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• The Future of Project Management is Social

  - by Natalia Rachelson

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} A guest post by Kazim Isfahani, Director, Product Marketing, Oracle Rapid Ascent. Breakneck Speed. Lightning Fast. Perhaps even overwhelming. No matter which set of adjectives we use to describe it, social media’s rise into the enterprise mainstream has been unprecedented. Indeed, the big 4 social media powerhouses (Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Twitter), have nearly 2 Billion users between them. You may be asking (as you should really) “That’s all well and good for the consumer, but for me at my company, what’s your point? Beyond the fact that I can check and post updates, that is.” Good question, kind sir. Impact of Social and Collaboration on Project Management I’ll dovetail this discussion to the project management realm, since that’s what I’m writing about. Speed is a big challenge for project-driven organizations. Anything that can help speed up project delivery - be it a new product introduction effort or a geographical expansion project - fast is a good thing. So where does this whole social thing fit particularly since there are already a host of tools to help with traditional project execution? The fact is companies have seen improvements in their productivity by deploying departmental collaboration and other social-oriented solutions. McKinsey’s survey on social tools shows we have reached critical scale: 72% of respondents report that their companies use at least one and over 40% say they are using social networks and blogs. We don’t hear as much about the impact of social media technologies at the project and project manager level, but that does not mean there is none. Consider the new hire. The type of individual entering the workforce and executing on projects is a generation of worker expecting visually appealing, easy to use and easy to understand technology meshing hand-in-hand with business processes. Consider the project manager. The social era has enhanced the role that the project manager must play. Today’s project manager must be a supreme communicator, an influencer, a sympathizer, a negotiator, and still manage to keep all stakeholders in the loop on project progress. Social tools play a significant role in this effort. Now consider the impact to the project team. The way that a project team functions has changed, with newer, social oriented technologies making the process of information dissemination and team communications much more fluid. It’s clear that a shift is occurring where “social” is intersecting with project management. The Rise of Social Project Management We refer to the melding of project management and social networking as Social Project Management. Social Project Management is based upon the philosophy that the project team is one part of an integrated whole, and that valuable and unique abilities exist within the larger organization. For this reason, Social Project Management systems should be integrated into the collaborative platform(s) of an organization, allowing communication to proceed outside the project boundaries. What makes social project management "social" is an implicit awareness where distributed teams build connected links in ways that were previously restricted to teams that were co-located. Just as critical, Social Project Management embraces the vision of seamless online collaboration within a project team, but also provides for, (and enhances) the use of rigorous project management techniques. Social Project Management acknowledges that projects (particularly large projects) are a social activity - people doing work with people, for other people, with commitments to yet other people. The more people (larger projects), the more interpersonal the interactions, and the more social affects the project. The Epitome of Social - Fusion Project Portfolio Management If I take this one level further to discuss Fusion Project Portfolio Management, the notion of Social Project Management is on full display. With Fusion Project Portfolio Management, project team members have a single place for interaction on projects and access to any other resources working within the Fusion ERP applications. This allows team members the opportunity to be informed with greater participation and provide better information. The application’s the visual appeal, and highly graphical nature makes it easy to navigate information. The project activity stream adds to the intuitive user experience. The goal of productivity is pervasive throughout Fusion Project Portfolio Management. Field research conducted with Oracle customers and partners showed that users needed a way to stay in the context of their core transactions and yet easily access social networking tools. This is manifested in the application so when a user executes a business process, they not only have the transactional application at their fingertips, but also have things like e-mail, SMS, text, instant messaging, chat – all providing a number of different ways to interact with people and/or groups of people, both internal and external to the project and enterprise. But in the end, connecting people is relatively easy. The larger issue is finding a way to serve up relevant, system-generated, actionable information, in real time, which will allow for more streamlined execution on key business processes. Fusion Project Portfolio Management’s design concept enables users to create project communities, establish discussion threads, manage event calendars as well as deliver project based work spaces to organize communications within the context of a project – all within a secure business environment. We’d love to hear from you and get your thoughts and ideas about how Social Project Management is impacting your organization. To learn more about Oracle Fusion Project Portfolio Management, please visit this link

