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• Network Logon Issues with Group Policy and Network

  - by bobloki

  I am gravely in need of your help and assistance. We have a problem with our logon and startup to our Windows 7 Enterprise system. We have more than 3000 Windows Desktops situated in roughly 20+ buildings around campus. Almost every computer on campus has the problem that I will be describing. I have spent over one month peering over etl files from Windows Performance Analyzer (A great product) and hundreds of thousands of event logs. I come to you today humbled that I could not figure this out. The problem as simply put our logon times are extremely long. An average first time logon is roughly 2-10 minutes depending on the software installed. All computers are Windows 7, the oldest computers being 5 years old. Startup times on various computers range from good (1-2 minutes) to very bad (5-60). Our second time logons range from 30 seconds to 4 minutes. We have a gigabit connection between each computer on the network. We have 5 domain controllers which also double as our DNS servers. Initial testing led us to believe that this was a software problem. So I spent a few days testing machines only to find inconsistent results from the etl files from xperfview. Each subset of computers on campus had a different subset of software issues, none seeming to interfere with logon just startup. So I started looking at our group policy and located some very interesting event ID’s. Group Policy 1129: The processing of Group Policy failed because of lack of network connectivity to a domain controller. Group Policy 1055: The processing of Group Policy failed. Windows could not resolve the computer name. This could be caused by one of more of the following: a) Name Resolution failure on the current domain controller. b) Active Directory Replication Latency (an account created on another domain controller has not replicated to the current domain controller). NETLOGON 5719 : This computer was not able to set up a secure session with a domain controller in domain OURDOMAIN due to the following: There are currently no logon servers available to service the logon request. This may lead to authentication problems. Make sure that this computer is connected to the network. If the problem persists, please contact your domain administrator. E1kexpress 27: Intel®82567LM-3 Gigabit Network Connection – Network link is disconnected. NetBT 4300 – The driver could not be created. WMI 10 - Event filter with query "SELECT * FROM __InstanceModificationEvent WITHIN 60 WHERE TargetInstance ISA "Win32_Processor" AND TargetInstance.LoadPercentage 99" could not be reactivated in namespace "//./root/CIMV2" because of error 0x80041003. Events cannot be delivered through this filter until the problem is corrected. More or less with timestamps it becomes apparent that the network maybe the issue. 1:25:57 - Group Policy is trying to discover the domain controller information 1:25:57 - The network link has been disconnected 1:25:58 - The processing of Group Policy failed because of lack of network connectivity to a domain controller. This may be a transient condition. A success message would be generated once the machine gets connected to the domain controller and Group Policy has successfully processed. If you do not see a success message for several hours, then contact your administrator. 1:25:58 - Making LDAP calls to connect and bind to active directory. DC1.ourdomain.edu 1:25:58 - Call failed after 0 milliseconds. 1:25:58 - Forcing rediscovery of domain controller details. 1:25:58 - Group policy failed to discover the domain controller in 1030 milliseconds 1:25:58 - Periodic policy processing failed for computer OURDOMAIN\%name%$ in 1 seconds. 1:25:59 - A network link has been established at 1Gbps at full duplex 1:26:00 - The network link has been disconnected 1:26:02 - NtpClient was unable to set a domain peer to use as a time source because of discovery error. NtpClient will try again in 3473457 minutes and DOUBLE THE REATTEMPT INTERVAL thereafter. 1:26:05 - A network link has been established at 1Gbps at full duplex 1:26:08 - Name resolution for the name %Name% timed out after none of the configured DNS servers responded. 1:26:10 – The TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper service entered the running state. 1:26:11 - The time provider NtpClient is currently receiving valid time data at dc4.ourdomain.edu 1:26:14 – User Logon Notification for Customer Experience Improvement Program 1:26:15 - Group Policy received the notification Logon from Winlogon for session 1. 1:26:15 - Making LDAP calls to connect and bind to Active Directory. dc4.ourdomain.edu 1:26:18 - The LDAP call to connect and bind to Active Directory completed. dc4. ourdomain.edu. The call completed in 2309 milliseconds. 1:26:18 - Group Policy successfully discovered the Domain Controller in 2918 milliseconds. 1:26:18 - Computer details: Computer role : 2 Network name : (Blank) 1:26:18 - The LDAP call to connect and bind to Active Directory completed. dc4.ourdomain.edu. The call completed in 2309 milliseconds. 1:26:18 - Group Policy successfully discovered the Domain Controller in 2918 milliseconds. 1:26:19 - The WinHTTP Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Service service entered the running state. 1:26:46 - The Network Connections service entered the running state. 1:27:10 – Retrieved account information 1:27:10 – The system call to get account information completed. 1:27:10 - Starting policy processing due to network state change for computer OURDOMAIN\%name%$ 1:27:10 – Network state change detected 1:27:10 - Making system call to get account information. 1:27:11 - Making LDAP calls to connect and bind to Active Directory. dc4.ourdomain.edu 1:27:13 - Computer details: Computer role : 2 Network name : ourdomain.edu (Now not blank) 1:27:13 - Group Policy successfully discovered the Domain Controller in 2886 milliseconds. 1:27:13 - The LDAP call to connect and bind to Active Directory completed. dc4.ourdomain.edu The call completed in 2371 milliseconds. 1:27:15 - Estimated network bandwidth on one of the connections: 0 kbps. 1:27:15 - Estimated network bandwidth on one of the connections: 8545 kbps. 1:27:15 - A fast link was detected. The Estimated bandwidth is 8545 kbps. The slow link threshold is 500 kbps. 1:27:17 – Powershell - Engine state is changed from Available to Stopped. 1:27:20 - Completed Group Policy Local Users and Groups Extension Processing in 4539 milliseconds. 1:27:25 - Completed Group Policy Scheduled Tasks Extension Processing in 5210 milliseconds. 1:27:27 - Completed Group Policy Registry Extension Processing in 1529 milliseconds. 1:27:27 - Completed policy processing due to network state change for computer OURDOMAIN\%name%$ in 16 seconds. 1:27:27 – The Group Policy settings for the computer were processed successfully. There were no changes detected since the last successful processing of Group Policy. Any help would be appreciated. Please ask for any relevant information and it will be provided as soon as possible.

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• Why is my unsafe code block slower than my safe code?

  - by jomtois

  I am attempting to write some code that will expediently process video frames. I am receiving the frames as a System.Windows.Media.Imaging.WriteableBitmap. For testing purposes, I am just applying a simple threshold filter that will process a BGRA format image and assign each pixel to either be black or white based on the average of the BGR pixels. Here is my "Safe" version: public static void ApplyFilter(WriteableBitmap Bitmap, byte Threshold) { // Let's just make this work for this format if (Bitmap.Format != PixelFormats.Bgr24 && Bitmap.Format != PixelFormats.Bgr32) { return; } // Calculate the number of bytes per pixel (should be 4 for this format). var bytesPerPixel = (Bitmap.Format.BitsPerPixel + 7) / 8; // Stride is bytes per pixel times the number of pixels. // Stride is the byte width of a single rectangle row. var stride = Bitmap.PixelWidth * bytesPerPixel; // Create a byte array for a the entire size of bitmap. var arraySize = stride * Bitmap.PixelHeight; var pixelArray = new byte[arraySize]; // Copy all pixels into the array Bitmap.CopyPixels(pixelArray, stride, 0); // Loop through array and change pixels to black or white based on threshold for (int i = 0; i < pixelArray.Length; i += bytesPerPixel) { // i=B, i+1=G, i+2=R, i+3=A var brightness = (byte)((pixelArray[i] + pixelArray[i + 1] + pixelArray[i + 2]) / 3); var toColor = byte.MinValue; // Black if (brightness >= Threshold) { toColor = byte.MaxValue; // White } pixelArray[i] = toColor; pixelArray[i + 1] = toColor; pixelArray[i + 2] = toColor; } Bitmap.WritePixels(new Int32Rect(0, 0, Bitmap.PixelWidth, Bitmap.PixelHeight), pixelArray, stride, 0); } Here is what I think is a direct translation using an unsafe code block and the WriteableBitmap Back Buffer instead of the forebuffer: public static void ApplyFilterUnsafe(WriteableBitmap Bitmap, byte Threshold) { // Let's just make this work for this format if (Bitmap.Format != PixelFormats.Bgr24 && Bitmap.Format != PixelFormats.Bgr32) { return; } var bytesPerPixel = (Bitmap.Format.BitsPerPixel + 7) / 8; Bitmap.Lock(); unsafe { // Get a pointer to the back buffer. byte* pBackBuffer = (byte*)Bitmap.BackBuffer; for (int i = 0; i < Bitmap.BackBufferStride*Bitmap.PixelHeight; i+= bytesPerPixel) { var pCopy = pBackBuffer; var brightness = (byte)((*pBackBuffer + *pBackBuffer++ + *pBackBuffer++) / 3); pBackBuffer++; var toColor = brightness >= Threshold ? byte.MaxValue : byte.MinValue; *pCopy = toColor; *++pCopy = toColor; *++pCopy = toColor; } } // Bitmap.AddDirtyRect(new Int32Rect(0,0, Bitmap.PixelWidth, Bitmap.PixelHeight)); Bitmap.Unlock(); } This is my first foray into unsafe code blocks and pointers, so maybe the logic is not optimal. I have tested both blocks of code on the same WriteableBitmaps using: var threshold = Convert.ToByte(op.Result); var copy2 = copyFrame.Clone(); Stopwatch stopWatch = new Stopwatch(); stopWatch.Start(); BinaryFilter.ApplyFilterUnsafe(copyFrame, threshold); stopWatch.Stop(); var unsafesecs = stopWatch.ElapsedMilliseconds; stopWatch.Reset(); stopWatch.Start(); BinaryFilter.ApplyFilter(copy2, threshold); stopWatch.Stop(); Debug.WriteLine(string.Format("Unsafe: {1}, Safe: {0}", stopWatch.ElapsedMilliseconds, unsafesecs)); So I am analyzing the same image. A test run of an incoming stream of video frames: Unsafe: 110, Safe: 53 Unsafe: 136, Safe: 42 Unsafe: 106, Safe: 36 Unsafe: 95, Safe: 43 Unsafe: 98, Safe: 41 Unsafe: 88, Safe: 36 Unsafe: 129, Safe: 65 Unsafe: 100, Safe: 47 Unsafe: 112, Safe: 50 Unsafe: 91, Safe: 33 Unsafe: 118, Safe: 42 Unsafe: 103, Safe: 80 Unsafe: 104, Safe: 34 Unsafe: 101, Safe: 36 Unsafe: 154, Safe: 83 Unsafe: 134, Safe: 46 Unsafe: 113, Safe: 76 Unsafe: 117, Safe: 57 Unsafe: 90, Safe: 41 Unsafe: 156, Safe: 35 Why is my unsafe version always slower? Is it due to using the back buffer? Or am I doing something wrong? Thanks

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• What is the cause of these Visual Studio 2010 errors & warnings?

  - by volpack

  I don't know the cause of these errors I am receiving from Visual Studio 2010. This is the code from my program from line 343 to line 408: int create_den_from_img(char *img_file_name_part, int xlen, int ylen, int zlen ) { IplImage* imgs = 0; char str[80]; unsigned char *data,*imgdata; /* allocating memory */ data = (unsigned char *) malloc(xlen * ylen * zlen * sizeof(unsigned char) ); if(data==NULL) { printf("error in allocating memory \n"); exit(1); } /* Getting the filename & iterating through tiff images */ for(int k = 0; k < zlen; k++) { int count=2; int tmp=k+1; while(tmp/10) { count=count-1; tmp=tmp/10; } switch(count) { case 2:sprintf(str,"%s00%d.tif",img_file_name_part,k+1); break; case 1:sprintf(str,"%s0%d.tif",img_file_name_part,k+1); break; default:sprintf(str,"%s%d.tif",img_file_name_part,k+1); break; } printf("%s\n",str); /* Loading Image using OpenCV */ imgs=cvLoadImage(str,-1); if(imgs==NULL) { printf("error in opening image \n"); exit(1); } imgdata=(uchar *)imgs->imageData; for(int j =0; j < ylen; j++) { for(int i =0; i < xlen; i++) { data[ k*xlen*ylen + j*xlen + i ] = imgdata[ j*xlen+i ]; } } cvReleaseImage(&imgs ); } /* populating `data` variable is done. So, calling `write_den` */ if(write_den("test.den",data,xlen,ylen,zlen)==0) { printf("Error in creating den file\n"); exit(1); } printf("Den file created\n"); } These are the list of errors: Error 3 error C2143: syntax error : missing ';' before 'type' c:\examples\denfile.c 358 1 MTP_TEST Error 4 error C2143: syntax error : missing ';' before 'type' c:\examples\denfile.c 358 1 MTP_TEST Error 5 error C2143: syntax error : missing ')' before 'type' c:\examples\denfile.c 358 1 MTP_TEST Error 6 error C2143: syntax error : missing ';' before 'type' c:\examples\denfile.c 358 1 MTP_TEST Error 7 error C2065: 'k' : undeclared identifier c:\examples\denfile.c 358 1 MTP_TEST Error 9 error C2065: 'k' : undeclared identifier c:\examples\denfile.c 358 1 MTP_TEST Error 10 error C2059: syntax error : ')' c:\examples\denfile.c 358 1 MTP_TEST Error 11 error C2143: syntax error : missing ';' before '{' c:\examples\denfile.c 359 1 MTP_TEST Error 12 error C2065: 'k' : undeclared identifier c:\examples\denfile.c 361 1 MTP_TEST Error 13 error C2065: 'k' : undeclared identifier c:\examples\denfile.c 370 1 MTP_TEST Error 14 error C2065: 'k' : undeclared identifier c:\examples\denfile.c 372 1 MTP_TEST Error 15 error C2065: 'k' : undeclared identifier c:\examples\denfile.c 374 1 MTP_TEST Error 16 error C2143: syntax error : missing ';' before 'type' c:\examples\denfile.c 388 1 MTP_TEST Error 17 error C2143: syntax error : missing ';' before 'type' c:\examples\denfile.c 388 1 MTP_TEST Error 18 error C2143: syntax error : missing ')' before 'type' c:\examples\denfile.c 388 1 MTP_TEST Error 19 error C2143: syntax error : missing ';' before 'type' c:\examples\denfile.c 388 1 MTP_TEST Error 20 error C2065: 'j' : undeclared identifier c:\examples\denfile.c 388 1 MTP_TEST Error 22 error C2065: 'j' : undeclared identifier c:\examples\denfile.c 388 1 MTP_TEST Error 23 error C2059: syntax error : ')' c:\examples\denfile.c 388 1 MTP_TEST Error 24 error C2143: syntax error : missing ';' before '{' c:\examples\denfile.c 389 1 MTP_TEST Error 25 error C2143: syntax error : missing ';' before 'type' c:\examples\denfile.c 390 1 MTP_TEST Error 26 error C2143: syntax error : missing ';' before 'type' c:\examples\denfile.c 390 1 MTP_TEST Error 27 error C2143: syntax error : missing ')' before 'type' c:\examples\denfile.c 390 1 MTP_TEST Error 28 error C2143: syntax error : missing ';' before 'type' c:\examples\denfile.c 390 1 MTP_TEST Error 29 error C2065: 'i' : undeclared identifier c:\examples\denfile.c 390 1 MTP_TEST Error 31 error C2065: 'i' : undeclared identifier c:\examples\denfile.c 390 1 MTP_TEST Error 32 error C2059: syntax error : ')' c:\examples\denfile.c 390 1 MTP_TEST Error 33 error C2143: syntax error : missing ';' before '{' c:\examples\denfile.c 391 1 MTP_TEST Error 34 error C2065: 'k' : undeclared identifier c:\examples\denfile.c 392 1 MTP_TEST Error 35 error C2065: 'j' : undeclared identifier c:\examples\denfile.c 392 1 MTP_TEST Error 36 error C2065: 'i' : undeclared identifier c:\examples\denfile.c 392 1 MTP_TEST Error 37 error C2065: 'j' : undeclared identifier c:\examples\denfile.c 392 1 MTP_TEST Error 38 error C2065: 'i' : undeclared identifier c:\examples\denfile.c 392 1 MTP_TEST I've been getting these kind of errors all day long. Sometimes the code compiles, while at other time it doesn't. Its really annoying.

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• What's the best Communication Pattern for EJB3-based applications?

  - by Hank

  I'm starting a JEE project that needs to be strongly scalable. So far, the concept was: several Message Driven Beans, responsible for different parts of the architecture each MDB has a Session Bean injected, handling the business logic a couple of Entity Beans, providing access to the persistence layer communication between the different parts of the architecture via Request/Reply concept via JMS messages: MDB receives msg containing activity request uses its session bean to execute necessary business logic returns response object in msg to original requester The idea was that by de-coupling parts of the architecture from each other via the message bus, there is no limit to the scalability. Simply start more components - as long as they are connected to the same bus, we can grow and grow. Unfortunately, we're having massive problems with the request-reply concept. Transaction Mgmt seems to be in our way plenty. It seams that session beans are not supposed to consume messages?! Reading http://blogs.sun.com/fkieviet/entry/request_reply_from_an_ejb and http://forums.sun.com/message.jspa?messageID=10338789, I get the feeling that people actually recommend against the request/reply concept for EJBs. If that is the case, how do you communicate between your EJBs? (Remember, scalability is what I'm after) Details of my current setup: MDB 1 'TestController', uses (local) SLSB 1 'TestService' for business logic TestController.onMessage() makes TestService send a message to queue XYZ and requests a reply TestService uses Bean Managed Transactions TestService establishes a connection & session to the JMS broker via a joint connection factory upon initialization (@PostConstruct) TestService commits the transaction after sending, then begins another transaction and waits 10 sec for the response Message gets to MDB 2 'LocationController', which uses (local) SLSB 2 'LocationService' for business logic LocationController.onMessage() makes LocationService send a message back to the requested JMSReplyTo queue Same BMT concept, same @PostConstruct concept all use the same connection factory to access the broker Problem: The first message gets send (by SLSB 1) and received (by MDB 2) ok. The sending of the returning message (by SLSB 2) is fine as well. However, SLSB 1 never receives anything - it just times out. I tried without the messageSelector, no change, still no receiving message. Is it not ok to consume message by a session bean? SLSB 1 - TestService.java @Resource(name = "jms/mvs.MVSControllerFactory") private javax.jms.ConnectionFactory connectionFactory; @PostConstruct public void initialize() { try { jmsConnection = connectionFactory.createConnection(); session = jmsConnection.createSession(false, Session.AUTO_ACKNOWLEDGE); System.out.println("Connection to JMS Provider established"); } catch (Exception e) { } } public Serializable sendMessageWithResponse(Destination reqDest, Destination respDest, Serializable request) { Serializable response = null; try { utx.begin(); Random rand = new Random(); String correlationId = rand.nextLong() + "-" + (new Date()).getTime(); // prepare the sending message object ObjectMessage reqMsg = session.createObjectMessage(); reqMsg.setObject(request); reqMsg.setJMSReplyTo(respDest); reqMsg.setJMSCorrelationID(correlationId); // prepare the publishers and subscribers MessageProducer producer = session.createProducer(reqDest); // send the message producer.send(reqMsg); System.out.println("Request Message has been sent!"); utx.commit(); // need to start second transaction, otherwise the first msg never gets sent utx.begin(); MessageConsumer consumer = session.createConsumer(respDest, "JMSCorrelationID = '" + correlationId + "'"); jmsConnection.start(); ObjectMessage respMsg = (ObjectMessage) consumer.receive(10000L); utx.commit(); if (respMsg != null) { response = respMsg.getObject(); System.out.println("Response Message has been received!"); } else { // timeout waiting for response System.out.println("Timeout waiting for response!"); } } catch (Exception e) { } return response; } SLSB 2 - LocationService.Java (only the reply method, rest is same as above) public boolean reply(Message origMsg, Serializable o) { boolean rc = false; try { // check if we have necessary correlationID and replyTo destination if (!origMsg.getJMSCorrelationID().equals("") && (origMsg.getJMSReplyTo() != null)) { // prepare the payload utx.begin(); ObjectMessage msg = session.createObjectMessage(); msg.setObject(o); // make it a response msg.setJMSCorrelationID(origMsg.getJMSCorrelationID()); Destination dest = origMsg.getJMSReplyTo(); // send it MessageProducer producer = session.createProducer(dest); producer.send(msg); producer.close(); System.out.println("Reply Message has been sent"); utx.commit(); rc = true; } } catch (Exception e) {} return rc; } sun-resources.xml <admin-object-resource enabled="true" jndi-name="jms/mvs.LocationControllerRequest" res-type="javax.jms.Queue" res-adapter="jmsra"> <property name="Name" value="mvs.LocationControllerRequestQueue"/> </admin-object-resource> <admin-object-resource enabled="true" jndi-name="jms/mvs.LocationControllerResponse" res-type="javax.jms.Queue" res-adapter="jmsra"> <property name="Name" value="mvs.LocationControllerResponseQueue"/> </admin-object-resource> <connector-connection-pool name="jms/mvs.MVSControllerFactoryPool" connection-definition-name="javax.jms.QueueConnectionFactory" resource-adapter-name="jmsra"/> <connector-resource enabled="true" jndi-name="jms/mvs.MVSControllerFactory" pool-name="jms/mvs.MVSControllerFactoryPool" />

