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• A class meant for an alfresco behavior and its bean, how do they work and how are they deployed trough eclipse

  - by MrHappy

  (This is a partial repost of a question asked 10 days ago because only 1 part was answered(not included), I've rewritten it into a way better question and added 3 more tags) where do I put the DeleteAsset.class or why isn't it being found? I've put the compiled class from the bin of the workspace of eclipse into alfresco-4.2.c/tomcat/webapps/alfresco/WEB-INF/classes/com/openerp/behavior/ and right now it's giving me Error loading class [com.openerp.behavior.DeleteAsset] for bean with name 'deletionBehavior' defined in URL [file:/home/openerp/alfresco-4.2.c/tomcat/shared/classes/alfresco/extension/cust??om-web-context.xml]: problem with class file or dependent class; nested exception is java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/openerp/behavior/DeleteAsset (wrong name: DeleteAsset) when I put it in there. (See bean below!) The code(I'd trying to work without the model class, idk if I made any silly mistakes on that): package com.openerp.behavior; import java.util.List; import java.net.*; import java.io.*; import org.alfresco.repo.node.NodeServicePolicies; import org.alfresco.repo.policy.Behaviour; import org.alfresco.repo.policy.JavaBehaviour; import org.alfresco.repo.policy.PolicyComponent; import org.alfresco.repo.policy.Behaviour.NotificationFrequency; import org.alfresco.repo.security.authentication.AuthenticationUtil; import org.alfresco.repo.security.authentication.AuthenticationUtil.RunAsWork; import org.alfresco.service.cmr.repository.ChildAssociationRef; import org.alfresco.service.cmr.repository.NodeRef; import org.alfresco.service.cmr.repository.NodeService; import org.alfresco.service.namespace.NamespaceService; import org.alfresco.service.namespace.QName; import org.alfresco.service.transaction.TransactionService; import org.apache.log4j.Logger; //this is the newer version //import com.openerp.model.openerpJavaModel; public class DeleteAsset implements NodeServicePolicies.BeforeDeleteNodePolicy { private PolicyComponent policyComponent; private Behaviour beforeDeleteNode; private NodeService nodeService; public void init() { this.beforeDeleteNode = new JavaBehaviour(this,"beforeDeleteNode",NotificationFrequency.EVERY_EVENT); this.policyComponent.bindClassBehaviour(QName.createQName("http://www.someco.com/model/content/1.0","beforeDeleteNode"), QName.createQName("http://www.someco.com/model/content/1.0","sc:doc"), this.beforeDeleteNode); } public setNodeService(NodeService nodeService){ this.nodeService = nodeService; } @Override public void beforeDeleteNode(NodeRef node) { System.out.println("beforeDeleteNode!"); try { QName attachmentID1= QName.createQName("http://www.someco.com/model/content/1.0", "OpenERPattachmentID1"); // this could/shoul be defined in your OpenERPModel-class int attachmentid = (Integer)nodeService.getProperty(node, attachmentID1); //int attachmentid = 123; URL oracle = new URL("http://0.0.0.0:1885/delete/%20?attachmentid=" + attachmentid); URLConnection yc = oracle.openConnection(); BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader( yc.getInputStream())); String inputLine; while ((inputLine = in.readLine()) != null) //System.out.println(inputLine); in.close(); } catch(Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } } This is my full custom-web-context file: <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?> <!DOCTYPE beans PUBLIC '-//SPRING//DTD BEAN//EN' 'http://www.springframework.org/dtd/spring-beans.dtd'> <beans> <!-- Registration of new models --> <bean id="smartsolution.dictionaryBootstrap" parent="dictionaryModelBootstrap" depends-on="dictionaryBootstrap"> <property name="models"> <list> <value>alfresco/extension/scOpenERPModel.xml</value> </list> </property> </bean> <!-- deletion of attachments within openERP when delete is initiated in Alfresco--> <bean id="DeleteAsset" class="com.openerp.behavior.DeleteAsset" init-method="init"> <property name="NodeService"> <ref bean="NodeService" /> </property> <property name="PolicyComponent"> <ref bean="PolicyComponent" /> </property> </bean> and content type: <type name="sc:doc"> <title>OpenERP Document</title> <parent>cm:content</parent> There's also this when I open share An error has occured in the Share component: /share/service/components/dashlets/my-sites. It responded with a status of 500 - Internal Error. Error Code Information: 500 - An error inside the HTTP server which prevented it from fulfilling the request. Error Message: 09230001 Failed to execute script 'classpath*:alfresco/site-webscripts/org/alfresco/components/dashlets/my-sites.get.js': 09230000 09230001 Failed during processing of IMAP server status configuration from Alfresco: 09230000 Unable to retrieve IMAP server status from Alfresco: 404 Server: Alfresco Spring WebScripts - v1.2.0 (Release 1207) schema 1,000 Time: Oct 23, 2013 11:40:06 AM Click here to view full technical information on the error. Exception: org.alfresco.error.AlfrescoRuntimeException - 09230001 Failed during processing of IMAP server status configuration from Alfresco: 09230000 Unable to retrieve IMAP server status from Alfresco: 404 org.alfresco.web.scripts.SingletonValueProcessorExtension.getSingletonValue(SingletonValueProcessorExtension.java:108) org.alfresco.web.scripts.SingletonValueProcessorExtension.getSingletonValue(SingletonValueProcessorExtension.java:59) org.alfresco.web.scripts.ImapServerStatus.getEnabled(ImapServerStatus.java:49) sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57) sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43) java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:606) org.mozilla.javascript.MemberBox.invoke(MemberBox.java:155) org.mozilla.javascript.JavaMembers.get(JavaMembers.java:117) org.mozilla.javascript.NativeJavaObject.get(NativeJavaObject.java:113) org.mozilla.javascript.ScriptableObject.getProperty(ScriptableObject.java:1544) org.mozilla.javascript.ScriptRuntime.getObjectProp(ScriptRuntime.java:1375) org.mozilla.javascript.ScriptRuntime.getObjectProp(ScriptRuntime.java:1364) org.mozilla.javascript.gen.c6._c1(file:/opt/alfresco-4.2.c/tomcat/webapps/share/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/site-webscripts/org/alfresco/components/dashlets/my-sites.get.js:4) org.mozilla.javascript.gen.c6.call(file:/opt/alfresco-4.2.c/tomcat/webapps/share/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/site-webscripts/org/alfresco/components/dashlets/my-sites.get.js) org.mozilla.javascript.optimizer.OptRuntime.callName0(OptRuntime.java:108) org.mozilla.javascript.gen.c6._c0(file:/opt/alfresco-4.2.c/tomcat/webapps/share/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/site-webscripts/org/alfresco/components/dashlets/my-sites.get.js:51) org.mozilla.javascript.gen.c6.call(file:/opt/alfresco-4.2.c/tomcat/webapps/share/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/site-webscripts/org/alfresco/components/dashlets/my-sites.get.js) org.mozilla.javascript.ContextFactory.doTopCall(ContextFactory.java:393) org.mozilla.javascript.ScriptRuntime.doTopCall(ScriptRuntime.java:2834) org.mozilla.javascript.gen.c6.call(file:/opt/alfresco-4.2.c/tomcat/webapps/share/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/site-webscripts/org/alfresco/components/dashlets/my-sites.get.js) org.mozilla.javascript.gen.c6.exec(file:/opt/alfresco-4.2.c/tomcat/webapps/share/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/site-webscripts/org/alfresco/components/dashlets/my-sites.get.js) org.springframework.extensions.webscripts.processor.JSScriptProcessor.executeScriptImpl(JSScriptProcessor.java:318) org.springframework.extensions.webscripts.processor.JSScriptProcessor.executeScript(JSScriptProcessor.java:192) org.springframework.extensions.webscripts.AbstractWebScript.executeScript(AbstractWebScript.java:1305) org.springframework.extensions.webscripts.DeclarativeWebScript.execute(DeclarativeWebScript.java:86) org.springframework.extensions.webscripts.PresentationContainer.executeScript(PresentationContainer.java:70) org.springframework.extensions.webscripts.LocalWebScriptRuntimeContainer.executeScript(LocalWebScriptRuntimeContainer.java:240) org.springframework.extensions.webscripts.AbstractRuntime.executeScript(AbstractRuntime.java:377) org.springframework.extensions.webscripts.AbstractRuntime.executeScript(AbstractRuntime.java:209) org.springframework.extensions.webscripts.WebScriptProcessor.executeBody(WebScriptProcessor.java:310) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.AbstractProcessor.execute(AbstractProcessor.java:57) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.RenderService.process(RenderService.java:599) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.RenderService.renderSubComponent(RenderService.java:505) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.RenderService.renderChromeInclude(RenderService.java:1284) org.springframework.extensions.directives.ChromeIncludeFreeMarkerDirective.execute(ChromeIncludeFreeMarkerDirective.java:81) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:274) freemarker.core.UnifiedCall.accept(UnifiedCall.java:126) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:221) freemarker.core.MixedContent.accept(MixedContent.java:92) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:221) freemarker.core.IfBlock.accept(IfBlock.java:82) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:221) freemarker.core.MixedContent.accept(MixedContent.java:92) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:221) freemarker.core.Environment.process(Environment.java:199) org.springframework.extensions.webscripts.processor.FTLTemplateProcessor.process(FTLTemplateProcessor.java:171) org.springframework.extensions.webscripts.WebTemplateProcessor.executeBody(WebTemplateProcessor.java:438) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.AbstractProcessor.execute(AbstractProcessor.java:57) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.RenderService.processRenderable(RenderService.java:204) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.bean.ChromeRenderer.body(ChromeRenderer.java:95) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.AbstractRenderer.render(AbstractRenderer.java:77) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.bean.ChromeRenderer.render(ChromeRenderer.java:86) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.RenderService.processComponent(RenderService.java:432) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.bean.ComponentRenderer.body(ComponentRenderer.java:94) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.AbstractRenderer.render(AbstractRenderer.java:77) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.RenderService.renderComponent(RenderService.java:961) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.RenderService.renderRegionComponents(RenderService.java:900) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.RenderService.renderChromeInclude(RenderService.java:1263) org.springframework.extensions.directives.ChromeIncludeFreeMarkerDirective.execute(ChromeIncludeFreeMarkerDirective.java:81) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:274) freemarker.core.UnifiedCall.accept(UnifiedCall.java:126) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:221) freemarker.core.MixedContent.accept(MixedContent.java:92) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:221) freemarker.core.Environment.process(Environment.java:199) org.springframework.extensions.webscripts.processor.FTLTemplateProcessor.process(FTLTemplateProcessor.java:171) org.springframework.extensions.webscripts.WebTemplateProcessor.executeBody(WebTemplateProcessor.java:438) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.AbstractProcessor.execute(AbstractProcessor.java:57) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.RenderService.processRenderable(RenderService.java:204) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.bean.ChromeRenderer.body(ChromeRenderer.java:95) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.AbstractRenderer.render(AbstractRenderer.java:77) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.bean.ChromeRenderer.render(ChromeRenderer.java:86) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.bean.RegionRenderer.body(RegionRenderer.java:99) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.AbstractRenderer.render(AbstractRenderer.java:77) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.RenderService.renderRegion(RenderService.java:851) org.springframework.extensions.directives.RegionDirectiveData.render(RegionDirectiveData.java:91) org.springframework.extensions.surf.extensibility.impl.ExtensibilityModelImpl.merge(ExtensibilityModelImpl.java:408) org.springframework.extensions.surf.extensibility.impl.AbstractExtensibilityDirective.merge(AbstractExtensibilityDirective.java:169) org.springframework.extensions.surf.extensibility.impl.AbstractExtensibilityDirective.execute(AbstractExtensibilityDirective.java:137) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:274) freemarker.core.UnifiedCall.accept(UnifiedCall.java:126) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:221) freemarker.core.IteratorBlock$Context.runLoop(IteratorBlock.java:179) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:428) freemarker.core.IteratorBlock.accept(IteratorBlock.java:102) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:221) freemarker.core.MixedContent.accept(MixedContent.java:92) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:221) freemarker.core.IteratorBlock$Context.runLoop(IteratorBlock.java:179) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:428) freemarker.core.IteratorBlock.accept(IteratorBlock.java:102) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:221) freemarker.core.MixedContent.accept(MixedContent.java:92) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:221) freemarker.core.Macro$Context.runMacro(Macro.java:172) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:614) freemarker.core.UnifiedCall.accept(UnifiedCall.java:106) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:221) freemarker.core.IfBlock.accept(IfBlock.java:82) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:221) freemarker.core.Macro$Context.runMacro(Macro.java:172) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:614) freemarker.core.UnifiedCall.accept(UnifiedCall.java:106) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:221) freemarker.core.MixedContent.accept(MixedContent.java:92) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:221) freemarker.core.Environment$3.render(Environment.java:246) org.springframework.extensions.surf.extensibility.impl.DefaultExtensibilityDirectiveData.render(DefaultExtensibilityDirectiveData.java:119) org.springframework.extensions.surf.extensibility.impl.ExtensibilityModelImpl.merge(ExtensibilityModelImpl.java:408) org.springframework.extensions.surf.extensibility.impl.AbstractExtensibilityDirective.merge(AbstractExtensibilityDirective.java:169) org.springframework.extensions.surf.extensibility.impl.AbstractExtensibilityDirective.execute(AbstractExtensibilityDirective.java:137) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:274) freemarker.core.UnifiedCall.accept(UnifiedCall.java:126) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:221) freemarker.core.MixedContent.accept(MixedContent.java:92) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:221) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:406) freemarker.core.BodyInstruction.accept(BodyInstruction.java:93) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:221) freemarker.core.MixedContent.accept(MixedContent.java:92) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:221) freemarker.core.Macro$Context.runMacro(Macro.java:172) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:614) freemarker.core.UnifiedCall.accept(UnifiedCall.java:106) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:221) freemarker.core.MixedContent.accept(MixedContent.java:92) freemarker.core.Environment.visit(Environment.java:221) freemarker.core.Environment.process(Environment.java:199) org.springframework.extensions.webscripts.processor.FTLTemplateProcessor.process(FTLTemplateProcessor.java:171) org.springframework.extensions.webscripts.WebTemplateProcessor.executeBody(WebTemplateProcessor.java:438) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.AbstractProcessor.execute(AbstractProcessor.java:57) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.RenderService.processTemplate(RenderService.java:721) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.bean.TemplateInstanceRenderer.body(TemplateInstanceRenderer.java:140) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.AbstractRenderer.render(AbstractRenderer.java:77) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.bean.PageRenderer.body(PageRenderer.java:85) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.AbstractRenderer.render(AbstractRenderer.java:77) org.springframework.extensions.surf.render.RenderService.renderPage(RenderService.java:762) org.springframework.extensions.surf.mvc.PageView.dispatchPage(PageView.java:411) org.springframework.extensions.surf.mvc.PageView.renderView(PageView.java:306) org.springframework.extensions.surf.mvc.AbstractWebFrameworkView.renderMergedOutputModel(AbstractWebFrameworkView.java:316) org.springframework.web.servlet.view.AbstractView.render(AbstractView.java:250) org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet.render(DispatcherServlet.java:1047) org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet.doDispatch(DispatcherServlet.java:817) org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet.doService(DispatcherServlet.java:719) org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.processRequest(FrameworkServlet.java:644) org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.doGet(FrameworkServlet.java:549) javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:621) javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:722) org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:305) org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:210) org.alfresco.web.site.servlet.MTAuthenticationFilter.doFilter(MTAuthenticationFilter.java:74) org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:243) org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:210) org.alfresco.web.site.servlet.SSOAuthenticationFilter.doFilter(SSOAuthenticationFilter.java:374) org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:243) org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:210) org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:222) org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:123) org.apache.catalina.authenticator.AuthenticatorBase.invoke(AuthenticatorBase.java:472) org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:168) org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:99) org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve.invoke(AccessLogValve.java:929) org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:118) org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:407) org.apache.coyote.http11.AbstractHttp11Processor.process(AbstractHttp11Processor.java:1002) org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol$AbstractConnectionHandler.process(AbstractProtocol.java:585) org.apache.tomcat.util.net.AprEndpoint$SocketWithOptionsProcessor.run(AprEndpoint.java:1771) java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1145) java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:615) java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:724) Exception: org.springframework.extensions.webscripts.WebScriptException - 09230000 09230001 Failed during processing of IMAP server status configuration from Alfresco: 09230000 Unable to retrieve IMAP server status from Alfresco: 404 org.springframework.extensions.webscripts.processor.JSScriptProcessor.executeScriptImpl(JSScriptProcessor.java:324) Exception: org.springframework.extensions.webscripts.WebScriptException - 09230001 Failed to execute script 'classpath*:alfresco/site-webscripts/org/alfresco/components/dashlets/my-sites.get.js': 09230000 09230001 Failed during processing of IMAP server status configuration from Alfresco: 09230000 Unable to retrieve IMAP server status from Alfresco: 404 org.springframework.extensions.webscripts.processor.JSScriptProcessor.executeScript(JSScriptProcessor.java:200) UPDATE: I think I've found the problem. Being a newbie to eclipse I haven't managed the dependecies well I think. Could anyone link me to a tutorial describing how to get org.alfresco.repo.node.NodeServicePolicies; as seen in import org.alfresco.repo.node.NodeServicePolicies; and other such imports into eclipse, I've got the alfresco source from svn but the tutorial I've found seems to fail me. java/lang/Error\00\F1Unresolved compilation problems: The declared package "com.openerp.behavior" does not match the expected package "java.com.openerp.behavior" The import org.alfresco cannot be resolved The import org.alfresco cannot be resolved The import org.alfresco cannot be resolved The import org.alfresco cannot be resolved The import org.alfresco cannot be resolved The import org.alfresco cannot be resolved The import org.alfresco cannot be resolved The import org.alfresco cannot be resolved The import org.alfresco cannot be resolved The import org.alfresco cannot be resolved The import org.alfresco cannot be resolved The import org.alfresco cannot be resolved The import org.alfresco cannot be resolved The import org.apache cannot be resolved The import com.openerp cannot be resolved NodeServicePolicies cannot be resolved to a type PolicyComponent cannot be resolved to a type Behaviour cannot be resolved to a type NodeService cannot be resolved to a type Behaviour cannot be resolved to a type JavaBehaviour cannot be resolved to a type NotificationFrequency cannot be resolved to a variable PolicyComponent cannot be resolved to a type QName cannot be resolved QName cannot be resolved Behaviour cannot be resolved to a type Return type for the method is missing NodeService cannot be resolved to a type NodeService cannot be resolved to a type NodeRef cannot be resolved to a type QName cannot be resolved to a type QName cannot be resolved NodeService cannot be resolved to a type \00\00\00\00\00(Ljava/lang/String;)V\00LineNumberTable\00LocalVariableTable\00this\00'Ljava/com/openerp/behavior/DeleteAsset;\00init\008Unresolved compilation problems: Behaviour cannot be resolved to a type JavaBehaviour cannot be resolved to a type NotificationFrequency cannot be resolved to a variable PolicyComponent cannot be resolved to a type QName cannot be resolved QName cannot be resolved Behaviour cannot be resolved to a type \00(LNodeRef;)V\00\00\B0Unresolved compilation problems: NodeRef cannot be resolved to a type QName cannot be resolved to a type QName cannot be resolved NodeService cannot be resolved to a type