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• Behavior Driven Development (BDD) and DevExpress XAF

  - by Patrick Liekhus

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

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• Expectations + Rewards = Innovation

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  “Innovation” is a heavy word. We regard those that embrace it as “Innovators”. We describe organizations as being “Innovative”. We hold those associated with the word in high regard, even though its dictionary definition is very simple: Introducing something new. What our culture has done is wrapped Innovation in white robes and a gold crown. Innovation is rarely just introducing something new. Innovations and innovators are typically associated with other terms: groundbreaking, genius, industry-changing, creative, leading. Being a true innovator and creating innovations are a big deal, and something companies try to strive for…or at least say they strive for. There’s huge value in being recognized as an innovator in an industry, since the idea is that innovation equates to increased profitability. IBM ran an ad a few years back that showed what their view of innovation is: “The point of innovation is to make actual money.” If the money aspect makes you feel uneasy, consider it another way: the point of innovation is to <insert payoff here>. Companies that innovate will be more successful. Non-profits that innovate can better serve their target clients. Governments that innovate can better provide services to their citizens. True innovation is not easy to come by though. As with anything in business, how well an organization will innovate is reliant on the employees it retains, the expectations placed on those employees, and the rewards available to them. In a previous blog post I talked about one formula: Right Employees + Happy Employees = Productive Employees I want to introduce a new one, that builds upon the previous one: Expectations + Rewards = Innovation  The level of innovation your organization will realize is directly associated with the expectations you place on your staff and the rewards you make available to them. Expectations We may feel uncomfortable with the idea of placing expectations on our staff, mainly because expectation has somewhat of a negative or cold connotation to it: “I expect you to act this way or else!” The problem is in the or-else part…we focus on the negative aspects of failing to meet expectations instead of looking at the positive side. “I expect you to act this way because it will produce <insert benefit here>”. Expectations should not be set to punish but instead be set to ensure quality. At a recent conference I spoke with some Microsoft employees who told me that you have five years from starting with the company to reach a “Senior” level. If you don’t, then you’re let go. The expectation Microsoft placed on their staff is that they should be working towards improving themselves, taking more responsibility, and thus ensure that there is a constant level of quality in the workforce. Rewards Let me be clear: a paycheck is not a reward. A paycheck is simply the employer’s responsibility in the employee/employer relationship. A paycheck will never be the key motivator to drive innovation. Offering employees something over and above their required compensation can spur them to greater performance and achievement. Working in the food service industry, this tactic was used again and again: whoever has the highest sales over lunch will receive a free lunch/gift certificate/entry into a draw/etc. There was something to strive for, to try beyond the baseline of what our serving jobs were. It was through this that innovative sales techniques would be tried and honed, with key servers being top sellers time and time again. At a code camp I spoke at, I was amazed to see that all the employees from one company receive $100 Visa gift cards as a thank you for taking time to speak. Again, offering something over and above that can give that extra push for employees. Rewards work. But what about the fairness angle? In the restaurant example I gave, there were servers that would never win the competition. They just weren’t good enough at selling and never seemed to get better. So should those that did work at performing better and produce more sales