes]; int numberofbytesread = 0; while ((numberofbytesread = ais.read(sounddata)) != -1) { int numberofbytesremaining = numberofbytesread; sourcedataline.write(sounddata, 0, numberofbytesread); } } } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } The problem with this is that my entire program stops until the sound file is finished, or at least nearly finished. The second method is this: File file = new File("Launch1.wav"); AudioClip clip; try { clip = JApplet.newAudioClip(file.toURL()); clip.play(); } catch (Exception e) { e.getMessage(); } The problem I have here is that every time the sound file ends early or doesn't play at all depending on where I place the code. Is their any way to play sound without the above mentioned problems? Am I doing something wrong? Any help is greatly appreciated.

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  • How best to modernize the 2002-era J2EE app?

    - by user331465
    I have this friend.... I have this friend who works on a java ee application (j2ee) application started in the early 2000's. Currently they add a feature here and there, but have a large codebase. Over the years the team has shrunk by 70%. [Yes, the "i have this friend is". It's me, attempting to humorously inject teenage high-school counselor shame into the mix] Java, Vintage 2002 The application uses EJB 2.1, struts 1.x, DAO's etc with straight jdbc calls (mixture of stored procedures and prepared statements). No ORM. For caching they use a mixture of OpenSymphony OSCache and a home-grown cache layer. Over the last few years, they have spent effort to modernize the UI using ajax techniques and libraries. This largely involves javascript libaries (jquery, yui, etc). Client Side On the client side, the lack of upgrade path from struts1 to struts2 discouraged them from migrating to struts2. Other web frameworks became popular (wicket, spring , jsf). Struts2 was not the "clear winner". Migrating all the existing UI from Struts1 to Struts2/wicket/etc did not seem to present much marginal benefit at a very high cost. They did not want to have a patchwork of technologies-du-jour (subsystem X in Struts2, subsystem Y in Wicket, etc.) so developer write new features using Struts 1. Server Side On the server side, they looked into moving to ejb 3, but never had a big impetus. The developers are all comfortable with ejb-jar.xml, EJBHome, EJBRemote, that "ejb 2.1 as is" represented the path of least resistance. One big complaint about the ejb environment: programmers still pretend "ejb server runs in separate jvm than servlet engine". No app server (jboss/weblogic) has ever enforced this separation. The team has never deployed the ejb server on a separate box then the app server. The ear file contains multiple copies of the same jar file; one for the 'web layer' (foo.war/WEB-INF/lib) and one for the server side (foo.ear/). The app server only loads one jar. The duplications makes for ambiguity. Caching As for caching, they use several cache implementations: OpenSymphony cache and a homegrown cache. Jgroups provides clustering support Now What? The question: The team currently has spare cycles to to invest in modernizing the application? Where would the smart investor spend them? The main criteria: 1) productivity gains. Specifically reducing the time to develope new subsystems features and reduced maintenance. 2) performance/scalability. They do not care about fashion or techno-du-jour street cred. What do you all recommend? On the persistence side Switch everything (or new development only) to JPA/JPA2? Straight hibernate? Wait for Java EE 6? On the client/web-framework side: Migrate (some or all) to struts2? wicket? jsf/jsf2? As for caching: terracotta? ehcache? coherence? stick with what they have? how best to take advantage of the huge heap sizes that the 64-bit jvms offer? Thanks in advance.

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  • L2S DataContext out of synch: row not found or changed

    - by awrigley
    The Problem I am getting a number of errors that imply that the DataContext, or rather, the way I am using the DataContext is getting out of synch. The error occurs on db.SubmitChanges() where db is my DataContext instance. The error is: Row not found or changed. The problem only occurs intermitently, for example, adding a row then deleting it. If I stop the dev server and restart, the added row is there and I can delete it no problem. Ie, it seems that the problem is related to the DataContext losing track of the rows that have been added. IMPORTANT: Before anyone votes to close this thread, on the basis of it being a duplicate, I have checked the sql server profiler and there is no "Where 0 = 1" in the SQL. I have also recreated the dbml file, so am satisfied that the database schema is in synch with the schema represented by the dbml file. Ie, no cases of mismatched nullable/not nullable columns, etc. My Diagnosis (for what it is worth): It seems to be a problem related to how I am using the DataContext. I am new to MVC, Repositories and Services patterns, so suspect that I have wired things up wrong. The Setup Simple eLearning app in its early stages. Pupils need to be able to add and delete courses (Courses table) to their UserCourses. To do this, I have a service that gets a specific DataContext instance Dependency Injected into its constructor. Service Class Constructor: public class SqlPupilBlockService : IPupilBlockService { DataContext db; public SqlPupilBlockService(DataContext db) { this.db = db; CoursesRepository = new SqlRepository<Course>(db); UserCoursesRepository = new SqlRepository<UserCourse>(db); } // Etc, etc } The CoursesRepository and UserCoursesRepository are both private properties of the service class that are of Type IRepository (just a simple generic repository interface). Sql Respoitory Code: public class SqlRepository<T> : IRepository<T> where T : class { DataContext db; public SqlRepository(DataContext db) { this.db = db; } #region IRepository<T> Members public IQueryable<T> Query { get { return db.GetTable<T>(); } } public List<T> FetchAll() { return Query.ToList(); } public void Add(T entity) { db.GetTable<T>().InsertOnSubmit(entity); } public void Delete(T entity) { db.GetTable<T>().DeleteOnSubmit(entity); } public void Save() { db.SubmitChanges(); } #endregion } The two methods for adding and deleting UserCourses are: Service Methods for Adding and Deleting UserCourses: public void AddUserCourse(int courseId) { UserCourse uc = new UserCourse(); uc.IdCourse = courseId; uc.IdUser = UserId; uc.DateCreated = DateTime.Now; uc.DateAmended = DateTime.Now; uc.Role = "Pupil"; uc.CourseNotes = string.Empty; uc.ActiveStepIndex = 0; UserCoursesRepository.Add(uc); UserCoursesRepository.Save(); } public void DeleteUserCourse(int courseId) { var uc = (UserCoursesRepository.Query.Where(x => x.IdUser == UserId && x.IdCourse == courseId)).Single(); UserCoursesRepository.Delete(uc); UserCoursesRepository.Save(); } Ajax I am using Ajax via Ajax.BeginForm I don't think that is relevant. ASP.NET MVC 3 I am using mvc3, but don't think that is relevant: the errors are related to model code.