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• Chester Devs Presentation and source code &ndash; &lsquo;Event Store - an introduction to a DSD for event sourcing and notifications&rsquo;

  - by Liam Westley

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/twickers/archive/2013/11/11/chester-devs-presentation-and-source-code-ndash-lsquoevent-store.aspxThank you everyone at Chester Devs Thanks to Fran Hoey and all the people from Chester Devs. It was a hard drive up and back but the enthusiasm of the audience, with some great questions does make it worthwhile. Presentation and source code My presentation, source code, Event Store runners and text files containing the various command line parameters used for curl is now available on GitHub; https://github.com/westleyl/ChesterDevs-EventStore. Don’t worry if you don’t have a GitHub account, you don’t need one, you can just click on the Download Zip button on the right hand menu to download all the files as a single ZIP file.  If all you want is the PowerPoint presentation, go to https://github.com/westleyl/ChesterDevs-EventStore/blob/master/Powerpoint/Huddle-EventStore.pptx, and click on the View Raw button. Downloading and installing Event Store and Tools Download Event Store http://download.geteventstore.com – I unzipped these files into C:\EventStore\v2.0.1 Download Curl from http://curl.haxx.se/download.html – I downloaded Win64 Generic (with SSL) and unzipped these files into C:\curl version 7.31.0 Running the tools I used in my presentation Demonstration 1 (running Event Store) You can use one of my Event Store runner command files to run the single node version of Event Store, using default ports of 2213 for HTTP and 1113  for TCP, and with a wildcard HTTP pattern.  Both take a single command line parameter to specify the location of the data and log files.  The runners assume the single node executable is located in C:\EventStore\v2.0.1, and will placed data files and logs beneath C:\EventStore\Data, i.e. RunEventStore.cmd TestData1 This will create data files in C:\EventStore\Data\TestData1\Data and log files in C:\EventStore\Data\TestData1\logs. If, when running Event Store you may see the following message, [03288,15,06:23:00.622] Failed to start http server Access is denied You will either need to run Event Store in an administrator console window, or you can use the netsh command to create a firewall permission to allow HTTP listening (this will need to be run, once, in an administrator console window), netsh http add urlacl url=http://*:2213/ user=liam You can always delete this later by running the delete; netsh http delete urlacl url=http://*:2213/ If you want to confirm that everything is running OK, open the management console in a browser by navigating to http://127.0.0.1:2213. If at any point you are asked for a user name and password use the default of ‘admin’/‘changeit’. Demonstration 2 (reading and adding data, curl) In my second demonstration I used curl directly from the console to read streams, write events and then read back those events. On GitHub I have included is a set of curl commands, CurlCommandLine.txt, and a sample data file, SampleData.json, to load an event into a DDDNorth3 stream. As there is not much data in the Event Store at this point I used the $stats-127.0.0.1:2113 which is a stream containing performance statistics for Event Store and is updated every 30 seconds (default). Demonstration 3 (projections) On GitHub I have included a sample projection, Projection-ByRoom.txt, which will create streams based on the room on which a session was held on the DDDNorth3 agenda. Browse to the management console, http://127.0.0.1:2213.  Click on Projections, New Projection, give it a name, Sessions-ByRoom, and copy in the JavaScript in the Projection-ByRoom.txt file.  Select Continuous, tick Emit Enabled and then click on Post. It should run immediately. You may by challenged for the administration login for the management console, if so use the default user name and password; 'admin'/'changeit'. Demonstration 4 (C# client) The final demonstration was the Visual Studio 2012 project using the Event Store client – referenced directly as C:\EventStore\v2.0.1\EventStore.ClientAPI.dll, although you can switch this to the latest Event Store client NuGet package. The source code provides a console app for viewing projections with the projection manager (HTTP connection), as well as containing a full set of data for the entire DDDNorth3 agenda.  It also deals with the strategy for reading newest events backwards to older events and ignoring older events that have been superseded. Resources Event Store home page: http://www.geteventstore.com/ Event Store source code on GitHub: https://github.com/eventstore/eventstore Event Store documentation on GitHub: https://github.com/eventstore/eventstore/wiki (includes index to @RobAshton’s blog series on Event Store at https://github.com/eventstore/eventstore/wiki#rob-ashton---projections-series) Event Store forum in Google Groups: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/event-store TopShelf Windows service wrapper is available on github: https://gist.github.com/trbngr/5083266

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• DDD North 3 Presentation and source code &ndash; &lsquo;Event Store - an introduction to a DSD for event sourcing and notifications&rsquo;

  - by Liam Westley

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/twickers/archive/2013/10/15/ddd-north-3-presentation-and-source-code-ndash-lsquoevent-store.aspxThank you everyone at DDD North Thanks to all the people who helped organise the cracking conference that is DDD North 3, returning to Sunderland, and the great facilities at the University of Sunderland, and the fine drinks reception at Sunderland Software City.  The whole event wouldn’t be possible without the sponsors who ensured over 400 people were kept fed and watered so they could enjoy the impressive range of sessions. And lastly, a thank you to all those delegates who gave up their free time on a Saturday to spend a day dashing between lecture rooms, including a late change to my room which saw 40 people having to brave a journey between buildings in the fine drizzle. The enthusiasm from the delegates always helps recharge my geek batteries. Presentation and source code My presentation, source code, Event Store runners and text files containing the various command line parameters used for curl is now available on GitHub; https://github.com/westleyl/DDDNorth3-EventStore. Don’t worry if you don’t have a GitHub account, you don’t need one, you can just click on the Download Zip button on the right hand menu to download all the files as a single ZIP file.  If all you want is the PowerPoint presentation, go to https://github.com/westleyl/DDDNorth3-EventStore/blob/master/Powerpoint/DDDNorth-EventStore.pptx, and click on the View Raw button. Downloading and installing Event Store and Tools Download Event Store http://download.geteventstore.com – I unzipped these files into C:\EventStore\v2.0.1 Download Curl from http://curl.haxx.se/download.html – I downloaded Win64 Generic (with SSL) and unzipped these files into C:\curl version 7.31.0 Running the tools I used in my presentation Demonstration 1 (running Event Store) You can use one of my Event Store runner command files to run the single node version of Event Store, using default ports of 2213 for HTTP and 1113  for TCP, and with a wildcard HTTP pattern.  Both take a single command line parameter to specify the location of the data and log files.  The runners assume the single node executable is located in C:\EventStore\v2.0.1, and will placed data files and logs beneath C:\EventStore\Data, i.e. RunEventStore.cmd TestData1 This will create data files in C:\EventStore\Data\TestData1\Data and log files in C:\EventStore\Data\TestData1\logs. If, when running Event Store you may see the following message, [03288,15,06:23:00.622] Failed to start http server Access is denied You will either need to run Event Store in an administrator console window, or you can use the netsh command to create a firewall permission to allow HTTP listening (this will need to be run, once, in an administrator console window), netsh http add urlacl url=http://*:2213/ user=liam You can always delete this later by running the delete; netsh http delete urlacl url=http://*:2213/ If you want to confirm that everything is running OK, open the management console in a browser by navigating to http://127.0.0.1:2213. If at any point you are asked for a user name and password use the default of ‘admin’/‘changeit’.   Demonstration 2 (reading and adding data, curl) In my second demonstration I used curl directly from the console to read streams, write events and then read back those events. On GitHub I have included is a set of curl commands, CurlCommandLine.txt, and a sample data file, SampleData.json, to load an event into a DDDNorth3 stream. As there is not much data in the Event Store at this point I used the $stats-127.0.0.1:2113 which is a stream containing performance statistics for Event Store and is updated every 30 seconds (default). Demonstration 3 (projections) On GitHub I have included a sample projection, Projection-ByRoom.txt, which will create streams based on the room on which a session was held on the DDDNorth3 agenda. Browse to the management console, http://127.0.0.1:2213.  Click on Projections, New Projection, give it a name, Sessions-ByRoom, and copy in the JavaScript in the Projection-ByRoom.txt file.  Select Continuous, tick Emit Enabled and then click on Post. It should run immediately. You may by challenged for the administration login for the management console, if so use the default user name and password; 'admin'/'changeit'.   Demonstration 4 (C# client) The final demonstration was the Visual Studio 2012 project using the Event Store client – referenced directly as C:\EventStore\v2.0.1\EventStore.ClientAPI.dll, although you can switch this to the latest Event Store client NuGet package. The source code provides a console app for viewing projections with the projection manager (HTTP connection), as well as containing a full set of data for the entire DDDNorth3 agenda.  It also deals with the strategy for reading newest events backwards to older events and ignoring older events that have been superseded. Resources Event Store home page: http://www.geteventstore.com/ Event Store source code on GitHub: https://github.com/eventstore/eventstore Event Store documentation on GitHub: https://github.com/eventstore/eventstore/wiki (includes index to @RobAshton’s blog series on Event Store at https://github.com/eventstore/eventstore/wiki#rob-ashton---projections-series) Event Store forum in Google Groups: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/event-store TopShelf Windows service wrapper is available on github: https://gist.github.com/trbngr/5083266

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• BizTalk host throttling &ndash; Singleton pattern and High database size

  - by S.E.R.

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/SERivas/archive/2013/06/30/biztalk-host-throttling-ndash-singleton-pattern-and-high-database-size.aspxI have worked for some days around the singleton pattern (for those unfamiliar with it, read this post by Victor Fehlberg) and have come across a few very interesting posts, among which one dealt with performance issues (here, also by Victor Fehlberg). Simply put: if you have an orchestration which implements the singleton pattern, then performances will continuously decrease as the orchestration receives and consumes messages, and that behavior is more obvious when the orchestration never ends (ie : it keeps looping and never terminates or completes). As I experienced the same kind of problem (actually I was alerted by SCOM, which told me that the host was being throttled because of High database size), I thought it would be a good idea to dig a little bit a see what happens deep inside BizTalk and thus understand the reasons for this behavior. NOTE: in this article, I will focus on this High database size throttling condition. I will try and work on the other conditions in some not too distant future… Test conditions The singleton orchestration For the purpose of this study, I have created the following orchestration, which is a very basic implementation of a singleton that piles up incoming messages, then does something else when a certain timeout has been reached without receiving another message: Throttling settings I have two distinct hosts : one that hosts the receive port (basic FILE port) : Ports_ReceiveHostone that hosts the orchestration : ProcessingHost In order to emphasize the throttling mechanism, I have modified the throttling settings for each of these hosts are as follows (all other parameters are set to the default value): [Throttling thresholds] Message count in database: 500 (default value : 50000) Evolution of performance counters when submitting messages Since we are investigating the High database size throttling condition, here are the performance counter that we should take a look at (all of them are in the BizTalk:Message Agent performance object): Database sizeHigh database sizeMessage delivery throttling stateMessage publishing throttling stateMessage delivery delay (ms)Message publishing delay (ms)Message delivery throttling state durationMessage publishing throttling state duration (If you are not used to Perfmon, I strongly recommend that you start using it right now: it is a wonderful tool that allows you to open the hood and see what is going on inside BizTalk – and other systems) Database size It is quite obvious that we will start by watching the database size and high database size counters, just to see when the first reaches the configured threshold (500) and when the second rings the alarm. NOTE : During this test I submitted 600 messages, one message at a time every 10ms to see the evolution of the counters we have previously selected. It might not show very well on this screenshot, but here is what happened: From 15:46:50 to 15:47:50, the database size for the Ports_ReceiveHost host (blue line) kept growing until it reached a maximum of 504.At 15:47:50, the high database size alert fires At first I was surprised by this result: why is it the database size of the receiving host that keeps growing since it is the processing host that piles up messages? Actually, it makes total sense. This counter measures the size of the database queue that is being filled by the host, not consumed. Therefore, the high database size alert is raised on the host that fills the queue: Ports_ReceiveHost. More information is available on the Public MPWiki page. Now, looking at the Message publishing throttling state for the receiving host (green line), we can see that a throttling condition has been reached at 15:47:50: We can also see that the Message publishing delay(ms) (blue line) has begun growing slowly from this point. All of this explains why performances keep decreasing when a singleton keeps processing new messages: the database size grows and when it has exceeded the Message count in database threshold, the host is throttled and the publishing delay keeps increasing. Digging further So, what happens to the database queue then? Is it flushed some day or does it keep growing and growing indefinitely? The real question being: will the host be throttled forever because of this singleton? To answer this question, I set the Message count in database threshold to 20 (this value is very low in order not to wait for too long, otherwise I certainly would have fallen asleep in front of my screen) and I submitted 30 messages. The test was started at 18:26. At 18:56 (ie : exactly 30min later) the throttling was stopped and the database size was divided by 2. 30 min later again, the database size had dropped to almost zero: I guess I’ll have to find some documentation and do some more testing before I sort this out! My guess is that some maintenance job is at work here, though I cannot tell which one Digging even further If we take a look at the Message delivery throttling state counter for the processing host, we can see that this host was also throttled during the submission of the 600 documents: The value for the counter was 1, meaning that Message delivery incoming rate for the host instance exceeds the Message delivery outgoing rate * the specified Rate overdrive factor (percent) value. We will see this another day… :) A last word Let’s end this article with a warning: DO NOT CHANGE THE THROTTLING SETTINGS LIGHTLY! The temptation can be great to just bypass throttling by setting very high values for each parameter (or zero in some cases, which simply disables throttling). Nevertheless, always keep in mind that this mechanism is here for a very good reason: prevent your BizTalk infrastructure from exploding!! So whatever you do with those settings, do a lot of testing and benchmarking!

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• Performance considerations for common SQL queries

  - by Jim Giercyk

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/NibblesAndBits/archive/2013/10/16/performance-considerations-for-common-sql-queries.aspxSQL offers many different methods to produce the same results.  There is a never-ending debate between SQL developers as to the “best way” or the “most efficient way” to render a result set.  Sometimes these disputes even come to blows….well, I am a lover, not a fighter, so I decided to collect some data that will prove which way is the best and most efficient.  For the queries below, I downloaded the test database from SQLSkills:  http://www.sqlskills.com/sql-server-resources/sql-server-demos/.  There isn’t a lot of data, but enough to prove my point: dbo.member has 10,000 records, and dbo.payment has 15,554.  Our result set contains 6,706 records. The following queries produce an identical result set; the result set contains aggregate payment information for each member who has made more than 1 payment from the dbo.payment table and the first and last name of the member from the dbo.member table.   /*************/ /* Sub Query  */ /*************/ SELECT  a.[Member Number] ,         m.lastname ,         m.firstname ,         a.[Number Of Payments] ,         a.[Average Payment] ,         a.[Total Paid] FROM    ( SELECT    member_no 'Member Number' ,                     AVG(payment_amt) 'Average Payment' ,                     SUM(payment_amt) 'Total Paid' ,                     COUNT(Payment_No) 'Number Of Payments'           FROM      dbo.payment           GROUP BY  member_no           HAVING    COUNT(Payment_No) > 1         ) a         JOIN dbo.member m ON a.[Member Number] = m.member_no         /***************/ /* Cross Apply  */ /***************/ SELECT  ca.[Member Number] ,         m.lastname ,         m.firstname ,         ca.[Number Of Payments] ,         ca.[Average Payment] ,         ca.[Total Paid] FROM    dbo.member m         CROSS APPLY ( SELECT    member_no 'Member Number' ,                                 AVG(payment_amt) 'Average Payment' ,                                 SUM(payment_amt) 'Total Paid' ,                                 COUNT(Payment_No) 'Number Of Payments'                       FROM      dbo.payment                       WHERE     member_no = m.member_no                       GROUP BY  member_no                       HAVING    COUNT(Payment_No) > 1                     ) ca /********/                    /* CTEs  */ /********/ ; WITH    Payments           AS ( SELECT   member_no 'Member Number' ,                         AVG(payment_amt) 'Average Payment' ,                         SUM(payment_amt) 'Total Paid' ,                         COUNT(Payment_No) 'Number Of Payments'                FROM     dbo.payment                GROUP BY member_no                HAVING   COUNT(Payment_No) > 1              ),         MemberInfo           AS ( SELECT   p.[Member Number] ,                         m.lastname ,                         m.firstname ,                         p.[Number Of Payments] ,                         p.[Average Payment] ,                         p.[Total Paid]                FROM     dbo.member m                         JOIN Payments p ON m.member_no = p.[Member Number]              )     SELECT  *     FROM    MemberInfo /************************/ /* SELECT with Grouping   */ /************************/ SELECT  p.member_no 'Member Number' ,         m.lastname ,         m.firstname ,         COUNT(Payment_No) 'Number Of Payments' ,         AVG(payment_amt) 'Average Payment' ,         SUM(payment_amt) 'Total Paid' FROM    dbo.payment p         JOIN dbo.member m ON m.member_no = p.member_no GROUP BY p.member_no ,         m.lastname ,         m.firstname HAVING  COUNT(Payment_No) > 1   We can see what is going on in SQL’s brain by looking at the execution plan.  The Execution Plan will demonstrate which steps and in what order SQL executes those steps, and what percentage of batch time each query takes.  SO….if I execute all 4 of these queries in a single batch, I will get an idea of the relative time SQL takes to execute them, and how it renders the Execution Plan.  We can settle this once and for all.  Here is what SQL did with these queries:   Not only did the queries take the same amount of time to execute, SQL generated the same Execution Plan for each of them.  Everybody is right…..I guess we can all finally go to lunch together!  But wait a second, I may not be a fighter, but I AM an instigator.     Let’s see how a table variable stacks up.  Here is the code I executed: /********************/ /*  Table Variable  */ /********************/ DECLARE @AggregateTable TABLE     (       member_no INT ,       AveragePayment MONEY ,       TotalPaid MONEY ,       NumberOfPayments MONEY     ) INSERT  @AggregateTable         SELECT  member_no 'Member Number' ,                 AVG(payment_amt) 'Average Payment' ,                 SUM(payment_amt) 'Total Paid' ,                 COUNT(Payment_No) 'Number Of Payments'         FROM    dbo.payment         GROUP BY member_no         HAVING  COUNT(Payment_No) > 1   SELECT  at.member_no 'Member Number' ,         m.lastname ,         m.firstname ,         at.NumberOfPayments 'Number Of Payments' ,         at.AveragePayment 'Average Payment' ,         at.TotalPaid 'Total Paid' FROM    @AggregateTable at         JOIN dbo.member m ON m.member_no = at.member_no In the interest of keeping things in groupings of 4, I removed the last query from the previous batch and added the table variable query.  Here’s what I got:     Since we first insert into the table variable, then we read from it, the Execution Plan renders 2 steps.  BUT, the combination of the 2 steps is only 22% of the batch.  It is actually faster than the other methods even though it is treated as 2 separate queries in the Execution Plan.  The argument I often hear against Table Variables is that SQL only estimates 1 row for the table size in the Execution Plan.  While this is true, the estimate does not come in to play until you read from the table variable.  In this case, the table variable had 6,706 rows, but it still outperformed the other queries.  People argue that table variables should only be used for hash or lookup tables.  The fact is, you have control of what you put IN to the variable, so as long as you keep it within reason, these results suggest that a table variable is a viable alternative to sub-queries. If anyone does volume testing on this theory, I would be interested in the results.  My suspicion is that there is a breaking point where efficiency goes down the tubes immediately, and it would be interesting to see where the threshold is. Coding SQL is a matter of style.  If you’ve been around since they introduced DB2, you were probably taught a little differently than a recent computer science graduate.  If you have a company standard, I strongly recommend you follow it.    If you do not have a standard, generally speaking, there is no right or wrong answer when talking about the efficiency of these types of queries, and certainly no hard-and-fast rule.  Volume and infrastructure will dictate a lot when it comes to performance, so your results may vary in your environment.  Download the database and try it!