for the restaurant not get rewarded because those who weren’t working at performing better might get upset? Of course not! Organizations succeed because of their top performers and those that strive to join their ranks. The Expectation/Reward Graph While the Expectations + Rewards = Innovation formula may seem like a simple mathematics formula, there’s much more going under the hood. In fact there are three different outcomes that could occur based on what you put in as values for Expectations and Rewards. Consider the graph below and the descriptions that follow: Disgruntled – High Expectation, Low Reward I worked at a company where the mantra was “Company First, Because We Pay You”. Even today I still hear stories of how this sentiment continues to be perpetuated: They provide you a paycheck and a means to live, therefore you should always put them as your top priority. Of course, this is a huge imbalance in the expectation/reward equation. Why would anyone willingly meet high expectations of availability, workload, deadlines, etc. when there is no reward other than a paycheck to show for it? Remember: paychecks are not rewards! Instead, you see employees be disgruntled which not only affects the level of production but also the level of quality within an organization. It also means that you see higher turnover. Complacent – Low Expectation, Low Reward Complacency is a systemic problem that typically exists throughout all levels of an organization. With no real expectations or rewards, nobody needs to excel. In fact, those that do try to innovate, improve, or introduce new things into the organization might be shunned or pushed out by the rest of the staff who are just doing things the same way they’ve always done it. The bigger issue for the organization with low/low values is that at best they’ll never grow beyond their current size (and may shrink actually), and at worst will cease to exist. Entitled – Low Expectation, High Reward It’s one thing to say you have the best people and reward them as such, but its another thing to actually have the best people and reward them as such. Organizations with Entitled employees are the former: their organization provides them with all types of comforts, benefits, and perks. But there’s no requirement before the rewards are dolled out, and there’s no short-list of who receives the rewards. Everyone in the company is treated the same and is given equal share of the spoils. Entitlement is actually almost identical with Complacency with one notable difference: just try to introduce higher expectations into an entitled organization! Entitled employees have been spoiled for so long that they can’t fathom having rewards taken from them, or having to achieve specific levels of performance before attaining them. Those running the organization also buy in to the Entitled sentiment, feeling that they must persist the same level of comforts to appease their staff…even though the quality of the employee pool may be suspect. Innovative – High Expectation, High Reward Finally we have the Innovative organization which places high expectations but also provides high rewards. This organization gets it: if you truly want the best employees you need to apply equal doses of pressure and praise. Realize that I’m not suggesting crazy overtime or un-realistic working conditions. I do not agree with the “Glengary-Glenross” method of encouragement. But as anyone who follows sports can tell you, the teams that win are the ones where the coaches push their players to be their best; to achieve new levels of performance that they didn’t know they could receive. And the result for the players is more money, fame, and opportunity. It’s in this environment that organizations can focus on innovation – true innovation that builds the business and allows everyone involved to truly benefit. In Closing Organizations love to use the word “Innovation” and its derivatives, but very few actually do innovate. For many, the term has just become another marketing buzzword to lump in with all the other business terms that get overused. But for those organizations that truly get the value of innovation, they will be the ones surging forward while other companies simply fade into the background. And they will be the organizations that expect more from their employees, and give them their just rewards.