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• Sendmail to local domain ignoring MX records (part 2)

  - by FractalizeR

  Hello. I have the exact problem, like in this post: http://serverfault.com/questions/25068/sendmail-to-local-domain-ignoring-mx-records I am also using email provider like GMail For Your Domain (which stores your mail and manages it). I am sending mail from my server directly, but receiving mail is done via Yandex (email provider). Since the server hosts forum, I prefer to send mail directly from it because using another mail provider can slow things. Also, when I send 300.000 emails to my subscribers, email provider will surely block me thinking I send spam. My DNS zone now is: ; ; GSMFORUM.RU ; $TTL 1H gsmforum.ru. SOA ns1.hc.ru. support.hc.ru. ( 2009122268 ; Serial 1H ; Refresh 30M ; Retry 1W ; Expire 1H ) ; Minimum gsmforum.ru. NS ns1.hc.ru. gsmforum.ru. NS ns2.hc.ru. @ A 79.174.68.223 *.gsmforum.ru. CNAME @ ns1 A 79.174.68.223 ns2 A 79.174.68.224 @ MX 10 mx.yandex.ru. mail CNAME domain.mail.yandex.net. yamail-xxxxxxxxx CNAME mail.yandex.ru. Server hostname is server.gsmforum.ru. May be this is the cause? Can someone explain the reason of the matter (the rules that make sendmail consider domain to be local)? Can I easily change *.gsmforum.ru. CNAME @ into *.gsmforum.ru. A 79.174.68.224 to solve this problem? [root@server ~]# cat /etc/mail/local-host-names localhost localhost.localdomain This server hosts gsmforum.ru so I cannot put it into another domain like David Mackintosh suggests. Putting domain in mailertable doesn't solve the problem also. sendmail -bt still shows, that address is local. DontProbeInterfaces is also set to true at sendmail config. M4 file follows: divert(-1)dnl dnl # dnl # This is the sendmail macro config file for m4. If you make changes to dnl # /etc/mail/sendmail.mc, you will need to regenerate the dnl # /etc/mail/sendmail.cf file by confirming that the sendmail-cf package is dnl # installed and then performing a dnl # dnl # make -C /etc/mail dnl # include(`/usr/share/sendmail-cf/m4/cf.m4')dnl VERSIONID(`setup for linux')dnl OSTYPE(`linux')dnl dnl # dnl # Do not advertize sendmail version. dnl # dnl define(`confSMTP_LOGIN_MSG', `$j Sendmail; $b')dnl dnl # dnl # default logging level is 9, you might want to set it higher to dnl # debug the configuration dnl # dnl define(`confLOG_LEVEL', `9')dnl dnl # dnl # Uncomment and edit the following line if your outgoing mail needs to dnl # be sent out through an external mail server: dnl # dnl define(`SMART_HOST', `smtp.your.provider')dnl dnl # define(`confDEF_USER_ID', ``8:12'')dnl dnl define(`confAUTO_REBUILD')dnl define(`confTO_CONNECT', `1m')dnl define(`confTRY_NULL_MX_LIST', `True')dnl define(`confDONT_PROBE_INTERFACES',`True') define(`PROCMAIL_MAILER_PATH', `/usr/bin/procmail')dnl define(`ALIAS_FILE', `/etc/aliases')dnl define(`STATUS_FILE', `/var/log/mail/statistics')dnl define(`UUCP_MAILER_MAX', `2000000')dnl define(`confUSERDB_SPEC', `/etc/mail/userdb.db')dnl define(`confPRIVACY_FLAGS', `authwarnings,novrfy,noexpn,restrictqrun')dnl define(`confAUTH_OPTIONS', `A')dnl dnl # dnl # The following allows relaying if the user authenticates, and disallows dnl # plaintext authentication (PLAIN/LOGIN) on non-TLS links dnl # dnl define(`confAUTH_OPTIONS', `A p')dnl dnl # dnl # PLAIN is the preferred plaintext authentication method and used by dnl # Mozilla Mail and Evolution, though Outlook Express and other MUAs do dnl # use LOGIN. Other mechanisms should be used if the connection is not dnl # guaranteed secure. dnl # Please remember that saslauthd needs to be running for AUTH. dnl # dnl TRUST_AUTH_MECH(`EXTERNAL DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5 LOGIN PLAIN')dnl dnl define(`confAUTH_MECHANISMS', `EXTERNAL GSSAPI DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5 LOGIN PLAIN')dnl dnl # dnl # Rudimentary information on creating certificates for sendmail TLS: dnl # cd /usr/share/ssl/certs; make sendmail.pem dnl # Complete usage: dnl # make -C /usr/share/ssl/certs usage dnl # dnl define(`confCACERT_PATH', `/etc/pki/tls/certs')dnl dnl define(`confCACERT', `/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt')dnl dnl define(`confSERVER_CERT', `/etc/pki/tls/certs/sendmail.pem')dnl dnl define(`confSERVER_KEY', `/etc/pki/tls/certs/sendmail.pem')dnl dnl # dnl # This allows sendmail to use a keyfile that is shared with OpenLDAP's dnl # slapd, which requires the file to be readble by group ldap dnl # dnl define(`confDONT_BLAME_SENDMAIL', `groupreadablekeyfile')dnl dnl # dnl define(`confTO_QUEUEWARN', `4h')dnl dnl define(`confTO_QUEUERETURN', `5d')dnl dnl define(`confQUEUE_LA', `12')dnl dnl define(`confREFUSE_LA', `18')dnl define(`confTO_IDENT', `0')dnl dnl FEATURE(delay_checks)dnl FEATURE(`no_default_msa', `dnl')dnl FEATURE(`smrsh', `/usr/sbin/smrsh')dnl FEATURE(`mailertable', `hash -o /etc/mail/mailertable.db')dnl FEATURE(`virtusertable', `hash -o /etc/mail/virtusertable.db')dnl FEATURE(redirect)dnl FEATURE(always_add_domain)dnl FEATURE(use_cw_file)dnl FEATURE(use_ct_file)dnl dnl # dnl # The following limits the number of processes sendmail can fork to accept dnl # incoming messages or process its message queues to 20.) sendmail refuses dnl # to accept connections once it has reached its quota of child processes. dnl # dnl define(`confMAX_DAEMON_CHILDREN', `20')dnl dnl # dnl # Limits the number of new connections per second. This caps the overhead dnl # incurred due to forking new sendmail processes. May be useful against dnl # DoS attacks or barrages of spam. (As mentioned below, a per-IP address dnl # limit would be useful but is not available as an option at this writing.) dnl # dnl define(`confCONNECTION_RATE_THROTTLE', `3')dnl dnl # dnl # The -t option will retry delivery if e.g. the user runs over his quota. dnl # FEATURE(local_procmail, `', `procmail -t -Y -a $h -d $u')dnl FEATURE(`access_db', `hash -T<TMPF> -o /etc/mail/access.db')dnl FEATURE(`blacklist_recipients')dnl EXPOSED_USER(`root')dnl dnl # dnl # For using Cyrus-IMAPd as POP3/IMAP server through LMTP delivery uncomment dnl # the following 2 definitions and activate below in the MAILER section the dnl # cyrusv2 mailer. dnl # dnl define(`confLOCAL_MAILER', `cyrusv2')dnl dnl define(`CYRUSV2_MAILER_ARGS', `FILE /var/lib/imap/socket/lmtp')dnl dnl # dnl # The following causes sendmail to only listen on the IPv4 loopback address dnl # 127.0.0.1 and not on any other network devices. Remove the loopback dnl # address restriction to accept email from the internet or intranet. dnl # DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Name=MTA,Port=smtp') dnl # dnl # The following causes sendmail to additionally listen to port 587 for dnl # mail from MUAs that authenticate. Roaming users who can't reach their dnl # preferred sendmail daemon due to port 25 being blocked or redirected find dnl # this useful. dnl # dnl DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=submission, Name=MSA, M=Ea')dnl dnl # dnl # The following causes sendmail to additionally listen to port 465, but dnl # starting immediately in TLS mode upon connecting. Port 25 or 587 followed dnl # by STARTTLS is preferred, but roaming clients using Outlook Express can't dnl # do STARTTLS on ports other than 25. Mozilla Mail can ONLY use STARTTLS dnl # and doesn't support the deprecated smtps; Evolution <1.1.1 uses smtps dnl # when SSL is enabled-- STARTTLS support is available in version 1.1.1. dnl # dnl # For this to work your OpenSSL certificates must be configured. dnl # dnl DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtps, Name=TLSMTA, M=s')dnl dnl # dnl # The following causes sendmail to additionally listen on the IPv6 loopback dnl # device. Remove the loopback address restriction listen to the network. dnl # dnl DAEMON_OPTIONS(`port=smtp,Addr=::1, Name=MTA-v6, Family=inet6')dnl dnl # dnl # enable both ipv6 and ipv4 in sendmail: dnl # dnl DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Name=MTA-v4, Family=inet, Name=MTA-v6, Family=inet6') dnl # dnl # We strongly recommend not accepting unresolvable domains if you want to dnl # protect yourself from spam. However, the laptop and users on computers dnl # that do not have 24x7 DNS do need this. dnl # FEATURE(`accept_unresolvable_domains')dnl dnl # dnl FEATURE(`relay_based_on_MX')dnl dnl # dnl # Also accept email sent to "localhost.localdomain" as local email. dnl # LOCAL_DOMAIN(`localhost.localdomain')dnl dnl # dnl # The following example makes mail from this host and any additional dnl # specified domains appear to be sent from mydomain.com dnl # dnl MASQUERADE_AS(`mydomain.com')dnl dnl # dnl # masquerade not just the headers, but the envelope as well dnl # dnl FEATURE(masquerade_envelope)dnl dnl # dnl # masquerade not just @mydomainalias.com, but @*.mydomainalias.com as well dnl # dnl FEATURE(masquerade_entire_domain)dnl dnl # dnl MASQUERADE_DOMAIN(localhost)dnl dnl MASQUERADE_DOMAIN(localhost.localdomain)dnl dnl MASQUERADE_DOMAIN(mydomainalias.com)dnl dnl MASQUERADE_DOMAIN(mydomain.lan)dnl MAILER(smtp)dnl MAILER(procmail)dnl dnl MAILER(cyrusv2)dnl FEATURE(`dnsbl',`zen.spamhaus.org',`Rejected - your IP is blacklisted by http://www.spamhaus.org')

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• Ignoring focusLost(), SWT.Verify, or other SWT listeners in Java code.

  - by Zoot

  Outside of the actual SWT listener, is there any way to ignore a listener via code? For example, I have a java program that implements SWT Text Widgets, and the widgets have: SWT.Verify listeners to filter out unwanted text input. ModifyListeners to wait for the correct number of valid input characters and automatically set focus (using setFocus())to the next valid field, skipping the other text widgets in the tab order. focusLost(FocusEvent) FocusListeners that wait for the loss of focus from the text widget to perform additional input verification and execute an SQL query based on the user input. The issue I run into is clearing the text widgets. One of the widgets has the format "####-##" (Four Numbers, a hyphen, then two numbers) and I have implemented this listener, which is a modified version of SWT Snippet Snippet179. The initial text for this text widget is " - " to provide visual feedback to the user as to the expected format. Only numbers are acceptable input, and the program automatically skips past the hyphen at the appropriate point. /* * This listener was adapted from the "verify input in a template (YYYY/MM/DD)" SWT Code * Snippet (also known as Snippet179), from the Snippets page of the SWT Project. * SWT Code Snippets can be found at: * http://www.eclipse.org/swt/snippets/ */ textBox.addListener(SWT.Verify, new Listener() { boolean ignore; public void handleEvent(Event e) { if (ignore) return; e.doit = false; StringBuffer buffer = new StringBuffer(e.text); char[] chars = new char[buffer.length()]; buffer.getChars(0, chars.length, chars, 0); if (e.character == '\b') { for (int i = e.start; i < e.end; i++) { switch (i) { case 0: /* [x]xxx-xx */ case 1: /* x[x]xx-xx */ case 2: /* xx[x]x-xx */ case 3: /* xxx[x]-xx */ case 5: /* xxxx-[x]x */ case 6: /* xxxx-x[x] */ { buffer.append(' '); break; } case 4: /* xxxx[-]xx */ { buffer.append('-'); break; } default: return; } } textBox.setSelection(e.start, e.start + buffer.length()); ignore = true; textBox.insert(buffer.toString()); ignore = false; textBox.setSelection(e.start, e.start); return; } int start = e.start; if (start > 6) return; int index = 0; for (int i = 0; i < chars.length; i++) { if (start + index == 4) { if (chars[i] == '-') { index++; continue; } buffer.insert(index++, '-'); } if (chars[i] < '0' || '9' < chars[i]) return; index++; } String newText = buffer.toString(); int length = newText.length(); textBox.setSelection(e.start, e.start + length); ignore = true; textBox.insert(newText); ignore = false; /* * After a valid key press, verifying if the input is completed * and passing the cursor to the next text box. */ if (7 == textBox.getCaretPosition()) { /* * Attempting to change the text after receiving a known valid input that has no results (0000-00). */ if ("0000-00".equals(textBox.getText())) { // "0000-00" is the special "Erase Me" code for these text boxes. ignore = true; textBox.setText(" - "); ignore = false; } // Changing focus to a different textBox by using "setFocus()" method. differentTextBox.setFocus(); } } } ); As you can see, the only method I've figured out to clear this text widget from a different point in the code is by assigning "0000-00" textBox.setText("000000") and checking for that input in the listener. When that input is received, the listener changes the text back to " - " (four spaces, a hyphen, then two spaces). There is also a focusLost Listener that parses this text widget for spaces, then in order to avoid unnecessary SQL queries, it clears/resets all fields if the input is invalid (i.e contains spaces). // Adding focus listener to textBox to wait for loss of focus to perform SQL statement. textBox.addFocusListener(new FocusAdapter() { @Override public void focusLost(FocusEvent evt) { // Get the contents of otherTextBox and textBox. (otherTextBox must be <= textBox) String boxFour = otherTextBox.getText(); String boxFive = textBox.getText(); // If either text box has spaces in it, don't perform the search. if (boxFour.contains(" ") || boxFive.contains(" ")) { // Don't perform SQL statements. Debug statement. System.out.println("Tray Position input contains spaces. Ignoring."); //Make all previous results invisible, if any. labels.setVisible(false); differentTextBox.setText(""); labelResults.setVisible(false); } else { //... Perform SQL statement ... } } } ); OK. Often, I use SWT MessageBox widgets in this code to communicate to the user, or wish to change the text widgets back to an empty state after verifying the input. The problem is that messageboxes seem to create a focusLost event, and using the .setText(string) method is subject to SWT.Verify listeners that are present on the text widget. Any suggestions as to selectively ignoring these listeners in code, but keeping them present for all other user input? Thank you in advance for your assistance.

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• How to create a SOAP REQUEST using ASP.NET (VB) without using Visual

  - by user311691

  Hi all , I urgently need your help . I am new to consuming a web service using SOAP protocol. I have been given a demo webservice URL which ends in .WSDL and NOT .asml?WSDL. The problem is I cannot add a web reference using Visual studio OR Disco.exe or Wsdl.exe - This webservice has been created on a java platform and for security reasons the only way to make a invoke the webservice is at runtime using SOAP protocol IN asp.net (VB). I I have created some code but cannot seem to send the soap object to the receiving web service. If I could get a solution with step by step instructions on how I can send a SOAP REQUEST. Below is my code and all am trying to do is send a SOAP REQUEST and receive a SOAP RESPONSE which I will display in my browser. <%@ page language="vb" %> <%@ Import Namespace="System.Data"%> <%@ Import Namespace="System.Xml"%> <%@ Import Namespace="System.Net"%> <%@ Import Namespace="System.IO"%> <%@ Import Namespace="System.Text"%> <script runat=server> Private Sub Page_Load() Dim objHTTPReq As HttpWebRequest Dim WebserviceUrl As String = "http://xx.xx.xx:8084/asy/wsdl/asy.wsdl" objHTTPReq = CType(WebRequest.Create(WebserviceUrl), HttpWebRequest) Dim soapXML As String soapXML = "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>" & _ " <soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance'" & _ " xmlns:xsd='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema'"& _ " xmlns:soap='http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/' >"& _ " <soap:Body> "& _ " <validatePaymentData xmlns='http://asybanks.webservices.asycuda.org'> " & _ " <bankCode>"& bankCode &"</bankCode> " & _ " <PaymentDataType>" & _ " <paymentType>"& payment_type &"</paymentType> " & _ " <amount>"& ass_amount &"</amount> " & _ " <ReferenceType>" & _ " <year>"& year &"</year> " & _ " <customsOfficeCode>"& station &"</customsOfficeCode> " & _ " </ReferenceType>" & _ " <accountNumber>"& zra_account &"</accountNumber> " & _ " </PaymentDataType> " & _ " </validatePaymentData> " & _ " </soap:Body> " & _ " </soap:Envelope> " objHTTPReq.Headers.Add("SOAPAction", "http://asybanks.webservices.asycuda.org") objHTTPReq.ContentType = "text/xml; charset=utf-8" objHTTPReq.ContentLength = soapXML.Length objHTTPReq.Accept = "text/xml" objHTTPReq.Method = "POST" Dim objHTTPRes As HttpWebResponse = CType(objHTTPReq.GetResponse(), HttpWebResponse) Dim dataStream As Stream = objHTTPRes.GetResponseStream() Dim reader As StreamReader = new StreamReader(dataStream) Dim responseFromServer As String = reader.ReadToEnd() OurXml.text = responseFromServer End Sub </script> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head runat="server"> <title> XML TRANSACTION SIMULATION - N@W@ TJ </title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <div> <p>ZRA test Feedback:</p> <asp:label id="OurXml" runat="server"/> </div> </form> </body> </html> the demo webservice looks like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> - <!-- WEB SERVICE JAVA DEMO --> - <definitions targetNamespace="http://asybanks.webservices.asycuda.org" xmlns="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/" xmlns:apachesoap="http://xml.apache.org/xml-soap" xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/soap/" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:y="http://asybanks.webservices.asycuda.org"> - <types> - <xs:schema elementFormDefault="qualified" targetNamespace="http://asybanks.webservices.asycuda.org" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> SOME OTHER INFORMATION AT THE BOTTOM <soap:address location="http://xx.xx.xx:8084/asy/services/asy" /> </port> </service> </definitions> From the above excerpt of the wsdl url webservice, I am not sure which namespace to use for soapACTION - please advise.... Please if you could comment every stage of a soap request and provide a working demo - I would be most grateful as I would be learning rather than just assuming stuff :)

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• plupload variable upload path?