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• AWS: setting up auto-scale for EC2 instances

  - by Elton Stoneman

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/EltonStoneman/archive/2013/10/16/aws-setting-up-auto-scale-for-ec2-instances.aspxWith Amazon Web Services, there’s no direct equivalent to Azure Worker Roles – no Elastic Beanstalk-style application for .NET background workers. But you can get the auto-scale part by configuring an auto-scaling group for your EC2 instance. This is a step-by-step guide, that shows you how to create the auto-scaling configuration, which for EC2 you need to do with the command line, and then link your scaling policies to CloudWatch alarms in the Web console. I’m using queue size as my metric for CloudWatch,  which is a good fit if your background workers are pulling messages from a queue and processing them.  If the queue is getting too big, the “high” alarm will fire and spin up a new instance to share the workload. If the queue is draining down, the “low” alarm will fire and shut down one of the instances. To start with, you need to manually set up your app in an EC2 VM, for a background worker that would mean hosting your code in a Windows Service (I always use Topshelf). If you’re dual-running Azure and AWS, then you can isolate your logic in one library, with a generic entry point that has Start() and Stop()  functions, so your Worker Role and Windows Service are essentially using the same code. When you have your instance set up with the Windows Service running automatically, and you’ve tested it starts up and works properly from a reboot, shut the machine down and take an image of the VM, using Create Image (EBS AMI) from the Web Console: When that completes, you’ll have your own AMI which you can use to spin up new instances, and you’re ready to create your auto-scaling group. You need to dip into the command-line tools for this, so follow this guide to set up the AWS autoscale command line tool. Now we’re ready to go. 1. Create a launch configuration This launch configuration tells AWS what to do when a new instance needs to be spun up. You create it with the as-create-launch-config command, which looks like this: as-create-launch-config sc-xyz-launcher # name of the launch config --image-id ami-7b9e9f12 # id of the AMI you extracted from your VM --region eu-west-1 # which region the new instance gets created in --instance-type t1.micro # size of the instance to create --group quicklaunch-1 #security group for the new instance 2. Create an auto-scaling group The auto-scaling group links to the launch config, and defines the overall configuration of the collection of instances: as-create-auto-scaling-group sc-xyz-asg # auto-scaling group name --region eu-west-1 # region to create in --launch-configuration sc-xyz-launcher # name of the launch config to invoke for new instances --min-size 1 # minimum number of nodes in the group --max-size 5 # maximum number of nodes in the group --default-cooldown 300 # period to wait (in seconds) after each scaling event, before checking if another scaling event is required --availability-zones eu-west-1a eu-west-1b eu-west-1c # which availability zones you want your instances to be allocated in – multiple entries means EC@ will use any of them 3. Create a scale-up policy The policy dictates what will happen in response to a scaling event being triggered from a “high” alarm being breached. It links to the auto-scaling group; this sample results in one additional node being spun up: as-put-scaling-policy scale-up-policy # policy name -g sc-psod-woker-asg # auto-scaling group the policy works with --adjustment 1 # size of the adjustment --region eu-west-1 # region --type ChangeInCapacity # type of adjustment, this specifies a fixed number of nodes, but you can use PercentChangeInCapacity to make an adjustment relative to the current number of nodes, e.g. increasing by 50% 4. Create a scale-down policy The policy dictates what will happen in response to a scaling event being triggered from a “low” alarm being breached. It links to the auto-scaling group; this sample results in one node from the group being taken offline: as-put-scaling-policy scale-down-policy -g sc-psod-woker-asg "--adjustment=-1" # in Windows, use double-quotes to surround a negative adjustment value –-type ChangeInCapacity --region eu-west-1 5. Create a “high” CloudWatch alarm We’re done with the command line now. In the Web Console, open up the CloudWatch view and create a new alarm. This alarm will monitor your metrics and invoke the scale-up policy from your auto-scaling group, when the group is working too hard. Configure your metric – this example will fire the alarm if there are more than 10 messages in my queue for over a minute: Then link the alarm to the scale-up policy in your group: 6. Create a “low” CloudWatch alarm The opposite of step 4, this alarm will trigger when the instances in your group don’t have enough work to do (e.g fewer than 2 messages in the queue for 1 minute), and will invoke the scale-down policy. And that’s it. You don’t need your original VM as the auto-scale group has a minimum number of nodes connected. You can test out the scaling by flexing your CloudWatch metric – in this example, filling up a queue from a  stub publisher – and watching AWS create new nodes as required, then stopping the publisher and watch AWS kill off the spare nodes.

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• Simple Excel Export with EPPlus

  - by Jesse Taber

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/GruffCode/archive/2013/10/30/simple-excel-export-with-epplus.aspxAnyone I’ve ever met who works with an application that sits in front of a lot of data loves it when they can get that data exported to an Excel file for them to mess around with offline. As both developer and end user of a little website project that I’ve been working on, I found myself wanting to be able to get a bunch of the data that the application was collecting into an Excel file. The great thing about being both an end user and a developer on a project is that you can build the features that you really want! While putting this feature together I came across the fantastic EPPlus library. This library is certainly very well known and popular, but I was so impressed with it that I thought it was worth a quick blog post. This library is extremely powerful; it lets you create and manipulate Excel 2007/2010 spreadsheets in .NET code with a high degree of flexibility. My only gripe with the project is that they are not touting how insanely easy it is to build a basic Excel workbook from a simple data source. If I were running this project the approach I’m about to demonstrate in this post would be front and center on the landing page for the project because it shows how easy it really is to get started and serves as a good way to ease yourself in to some of the more advanced features. The website in question uses RavenDB, which means that we’re dealing with POCOs to model the data throughout all layers of the application. I love working like this so when it came time to figure out how to export some of this data to an Excel spreadsheet I wanted to find a way to take an IEnumerable<T> and just have it dumped to Excel with each item in the collection being modeled as a single row in the Excel worksheet. Consider the following class: public class Employee { public int Id { get; set; } public string Name { get; set; } public decimal HourlyRate { get; set; } public DateTime HireDate { get; set; } } Now let’s say we have a collection of these represented as an IEnumerable<Employee> and we want to be able to output it to an Excel file for offline querying/manipulation. As it turns out, this is dead simple to do with EPPlus. Have a look: public void ExportToExcel(IEnumerable<Employee> employees, FileInfo targetFile) { using (var excelFile = new ExcelPackage(targetFile)) { var worksheet = excelFile.Workbook.Worksheets.Add("Sheet1"); worksheet.Cells["A1"].LoadFromCollection(Collection: employees, PrintHeaders: true); excelFile.Save(); } } That’s it. Let’s break down what’s going on here: Create a ExcelPackage to model the workbook (Excel file). Note that the ‘targetFile’ value here is a FileInfo object representing the location on disk where I want the file to be saved. Create a worksheet within the workbook. Get a reference to the top-leftmost cell (addressed as A1) and invoke the ‘LoadFromCollection’ method, passing it our collection of Employee objects. Behind the scenes this is reflecting over the properties of the type provided and pulling out any public members to become columns in the resulting Excel output. The ‘PrintHeaders’ parameter tells EPPlus to grab the name of the property and put it in the first row. Save the Excel file All of the heavy lifting here is being done by the ‘LoadFromCollection’ method, and that’s a good thing. Now, this was really easy to do, but it has some limitations. Using this approach you get a very plain, un-styled Excel worksheet. The column widths are all set to the default. The number format for all cells is ‘General’ (which proves particularly interesting if you have a DateTime property in your data source). I’m a “no frills” guy, so I wasn’t bothered at all by trading off simplicity for style and formatting. That said, EPPlus has tons of samples that you can download that illustrate how to apply styles and formatting to cells and a ton of other advanced features that are way beyond the scope of this post.

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• Persisting settings without using Options dialog in Visual Studio

  - by Utkarsh Shigihalli

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/onlyutkarsh/archive/2013/11/02/persisting-settings-without-using-options-dialog-in-visual-studio.aspxIn one of my previous blog post we have seen persisting settings using Visual Studio's options dialog. Visual Studio options has many advantages in automatically persisting user options for you. However, during our latest Team Rooms extension development, we decided to provide our users; ability to use our preferences directly from Team Explorer. The main reason was that we had only one simple option for user and we thought it is cumbersome for user to go to Tools –> Options dialog to change this. Another reason was, we wanted to highlight this setting to user as soon as he is using our extension.   So if you are in such a scenario where you do not want to use VS options window, but still would like to persist the settings, this post will guide you through. Visual Studio SDK provides two ways to persist settings in your extensions. One is using DialogPage as shown in my previous post. Another way is to use by implementing IProfileManager interface which I will explain in this post. Please note that the class implementing IProfileManager should be independent class. This is because, VS instantiates this class during Tools –> Import and Export Settings. IProfileManager provides 2 different sets of methods (total 4 methods) to persist the settings. They are LoadSettingsFromXml and SaveSettingsToXml – Implement these methods to persist settings to disk from VS settings storage. The VS will persist your settings along with other options to disk. LoadSettingsFromStorage and SaveSettingsToStorage – Implement these methods to persist settings to local storage, usually it be registry. VS calls LoadSettingsFromStorage method when it is initializing the package too. We are going to use the 2nd set of methods for this example. First, we are creating a separate class file called UserOptions.cs. Please note that, we also need to implement IComponent, which can be done by inheriting Component along with IProfileManager. [ComVisible(true)] [Guid("XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX")] public class UserOptions : Component, IProfileManager { private const string SUBKEY_NAME = "TForVS2013"; private const string TRAY_NOTIFICATIONS_STRING = "TrayNotifications"; ... } Define the property so that it can be used to set and get from other classes. public bool TrayNotifications { get; set; } Implement the members of IProfileManager. public void LoadSettingsFromStorage() { RegistryKey reg = null; try { using (reg = Package.UserRegistryRoot.OpenSubKey(SUBKEY_NAME)) { if (reg != null) { // Key already exists, so just update this setting. TrayNotifications = Convert.ToBoolean(reg.GetValue(TRAY_NOTIFICATIONS_STRING, true)); } } } catch (TeamRoomException exception) { TrayNotifications = true; ExceptionReporting.Report(exception); } finally { if (reg != null) { reg.Close(); } } } public void LoadSettingsFromXml(IVsSettingsReader reader) { reader.ReadSettingBoolean(TRAY_NOTIFICATIONS_STRING, out _isTrayNotificationsEnabled); TrayNotifications = (_isTrayNotificationsEnabled == 1); } public void ResetSettings() { } public void SaveSettingsToStorage() { RegistryKey reg = null; try { using (reg = Package.UserRegistryRoot.OpenSubKey(SUBKEY_NAME, true)) { if (reg != null) { // Key already exists, so just update this setting. reg.SetValue(TRAY_NOTIFICATIONS_STRING, TrayNotifications); } else { reg = Package.UserRegistryRoot.CreateSubKey(SUBKEY_NAME); reg.SetValue(TRAY_NOTIFICATIONS_STRING, TrayNotifications); } } } catch (TeamRoomException exception) { ExceptionReporting.Report(exception); } finally { if (reg != null) { reg.Close(); } } } public void SaveSettingsToXml(IVsSettingsWriter writer) { writer.WriteSettingBoolean(TRAY_NOTIFICATIONS_STRING, TrayNotifications ? 1 : 0); } Let me elaborate on the method implementation. The Package class provides UserRegistryRoot (which is HKCU\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0 for VS2013) property which can be used to create and read the registry keys. So basically, in the methods above, I am checking if the registry key exists already and if not, I simply create it. Also, in case there is an exception I return the default values. If the key already exists, I update the value. Also, note that you need to make sure that you close the key while exiting from the method. Very simple right? Accessing and settings is simple too. We just need to use the exposed property. UserOptions.TrayNotifications = true; UserOptions.SaveSettingsToStorage(); Reading settings is as simple as reading a property. UserOptions.LoadSettingsFromStorage(); var trayNotifications = UserOptions.TrayNotifications; Lastly, the most important step. We need to tell Visual Studio shell that our package exposes options using the UserOptions class. For this we need to decorate our package class with ProvideProfile attribute as below. [ProvideProfile(typeof(UserOptions), "TForVS2013", "TeamRooms", 110, 110, false, DescriptionResourceID = 401)] public sealed class TeamRooms : Microsoft.VisualStudio.Shell.Package { ... } That's it. If everything is alright, once you run the package you will also see your options appearing in "Import Export settings" window, which allows you to export your options.

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• Cloud Computing Architecture Patterns: Don’t Focus on the Client

  - by BuckWoody

  Normally I try to put topics in the positive in other words "Do this" not "Don't do that". Sometimes its clearer to focus on what *not* to do. Popular development processes often start with screen mockups, or user input descriptions. In a scale-out pattern like Cloud Computing on Windows Azure, that's the wrong place to start. Start with the Data    Instead, I recommend that you start with the data that a process requires. That data might be temporary or persisted, but starting with the data and its requirements helps to define not only the storage engine you need but also drives everything from security to the integrity of the application. For instance, assume the requirements show that the user must enter their phone number, and that this datum is used in a contact management system further down the application chain. For that datum, you can determine what data type you need (U.S. only or International?) the security requirements, whether it needs ACID compliance, how it will be searched, indexed and so on. From one small data point you can extrapolate out your options for storing and processing the data. Here's the interesting part, which begins to break the patterns that we've used for decades: all of the data doesn't have the same requirements. The phone number might be best suited for a list, or an element, or a string, with either BASE or ACID requirements, based on how it is used. That means we don't have to dump everything into XML, an RDBMS, a NoSQL engine, or a flat file exclusively. In fact, one record might use all of those depending on the use-case requirements. Next Is Data Management  With the data defined, we can move on to how to store the data. Again, the requirements now dictate whether we need a full relational calculus or set-based operations, or we can choose another method based on the requirements for the data. And breaking another pattern its OK to store in more than once, in more than one location. We do this all the time for reporting systems and Business Intelligence systems, so this is a pattern we need to think about even for OLTP data. Move to Data Transport How does the data get around? We can use a connection-based method, sending the data along a transport to the storage engine, but in some cases we may want to use a cache, a queue, the Service Bus, or Complex Event Processing. Finally, Data Processing Most RDBMS engines, NoSQL, and certainly Big Data engines not only store data, but can process and manipulate it as well. Its doubtful that you'll calculate that phone number right? Well, if you're the phone company, you most certainly will. And so we see that even once we've chosen the data type, storage and engine, the same element can have different computing requirements based on how it is used. Sure, We Need A Front-End At Some Point Not all data is entered by human hands in fact most data isn't. We don't really need a Graphical User Interface (GUI) we need some way for a GUI to get data into and out of the systems listed earlier.   But when we do need to allow users to enter or examine data, that should be left to the GUI that best fits the device the user has. Ever tried to use an application designed for a web browser on a phone? Or one designed for a tablet on a phone? Its usually quite painful. The siren song of "We'll just write one interface for all devices" is strong, and has beguiled many an unsuspecting architect. But they just don't work out.   Instead, focus on the data, its transport and processing. Create API calls or a message system that allows for resilient transport to the device or interface, and let it do what it does best. References Microsoft Architecture Journal:   http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/architecture/bb410935.aspx Patterns and Practices:   http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff921345.aspx Windows Azure iOS, Android, Windows 8 Mobile Devices SDK: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/mobile/tutorials/get-started-ios/ Windows Azure Facebook SDK: http://ntotten.com/2013/03/14/using-windows-azure-mobile-services-with-the-facebook-sdk-for-windows-phone/

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• Remote Debug Windows Azure Cloud Service