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• Book Review: Brownfield Application Development in .NET

  - by DotNetBlues

  I recently finished reading the book Brownfield Application Development in .NET by Kyle Baley and Donald Belcham.  The book is available from Manning.  First off, let me say that I'm a huge fan of Manning as a publisher.  I've found their books to be top-quality, over all.  As a Kindle owner, I also appreciate getting an ebook copy along with the dead tree copy.  I find ebooks to be much more convenient to read, but hard-copies are easier to reference. The book covers, surprisingly enough, working with brownfield applications.  Which is well and good, if that term has meaning to you.  It didn't for me.  Without retreading a chunk of the first chapter, the authors break code bases into three broad categories: greenfield, brownfield, and legacy.  Greenfield is, essentially, new development that hasn't had time to rust and is (hopefully) being approached with some discipline.  Legacy applications are those that are more or less stable and functional, that do not expect to see a lot of work done to them, and are more likely to be replaced than reworked. Brownfield code is the gray (brown?) area between the two and the authors argue, quite effectively, that it is the most likely state for an application to be in.  Brownfield code has, in some way, been allowed to tarnish around the edges and can be difficult to work with.  Although I hadn't realized it, most of the code I've worked on has been brownfield.  Sometimes, there's talk of scrapping and starting over.  Sometimes, the team dismisses increased discipline as ivory tower nonsense.  And, sometimes, I've been the ignorant culprit vexing my future self. The book is broken into two major sections, plus an introduction chapter and an appendix.  The first section covers what the authors refer to as "The Ecosystem" which consists of version control, build and integration, testing, metrics, and defect management.  The second section is on actually writing code for brownfield applications and discusses object-oriented principles, architecture, external dependencies, and, of course, how to deal with these when coming into an existing code base. The ecosystem section is just shy of 140 pages long and brings some real meat to the matter.  The focus on "pain points" immediately sets the tone as problem-solution, rather than academic.  The authors also approach some of the topics from a different angle than some essays I've read on similar topics.  For example, the chapter on automated testing is on just that -- automated testing.  It's all well and good to criticize a project as conflating integration tests with unit tests, but it really doesn't make anyone's life better.  The discussion on testing is more focused on the "right" level of testing for existing projects.  Sometimes, an integration test is the best you can do without gutting a section of functional code.  Even if you can sell other developers and/or management on doing so, it doesn't actually provide benefit to your customers to rewrite code that works.  This isn't to say the authors encourage sloppy coding.  Far from it.  Just that they point out the wisdom of ignoring the sleeping bear until after you deal with the snarling wolf. The other sections take a similarly real-world, workable approach to the pain points they address.  As the section moves from technical solutions like version control and continuous integration (CI) to the softer, process issues of metrics and defect tracking, the authors begin to gently suggest moving toward a zero defect count.  While that really sounds like an unreasonable goal for a lot of ongoing projects, it's quite apparent that the authors have first-hand experience with taming some gruesome projects.  The suggestions are grounded and workable, and the difficulty of some situations is explicitly acknowledged. I have to admit that I started getting bored by the end of the ecosystem section.  No matter how valuable I think a good project manager or business analyst is to a successful ALM, at the end of the day, I'm a gear-head.  Also, while I agreed with a lot of the ecosystem ideas, in theory, I didn't necessarily feel that a lot of the single-developer projects that I'm often involved in really needed that level of rigor.  It's only after reading the sidebars and commentary in the coding section that I had the context for the arguments made in favor of a strong ecosystem supporting the development process.  That isn't to say that I didn't support good product management -- indeed, I've probably pushed too hard, on occasion, for a strong ALM outside of just development.  This book gave me deeper insight into why some corners shouldn't be cut and how damaging certain sins of omission can be. The code section, though, kept me engaged for its entirety.  Many technical books can be used as reference material from day one.  The authors were clear, however, that this book is not one of these.  The first chapter of the section (chapter seven, over all) addresses object oriented (OO) practices.  I've read any number of definitions, discussions, and treatises on OO.  None of the chapter was new to me, but it was a good review, and I'm of the opinion that it's good to review the foundations of what you do, from time to time, so I didn't mind. The remainder of the book is really just about how to apply OOP to existing code -- and, just because all your code exists in classes does not mean that it's object oriented.  That topic has the potential to be extremely condescending, but the authors miraculously managed to never once make me feel like a dolt or that they were wagging their finger at me for my prior sins.  Instead, they continue the "pain points" and problem-solution presentation to give concrete examples of how to apply some pretty academic-sounding ideas.  That's a point worth emphasizing, as my experience with most OO discussions is that they stay in the academic realm.  This book gives some very, very good explanations of why things like the Liskov Substitution Principle exist and why a corporate programmer should even care.  Even if you know, with absolute certainty, that you'll never have to work on an existing code-base, I would recommend this book just for the clarity it provides on OOP. This book goes beyond just theory, or even real-world application.  It presents some methods for fixing problems that any developer can, and probably will, encounter in the wild.  First, the authors address refactoring application layers and internal dependencies.  Then, they take you through those layers from the UI to the data access layer and external dependencies.  Finally, they come full circle to tie it all back to the overall process.  By the time the book is done, you're left with a lot of ideas, but also a reasonable plan to begin to improve an existing project structure. Throughout the book, it's apparent that the authors have their own preferred methodology (TDD and domain-driven design), as well as some preferred tools.  The "Our .NET Toolbox" is something of a neon sign pointing to that latter point.  They do not beat the reader over the head with anything resembling a "One True Way" mentality.  Even for the most emphatic points, the tone is quite congenial and helpful.  With some of the near-theological divides that exist within the tech community, I found this to be one of the more remarkable characteristics of the book.  Although the authors favor tools that might be considered Alt.NET, there is no reason the advice and techniques given couldn't be quite successful in a pure Microsoft shop with Team Foundation Server.  For that matter, even though the book specifically addresses .NET, it could be applied to a Java and Oracle shop, as well.