  - by SoulieBaby

  Hi all, I'm using plupload to upload files to my server (http://www.plupload.com/index.php), however I wanted to know if there was any way of making the upload path variable. Basically I need to select the upload path folder first, then choose the files using plupload and then upload to the initially selected folder. I've tried a few different ways but I can't seem to pass along the variable folder path to the upload.php file. I'm using the flash version of plupload. If someone could help me out, that would be fantastic!! :) Here's my plupload jquery: jQuery.noConflict(); jQuery(document).ready(function() { jQuery("#flash_uploader").pluploadQueue({ // General settings runtimes: 'flash', url: '/assets/upload/upload.php', max_file_size: '10mb', chunk_size: '1mb', unique_names: false, // Resize images on clientside if we can resize: {width: 500, height: 350, quality: 100}, // Flash settings flash_swf_url: '/assets/upload/flash/plupload.flash.swf' }); }); And here's the upload.php file: <?php /** * upload.php * * Copyright 2009, Moxiecode Systems AB * Released under GPL License. * * License: http://www.plupload.com/license * Contributing: http://www.plupload.com/contributing */ // HTTP headers for no cache etc header('Content-type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8'); header("Expires: Mon, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT"); header("Last-Modified: ".gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s")." GMT"); header("Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate"); header("Cache-Control: post-check=0, pre-check=0", false); header("Pragma: no-cache"); // Settings $targetDir = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."/tmp/uploads"; //temp directory <- need these to be variable $finalDir = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."/tmp/uploads2"; //final directory <- need these to be variable $cleanupTargetDir = true; // Remove old files $maxFileAge = 60 * 60; // Temp file age in seconds // 5 minutes execution time @set_time_limit(5 * 60); // usleep(5000); // Get parameters $chunk = isset($_REQUEST["chunk"]) ? $_REQUEST["chunk"] : 0; $chunks = isset($_REQUEST["chunks"]) ? $_REQUEST["chunks"] : 0; $fileName = isset($_REQUEST["name"]) ? $_REQUEST["name"] : ''; // Clean the fileName for security reasons $fileName = preg_replace('/[^\w\._]+/', '', $fileName); // Create target dir if (!file_exists($targetDir)) @mkdir($targetDir); // Remove old temp files if (is_dir($targetDir) && ($dir = opendir($targetDir))) { while (($file = readdir($dir)) !== false) { $filePath = $targetDir . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . $file; // Remove temp files if they are older than the max age if (preg_match('/\\.tmp$/', $file) && (filemtime($filePath) < time() - $maxFileAge)) @unlink($filePath); } closedir($dir); } else die('{"jsonrpc" : "2.0", "error" : {"code": 100, "message": "Failed to open temp directory."}, "id" : "id"}'); // Look for the content type header if (isset($_SERVER["HTTP_CONTENT_TYPE"])) $contentType = $_SERVER["HTTP_CONTENT_TYPE"]; if (isset($_SERVER["CONTENT_TYPE"])) $contentType = $_SERVER["CONTENT_TYPE"]; if (strpos($contentType, "multipart") !== false) { if (isset($_FILES['file']['tmp_name']) && is_uploaded_file($_FILES['file']['tmp_name'])) { // Open temp file $out = fopen($targetDir . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . $fileName, $chunk == 0 ? "wb" : "ab"); if ($out) { // Read binary input stream and append it to temp file $in = fopen($_FILES['file']['tmp_name'], "rb"); if ($in) { while ($buff = fread($in, 4096)) fwrite($out, $buff); } else die('{"jsonrpc" : "2.0", "error" : {"code": 101, "message": "Failed to open input stream."}, "id" : "id"}'); fclose($out); unlink($_FILES['file']['tmp_name']); } else die('{"jsonrpc" : "2.0", "error" : {"code": 102, "message": "Failed to open output stream."}, "id" : "id"}'); } else die('{"jsonrpc" : "2.0", "error" : {"code": 103, "message": "Failed to move uploaded file."}, "id" : "id"}'); } else { // Open temp file $out = fopen($targetDir . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . $fileName, $chunk == 0 ? "wb" : "ab"); if ($out) { // Read binary input stream and append it to temp file $in = fopen("php://input", "rb"); if ($in) { while ($buff = fread($in, 4096)){ fwrite($out, $buff); } } else die('{"jsonrpc" : "2.0", "error" : {"code": 101, "message": "Failed to open input stream."}, "id" : "id"}'); fclose($out); } else die('{"jsonrpc" : "2.0", "error" : {"code": 102, "message": "Failed to open output stream."}, "id" : "id"}'); } //Moves the file from $targetDir to $finalDir after receiving the final chunk if($chunk == ($chunks-1)){ rename($targetDir . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . $fileName, $finalDir . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . $fileName); } // Return JSON-RPC response die('{"jsonrpc" : "2.0", "result" : null, "id" : "id"}'); ?>

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• PHP File Serving Script: Unreliable Downloads?

  - by JGB146

  This post started as a question on ServerFault ( http://serverfault.com/questions/131156/user-receiving-partial-downloads ) but I determined that our php script was the culprit. So I'm issuing an updated question here about what I believe is the actual issue. I am using a php script to verify permissions and then serve up a file for users of my website to download. Most of the time, this works, but recently one user has been seeing problems with larger downloads. He is only getting ~80% of downloads for files that are 100MB in size. Also, all downloads from this script fail to report a filesize. Further, tests revealed that the same user COULD reliably download each of the failed files if given a direct link (at which point the filesize is reported). Here's the relevant snippet of code that we are using to serve the file: header("Content-type:$contenttype"); $len = filesize($filename); header("Content-Length: $len"); header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=".$title.".".$ext); readfile($filename); Note that $contenttype, $filename, $title, and $ext are all set correctly before we get here. These have been triple-checked. None of them are the problem. Also, $len does provide the correct filesize. While researching this issue, I came across this post: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1334471/content-length-header-always-zero It seems that I am encountering the same issue. When I use the script, I get chunked encoding on the file and no size is set for content-length. I'm hypothesizing that something is going wrong on the large downloads, leading him to get a zero-length chunk before the end of the file. Here's what the headers look like for a direct request: http://www.grinderschool.com/videos/zfff5061b65ae00e8b21/KillsAids021.wmv GET /videos/zfff5061b65ae00e8b21/KillsAids021.wmv HTTP/1.1 Host: www.grinderschool.com User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729) Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8 Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7 Keep-Alive: 115 Connection: keep-alive Referer: http://www.grinderschool.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=14&p=29468 Cookie: style_cookie=printonly; phpbb3_7c544_u=2; phpbb3_7c544_k=44b832912e5f887d; phpbb3_7c544_sid=e8852df42e08cc1b2250300c2897f78f; __utma=174624884.2719561324781918700.1251850714.1270986325.1270989003.575; __utmz=174624884.1264524375.411.12.utmcsr=google|utmccn=(organic)|utmcmd=organic|utmctr=low%20stakes%20poker%20videos; phpbb3_cmviy_k=; phpbb3_cmviy_u=2; phpbb3_cmviy_sid=d8df5c0943863004ca40ef9c392d371d; __utmb=174624884.4.10.1270989003; __utmc=174624884 Pragma: no-cache Cache-Control: no-cache HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2010 12:57:41 GMT Server: Apache/2.2.14 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.14 OpenSSL/0.9.8l DAV/2 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 Last-Modified: Sun, 04 Apr 2010 12:51:06 GMT Etag: "eb42d6-7d9b843-48368aa6dc280" Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 131708995 Keep-Alive: timeout=10, max=30 Connection: Keep-Alive Content-Type: video/x-ms-wmv And here's what they look like for the request answered by my script: http://www.grinderschool.com/download_video_test.php?t=KillsAids021&format=wmv GET /download_video_test.php?t=KillsAids021&format=wmv HTTP/1.1 Host: www.grinderschool.com User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729) Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8 Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7 Keep-Alive: 115 Connection: keep-alive Cookie: style_cookie=printonly; phpbb3_7c544_u=2; phpbb3_7c544_k=44b832912e5f887d; phpbb3_7c544_sid=e8852df42e08cc1b2250300c2897f78f; __utma=174624884.2719561324781918700.1251850714.1270986325.1270989003.575; __utmz=174624884.1264524375.411.12.utmcsr=google|utmccn=(organic)|utmcmd=organic|utmctr=low%20stakes%20poker%20videos; phpbb3_cmviy_k=; phpbb3_cmviy_u=2; phpbb3_cmviy_sid=d8df5c0943863004ca40ef9c392d371d; __utmb=174624884.4.10.1270989003; __utmc=174624884 HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2010 12:58:02 GMT Server: Apache/2.2.14 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.14 OpenSSL/0.9.8l DAV/2 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.11 Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=KillsAids021.wmv Vary: Accept-Encoding Content-Encoding: gzip Keep-Alive: timeout=10, max=30 Connection: Keep-Alive Transfer-Encoding: chunked Content-Type: video/x-ms-wmv So the question is...what can I do to make downloads from the script work properly? Again, for 99% of users, it works as is (though I find it annoying now that no filesize is reported and thus that no time estimate can be computed about the download).

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• What's wrong with Bundler working with RubyGems to push a Git repo to Heroku?

  - by stanigator

  I've made sure that all the files are in the root of the repository as recommended in this discussion. However, as I follow the instructions in this section of the book, I can't get through the section without the problems. What do you think is happening with my system that's causing the error? I have no clue at the moment of what the problem means despite reading the following in the log. Thanks in advance for your help! stanley@ubuntu:~/rails_sample/first_app$ git push heroku master Warning: Permanently added the RSA host key for IP address '50.19.85.156' to the list of known hosts. Counting objects: 96, done. Compressing objects: 100% (79/79), done. Writing objects: 100% (96/96), 28.81 KiB, done. Total 96 (delta 22), reused 0 (delta 0) -----> Heroku receiving push -----> Ruby/Rails app detected -----> Installing dependencies using Bundler version 1.2.0.pre Running: bundle install --without development:test --path vendor/bundle --binstubs bin/ --deployment Fetching gem metadata from https://rubygems.org/....... Installing rake (0.9.2.2) Installing i18n (0.6.0) Installing multi_json (1.3.5) Installing activesupport (3.2.3) Installing builder (3.0.0) Installing activemodel (3.2.3) Installing erubis (2.7.0) Installing journey (1.0.3) Installing rack (1.4.1) Installing rack-cache (1.2) Installing rack-test (0.6.1) Installing hike (1.2.1) Installing tilt (1.3.3) Installing sprockets (2.1.3) Installing actionpack (3.2.3) Installing mime-types (1.18) Installing polyglot (0.3.3) Installing treetop (1.4.10) Installing mail (2.4.4) Installing actionmailer (3.2.3) Installing arel (3.0.2) Installing tzinfo (0.3.33) Installing activerecord (3.2.3) Installing activeresource (3.2.3) Installing coffee-script-source (1.3.3) Installing execjs (1.3.2) Installing coffee-script (2.2.0) Installing rack-ssl (1.3.2) Installing json (1.7.3) with native extensions Installing rdoc (3.12) Installing thor (0.14.6) Installing railties (3.2.3) Installing coffee-rails (3.2.2) Installing jquery-rails (2.0.2) Using bundler (1.2.0.pre) Installing rails (3.2.3) Installing sass (3.1.18) Installing sass-rails (3.2.5) Installing sqlite3 (1.3.6) with native extensions Gem::Installer::ExtensionBuildError: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension. /usr/local/bin/ruby extconf.rb checking for sqlite3.h... no sqlite3.h is missing. Try 'port install sqlite3 +universal' or 'yum install sqlite-devel' and check your shared library search path (the location where your sqlite3 shared library is located). *** extconf.rb failed *** Could not create Makefile due to some reason, probably lack of necessary libraries and/or headers. Check the mkmf.log file for more details. You may need configuration options. Provided configuration options: --with-opt-dir --without-opt-dir --with-opt-include --without-opt-include=${opt-dir}/include --with-opt-lib --without-opt-lib=${opt-dir}/lib --with-make-prog --without-make-prog --srcdir=. --curdir --ruby=/usr/local/bin/ruby --with-sqlite3-dir --without-sqlite3-dir --with-sqlite3-include --without-sqlite3-include=${sqlite3-dir}/include --with-sqlite3-lib --without-sqlite3-lib=${sqlite3-dir}/lib --enable-local --disable-local Gem files will remain installed in /tmp/build_3tplrxvj7qa81/vendor/bundle/ruby/1.9.1/gems/sqlite3-1.3.6 for inspection. Results logged to /tmp/build_3tplrxvj7qa81/vendor/bundle/ruby/1.9.1/gems/sqlite3-1.3.6/ext/sqlite3/gem_make.out An error occurred while installing sqlite3 (1.3.6), and Bundler cannot continue. Make sure that `gem install sqlite3 -v '1.3.6'` succeeds before bundling. ! ! Failed to install gems via Bundler. ! ! Heroku push rejected, failed to compile Ruby/rails app To [email protected]:growing-mountain-2788.git ! [remote rejected] master -> master (pre-receive hook declined) error: failed to push some refs to '[email protected]:growing-mountain-2788.git' ------Gemfile------------------------ As requested, here's the auto-generated gemfile: source 'https://rubygems.org' gem 'rails', '3.2.3' # Bundle edge Rails instead: # gem 'rails', :git => 'git://github.com/rails/rails.git' gem 'sqlite3' gem 'json' # Gems used only for assets and not required # in production environments by default. group :assets do gem 'sass-rails', '~> 3.2.3' gem 'coffee-rails', '~> 3.2.1' # See https://github.com/sstephenson/execjs#readme for more supported runtimes # gem 'therubyracer', :platform => :ruby gem 'uglifier', '>= 1.0.3' end gem 'jquery-rails' # To use ActiveModel has_secure_password # gem 'bcrypt-ruby', '~> 3.0.0' # To use Jbuilder templates for JSON # gem 'jbuilder' # Use unicorn as the app server # gem 'unicorn' # Deploy with Capistrano # gem 'capistrano' # To use debugger # gem 'ruby-debug'

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• What other tool is using my hotkey?

  - by Sammy

  I use Greenshot for screenshots, and it's been nagging about some other software tool using the same hotkey. I started receiving this warning message about two days ago. It shows up each time I reboot and log on to Windows. The hotkey(s) "Ctrl + Shift + PrintScreen" could not be registered. This problem is probably caused by another tool claiming usage of the same hotkey(s)! You could either change your hotkey settings or deactivate/change the software making use of the hotkey(s). What's this all about? The only software I recently installed is CPU-Z Core Temp Speed Fan HD Tune Epson Print CD NetStress What I would like to know is how to find out what other tool is causing this conflict? Do I really have to uninstall each program, one by one, until there is no conflict anymore? I see no option for customizing any hotkeys in CPU-Z, and according to docs there are only a few keyboard shortcuts. These are F5 through F9, but they are no hotkeys. There is nothing in Core Temp, and from what I can see... nothing in Speed Fan. Is any of these programs known to use Ctrl + Shift + PrintScreen hotkey for screenshots? I am actually suspecting the Dropbox client. I think I saw a warning recently coming from Dropbox program, something to do with hotkeys or keyboard shortcuts. I see that it has an option for sharing screenshots under Preferences menu, but I see no option for hotkeys. Core Temp actually also has an option for taking screenshots (F9) but it's just that - a keyboard shortcut, not a hotkey. And again, there's no option actually for changing this setting in Options/Settings menu. How do you resolve this type of conflicts? Are there any general methods you can use to pinpoint the second conflicting software? Like... is there some Windows registry key that holds the hotkeys? Or is it just down to mere luck and trial and error? Addendum I forgot to mention, when I do use the Ctrl + Shift + PrintScreen hotkey, what happens is that the Greenshot context menu shows up, asking me where I want to save the screenshot. So it appears to be working. But I am still getting the darn warning every time I reboot and log on to Windows?! I actually tried changing the key bindings in Greenshot preferences, but after a reboot it seems to have returned back to the settings I had previously. Update I can't see any hotkey conflicts in the Widnows Hotkey Explorer. The aforementioned hotkey is reserved by Greenshot, and I don't see any other program using the same hotkey binding. But when I went into Greenshot preferences, this is what I discovered. As you can see it's the Greenshot itself that uses the same hotkey twice! I guess that's why no other program was listed above as using this hotkey. But how can Greenshot be so stupid to use the same hotkey more than once? I didn't do this! It's not my fault... I'm not that stupid. This is what it's set to right now: Capture full screen: Ctrl + Skift + Prntscrn Capture window: Alt + Prntscrn Capture region: Ctrl + Prntscrn Capture last region: Skift + Prntscrn Capture Internet Explorer: Ctrl + Skift + Prntscrn And this is my preferred setting: Capture full screen: Prntscrn Capture window: Alt + Prntscrn Capture region: Ctrl + Prntscrn Capture last region: Capture Internet Explorer: I don't use any hotkey for "last region" and IE. But when I set this to my liking, as listed here, Greenshot gives me the same warning message, even as I tab through the hotkey entry fields. Sometimes it even gives me the warning when I just click Cancel button. This is really crazy! On the side note... You might have noticed that I have "update check" set to 0 (zero). This is because, in my experience, Greenshot changes all or only some of my preferences back to default settings whenever it automatically updates to a new version. So I opted to stay off updates to get rid of the problem. It has done so for the past three updates or so. I hoped to receive a new update that would fix the issue, but I think it still reverts back to default settings after each update to a new version, including setting default hotkeys. Update 2 I'll give you just one example of how Greenshot behaves. This is the dialog I have in front of me right now. As you can see, I have removed the last two hotkeys and changed the first one to my own liking. While I was clicking in the fields and removing the two hotkeys I was getting the warning message. So let's say I click in the "capture last region" field. Then I get this: Note that none of the entries include "Ctrl + Shift + PrintScreen" that it's warning about. Now I will change all the hotkeys so I get something like this: So now I'm using QWERTY letters for binding, like Ctrl+Alt+Q, Ctrl+Alt+W and so on. As far as I know no Windows program is using these. While I was clicking through the different fields it was giving me the warning. Now when I try to click OK to save the changes, it once again gives me a warning about "ctrl + shift + printscreen". Update 3 After setting the above key bindings (QWERTY) and saving changes, and then rebooting, the conflict seems to have been resolved. I was then able to set following key bindings. Capture full screen: Prntscrn Capture window: Alt + Prntscrn Capture region: Ctrl + Prntscrn I was not prompted with the warning message this time. Perhaps changing key binding required a system reboot? Sounds far fetched but that appears to be the case. I'm still not sure what caused this conflict, but I know for sure that it started after installing aforementioned programs. It might just have to do with Greenshot itself, and not some other program. Like I said, I know from experience that Greenshot likes to mess with users' settings after each update. I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually silently updated, even though I have specified not to check for updates, then it changed the key bindings back to defaults and caused a conflict with the hotkeys that were registered with the operating system previously. I rarely reboot the system, so that could have added to the conflict. Next time if I see this I will run Hotkey Explorer immediately and see if there is another program causing the conflict.

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• PHP, MySQL, jQuery, AJAX: json data returns correct response but frontend returns error

  - by Devner

  Hi all, I have a user registration form. I am doing server side validation on the fly via AJAX. The quick summary of my problem is that upon validating 2 fields, I get error for the second field validation. If I comment first field, then the 2nd field does not show any error. It has this weird behavior. More details below: The HTML, JS and Php code are below: HTML FORM: <form id="SignupForm" action=""> <fieldset> <legend>Free Signup</legend> <label for="username">Username</label> <input name="username" type="text" id="username" /><span id="status_username"></span><br /> <label for="email">Email</label> <input name="email" type="text" id="email" /><span id="status_email"></span><br /> <label for="confirm_email">Confirm Email</label> <input name="confirm_email" type="text" id="confirm_email" /><span id="status_confirm_email"></span><br /> </fieldset> <p> <input id="sbt" type="button" value="Submit form" /> </p> </form> JS: <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function() { $("#email").blur(function() { var email = $("#email").val(); var msgbox2 = $("#status_email"); if(email.length > 3) { $.ajax({ type: 'POST', url: 'check_ajax2.php', data: "email="+ email, dataType: 'json', cache: false, success: function(data) { if(data.success == 'y') { alert('Available'); } else { alert('Not Available'); } } }); } return false; }); $("#confirm_email").blur(function() { var confirm_email = $("#confirm_email").val(); var email = $("#email").val(); var msgbox3 = $("#status_confirm_email"); if(confirm_email.length > 3) { $.ajax({ type: 'POST', url: 'check_ajax2.php', data: 'confirm_email='+ confirm_email + '&email=' + email, dataType: 'json', cache: false, success: function(data) { if(data.success == 'y') { alert('Available'); } else { alert('Not Available'); } } , error: function (data) { alert('Some error'); } }); } return false; }); }); </script> PHP code: <?php //check_ajax2.php if(isset($_POST['email'])) { $email = $_POST['email']; $res = mysql_query("SELECT uid FROM members WHERE email = '$email' "); $i_exists = mysql_num_rows($res); if( 0 == $i_exists ) { $success = 'y'; $msg_email = 'Email available'; } else { $success = 'n'; $msg_email = 'Email is already in use.</font>'; } print json_encode(array('success' => $success, 'msg_email' => $msg_email)); } if(isset($_POST['confirm_email'])) { $confirm_email = $_POST['confirm_email']; $email = ( isset($_POST['email']) && trim($_POST['email']) != '' ? $_POST['email'] : '' ); $res = mysql_query("SELECT uid FROM members WHERE email = '$confirm_email' "); $i_exists = mysql_num_rows($res); if( 0 == $i_exists ) { if( isset($email) && isset($confirm_email) && $email == $confirm_email ) { $success = 'y'; $msg_confirm_email = 'Email available and match'; } else { $success = 'n'; $msg_confirm_email = 'Email and Confirm Email do NOT match.'; } } else { $success = 'n'; $msg_confirm_email = 'Email already exists.'; } print json_encode(array('success' => $success, 'msg_confirm_email' => $msg_confirm_email)); } ?> THE PROBLEM: As long as I am validating the $_POST['email'] as well as $_POST['confirm_email'] in the check_ajax2.php file, the validation for confirm_email field always returns an error. With my limited knowledge of Firebug, however, I did find out that the following were the responses when I entered email and confirm_email in the fields: RESPONSE 1: {"success":"y","msg_email":"Email available"} RESPONSE 2: {"success":"y","msg_email":"Email available"}{"success":"n","msg_confirm_email":"Email and Confirm Email do NOT match."} Although the RESPONSE 2 shows that we are receiving the correct message via msg_confirm_email, in the front end, the alert 'Some error' is popping up (I have enabled the alert for debugging). I have spent 48 hours trying to change every part of the code wherever possible, but with only little success. What is weird about this is that if I comment the validation for $_POST['email'] field completely, then the validation for $_POST['confirm_email'] field is displaying correctly without any errors. If I enable it back, it is validating email field correctly, but when it reaches the point of validating confirm_email field, it is again showing me the error. I have also tried renaming success variable in check_ajax2.php page to other different names for both $_POST['email'] and $_POST['confirm_email'] but no success. I will be adding more fields in the form and validating within the check_ajax2.php page. So I am not planning on using different ajax pages for validating each of those fields (and I don't think it's smart to do it that way). I am not a jquery or AJAX guru, so all help in resolving this issue is highly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

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• how to use a class method as a WIN32 application callback method (WINPROC)... Error static struct HI