  - by Shaun

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/shaunxu/archive/2013/11/02/remote-debug-windows-azure-cloud-service.aspxOn the 22nd of October Microsoft Announced the new Windows Azure SDK 2.2. It introduced a lot of cool features but one of it shocked most, which is the remote debug support for Windows Azure Cloud Service (a.k.a. WACS).   Live Debug is Nightmare for Cloud Application When we are developing against public cloud, debug might be the most difficult task, especially after the application had been deployed. In order to minimize the debug effort, Microsoft provided local emulator for cloud service and storage once the Windows Azure platform was announced. By using local emulator developers could be able run their application on local machine with almost the same behavior as running on Windows Azure, and that could be debug easily and quickly. But when we deployed our application to Azure, we have to use log, diagnostic monitor to debug, which is very low efficient. Visual Studio 2012 introduced a new feature named "anonymous remote debug" which allows any workstation under any user could be able to attach the remote process. This is less secure comparing the authenticated remote debug but much easier and simpler to use. Now in Windows Azure SDK 2.2, we could be able to attach our application from our local machine to Windows Azure, and it's very easy.   How to Use Remote Debugger First, let's create a new Windows Azure Cloud Project in Visual Studio and selected ASP.NET Web Role. Then create an ASP.NET WebForm application. Then right click on the cloud project and select "publish". In the publish dialog we need to make sure the application will be built in debug mode, since .NET assembly cannot be debugged in release mode. I enabled Remote Desktop as I will log into the virtual machine later in this post. It's NOT necessary for remote debug. And selected "advanced settings" tab, make sure we checked "Enable Remote Debugger for all roles". In WACS, a cloud service could be able to have one or more roles and each role could be able to have one or more instances. The remote debugger will be enabled for all roles and all instances if we checked. Currently there's no way for us to specify which role(s) and which instance(s) to enable. Finally click "publish" button. In the windows azure activity window in Visual Studio we can find some information about remote debugger. To attache remote process would be easy. Open the "server explorer" window in Visual Studio and expand "cloud services" node, find the cloud service, role and instance we had just published and wanted to debug, right click on the instance and select "attach debugger". Then after a while (it's based on how fast our Internet connect to Windows Azure Data Center) the Visual Studio will be switched to debug mode. Let's add a breakpoint in the default web page's form load function and refresh the page in browser to see what's happen. We can see that the our application was stopped at the breakpoint. The call stack, watch features are all available to use. Now let's hit F5 to continue the step, then back to the browser we will find the page was rendered successfully.   What Under the Hood Remote debugger is a WACS plugin. When we checked the "enable remote debugger" in the publish dialog, Visual Studio will add two cloud configuration settings in the CSCFG file. Since they were appended when deployment, we cannot find in our project's CSCFG file. But if we opened the publish package we could find as below. At the same time, Visual Studio will generate a certificate and included into the package for remote debugger. If we went to the azure management portal we will find there will a certificate under our application which was created, uploaded by remote debugger plugin. Since I enabled Remote Desktop there will be two certificates in the screenshot below. The other one is for remote debugger. When our application was deployed, windows azure system will open related ports for remote debugger. As below you can see there are two new ports opened on my application. Finally, in our WACS virtual machine, windows azure system will copy the remote debug component based on which version of Visual Studio we are using and start. Our application then can be debugged remotely through the visual studio remote debugger. Below is the task manager on the virtual machine of my WACS application.   Summary In this post I demonstrated one of the feature introduced in Windows Azure SDK 2.2, which is Remote Debugger. It allows us to attach our application from local machine to windows azure virtual machine once it had been deployed. Remote debugger is powerful and easy to use, but it brings more security risk. And since it's only available for debug build this means the performance will be worse than release build. Hence we should only use this feature for staging test and bug fix (publish our beta version to azure staging slot), rather than for production.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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• Fun With the Chrome JavaScript Console and the Pluralsight Website

  - by Steve Michelotti

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/michelotti/archive/2013/07/24/fun-with-the-chrome-javascript-console-and-the-pluralsight-website.aspxI’m currently working on my third course for Pluralsight. Everyone already knows that Scott Allen is a “dominating force” for Pluralsight but I was curious how many courses other authors have published as well. The Pluralsight Authors page - http://pluralsight.com/training/Authors – shows all 146 authors and you can click on any author’s page to see how many (and which) courses they have authored. The problem is: I don’t want to have to click into 146 pages to get a count for each author. With this in mind, I figured I could write a little JavaScript using the Chrome JavaScript console to do some “detective work.” My first step was to figure out how the HTML was structured on this page so I could do some screen-scraping. Right-click the first author - “Inspect Element”. I can see there is a primary <div> with a class of “main” which contains all the authors. Each author is in an <h3> with an <a> tag containing their name and link to their page:     This web page already has jQuery loaded so I can use $ directly from the console. This allows me to just use jQuery to inspect items on the current page. Notice this is a multi-line command. In order to use multiple lines in the console you have to press SHIFT-ENTER to go to the next line:     Now I can see I’m extracting data just fine. At this point I want to follow each URL. Then I want to screen-scrape this next page to see how many courses each author has done. Let’s take a look at the author detail page:       I can see we have a table (with a css class of “course”) that contains rows for each course authored. This means I can get the number of courses pretty easily like this:     Now I can put this all together. Back on the authors page, I want to follow each URL, extract the returned HTML, and grab the count. In the code below, I simply use the jQuery $.get() method to get the author detail page and the “data” variable that is in the callback contains the HTML. A nice feature of jQuery is that I can simply put this HTML string inside of $() and I can use jQuery selectors directly on it in conjunction with the find() method:     Now I’m getting somewhere. I have every Pluralsight author and how many courses each one has authored. But that’s not quite what I’m after – what I want to see are the authors that have the MOST courses in the library. What I’d like to do is to put all of the data in an array and then sort that array descending by number of courses. I can add an item to the array after each author detail page is returned but the catch here is that I can’t perform the sort operation until ALL of the author detail pages have executed. The jQuery $.get() method is naturally an async method so I essentially have 146 async calls and I don’t want to perform my sort action until ALL have completed (side note: don’t run this script too many times or the Pluralsight servers might think your an evil hacker attempting a DoS attack and deny you). My C# brain wants to use a WaitHandle WaitAll() method here but this is JavaScript. I was able to do this by using the jQuery Deferred() object. I create a new deferred object for each request and push it onto a deferred array. After each request is complete, I signal completion by calling the resolve() method. Finally, I use a $.when.apply() method to execute my descending sort operation once all requests are complete. Here is my complete console command: 1: var authorList = [], 2: defList = []; 3: $(".main h3 a").each(function() { 4: var def = $.Deferred(); 5: defList.push(def); 6: var authorName = $(this).text(); 7: var authorUrl = $(this).attr('href'); 8: $.get(authorUrl, function(data) { 9: var courseCount = $(data).find("table.course tbody tr").length; 10: authorList.push({ name: authorName, numberOfCourses: courseCount }); 11: def.resolve(); 12: }); 13: }); 14: $.when.apply($, defList).then(function() { 15: console.log("*Everything* is complete"); 16: var sortedList = authorList.sort(function(obj1, obj2) { 17: return obj2.numberOfCourses - obj1.numberOfCourses; 18: }); 19: for (var i = 0; i < sortedList.length; i++) { 20: console.log(authorList[i]); 21: } 22: });   And here are the results:     WOW! John Sonmez has 44 courses!! And Matt Milner has 29! I guess Scott Allen isn’t the only “dominating force”. I would have assumed Scott Allen was #1 but he comes in as #3 in total course count (of course Scott has 11 courses in the Top 50, and 14 in the Top 100 which is incredible!). Given that I’m in the middle of producing only my third course, I better get to work!

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• Running a Mongo Replica Set on Azure VM Roles

  - by Elton Stoneman

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/EltonStoneman/archive/2013/10/15/running-a-mongo-replica-set-on-azure-vm-roles.aspxSetting up a MongoDB Replica Set with a bunch of Azure VMs is straightforward stuff. Here’s a step-by-step which gets you from 0 to fully-redundant 3-node document database in about 30 minutes (most of which will be spent waiting for VMs to fire up). First, create yourself 3 VM roles, which is the minimum number of nodes you need for high availability. You can use any OS that Mongo supports. This guide uses Windows but the only difference will be the mechanism for starting the Mongo service when the VM starts (Windows Service, daemon etc.) While the VMs are provisioning, download and install Mongo locally, so you can set up the replica set with the Mongo shell. We’ll create our replica set from scratch, doing one machine at a time (if you have a single node you want to upgrade to a replica set, it’s the same from step 3 onwards): 1. Setup Mongo Log into the first node, download mongo and unzip it to C:. Rename the folder to remove the version – so you have c:\MongoDB\bin etc. – and create a new folder for the logs, c:\MongoDB\logs. 2. Setup your data disk When you initialize a node in a replica set, Mongo pre-allocates a whole chunk of storage to use for data replication. It will use up to 5% of your data disk, so if you use a Windows VM image with a defsault 120Gb disk and host your data on C:, then Mongo will allocate 6Gb for replication. And that takes a while. Instead you can create yourself a new partition by shrinking down the C: drive in Computer Management, by say 10Gb, and then creating a new logical disk for your data from that spare 10Gb, which will be allocated as E:. Create a new folder, e:\data. 3. Start Mongo When that’s done, start a command line, point to the mongo binaries folder, install Mongo as a Windows Service, running in replica set mode, and start the service: cd c:\mongodb\bin mongod -logpath c:\mongodb\logs\mongod.log -dbpath e:\data -replSet TheReplicaSet –install net start mongodb 4. Open the ports Mongo uses port 27017 by default, so you need to allow access in the machine and in Azure. In the VM, open Windows Firewall and create a new inbound rule to allow access via port 27017. Then in the Azure Management Console for the VM role, under the Configure tab add a new rule, again to allow port 27017. 5. Initialise the replica set Start up your local mongo shell, connecting to your Azure VM, and initiate the replica set: c:\mongodb\bin\mongo sc-xyz-db1.cloudapp.net rs.initiate() This is the bit where the new node (at this point the only node) allocates its replication files, so if your data disk is large, this can take a long time (if you’re using the default C: drive with 120Gb, it may take so long that rs.initiate() never responds. If you’re sat waiting more than 20 minutes, start another instance of the mongo shell pointing to the same machine to check on it). Run rs.conf() and you should see one node configured. 6. Fix the host name for the primary – *don’t miss this one* For the first node in the replica set, Mongo on Windows doesn’t populate the full machine name. Run rs.conf() and the name of the primary is sc-xyz-db1, which isn’t accessible to the outside world. The replica set configuration needs the full DNS name of every node, so you need to manually rename it in your shell, which you can do like this: cfg = rs.conf() cfg.members[0].host = ‘sc-xyz-db1.cloudapp.net:27017’ rs.reconfig(cfg) When that returns, rs.conf() will have your full DNS name for the primary, and the other nodes will be able to connect. At this point you have a working database, so you can start adding documents, but there’s no replication yet. 7. Add more nodes For the next two VMs, follow steps 1 through to 4, which will give you a working Mongo database on each node, which you can add to the replica set from the shell with rs.add(), using the full DNS name of the new node and the port you’re using: rs.add(‘sc-xyz-db2.cloudapp.net:27017’) Run rs.status() and you’ll see your new node in STARTUP2 state, which means its initializing and replicating from the PRIMARY. Repeat for your third node: rs.add(‘sc-xyz-db3.cloudapp.net:27017’) When all nodes are finished initializing, you will have a PRIMARY and two SECONDARY nodes showing in rs.status(). Now you have high availability, so you can happily stop db1, and one of the other nodes will become the PRIMARY with no loss of data or service. Note – the process for AWS EC2 is exactly the same, but with one important difference. On the Azure Windows Server 2012 base image, the MongoDB release for 64-bit 2008R2+ works fine, but on the base 2012 AMI that release keeps failing with a UAC permission error. The standard 64-bit release is fine, but it lacks some optimizations that are in the 2008R2+ version.

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: Getting Caller Information

  - by James Michael Hare

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/BlackRabbitCoder/archive/2013/07/25/c.net-little-wonders-getting-caller-information.aspx Once again, in this series of posts I look at the parts of the .NET Framework that may seem trivial, but can help improve your code by making it easier to write and maintain. The index of all my past little wonders posts can be found here. There are times when it is desirable to know who called the method or property you are currently executing.  Some applications of this could include logging libraries, or possibly even something more advanced that may server up different objects depending on who called the method. In the past, we mostly relied on the System.Diagnostics namespace and its classes such as StackTrace and StackFrame to see who our caller was, but now in C# 5, we can also get much of this data at compile-time. Determining the caller using the stack One of the ways of doing this is to examine the call stack.  The classes that allow you to examine the call stack have been around for a long time and can give you a very deep view of the calling chain all the way back to the beginning for the thread that has called you. You can get caller information by either instantiating the StackTrace class (which will give you the complete stack trace, much like you see when an exception is generated), or by using StackFrame which gets a single frame of the stack trace.  Both involve examining the call stack, which is a non-trivial task, so care should be done not to do this in a performance-intensive situation. For our simple example let's say we are going to recreate the wheel and construct our own logging framework.  Perhaps we wish to create a simple method Log which will log the string-ified form of an object and some information about the caller.  We could easily do this as follows: 1: static void Log(object message) 2: { 3: // frame 1, true for source info 4: StackFrame frame = new StackFrame(1, true); 5: var method = frame.GetMethod(); 6: var fileName = frame.GetFileName(); 7: var lineNumber = frame.GetFileLineNumber(); 8: 9: // we'll just use a simple Console write for now 10: Console.WriteLine("{0}({1}):{2} - {3}", 11: fileName, lineNumber, method.Name, message); 12: } So, what we are doing here is grabbing the 2nd stack frame (the 1st is our current method) using a 2nd argument of true to specify we want source information (if available) and then taking the information from the frame.  This works fine, and if we tested it out by calling from a file such as this: 1: // File c:\projects\test\CallerInfo\CallerInfo.cs 2:  3: public class CallerInfo 4: { 5: Log("Hello Logger!"); 6: } We'd see this: 1: c:\projects\test\CallerInfo\CallerInfo.cs(5):Main - Hello Logger! This works well, and in fact CallStack and StackFrame are still the best ways to examine deeper into the call stack.  But if you only want to get information on the caller of your method, there is another option… Determining the caller at compile-time In C# 5 (.NET 4.5) they added some attributes that can be supplied to optional parameters on a method to receive caller information.  These attributes can only be applied to methods with optional parameters with explicit defaults.  Then, as the compiler determines who is calling your method with these attributes, it will fill in the values at compile-time. These are the currently supported attributes available in the  System.Runtime.CompilerServices namespace": CallerFilePathAttribute – The path and name of the file that is calling your method. CallerLineNumberAttribute – The line number in the file where your method is being called. CallerMemberName – The member that is calling your method. So let’s take a look at how our Log method would look using these attributes instead: 1: static int Log(object message, 2: [CallerMemberName] string memberName = "", 3: [CallerFilePath] string fileName = "", 4: [CallerLineNumber] int lineNumber = 0) 5: { 6: // we'll just use a simple Console write for now 7: Console.WriteLine("{0}({1}):{2} - {3}", 8: fileName, lineNumber, memberName, message); 9: } Again, calling this from our sample Main would give us the same result: 1: c:\projects\test\CallerInfo\CallerInfo.cs(5):Main - Hello Logger! However, though this seems the same, there are a few key differences. First of all, there are only 3 supported attributes (at this time) that give you the file path, line number, and calling member.  Thus, it does not give you as rich of detail as a StackFrame (which can give you the calling type as well and deeper frames, for example).  Also, these are supported through optional parameters, which means we could call our new Log method like this: 1: // They're defaults, why not fill 'em in 2: Log("My message.", "Some member", "Some file", -13); In addition, since these attributes require optional parameters, they cannot be used in properties, only in methods. These caveats aside, they do let you get similar information inside of methods at a much greater speed!  How much greater?  Well lets crank through 1,000,000 iterations of each.  instead of logging to console, I’ll return the formatted string length of each.  Doing this, we get: 1: Time for 1,000,000 iterations with StackTrace: 5096 ms 2: Time for 1,000,000 iterations with Attributes: 196 ms So you see, using the attributes is much, much faster!  Nearly 25x faster in fact.  Summary There are a few ways to get caller information for a method.  The StackFrame allows you to get a comprehensive set of information spanning the whole call stack, but at a heavier cost.  On the other hand, the attributes allow you to quickly get at caller information baked in at compile-time, but to do so you need to create optional parameters in your methods to support it. Technorati Tags: Little Wonders,CSharp,C#,.NET,StackFrame,CallStack,CallerFilePathAttribute,CallerLineNumberAttribute,CallerMemberName

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• Data Binding to Attached Properties

  - by Chris Gardner

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/freestylecoding/archive/2013/06/14/data-binding-to-attached-properties.aspx When I was working on my C#/XAML game framework, I discovered I wanted to try to data bind my sprites to background objects. That way, I could update my objects and the draw functionality would take care of the work for me. After a little experimenting and web searching, it appeared this concept was an impossible dream. Of course, when has that ever stopped me? In my typical way, I started to massively dive down the rabbit hole. I created a sprite on a canvas, and I bound it to a background object. <Canvas Name="GameField" Background="Black"> <Image Name="PlayerStrite" Source="Assets/Ship.png" Width="50" Height="50" Canvas.Left="{Binding X}" Canvas.Top="{Binding Y}"/> </Canvas> Now, we wire the UI item to the background item. public MainPage() { this.InitializeComponent(); this.Loaded += StartGame; }   void StartGame( object sender, RoutedEventArgs e ) { BindingPlayer _Player = new BindingPlayer(); _Player.X = Window.Current.Bounds.Height - PlayerSprite.Height; _Player.X = ( Window.Current.Bounds.Width - PlayerSprite.Width ) / 2.0; } Of course, now we need to actually have our background object. public class BindingPlayer : INotifyPropertyChanged { private double m_X; public double X { get { return m_X; } set { m_X = value; NotifyPropertyChanged(); } }   private double m_Y; public double Y { get { return m_Y; } set { m_Y = value; NotifyPropertyChanged(); } }   public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged; protected void NotifyPropertyChanged( [CallerMemberName] string p_PropertyName = null ) { if( PropertyChanged != null ) PropertyChanged( this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs( p_PropertyName ) ); } } I fired this baby up, and my sprite was correctly positioned on the screen. Maybe the sky wasn't falling after all. Wouldn't it be great if that was the case? I created some code to allow me to move the sprite, but nothing happened. This seems odd. So, I start debugging the application and stepping through code. Everything appears to be working. Time to dig a little deeper. After much profanity was spewed, I stumbled upon a breakthrough. The code only looked like it was working. What was really happening is that there was an exception being thrown in the background thread that I never saw. Apparently, the key call was the one to PropertyChanged. If PropertyChanged is not called on the UI thread, the UI thread ignores the call. Actually, it throws an exception and the background thread silently crashes. Of course, you'll never see this unless you're looking REALLY carefully. This seemed to be a simple problem. I just need to marshal this to the UI thread. Unfortunately, this object has no knowledge of this mythical UI Thread in which we speak. So, I had to pull the UI Thread out of thin air. Let's change our PropertyChanged call to look this. public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged; protected void NotifyPropertyChanged( [CallerMemberName] string p_PropertyName = null ) { if( PropertyChanged != null ) Windows.ApplicationModel.Core.CoreApplication.MainView.CoreWindow.Dispatcher.RunAsync( Windows.UI.Core.CoreDispatcherPriority.Normal, new Windows.UI.Core.DispatchedHandler( () => { PropertyChanged( this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs( p_PropertyName ) ); } ) ); } Now, we raised our notification on the UI thread. Everything is fine, people are happy, and the world moves on. You may have noticed that I didn't await my call to the dispatcher. This was intentional. If I am trying to update a slew of sprites, I don't want thread being hung while I wait my turn. Thus, I send the message and move on. It is worth nothing that this is NOT the most efficient way to do this for game programming. We'll get to that in another blog post. However, it is perfectly acceptable for a business app that is running a background task that would like to notify the UI thread of progress on a periodic basis. It is worth noting that this code was written for a Windows Store App. You can do the same thing with WP8 and WPF. The call to the marshaler changes, but it is the same idea.