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• Computer Networks UNISA - Chap 10 &ndash; In Depth TCP/IP Networking

  - by MarkPearl

  After reading this section you should be able to Understand methods of network design unique to TCP/IP networks, including subnetting, CIDR, and address translation Explain the differences between public and private TCP/IP networks Describe protocols used between mail clients and mail servers, including SMTP, POP3, and IMAP4 Employ multiple TCP/IP utilities for network discovery and troubleshooting Designing TCP/IP-Based Networks The following sections explain how network and host information in an IPv4 address can be manipulated to subdivide networks into smaller segments. Subnetting Subnetting separates a network into multiple logically defined segments, or subnets. Networks are commonly subnetted according to geographic locations, departmental boundaries, or technology types. A network administrator might separate traffic to accomplish the following… Enhance security Improve performance Simplify troubleshooting The challenges of Classful Addressing in IPv4 (No subnetting) The simplest type of IPv4 is known as classful addressing (which was the Class A, Class B & Class C network addresses). Classful addressing has the following limitations. Restriction in the number of usable IPv4 addresses (class C would be limited to 254 addresses) Difficult to separate traffic from various parts of a network Because of the above reasons, subnetting was introduced. IPv4 Subnet Masks Subnetting depends on the use of subnet masks to identify how a network is subdivided. A subnet mask indicates where network information is located in an IPv4 address. The 1 in a subnet mask indicates that corresponding bits in the IPv4 address contain network information (likewise 0 indicates the opposite) Each network class is associated with a default subnet mask… Class A = 255.0.0.0 Class B = 255.255.0.0 Class C = 255.255.255.0 An example of calculating  the network ID for a particular device with a subnet mask is shown below.. IP Address = 199.34.89.127 Subnet Mask = 255.255.255.0 Resultant Network ID = 199.34.89.0 IPv4 Subnetting Techniques Subnetting breaks the rules of classful IPv4 addressing. Read page 490 for a detailed explanation Calculating IPv4 Subnets Read page 491 – 494 for an explanation Important… Subnetting only applies to the devices internal to your network. Everything external looks at the class of the IP address instead of the subnet network ID. This way, traffic directed to your network externally still knows where to go, and once it has entered your internal network it can then be prioritized and segmented. CIDR (classless Interdomain Routing) CIDR is also known as classless routing or supernetting. In CIDR conventional network class distinctions do not exist, a subnet boundary can move to the left, therefore generating more usable IP addresses on your network. A subnet created by moving the subnet boundary to the left is known as a supernet. With CIDR also came new shorthand for denoting the position of subnet boundaries known as CIDR notation or slash notation. CIDR notation takes the form of the network ID followed by a forward slash (/) followed by the number of bits that are used for the extended network prefix. To take advantage of classless routing, your networks routers must be able to interpret IP addresses that don;t adhere to conventional network class parameters. Routers that rely on older routing protocols (i.e. RIP) are not capable of interpreting classless IP addresses. Internet Gateways Gateways are a combination of software and hardware that enable two different network segments to exchange data. A gateway facilitates communication between different networks or subnets. Because on device cannot send data directly to a device on another subnet, a gateway must intercede and hand off the information. Every device on a TCP/IP based network has a default gateway (a gateway that first interprets its outbound requests to other subnets, and then interprets its inbound requests from other subnets). The internet