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, February 24, 2010

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, February 24, 2010New ProjectsADO.Net DataSets to ExtJs.data.Store: A JavaScript (and C#) based project to reduce the amount of client-side code necessary to consume ADO.Net / ASP.Net web services when using ExtJS.AMP.Net Wrapper: AMP is a platform to build on-line marketplaces (http://www.poweredbyamp.com). AMP.Net provided Object-Like interaction with AMP's restful service...ArkSwitch: ArkSwitch is an easy to use, finger-friendly task manager for Windows Mobile 6.5.3 (with a WM6.5 compatibility mode). It is developed mainly in C#,...Biffen: Cinema-booking project in Computer Science at University College Nordjylland, Denmark.Braintree Client Library: Client library for integrating with the Braintree Gateway.Business Framework: A framework which helps building business applications. It provides business rules, validation rules and a text-based language for writing rules. I...Camp Araminta: This project will be used to coordinate development efforts on the Camp Araminta website.ChoServiceHost: Simple and easy way to create and host Windows Service Applications in .NET 3.5/Visual Studio 2008Delta College Game Development Project: Project site for cs 16 game development classDotNetNuke® Labs: DotNetNuke Labs is a collection of "research & development" type projects for the DotNetNuke platform.Generic web part for hosting Silverlight content on SharePoint sites (WSS,MOSS): This is a generic web part for hosting Silverlight content on WSS 30 and MOSS 2007 sites. The objective of this web part was to make it easy for us...GpTiming: GpTiming is a simple "lab" application related to race events, based on a Domain Model.HTML Forms in Windows Forms: As the names suggests this code library is designed to introduce HTML code (primarily form code) into Windows Forms. It was created because standar...imgur uploader - .net open source uploader for image sharing site imgur: Imgur uploader strives to be an easy to use uploader for images you would like to share with friends and family. It is written in c#.kuuy static system: kuuy static system is a full static publish website system!LaTeX Grapher: The goal of this project is to make a tool that facilitates making high quality two dimensional vector graphic function plots with a minimal amount...LightREST: A .NET library to consume REST-based HTTP services.Machiavelli: Machiavelli is Stackoverflow inspired project that I am working on following Andrew Siemer's article on DotNetSlackers. Mover: Mover makes it easier for developers to create programmatic animations in Silverlight. It provides an expressive API to the platform's underlying S...MVC Presenter: ASP.NET MVC 2で作るプレゼンビューアーnHibernate Attribute mapping: How to use Attibute mapping with a ManyToMany Relationship with nHibernateNIPO Data Processing Component Framework: NIPO is a general purpose component framework for data processing applications (that follow the IPO-principle). Its plugin-based architecture makes...PowerShell Remote File Explorer: This project intends to develop a Windows forms based file explorer to browse/transfer files over PowerShell 2.0 remoting channel. The file transfe...Process Flow Tracking of Biomass Distribution Project (University of Mumbai): At Larsen & Toubro Infotech India Ltd., my team worked on a SCM (Supply Chain Management) based project titled 'Process Flow Tracking of Biomass Di...VS2010 Rc1 Fix: Illustrates a fix for working with the ASAP.NET Wizard control with VS2010 RC1Yicker: a microblog program devolep by c#.New ReleasesADO.Net DataSets to ExtJs.data.Store: Ext.net: This is the first version of Ext.net. This version contains a single class, Ext.net.Store which extends the Ext.data.Store class to consume ADO.Ne...AMP.Net Wrapper: AMP.Net v1.0: Provides abstraction for all the product search functionality offered by AMP.ArkSwitch: ArkSwitch legacy versions: Old versions - no need to download themArkSwitch: ArkSwitch v1.1.0: ArkSwitch v1.1.0Braintree Client Library: Braintree 1.0.0: Braintree .NET client library 1.0.0Business Framework: BusinessFramework preview: Early preview bits. See Rules for a sample.Business Framework: Samples: SamplesCC.Votd: CC.Votd 1.0.10.224: This is the initial release of CC.Votd. Marking as beta since I'm the only one who has used it up to this point.ChoServiceHost: ChoServiceHost.msi: Easy way to develop Windows Service applications in .NET 3.5/VS.NET 2008. (Installer)ChoServiceHost: ChoServiceHost-Src.zip: Easy way to develop Windows Service applications in .NET 3.5/VS.NET 2008. (Source Files)CHS Extranet: Beta 2.4: Beta 2.4 Release: Change Log: Added HTML preview options for XLS, XLSX, DOCX File Changes: ~/MyComputer.aspx ~/mycomputer.css ~/basestyle.css...Composure: AvalonDock-55751-VS2010.NET4: This is a "convenience build" of AvalonDock (drop 55751) for VIsual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0. Nothing has been altered in the source code (which ...Data Access Component: Version 2.6: Add LINQ support.Desktop Google Reader: 1.3 Beta 1: New features: Read it Later included (see http://readitlaterlist.com/) Liking added (working: see number of liking users, see if liking yourself,...Explorer Plus: Explorer Plus v0.3: Amazon Locales AddedFree Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts 3.0.3 Released: Hi, Today we have released the final version of Visifire v3.0.3 which contains the following major features: * DataBinding. * IndicatorEn...Generic web part for hosting Silverlight content on SharePoint sites (WSS,MOSS): CTP: The objective of this release was to gather feedback from the wider community. I intend to pursue further development and make fixes wherever appro...HTML Forms in Windows Forms: HTMLForms 1.0: First Release.imgur uploader - .net open source uploader for image sharing site imgur: Release 2010-02-23-01: This is the first codeplex release! Let mayhem commence...Jeremi Stadler: Stick Tops 2.5: Sticktops is a very light program that makes it easy to paste stuff on small notes on the screen. All notes you have is saved on a server so you ca...kuuy static system: kss_v1.0beta sql: kss_v1.0beta sql scripts sourceMDownloader: MDownloader-0.15.2.55998: Fixed detecting uploading.com dead links; Added hiding rss entries without files;Mover: MoverLib for Silverlight 3: A first version of MoverLib for Silverlight 3.nHibernate Attribute mapping: 1.0: Source CodenHibernate Attribute mapping: Download 1: Zip fileNodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel: NodeXL Class Libraries, version 1.0.1.113: The NodeXL class libraries can be used to display network graphs in .NET applications. To include a NodeXL network graph in a WPF desktop or Windo...NodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel: NodeXL Excel 2007 Template, version 1.0.1.113: The NodeXL Excel 2007 template displays a network graph using edge and vertex lists stored in an Excel 2007 workbook. What's NewThis version inclu...OAuthLib: OAuthLib (1.6.0.0): Difference between previous version is as next. 7079 Make it possible to pass factory method of request in ObtainUnauthorizedRequestToken and Reque...patterns & practices SharePoint Guidance: SPG2010 Drop 5: SharePoint Guidance Drop Notes Microsoft patterns and practices ****************************************** ***************************************...PowerShell Remote File Explorer: PSRemoteExplorer 0.1: This release is the initial release of PowerShell remote file explorer. This enables the basic functionality of a remote file explorer. This also p...Reusable Library: v1.0.3: A collection of reusable abstractions for enterprise application developer.SharePoint Outlook Connector: Version 1.0.2.4: Version 1.0.2.4 Minor bugs have been fixed.Silverlight Server File Manager: First production release: This release is in production. Release on change set 37268.SIMD Detector: 2nd Release: Released C/CLI assembly project for use in CSharp and VB. Tested in CSharp console application. A Windows Form application coming soon. Projects ma...Source Analysis Policy: Source Analysis Policy v1.1 SP1: This release contains the compiled, and signed binaries in an installation package. This package also registers the policy with Microsoft Visual St...SpecExpress : A Fluent Validation Framework: SpecExpress 1.1: UpdatesAdded Validation Contexts feature Fixed bug with handling for Bool Types and Required MessageStore now allows for overriding individual ...