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• Sass interface in HTML6 for upload files.

  - by Anirudha

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/anirugu/archive/2013/11/04/sass-interface-in-html6-for-upload-files.aspx[This post is about experiment & imagination] From Windows XP (ever last OS I tried) I have seen a feature that is about send file to pen drive and make shortcut on Desktop. In XP, Win7 (Win8 have this too, not removed) just select the file right click > send to and you can send this file to many places. In my menu it’s show me Skype because I have installed it. this skype confirm that we can add our own app here to make it more easy for user to send file in our app. Nowadays Many people use Cloud or online site to store the file. In case of html5 drag and drop you need to have site opened and have opened that page which is about file upload. You need to select all  and drag and drop. after drag and drop file is simply uploaded to server and site show you on list (if no error happen). but this file upload is seriously not worthy since I have to open the site when I do this operation.   Through this post I want to describe a feature that can make this thing better.  This API is simply called SASS FILE UPLOAD API Through This API when you surf the site and come into file upload page then the page will tell you that we also have SASS FILE API support. Enable it for better result.   How this work This API feature are activated on 2 basis. 1. Feature are disabled by default on site (or you can change it if it’s not) 2. This API allow specific site to upload the files. Files upload may have some rule. For example (minimum or maximum size of file to uploaded, which format the site allowed you to upload). In case of resume site you will be allowed to use .doc (according to code of site)   How browser recognize that Site have SASS service. In HTML source of  the site, the code have a meta tag similar to this <meta name=”sass-upload-api” path=”/upload.json”/> Remember that upload.json is one file that has define the value of many settings {   "cookie_name": "ck_file",   "maximum_allowed_perday": 24,   "allowed_file_extensions","*.png,*.jpg,*.jpeg,*.gif",   "method": [       {           "get": "file/get",           "routing":"/file/get/{fileName}"       },       {           "post": "file/post",           "routing":"/file/post/{fileName}"       },       {           "delete": "file/delete",           "routing":"/file/delete/{fileName}"       },         {           "put": "file/put",           "routing":"/file/put/{fileName}"       },        {           "all": "file/all",           "routing":"/file/all/{fileName}"       }    ] } cookie name is simply a cookie which should be stored in browser and define in json. we define the cookie_name so we can easily share then with service in Windows system. This cookie will be accessible with the service so it’s security based safe. other cookie will not be shared.   The cookie will be post,put, get from this location. The all location will be simply about showing a whole list of file. This will gave a treeview kind of json to show the directories on sever.   for example example.com if you have activated the API with this site then you will seen a send to option in your explorer.exe when you send you will got a windows open which folder you want to use to send the file. The windows will also describe the limit and how much you can upload. This thing never required site to opened. When you upload the file this will be uploaded through FTP protocol. FTP protocol are better for performance.   How this API make thing faster. Suppose you want to ask a question and want to post image. you just do it and get it ready when you open stackoverflow.com now stackoverflow will only tell you which file you want to put on your current question that you asking for. second use is about people use cloud app.   There is no need of drag and drop anymore. we just need to do it without drag and drop it. we doesn’t need to open the site either. This thing is still in experiment level. I will update this post when I got some progress on this API.

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• Styling ASP.NET MVC Error Messages

  - by MightyZot

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/MightyZot/archive/2013/11/11/styling-asp.net-mvc-error-messages.aspxOff the cuff, it may look like you’re stuck with the presentation of your error messages (model errors) in ASP.NET MVC. That’s not the case, though. You actually have quite a number of options with regard to styling those boogers. Like many of the helpers in MVC, the Html.ValidationMessageFor helper has multiple prototypes. One of those prototypes lets you pass a dictionary, or anonymous object, representing attribute values for the resulting markup. @Html.ValidationMessageFor( m => Model.Whatever, null, new { @class = “my-error” }) By passing the htmlAttributes parameter, which is the last parameter in the call to the prototype of Html.ValidationMessageFor shown above, I can style the resulting markup by associating styles to the my-error css class.  When you run your MVC project and view the source, you’ll notice that MVC adds the class field-validation-valid or field-validation-error to a span created by the helper. You could actually just style those classes instead of adding your own…it’s really up to you. Now, what if you wanted to move that error message around? Maybe you want to put that error message in a box or a callout. How do you do that? When I first started using MVC, it didn’t occur to me that the Html.ValidationMessageFor helper just spits out a little bit of markup. I wanted to put the error messages in boxes with white backgrounds, our site originally had a black background, and show a little nib on the side to make them look like callouts or conversation bubbles. Not realizing how much freedom there is in the styling and markup, and after reading someone else’s post, I created my own version of the ValidationMessageFor helper that took out the span and replaced it with divs. I styled the divs to produce the effect of a popup box and had a lot of trouble with sizing and such. That’s a really silly and unnecessary way to solve this problem. If you want to move your error messages around, all you have to do is move the helper. MVC doesn’t appear to care where you put it, which makes total sense when you think about it. Html.ValidationMessageFor is just spitting out a little markup using a little bit of reflection on the name you’re passing it. All you’ve got to do to style it the way you want it is to put it in whatever markup you desire. Take a look at this, for example… <div class=”my-anchor”>@Html.ValidationMessageFor( m => Model.Whatever )</div> @Html.TextBoxFor(m => Model.Whatever) Now, given that bit of HTML, consider the following CSS… <style> .my-anchor { position:relative; } .field-validation-error {    background-color:white;    border-radius:4px;    border: solid 1px #333;    display: block;    position: absolute;    top:0; right:0; left:0;    text-align:right; } </style> The my-anchor class establishes an anchor for the absolutely positioned error message. Now you can move the error message wherever you want it relative to the anchor. Using css3, there are some other tricks. For example, you can use the :not(:empty) selector to select the span and apply styles based upon whether or not the span has text in it. Keep it simple, though. Moving your elements around using absolute positioning may cause you issues on devices with screens smaller than your standard laptop or PC. While looking for something else recently, I saw someone asking how to style the output for Html.ValidationSummary.  Html.ValidationSummery is the helper that will spit out a list of property errors, general model errors, or both. Html.ValidationSummary spits out fairly simple markup as well, so you can use the techniques described above with it also. The resulting markup is a <ul><li></li></ul> unordered list of error messages that carries the class validation-summary-errors In the forum question, the user was asking how to hide the error summary when there are no errors. Their errors were in a red box and they didn’t want to show an empty red box when there aren’t any errors. Obviously, you can use the css3 selectors to apply different styles to the list when it’s empty and when it’s not empty; however, that’s not support in all browsers. Well, it just so happens that the unordered list carries the style validation-summary-valid when the list is empty. While the div rendered by the Html.ValidationSummary helper renders a visible div, containing one invisible listitem, you can always just style the whole div with “display:none” when the validation-summary-valid class is applied and make it visible when the validation-summary-errors class is applied. Or, if you don’t like that solution, which I like quite well, you can also check the model state for errors with something like this… int errors = ViewData.ModelState.Sum(ms => ms.Value.Errors.Count); That’ll give you a count of the errors that have been added to ModelState. You can check that and conditionally include markup in your page if you want to. The choice is yours. Obviously, doing most everything you can with styles increases the flexibility of the presentation of your solution, so I recommend going that route when you can. That picture of the fat guy jumping has nothing to do with the article. That’s just a picture of me on the roof and I thought it was funny. Doesn’t every post need a picture?

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• How to change image through click - javascript

  - by Elmir Kouliev

  I have a toolbar that has 5 table cells. The first cell looks clear, and the other 4 have a shade over them. I want to make it so that clicking on the table cell will also change the image so that the shade will also change in respect to the current table cell that is selected. <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <title>X?B?RL?R V? HADIS?L?R</title> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> <link rel="stylesheet" href="N&SAz.css" /> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="../../Images/favicon.ico" /> <script type="text/javascript"> var switchTo5x = true; </script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://w.sharethis.com/button/buttons.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> stLight.options({ publisher: "581d0c30-ee9d-4c94-9b6f-a55e8ae3f4ae" }); </script> <script src="../../jquery-1.7.2.min.js" type="text/javascript"> </script> <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function () { $(".fade").css("display", "none"); $(".fade").fadeIn(20); $("a.transition").click(function (event) { event.preventDefault(); linkLocation = this.href; $("body").fadeOut(500, redirectPage); }); function redirectPage() { window.location = linkLocation; } }); $(document).ready(function () { $('.preview').hide(); $('#link_1').click(function () { $('#latest_story_preview1').hide(); $('#latest_story_preview2').hide(); $('#latest_story_preview3').hide(); $('#latest_story_preview4').hide(); $('#latest_story_main').fadeIn(800); }); $('#link_2').click(function () { $('#latest_story_main').hide(); $('#latest_story_preview2').hide(); $('#latest_story_preview3').hide(); $('#latest_story_preview4').hide(); $('#latest_story_preview1').fadeIn(800); }); $('#link_3').click(function () { $('#latest_story_main').hide(); $('#latest_story_preview1').hide(); $('#latest_story_preview3').hide(); $('#latest_story_preview4').hide(); $('#latest_story_preview2').fadeIn(800); }); $('#link_4').click(function () { $('#latest_story_main').hide(); $('#latest_story_preview1').hide(); $('#latest_story_preview2').hide(); $('#latest_story_preview4').hide(); $('#latest_story_preview3').fadeIn(800); }); $('#link_5').click(function () { $('#latest_story_main').hide(); $('#latest_story_preview1').hide(); $('#latest_story_preview2').hide(); $('#latest_story_preview3').hide(); $('#latest_story_preview4').fadeIn(800); }); $(".fade").css("display", "none"); $(".fade").fadeIn(1200); $("a.transition").click(function (event) { event.preventDefault(); linkLocation = this.href; $("body").fadeOut(500, redirectPage); }); }); </script> </head> <body id="body" style="background-color:#FFF;" onload="document"> <div style="margin:0px auto;width:1000px;" id="all_content"> <div id="top_content" style="background-color:transparent;"> <ul id="translation_list"> <li> <a href=""> AZ </a> </li> <li> <a href="#"> RUS </a> </li> <li> <a href="#"> ENG </a> </li> </ul> <div id="share_buttons"> <span class='st_facebook' displayText='' title="Facebook"></span> <span class='st_twitter' displayText='' title="Twitter"></span> <span class='st_linkedin' displayText='' title="Linkedin"></span> <span class='st_googleplus' displayText='' title="Google +"></span> <span class='st_email' displayText='' title="Email"></span> </div> <img src="../../Images/RasulGuliyev.png" width="330" height="80" id="top_logo"> <br /> <br /> <div class="fade" id="navigation"> <ul> <font face="Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif"> <li> <a href="../../index.html"> ANA S?HIF? </a> </li> <li> <a href="../biographyAZ.html"> BIOQRAFIYA </a> </li> <li style="background-color:#9C1A35;"> <a href="#"> X?B?RL?R V? HADIS?L?R </a> </li> <li> <a> PROQRAM </a> </li> <li> <a> SEÇICIL?R </a> </li> <li> <a> ?LAQ?L?R</a> </li> </font> </ul> </div> <font face="Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif"> <br /> <div id="navigation2"> <ul> <a> <li><i> HADIS?L?R </i></li> </a> <a> <li><i>VIDEOLAR</i> </li> </a> </ul> </div> <div id="news_section" style="background-color:#FFF;"> <h3 style="font-weight:100; font-size:22px; font-style:normal; color:#7C7C7C;">Son X?b?rl?r</h3> <div class="fade" id="Latest-Stories"> <table id="stories-preview" width="330" height="598" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td> <a id="link_1" href="#"><img src="../../Images/N&EImages/images/Article-Nav-Bar1_01.gif" width="330" height="114" alt=""></a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> <a id="link_2" href="#"> <img src="../../Images/N&EImages/images/Article-Nav-Bar1_02.gif" width="330" height="109" alt=""> </a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> <a id="link_3" href="#"> <img src="../../Images/N&EImages/images/Article-Nav-Bar1_03.gif" width="330" height="132" alt=""></a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> <a id="link_4" href="#"><img src="../../Images/N&EImages/images/Article-Nav-Bar1_04.gif" width="330" height="124" alt=""></a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> <a id="link_5" href="#"><img src="../../Images/N&EImages/images/Article-Nav-Bar1_05.gif" width="330" height="119" alt=""></a> </td> </tr> </table> <div class="fade" id="latest_story_main"> <!--START--> <img src="../../Images/N&EImages/GuliyevFace.jpeg" style="padding:4px; margin-top:6px; border-style:groove; border-width:thin; margin-left:90px;" /> <a href="#"> <h2 style="font-weight:100; font-style:normal;"> "Bizim V?zif?miz Az?rbaycan Xalqinin T?zyiq? M?ruz Qalmamasini T?min Etm?kdir" </h2> </a> <h5 style="font-weight:100; font-size:12px; color:#888; opacity:.9;"> <img src="../../Images/ClockImage.png" />IYUN 19, 2012 BY RASUL GULIYEV - R?SUL QULIYEV</h5> <p style="font-size:14px; font-style:normal;">ACP-nin v? Müqavim?t H?r?katinin lideri, eks-spiker R?sul Quliyev "Yeni Müsavat"a müsahib? verib. O, son vaxtlar ACP-d? bas ver?n kadr d?yisiklikl?ri, bar?sind? dolasan söz-söhb?tl?r v? dig?r m?s?l?l?r? aydinliq g?tirib. Müsahib?ni t?qdim edirik. – Az?rbaycanda siyasi günd?mi ?hat? ed?n m?s?l?l?rd?n biri d? Sülh?ddin ?kb?rin ACP-y? s?dr g?tirilm?sidir. Ideya v? t?s?bbüs kimin idi? – ?vv?ll?r d? qeyd <a href="#"> [...]</a> </p> <!--FIRST STORY END --> </div> <div class="preview" id="latest_story_preview1"> <!--START--> <img src="../../Images/N&EImages/GuliyevFace2.jpeg" style="padding:4px; margin-top:6px; border-style:groove; border-width:thin; margin-left:90px;" /> <a href="#"> <h2 style="font-weight:100; font-style:normal;"> "S?xsiyy?ti Alçaldilan Insanlarin Qisasi Amansiz Olur" </h2></a> <h5 style="font-weight:100; font-size:12px; color:#888; opacity:.9;"> <img src="../../Images/ClockImage.png" />IYUN 12, 2012 BY RASUL GULIYEV - R?SUL QULIYEV</h5> <p style="font-size:14px; font-style:normal;">R?sul Quliyev: "Az?rbaycanda müxalif?tin görün?n f?aliyy?ti ?halinin hökum?td?n naraziliq potensialini ifad? etmir" Eks-spiker Avropa görüsl?rinin yekunlarini s?rh etdi ACP lideri R?sul Quliyevin Avropa görüsl?ri basa çatib. S?f?rin yekunlari bar?d? R?sul Quliyev eksklüziv olaraq "Yeni Müsavat"a açiqlama verib. Norveçd? keçiril?n görüsl?rd? Açiq C?miyy?t v? Liberal Demokrat partiyalarinin s?drl?ri Sülh?ddin ?kb?r, Fuad ?liyev v? Müqavim?t H?r?kati Avropa <a href="#"> [...]</a> </p> <!--SECOND STORY END --> </div> <div class="preview" id="latest_story_preview2"> <!--START--> <img src="../../Images/N&EImages/GuliyevFace3.jpeg" style="padding:4px; margin-top:6px; border-style:groove; border-width:thin; margin-left:90px;" /> <a href="#"> <h2 style="font-weight:100; font-style:normal;"> R?sul Quliyevin Iyunun 4, 2012-ci ild? Bryusseld?ki Görüsl?rl? ?laq?dar Çixisi </h2></a> <h5 style="font-weight:100; font-size:12px; color:#888; opacity:.9;"> <img src="../../Images/ClockImage.png" />IYUN 4, 2012 BY RASUL GULIYEV - R?SUL QULIYEV</h5> <p style="font-size:14px; font-style:normal;">Brüssel görüsl?ri – Az?rbaycanda xalqin malini ogurlayan korrupsioner Höküm?t liderl?rinin xarici banklarda olan qara pullari v? ?mlaklarinin dondurulmasina çox qalmayib. Camaatin hüquqlarini pozan polis, prokuratura v? m?hk?m? isçil?rin? v? onlarin r?hb?rl?rin? viza m?hdudiyy?tl?ri qoymaqda reallasacaq. R?sul Quliyevin Iyunun 4, 2012-ci ild? Bryusseld?ki Görüsl?rl? ?laq?dar Çixisi Rasul Guliyev's Speech on June 4, 2012 about Brussels Meetings <a href="#">[...]</a> </p> <!--THIRD STORY END --> </div> <div class="preview" id="latest_story_preview3"> <!--START--> <img src="../../Images/N&EImages/GuliyevGroup1.jpeg" style="padding:4px; margin-top:6px; border-style:groove; border-width:thin; margin-left:90px;" /> <a href="#"> <h2 style="font-weight:100; font-style:normal;"> R?sul Quliyevin Avropa Parlamentind? v? Hakimiyy?t Qurumlarinda Görüsl?ri Baslamisdir </h2></a> <h5 style="font-weight:100; font-size:12px; color:#888; opacity:.9;"> <img src="../../Images/ClockImage.png" />MAY 31, 2012 BY RASUL GULIYEV - R?SUL QULIYEV</h5> <p style="font-size:14px; font-style:normal;">Aciq C?miyy?t Partiyasinin lideri, eks-spiker R?sul Quliyev Avropa Parlamentind? görüsl?rini davam etdirir. Bu haqda "Yeni Müsavat"a R.Quliyev özü m?lumat verib. O bildirib ki, görüsl?rd? Liberal Demokrat Partiyasinin s?dri Fuad ?liyev v? R.Quliyevin Skandinaviya ölk?l?ri üzr? müsaviri Rauf K?rimov da istirak edirl?r. Eks-spiker deyib ki, bu görüsl?r 2013-cü ild? keçiril?c?k prezident seçkil?rind? saxtalasdirmanin qarsisini almaq planinin [...]</p> <!--FOURTH STORY END --> </div> <div class="preview" id="latest_story_preview4"> <!--START--> <img src="../../Images/N&EImages/GuliyevGroup2.jpeg" style="padding:4px; margin-top:6px; border-style:groove; border-width:thin; margin-left:90px;" /> <a href="#"> <h2 style="font-weight:100; font-style:normal;"> Norveçin Oslo S?h?rind? Parlament Üzvl?ri il? v? Xarici Isl?r Nazirliyind? Görüsl?r </h2></a> <h5 style="font-weight:100; font-size:12px; color:#888; opacity:.9;"> <img src="../../Images/ClockImage.png" />MAY 30, 2012 BY RASUL GULIYEV - R?SUL QULIYEV</h5> <p style="font-size:14px; font-style:normal;">R?sul Quliyev Norveçin Oslo s?h?rind? Parlament üzvl?ri v? Xarici isl?r nazirliyind? görüsl?r keçirmisdir. Bu görüsl?rd? Az?rbaycandan Liberal Demokrat Partiyasinin s?dri Fuad ?liyev, Avro-Atlantik Surasinin s?dri Sülh?ddin ?kb?r v? Milli Müqavim?t H?r?katinin Skandinaviya ölk?l?ri üzr? nümay?nd?si Rauf K?rimov istirak etmisdir. Siyasil?r ilk ?vv?l mayin 22-d? Norveç Parlamentinin Avropa Surasinda t?msil ed?n nümay?nd? hey?tinin üzvül?ri Karin S. [...]</a> </p> <!--FIFTH STORY END --> </div> <hr /> </div> <!--LATEST STORIES --> <div class="fade" id="article-section"> <h3 style="font-weight:100; font-size:22px; font-style:normal; color:#7C7C7C;">Çecin X?b?rl?r</h3> <div class="older-article"> <img src="../../Images/N&EImages/GuliyevGroup2.jpeg" style="padding:4px; margin-top:6px; border-style:groove; border-width:thin; margin-left:90px;" /> <a href="#"> <h2 style="font-weight:100; font-style:normal;"> Norveçin Oslo S?h?rind? Parlament Üzvl?ri il? v? Xarici Isl?r Nazirliyind? Görüsl?r </h2></a> <h5 style="font-weight:100; font-size:12px; color:#888; opacity:.9;"> <img src="../../Images/ClockImage.png" />MAY 30, 2012 BY RASUL GULIYEV - R?SUL QULIYEV</h5> <p style="font-size:14px; font-style:normal;">R?sul Quliyev Norveçin Oslo s?h?rind? Parlament üzvl?ri v? Xarici isl?r nazirliyind? görüsl?r keçirmisdir. Bu görüsl?rd? Az?rbaycandan Liberal Demokrat Partiyasinin s?dri Fuad ?liyev, Avro-Atlantik Surasinin s?dri Sülh?ddin ?kb?r v? Milli Müqavim?t H?r?katinin Skandinaviya ölk?l?ri üzr? nümay?nd?si Rauf K?rimov istirak etmisdir. Siyasil?r ilk ?vv?l mayin 22-d? Norveç Parlamentinin Avropa Surasinda t?msil ed?n nümay?nd? hey?tinin üzvül?ri Karin S. [...]</a> </p> </div> <hr /> </div> <!--NEWS SECTION--> </font> <h3 class="fade" id="footer">Rasul Guliyev 2012</h3> </div> </body> </head> </html>