contains a vast number of routers and gateways. If each gateway had to track addressing information for every other gateway on the Internet, it would be overtaxed. Instead, each handles only a relatively small amount of addressing information, which it uses to forward data to another gateway that knows more about the data’s destination. The gateways that make up the internet backbone are called core gateways. Address Translation An organizations default gateway can also be used to “hide” the organizations internal IP addresses and keep them from being recognized on a public network. A public network is one that any user may access with little or no restrictions. On private networks, hiding IP addresses allows network managers more flexibility in assigning addresses. Clients behind a gateway may use any IP addressing scheme, regardless of whether it is recognized as legitimate by the Internet authorities but as soon as those devices need to go on the internet, they must have legitimate IP addresses to exchange data. When a clients transmission reaches the default gateway, the gateway opens the IP datagram and replaces the client’s private IP address with an Internet recognized IP address. This process is known as NAT (Network Address Translation). TCP/IP Mail Services All Internet mail services rely on the same principles of mail delivery, storage, and pickup, though they may use different types of software to accomplish these functions. Email servers and clients communicate through special TCP/IP application layer protocols. These protocols, all of which operate on a variety of operating systems are discussed below… SMTP (Simple Mail transfer Protocol) The protocol responsible for moving messages from one mail server to another over TCP/IP based networks. SMTP belongs to the application layer of the ODI model and relies on TCP as its transport protocol. Operates from port 25 on the SMTP server Simple sub-protocol, incapable of doing anything more than transporting mail or holding it in a queue MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) The standard message format specified by SMTP allows for lines that contain no more than 1000 ascii characters meaning if you relied solely on SMTP you would have very short messages and nothing like pictures included in an email. MIME us a standard for encoding and interpreting binary files, images, video, and non-ascii character sets within an email message. MIME identifies each element of a mail message according to content type. MIME does not replace SMTP but works in conjunction with it. Most modern email clients and servers support MIME POP (Post Office Protocol) POP is an application layer protocol used to retrieve messages from a mail server POP3 relies on TCP and operates over port 110 With POP3 mail is delivered and stored on a mail server until it is downloaded by a user Disadvantage of POP3 is that it typically does not allow users to save their messages on the server because of this IMAP is sometimes used IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) IMAP is a retrieval protocol that was developed as a more sophisticated alternative to POP3 The single biggest advantage IMAP4 has over POP3 is that users can store messages on the mail server, rather than having to continually download them Users can retrieve all or only a portion of any mail message Users can review their messages and delete them while the messages remain on the server Users can create sophisticated methods of organizing messages on the server Users can share a mailbox in a central location Disadvantages of IMAP are typically related to the fact that it requires more storage space on the server. Additional TCP/IP Utilities Nearly all TCP/IP utilities can be accessed from the command prompt on any type of server or client running TCP/IP. The syntaxt may differ depending on the OS of the client. Below is a list of additional TCP/IP utilities – research their use on your own! Ipconfig (Windows) & Ifconfig (Linux) Netstat Nbtstat Hostname, Host & Nslookup Dig (Linux) Whois (Linux) Traceroute (Tracert) Mtr (my traceroute) Route