  - by numerical25

  I am receiving errors and at the same time trying to make this work so please read what I got to say. Thanks.... I am creating a c++ application and majority of the application is encapsulated into a class. That means that my WinProc function is a static class method that I use as my call back method for my win32 application. The problem is that since I created that as a win32 application, every class member I use inside that method has to be static as well. Including my HINSTANCE class which I use inside of it. Now I receive this error error LNK2001: unresolved external symbol "public: static struct HINSTANCE__ I need to figure out how to make this all work and below is my class declaration. My static member static HINSTANCE m_hInst is causing the error I believe. #pragma once #include "stdafx.h" #include "resource.h" #define MAX_LOADSTRING 100 class RenderEngine { protected: int m_width; int m_height; ATOM RegisterEngineClass(); public: static HINSTANCE m_hInst; //<------ This is causing the error HWND m_hWnd; int m_nCmdShow; TCHAR m_szTitle[MAX_LOADSTRING]; // The title bar text TCHAR m_szWindowClass[MAX_LOADSTRING]; // the main window class name bool InitWindow(); bool InitDirectX(); bool InitInstance(); //static functions static LRESULT CALLBACK WndProc(HWND hWnd, UINT message, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam); static INT_PTR CALLBACK About(HWND hDlg, UINT message, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam); int Run(); }; Below is the implementation #include "stdafx.h" #include "RenderEngine.h" bool RenderEngine::InitWindow() { RenderEngine::m_hInst = NULL; // Initialize global strings LoadString(m_hInst, IDS_APP_TITLE, m_szTitle, MAX_LOADSTRING); LoadString(m_hInst, IDC_RENDERENGINE, m_szWindowClass, MAX_LOADSTRING); if(!RegisterEngineClass()) { return false; } if(!InitInstance()) { return false; } return true; } ATOM RenderEngine::RegisterEngineClass() { WNDCLASSEX wcex; wcex.cbSize = sizeof(WNDCLASSEX); wcex.style = CS_HREDRAW | CS_VREDRAW; wcex.lpfnWndProc = RenderEngine::WndProc; wcex.cbClsExtra = 0; wcex.cbWndExtra = 0; wcex.hInstance = m_hInst; wcex.hIcon = LoadIcon(m_hInst, MAKEINTRESOURCE(IDI_RENDERENGINE)); wcex.hCursor = LoadCursor(NULL, IDC_ARROW); wcex.hbrBackground = (HBRUSH)(COLOR_WINDOW+1); wcex.lpszMenuName = MAKEINTRESOURCE(IDC_RENDERENGINE); wcex.lpszClassName = m_szWindowClass; wcex.hIconSm = LoadIcon(wcex.hInstance, MAKEINTRESOURCE(IDI_SMALL)); return RegisterClassEx(&wcex); } LRESULT CALLBACK RenderEngine::WndProc(HWND hWnd, UINT message, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam) { int wmId, wmEvent; PAINTSTRUCT ps; HDC hdc; switch (message) { case WM_COMMAND: wmId = LOWORD(wParam); wmEvent = HIWORD(wParam); // Parse the menu selections: switch (wmId) { case IDM_ABOUT: DialogBox(m_hInst, MAKEINTRESOURCE(IDD_ABOUTBOX), hWnd, About); break; case IDM_EXIT: DestroyWindow(hWnd); break; default: return DefWindowProc(hWnd, message, wParam, lParam); } break; case WM_PAINT: hdc = BeginPaint(hWnd, &ps); // TODO: Add any drawing code here... EndPaint(hWnd, &ps); break; case WM_DESTROY: PostQuitMessage(0); break; default: return DefWindowProc(hWnd, message, wParam, lParam); } return 0; } bool RenderEngine::InitInstance() { m_hWnd = NULL; m_hWnd = CreateWindow(m_szWindowClass, m_szTitle, WS_OVERLAPPEDWINDOW, CW_USEDEFAULT, 0, CW_USEDEFAULT, 0, NULL, NULL, m_hInst, NULL); if (!m_hWnd) { return FALSE; } if(!ShowWindow(m_hWnd, m_nCmdShow)) { return false; } UpdateWindow(m_hWnd); return true; } // Message handler for about box. INT_PTR CALLBACK RenderEngine::About(HWND hDlg, UINT message, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam) { UNREFERENCED_PARAMETER(lParam); switch (message) { case WM_INITDIALOG: return (INT_PTR)TRUE; case WM_COMMAND: if (LOWORD(wParam) == IDOK || LOWORD(wParam) == IDCANCEL) { EndDialog(hDlg, LOWORD(wParam)); return (INT_PTR)TRUE; } break; } return (INT_PTR)FALSE; } int RenderEngine::Run() { MSG msg; HACCEL hAccelTable; hAccelTable = LoadAccelerators(m_hInst, MAKEINTRESOURCE(IDC_RENDERENGINE)); // Main message loop: while (GetMessage(&msg, NULL, 0, 0)) { if (!TranslateAccelerator(msg.hwnd, hAccelTable, &msg)) { TranslateMessage(&msg); DispatchMessage(&msg); } } return (int) msg.wParam; } and below is the code being used within the WinMain RenderEngine go; int APIENTRY _tWinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance, LPTSTR lpCmdLine, int nCmdShow) { UNREFERENCED_PARAMETER(hPrevInstance); UNREFERENCED_PARAMETER(lpCmdLine); // TODO: Place code here. RenderEngine::m_hInst = hInstance; go.m_nCmdShow = nCmdShow; if(!go.InitWindow()) { return 0; } go.Run(); return 0; } If anything does not make any sense, then I apologize, I am a newb. Thanks for the help!!

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• Android Multiple objects in SimpleAdapter

  - by Adam Sherratt

  I have a need (unless you can think of a better way) of passing multiple objects to a custom list adapter. I know that I'm barking up the wrong tree here, and would appreciate someone setting me on the right course! Thanks playlistadapter = new MyPlaylistAdapter(MyApplication.getAppContext(), songsList, retained_songsList, folderMode, R.layout.file_view, new String[] { "songTitle","songAlbum", "songPath" }, new int[] { R.id.checkTextView, R.id.text2, R.id.text3 }); And my adapter class: public class MyPlaylistAdapter extends SimpleAdapter{ private ArrayList <Song> songsList = new ArrayList<Song>(); private ArrayList <Song> retained_songsList = new ArrayList<Song>(); private ArrayList<Song> playlistcheck = new ArrayList<Song>(); private String folderMode; private String TAG = "AndroidMediaCenter"; public MyPlaylistAdapter(Context context,List<Song> SongsList, List<Song> Retained_songsList, String FolderMode,int resource, String[] from, int[] to) { super(context, null, resource, from, to); songsList.clear(); songsList.addAll(SongsList); Log.i(TAG, "MyPlayListAdapter Songslist = " + songsList.size()); retained_songsList.clear(); retained_songsList.addAll(Retained_songsList); folderMode = FolderMode; } public View getView(int position, View convertView, ViewGroup parent) { //PlayListViewHolder holder; CheckedTextView checkTextView; TextView text2; TextView text3; if (convertView == null) { LayoutInflater inflater = (LayoutInflater) MyApplication.getAppContext().getSystemService(Context.LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE); //LayoutInflater inflater=getLayoutInflater(); convertView=inflater.inflate(R.layout.file_view, parent, false); //convertView.setBackgroundColor(0xFF00FF00 ); //holder = new PlayListViewHolder(); checkTextView = (CheckedTextView) convertView.findViewById(R.id.checkTextView); text2 = (TextView) convertView.findViewById(R.id.text2); text3 = (TextView) convertView.findViewById(R.id.text3); //convertView.setTag(holder); } else { //holder = (PlayListViewHolder) convertView.getTag(); } //put something into textviews String tracks = null; String tracks_Details = null; String trackspath = null; tracks = songsList.get(position).getSongTitle(); tracks_Details = songsList.get(position).getAlbum() + " (" + songsList.get(position).getArtist() + ")"; trackspath = songsList.get(position).getSongPath(); checkTextView = (CheckedTextView) convertView.findViewById(R.id.checkTextView); text2 = (TextView) convertView.findViewById(R.id.text2); text3 = (TextView) convertView.findViewById(R.id.text3); checkTextView.setText(tracks); if(folderMode.equals("Playlists")){ checkTextView.setBackgroundColor(Color.GREEN); checkTextView.setChecked(false); try { int listsize_rs = retained_songsList.size(); for (int j = 0; j<listsize_rs;j++){ if((retained_songsList.get(j).getSongPath()).equals(songsList.get(position).getSongPath())){ checkTextView.setBackgroundColor(Color.TRANSPARENT); //Need to check here whether the checkedtextview is ticked or not checkTextView.setChecked(true); playlistcheck.add(songsList.get(position)); break; } } } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); } }else { //Need to check here whether the checkedtextview is ticked or not try { if (songsList.get(position).getSongCheckedStatus()==true){ checkTextView.setChecked(true); }else{ checkTextView.setChecked(false); } } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } text2.setText(tracks_Details); text3.setText(trackspath); Log.i(TAG, "MyPlayListAdapter Songslist = " + songsList.size()); return convertView; } } However, this doesn't inflate, throwing the following errors: 10-26 23:11:09.464: E/AndroidRuntime(2826): FATAL EXCEPTION: main 10-26 23:11:09.464: E/AndroidRuntime(2826): java.lang.RuntimeException: Error receiving broadcast Intent { act=android.intent.action.GetMusicComplete flg=0x10 } in com.Nmidia.AMC.MusicActivity$18@414c5770 10-26 23:11:09.464: E/AndroidRuntime(2826): at android.app.LoadedApk$ReceiverDispatcher$Args.run(LoadedApk.java:765) 10-26 23:11:09.464: E/AndroidRuntime(2826): at android.os.Handler.handleCallback(Handler.java:615) 10-26 23:11:09.464: E/AndroidRuntime(2826): at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:92) 10-26 23:11:09.464: E/AndroidRuntime(2826): at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:137) 10-26 23:11:09.464: E/AndroidRuntime(2826): at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:4745) 10-26 23:11:09.464: E/AndroidRuntime(2826): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) 10-26 23:11:09.464: E/AndroidRuntime(2826): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:511) 10-26 23:11:09.464: E/AndroidRuntime(2826): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:786) 10-26 23:11:09.464: E/AndroidRuntime(2826): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:553) 10-26 23:11:09.464: E/AndroidRuntime(2826): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method) 10-26 23:11:09.464: E/AndroidRuntime(2826): Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException 10-26 23:11:09.464: E/AndroidRuntime(2826): at android.widget.SimpleAdapter.getCount(SimpleAdapter.java:93) 10-26 23:11:09.464: E/AndroidRuntime(2826): at android.widget.ListView.setAdapter(ListView.java:460) 10-26 23:11:09.464: E/AndroidRuntime(2826): at com.Nmidia.AMC.MusicActivity.setFilterMusic(MusicActivity.java:1230) 10-26 23:11:09.464: E/AndroidRuntime(2826): at com.Nmidia.AMC.MusicActivity$18.onReceive(MusicActivity.java:996) 10-26 23:11:09.464: E/AndroidRuntime(2826): at android.app.LoadedApk$ReceiverDispatcher$Args.run(LoadedApk.java:755) 10-26 23:11:09.464: E/AndroidRuntime(2826): ... 9 more

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• NoClassDefFoundError with new eclipse bundle

  - by djmedic

  I am informed by a customer that they are receiving an error. On the report they filed it is continuosly coming up with NoClassDefFoundError. It appears none of my other customers are having this issue. I'm not having this issue running the app on my Motorola Droid Maxx. The customer is running the app on a rooted Droid Bionic. Everything was working fine on my version at 2.3 but when I updated it to 2.4, this issue arose. I also replaced my computer with a new and now I am running windows 8 and installed the adt bundle. The only change I made to the file in question in changing a -90 to -85. Below is the code...I have also included below the code the error report. This is only happening on phone. import android.app.Activity; import android.content.Context; import android.content.Intent; import android.net.ConnectivityManager; import android.net.NetworkInfo; import android.os.Bundle; import android.telephony.PhoneStateListener; import android.telephony.SignalStrength; import android.telephony.TelephonyManager; public class ConnectivityCheck extends Activity { TelephonyManager Tel; MyPhoneStateListener MyListener; boolean isGsm; boolean cellAvailable; int strengthAmplitudeGSM; int strengthAmplitudeCDMA; @Override public void onCreate(Bundle icicle) { super.onCreate(icicle); ConnectivityManager connec = (ConnectivityManager)getSystemService(Context.CONNECTIVITY_SERVICE); if (connec.getNetworkInfo(0) != null) { cellAvailable = true; } if (cellAvailable) { /* Update the listener, and start it */ MyListener = new MyPhoneStateListener(); Tel = ( TelephonyManager )getSystemService(Context.TELEPHONY_SERVICE); Tel.listen(MyListener ,PhoneStateListener.LISTEN_SIGNAL_STRENGTHS); } if (connec.getNetworkInfo(1).getState() == NetworkInfo.State.CONNECTED) { startActivity(new Intent(ConnectivityCheck.this, LicenseCheck.class)); if (cellAvailable) { Tel.listen(MyListener, PhoneStateListener.LISTEN_NONE); } finish(); } else if (cellAvailable) { if (connec.getNetworkInfo(0).getState() == NetworkInfo.State.CONNECTED && strengthAmplitudeCDMA >= -90) { startActivity(new Intent(ConnectivityCheck.this, LicenseCheck.class)); Tel.listen(MyListener, PhoneStateListener.LISTEN_NONE); finish(); } else if (connec.getNetworkInfo(0).getState() == NetworkInfo.State.CONNECTED && isGsm && strengthAmplitudeGSM >= 10 && strengthAmplitudeGSM <= 31) { startActivity(new Intent(ConnectivityCheck.this, LicenseCheck.class)); Tel.listen(MyListener, PhoneStateListener.LISTEN_NONE); finish(); } else { startActivity(new Intent(ConnectivityCheck.this, ProtocolsMMenuActivity.class)); Tel.listen(MyListener, PhoneStateListener.LISTEN_NONE); finish(); } } else { startActivity(new Intent(ConnectivityCheck.this, ProtocolsMMenuActivity.class)); if (cellAvailable) { Tel.listen(MyListener, PhoneStateListener.LISTEN_NONE); } finish(); } } /* Called when the application is minimized */ @Override protected void onPause() { super.onPause(); if (cellAvailable) { Tel.listen(MyListener, PhoneStateListener.LISTEN_NONE); } } /* Called when the application resumes */ @Override protected void onResume() { super.onResume(); if (cellAvailable) { Tel.listen(MyListener, PhoneStateListener.LISTEN_SIGNAL_STRENGTHS); } } /* Start the PhoneState listener */ private class MyPhoneStateListener extends PhoneStateListener { /* Get the Signal strength from the provider, each tiome there is an update */ @Override public void onSignalStrengthsChanged(SignalStrength signalStrength) { isGsm = signalStrength.isGsm(); strengthAmplitudeGSM = signalStrength.getGsmSignalStrength(); strengthAmplitudeCDMA = signalStrength.getCdmaDbm(); super.onSignalStrengthsChanged(signalStrength); } };/* End of private Class */ } Here is the error report java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com.emsprotocols.njalsprotocolspaidac.ConnectivityCheck at com.emsprotocols.njalsprotocolspaidac.ProtocolsSplashActivity$1.onAnimationEnd (ProtocolsSplashActivity.java:144) at android.view.animation.AnimationSet.getTransformation(AnimationSet.java:411) at android.view.animation.Animation.getTransformation(Animation.java:920) at android.view.ViewGroup.drawChild(ViewGroup.java:2657) at android.view.ViewGroup.dispatchDraw(ViewGroup.java:2489) at android.view.ViewGroup.drawChild(ViewGroup.java:2885) at android.view.ViewGroup.dispatchDraw(ViewGroup.java:2489) at android.view.ViewGroup.drawChild(ViewGroup.java:2885) at android.view.ViewGroup.dispatchDraw(ViewGroup.java:2489) at android.view.View.draw(View.java:11009) at android.widget.FrameLayout.draw(FrameLayout.java:450) at com.android.internal.policy.impl.PhoneWindow$DecorView.draw(PhoneWindow.java:2154) at android.view.ViewRootImpl.draw(ViewRootImpl.java:2096) at android.view.ViewRootImpl.performTraversals(ViewRootImpl.java:1679) at android.view.ViewRootImpl.handleMessage(ViewRootImpl.java:2558) at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99) at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:137) at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:4722) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:511) at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:787) at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:554) at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method)

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• directX texture appears incorrectly

  - by numerical25

  I finally managed to get a texture onto a cube sadly, but it is appearing incorrectly. as the below picture identifies. Anyways, I am not sure what it could be. My first guess is it could be my uv mapping or my vertex positioning is off. If someone could check and make sure thats good. The first element is the vertex position, second is the color, and third is the uv texture. //Create vectors and put in vertices // Create vertex buffer VertexPos vertices[] = { // BACK SIDES { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(1.0,1.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,1.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,1.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(1.0,1.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, -5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(1.0,1.0)}, // 2 FRONT SIDE { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, 5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(1.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,1.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,1.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.0f,0.0f) , D3DXVECTOR2(1.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(1.0,1.0)}, // 3 { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(1.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, 5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,1.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, 5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,2.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(1.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,1.0)}, // 4 { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.5f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.5f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(1.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, -5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.5f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,1.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, -5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.5f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,1.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.5f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(1.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.5f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,1.0)}, // 5 { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.5f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.5f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(1.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.5f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,1.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.5f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,1.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.5f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(1.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, -5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.5f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,2.0)}, // 6 {D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, 5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.5f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, {D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.5f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(1.0,0.0)}, {D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.5f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,1.0)}, {D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.5f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,1.0)}, {D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.5f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(1.0,0.0)}, {D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.5f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,1.0)}, }; My second guess could be an error that I am receiving as I run the program. But I don't know where to begin with that. The following is the description of the error . D3D10: WARNING: ID3D10Device::Draw: Vertex Buffer at the input vertex slot 0 is not big enough for what the Draw*() call expects to traverse. This is OK, as reading off the end of the Buffer is defined to return 0. However the developer probably did not intend to make use of this behavior. [ EXECUTION WARNING #356: DEVICE_DRAW_VERTEX_BUFFER_TOO_SMALL ] Not sure what it could be. but where is my vertex layout description //Create Layout D3D10_INPUT_ELEMENT_DESC layout[] = { {"POSITION",0,DXGI_FORMAT_R32G32B32_FLOAT, 0 , 0, D3D10_INPUT_PER_VERTEX_DATA, 0}, {"COLOR",0,DXGI_FORMAT_R32G32B32A32_FLOAT, 0 , 12, D3D10_INPUT_PER_VERTEX_DATA, 0}, {"NORMAL",0,DXGI_FORMAT_R32G32B32A32_FLOAT, 0 , 28, D3D10_INPUT_PER_VERTEX_DATA, 0}, {"TEXCOORD",0, DXGI_FORMAT_R32G32_FLOAT, 0 , 44, D3D10_INPUT_PER_VERTEX_DATA, 0} }; UINT numElements = (sizeof(layout)/sizeof(layout[0])); modelObject.numVertices = sizeof(vertices)/sizeof(VertexPos); for(int i = 0; i < modelObject.numVertices; i += 3) { D3DXVECTOR3 out; D3DXVECTOR3 v1 = vertices[0 + i].pos; D3DXVECTOR3 v2 = vertices[1 + i].pos; D3DXVECTOR3 v3 = vertices[2 + i].pos; D3DXVECTOR3 u = v2 - v1; D3DXVECTOR3 v = v3 - v1; D3DXVec3Cross(&out, &u, &v); D3DXVec3Normalize(&out, &out); vertices[0 + i].normal = out; vertices[1 + i].normal = out; vertices[2 + i].normal = out; } //Create buffer desc D3D10_BUFFER_DESC bufferDesc; bufferDesc.Usage = D3D10_USAGE_DEFAULT; bufferDesc.ByteWidth = sizeof(VertexPos) * modelObject.numVertices; bufferDesc.BindFlags = D3D10_BIND_VERTEX_BUFFER; bufferDesc.CPUAccessFlags = 0; bufferDesc.MiscFlags = 0; D3D10_SUBRESOURCE_DATA initData; initData.pSysMem = vertices; //Create the buffer HRESULT hr = mpD3DDevice->CreateBuffer(&bufferDesc, &initData, &modelObject.pVertexBuffer); if(FAILED(hr)) return false;

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• Assigning two strings together getting Access Read Violation