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• Error when installing AppFabric 1.1 on Server 2012 64bit

  - by no9

  I am trying to install AppFabric 1.1 on 64bit Windows Server 2012 R2. All updates have been installed and updates are turned ON .NET Framework 4.0 is installed .NET Framework 3.5 is installed IIS is installed Windows Powershell 3.0 should already be included in Server 2012 I am getting the following error: 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup ===== Logging started: 2014-03-21 11:02:34+01:00 ===== 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup File: c:\6c4006b0b3f6dee1bf616f1967\setup.exe 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup InternalName: Setup.exe 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup OriginalFilename: Setup.exe 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup FileVersion: 1.1.2106.32 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup FileDescription: Setup.exe 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup Product: Microsoft(R) Windows(R) Server AppFabric 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup ProductVersion: 1.1.2106.32 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup Debug: False 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup Patched: False 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup PreRelease: False 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup PrivateBuild: False 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup SpecialBuild: False 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup Language: Language Neutral 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup OS Name: Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup OS Edition: ServerStandard 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup OSVersion: Microsoft Windows NT 6.2.9200.0 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup CurrentCulture: sl-SI 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup Processor Architecture: AMD64 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup Event Registration Source : AppFabric_Setup 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Setup.Upgrade.V1UpgradeSetupModule : Initiating V1.0 Upgrade module. 2014-03-21 11:02:34, Information Setup Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Setup.Upgrade.V1UpgradeSetupModule : V1.0 is not installed. 2014-03-21 11:02:54, Information Setup Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Setup.Upgrade.V1UpgradeSetupModule : Initiating V1 Upgrade pre-install. 2014-03-21 11:02:54, Information Setup Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Setup.Upgrade.V1UpgradeSetupModule : V1.0 is not installed, not taking backup. 2014-03-21 11:02:55, Information Setup Executing C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\aspnet_regiis.exe with commandline -iru. 2014-03-21 11:02:55, Information Setup Return code from aspnet_regiis.exe is 0 2014-03-21 11:02:55, Information Setup Process.Start: C:\Windows\system32\msiexec.exe /quiet /norestart /i "c:\6c4006b0b3f6dee1bf616f1967\Microsoft CCR and DSS Runtime 2008 R3.msi" /l*vx "C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\Temp\AppServerSetup1_1(2014-03-21 11-02-55).log" 2014-03-21 11:02:57, Information Setup Process.ExitCode: 0x00000000 2014-03-21 11:02:57, Information Setup Windows features successfully enabled. 2014-03-21 11:02:57, Information Setup Process.Start: C:\Windows\system32\msiexec.exe /quiet /norestart /i "c:\6c4006b0b3f6dee1bf616f1967\Packages\AppFabric-1.1-for-Windows-Server-64.msi" ADDDEFAULT=Worker,WorkerAdmin,CacheService,CacheAdmin,Setup /l*vx "C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\Temp\AppServerSetup1_1(2014-03-21 11-02-57).log" LOGFILE="C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\Temp\AppServerSetup1_1_CustomActions(2014-03-21 11-02-57).log" INSTALLDIR="C:\Program Files\AppFabric 1.1 for Windows Server" LANGID=en-US 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup Process.ExitCode: 0x00000643 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Error Setup AppFabric installation failed because installer MSI returned with error code : 1603 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Error Setup 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Error Setup AppFabric installation failed because installer MSI returned with error code : 1603 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Error Setup 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Setup.Core.SetupException: AppFabric installation failed because installer MSI returned with error code : 1603 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup at Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Setup.Installer.WindowsInstallerProxy.GenerateAndThrowSetupException(Int32 exitCode, LogEventSource logEventSource) 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup at Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Setup.Installer.WindowsInstallerProxy.Invoke(LogEventSource logEventSource, InstallMode installMode, String packageIdentity, List`1 updateList, List`1 customArguments) 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup at Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Setup.Installer.MsiInstaller.InstallSelectedFeatures() 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup at Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Setup.Installer.MsiInstaller.Install() 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup at Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Setup.Client.ProgressPage.StartAction() 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup === Summary of Actions === 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup Required Windows components : Completed Successfully 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup IIS Management Console : Completed Successfully 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup Microsoft CCR and DSS Runtime 2008 R3 : Completed Successfully 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup AppFabric 1.1 for Windows Server : Failed 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup Hosting Services : Failed 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup Caching Services : Failed 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup Hosting Administration : Failed 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup Cache Administration : Failed 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup Microsoft Update : Skipped 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup Microsoft Update : Skipped 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup 2014-03-21 11:03:45, Information Setup ===== Logging stopped: 2014-03-21 11:03:45+01:00 ===== I have tried this solution but no success: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11205927/appfabric-installation-failed-because-installer-msi-returned-with-error-code-1 My system enviroment variable PSModulesPath has this value: C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules I have also followed this link with no success: http://jefferytay.wordpress.com/2013/12/11/installing-appfabric-on-windows-server-2012/ Any help would be greatly appreciated !

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• NLog Exception Details Renderer

  - by jtimperley

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/jtimperley/archive/2013/07/28/nlog-exception-details-renderer.aspxI recently switch from Microsoft's Enterprise Library Logging block to NLog.  In my opinion, NLog offers a simpler and much cleaner configuration section with better use of placeholders, complemented by custom variables. Despite this, I found one deficiency in my migration; I had lost the ability to simply render all details of an exception into our logs and notification emails. This is easily remedied by implementing a custom layout renderer. Start by extending 'NLog.LayoutRenderers.LayoutRenderer' and overriding the 'Append' method. using System.Text; using NLog; using NLog.Config; using NLog.LayoutRenderers;   [ThreadAgnostic] [LayoutRenderer(Name)] public class ExceptionDetailsRenderer : LayoutRenderer { public const string Name = "exceptiondetails";   protected override void Append(StringBuilder builder, LogEventInfo logEvent) { // Todo: Append details to StringBuilder } }   Now that we have a base layout renderer, we simply need to add the formatting logic to add exception details as well as inner exception details. This is done using reflection with some simple filtering for the properties that are already being rendered. I have added an additional 'Register' method, allowing the definition to be registered in code, rather than in configuration files. This complements by 'LogWrapper' class which standardizes writing log entries throughout my applications. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Reflection; using System.Text; using NLog; using NLog.Config; using NLog.LayoutRenderers;   [ThreadAgnostic] [LayoutRenderer(Name)] public sealed class ExceptionDetailsRenderer : LayoutRenderer { public const string Name = "exceptiondetails"; private const string _Spacer = "======================================"; private List<string> _FilteredProperties;   private List<string> FilteredProperties { get { if (_FilteredProperties == null) { _FilteredProperties = new List<string> { "StackTrace", "HResult", "InnerException", "Data" }; }   return _FilteredProperties; } }   public bool LogNulls { get; set; }   protected override void Append(StringBuilder builder, LogEventInfo logEvent) { Append(builder, logEvent.Exception, false); }   private void Append(StringBuilder builder, Exception exception, bool isInnerException) { if (exception == null) { return; }   builder.AppendLine();   var type = exception.GetType(); if (isInnerException) { builder.Append("Inner "); }   builder.AppendLine("Exception Details:") .AppendLine(_Spacer) .Append("Exception Type: ") .AppendLine(type.ToString());   var bindingFlags = BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.Public; var properties = type.GetProperties(bindingFlags); foreach (var property in properties) { var propertyName = property.Name; var isFiltered = FilteredProperties.Any(filter => String.Equals(propertyName, filter, StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase)); if (isFiltered) { continue; }   var propertyValue = property.GetValue(exception, bindingFlags, null, null, null); if (propertyValue == null && !LogNulls) { continue; }   var valueText = propertyValue != null ? propertyValue.ToString() : "NULL"; builder.Append(propertyName) .Append(": ") .AppendLine(valueText); }   AppendStackTrace(builder, exception.StackTrace, isInnerException); Append(builder, exception.InnerException, true); }   private void AppendStackTrace(StringBuilder builder, string stackTrace, bool isInnerException) { if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(stackTrace)) { return; }   builder.AppendLine();   if (isInnerException) { builder.Append("Inner "); }   builder.AppendLine("Exception StackTrace:") .AppendLine(_Spacer) .AppendLine(stackTrace); }   public static void Register() { Type definitionType; var layoutRenderers = ConfigurationItemFactory.Default.LayoutRenderers; if (layoutRenderers.TryGetDefinition(Name, out definitionType)) { return; }   layoutRenderers.RegisterDefinition(Name, typeof(ExceptionDetailsRenderer)); LogManager.ReconfigExistingLoggers(); } } For brevity I have removed the Trace, Debug, Warn, and Fatal methods. They are modelled after the Info methods. As mentioned above, note how the log wrapper automatically registers our custom layout renderer reducing the amount of application configuration required. using System; using NLog;   public static class LogWrapper { static LogWrapper() { ExceptionDetailsRenderer.Register(); }   #region Log Methods   public static void Info(object toLog) { Log(toLog, LogLevel.Info); }   public static void Info(string messageFormat, params object[] parameters) { Log(messageFormat, parameters, LogLevel.Info); }   public static void Error(object toLog) { Log(toLog, LogLevel.Error); }   public static void Error(string message, Exception exception) { Log(message, exception, LogLevel.Error); }   private static void Log(string messageFormat, object[] parameters, LogLevel logLevel) { string message = parameters.Length == 0 ? messageFormat : string.Format(messageFormat, parameters); Log(message, (Exception)null, logLevel); }   private static void Log(object toLog, LogLevel logLevel, LogType logType = LogType.General) { if (toLog == null) { throw new ArgumentNullException("toLog"); }   if (toLog is Exception) { var exception = toLog as Exception; Log(exception.Message, exception, logLevel, logType); } else { var message = toLog.ToString(); Log(message, null, logLevel, logType); } }   private static void Log(string message, Exception exception, LogLevel logLevel, LogType logType = LogType.General) { if (exception == null && String.IsNullOrEmpty(message)) { return; }   var logger = GetLogger(logType); // Note: Using the default constructor doesn't set the current date/time var logInfo = new LogEventInfo(logLevel, logger.Name, message); logInfo.Exception = exception; logger.Log(logInfo); }   private static Logger GetLogger(LogType logType) { var loggerName = logType.ToString(); return LogManager.GetLogger(loggerName); }   #endregion   #region LogType private enum LogType { General } #endregion } The following configuration is similar to what is provided for each of my applications. The 'application' variable is all that differentiates the various applications in all of my environments, the rest has been standardized. Depending on your needs to tweak this configuration while developing and debugging, this section could easily be pushed back into code similar to the registering of our custom layout renderer.   <?xml version="1.0"?>   <configuration> <configSections> <section name="nlog" type="NLog.Config.ConfigSectionHandler, NLog"/> </configSections> <nlog xmlns="http://www.nlog-project.org/schemas/NLog.xsd" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"> <variable name="application" value="Example"/> <targets> <target type="EventLog" name="EventLog" source="${application}" log="${application}" layout="${message}${onexception: ${newline}${exceptiondetails}}"/> <target type="Mail" name="Email" smtpServer="smtp.example.local" from="[email protected]" to="[email protected]" subject="(${machinename}) ${application}: ${level}" body="Machine: ${machinename}${newline}Timestamp: ${longdate}${newline}Level: ${level}${newline}Message: ${message}${onexception: ${newline}${exceptiondetails}}"/> </targets> <rules> <logger name="*" minlevel="Debug" writeTo="EventLog" /> <logger name="*" minlevel="Error" writeTo="Email" /> </rules> </nlog> </configuration>   Now go forward, create your custom exceptions without concern for including their custom properties in your exception logs and notifications.