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30223.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVS2010 Rc1 Fix: RC1Fix01: This is a very simple project implementing a Microsoft Walkthrough at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/wdb4eb30%28VS.100%29.aspx and the man...WPF AutoComplete TextBox Control: version 1.0: Initial releaseMost Popular ProjectsASP.NET Ajax LibraryManaged Extensibility FrameworkAccelerators for Microsoft Dynamics CRMWindows 7 USB/DVD Download ToolDotNetZip LibraryMDownloaderVirtual Router - Wifi Hot Spot for Windows 7 / 2008 R2MFCMAPIDroid ExplorerUseful Sharepoint Designer Custom Workflow ActivitiesMost Active ProjectsDinnerNow.netRawrBlogEngine.NETInfoServiceNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleRapid Entity Framework. (ORM). CTP 2SharpMap - Geospatial Application Framework for the CLRjQuery Library for SharePoint Web Servicespatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryXcoordination Application Space

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  • jQuery Templates and Data Linking (and Microsoft contributing to jQuery)

    - by ScottGu
    The jQuery library has a passionate community of developers, and it is now the most widely used JavaScript library on the web today. Two years ago I announced that Microsoft would begin offering product support for jQuery, and that we’d be including it in new versions of Visual Studio going forward. By default, when you create new ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC projects with VS 2010 you’ll find jQuery automatically added to your project. A few weeks ago during my second keynote at the MIX 2010 conference I announced that Microsoft would also begin contributing to the jQuery project.  During the talk, John Resig -- the creator of the jQuery library and leader of the jQuery developer team – talked a little about our participation and discussed an early prototype of a new client templating API for jQuery. In this blog post, I’m going to talk a little about how my team is starting to contribute to the jQuery project, and discuss some of the specific features that we are working on such as client-side templating and data linking (data-binding). Contributing to jQuery jQuery has a fantastic developer community, and a very open way to propose suggestions and make contributions.  Microsoft is following the same process to contribute to jQuery as any other member of the community. As an example, when working with the jQuery community to improve support for templating to jQuery my team followed the following steps: We created a proposal for templating and posted the proposal to the jQuery developer forum (http://forum.jquery.com/topic/jquery-templates-proposal and http://forum.jquery.com/topic/templating-syntax ). After receiving feedback on the forums, the jQuery team created a prototype for templating and posted the prototype at the Github code repository (http://github.com/jquery/jquery-tmpl ). We iterated on the prototype, creating a new fork on Github of the templating prototype, to suggest design improvements. Several other members of the community also provided design feedback by forking the templating code. There has been an amazing amount of participation by the jQuery community in response to the original templating proposal (over 100 posts in the jQuery forum), and the design of the templating proposal has evolved significantly based on community feedback. The jQuery team is the ultimate determiner on what happens with the templating proposal – they might include it in jQuery core, or make it an official plugin, or reject it entirely.  My team is excited to be able to participate in the open source process, and make suggestions and contributions the same way as any other member of the community. jQuery Template Support Client-side templates enable jQuery developers to easily generate and render HTML UI on the client.  Templates support a simple syntax that enables either developers or designers to declaratively specify the HTML they want to generate.  Developers can then programmatically invoke the templates on the client, and pass JavaScript objects to them to make the content rendered completely data driven.  These JavaScript objects can optionally be based on data retrieved from a server. Because the jQuery templating proposal is still evolving in response to community feedback, the final version might look very different than the version below. This blog post gives you a sense of how you can try out and use templating as it exists today (you can download the prototype by the jQuery core team at http://github.com/jquery/jquery-tmpl or the latest submission from my team at http://github.com/nje/jquery-tmpl).  jQuery Client Templates You create client-side jQuery templates by embedding content within a <script type="text/html"> tag.  For example, the HTML below contains a <div> template container, as well as a client-side jQuery “contactTemplate” template (within the <script type="text/html"> element) that can be used to dynamically display a list of contacts: The {{= name }} and {{= phone }} expressions are used within the contact template above to display the names and phone numbers of “contact” objects passed to the template. We can use the template to display either an array of JavaScript objects or a single object. The JavaScript code below demonstrates how you can render a JavaScript array of “contact” object using the above template. The render() method renders the data into a string and appends the string to the “contactContainer” DIV element: When the page is loaded, the list of contacts is rendered by the template.  All of this template rendering is happening on the client-side within the browser:   Templating Commands and Conditional Display Logic The current templating proposal supports a small set of template commands - including if, else, and each statements. The number of template commands was deliberately kept small to encourage people to place more complicated logic outside of their templates. Even this small set of template commands is very useful though. Imagine, for example, that each contact can have zero or more phone numbers. The contacts could be represented by the JavaScript array below: The template below demonstrates how you can use the if and each template commands to conditionally display and loop the phone numbers for each contact: If a contact has one or more phone numbers then each of the phone numbers is displayed by iterating through the phone numbers with the each template command: The jQuery team designed the template commands so that they are extensible. If you have a need for a new template command then you can easily add new template commands to the default set of commands. Support for Client Data-Linking The ASP.NET team recently submitted another proposal and prototype to the jQuery forums (http://forum.jquery.com/topic/proposal-for-adding-data-linking-to-jquery). This proposal describes a new feature named data linking. Data Linking enables you to link a property of one object to a property of another object - so that when one property changes the other property changes.  