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• Delight and Excite

  - by Applications User Experience

  Mick McGee, CEO & President, EchoUser Editor’s Note: EchoUser is a User Experience design firm in San Francisco and a member of the Oracle Usability Advisory Board. Mick and his staff regularly consult on Oracle Applications UX projects. Being part of a user experience design firm, we have the luxury of working with a lot of great people across many great companies. We get to help people solve their problems.  At least we used to. The basic design challenge is still the same; however, the goal is not necessarily to solve “problems” anymore; it is, “I want our products to delight and excite!” The question for us as UX professionals is how to design to those goals, and then how to assess them from a usability perspective. I’m not sure where I first heard “delight and excite” (A book? blog post? Facebook  status? Steve Jobs quote?), but now I hear these listed as user experience goals all the time. In particular, somewhat paradoxically, I routinely hear them in enterprise software conversations. And when asking these same enterprise companies what will make the project successful, we very often hear, “Make it like Apple.” In past days, it was “make it like Yahoo (or Amazon or Google“) but now Apple is the common benchmark. Steve Jobs and Apple were not secrets, but with Jobs’ passing and Apple becoming the world’s most valuable company in the last year, the impact of great design and experience is suddenly very widespread. In particular, users’ expectations have gone way up. Being an enterprise company is no shield to the general expectations that users now have, for all products. Designing a “Minimum Viable Product” The user experience challenge has historically been, to echo the words of Eric Ries (author of Lean Startup) , to create a “minimum viable product”: the proverbial, “make it good enough”. But, in our profession, the “minimum viable” part of that phrase has oftentimes, unfortunately, referred to the design and user experience. Technology typically dominated the focus of the biggest, most successful companies. Few have had the laser focus of Apple to also create and sell design and user experience alongside great technology. But now that Apple is the most valuable company in the world, copying their success is a common undertaking. Great design is now a premium offering that everyone wants, from the one-person startup to the largest companies, consumer and enterprise. This emerging business paradigm will have significant impact across the user experience design process and profession. One area that particularly interests me is, how are we going to evaluate these new emerging “delight and excite” experiences, which are further customized to each particular domain? How to Measure “Delight and Excite” Traditional usability measures of task completion rate, assists, time, and errors are still extremely useful in many situations; however, they are too blunt to offer much insight into emerging experiences “Satisfaction” is usually assessed in user testing, in roughly equivalent importance to the above objective metrics. Various surveys and scales have provided ways to measure satisfying UX, with whatever questions they include. However, to meet the demands of new business goals and keep users at the center of design and development processes, we have to explore new methods to better capture custom-experience goals and emotion-driven user responses. We have had success assessing custom experiences, including “delight and excite”, by employing a variety of user testing methods that tend to combine formative and summative techniques (formative being focused more on identifying usability issues and ways to improve design, and summative focused more on metrics). Our most successful tool has been one we’ve been using for a long time, Magnitude Estimation Technique (MET). But it’s not necessarily about MET as a measure, rather how it is created. Caption: For one client, EchoUser did two rounds of testing.  Each test was a mix of performing representative tasks and gathering qualitative impressions. Each user participated in an in-person moderated 1-on-1 session for 1 hour, using a testing set-up where they held the phone. The primary goal was to identify usability issues and recommend design improvements. MET is based on a definition of the desired experience, which users will then use to rate items of interest (usually tasks in a usability test). In other words, a custom experience definition needs to be created. This can then be used to measure satisfaction in accomplishing tasks; “delight and excite”; or anything else from strategic goals, user demands, or elsewhere. For reference, our standard MET definition in usability testing is: “User experience is your perception of how easy to use, well designed and productive an interface is to complete tasks.” Articulating the User Experience We’ve helped construct experience definitions for several clients to better match their business goals. One example is a modification of the above that was needed for a company that makes medical-related products: “User experience is your perception of how easy to use, well-designed, productive and safe an interface is for conducting tasks. ‘Safe’ is how free an environment (including devices, software, facilities, people, etc.) is from danger, risk, and injury.” Another example is from a company that is pushing hard to incorporate “delight” into their enterprise business line: “User experience is your perception of a product’s ease of use and learning, satisfaction and delight in design, and ability to accomplish objectives.” I find the last one particularly compelling in that there is little that identifies the experience as being for a highly technical enterprise application. That definition could easily be applied to any number of consumer products. We have gone further than the above, including “sexy” and “cool” where decision-makers insisted they were part of the desired experience. We also applied it to completely different experiences where the “interface” was, for example, riding public transit, the “tasks” were train rides, and we followed the participants through the train-riding journey and rated various aspects accordingly: “A good public transportation experience is a cost-effective way of reliably, conveniently, and safely getting me to my intended destination on time.” To construct these definitions, we’ve employed both bottom-up and top-down approaches, depending on circumstances. For bottom-up, user inputs help dictate the terms that best fit the desired experience (usually by way of cluster and factor analysis). Top-down depends on strategic, visionary goals expressed by upper management that we then attempt to integrate into product development (e.g., “delight and excite”). We like a combination of both approaches to push the innovation envelope, but still be mindful of current user concerns. Hopefully the idea of crafting your own custom experience, and a way to measure it, can provide you with some ideas how you can adapt your user experience needs to whatever company you are in. Whether product-development or service-oriented, nearly every company is ultimately providing a user experience. The Bottom Line Creating great experiences may have been popularized by Steve Jobs and Apple, but I’ll be honest, it’s a good feeling to be moving from “good enough” to “delight and excite,” despite the challenge that entails. In fact, it’s because of that challenge that we will expand what we do as UX professionals to help deliver and assess those experiences. I’m excited to see how we, Oracle, and the rest of the industry will live up to that challenge.