  - by Jay Bell

  I am trying to pass a string to a class mutator and set the private member to that string here is the code that is sending the string void parseTradePairs(Exchange::Currency *curr, std::string *response, int begin, int exit) { int start; int end; string temp; string dataResponse; CURL *tempCurl; initializeCurl(tempCurl); int location = response->find("marketid", begin); if(location <= exit) { start = location + 11; begin = response->find("label", start); end = begin - start - 3; findStrings(start, end, temp, response); getMarketInfo(tempCurl, temp, dataResponse); curr->_coin->setExch(temp); // here is the line of code that is sending the string dataResponse >> *(curr->_coin); curr->_next = new Exchange::Currency(curr, curr->_position + 1); parseTradePairs(curr->_next, response, begin, exit); } } and here is the mutator within the coin class that is receiving the string and assigning it to _exch void Coin::setExch(string exch) { _exch = exch; } I have stepped through it and made sure that exch has the string in it. "105" but soon as it hits _exch = exch; I get the reading violation. I tried passing as pointer as well. I do not believe it should go out of scope. and the string variable in the class is initialized to zero in the default constructor but again that should matter unless I am trying to read from it instead of writing to it. /* defualt constructor */ Coin::Coin() { _id = ""; _label = ""; _code= ""; _name = ""; _marketCoin = ""; _volume = 0; _last = 0; _exch = ""; } Exchange::Exchange(std::string str) { _exch = str; _currencies = new Currency; std::string pair; std::string response; CURL *curl; initializeCurl(curl); getTradePairs(curl, response); int exit = response.find_last_of("marketid"); parseTradePairs(_currencies, &response, 0, exit); } int main(void) { CURL *curl; string str; string id; Coin coin1; initializeCurl(curl); Exchange ex("cryptsy"); curl_easy_cleanup(curl); system("pause"); return 0; } class Exchange { public: typedef struct Currency { Currency(Coin *coin, Currency *next, Currency *prev, int position) : _coin(coin), _next(next), _prev(prev), _position(position) {} Currency(Currency *prev, int position) : _prev(prev), _position(position), _next(NULL), _coin(&Coin()){} Currency() : _next(NULL), _prev(NULL), _position(0) {} Coin *_coin; Currency *_next; Currency *_prev; int _position; }; /* constructor and destructor */ Exchange(); Exchange(std::string str); ~Exchange(); /* Assignment operator */ Exchange& operator =(const Exchange& copyExchange); /* Parse Cryptsy Pairs */ friend void parseTradePairs(Currency *curr, std::string *response, int begin, int exit); private: std::string _exch; Currency *_currencies; }; here is what i changed it to to fix it. typedef struct Currency { Currency(Coin *coin, Currency *next, Currency *prev, int position) : _coin(coin), _next(next), _prev(prev), _position(position) {} Currency(Currency *prev, int position) : _prev(prev), _position(position), _next(NULL), _coin(&Coin()){} Currency() { _next = NULL; _prev = NULL; _position = 0; _coin = new Coin(); } Coin *_coin; Currency *_next; Currency *_prev; int _position; };

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• How Expedia Made My New Bride Cry

  - by Lance Robinson

  Tweet this? Email Expedia and ask them to give me and my new wife our honeymoon? When Expedia followed up their failure with our honeymoon trip with a complete and total lack of acknowledgement of any responsibility for the problem and endless loops of explaining the issue over and over again - I swore that they would make it right. When they brought my new bride to tears, I got an immediate and endless supply of motivation. I hope you will help me make them make it right by posting our story on Twitter, Facebook, your blog, on Expedia itself, and when talking to your friends in person about their own travel plans.   If you are considering using them now for an important trip - reconsider. Short summary: We arrived early for a flight - but Expedia had made a mistake with the data they supplied to JetBlue and Emirates, which resulted in us not being able to check in (one leg of our trip was missing)!  At the time of this post, three people (myself, my wife, and an exceptionally patient JetBlue employee named Mary) each spent hours on the phone with Expedia.  I myself spent right at 3 hours (according to iPhone records), Lauren spent an hour and a half or so, and poor Mary was probably on the phone for a good 3.5 hours.  This is after 5 hours total at the airport.  If you add up our phone time, that is nearly 8 hours of phone time over a 5 hour period with little or no help, stall tactics (?), run-around, denial, shifting of blame, and holding. Details below (times are approximate): First, my wife and I were married yesterday - June 18th, the 3 year anniversary of our first date. She is awesome. She is the nicest person I have ever known, a ton of fun, absolutely beautiful in every way. Ok enough mushy - here are the dirty details. 2:30 AM - Early Check-in Attempt - we attempted to check-in for our flight online. Some sort of technology error on website, instructed to checkin at desk. 4:30 AM - Arrive at airport. Try to check-in at kiosk, get the same error. We got to the JetBlue desk at RDU International Airport, where Mary helped us. Mary discovered that the Expedia provided itinerary does not match the Expedia provided tickets. We are informed that when that happens American, JetBlue, and others that use the same software cannot check you in for the flight because. Why? Because the itinerary was missing a leg of our flight! Basically we were not shown in the system as definitely being able to make it home. Mary called Expedia and was put on hold by their automated system. 4:55 AM - Mary, myself, and my brand new bride all waited for about 25 minutes when finally I decided I would make a call myself on my iPhone while Mary was on the airport phone. In their automated system, I chose "make a new reservation", thinking they might answer a little more quickly than "customer service". Not surprisingly I was connected to an Expedia person within 1 minute. They informed me that they would have to forward me to a customer service specialist. I explained to them that we were already on hold for that and had been for nearly half an hour, that we were going on our honeymoon and that our flight would be leaving soon - could they please help us. "Yes, I will help you". I hand the phone to JetBlue Mary who explains the situation 3 or 4 times. Obviously I couldn't hear both ends of the conversation at this point, but the Expedia person explained what the problem was by stating exactly what Mary had just spent 15 minutes explaining. Mary calmly confirms that this is the problem, and asks Expedia to re-issue the itinerary. Expedia tells Mary that they'll have to transfer her to customer service. Mary asks for someone specific so that we get an answer this time, and goes on hold. Mary get's connected, explains the situation, and then Mary's connection gets terminated. 5:10 AM - Mary calls back to the Expedia automated system again, and we wait for about 5 minutes on hold this time before I pick up my iPhone and call Expedia again myself. Again I go to sales, a person picks up the phone in less than a minute. I explain the situation and let them know that we are now very close to missing our flight for our honeymoon, could they please help us. "Yes, I will help you". Again I give the phone to Mary who provides them with a call back number in case we get disconnected again and explains the situation again. More back and forth with Expedia doing nothing but repeating the same questions, Mary answering the questions with the same information she provided in the original explanation, and Expedia simply restating the problem. Mary again asks them to re-issue the itinerary, and explains that doing so will fix the problem. Expedia again repeats the problem instead of fixing it, and Mary's connection gets terminated. 5:20 AM - Mary again calls back to Expedia. My beautiful bride also calls on her own phone. At this point she is struggling to hold back her tears, stumbling through an explanation of all that has happened and that we are about to miss our flight. Please help us. "Yes, I will help". My beautiful bride's connection gets terminated. Ok, maybe this disconnection isn't an accident. We've now been disconnected 3 times on two different phones. 5:45 AM - I walk away and pleadingly beg a person to help me. They "escalate" the issue to "Rosy" (sp?) at Expedia. I go through the whole song and dance again with Rosy, who gives me the same treatment Mary was given. Rosy blames JetBlue for now having the correct data. Meanwhile Mary is on the phone with Emirates Air (the airline for the second leg of our trip), who agrees with JetBlue that Expedia's data isn't up to date. We are informed by two airport employees that issues like this with Expedia are not uncommon, and that the fix is simple. On the phone iwth Rosy, I ask her to re-issue the itinerary because we are about to miss our flight. She again explains the problem to me. At this point, I am standing at the window, pleading with Rosy to help us get to our honeymoon, watching our airplane. Then our airplane leaves without us. 6:03 AM - At this point we have missed our flight. Re-issuing the itinerary is no longer a solution. I ask Rosy to start from the beginning and work us up a new trip. She says that she cannot do that. She says that she needs to talk to JetBlue and Emirates and find out why we cannot check-in for our flight. I remind Rosy that our flight has already left - I just watched it taxi away - it no longer matters why (not to mention the fact that we already knew why, and have known why since 4:30 AM), and have known the solution since 4:30 AM. Rosy, can you please book a new trip? Yes, but it will cost $400. Excuse me? Now you can, but it will cost ME to fix your mistake? Rosy says that she can escalate the situation to her supervisor but that will take 1.5 hours. 6:15 AM - I told Rosy that if they had re-issued the itinerary as JetBlue asked (at 4:30 AM), my new wife and I might be on the airplane now instead of dealing with this on the phone and missing the beginning (and how much more?) of our honeymoon. Rosy said that it was not necessary to re-issue the itinerary. Out of curiosity, i asked Rosy if there was some financial burden on them to re-issue the itinerary. "No", said Rosy. I asked her if it was a large time burden on Expedia to re-issue the itinerary. "No", said Rosy. I directly asked Rosy: Why wouldn't Expedia have re-issued the itinerary when JetBlue asked? No answer. I asked Rosy: If you had re-issued the itinerary at 4:30, isn't it possible that I would be on that flight right now? She actually surprised me by answering "Yes" to that question. So I pointed out that it followed that Expedia was responsible for the fact that we missed out flight, and she immediately went into more about how the problem was with JetBlue - but now it was ALSO an Emirates Air problem as well. I tell Rosy to go ahead and escalate the issue again, and please call me back in that 1.5 hours (which how is about 1 hour and 10 minutes away). 6:30 AM - I start tweeting my frustration with iPhone. It's now pretty much impossible for us to make it to The Maldives by 3pm, which is the time at which we would need to arrive in order to be allowed service to the actual island where we are staying. Expedia has now given me the run-around for 2 hours, caused me to miss my flight, and worst of all caused my amazing new wife Lauren to miss our honeymoon. You think I was mad? No. Furious. Its ok to make mistakes - but to refuse to fix them and to ruin our honeymoon? No, not ok, Expedia. I swore right then that Expedia would make this right. 7:45 AM - JetBlue mary is still talking her tail off to other people in JetBlue and Emirates Air. Mary works it out so that if Expedia simply books a new trip, JetBlue and Emirates will both waive all the fees. Now we just have to convince Expedia to fix their mistake and get us on our way! Around this time Expedia Rosy calls me back! I inform her of the excellent work of JetBlue Mary - that JetBlue and Emirates both will waive the fees so Expedia can fix their mistake and get us going on our way. She says that she sees documentation of this in her system and that she needs to put me on hold "for 1 to 10 minutes" to talk to Emirates Air (why I'm not exactly sure). I say ok. 8:45 AM - After an hour on hold, Rosy comes on the line and asks me to hold more. I ask her to call me back. 9:35 AM - I put down the iPhone Twitter app and picks up the laptop. You think I made some noise with my iPhone? Heh 11:25 AM - Expedia follows me and sends a canned "We're sorry, DM us the details".  If you look at their Twitter feed, 16 out of the most recent 20 tweets are exactly the same canned response.  The other 4?  Ads.  Um - #MultiFAIL? To Expedia:  You now have had (as explained above) 8 hours of 3 different people explaining our situation, you know the email address of our Expedia account, you know my web blog, you know my Twitter address, you know my phone number.  You also know how upset you have made both me and my new bride by treating us with such a ... non caring, scripted, uncooperative, argumentative, and possibly even deceitful manner.  In the wise words of the great Kenan Thompson of SNL: "FIX IT!".  And no, I'm NOT going away until you make this right. Period. 11:45 AM - Expedia corporate office called.  The woman I spoke to was very nice and apologetic.  She listened to me tell the story again, she says she understands the problem and she is going to work to resolve it.  I don't have any details on what exactly that resolution might me, she said she will call me back in 20 minutes.  She found out about the problem via Twitter.  Thank you Twitter, and all of you who helped.  Hopefully social media will win my wife and I our honeymoon, and hopefully Expedia will encourage their customer service teams treat their customers properly. 12:22 PM - Spoke to Fran again from Expedia corporate office.  She has a flight for us tonight.  She is booking it now.  We will arrive at our honeymoon destination of beautiful Veligandu Island Resort only 1 day late.  She cannot confirm today, but she expects that Expedia will pay for the lost honeymoon night.  Thank you everyone for your help.  I will reflect more on this whole situation and confirm its resolution after our flight is 100% confirmed.  For now, I'm going to take a breather and go kiss my wonderful wife! 1:50 PM - Have not yet received the promised phone call.  We did receive an email with a new itinerary for a flight but the booking is not for specific seats, so there is no guarantee that my wife and I will be able to sit together.  With the original booking I carefully selected our seats for every segment of our trip.  I decided to call into the phone number that Fran from the Expedia corporate office gave me.  Its automated voice system identified itself as "Tier 3 Support".  I am currently still on hold with them, I have not gotten through to a human yet. 1:55 PM - Fran from Expedia called me back.  She confirmed us as booked.  She called the airlines to confirm.  Unfortunately, Expedia was unwilling or unable to allow us any type of seat selection.  It is possible that i won't get to sit next to the woman I married less than a day ago on our 40 total hours of flight time (there and back).  In addition, our seats could be the worst seats on the planes, with no reclining seat back or right next to the restroom.  Despite this fact (which in my opinion is huge), the horrible inconvenience, the hours at the airport, and the negative Internet publicity that Expedia is receiving, Expedia declined to offer us any kind of upgrade or to mark us as SFU (suitable for upgrade).  Since they didn't offer - I asked, and was rejected.  I am grateful to finally be heading in the right direction, but not only did Expedia horribly botch this job from the very beginning, they followed that botch job with near zero customer service, followed by a verbally apologetic but otherwise half-hearted resolution.  If this works out favorably for us, great.  If not - I'm not done making noise, Expedia.  You owe us, and I expect you to make it right.  You haven't quite done that yet. Thanks - Thank you to Twitter.  Thanks to all those who sympathize with us and helped us get the attention of Expedia, since three people (one of them an airline employee) using Expedia's normal channels of communication for many hours didn't help.  Thanks especially to my PowerShell and Sharepoint friends, my local friends, and those connectors who encouraged me and spread my story. 5:15 PM - Love Wins - After all this, Lauren and I are exhausted.  We both took a short nap, and when we woke up we talked about the last 24 hours.  It was a big, amazing, story-filled 24 hours.  I said that Expedia won, but Lauren said no.  She pointed out how lucky we are.  We are in love and married.  We have wonderful family and friends.  We are both hard-working successful people who love what they do.  We get to go to an amazing exotic destination for our honeymoon like Veligandu in The Maldives...  That's a lot of good.  Expedia didn't win.  This was (is) a big loss for Expedia.  It is a public blemish for all to see.  But Lauren and I did win, big time.  Expedia may not have made things right - but things are right for us.  Post in progress... I will relay any further comments (or lack of) from Expedia soon, as well as an update on confirmation of their repayment of our lost resort room rates.  I'll also post a picture of us on our honeymoon as soon as I can!

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• Using an alternate search platform in Commerce Server 2009

  - by Lewis Benge

  Although Microsoft Commerce Server 2009's architecture is built upon Microsoft SQL Server, and has the full power of the SQL Full Text Indexing Search Platform, there are time however when you may require a richer or alternate search platform. One of these scenarios if when you want to implement a faceted (refinement) search into your site, which provides dynamic refinements based on the search results dataset. Faceted search is becoming popular in most online retail environments as a way of providing an enhanced user experience when browsing a larger catalogue. This is powerful for two reasons, firstly with a traditional search it is down to a user to think of a search term suitable for the product they are trying to find. This typically will not return similar products or help in any way to refine a larger dataset. Faceted searches on the other hand provide a comprehensive list of product properties, grouped together by similarity to help the user narrow down the results returned, as the user progressively restricts the search criteria by selecting additional criteria to search again, these facets needs to continually refresh. The whole experience allows users to explore alternate brands, price-ranges, or find products they hadn't initially thought of or where looking for in a bid to enhance cross sell in the retail environment. The second advantage of this type of search from a business perspective is also to harvest the search result to start to profile your user. Even though anonymous users may routinely visit your site, and will not necessarily register or complete a transaction to build up marketing data- profiling, you can still achieve the same result by recording search facets used within the search sequence. Below is a faceted search scenario generated from eBay using the search term "server". By creating a search profile of clicking through Computer & Networking -> Servers -> Dell - > New and recording this information against my user profile you can start to predict with a lot more certainty what types of products I am interested in. This will allow you to apply shopping-cart analysis against your search data and provide great cross-sale or advertising opportunity, or personalise the user experience based on your prediction of what the user may be interested in. This type of search is extremely beneficial in e-Commerce environments but achieving it out of the box with Commerce Server and SQL Full Text indexing can be challenging. In many deployments it is often easier to use an alternate search platform such as Microsoft's FAST, Apache SOLR, or Endecca, however you still want these products to integrate natively into Commerce Server to ensure that up-to-date inventory information is presented, profile information is generated, and you provide a consistant API. To do so we make the most of the Commerce Server extensibilty points called operation sequence components. In this example I will be talking about Apache Solr hosted on Apache Tomcat, in this specific example I have used the SolrNet C# library to interface to the Java platform. Also I am not going to talk about Solr configuration of indexing – but in a production envionrment this would typically happen by using Powershell to call the Commerce Server management webservice to export your catalog as XML, apply an XSLT transform to the file to make it conform to SOLR and use a simple HTTP Post to send it to the search enginge for indexing. Essentially a sequance component is a step in a serial workflow used to call a data repository (which in most cases is usually the Commerce Server pipelines or databases) and map to and from a Commerce Entity object whilst enforcing any business rules. So the first step in the process is to add a new class library to your existing Commerce Server site. You will need to use a new library as Sequence Components will need to be strongly named to be deployed. Once you are inside of your new project, add a new class file and add a reference to the Microsoft.Commerce.Providers, Microsoft.Commerce.Contracts and the Microsoft.Commerce.Broker assemblies. Now make your new class derive from the base object Microsoft.Commerce.Providers.Components.OperationSequanceComponent and overide the ExecuteQueryMethod. Your screen will then look something similar ot this: As all we are doing on this component is conducting a search we are only interested in the ExecuteQuery method. This method accepts three arguments, queryOperation, operationCache, and response. The queryOperation will be the object in which we receive our search parameters, the cache allows access to the Commerce Server cache allowing us to store regulary accessed information, and the response object is the object which we will return the result of our search upon. Inside this method is simply where we are going to inject our logic for our third party search platform. As I am not going to explain the inner-workings of actually making a SOLR call, I'll simply provide the sample code here. I would highly recommend however looking at the SolrNet wiki as they have some great explinations of how the API works. What you will find however is that there are some further extensions required when attempting to integrate a custom search provider. Firstly you out of the box the CommerceQueryOperation you will receive into the method when conducting a search against a catalog is specifically geared towards a SQL Full Text Search with properties such as a Where clause. To make the operation you receive more relevant you will need to create another class, this time derived from Microsoft.Commerce.Contract.Messages.CommerceSearchCriteria and within this you need to detail the properties you will require to allow you to submit as parameters to the SOLR search API. My exmaple looks like this: [DataContract(Namespace = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/microsoft-multi-channel-commerce-foundation/types/2008/03")] public class CommerceCatalogSolrSearch : CommerceSearchCriteria { private Dictionary<string, string> _facetQueries;   public CommerceCatalogSolrSearch() { _facetQueries = new Dictionary<String, String>();   }     public Dictionary<String, String> FacetQueries { get { return _facetQueries; } set { _facetQueries = value; } }   public String SearchPhrase{ get; set; } public int PageIndex { get; set; } public int PageSize { get; set; } public IEnumerable<String> Facets { get; set; }   public string Sort { get; set; }   public new int FirstItemIndex { get { return (PageIndex-1)*PageSize; } }   public int LastItemIndex { get { return FirstItemIndex + PageSize; } } }  To allow you to construct a CommerceQueryOperation call within the API you will also need to construct another class to derived from Microsoft.Commerce.Common.MessageBuilders.CommerceSearchCriteriaBuilder and is simply used to construct an instance of the CommerceQueryOperation you have just created and expose the properties you want set. My Message builder looks like this: public class CommerceCatalogSolrSearchBuilder : CommerceSearchCriteriaBuilder { private CommerceCatalogSolrSearch _solrSearch;   public CommerceCatalogSolrSearchBuilder() { _solrSearch = new CommerceCatalogSolrSearch(); }   public String SearchPhrase { get { return _solrSearch.SearchPhrase; } set { _solrSearch.SearchPhrase = value; } }   public int PageIndex { get { return _solrSearch.PageIndex; } set { _solrSearch.PageIndex = value; } }   public int PageSize { get { return _solrSearch.PageSize; } set { _solrSearch.PageSize = value; } }   public Dictionary<String,String> FacetQueries { get { return _solrSearch.FacetQueries; } set { _solrSearch.FacetQueries = value; } }   public String[] Facets { get { return _solrSearch.Facets.ToArray(); } set { _solrSearch.Facets = value; } } public override CommerceSearchCriteria ToSearchCriteria() { return _solrSearch; } }  Once you have these two classes in place you can now safely cast the CommerceOperation you receive as an argument of the overidden ExecuteQuery method in the SequenceComponent to the CommerceCatalogSolrSearch operation you have just created, e.g. public CommerceCatalogSolrSearch TryGetSearchCriteria(CommerceOperation operation) { var searchCriteria = operation as CommerceQueryOperation; if (searchCriteria == null) throw new Exception("No search criteria present");   var local = (CommerceCatalogSolrSearch) searchCriteria.SearchCriteria; if (local == null) throw new Exception("Unexpected Search Criteria in Operation");   return local; }  Now you have all of your search parameters present, you can go off an call the external search platform API. You will of-course get proprietry objects returned, so the next step in the process is to convert the results being returned back into CommerceEntities. You do this via another extensibility point within the Commerce Server API called translatators. Translators are another separate class, this time derived inheriting the interface Microsoft.Commerce.Providers.Translators.IToCommerceEntityTranslator . As you can imaginge this interface is specific for the conversion of the object TO a CommerceEntity, you will need to implement a separate interface if you also need to go in the opposite direction. If you implement the required method for the interace you will get a single translate method which has a source onkect, destination CommerceEntity, and a collection of properties as arguments. For simplicity sake in this example I have hard-coded the mappings, however best practice would dictate you map the objects using your metadatadefintions.xml file . Once complete your translator would look something like the following: public class SolrEntityTranslator : IToCommerceEntityTranslator { #region IToCommerceEntityTranslator Members   public void Translate(object source, CommerceEntity destinationCommerceEntity, CommercePropertyCollection propertiesToReturn) { if (source.GetType().Equals(typeof (SearchProduct))) { var searchResult = (SearchProduct) source;   destinationCommerceEntity.Id = searchResult.ProductId; destinationCommerceEntity.SetPropertyValue("DisplayName", searchResult.Title); destinationCommerceEntity.ModelName = "Product";   } }  Once you have a translator in place you can then safely map the results of your search platform into Commerce Entities and attach them on to the CommerceResponse object in a fashion similar to this: foreach (SearchProduct result in matchingProducts) { var destinationEntity = new CommerceEntity(_returnModelName);   Translator.ToCommerceEntity(result, destinationEntity, _queryOperation.Model.Properties); response.CommerceEntities.Add(destinationEntity); }  In SOLR I actually have two objects being returned – a product, and a collection of facets so I have an additional translator for facet (which maps to a custom facet CommerceEntity) and my facet response from SOLR is passed into the Translator helper class seperatley. When all of this is pieced together you have sucessfully completed the extensiblity point coding. You would have created a new OperationSequanceComponent, a custom SearchCritiera object and message builder class, and translators to convert the objects into Commerce Entities. Now you simply need to configure them, and can start calling them in your code. Make sure you sign you assembly, compile it and identiy its signature. Next you need to put this a reference of your new assembly into the Channel.Config configuration file replacing that of the existing SQL Full Text component: You will also need to add your translators to the Translators node of your Channel.Config too: Lastly add any custom CommerceEntities you have developed to your MetaDataDefintions.xml file. Your configuration is now complete, and you should now be able to happily make a call to the Commerce Foundation API, which will act as a proxy to your third party search platform and return back CommerceEntities of your search results. If you require data to be enriched, or logged, or any other logic applied then simply add further sequence components into the OperationSequence (obviously keeping the search response first) to the node of your Channel.Config file. Now to call your code you simply request it as per any other CommerceQuery operation, but taking into account you may be receiving multiple types of CommerceEntity returned: public KeyValuePair<FacetCollection ,List<Product>> DoFacetedProductQuerySearch(string searchPhrase, string orderKey, string sortOrder, int recordIndex, int recordsPerPage, Dictionary<string, string> facetQueries, out int totalItemCount) { var products = new List<Product>(); var query = new CommerceQuery<CatalogEntity, CommerceCatalogSolrSearchBuilder>();   query.SearchCriteria.PageIndex = recordIndex; query.SearchCriteria.PageSize = recordsPerPage; query.SearchCriteria.SearchPhrase = searchPhrase; query.SearchCriteria.FacetQueries = facetQueries;     totalItemCount = 0; CommerceResponse response = SiteContext.ProcessRequest(query.ToRequest()); var queryResponse = response.OperationResponses[0] as CommerceQueryOperationResponse;   // No results. Return the empty list if (queryResponse != null && queryResponse.CommerceEntities.Count == 0) return new KeyValuePair<FacetCollection, List<Product>>();   totalItemCount = (int)queryResponse.TotalItemCount;   // Prepare a multi-operation to retrieve the product variants var multiOperation = new CommerceMultiOperation();     //Add products to results foreach (Product product in queryResponse.CommerceEntities.Where(x => x.ModelName == "Product")) { var productQuery = new CommerceQuery<Product>(Product.ModelNameDefinition); productQuery.SearchCriteria.Model.Id = product.Id; productQuery.SearchCriteria.Model.CatalogId = product.CatalogId;   var variantQuery = new CommerceQueryRelatedItem<Variant>(Product.RelationshipName.Variants);   productQuery.RelatedOperations.Add(variantQuery);   multiOperation.Add(productQuery); }   CommerceResponse variantsResponse = SiteContext.ProcessRequest(multiOperation.ToRequest()); foreach (CommerceQueryOperationResponse queryOpResponse in variantsResponse.OperationResponses) { if (queryOpResponse.CommerceEntities.Count() > 0) products.Add(queryOpResponse.CommerceEntities[0]); }   //Get facet collection FacetCollection facetCollection = queryResponse.CommerceEntities.Where(x => x.ModelName == "FacetCollection").FirstOrDefault();     return new KeyValuePair<FacetCollection, List<Product>>(facetCollection, products); }    ..And that is it – simply a few classes and some configuration will allow you to extend the Commerce Server query operations to call a third party search platform, whilst still maintaing a unifed API in the remainder of your code. This logic stands for any extensibility within CommerceServer, which requires excution in a serial fashioon such as call to LOB systems or web service to validate or enrich data. Feel free to use this example on other applications, and if you have any questions please feel free to e-mail and I'll help out where I can!