Data linking enables you to easily keep your UI and data objects synchronized within a page. If you are familiar with the concept of data-binding then you will be familiar with data linking (in the proposal, we call the feature data linking because jQuery already includes a bind() method that has nothing to do with data-binding). Imagine, for example, that you have a page with the following HTML <input> elements: The following JavaScript code links the two INPUT elements above to the properties of a JavaScript “contact” object that has a “name” and “phone” property: When you execute this code, the value of the first INPUT element (#name) is set to the value of the contact name property, and the value of the second INPUT element (#phone) is set to the value of the contact phone property. The properties of the contact object and the properties of the INPUT elements are also linked – so that changes to one are also reflected in the other. Because the contact object is linked to the INPUT element, when you request the page, the values of the contact properties are displayed: More interesting, the values of the linked INPUT elements will change automatically whenever you update the properties of the contact object they are linked to. For example, we could programmatically modify the properties of the “contact” object using the jQuery attr() method like below: Because our two INPUT elements are linked to the “contact” object, the INPUT element values will be updated automatically (without us having to write any code to modify the UI elements): Note that we updated the contact object above using the jQuery attr() method. In order for data linking to work, you must use jQuery methods to modify the property values. Two Way Linking The linkBoth() method enables two-way data linking. The contact object and INPUT elements are linked in both directions. When you modify the value of the INPUT element, the contact object is also updated automatically. For example, the following code adds a client-side JavaScript click handler to an HTML button element. When you click the button, the property values of the contact object are displayed using an alert() dialog: The following demonstrates what happens when you change the value of the Name INPUT element and click the Save button. Notice that the name property of the “contact” object that the INPUT element was linked to was updated automatically: The above example is obviously trivially simple.  Instead of displaying the new values of the contact object with a JavaScript alert, you can imagine instead calling a web-service to save the object to a database. The benefit of data linking is that it enables you to focus on your data and frees you from the mechanics of keeping your UI and data in sync. Converters The current data linking proposal also supports a feature called converters. A converter enables you to easily convert the value of a property during data linking. For example, imagine that you want to represent phone numbers in a standard way with the “contact” object phone property. In particular, you don’t want to include special characters such as ()- in the phone number - instead you only want digits and nothing else. In that case, you can wire-up a converter to convert the value of an INPUT element into this format using the code below: Notice above how a converter function is being passed to the linkFrom() method used to link the phone property of the “contact” object with the value of the phone INPUT element. This convertor function strips any non-numeric characters from the INPUT element before updating the phone property.  Now, if you enter the phone number (206) 555-9999 into the phone input field then the value 2065559999 is assigned to the phone property of the contact object: You can also use a converter in the opposite direction also. For example, you can apply a standard phone format string when displaying a phone number from a phone property. Combining Templating and Data Linking Our goal in submitting these two proposals for templating and data linking is to make it easier to work with data when building websites and applications with jQuery. Templating makes it easier to display a list of database records retrieved from a database through an Ajax call. Data linking makes it easier to keep the data and user interface in sync for update scenarios. Currently, we are working on an extension of the data linking proposal to support declarative data linking. We want to make it easy to take advantage of data linking when using a template to display data. For example, imagine that you are using the following template to display an array of product objects: Notice the {{link name}} and {{link price}} expressions. These expressions enable declarative data linking between the SPAN elements and properties of the product objects. The current jQuery templating prototype supports extending its syntax with custom template commands. In this case, we are extending the default templating syntax with a custom template command named “link”. The benefit of using data linking with the above template is that the SPAN elements will be automatically updated whenever the underlying “product” data is updated.  Declarative data linking also makes it easier to create edit and insert forms. For example, you could create a form for editing a product by using declarative data linking like this: Whenever you change the value of the INPUT elements in a template that uses declarative data linking, the underlying JavaScript data object is automatically updated. Instead of needing to write code to scrape the HTML form to get updated values, you can instead work with the underlying data directly – making your client-side code much cleaner and simpler. Downloading Working Code Examples of the Above Scenarios You can download this .zip file to get with working code examples of the above scenarios.  The .zip file includes 4 static HTML page: Listing1_Templating.htm – Illustrates basic templating. Listing2_TemplatingConditionals.htm – Illustrates templating with the use of the if and each template commands. Listing3_DataLinking.htm – Illustrates data linking. Listing4_Converters.htm – Illustrates using a converter with data linking. You can un-zip the file to the file-system and then run each page to see the concepts in action. Summary We are excited to be able to begin participating within the open-source jQuery project.  We’ve received lots of encouraging feedback in response to our first two proposals, and we will continue to actively contribute going forward.  These features will hopefully make it easier for all developers (including ASP.NET developers) to build great Ajax applications. 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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  • Parallelism in .NET – Part 4, Imperative Data Parallelism: Aggregation

    - by Reed