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• Upgrading Windows 8 boot to VHD to Windows 8.1&ndash;Step by step guide

  - by Liam Westley

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/twickers/archive/2013/10/19/upgrading-windows-8-boot-to-vhd-to-windows-8.1ndashstep-by.aspxBoot to VHD – dual booting Windows 7 and Windows 8 became easy When Windows 8 arrived, quite a few people decided that they would still dual boot their machines, and instead of mucking about with resizing disk partitions to free up space for Windows 8 they decided to use the boot from VHD feature to create a huge hard disc image into which Windows 8 could be installed.  Scott Hanselman wrote this installation guide, while I myself used the installation guide from Ed Bott of ZD net fame. Boot to VHD is a great solution, it achieves a dual boot, can be backed up easily and had virtually no effect on the original Windows 7 partition. As a developer who has dual booted Windows operating systems for years, hacking boot.ini files, the boot to VHD was a much easier solution. Upgrade to Windows 8.1 – ah, you can’t do that on a virtual disk installation (boot to VHD) Last week the final version of Windows 8.1 arrived, and I went into the Windows Store to upgrade.  Luckily I’m on a fast download service, and use an SSD, because once the upgrade was downloaded and prepared Windows informed that This PC can’t run Windows 8.1, and provided the reason, You can’t install Windows on a virtual drive.  You can see an image of the message and discussion that sparked my search for a solution in this Microsoft Technet forum post. I was determined not to have to resize partitions yet again and fiddle with VHD to disk utilities and back again, and in the end I did succeed in upgrading to a Windows 8.1 boot to VHD partition.  It takes quite a bit of effort though … tldr; Simple steps of how you upgrade Boot into Windows 7 – make a copy of your Windows 8 VHD, to become Windows 8.1 Enable Hyper-V in your Windows 8 (the original boot to VHD partition) Create a new virtual machine, attaching the copy of your Windows 8 VHD Start the virtual machine, upgrade it via the Windows Store to Windows 8.1 Shutdown the virtual machine Boot into Windows 7 – use the bcedit tool to create a new Windows 8.1 boot to VHD option (pointing at the copy) Boot into the new Windows 8.1 option Reactivate Windows 8.1 (it will have become deactivated by running under Hyper-V) Remove the original Windows 8 VHD, and in Windows 7 use bcedit to remove it from the boot menu Things you’ll need A system that can run Hyper-V under Windows 8 (Intel i5, i7 class CPU) Enough space to have your original Windows 8 boot to VHD and a copy at the same time An ISO or DVD for Windows 8 to create a bootable Windows 8 partition Step by step guide Boot to your base o/s, the real one, Windows 7. Make a copy of the Windows 8 VHD file that you use to boot Windows 8 (via boot from VHD) – I copied it from a folder on C: called VHD-Win8 to VHD-Win8.1 on my N: drive. Reboot your system into Windows 8, and enable Hyper-V if not already present (this may require reboot) Use the Hyper-V manager , create a new Hyper-V machine, using half your system memory, and use the option to attach an existing VHD on the main IDE controller – this will be the new copy you made in Step 2. Start the virtual machine, use Connect to view it, and you’ll probably discover it cannot boot as there is no boot record If this is the case, go to Hyper-V manager, edit the Settings for the virtual machine to attach an ISO of a Windows 8 DVD to the second IDE controller. Start the virtual machine, use Connect to view it, and it should now attempt a fresh installation of Windows 8.  You should select Advanced Options and choose Repair - this will make VHD bootable When the setup reboots your virtual machine, turn off the virtual machine, and remove the ISO of the Windows 8 DVD from the virtual machine settings. Start virtual machine, use Connect to view it.  You will see the devices to be re-discovered (including your quad CPU becoming single CPU).  Eventually you should see the Windows Login screen. You may notice that your desktop background (Win+D) will have turned black as your Windows installation has become deactivate due to the hardware changes between your real PC and Hyper-V. Fortunately becoming deactivated, does not stop you using the Windows Store, where you can select the update to Windows 8.1. You can now watch the progress joy of the Windows 8 update; downloading, preparing to update, checking compatibility, gathering info, preparing to restart, and finally, confirm restart - remember that you are restarting your virtual machine sitting on the copy of the VHD, not the Windows 8 boot to VHD you are currently using to run Hyper-V (confused yet?) After the reboot you get the real upgrade messages; setting up x%, xx%, (quite slow) After a while, Getting ready Applying PC Settings x%, xx% (really slow) Updating your system (fast) Setting up a few more things x%, (quite slow) Getting ready, again Accept license terms Express settings Confirmed previous password Next, I had to set up a Microsoft account – which is possibly now required, and not optional Using the Microsoft account required a 2 factor authorization, via text message, a 7 digit code for me Finalising settings Blank screen, HI .. We're setting up things for you (similar to original Windows 8 install) 'You can get new apps from the Store', below which is ’Installing your apps’ - I had Windows Media Center which is counts as an app from the Store ‘Taking care of a few things’, below which is ‘Installing your apps’ ‘Taking care of a few things’, below ‘Don't turn off your PC’ ‘Getting your apps ready’, below ‘Don't turn off your PC’ ‘Almost ready’, below ‘Don't turn off your PC’ … finally, we get the Windows 8.1 start menu, and a quick Win+D to check the desktop confirmed all the application icons I expected, pinned items on the taskbar, and one app moaning about a missing drive At this point the upgrade is complete – you can shutdown the virtual machine Reboot from the original Windows 8 and return to Windows 7 to configure booting to the Windows 8.1 copy of the VHD In an administrator command prompt do following use the bcdedit tool (from an MSDN blog about configuring VHD to boot in Windows 7) Type bcedit to list the current boot options, so you can copy the GUID (complete with brackets/braces) for the original Windows 8 boot to VHD Create a new menu option, copy of the Windows 8 option; bcdedit /copy {originalguid} /d "Windows 8.1" Point the new Windows 8.1 option to the copy of the VHD; bcdedit /set {newguid} device vhd=[D:]\Image.vhd Point the new Windows 8.1 option to the copy of the VHD; bcdedit /set {newguid} osdevice vhd=[D:]\Image.vhd Set autodetection of the HAL (may already be set); bcdedit /set {newguid} detecthal on Reboot from Windows 7 and select the new option 'Windows 8.1' on the boot menu, and you’ll have some messages to look at, as your hardware is redetected (as you are back from 1 CPU to 4 CPUs) ‘Getting devices ready, blank then %xx, with occasional blank screen, for the graphics driver, (fast-ish) Getting Ready message (fast) You will have to suffer one final reboots, choose 'Windows 8.1' and you can now login to a lovely Windows 8.1 start screen running on non virtualized hardware via boot to VHD After checking everything is running fine, you can now choose to Activate Windows, which for me was a toll free phone call to the automated system where you type in lots of numbers to be given a whole bunch of new activation codes. Once you’re happy with your new Windows 8.1 boot to VHD, and no longer need the Windows 8 boot to VHD, feel free to delete the old one.  I do believe once you upgrade, you are no longer licensed to use it anyway. There, that was simple wasn’t it? Looking at the huge list of steps it took to perform this upgrade, you may wonder whether I think this is worth it.  Well, I think it is worth booting to VHD.  It makes backups a snap (go to Windows 7, copy the VHD, you backed up the o/s) and helps with disk management – want to move the o/s, you can move the VHD and repoint the boot menu to the new location. The downside is that Microsoft has complete neglected to support boot to VHD as an upgradable option.  Quite a poor decision in my opinion, and if you read twitter and the forums quite a few people agree with that view.  It’s a shame this got missed in the work on creating the upgrade packages for Windows 8.1.

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• Windows Azure VMs - New "Stopped" VM Options Provide Cost-effective Flexibility for On-Demand Workloads

  - by KeithMayer

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/KeithMayer/archive/2013/06/22/windows-azure-vms---new-stopped-vm-options-provide-cost-effective.aspxDidn’t make it to TechEd this year? Don’t worry!  This month, we’ll be releasing a new article series that highlights the Best of TechEd announcements and technical information for IT Pros.  Today’s article focuses on a new, much-heralded enhancement to Windows Azure Infrastructure Services to make it more cost-effective for spinning VMs up and down on-demand on the Windows Azure cloud platform. NEW! VMs that are shutdown from the Windows Azure Management Portal will no longer continue to accumulate compute charges while stopped! Previous to this enhancement being available, the Azure platform maintained fabric resource reservations for VMs, even in a shutdown state, to ensure consistent resource availability when starting those VMs in the future.  And, this meant that VMs had to be exported and completely deprovisioned when not in use to avoid compute charges. In this article, I'll provide more details on the scenarios that this enhancement best fits, and I'll also review the new options and considerations that we now have for performing safe shutdowns of Windows Azure VMs. Which scenarios does the new enhancement best fit? Being able to easily shutdown VMs from the Windows Azure Management Portal without continued compute charges is a great enhancement for certain cloud use cases, such as: On-demand dev/test/lab environments - Freely start and stop lab VMs so that they are only accumulating compute charges when being actively used.  "Bursting" load-balanced web applications - Provision a number of load-balanced VMs, but keep the minimum number of VMs running to support "normal" loads. Easily start-up the remaining VMs only when needed to support peak loads. Disaster Recovery - Start-up "cold" VMs when needed to recover from disaster scenarios. BUT ... there is a consideration to keep in mind when using the Windows Azure Management Portal to shutdown VMs: although performing a VM shutdown via the Windows Azure Management Portal causes that VM to no longer accumulate compute charges, it also deallocates the VM from fabric resources to which it was previously assigned.  These fabric resources include compute resources such as virtual CPU cores and memory, as well as network resources, such as IP addresses.  This means that when the VM is later started after being shutdown from the portal, the VM could be assigned a different IP address or placed on a different compute node within the fabric. In some cases, you may want to shutdown VMs using the old approach, where fabric resource assignments are maintained while the VM is in a shutdown state.  Specifically, you may wish to do this when temporarily shutting down or restarting a "7x24" VM as part of a maintenance activity.  Good news - you can still revert back to the old VM shutdown behavior when necessary by using the alternate VM shutdown approaches listed below.  Let's walk through each approach for performing a VM Shutdown action on Windows Azure so that we can understand the benefits and considerations of each... How many ways can I shutdown a VM? In Windows Azure Infrastructure Services, there's three general ways that can be used to safely shutdown VMs: Shutdown VM via Windows Azure Management Portal Shutdown Guest Operating System inside the VM Stop VM via Windows PowerShell using Windows Azure PowerShell Module Although each of these options performs a safe shutdown of the guest operation system and the VM itself, each option handles the VM shutdown end state differently. Shutdown VM via Windows Azure Management Portal When clicking the Shutdown button at the bottom of the Virtual Machines page in the Windows Azure Management Portal, the VM is safely shutdown and "deallocated" from fabric resources.  Shutdown button on Virtual Machines page in Windows Azure Management Portal  When the shutdown process completes, the VM will be shown on the Virtual Machines page with a "Stopped ( Deallocated )" status as shown in the figure below. Virtual Machine in a "Stopped (Deallocated)" Status "Deallocated" means that the VM configuration is no longer being actively associated with fabric resources, such as virtual CPUs, memory and networks. In this state, the VM will not continue to allocate compute charges, but since fabric resources are deallocated, the VM could receive a different internal IP address ( called "Dynamic IPs" or "DIPs" in Windows Azure ) the next time it is started.  TIP: If you are leveraging this shutdown option and consistency of DIPs is important to applications running inside your VMs, you should consider using virtual networks with your VMs.  Virtual networks permit you to assign a specific IP Address Space for use with VMs that are assigned to that virtual network.  As long as you start VMs in the same order in which they were originally provisioned, each VM should be reassigned the same DIP that it was previously using. What about consistency of External IP Addresses? Great question! External IP addresses ( called "Virtual IPs" or "VIPs" in Windows Azure ) are associated with the cloud service in which one or more Windows Azure VMs are running.  As long as at least 1 VM inside a cloud service remains in a "Running" state, the VIP assigned to a cloud service will be preserved.  If all VMs inside a cloud service are in a "Stopped ( Deallocated )" status, then the cloud service may receive a different VIP when VMs are next restarted. TIP: If consistency of VIPs is important for the cloud services in which you are running VMs, consider keeping one VM inside each cloud service in the alternate VM shutdown state listed below to preserve the VIP associated with the cloud service. Shutdown Guest Operating System inside the VM When performing a Guest OS shutdown or restart ( ie., a shutdown or restart operation initiated from the Guest OS running inside the VM ), the VM configuration will not be deallocated from fabric resources. In the figure below, the VM has been shutdown from within the Guest OS and is shown with a "Stopped" VM status rather than the "Stopped ( Deallocated )" VM status that was shown in the previous figure. Note that it may require a few minutes for the Windows Azure Management Portal to reflect that the VM is in a "Stopped" state in this scenario, because we are performing an OS shutdown inside the VM rather than through an Azure management endpoint. Virtual Machine in a "Stopped" Status VMs shown in a "Stopped" status will continue to accumulate compute charges, because fabric resources are still being reserved for these VMs.  However, this also means that DIPs and VIPs are preserved for VMs in this state, so you don't have to worry about VMs and cloud services getting different IP addresses when they are started in the future. Stop VM via Windows PowerShell In the latest version of the Windows Azure PowerShell Module, a new -StayProvisioned parameter has been added to the Stop-AzureVM cmdlet. This new parameter provides the flexibility to choose the VM configuration end result when stopping VMs using PowerShell: When running the Stop-AzureVM cmdlet without the -StayProvisioned parameter specified, the VM will be safely stopped and deallocated; that is, the VM will be left in a "Stopped ( Deallocated )" status just like the end result when a VM Shutdown operation is performed via the Windows Azure Management Portal.  When running the Stop-AzureVM cmdlet with the -StayProvisioned parameter specified, the VM will be safely stopped but fabric resource reservations will be preserved; that is the VM will be left in a "Stopped" status just like the end result when performing a Guest OS shutdown operation. So, with PowerShell, you can choose how Windows Azure should handle VM configuration and fabric resource reservations when stopping VMs on a case-by-case basis. TIP: It's important to note that the -StayProvisioned parameter is only available in the latest version of the Windows Azure PowerShell Module.  So, if you've previously downloaded this module, be sure to download and install the latest version to get this new functionality. Want to Learn More about Windows Azure Infrastructure Services? To learn more about Windows Azure Infrastructure Services, be sure to check-out these additional FREE resources: Become our next "Early Expert"! Complete the Early Experts "Cloud Quest" and build a multi-VM lab network in the cloud for FREE!  Build some cool scenarios! Check out our list of over 20+ Step-by-Step Lab Guides based on key scenarios that IT Pros are implementing on Windows Azure Infrastructure Services TODAY!  Looking forward to seeing you in the Cloud! - Keith Build Your Lab! Download Windows Server 2012 Don’t Have a Lab? Build Your Lab in the Cloud with Windows Azure Virtual Machines Want to Get Certified? Join our Windows Server 2012 "Early Experts" Study Group

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• My Thoughts On the Xbox 180

  - by Chris Gardner

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/freestylecoding/archive/2013/06/21/my-thoughts-on-the-xbox-180.aspx Everyone seems to be putting their 0.00237 cents into the wishing well over Microsoft's recent decision to reverse the DRM policy on the Xbox One. However, there have been a few issues that nobody has touched. As such, I have decided to dig 0.00237 cents out of my pocket. First, let me be clear about this point. I do not support the decision to reverse the DRM policy on the Xbox One. I wanted that point to be expressed first and unambiguously. I will say it again. I do not support the decision to reverse the DRM policy on the Xbox One. Now that I have that out of the way, let me go into my rationale. This decision removes most of the cool features that enticed me to pre-order the console. No, I didn't cancel my pre-order. There is still five months before the release of the console, and there is still a plethora of information that we, as consumers, do not have. With that, it should be noted that much of the talk in this post is speculation and rhetoric. I do not have any insider information that you do not possess. The persistent connection would have allowed the console to do many of the functions for which we have been begging. That demo where someone was playing Ryse, seamlessly accepted a multiplayer challenge in Killer Instinct, played the match (and a rematch,) and then jumped back into Ryse. That's gone, if you bought the game on disc. The new, DRM free system will require the disc in the system to play a game. That bullet point where one Xbox Live account could have up to 10 slave accounts so families could play together, no matter where they were located. That's gone as well. The promise of huge, expansive, dynamically changing worlds that was brought to us with the power of cloud computing. Well, "the people" didn't want there to be a forced, persistent connection. As such, developers can't rely on a connection and, as such, that feature is gone. This is akin to the removal of the hard drive on the Xbox 360. The list continues, but the enthusiast press has enumerated the list far better than I wish. All of this is because the Xbox team saw the HUGE success of Steam and decided to borrow a few ideas. Yes, Steam. The service that everyone hated for the first six months (for the same reasons the Xbox One is getting flack.) There was an initial growing pain. However, it is now lauded as the way games distribution should be handled. Unless you are Microsoft. I do find it curious that many of the features were originally announced for the PS4 during its unveiling. However, much of that was left strangely absent for Sony's E3 press conference. Instead, we received a single, static slide that basically said the exact opposite of Microsoft's plans. It is not farfetched to believe that slide came into existence during the approximately seven hours between the two media briefings. The thing that majorly annoys me over this whole kerfuffle is that the single thing that caused the call to arms is, really, not an issue. Microsoft never said they were going to block used sales. They said it was up to the publisher to make that decision. This would have allowed publishers to reclaim some of the costs of development in subsequent sales of the product. If you sell your game to GameStop for 7 USD, GameStop is going to sell it for 55 USD. That is 48 USD pure profit for them. Some publishers asked GameStop for a small cut. Was this a huge, money grubbing scheme? Well, yes, but the idea was that they have to handle server infrastructure for dormant accounts, etc. Of course, GameStop flatly refused, and the Online Pass was born. Fortunately, this trend didn’t last, and most publishers have stopped the practice. The ability to sell "licenses" has already begun to be challenged. Are you living in the EU? If so, companies must allow you to sell digital property. With this precedent in place, it's only a matter of time before other areas follow suit. If GameStop were smart, they should have immediately contacted every publisher out there to get the rights to become a clearing house for these licenses. Then, they keep their business model and could reduce their brick and mortar footprint. The digital landscape is changing. We need to not block this process. As Seth MacFarlane best said "Some issues are so important that you should drag people kicking and screaming." I believe this was said on an episode of Real Time with Bill Maher about the issue of Gay Marriages. Much like the original source, this is an issue that we need to drag people to the correct, progressive position. Microsoft, as a company, actually has the resources to weather the transition period. They have a great pool of first and second party developers that can leverage this new framework to prove the validity. Over time, the third party developers will get excited to use these tools. As an old C++ guy, I resisted C# for years. Now, I think it's one of the best languages I've ever used. I have a server room and a Co-Lo full of servers, so I originally didn't see the value in Azure. Now, I wish I could move every one of my projects into the cloud. I still LOVE getting physical packaging, which my music and games collection will proudly attest. However, I have started to see the value in pure digital, and have found ways to integrate this into the ways I consume those products. I can, honestly, understand how some parts of the population would be very apprehensive about this new landscape. There were valid arguments about people with no internet access. There are ways to combat these problems. These methods do not require us to throw the baby out with the bathwater. However, the number of people in the computer industry that I have seen cry foul is truly appalling. We are the forward looking people that help show how technology can improve people's lives. If we can't see the value of the brief pain involved with an exciting new ecosystem, than who will?