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• Passing multiple POST parameters to Web API Controller Methods

  - by Rick Strahl

  ASP.NET Web API introduces a new API for creating REST APIs and making AJAX callbacks to the server. This new API provides a host of new great functionality that unifies many of the features of many of the various AJAX/REST APIs that Microsoft created before it - ASP.NET AJAX, WCF REST specifically - and combines them into a whole more consistent API. Web API addresses many of the concerns that developers had with these older APIs, namely that it was very difficult to build consistent REST style resource APIs easily. While Web API provides many new features and makes many scenarios much easier, a lot of the focus has been on making it easier to build REST compliant APIs that are focused on resource based solutions and HTTP verbs. But  RPC style calls that are common with AJAX callbacks in Web applications, have gotten a lot less focus and there are a few scenarios that are not that obvious, especially if you're expecting Web API to provide functionality similar to ASP.NET AJAX style AJAX callbacks. RPC vs. 'Proper' REST RPC style HTTP calls mimic calling a method with parameters and returning a result. Rather than mapping explicit server side resources or 'nouns' RPC calls tend simply map a server side operation, passing in parameters and receiving a typed result where parameters and result values are marshaled over HTTP. Typically RPC calls - like SOAP calls - tend to always be POST operations rather than following HTTP conventions and using the GET/POST/PUT/DELETE etc. verbs to implicitly determine what operation needs to be fired. RPC might not be considered 'cool' anymore, but for typical private AJAX backend operations of a Web site I'd wager that a large percentage of use cases of Web API will fall towards RPC style calls rather than 'proper' REST style APIs. Web applications that have needs for things like live validation against data, filling data based on user inputs, handling small UI updates often don't lend themselves very well to limited HTTP verb usage. It might not be what the cool kids do, but I don't see RPC calls getting replaced by proper REST APIs any time soon.  Proper REST has its place - for 'real' API scenarios that manage and publish/share resources, but for more transactional operations RPC seems a better choice and much easier to implement than trying to shoehorn a boatload of endpoint methods into a few HTTP verbs. In any case Web API does a good job of providing both RPC abstraction as well as the HTTP Verb/REST abstraction. RPC works well out of the box, but there are some differences especially if you're coming from ASP.NET AJAX service or WCF Rest when it comes to multiple parameters. Action Routing for RPC Style Calls If you've looked at Web API demos you've probably seen a bunch of examples of how to create HTTP Verb based routing endpoints. Verb based routing essentially maps a controller and then uses HTTP verbs to map the methods that are called in response to HTTP requests. This works great for resource APIs but doesn't work so well when you have many operational methods in a single controller. HTTP Verb routing is limited to the few HTTP verbs available (plus separate method signatures) and - worse than that - you can't easily extend the controller with custom routes or action routing beyond that. Thankfully Web API also supports Action based routing which allows you create RPC style endpoints fairly easily:RouteTable.Routes.MapHttpRoute( name: "AlbumRpcApiAction", routeTemplate: "albums/{action}/{title}", defaults: new { title = RouteParameter.Optional, controller = "AlbumApi", action = "GetAblums" } ); This uses traditional MVC style {action} method routing which is different from the HTTP verb based routing you might have read a bunch about in conjunction with Web API. Action based routing like above lets you specify an end point method in a Web API controller either via the {action} parameter in the route string or via a default value for custom routes. Using routing you can pass multiple parameters either on the route itself or pass parameters on the query string, via ModelBinding or content value binding. For most common scenarios this actually works very well. As long as you are passing either a single complex type via a POST operation, or multiple simple types via query string or POST buffer, there's no issue. But if you need to pass multiple parameters as was easily done with WCF REST or ASP.NET AJAX things are not so obvious. Web API has no issue allowing for single parameter like this:[HttpPost] public string PostAlbum(Album album) { return String.Format("{0} {1:d}", album.AlbumName, album.Entered); } There are actually two ways to call this endpoint: albums/PostAlbum Using the Model Binder with plain POST values In this mechanism you're sending plain urlencoded POST values to the server which the ModelBinder then maps the parameter. Each property value is matched to each matching POST value. This works similar to the way that MVC's  ModelBinder works. Here's how you can POST using the ModelBinder and jQuery:$.ajax( { url: "albums/PostAlbum", type: "POST", data: { AlbumName: "Dirty Deeds", Entered: "5/1/2012" }, success: function (result) { alert(result); }, error: function (xhr, status, p3, p4) { var err = "Error " + " " + status + " " + p3; if (xhr.responseText && xhr.responseText[0] == "{") err = JSON.parse(xhr.responseText).message; alert(err); } }); Here's what the POST data looks like for this request: The model binder and it's straight form based POST mechanism is great for posting data directly from HTML pages to model objects. It avoids having to do manual conversions for many operations and is a great boon for AJAX callback requests. Using Web API JSON Formatter The other option is to post data using a JSON string. The process for this is similar except that you create a JavaScript object and serialize it to JSON first.album = { AlbumName: "PowerAge", Entered: new Date(1977,0,1) } $.ajax( { url: "albums/PostAlbum", type: "POST", contentType: "application/json", data: JSON.stringify(album), success: function (result) { alert(result); } }); Here the data is sent using a JSON object rather than form data and the data is JSON encoded over the wire. The trace reveals that the data is sent using plain JSON (Source above), which is a little more efficient since there's no UrlEncoding that occurs. BTW, notice that WebAPI automatically deals with the date. I provided the date as a plain string, rather than a JavaScript date value and the Formatter and ModelBinder both automatically map the date propertly to the Entered DateTime property of the Album object. Passing multiple Parameters to a Web API Controller Single parameters work fine in either of these RPC scenarios and that's to be expected. ModelBinding always works against a single object because it maps a model. But what happens when you want to pass multiple parameters? Consider an API Controller method that has a signature like the following:[HttpPost] public string PostAlbum(Album album, string userToken) Here I'm asking to pass two objects to an RPC method. Is that possible? This used to be fairly straight forward either with WCF REST and ASP.NET AJAX ASMX services, but as far as I can tell this is not directly possible using a POST operation with WebAPI. There a few workarounds that you can use to make this work: Use both POST *and* QueryString Parameters in Conjunction If you have both complex and simple parameters, you can pass simple parameters on the query string. The above would actually work with: /album/PostAlbum?userToken=sekkritt but that's not always possible. In this example it might not be a good idea to pass a user token on the query string though. It also won't work if you need to pass multiple complex objects, since query string values do not support complex type mapping. They only work with simple types. Use a single Object that wraps the two Parameters If you go by service based architecture guidelines every service method should always pass and return a single value only. The input should wrap potentially multiple input parameters and the output should convey status as well as provide the result value. You typically have a xxxRequest and a xxxResponse class that wraps the inputs and outputs. Here's what this method might look like:public PostAlbumResponse PostAlbum(PostAlbumRequest request) { var album = request.Album; var userToken = request.UserToken; return new PostAlbumResponse() { IsSuccess = true, Result = String.Format("{0} {1:d} {2}", album.AlbumName, album.Entered,userToken) }; } with these support types:public class PostAlbumRequest { public Album Album { get; set; } public User User { get; set; } public string UserToken { get; set; } } public class PostAlbumResponse { public string Result { get; set; } public bool IsSuccess { get; set; } public string ErrorMessage { get; set; } }   To call this method you now have to assemble these objects on the client and send it up as JSON:var album = { AlbumName: "PowerAge", Entered: "1/1/1977" } var user = { Name: "Rick" } var userToken = "sekkritt"; $.ajax( { url: "samples/PostAlbum", type: "POST", contentType: "application/json", data: JSON.stringify({ Album: album, User: user, UserToken: userToken }), success: function (result) { alert(result.Result); } }); I assemble the individual types first and then combine them in the data: property of the $.ajax() call into the actual object passed to the server, that mimics the structure of PostAlbumRequest server class that has Album, User and UserToken properties. This works well enough but it gets tedious if you have to create Request and Response types for each method signature. If you have common parameters that are always passed (like you always pass an album or usertoken) you might be able to abstract this to use a single object that gets reused for all methods, but this gets confusing too: Overload a single 'parameter' too much and it becomes a nightmare to decipher what your method actual can use. Use JObject to parse multiple Property Values out of an Object If you recall, ASP.NET AJAX and WCF REST used a 'wrapper' object to make default AJAX calls. Rather than directly calling a service you always passed an object which contained properties for each parameter: { parm1: Value, parm2: Value2 } WCF REST/ASP.NET AJAX would then parse this top level property values and map them to the parameters of the endpoint method. This automatic type wrapping functionality is no longer available directly in Web API, but since Web API now uses JSON.NET for it's JSON serializer you can actually simulate that behavior with a little extra code. You can use the JObject class to receive a dynamic JSON result and then using the dynamic cast of JObject to walk through the child objects and even parse them into strongly typed objects. Here's how to do this on the API Controller end:[HttpPost] public string PostAlbum(JObject jsonData) { dynamic json = jsonData; JObject jalbum = json.Album; JObject juser = json.User; string token = json.UserToken; var album = jalbum.ToObject<Album>(); var user = juser.ToObject<User>(); return String.Format("{0} {1} {2}", album.AlbumName, user.Name, token); } This is clearly not as nice as having the parameters passed directly, but it works to allow you to pass multiple parameters and access them using Web API. JObject is JSON.NET's generic object container which sports a nice dynamic interface that allows you to walk through the object's properties using standard 'dot' object syntax. All you have to do is cast the object to dynamic to get access to the property interface of the JSON type. Additionally JObject also allows you to parse JObject instances into strongly typed objects, which enables us here to retrieve the two objects passed as parameters from this jquery code:var album = { AlbumName: "PowerAge", Entered: "1/1/1977" } var user = { Name: "Rick" } var userToken = "sekkritt"; $.ajax( { url: "samples/PostAlbum", type: "POST", contentType: "application/json", data: JSON.stringify({ Album: album, User: user, UserToken: userToken }), success: function (result) { alert(result); } }); Summary ASP.NET Web API brings many new features and many advantages over the older Microsoft AJAX and REST APIs, but realize that some things like passing multiple strongly typed object parameters will work a bit differently. It's not insurmountable, but just knowing what options are available to simulate this behavior is good to know. Now let me say here that it's probably not a good practice to pass a bunch of parameters to an API call. Ideally APIs should be closely factored to accept single parameters or a single content parameter at least along with some identifier parameters that can be passed on the querystring. But saying that doesn't mean that occasionally you don't run into a situation where you have the need to pass several objects to the server and all three of the options I mentioned might have merit in different situations. For now I'm sure the question of how to pass multiple parameters will come up quite a bit from people migrating WCF REST or ASP.NET AJAX code to Web API. At least there are options available to make it work.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Web Api   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Coding With Windows Azure IaaS