    In the article on simple data parallelism, I described how to perform an operation on an entire collection of elements in parallel.  Often, this is not adequate, as the parallel operation is going to be performing some form of aggregation. Simple examples of this might include taking the sum of the results of processing a function on each element in the collection, or finding the minimum of the collection given some criteria.  This can be done using the techniques described in simple data parallelism, however, special care needs to be taken into account to synchronize the shared data appropriately.  The Task Parallel Library has tools to assist in this synchronization. The main issue with aggregation when parallelizing a routine is that you need to handle synchronization of data.  Since multiple threads will need to write to a shared portion of data.  Suppose, for example, that we wanted to parallelize a simple loop that looked for the minimum value within a dataset: double min = double.MaxValue; foreach(var item in collection) { double value = item.PerformComputation(); min = System.Math.Min(min, value); } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } This seems like a good candidate for parallelization, but there is a problem here.  If we just wrap this into a call to Parallel.ForEach, we’ll introduce a critical race condition, and get the wrong answer.  Let’s look at what happens here: // Buggy code! Do not use! double min = double.MaxValue; Parallel.ForEach(collection, item => { double value = item.PerformComputation(); min = System.Math.Min(min, value); }); This code has a fatal flaw: min will be checked, then set, by multiple threads simultaneously.  Two threads may perform the check at the same time, and set the wrong value for min.  Say we get a value of 1 in thread 1, and a value of 2 in thread 2, and these two elements are the first two to run.  If both hit the min check line at the same time, both will determine that min should change, to 1 and 2 respectively.  If element 1 happens to set the variable first, then element 2 sets the min variable, we’ll detect a min value of 2 instead of 1.  This can lead to wrong answers. Unfortunately, fixing this, with the Parallel.ForEach call we’re using, would require adding locking.  We would need to rewrite this like: // Safe, but slow double min = double.MaxValue; // Make a "lock" object object syncObject = new object(); Parallel.ForEach(collection, item => { double value = item.PerformComputation(); lock(syncObject) min = System.Math.Min(min, value); }); This will potentially add a huge amount of overhead to our calculation.  Since we can potentially block while waiting on the lock for every single iteration, we will most likely slow this down to where it is actually quite a bit slower than our serial implementation.  The problem is the lock statement – any time you use lock(object), you’re almost assuring reduced performance in a parallel situation.  This leads to two observations I’ll make: When parallelizing a routine, try to avoid locks. That being said: Always add any and all required synchronization to avoid race conditions. These two observations tend to be opposing forces – we often need to synchronize our algorithms, but we also want to avoid the synchronization when possible.  Looking at our routine, there is no way to directly avoid this lock, since each element is potentially being run on a separate thread, and this lock is necessary in order for our routine to function correctly every time. However, this isn’t the only way to design this routine to implement this algorithm.  Realize that, although our collection may have thousands or even millions of elements, we have a limited number of Processing Elements (PE).  Processing Element is the standard term for a hardware element which can process and execute instructions.  This typically is a core in your processor, but many modern systems have multiple hardware execution threads per core.  The Task Parallel Library will not execute the work for each item in the collection as a separate work item. Instead, when Parallel.ForEach executes, it will partition the collection into larger “chunks” which get processed on different threads via the ThreadPool.  This helps reduce the threading overhead, and help the overall speed.  In general, the Parallel class will only use one thread per PE in the system. Given the fact that there are typically fewer threads than work items, we can rethink our algorithm design.  We can parallelize our algorithm more effectively by approaching it differently.  Because the basic aggregation we are doing here (Min) is communitive, we do not need to perform this in a given order.  We knew this to be true already – otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to parallelize this routine in the first place.  With this in mind, we can treat each thread’s work independently, allowing each thread to serially process many elements with no locking, then, after all the threads are complete, “merge” together the results. This can be accomplished via a different set of overloads in the Parallel class: Parallel.ForEach<TSource,TLocal>.  The idea behind these overloads is to allow each thread to begin by initializing some local state (TLocal).  The thread will then process an entire set of items in the source collection, providing that state to the delegate which processes an individual item.  Finally, at the end, a separate delegate is run which allows you to handle merging that local state into your final results. To rewriting our routine using Parallel.ForEach<TSource,TLocal>, we need to provide three delegates instead of one.  The most basic version of this function is declared as: public static ParallelLoopResult ForEach<TSource, TLocal>( IEnumerable<TSource> source, Func<TLocal> localInit, Func<TSource, ParallelLoopState, TLocal, TLocal> body, Action<TLocal> localFinally ) The first delegate (the localInit argument) is defined as Func<TLocal>.  This delegate initializes our local state.  It should return some object we can use to track the results of a single thread’s operations. The second delegate (the body argument) is where our main processing occurs, although now, instead of being an Action<T>, we actually provide a Func<TSource, ParallelLoopState, TLocal, TLocal> delegate.  This delegate will receive three arguments: our original element from the collection (TSource), a ParallelLoopState which we can use for early termination, and the instance of our local state we created (TLocal).  It should do whatever processing you wish to occur per element, then return the value of the local state after processing is completed. The third delegate (the localFinally argument) is defined as Action<TLocal>.  This delegate is passed our local state after it’s been processed by all of the elements this thread will handle.  This is where you can merge your final results together.  This may require synchronization, but now, instead of synchronizing once per element (potentially millions of times), you’ll only have to synchronize once per thread, which is an ideal situation. Now that I’ve explained how this works, lets look at the code: // Safe, and fast! double min = double.MaxValue; // Make a "lock" object object syncObject = new object(); Parallel.ForEach( collection, // First, we provide a local state initialization delegate. () => double.MaxValue, // Next, we supply the body, which takes the original item, loop state, // and local state, and returns a new local state (item, loopState, localState) => { double value = item.PerformComputation(); return System.Math.Min(localState, value); }, // Finally, we provide an Action<TLocal>, to "merge" results together localState => { // This requires locking, but it's only once per used thread lock(syncObj) min = System.Math.Min(min, localState); } ); Although this is a bit more complicated than the previous version, it is now both thread-safe, and has minimal locking.  This same approach can be used by Parallel.For, although now, it’s Parallel.For<TLocal>.  When working with Parallel.For<TLocal>, you use the same triplet of delegates, with the same purpose and results. Also, many times, you can completely avoid locking by using a method of the Interlocked class to perform the final aggregation in an atomic operation.  The MSDN example demonstrating this same technique using Parallel.For uses the Interlocked class instead of a lock, since they are doing a sum operation on a long variable, which is possible via Interlocked.Add. By taking advantage of local state, we can use the Parallel class methods to parallelize algorithms such as aggregation, which, at first, may seem like poor candidates for parallelization.  Doing so requires careful consideration, and often requires a slight redesign of the algorithm, but the performance gains can be significant if handled in a way to avoid excessive synchronization.