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• Responsive Inline Elements with Twitter Bootstrap

  - by MightyZot

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/MightyZot/archive/2013/11/12/responsive-inline-elements-with-twitter-bootstrap.aspxTwitter Boostrap is a responsive css platform created by some dudes affiliated with Twitter and since supported and maintained by an open source following. I absolutely love the new version of this css toolkit. They rebuilt it with a mobile first strategy and it’s very easy to layout pages once you get the hang of it. Using a css / javascript framework like bootstrap is certainly much easier than coding your layout by hand. And, you get a “leg up” when it comes to adding responsive features to your site. Bootstrap includes column layout classes that let you specify size and placement based upon the viewport width. In addition, there are a handful of responsive helpers to hide and show content based upon the user’s device size. Most notably, the visible-xs, visible-sm, visible-md, and visible-lg classes let you show content for devices corresponding to those sizes (they are listed in the bootstrap docs.) hidden-xs, hidden-sm, hidden-md, and hidden-lg let you hide content for devices with those respective sizes. These helpers work great for showing and hiding block elements. Unfortunately, there isn’t a provision yet in Twitter Bootstrap (as of the time of this writing) for inline elements. We are using the navbar classes to create a navigation bar at the top of our website, www.crowdit.com. When you shrink the width of the screen to tablet or phone size, the tools in the navbar are turned into a drop down menu, and a button appears on the right side of the navbar. This is great! But, we wanted different content to display based upon whether the items were on the navbar versus when they were in the dropdown menu. The visible-?? and hidden-?? classes make this easy for images and block elements. In our case, we wanted our anchors to show different text depending upon whether they’re in the navbar, or in the dropdown. span is inherently inline and it can be a block element. My first approach was to create two anchors for each options, one set visible when the navbar is on a desktop or laptop with a wide display and another set visible when the elements converted to a dropdown menu. That works fine with the visible-?? and hidden-?? classes, but it just doesn’t seem that clean to me. I put up with that for about a week…last night I created the following classes to augment the block-based classes provided by bootstrap. .cdt-hidden-xs, .cdt-hidden-sm, .cdt-hidden-md, .cdt-hidden-lg {     display: inline !important; } @media (max-width:767px) {     .cdt-hidden-xs, .cdt-hidden-sm.cdt-hidden-xs, .cdt-hidden-md.cdt-hidden-xs, .cdt-hidden-lg.cdt-hidden-xs {         display: none !important;     } } @media (min-width:768px) and (max-width:991px) {     .cdt-hidden-xs.cdt-hidden-sm, .cdt-hidden-sm, .cdt-hidden-md.cdt-hidden-sm, .cdt-hidden-lg.cdt-hidden-sm {         display: none !important;     } } @media (min-width:992px) and (max-width:1199px) {     .cdt-hidden-xs.cdt-hidden-md, .cdt-hidden-sm.cdt-hidden-md, .cdt-hidden-md, .cdt-hidden-lg.cdt-hidden-md {         display: none !important;     } } @media (min-width:1200px) {     .cdt-hidden-xs.cdt-hidden-lg, .cdt-hidden-sm.cdt-hidden-lg, .cdt-hidden-md.cdt-hidden-lg, .cdt-hidden-lg {         display: none !important;     } } .cdt-visible-xs, .cdt-visible-sm, .cdt-visible-md, .cdt-visible-lg {     display: none !important; } @media (max-width:767px) {     .cdt-visible-xs, .cdt-visible-sm.cdt-visible-xs, .cdt-visible-md.cdt-visible-xs, .cdt-visible-lg.cdt-visible-xs {         display: inline !important;     } } @media (min-width:768px) and (max-width:991px) {     .cdt-visible-xs.cdt-visible-sm, .cdt-visible-sm, .cdt-visible-md.cdt-visible-sm, .cdt-visible-lg.cdt-visible-sm {         display: inline !important;     } } @media (min-width:992px) and (max-width:1199px) {     .cdt-visible-xs.cdt-visible-md, .cdt-visible-sm.cdt-visible-md, .cdt-visible-md, .cdt-visible-lg.cdt-visible-md {         display: inline !important;     } } @media (min-width:1200px) {     .cdt-visible-xs.cdt-visible-lg, .cdt-visible-sm.cdt-visible-lg, .cdt-visible-md.cdt-visible-lg, .cdt-visible-lg {         display: inline !important;     } } I created these by looking at the example provided by bootstrap and consolidating the styles. “cdt” is just a prefix that I’m using to distinguish these classes from the block-based classes in bootstrap. You are welcome to change the prefix to whatever feels right for you. These classes can be applied to spans in textual content to hide and show text based upon the browser width. Applying the styles is simple… <span class=”cdt-visible-xs”>This text is visible in extra small</span> <span class=”cdt-visible-sm”>This text is visible in small</span> Why would you want to do this? Here are a couple of examples, shown in screen shots. This is the CrowdIt navbar on larger displays. Notice how the text is two line and certain words are capitalized? Now, check this out! Here is a screen shot showing the dropdown menu that’s displayed when the browser window is tablet or phone sized. The markup to make this happen is quite simple…take a look. <li>     <a href="@Url.Action("what-is-crowdit","home")" title="Learn about what CrowdIt can do for your Small Business">         <span class="cdt-hidden-xs">WHAT<br /><small>is CrowdIt?</small></span>         <span class="cdt-visible-xs">What is CrowdIt?</span>     </a> </li> There is a single anchor tag in this example and only the spans change visibility based on browser width. I left them separate for readability and because I wanted to use the small tag; however, you could just as easily hide the “WHAT” and the br tag on small displays and replace them with “What “, consolidating this even further to text containing a single span. <span class=”cdt-hidden-xs”>WHAT<br /></span><span class=”cdt-visible-xs”>What </span>is CrowdIt? You might be a master of css and have a better method of handling this problem. If so, I’d love to hear about your solution…leave me some feedback! You’ll be entered into a drawing for a chance to win an autographed picture of ME! Yay!

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• Creating a Training Lab on Windows Azure

  - by Michael Stephenson

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/michaelstephenson/archive/2013/06/17/153149.aspxThis week we are preparing for a training course that Alan Smith will be running for the support teams at one of my customers around Windows Azure. In order to facilitate the training lab we have a few prerequisites we need to handle. One of the biggest ones is that although the support team all have MSDN accounts the local desktops they work on are not ideal for running most of the labs as we want to give them some additional developer background training around Azure. Some recent Azure announcements really help us in this area: MSDN software can now be used on Azure VM You don't pay for Azure VM's when they are no longer used  Since the support team only have limited experience of Windows Azure and the organisation also have an Enterprise Agreement we decided it would be best value for money to spin up a training lab in a subscription on the EA and then we can turn the machines off when we are done. At the same time we would be able to spin them back up when the users need to do some additional lab work once the training course is completed. In order to achieve this I wanted to create a powershell script which would setup my training lab. The aim was to create 18 VM's which would be based on a prebuilt template with Visual Studio and the Azure development tools. The script I used is described below The Start & Variables The below text will setup the powershell environment and some variables which I will use elsewhere in the script. It will also import the Azure Powershell cmdlets. You can see below that I will need to download my publisher settings file and know some details from my Azure account. At this point I will assume you have a basic understanding of Azure & Powershell so already know how to do this. Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestrictedcls $startTime = get-dateImport-Module "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Azure\PowerShell\Azure\Azure.psd1"# Azure Publisher Settings $azurePublisherSettings = '<Your settings file>.publishsettings'  # Subscription Details $subscriptionName = "<Your subscription name>" $defaultStorageAccount = "<Your default storage account>"  # Affinity Group Details $affinityGroup = '<Your affinity group>' $dataCenter = 'West Europe' # From Get-AzureLocation  # VM Details $baseVMName = 'TRN' $adminUserName = '<Your admin username>' $password = '<Your admin password>' $size = 'Medium' $vmTemplate = '<The name of your VM template image>' $rdpFilePath = '<File path to save RDP files to>' $machineSettingsPath = '<File path to save machine info to>'    Functions In the next section of the script I have some functions which are used to perform certain actions. The first is called CreateVM. This will do the following actions: If the VM already exists it will be deleted Create the cloud service Create the VM from the template I have created Add an endpoint so we can RDP to them all over the same port Download the RDP file so there is a short cut the trainees can easily access the machine via Write settings for the machine to a log file  function CreateVM($machineNo) { # Specify a name for the new VM $machineName = "$baseVMName-$machineNo" Write-Host "Creating VM: $machineName"       # Get the Azure VM Image      $myImage = Get-AzureVMImage $vmTemplate   #If the VM already exists delete and re-create it $existingVm = Get-AzureVM -Name $machineName -ServiceName $serviceName if($existingVm -ne $null) { Write-Host "VM already exists so deleting it" Remove-AzureVM -Name $machineName -ServiceName $serviceName }   "Creating Service" $serviceName = "bupa-azure-train-$machineName" Remove-AzureService -Force -ServiceName $serviceName New-AzureService -Location $dataCenter -ServiceName $serviceName   Write-Host "Creating VM: $machineName" New-AzureQuickVM -Windows -name $machineName -ServiceName $serviceName -ImageName $myImage.ImageName -InstanceSize $size -AdminUsername $adminUserName -Password $password  Write-Host "Updating the RDP endpoint for $machineName" Get-AzureVM -name $machineName -ServiceName $serviceName ` | Add-AzureEndpoint -Name RDP -Protocol TCP -LocalPort 3389 -PublicPort 550 ` | Update-AzureVM    Write-Host "Get the RDP File for machine $machineName" $machineRDPFilePath = "$rdpFilePath\$machineName.rdp" Get-AzureRemoteDesktopFile -name $machineName -ServiceName $serviceName -LocalPath "$machineRDPFilePath"   WriteMachineSettings "$machineName" "$serviceName" }    The delete machine settings function is used to delete the log file before we start re-running the process.  function DeleteMachineSettings() { Write-Host "Deleting the machine settings output file" [System.IO.File]::Delete("$machineSettingsPath"); }    The write machine settings function will get the VM and then record its details to the log file. The importance of the log file is that I can easily provide the information for all of the VM's to our infrastructure team to be able to configure access to all of the VM's    function WriteMachineSettings([string]$vmName, [string]$vmServiceName) { Write-Host "Writing to the machine settings output file"   $vm = Get-AzureVM -name $vmName -ServiceName $vmServiceName $vmEndpoint = Get-AzureEndpoint -VM $vm -Name RDP   $sb = new-object System.Text.StringBuilder $sb.Append("Service Name: "); $sb.Append($vm.ServiceName); $sb.Append(", "); $sb.Append("VM: "); $sb.Append($vm.Name); $sb.Append(", "); $sb.Append("RDP Public Port: "); $sb.Append($vmEndpoint.Port); $sb.Append(", "); $sb.Append("Public DNS: "); $sb.Append($vmEndpoint.Vip); $sb.AppendLine(""); [System.IO.File]::AppendAllText($machineSettingsPath, $sb.ToString());  } # end functions    Rest of Script In the rest of the script it is really just the bit that orchestrates the actions we want to happen. It will load the publisher settings, select the Azure subscription and then loop around the CreateVM function and create 16 VM's  Import-AzurePublishSettingsFile $azurePublisherSettings Set-AzureSubscription -SubscriptionName $subscriptionName -CurrentStorageAccount $defaultStorageAccount Select-AzureSubscription -SubscriptionName $subscriptionName  DeleteMachineSettings    "Starting creating Bupa International Azure Training Lab" $numberOfVMs = 16  for ($index=1; $index -le $numberOfVMs; $index++) { $vmNo = "$index" CreateVM($vmNo); }    "Finished creating Bupa International Azure Training Lab" # Give it a Minute Start-Sleep -s 60  $endTime = get-date "Script run time " + ($endTime - $startTime)    Conclusion As you can see there is nothing too fancy about this script but in our case of creating a small isolated training lab which is not connected to our corporate network then we can easily use this to provision the lab. Im sure if this is of use to anyone you can easily modify it to do other things with the lab environment too. A couple of points to note are that there are some soft limits in Azure about the number of cores and services your subscription can use. You may need to contact the Azure support team to be able to increase this limit. In terms of the real business value of this approach, it was not possible to use the existing desktops to do the training on, and getting some internal virtual machines would have been relatively expensive and time consuming for our ops team to do. With the Azure option we are able to spin these machines up for a temporary period during the training course and then throw them away when we are done. We expect the costing of this test lab to be very small, especially considering we have EA pricing. As a ball park I think my 18 lab VM training environment will cost in the region of $80 per day on our EA. This is a fraction of the cost of the creation of a single VM on premise.

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• Top 10 Browser Productivity Tips

  - by Renso

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/renso/archive/2013/10/14/top-10-browser-productivity-tips.aspxYou don’t have to be a geek to be a productive browser user. The tips below have been selected by actions users take most of the time to navigate a web-site but use long-standing keyboard or mouse actions to get them done, when there are keyboard short-cuts you can use instead. Since you hands are already on the keyboard it is almost always faster to sue a keyboard shortcut to get something done that you usually used the mouse for. For example right-clicking on something to copy it and then doing to same for pasting something is very time consuming, keyboard shortcuts have been created that simplify the task. All it takes are a few memory brain cells to remember them. Here are the tips, in no particular order:   Tip 1 Hold down the spacebar on your keyboard to page to the end of your web page rather than using your mouse. This is really a slow way of doing it. If you want to page one page at a time, hit the spacebar once, and again to page again. But if you want to page all the way to the end of the web page simply hit Ctrl+End (that is hold down the Ctrl key and hit the End button on your keyboard). To get to the top of your web page, simply hit Ctrl + Home to go all the way to the top of your web page. Tip 2 Where are my downloads? Some folks run downloads again-and-again because they do not know where the last one went and they do not see the popup, or browser note on their web page in the footer, etc. Simply hit Ctrl+J. Works in most browsers. Tip 3 Selecting a US state from a drop down box. Don’t use the mouse, takes just way too long to scroll. When you tab to the drop down box or click on it with your mouse, simply hit the first character of the state and it will be selected. For Texas for example hit the letter “T” twice on your keyboard to get to it. The same concept can be applied to any drop down box that is alphabetical or numerically sorted. Tip 4 Fixing spelling errors. All modern-day browsers support this now. You see the red wavy lines underscoring a word, yes it is a spelling error. How do you fix it? Don’t overtype it or try and fix it manually, fist right-click on it and a list of suggestions comes up. If it does not show up, like my name “Renso” and you know how to spell your name as in this example, look further down the list of options (the little window popup that appears when you right click) and you should see an option to “Add to Dictionary”. Be warned, when you add it, it only adds it to the browser you’re using’s dictionary. If you use Google Chrome, Firefox and IE, each one will have their own list. Tip 5 So you have trouble seeing the text on the screen. Or you are looking at a photo, for example in Facebook. You want to zoom in to read better or zoom into a photo a bit more. Hit Ctrl++ (hold down Ctrl key and hit the plus key – actually it’s the equal key but it is easier to remember that it is plus for bigger). Hit the minus to zoom out. Now you can’t remember what the original size was since you were so excited to hit it 20 times, or was that 21… Simply hit Ctrl+0 (that is zero) and it will reset it to the default. Tip 6 So you closed a couple of tabs in your browser. Suddenly you remember something you wanted to double-check something on one of the tabs, you cannot remember the URL ad the tab is gone forever, or is it? Simply hit Ctrl+Shift+t and it will bring back your tabs one by one each time you click the T. This has also been a great way for me to quickly close some tabs because I don’t want my boss to see I’m shopping and then hitting Ctrl+Shift+t to quickly get it back and complete my check-put and purchase. Or, for parents, when you walk into your daughter’s room and you see she quickly clicks and closes a window/tab in here browser. Not to worry my little darling, daddy will Ctrl+Shift+t and see what boys on Facebook you were talking too… Tip 7 The web browser is frozen on your PC/Laptop/Whatever, in this example it may be your Internet Explorer browser. I don’t mention Firefox or Chrome here because it probably never happens in their world. You cannot close it, it won’t respond to anything you have done s far except for the next step you are about to take, which is throw your two-day old coffee on your keyboard. This happens especially on sites that want to force you to complete a purchase order. Hit Ctrl+Alt+Del on your keyboard on any version of windows, select TASK MANAGER. In the  First Tab, which is the Process Tab, look for the item in question. In this example you should see Internet Explorer. Right-click it and select “End Task”. It will force the thread out of memory and terminate that process. You can of course do this with any program running under your account. Tip 8 This is a personal favorite of mine. To select words in the paragraph without using the mouse. You don’t want to select one character at a time like when you use the Ctrl+arrows as it can be very slow if you want to select a lot of text. You also want to select whole words. Simply use the Ctrl+Shift_arrow (right or left depending which direction you want to go. Tip 9 I was a bit reluctant to add this one, but being in the professional services industry still come across many-a-folk that simply can’t copy-and-paste them-all text or images that reside on them screens, y’all. Ctrl+c to copy and Ctrl+v to paste it. Works a lot faster than using the mouse. You may be asking: “Well why in the devil did they not use Ctrl+p for paste…. because that is for printing. This is of course not limited to the browser world, it applies to almost any piece of software running on PC or Mac. Go try it on an image on your browser, right-click it and select copy. Open a word document and Ctrl+v to paste the image in there. Please consider copyright laws. Tip 10 Getting rid of annoying ads. Now this only works when you load a web page, meaning when you get back to the same page later you will have to do this again and you will need to learn a tool to do it, WELL WORTH IT. For example, I use GrooveShark to listen to music but I don’t like the ads they show. Install a tool like Firebug for Firefox or use the Ctrl+Shift+I on Chrome to bring up the developer toolbar. Shows at the bottom of the page. With Firefox, once you have installed Firebug as an add-on, a yellow bug should appear on the top right-hand-side of your browser, click on it to display the developer toolbar. You will need to learn how to use it, but once you know how to select an item/section on the window (usually just right-click the add you don’t want to see and select “Inspect Element”, the developer toolbar will appear (if not already there)) and then simply hit delete and it will remove the add from the screen. If you don’t know HTML you may need to play with it a bit, but once you understand how it works can open up a whole new world for you on how web pages actually work. If you can think of any others that have saved you a ton of time please let me know so I can add them to a top 99 list.

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