  - by Hisham El-bereky

  This post will focus on some advanced programming topics concerned with IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) which provided as windows azure virtual machine (with its related resources like virtual disk and virtual network), you know that windows azure started as PaaS cloud platform but regarding to some business cases which need to have full control over their virtual machine, so windows azure directed toward providing IaaS. Sometimes you will need to manage your cloud IaaS through code may be for these reasons: Working on hyper-cloud system by providing bursting connector to windows azure virtual machines Providing multi-tenant system which consume windows azure virtual machine Automated process on your on-premises or cloud service which need to utilize some virtual resources We are going to implement the following basic operation using C# code: List images Create virtual machine List virtual machines Restart virtual machine Delete virtual machine Before going to implement the above operations we need to prepare client side and windows azure subscription to communicate correctly by providing management certificate (x.509 v3 certificates) which permit client access to resources in your Windows Azure subscription, whilst requests made using the Windows Azure Service Management REST API require authentication against a certificate that you provide to Windows Azure More info about setting management certificate located here. And to install .cer on other client machine you will need the .pfx file, or if not exist by exporting .cer as .pfx Note: You will need to install .net 4.5 on your machine to try the code So let start This post built on the post sent by Michael Washam "Advanced Windows Azure IaaS – Demo Code", so I'm here to declare some points and to add new operation which is not exist in Michael's demo The basic C# class object used here as client to azure REST API for IaaS service is HttpClient (Provides a base class for sending HTTP requests and receiving HTTP responses from a resource identified by a URI) this object must be initialized with the required data like certificate, headers and content if required. Also I'd like to refer here that the code is based on using Asynchronous programming with calls to azure which enhance the performance and gives us the ability to work with complex calls which depends on more than one sub-call to achieve some operation The following code explain how to get certificate and initializing HttpClient object with required data like headers and content HttpClient GetHttpClient() { X509Store certificateStore = null; X509Certificate2 certificate = null; try { certificateStore = new X509Store(StoreName.My, StoreLocation.CurrentUser); certificateStore.Open(OpenFlags.ReadOnly); string thumbprint = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["CertThumbprint"]; var certificates = certificateStore.Certificates.Find(X509FindType.FindByThumbprint, thumbprint, false); if (certificates.Count > 0) { certificate = certificates[0]; } } finally { if (certificateStore != null) certificateStore.Close(); }   WebRequestHandler handler = new WebRequestHandler(); if (certificate!= null) { handler.ClientCertificates.Add(certificate); HttpClient httpClient = new HttpClient(handler); //And to set required headers lik x-ms-version httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Add("x-ms-version", "2012-03-01"); httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Add(new MediaTypeWithQualityHeaderValue("application/xml")); return httpClient; } return null; }  Let us keep the object httpClient as reference object used to call windows azure REST API IaaS service. For each request operation we need to define: Request URI HTTP Method Headers Content body (1) List images The List OS Images operation retrieves a list of the OS images from the image repository Request URI https://management.core.windows.net/<subscription-id>/services/images] Replace <subscription-id> with your windows Id HTTP Method GET (HTTP 1.1) Headers x-ms-version: 2012-03-01 Body None.  C# Code List<String> imageList = new List<String>(); //replace _subscriptionid with your WA subscription String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/images", _subscriptionid);  HttpClient http = GetHttpClient(); Stream responseStream = await http.GetStreamAsync(uri);  if (responseStream != null) {      XDocument xml = XDocument.Load(responseStream);      var images = xml.Root.Descendants(ns + "OSImage").Where(i => i.Element(ns + "OS").Value == "Windows");      foreach (var image in images)      {      string img = image.Element(ns + "Name").Value;      imageList.Add(img);      } } More information about the REST call (Request/Response) located here on this link http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj157191.aspx (2) Create Virtual Machine Creating virtual machine required service and deployment to be created first, so creating VM should be done through three steps incase hosted service and deployment is not created yet Create hosted service, a container for service deployments in Windows Azure. A subscription may have zero or more hosted services Create deployment, a service that is running on Windows Azure. A deployment may be running in either the staging or production deployment environment. It may be managed either by referencing its deployment ID, or by referencing the deployment environment in which it's running. Create virtual machine, the previous two steps info required here in this step I suggest here to use the same name for service, deployment and service to make it easy to manage virtual machines Note: A name for the hosted service that is unique within Windows Azure. This name is the DNS prefix name and can be used to access the hosted service. For example: http://ServiceName.cloudapp.net// 2.1 Create service Request URI https://management.core.windows.net/<subscription-id>/services/hostedservices HTTP Method POST (HTTP 1.1) Header x-ms-version: 2012-03-01 Content-Type: application/xml Body More details about request body (and other information) are located here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/gg441304.aspx C# code The following method show how to create hosted service async public Task<String> NewAzureCloudService(String ServiceName, String Location, String AffinityGroup, String subscriptionid) { String requestID = String.Empty;   String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/hostedservices", subscriptionid); HttpClient http = GetHttpClient();   System.Text.ASCIIEncoding ae = new System.Text.ASCIIEncoding(); byte[] svcNameBytes = ae.GetBytes(ServiceName);   String locationEl = String.Empty; String locationVal = String.Empty;   if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(Location) == false) { locationEl = "Location"; locationVal = Location; } else { locationEl = "AffinityGroup"; locationVal = AffinityGroup; }   XElement srcTree = new XElement("CreateHostedService", new XAttribute(XNamespace.Xmlns + "i", ns1), new XElement("ServiceName", ServiceName), new XElement("Label", Convert.ToBase64String(svcNameBytes)), new XElement(locationEl, locationVal) ); ApplyNamespace(srcTree, ns);   XDocument CSXML = new XDocument(srcTree); HttpContent content = new StringContent(CSXML.ToString()); content.Headers.ContentType = new System.Net.Http.Headers.MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/xml");   HttpResponseMessage responseMsg = await http.PostAsync(uri, content); if (responseMsg != null) { requestID = responseMsg.Headers.GetValues("x-ms-request-id").FirstOrDefault(); } return requestID; } 2.2 Create Deployment Request URI https://management.core.windows.net/<subscription-id>/services/hostedservices/<service-name>/deploymentslots/<deployment-slot-name> <deployment-slot-name> with staging or production, depending on where you wish to deploy your service package <service-name> provided as input from the previous step HTTP Method POST (HTTP 1.1) Header x-ms-version: 2012-03-01 Content-Type: application/xml Body More details about request body (and other information) are located here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ee460813.aspx C# code The following method show how to create hosted service deployment async public Task<String> NewAzureVMDeployment(String ServiceName, String VMName, String VNETName, XDocument VMXML, XDocument DNSXML) { String requestID = String.Empty;     String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/hostedservices/{1}/deployments", _subscriptionid, ServiceName); HttpClient http = GetHttpClient(); XElement srcTree = new XElement("Deployment", new XAttribute(XNamespace.Xmlns + "i", ns1), new XElement("Name", ServiceName), new XElement("DeploymentSlot", "Production"), new XElement("Label", ServiceName), new XElement("RoleList", null) );   if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(VNETName) == false) { srcTree.Add(new XElement("VirtualNetworkName", VNETName)); }   if(DNSXML != null) { srcTree.Add(new XElement("DNS", new XElement("DNSServers", DNSXML))); }   XDocument deploymentXML = new XDocument(srcTree); ApplyNamespace(srcTree, ns);   deploymentXML.Descendants(ns + "RoleList").FirstOrDefault().Add(VMXML.Root);     String fixedXML = deploymentXML.ToString().Replace(" xmlns=\"\"", ""); HttpContent content = new StringContent(fixedXML); content.Headers.ContentType = new System.Net.Http.Headers.MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/xml");   HttpResponseMessage responseMsg = await http.PostAsync(uri, content); if (responseMsg != null) { requestID = responseMsg.Headers.GetValues("x-ms-request-id").FirstOrDefault(); }   return requestID; } 2.3 Create Virtual Machine Request URI https://management.core.windows.net/<subscription-id>/services/hostedservices/<cloudservice-name>/deployments/<deployment-name>/roles <cloudservice-name> and <deployment-name> are provided as input from the previous steps Http Method POST (HTTP 1.1) Header x-ms-version: 2012-03-01 Content-Type: application/xml Body More details about request body (and other information) located here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj157186.aspx C# code async public Task<String> NewAzureVM(String ServiceName, String VMName, XDocument VMXML) { String requestID = String.Empty;   String deployment = await GetAzureDeploymentName(ServiceName);   String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/hostedservices/{1}/deployments/{2}/roles", _subscriptionid, ServiceName, deployment);   HttpClient http = GetHttpClient(); HttpContent content = new StringContent(VMXML.ToString()); content.Headers.ContentType = new System.Net.Http.Headers.MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/xml"); HttpResponseMessage responseMsg = await http.PostAsync(uri, content); if (responseMsg != null) { requestID = responseMsg.Headers.GetValues("x-ms-request-id").FirstOrDefault(); } return requestID; } (3) List Virtual Machines To list virtual machine hosted on windows azure subscription we have to loop over all hosted services to get its hosted virtual machines To do that we need to execute the following operations: listing hosted services listing hosted service Virtual machine 3.1 Listing Hosted Services Request URI https://management.core.windows.net/<subscription-id>/services/hostedservices HTTP Method GET (HTTP 1.1) Headers x-ms-version: 2012-03-01 Body None. More info about this HTTP request located here on this link http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ee460781.aspx C# Code async private Task<List<XDocument>> GetAzureServices(String subscriptionid) { String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/hostedservices ", subscriptionid); List<XDocument> services = new List<XDocument>();   HttpClient http = GetHttpClient();   Stream responseStream = await http.GetStreamAsync(uri);   if (responseStream != null) { XDocument xml = XDocument.Load(responseStream); var svcs = xml.Root.Descendants(ns + "HostedService"); foreach (XElement r in svcs) { XDocument vm = new XDocument(r); services.Add(vm); } }   return services; }  3.2 Listing Hosted Service Virtual Machines Request URI https://management.core.windows.net/<subscription-id>/services/hostedservices/<service-name>/deployments/<deployment-name>/roles/<role-name> HTTP Method GET (HTTP 1.1) Headers x-ms-version: 2012-03-01 Body None. More info about this HTTP request here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj157193.aspx C# Code async public Task<XDocument> GetAzureVM(String ServiceName, String VMName, String subscriptionid) { String deployment = await GetAzureDeploymentName(ServiceName); XDocument vmXML = new XDocument();   String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/hostedservices/{1}/deployments/{2}/roles/{3}", subscriptionid, ServiceName, deployment, VMName);   HttpClient http = GetHttpClient(); Stream responseStream = await http.GetStreamAsync(uri); if (responseStream != null) { vmXML = XDocument.Load(responseStream); }   return vmXML; }  So the final method which can be used to list all virtual machines is: async public Task<XDocument> GetAzureVMs() { List<XDocument> services = await GetAzureServices(); XDocument vms = new XDocument(); vms.Add(new XElement("VirtualMachines")); ApplyNamespace(vms.Root, ns); foreach (var svc in services) { string ServiceName = svc.Root.Element(ns + "ServiceName").Value;   String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/hostedservices/{1}/deploymentslots/{2}", _subscriptionid, ServiceName, "Production");   try { HttpClient http = GetHttpClient(); Stream responseStream = await http.GetStreamAsync(uri);   if (responseStream != null) { XDocument xml = XDocument.Load(responseStream); var roles = xml.Root.Descendants(ns + "RoleInstance"); foreach (XElement r in roles) { XElement svcnameel = new XElement("ServiceName", ServiceName); ApplyNamespace(svcnameel, ns); r.Add(svcnameel); // not part of the roleinstance vms.Root.Add(r); } } } catch (HttpRequestException http) { // no vms with cloud service } } return vms; }  (4) Restart Virtual Machine Request URI https://management.core.windows.net/<subscription-id>/services/hostedservices/<service-name>/deployments/<deployment-name>/roles/<role-name>/Operations HTTP Method POST (HTTP 1.1) Headers x-ms-version: 2012-03-01 Content-Type: application/xml Body <RestartRoleOperation xmlns:i="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <OperationType>RestartRoleOperation</OperationType> </RestartRoleOperation>  More details about this http request here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj157197.aspx  C# Code async public Task<String> RebootVM(String ServiceName, String RoleName) { String requestID = String.Empty;   String deployment = await GetAzureDeploymentName(ServiceName); String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/hostedservices/{1}/deployments/{2}/roleInstances/{3}/Operations", _subscriptionid, ServiceName, deployment, RoleName);   HttpClient http = GetHttpClient();   XElement srcTree = new XElement("RestartRoleOperation", new XAttribute(XNamespace.Xmlns + "i", ns1), new XElement("OperationType", "RestartRoleOperation") ); ApplyNamespace(srcTree, ns);   XDocument CSXML = new XDocument(srcTree); HttpContent content = new StringContent(CSXML.ToString()); content.Headers.ContentType = new System.Net.Http.Headers.MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/xml");   HttpResponseMessage responseMsg = await http.PostAsync(uri, content); if (responseMsg != null) { requestID = responseMsg.Headers.GetValues("x-ms-request-id").FirstOrDefault(); } return requestID; }  (5) Delete Virtual Machine You can delete your hosted virtual machine by deleting its deployment, but I prefer to delete its hosted service also, so you can easily manage your virtual machines from code 5.1 Delete Deployment Request URI https://management.core.windows.net/< subscription-id >/services/hostedservices/< service-name >/deployments/<Deployment-Name> HTTP Method DELETE (HTTP 1.1) Headers x-ms-version: 2012-03-01 Body None. C# code async public Task<HttpResponseMessage> DeleteDeployment( string deploymentName) { string xml = string.Empty; String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/hostedservices/{1}/deployments/{2}", _subscriptionid, deploymentName, deploymentName); HttpClient http = GetHttpClient(); HttpResponseMessage responseMessage = await http.DeleteAsync(uri); return responseMessage; }  5.2 Delete Hosted Service Request URI https://management.core.windows.net/<subscription-id>/services/hostedservices/<service-name> HTTP Method DELETE (HTTP 1.1) Headers x-ms-version: 2012-03-01 Body None. C# code async public Task<HttpResponseMessage> DeleteService(string serviceName) { string xml = string.Empty; String uri = String.Format("https://management.core.windows.net/{0}/services/hostedservices/{1}", _subscriptionid, serviceName); Log.Info("Windows Azure URI (http DELETE verb): " + uri, typeof(VMManager)); HttpClient http = GetHttpClient(); HttpResponseMessage responseMessage = await http.DeleteAsync(uri); return responseMessage; }  And the following is the method which can used to delete both of deployment and service async public Task<string> DeleteVM(string vmName) { string responseString = string.Empty;   // as a convention here in this post, a unified name used for service, deployment and VM instance to make it easy to manage VMs HttpClient http = GetHttpClient(); HttpResponseMessage responseMessage = await DeleteDeployment(vmName);   if (responseMessage != null) {   string requestID = responseMessage.Headers.GetValues("x-ms-request-id").FirstOrDefault(); OperationResult result = await PollGetOperationStatus(requestID, 5, 120); if (result.Status == OperationStatus.Succeeded) { responseString = result.Message; HttpResponseMessage sResponseMessage = await DeleteService(vmName); if (sResponseMessage != null) { OperationResult sResult = await PollGetOperationStatus(requestID, 5, 120); responseString += sResult.Message; } } else { responseString = result.Message; } } return responseString; }  Note: This article is subject to be updated Hisham  References Advanced Windows Azure IaaS – Demo Code Windows Azure Service Management REST API Reference Introduction to the Azure Platform Representational state transfer Asynchronous Programming with Async and Await (C# and Visual Basic) HttpClient Class

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• Building The Right SharePoint Team For Your Organization

  - by Mark Rackley

  I see the question posted fairly often asking what kind SharePoint team an organization should have. How many people do I need? What roles do I need to fill? What is best for my organization? Well, just like every other answer in SharePoint, the correct answer is “it depends”. Do you ever get sick of hearing that??? I know I do… So, let me give you my thoughts and opinions based upon my experience and what I’ve seen and let you come to your own conclusions. What are the possible SharePoint roles? I guess the first thing you need to understand are the different roles that exist in SharePoint (and their are LOTS). Remember, SharePoint is a massive beast and you will NOT find one person who can do it all. If you are hoping to find that person you will be sorely disappointed. For the most part this is true in SharePoint 2007 and 2010. However, generally things are improved in 2010 and easier for junior individuals to grasp. SharePoint Administrator The absolutely positively only role that you should not be without no matter the size of your organization or SharePoint deployment is a SharePoint administrator. These guys are essential to keeping things running and figuring out what’s wrong when things aren’t running well. These unsung heroes do more before 10 am than I do all day. The bad thing is, when these guys are awesome, you don’t even know they exist because everything is running so smoothly. You should definitely invest some time and money here to make sure you have some competent if not rockstar help. You need an admin who truly loves SharePoint and will go that extra mile when necessary. Let me give you a real world example of what I’m talking about: We have a rockstar admin… and I’m sure she’s sick of my throwing her name around so she’ll just have to live with remaining anonymous in this post… sorry Lori… Anyway! A couple of weeks ago our Server teams came to us and said Hi Lori, I’m finalizing the MOSS servers and doing updates that require a restart; can I restart them? Seems like a harmless request from your server team does it not? Sure, go ahead and apply the patches and reboot during our scheduled maintenance window. No problem? right? Sounded fair to me… but no…. not to our fearless SharePoint admin… I need a complete list of patches that will be applied. There is an update that is out there that will break SharePoint… KB973917 is the patch that has been shown to cause issues. What? You mean Microsoft released a patch that would actually adversely affect SharePoint? If we did NOT have a rockstar admin, our server team would have applied these patches and then when some problem occurred in SharePoint we’d have to go through the fun task of tracking down exactly what caused the issue and resolve it. How much time would that have taken? If you have a junior SharePoint admin or an admin who’s not out there staying on top of what’s going on you could have spent days tracking down something so simple as applying a patch you should not have applied. I will even go as far to say the only SharePoint rockstar you NEED in your organization is a SharePoint admin. You can always outsource really complicated development projects or bring in a rockstar contractor every now and then to make sure you aren’t way off track in other areas. For your day-to-day sanity and to keep SharePoint running smoothly, you need an awesome Admin. Some rockstars in this category are: Ben Curry, Mike Watson, Joel Oleson, Todd Klindt, Shane Young, John Ferringer, Sean McDonough, and of course Lori Gowin. SharePoint Developer Another essential role for your SharePoint deployment is a SharePoint developer. Things do start to get a little hazy here and there are many flavors of “developers”. Are you writing custom code? using SharePoint Designer? What about SharePoint Branding?  Are all of these considered developers? I would say yes. Are they interchangeable? I’d say no. Development in SharePoint is such a large beast in itself. I would say that it’s not so large that you can’t know it all well, but it is so large that there are many people who specialize in one particular category. If you are lucky enough to have someone on staff who knows it all well, you better make sure they are well taken care of because those guys are ready-made to move over to a consulting role and charge you 3 times what you are probably paying them. :) Some of the all-around rockstars are Eric Shupps, Andrew Connell (go Razorbacks), Rob Foster, Paul Schaeflein, and Todd Bleeker SharePoint Power User/No-Code Solutions Developer These SharePoint Swiss Army Knives are essential for quick wins in your organization. These people can twist the out-of-the-box functionality to make it do things you would not even imagine. Give these guys SharePoint Designer, jQuery, InfoPath, and a little time and they will create views, dashboards, and KPI’s that will blow your mind away and give your execs the “wow” they are looking for. Not only can they deliver that wow factor, but they can mashup, merge, and really help make your SharePoint application usable and deliver an overall better user experience. Before you hand off a project to your SharePoint Custom Code developer, let one of these rockstars look at it and show you what they can do (in probably less time). I would say the second most important role you can fill in your organization is one of these guys. Rockstars in this category are Christina Wheeler, Laura Rogers, Jennifer Mason, and Mark Miller SharePoint Developer – Custom Code If you want to really integrate SharePoint into your legacy systems, or really twist it and make it bend to your will, you are going to have to open up Visual Studio and write some custom code.  Remember, SharePoint is essentially just a big, huge, ginormous .NET application, so you CAN write code to make it do ANYTHING, but do you really want to spend the time and effort to do so? At some point with every other form of SharePoint development you are going to run into SOME limitation (SPD Workflows is the big one that comes to mind). If you truly want to knock down all the walls then custom development is the way to go. PLEASE keep in mind when you are looking for a custom code developer that a .NET developer does NOT equal a SharePoint developer. Just SOME of the things these guys write are: Custom Workflows Custom Web Parts Web Service functionality Import data from legacy systems Export data to legacy systems Custom Actions Event Receivers Service Applications (2010) These guys are also the ones generally responsible for packaging everything up into solution packages (you are doing that, right?). Rockstars in this category are Phil Wicklund, Christina Wheeler, Geoff Varosky, and Brian Jackett. SharePoint Branding “But it LOOKS like SharePoint!” Somebody call the WAAAAAAAAAAAAHMbulance…   Themes, Master Pages, Page Layouts, Zones, and over 2000 styles in CSS.. these guys not only have to be comfortable with all of SharePoint’s quirks and pain points when branding, but they have to know it TWICE for publishing and non-publishing sites.  Not only that, but these guys really need to have an eye for graphic design and be able to translate the ramblings of business into something visually stunning. They also have to be comfortable with XSLT, XML, and be able to hand off what they do to your custom developers for them to package as solutions (which you are doing, right?). These rockstars include Heater Waterman, Cathy Dew, and Marcy Kellar SharePoint Architect SharePoint Architects are generally SharePoint Admins or Developers who have moved into more of a BA role? Is that fair to say? These guys really have a grasp and understanding for what SharePoint IS and what it can do. These guys help you structure your farms to meet your needs and help you design your applications the correct way. It’s always a good idea to bring in a rockstar SharePoint Architect to do a sanity check and make sure you aren’t doing anything stupid.  Most organizations probably do not have a rockstar architect on staff. These guys are generally brought in at the deployment of a farm, upgrade of a farm, or for large development projects. I personally also find architects very useful for sitting down with the business to translate their needs into what SharePoint can do. A good architect will be able to pick out what can be done out-of-the-box and what has to be custom built and hand those requirements to the development Staff. Architects can generally fill in as an admin or a developer when needed. Some rockstar architects are Rick Taylor, Dan Usher, Bill English, Spence Harbar, Neil Hodgkins, Eric Harlan, and Bjørn Furuknap. Other Roles / Specialties On top of all these other roles you also get these people who specialize in things like Reporting, BDC (BCS in 2010), Search, Performance, Security, Project Management, etc... etc... etc... Again, most organizations will not have one of these gurus on staff, they’ll just pay out the nose for them when they need them. :) SharePoint End User Everyone else in your organization that touches SharePoint falls into this category. What they actually DO in SharePoint is determined by your governance and what permissions you give these guys. Hopefully you have these guys on a fairly short leash and are NOT giving them access to tools like SharePoint Designer. Sadly end users are the ones who truly make your deployment a success by using it, but are also your biggest enemy in breaking it.  :)  We love you guys… really!!! Okay, all that’s fine and dandy, but what should MY SharePoint team look like? It depends! Okay… Are you just doing out of the box team sites with no custom development? Then you are probably fine with a great Admin team and a great No-Code Solution Development team. How many people do you need? Depends on how busy you can keep them. Sorry, can’t answer the question about numbers without knowing your specific needs. I can just tell you who you MIGHT need and what they will do for you. I’ll leave you with what my ideal SharePoint Team would look like for a particular scenario: Farm / Organization Structure Dev, QA, and 2 Production Farms. 5000 – 10000 Users Custom Development and Integration with legacy systems Team Sites, My Sites, Intranet, Document libraries and overall company collaboration Team Rockstar SharePoint Administrator 2-3 junior SharePoint Administrators SharePoint Architect / Lead Developer 2 Power User / No-Code Solution Developers 2-3 Custom Code developers Branding expert With a team of that size and skill set, they should be able to keep a substantial SharePoint deployment running smoothly and meet your business needs. This does NOT mean that you would not need to bring in contract help from time to time when you need an uber specialist in one area. Also, this team assumes there will be ongoing development for the life of your SharePoint farm. If you are just going to be doing sporadic custom development, it might make sense to partner with an awesome firm that specializes in that sort of work (I can give you the name of a couple if you are interested).  Again though, the size of your team depends on the number of requests you are receiving and how much active deployment you are doing. So, don’t bring in a team that looks like this and then yell at me because they are sitting around with nothing to do or are so overwhelmed that nothing is getting done. I do URGE you to take the proper time to asses your needs and determine what team is BEST for your organization. Also, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not skimp on the talent. When it comes to SharePoint you really do get what you pay for when it comes to employees, contractors, and software.  SharePoint can become absolutely critical to your business and because you skimped on hiring a developer he created a web part that brings down the farm because he doesn’t know what he’s doing, or you hire an admin who thinks it’s fine to stick everything in the same Content Database and then can’t figure out why people are complaining. SharePoint can be an enormous blessing to an organization or it’s biggest curse. Spend the time and money to do it right, or be prepared to spending even more time and money later to fix it.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, April 24, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, April 24, 2010New ProjectsAutoWorkLoad: Is an application intended to load hours to accounting system such as TimeTracker automatically.Chemistry Add-in for Word: The Chemistry Add-in for Word makes it easier for students, chemists, and researchers to insert and modify chemical information, such as labels, fo...Exceptional Visualizer: A Debugger Visualizer for VS 2008 that allows for effective visual tracing of an Exception stack. Useful for Unity Resolution Exceptions as seen i...FTE Owner Requirement: FIM 2010 Activity: Forefront Identity Manager 2010 (FIM) activity designed to ensure that group object has at least one assigned Full Time Employee owner. This policy...Globus CB: Group project 2009-2010Highlighterr for Visual C++ 2010: A simple code syntax highlighter to change the colors of classes, structs, interfaces, macros and typedefs in the Visual C++ 2010 IDE. It is implem...HTML to word (.doc): easy to export your HTML code to Microsoft Word (.doc extension)IETT Hat Güzergah Importer: http://www.iett.gov.tr sitesinden otobüs hat ve güzergahlarını indirerek RegEx ile parse eder. Elde ettiği verileri SQL Server'a kaydeder.Industrial Dashboard: WCF service that allows executing SQL Server stored procedures straight from javascript code, enabling sending and receiving structured data withou...iSafePDF: iSafePDF is a PDF protection software. it allows you to encrypt PDF document, signe them using a certificate and timestamp the signature. all those...Kordinat Dönüştürücü: * UTM Koordinatlardan DDD koordinatlara iki yönlü dönüşüm. * Google Earth üzerinde koordinat, polygon ve ruhsat gösterimi. * Türkiye Paftalarının...LinkedIn® for Windows Mobile: LinkedIn® for Windows Mobile brings your LinkedIn® account to your Window Mobile powered phone. See networkupdates / connections / profile etc. Macrosome: An F# project demonstrates recording and replaying user operations.Markov Text Generator: Markov Text Generator.MEFedMVVM: Library for building MEF MVVM applications for Silverlight and WPF. By using this library you can easily build MVVM application. *UNDER Constructi...Mercurial to Team Foundation Server Work Item Hook: This is a Mercurial hook that will mark Team Foundation Server work items as resolved with a specific format in the commit description.Metaball WPF HLSL: Metaballs in WPF 3 with pixel shaders.Project Audiophile: Project Audiophile is a suite of applications and libraries built for .Net and Mono for the purposes of listening and organising music.RSS Application Updater: A Libbrary that helps you to update your app from your web site's feed. works very good with drupal .Sherwood Content Management Suite: A project that aims to provide a powerful and flexible tool for aggregating data from different data sources. Add your own plugins to store wanted ...Sonic.Net: Sonic.Net is a .Net Library designed to facilitate development of rich client applications both in Silverlight and WPF. 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• Is Social Media The Vital Skill You Aren’t Tracking?