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  • Oracle Fusion Applications: Changing the Game

    - by kellsey.ruppel(at)oracle.com
    Originally posted in the Oracle Profit Magazine, November 2010 Edition. When the order processing system red-flags a customer's credit status, the IT department doesn't get the customer's call. When a supplier misses a delivery date for a key automotive assembly, it's not the CIO who has to answer for the error. Knowledge workers (known in IT circles as "users") are on the front lines when an exception occurs in an established business process. They're also the ones who study sales trends to decide when to open a new store in an up-and-coming neighborhood, which products are most profitable, how employee skill sets are evolving, and which suppliers are most efficient. In short, knowledge workers are masters of business as unusual. Traditional enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and other familiar enterprise applications excel at automating, managing, and executing standard business processes. These programs shine when everything goes as planned. Life gets even trickier when a traditional application needs to be extended with a new service or an extra step is added to a business process when new products are brought to market, divisions are merged, or companies are acquired. Monolithic applications often need the IT department to step in and make the necessary adjustments--incurring additional costs and delays. Until now. When Oracle unveiled the much-anticipated family of Oracle Fusion Applications at Oracle OpenWorld in September 2010, knowledge workers in particular had a lot to cheer about. Business users will soon have ready access to analytical information and collaboration tools in the context of what they are working on, so they can make better decisions when problems or opportunities arise. Additionally, the Oracle Fusion Applications platform will make it easy for business users to tweak processes, create new capabilities, and find information, often without the need for IT department assistance and while still following company guidelines. And IT leaders will be happy to hear about new deployment options, guided implementation and setup tools, and cost-saving management capabilities. Just as important, the underlying technologies in Oracle Fusion Applications will allow organizations to choose among their existing investments and next-generation enterprise applications so they can introduce innovations at a pace that makes the most business and financial sense. "Oracle Fusion Applications are architected so you don't have to do rip and replace," says Jim Hayes, managing director of the consulting firm Accenture. "That's very important for creating a business case that will get through the steering committee and be approved by the board. It shows you can drive value and make a difference in the near term." For these and other reasons, analysts and early adopters are calling Oracle Fusion Applications a game changer for enterprise customers. The differences become apparent in three key areas: the way we innovate, work, and adopt technology. Game Changer #1: New Standard for InnovationChange is a constant challenge for most businesses, whether the catalysts are market dynamics, new competition, or the ever-expanding regulatory environment. And, in an ongoing effort to differentiate, business leaders are constantly looking for new ways to do business, serve constituents, and bring new products and services to market. In addition, companies face significant costs to keep their applications up-to-date. For example, when a company adds new suppliers to a procurement system, the IT shop typically has to invest time, effort, and even consulting fees for custom integrations that allow various ERP systems to communicate with each other. Oracle Fusion Applications were built on Web services and a modular SOA foundation to ease customizations and integration activities among all applications--whether from Oracle or another vendor. Interfaces and updates written in ubiquitous Java, rather than a proprietary coding language, allow organizations to tap into existing in-house technical skills rather than seek expensive outside specialists. And with SOA, organizations can extend a feature set or integrate with other SOA environments by combining Web services such as "look up customer" into a new business process managed by the BPEL orchestration engine. Flexibility like this has long-term implications. "Because users capture these changes at a higher metadata layer, not in the application's code, changes and additions are protected even as new versions of Oracle Fusion Applications are released," says Steve Miranda, senior vice president of applications development at Oracle. "This is a much more sustainable approach because you don't incur costly customizations that prevent upgrades and other innovations." And changes are easier to make: if one change is made in the metadata, that change is automatically reflected throughout the application interface, business intelligence, business process, and business logic. Game Changer #2: New Standard for WorkBoosting productivity comes down to doing the basics right: running business processes more efficiently and managing exceptions more effectively, so users can accomplish more in the course of a day or spend more quality time with the most profitable customers. The fastest way to improve process efficiency is to reduce the number of steps it takes to execute common tasks, such as ordering office equipment from an internal procurement system. Oracle Fusion Applications will deliver a complete role-based user experience with business intelligence and collaboration capabilities provided in the context of the work at hand. "We created every Oracle Fusion Applications screen by asking 'What does the user need to know?' 'What does he or she need to do?' and 'Who do they need to work with to get the job done?'" Miranda explains. So when the sales department heads need new laptops, the self-service procurement screen will not only display a list of approved vendors and configurations, but also a running list of reviews by coworkers who recently purchased the various models. Embedded intelligence may also display prevailing delivery lead times based on actual order histories, not the generic shipping dates vendors may quote. The pervasive business intelligence serves many other business activities across all areas of the enterprise. For example, a manager considering whether to promote a direct report can see the person's employee profile, with a salary history, appraisal summaries, and a rundown of skills and training. This approach to business intelligence also has implications for supply chain management. "One of the challenges at Ingersoll Rand is lack of visibility in our supply chain," says Mike Macrie, global director of enterprise applications for global industrial firm Ingersoll Rand. "Oracle Fusion Applications are going to provide the embedded intelligence to give us that visibility and give us the ability to analyze those orders at any point in our supply chain." Oracle Fusion Applications will also create a "role-based user experience" that displays a work list of events that need attention, based on user job function. Role awareness guides users with daily lists of action items and exceptions. So a credit manager may see seven invoices with discounts that are about to expire or 12 suppliers that have been put on hold because credit memos are awaiting approval. Individualization extends to the search capabilities of Oracle Fusion Applications. The platform uses Web-style search screens powered by an Oracle enterprise search engine, with a security framework that filters search results so individuals will only see the internal information they're authorized to access. A further aid to productivity is Oracle Fusion Applications' integration with Web 2.0 collaboration and social networking resources for business environments. Hover-over text will reveal relevant contact information whenever the name of a person appears in an Oracle Fusion Application. Users can connect via an online chat, phone call, or instant message without leaving the main application, reducing the time required for an accounts payable staffer to resolve a mismatch between an invoiced charge and the service record, for example. Addresses of suppliers, customers, or partners will also initiate hover-over text to show contact details and Web-based maps. Finally, Oracle Fusion Applications will promote a new way of working with purpose-driven communities that can bring new efficiencies to everything from cultivating sales leads to managing new