  - by HCM-Oracle

  By Mark Bennett - Originally featured in Talent Management Excellence The ever-increasing presence of the workforce on social media presents opportunities as well as risks for organizations. While on the one hand, we read about social media embarrassments happening to organizations, on the other we see that social media activities by workers and candidates can enhance a company’s brand and provide insight into what individuals are, or can become, influencers in the social media sphere. HR can play a key role in helping organizations make the most value out of the activities and presence of workers and candidates, while at the same time also helping to manage the risks that come with the permanence and viral nature of social media. What is Missing from Understanding Our Workforce? “If only HP knew what HP knows, we would be three-times more productive.”  Lew Platt, Former Chairman, President, CEO, Hewlett-Packard  What Lew Platt recognized was that organizations only have a partial understanding of what their workforce is capable of. This lack of understanding impacts the company in several negative ways: 1. A particular skill that the company needs to access in one part of the organization might exist somewhere else, but there is no record that the skill exists, so the need is unfulfilled. 2. As market conditions change rapidly, the company needs to know strategic options, but some options are missed entirely because the company doesn’t know that sufficient capability already exists to enable those options. 3. Employees may miss out on opportunities to demonstrate how their hidden skills could create new value to the company. Why don’t companies have that more complete picture of their workforce capabilities – that is, not know what they know? One very good explanation is that companies put most of their efforts into rating their workforce according to the jobs and roles they are filling today. This is the essence of two important talent management processes: recruiting and performance appraisals.  In recruiting, a set of requirements is put together for a job, either explicitly or indirectly through a job description. During the recruiting process, much of the attention is paid towards whether the candidate has the qualifications, the skills, the experience and the cultural fit to be successful in the role. This makes a lot of sense.  In the performance appraisal process, an employee is measured on how well they performed the functions of their role and in an effort to help the employee do even better next time, they are also measured on proficiency in the competencies that are deemed to be key in doing that job. Again, the logic is impeccable.  But in both these cases, two adages come to mind: 1. What gets measured is what gets managed. 2. You only see what you are looking for. In other words, the fact that the current roles the workforce are performing are the basis for measuring which capabilities the workforce has, makes them the only capabilities to be measured. What was initially meant to be a positive, i.e. identify what is needed to perform well and measure it, in order that it can be managed, comes with the unintended negative consequence of overshadowing the other capabilities the workforce has. This also comes with an employee engagement price, for the measurements and management of workforce capabilities is to typically focus on where the workforce comes up short. Again, it makes sense to do this, since improving a capability that appears to result in improved performance benefits, both the individual through improved performance ratings and the company through improved productivity. But this is based on the assumption that the capabilities identified and their required proficiencies are the only attributes of the individual that matter. Anything else the individual brings that results in high performance, while resulting in a desired performance outcome, often goes unrecognized or underappreciated at best. As social media begins to occupy a more important part in current and future roles in organizations, businesses must incorporate social media savvy and innovation into job descriptions and expectations. These new measures could provide insight into how well someone can use social media tools to influence communities and decision makers; keep abreast of trends in fast-moving industries; present a positive brand image for the organization around thought leadership, customer focus, social responsibility; and coordinate and collaborate with partners. These measures should demonstrate the “social capital” the individual has invested in and developed over time. Without this dimension, “short cut” methods may generate a narrow set of positive metrics that do not have real, long-lasting benefits to the organization. How Workforce Reputation Management Helps HR Harness Social Media With hundreds of petabytes of social media data flowing across Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, businesses are tapping technology solutions to effectively leverage social for HR. Workforce reputation management technology helps organizations discover, mobilize and retain talent by providing insight into the social reputation and influence of the workforce while also helping organizations monitor employee social media policy compliance and mitigate social media risk.  There are three major ways that workforce reputation management technology can play a strategic role to support HR: 1. Improve Awareness and Decisions on Talent Many organizations measure the skills and competencies that they know they need today, but are unaware of what other skills and competencies their workforce has that could be essential tomorrow. How about whether your workforce has the reputation and influence to make their skills and competencies more effective? Many organizations don’t have insight into the social media “reach” their workforce has, which is becoming more critical to business performance. These features help organizations, managers, and employees improve many talent processes and decision making, including the following: Hiring and Assignments. People and teams with higher reputations are considered more valuable and effective workers. Someone with high reputation who refers a candidate also can have high credibility as a source for hires.   Training and Development. Reputation trend analysis can impact program decisions regarding training offerings by showing how reputation and influence across the workforce changes in concert with training. Worker reputation impacts development plans and goal choices by helping the individual see which development efforts result in improved reputation and influence.   Finding Hidden Talent. Managers can discover hidden talent and skills amongst employees based on a combination of social profile information and social media reputation. Employees can improve their personal brand and accelerate their career development.  2. Talent Search and Discovery The right technology helps organizations find information on people that might otherwise be hidden. By leveraging access to candidate and worker social profiles as well as their social relationships, workforce reputation management provides companies with a more complete picture of what their knowledge, skills, and attributes are and what they can in turn access. This more complete information helps to find the right talent both outside the organization as well as the right, perhaps previously hidden talent, within the organization to fill roles and staff projects, particularly those roles and projects that are required in reaction to fast-changing opportunities and circumstances. 3. Reputation Brings Credibility Workforce reputation management technology provides a clearer picture of how candidates and workers are viewed by their peers and communities across a wide range of social reputation and influence metrics. This information is less subject to individual bias and can impact critical decision-making. Knowing the individual’s reputation and influence enables the organization to predict how well their capabilities and behaviors will have a positive effect on desired business outcomes. Many roles that have the highest impact on overall business performance are dependent on the individual’s influence and reputation. In addition, reputation and influence measures offer a very tangible source of feedback for workers, providing them with insight that helps them develop themselves and their careers and see the effectiveness of those efforts by tracking changes over time in their reputation and influence. The following are some examples of the different reputation and influence measures of the workforce that Workforce Reputation Management could gather and analyze: Generosity – How often the user reposts other’s posts. Influence – How often the user’s material is reposted by others.  Engagement – The ratio of recent posts with references (e.g. links to other posts) to the total number of posts.  Activity – How frequently the user posts. (e.g. number per day)  Impact – The size of the users’ social networks, which indicates their ability to reach unique followers, friends, or users.   Clout – The number of references and citations of the user’s material in others’ posts.  The Vital Ingredient of Workforce Reputation Management: Employee Participation “Nothing about me, without me.” Valerie Billingham, “Through the Patient’s Eyes”, Salzburg Seminar Session 356, 1998 Since data resides primarily in social media, a question arises: what manner is used to collect that data? While much of social media activity is publicly accessible (as many who wished otherwise have learned to their chagrin), the social norms of social media have developed to put some restrictions on what is acceptable behavior and by whom. Disregarding these norms risks a repercussion firestorm. One of the more recognized norms is that while individuals can follow and engage with other individual’s public social activity (e.g. Twitter updates) fairly freely, the more an organization does this unprompted and without getting permission from the individual beforehand, the more likely the organization risks a totally opposite outcome from the one desired. Instead, the organization must look for permission from the individual, which can be met with resistance. That resistance comes from not knowing how the information will be used, how it will be shared with others, and not receiving enough benefit in return for granting permission. As the quote above about patient concerns and rights succinctly states, no one likes not feeling in control of the information about themselves, or the uncertainty about where it will be used. This is well understood in consumer social media (i.e. permission-based marketing) and is applicable to workforce reputation management. However, asking permission leaves open the very real possibility that no one, or so few, will grant permission, resulting in a small set of data with little usefulness for the company. Connecting Individual Motivation to Organization Needs So what is it that makes an individual decide to grant an organization access to the data it wants? It is when the individual’s own motivations are in alignment with the organization’s objectives. In the case of workforce reputation management, when the individual is motivated by a desire for increased visibility and career growth opportunities to advertise their skills and level of influence and reputation, they are aligned with the organizations’ objectives; to fill resource needs or strategically build better awareness of what skills are present in the workforce, as well as levels of influence and reputation. Individuals can see the benefit of granting access permission to the company through multiple means. One is through simple social awareness; they begin to discover that peers who are getting more career opportunities are those who are signed up for workforce reputation management. Another is where companies take the message directly to the individual; we think you would benefit from signing up with our workforce reputation management solution. Another, more strategic approach is to make reputation management part of a larger Career Development effort by the company; providing a wide set of tools to help the workforce find ways to plan and take action to achieve their career aspirations in the organization. An effective mechanism, that facilitates connecting the visibility and career growth motivations of the workforce with the larger context of the organization’s business objectives, is to use game mechanics to help individuals transform their career goals into concrete, actionable steps, such as signing up for reputation management. This works in favor of companies looking to use workforce reputation because the workforce is more apt to see how it fits into achieving their overall career goals, as well as seeing how other participation brings additional benefits.  Once an individual has signed up with reputation management, not only have they made themselves more visible within the organization and increased their career growth opportunities, they have also enabled a tool that they can use to better understand how their actions and behaviors impact their influence and reputation. Since they will be able to see their reputation and influence measurements change over time, they will gain better insight into how reputation and influence impacts their effectiveness in a role, as well as how their behaviors and skill levels in turn affect their influence and reputation. This insight can trigger much more directed, and effective, efforts by the individual to improve their ability to perform at a higher level and become more productive. The increased sense of autonomy the individual experiences, in linking the insight they gain to the actions and behavior changes they make, greatly enhances their engagement with their role as well as their career prospects within the company. Workforce reputation management takes the wide range of disparate data about the workforce being produced across various social media platforms and transforms it into accessible, relevant, and actionable information that helps the organization achieve its desired business objectives. Social media holds untapped insights about your talent, brand and business, and workforce reputation management can help unlock them. Imagine - if you could find the hidden secrets of your businesses, how much more productive and efficient would your organization be? Mark Bennett is a Director of Product Strategy at Oracle. Mark focuses on setting the strategic vision and direction for tools that help organizations understand, shape, and leverage the capabilities of their workforce to achieve business objectives, as well as help individuals work effectively to achieve their goals and navigate their own growth. His combination of a deep technical background in software design and development, coupled with a broad knowledge of business challenges and thinking in today’s globalized, rapidly changing, technology accelerated economy, has enabled him to identify and incorporate key innovations that are central to Oracle Fusion’s unique value proposition. Mark has over the course of his career been in charge of the design, development, and strategy of Talent Management products and the design and development of cutting edge software that is better equipped to handle the increasingly complex demands of users while also remaining easy to use. Follow him @mpbennett

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• UAT Testing for SOA 10G Clusters

  - by [email protected]

  A lot of customers ask how to verify their SOA clusters and make them production ready. Here is a list that I recommend using for 10G SOA Clusters. v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-CA X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} Test cases for each component - Oracle Application Server 10G General Application Server test cases This section is going to cover very General test cases to make sure that the Application Server cluster has been set up correctly and if you can start and stop all the components in the server via opmnct and AS Console. Test Case 1 Check if you can see AS instances in the console Implementation 1. Log on to the AS Console --> check to see if you can see all the nodes in your AS cluster. You should be able to see all the Oracle AS instances that are part of the cluster. This means that the OPMN clustering worked and the AS instances successfully joined the AS cluster. Result You should be able to see if all the instances in the AS cluster are listed in the EM console. If the instances are not listed here are the files to check to see if OPMN joined the cluster properly: $ORACLE_HOME\opmn\logs{*}opmn.log*$ORACLE_HOME\opmn\logs{*}opmn.dbg* If OPMN did not join the cluster properly, please check the opmn.xml file to make sure the discovery multicast address and port are correct (see this link  for opmn documentation). Restart the whole instance using opmnctl stopall followed by opmnctl startall. Log on to AS console to see if instance is listed as part of the cluster. Test Case 2 Check to see if you can start/stop each component Implementation Check each OC4J component on each AS instanceStart each and every component through the AS console to see if they will start and stop.Do that for each and every instance. Result Each component should start and stop through the AS console. You can also verify if the component started by checking opmnctl status by logging onto each box associated with the cluster Test Case 3 Add/modify a datasource entry through AS console on a remote AS instance (not on the instance where EM is physically running) Implementation Pick an OC4J instanceCreate a new data-source through the AS consoleModify an existing data-source or connection pool (optional) Result Open $ORACLE_HOME\j2ee\<oc4j_name>\config\data-sources.xml to see if the new (and or the modified) connection details and data-source exist. If they do then the AS console has successfully updated a remote file and MBeans are communicating correctly. Test Case 4 Start and stop AS instances using opmnctl @cluster command Implementation 1. Go to $ORACLE_HOME\opmn\bin and use the opmnctl @cluster to start and stop the AS instances Result Use opmnctl @cluster status to check for start and stop statuses.  HTTP server test cases This section will deal with use cases to test HTTP server failover scenarios. In these examples the HTTP server will be talking to the BPEL console (or any other web application that the client wants), so the URL will be _http://hostname:port\BPELConsole Test Case 1  Shut down one of the HTTP servers while accessing the BPEL console and see the requested routed to the second HTTP server in the cluster Implementation Access the BPELConsoleCheck $ORACLE_HOME\Apache\Apache\logs\access_log --> check for the timestamp and the URL that was accessed by the user. Timestamp and URL would look like this 1xx.2x.2xx.xxx [24/Mar/2009:16:04:38 -0500] "GET /BPELConsole=System HTTP/1.1" 200 15 After you have figured out which HTTP server this is running on, shut down this HTTP server by using opmnctl stopproc --> this is a graceful shutdown.Access the BPELConsole again (please note that you should have a LoadBalancer in front of the HTTP server and configured the Apache Virtual Host, see EDG for steps)Check $ORACLE_HOME\Apache\Apache\logs\access_log --> check for the timestamp and the URL that was accessed by the user. Timestamp and URL would look like above Result Even though you are shutting down the HTTP server the request is routed to the surviving HTTP server, which is then able to route the request to the BPEL Console and you are able to access the console. By checking the access log file you can confirm that the request is being picked up by the surviving node. Test Case 2 Repeat the same test as above but instead of calling opmnctl stopproc, pull the network cord of one of the HTTP servers, so that the LBR routes the request to the surviving HTTP node --> this is simulating a network failure. Test Case 3 In test case 1 we have simulated a graceful shutdown, in this case we will simulate an Apache crash Implementation Use opmnctl status -l to get the PID of the HTTP server that you would like forcefully bring downOn Linux use kill -9 <PID> to kill the HTTP serverAccess the BPEL console Result As you shut down the HTTP server, OPMN will restart the HTTP server. The restart may be so quick that the LBR may still route the request to the same server. One way to check if the HTTP server restared is to check the new PID and the timestamp in the access log for the BPEL console. BPEL test cases This section is going to cover scenarios dealing with BPEL clustering using jGroups, BPEL deployment and testing related to BPEL failover. Test Case 1 Verify that jGroups has initialized correctly. There is no real testing in this use case just a visual verification by looking at log files that jGroups has initialized correctly. Check the opmn log for the BPEL container for all nodes at $ORACLE_HOME/opmn/logs/<group name><container name><group name>~1.log. This logfile will contain jGroups related information during startup and steady-state operation. Soon after startup you should find log entries for UDP or TCP.Example jGroups Log Entries for UDPApr 3, 2008 6:30:37 PM org.collaxa.thirdparty.jgroups.protocols.UDP createSockets ·         INFO: sockets will use interface 144.25.142.172·          ·         Apr 3, 2008 6:30:37 PM org.collaxa.thirdparty.jgroups.protocols.UDP createSockets·          ·         INFO: socket information:·          ·         local_addr=144.25.142.172:1127, mcast_addr=228.8.15.75:45788, bind_addr=/144.25.142.172, ttl=32·         sock: bound to 144.25.142.172:1127, receive buffer size=64000, send buffer size=32000·         mcast_recv_sock: bound to 144.25.142.172:45788, send buffer size=32000, receive buffer size=64000·         mcast_send_sock: bound to 144.25.142.172:1128, send buffer size=32000, receive buffer size=64000·         Apr 3, 2008 6:30:37 PM org.collaxa.thirdparty.jgroups.protocols.TP$DiagnosticsHandler bindToInterfaces·          ·         -------------------------------------------------------·          ·         GMS: address is 144.25.142.172:1127·          ------------------------------------------------------- Example jGroups Log Entries for TCPApr 3, 2008 6:23:39 PM org.collaxa.thirdparty.jgroups.blocks.ConnectionTable start ·         INFO: server socket created on 144.25.142.172:7900·          ·         Apr 3, 2008 6:23:39 PM org.collaxa.thirdparty.jgroups.protocols.TP$DiagnosticsHandler bindToInterfaces·          ·         -------------------------------------------------------·         GMS: address is 144.25.142.172:7900------------------------------------------------------- In the log below the "socket created on" indicates that the TCP socket is established on the own node at that IP address and port the "created socket to" shows that the second node has connected to the first node, matching the logfile above with the IP address and port.Apr 3, 2008 6:25:40 PM org.collaxa.thirdparty.jgroups.blocks.ConnectionTable start ·         INFO: server socket created on 144.25.142.173:7901·          ·         Apr 3, 2008 6:25:40 PM org.collaxa.thirdparty.jgroups.protocols.TP$DiagnosticsHandler bindToInterfaces·          ·         ------------------------------------------------------·         GMS: address is 144.25.142.173:7901·         -------------------------------------------------------·         Apr 3, 2008 6:25:41 PM org.collaxa.thirdparty.jgroups.blocks.ConnectionTable getConnectionINFO: created socket to 144.25.142.172:7900  Result By reviewing the log files, you can confirm if BPEL clustering at the jGroups level is working and that the jGroup channel is communicating. Test Case 2  Test connectivity between BPEL Nodes Implementation Test connections between different cluster nodes using ping, telnet, and traceroute. The presence of firewalls and number of hops between cluster nodes can affect performance as they have a tendency to take down connections after some time or simply block them.Also reference Metalink Note 413783.1: "How to Test Whether Multicast is Enabled on the Network." Result Using the above tools you can confirm if Multicast is working  and whether BPEL nodes are commnunicating. Test Case3 Test deployment of BPEL suitcase to one BPEL node.  Implementation Deploy a HelloWorrld BPEL suitcase (or any other client specific BPEL suitcase) to only one BPEL instance using ant, or JDeveloper or via the BPEL consoleLog on to the second BPEL console to check if the BPEL suitcase has been deployed Result If jGroups has been configured and communicating correctly, BPEL clustering will allow you to deploy a suitcase to a single node, and jGroups will notify the second instance of the deployment. The second BPEL instance will go to the DB and pick up the new deployment after receiving notification. The result is that the new deployment will be "deployed" to each node, by only deploying to a single BPEL instance in the BPEL cluster. Test Case 4  Test to see if the BPEL server failsover and if all asynch processes are picked up by the secondary BPEL instance Implementation Deploy a 2 Asynch process: A ParentAsynch Process which calls a ChildAsynchProcess with a variable telling it how many times to loop or how many seconds to sleepA ChildAsynchProcess that loops or sleeps or has an onAlarmMake sure that the processes are deployed to both serversShut down one BPEL serverOn the active BPEL server call ParentAsynch a few times (use the load generation page)When you have enough ParentAsynch instances shut down this BPEL instance and start the other one. Please wait till this BPEL instance shuts down fully before starting up the second one.Log on to the BPEL console and see that the instance were picked up by the second BPEL node and completed Result The BPEL instance will failover to the secondary node and complete the flow ESB test cases This section covers the use cases involved with testing an ESB cluster. For this section please Normal 0 false false false EN-CA X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} follow Metalink Note 470267.1 which covers the basic tests to verify your ESB cluster.

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