projects. As soon as a lead or project materializes, the applications will automatically gather relevant participants into an online community that shares member contact information, schedules, discussion forums, and Wiki pages. "Oracle Fusion Applications will allow us to take it to the next level with embedded Web 2.0 tools and the embedded analytics," says Steve Printz, CIO and vice president, supply chain management, at window-and-door manufacturer Pella. "[This] allows those employees today who are processing transactions to really contribute to the success of the company and become decision-makers." Game Changer #3: New Standard for Technology AdoptionAs IT becomes a dominant component of how businesses run and compete, organizations need to lower the cost of implementing applications and introducing new application features. In the past, rolling out new code often required creating a test bed system, moving beta code to a separate system for user feedback, and--once all the revisions were made--moving version one of the software onto production systems, where business users could finally get the needed new features. Oracle Fusion Applications will use a dedicated setup manager application to streamline this process. First, the setup manager will help scope out the project, querying users about their requirements. "From those questions and answers we determine the steps and the order of those steps that will enable that task," Miranda says. Next, system utilities will assign tasks to owners, track completion status, and monitor the overall status of a programming effort. Oracle Fusion Applications can then recommend Web services that allow users to migrate setup choices and steps across all the various deployments of the application. Those setup capabilities automate the migration from test systems to production systems, as well as between different business units that may be using the same application. "The self-service ability of the setup manager helps business users change setups with very little intervention from the IT team," says Ravi Kumar, vice president at IT services company Infosys. "That to me is a big difference from how we've viewed enterprise applications before." For additional flexibility, organizations will be able to adopt Oracle Fusion Applications modules in either of two modes: a single-instance alternative uses one database for all Oracle Fusion Applications, while a "pillar mode" creates separate databases to underpin each application. This means IT departments running any one of Oracle's applications or even third-party applications can plug Oracle Fusion Applications modules into their environment and see additional business value created on top of their existing systems. And Oracle Fusion Applications offer a hybrid approach to deployment. The applications are all software-as-a-service-ready, so customers can choose on-premises, public or private cloud, or a combination of these to suit their business needs. It's that combination of flexibility and a roadmap for the future that may be the biggest game changer of all. "The Oracle Fusion Applications architecture allows us to migrate our company at a pace that's consistent with our business strategy, whereas before we might have had to do it with a massive upgrade," says Macrie of Ingersoll Rand. "We're looking forward to that architecture to really give us more flexibility in how we migrate over time." For More InformationUser Input Key to the Success of Oracle Fusion ApplicationsTransforming Coexistence into Strategic ValueUnder the HoodOracle Fusion ApplicationsOracle Service-Oriented Architecture  

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  • Ten - oh, wait, eleven - Eleven things you should know about the ASP.NET Fall 2012 Update

    - by Jon Galloway
    Today, just a little over two months after the big ASP.NET 4.5 / ASP.NET MVC 4 / ASP.NET Web API / Visual Studio 2012 / Web Matrix 2 release, the first preview of the ASP.NET Fall 2012 Update is out. Here's what you need to know: There are no new framework bits in this release - there's no change or update to ASP.NET Core, ASP.NET MVC or Web Forms features. This means that you can start using it without any updates to your server, upgrade concerns, etc. This update is really an update to the project templates and Visual Studio tooling, conceptually similar to the ASP.NET MVC 3 Tools Update. It's a relatively lightweight install. It's a 41MB download. I've installed it many times and usually takes 5-7 minutes; it's never required a reboot. It adds some new project templates to ASP.NET MVC: Facebook Application and Single Page Application templates. It adds a lot of cool enhancements to ASP.NET Web API. It adds some tooling that makes it easy to take advantage of features like SignalR, Friendly URLs, and Windows Azure Authentication. Most of the new features are installed via NuGet packages. Since ASP.NET is open source, nightly NuGet packages are available, and the roadmap is published, most of this has really been publicly available for a while. The official name of this drop is the ASP.NET Fall 2012 Update BUILD Prerelease. Please do not attempt to say that ten times fast. While the EULA doesn't prohibit it, it WILL legally change your first name to Scott. As with all new releases, you can find out everything you need to know about the Fall Update at http://asp.net/vnext (especially the release notes!) I'm going to be showing all of this off, assisted by special guest code monkey Scott Hanselman, this Friday at BUILD: Bleeding edge ASP.NET: See what is next for MVC, Web API, SignalR and more… (and I've heard it will be livestreamed). Let's look at some of those things in more detail. No new bits ASP.NET 4.5, MVC 4 and Web API have a lot of great core features. I see the goal of this update release as making it easier to put those features to use to solve some useful scenarios by taking advantage of NuGet packages and template code. If you create a new ASP.NET MVC application using one of the new templates, you'll see that it's using the ASP.NET MVC 4 RTM NuGet package (4.0.20710.0): This means you can install and use the Fall Update without any impact on your existing projects and no worries about upgrading or compatibility. New Facebook Application Template ASP.NET MVC 4 (and ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms) included the ability to authenticate your users via OAuth and OpenID, so you could let users log in to your site using a Facebook account. One of the new changes in the Fall Update is a new template that makes it really easy to create full Facebook applications. You could create Facebook application in ASP.NET already, you'd just need to go through a few steps: Search around to find a good Facebook NuGet package, like the Facebook C# SDK (written by my friend Nathan Totten and some other Facebook SDK brainiacs). Read the Facebook developer documentation to figure out how to authenticate and integrate with them. Write some code, debug it and repeat until you got something working. Get started with the application you'd originally wanted to write. What this template does for you: eliminate steps 1-3. Erik Porter, Nathan and some other experts built out the Facebook Application template so it automatically pulls in and configures the Facebook NuGet package and makes it really easy to take advantage of it in an ASP.NET MVC application. One great example is the the way you access a Facebook user's information. Take a look at the following code in a File / New / MVC / Facebook Application site. First, the Home Controller Index action: [FacebookAuthorize(Permissions = "email")] public ActionResult Index(MyAppUser user, FacebookObjectList<MyAppUserFriend> userFriends) { ViewBag.Message = "Modify this template to jump-start your Facebook application using ASP.NET MVC."; ViewBag.User = user; ViewBag.Friends = userFriends.Take(5); return View(); } First, notice that there's a FacebookAuthorize attribute which requires the user is authenticated via Facebook and requires permissions to access their e-mail address. It binds to two things: a custom MyAppUser object and a list of friends. Let's look at the MyAppUser code: using Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc.Facebook.Attributes; using Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc.Facebook.Models; // Add any fields you want to be saved for each user and specify the field name in the JSON coming back from Facebook // https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/user/ namespace MvcApplication3.Models { public class MyAppUser : FacebookUser { public string Name { get; set; } [FacebookField(FieldName = "picture", JsonField = "picture.data.url")] public string PictureUrl { get; set; } public string Email { get; set; } } } You can add in other custom fields if you want, but you can also just bind to a FacebookUser and it will automatically pull in the available fields. You can even just bind directly to a FacebookUser and check for what's available in debug mode, which makes it really easy to explore. For more information and some walkthroughs on creating Facebook applications, see: Deploying your first Facebook App on Azure using ASP.NET MVC Facebook Template (Yao Huang Lin) Facebook Application Template Tutorial (Erik Porter) Single Page Application template Early releases of ASP.NET MVC 4 included a Single Page Application template, but it was removed for the official release. There was a lot of interest in it, but it was kind of complex, as it handled features for things like data management. The new Single Page Application template that ships with the Fall Update is more lightweight. It uses Knockout.js on the client and ASP.NET Web API on the server, and it includes a sample application that shows how they all work together. I think the real benefit of this application is that it shows a good pattern for using ASP.NET Web API and Knockout.js. For instance, it's easy to end up with a mess of JavaScript when you're building out a client-side application. This template uses three separate JavaScript files (delivered via a Bundle, of course): todoList.js - this is where the main client-side logic lives todoList.dataAccess.js - this defines how the client-side application interacts with the back-end services todoList.bindings.js - this is where you set up events and overrides for the Knockout bindings - for instance, hooking up jQuery validation and defining some client-side events This is a fun one to play with, because you can just create a new Single Page Application and hit F5. Quick, easy install (with one gotcha) One of the cool engineering changes for this release is a big update to the installer to make it more lightweight and efficient. I've been running nightly builds of this for a few weeks to prep for my BUILD demos, and the install has been really quick and easy to use. The install takes about 5 minutes, has never required a reboot for me, and the uninstall is just as simple. There's one gotcha, though. In this preview release, you may hit an issue that will require you to uninstall and re-install the NuGet VSIX package. The problem comes up when you create a new MVC application and see this dialog: The solution, as explained in the release notes, is to uninstall and re-install the NuGet VSIX package: Start Visual Studio 2012 as an Administrator Go to Tools->Extensions and Updates and uninstall NuGet. Close Visual Studio Navigate to the ASP.NET Fall 2012 Update installation folder: For Visual Studio 2012: Program Files\Microsoft ASP.NET\ASP.NET Web Stack\Visual Studio 2012 For Visual Studio 2012 Express for Web: Program Files\Microsoft ASP.NET\ASP.NET Web Stack\Visual Studio Express 2012 for Web Double click on the NuGet.Tools.vsix to reinstall NuGet This took me under a minute to do, and I was up and running. ASP.NET Web API Update Extravaganza! Uh, the Web API team is out of hand. They added a ton of new stuff: OData support, Tracing, and API Help Page generation. OData support Some people like OData. Some people start twitching when you mention it. If you're in the first group, this is for you. You can add a [Queryable] attribute to an API that returns an IQueryable<Whatever> and you get OData query support from your clients. Then, without any extra changes to your client or server code, your clients can send filters like this: /Suppliers?$filter=Name eq ‘Microsoft’ For more information about OData support in ASP.NET Web API, see Alex James' mega-post about it: OData support in ASP.NET Web API ASP.NET Web API Tracing Tracing makes it really easy to leverage the .NET Tracing system from within your ASP.NET Web API's. If you look at the \App_Start\WebApiConfig.cs file in new ASP.NET Web API project, you'll see a call to TraceConfig.Register(config). That calls into some code in the new \App_Start\TraceConfig.cs file: public static void Register(HttpConfiguration configuration) { if (configuration == null) { throw new ArgumentNullException("configuration"); } SystemDiagnosticsTraceWriter traceWriter = new SystemDiagnosticsTraceWriter() { MinimumLevel = TraceLevel.Info, IsVerbose = false }; configuration.Services.Replace(typeof(ITraceWriter), traceWriter); } As you can see, this is using the standard trace system, so you can extend it to any other trace listeners you'd like. To see how it works with the built in diagnostics trace writer, just run the application call some API's, and look at the Visual Studio Output window: iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Request, Method=GET, Url=http://localhost:11147/api/Values, Message='http://localhost:11147/api/Values' iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Message='Values', Operation=DefaultHttpControllerSelector.SelectController iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Message='WebAPI.Controllers.ValuesController', Operation=DefaultHttpControllerActivator.Create iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Message='WebAPI.Controllers.ValuesController', Operation=HttpControllerDescriptor.CreateController iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Message='Selected action 'Get()'', Operation=ApiControllerActionSelector.SelectAction iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Operation=HttpActionBinding.ExecuteBindingAsync iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Operation=QueryableAttribute.ActionExecuting iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Message='Action returned 'System.String[]'', Operation=ReflectedHttpActionDescriptor.ExecuteAsync iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Message='Will use same 'JsonMediaTypeFormatter' formatter', Operation=JsonMediaTypeFormatter.GetPerRequestFormatterInstance iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Message='Selected formatter='JsonMediaTypeFormatter', content-type='application/json; charset=utf-8'', Operation=DefaultContentNegotiator.Negotiate iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Operation=ApiControllerActionInvoker.InvokeActionAsync, Status=200 (OK) iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Operation=QueryableAttribute.ActionExecuted, Status=200 (OK) iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Operation=ValuesController.ExecuteAsync, Status=200 (OK) iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Response, Status=200 (OK), Method=GET, Url=http://localhost:11147/api/Values, Message='Content-type='application/json; charset=utf-8', content-length=unknown' iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Operation=JsonMediaTypeFormatter.WriteToStreamAsync iisexpress.exe Information: 0 : Operation=ValuesController.Dispose API Help Page When you create a new ASP.NET Web API project, you'll see an API link in the header: Clicking the API link shows generated help documentation for your ASP.NET Web API controllers: And clicking on any of those APIs shows specific information: What's great is that this information is dynamically generated, so if you add your own new APIs it will automatically show useful and up to date help. This system is also completely extensible, so you can generate documentation in other formats or customize the HTML help as much as you'd like. The Help generation code is all included in an ASP.NET MVC Area: SignalR SignalR is a really slick open source project that was started by some ASP.NET team members in their spare time to add real-time communications capabilities to ASP.NET - and .NET applications in general. It allows you to handle long running communications channels between your server and multiple connected clients using the best communications channel they can both support - websockets if available, falling back all the way to old technologies like long polling if necessary for old browsers. SignalR remains an open source project, but now it's being included in ASP.NET (also open source, hooray!). That means there's real, official ASP.NET engineering work being put into SignalR, and it's even easier to use in an ASP.NET application. Now in any ASP.NET project type, you can right-click / Add / New Item... SignalR Hub or Persistent Connection. And much more... There's quite a bit more. You can find more info at http://asp.net/vnext, and we'll be adding more content as fast as we can. Watch my BUILD talk to see as I demonstrate these and other features in the ASP.NET Fall 2012 Update, as well as some other even futurey-er stuff!

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