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• Portable class libraries and fetching JSON

  - by Jeff

  After much delay, we finally have the Windows Phone 8 SDK to go along with the Windows 8 Store SDK, or whatever ridiculous name they’re giving it these days. (Seriously… that no one could come up with a suitable replacement for “metro” is disappointing in an otherwise exciting set of product launches.) One of the neat-o things is the potential for code reuse, particularly across Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 apps. This is accomplished in part with portable class libraries, which allow you to share code between different types of projects. With some other techniques and quasi-hacks, you can share some amount of code, and I saw it mentioned in one of the Build videos that they’re seeing as much as 70% code reuse. Not bad. However, I’ve already hit a super annoying snag. It appears that the HttpClient class, with its idiot-proof async goodness, is not included in the Windows Phone 8 class libraries. Shock, gasp, horror, disappointment, etc. The delay in releasing it already caused dismay among developers, and I’m sure this won’t help. So I started refactoring some code I already had for a Windows 8 Store app (ugh) to accommodate the use of HttpWebRequest instead. I haven’t tried it in a Windows Phone 8 project beyond compiling, but it appears to work. I used this StackOverflow answer as a starting point since it’s been a long time since I used HttpWebRequest, and keep in mind that it has no exception handling. It needs refinement. The goal here is to new up the client, and call a method that returns some deserialized JSON objects from the Intertubes. Adding facilities for headers or cookies is probably a good next step. You need to use NuGet for a Json.NET reference. So here’s the start: using System.Net; using System.Threading.Tasks; using Newtonsoft.Json; using System.IO; namespace MahProject {     public class ServiceClient<T> where T : class     {         public ServiceClient(string url)         {             _url = url;         }         private readonly string _url;         public async Task<T> GetResult()         {             var response = await MakeAsyncRequest(_url);             var result = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<T>(response);             return result;         }         public static Task<string> MakeAsyncRequest(string url)         {             var request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);             request.ContentType = "application/json";             Task<WebResponse> task = Task.Factory.FromAsync(                 request.BeginGetResponse,                 asyncResult => request.EndGetResponse(asyncResult),                 null);             return task.ContinueWith(t => ReadStreamFromResponse(t.Result));         }         private static string ReadStreamFromResponse(WebResponse response)         {             using (var responseStream = response.GetResponseStream())                 using (var reader = new StreamReader(responseStream))                 {                     var content = reader.ReadToEnd();                     return content;                 }         }     } } Calling it in some kind of repository class may look like this, if you wanted to return an array of Park objects (Park model class omitted because it doesn’t matter): public class ParkRepo {     public async Task<Park[]> GetAllParks()     {         var client = new ServiceClient<Park[]>(http://superfoo/endpoint);         return await client.GetResult();     } } And then from inside your WP8 or W8S app (see what I did there?), when you load state or do some kind of UI event handler (making sure the method uses the async keyword): var parkRepo = new ParkRepo(); var results = await parkRepo.GetAllParks(); // bind results to some UI or observable collection or something Hopefully this saves you a little time.

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• How to decrypt an encrypted Apple iTunes iPhone backup?

  - by afit

  I've been asked by a number of unfortunate iPhone users to help them restore data from their iTunes backups. This is easy when they are unencrypted, but not when they are encrypted, whether or not the password is known. As such, I'm trying to figure out the encryption scheme used on mddata and mdinfo files when encrypted. I have no problems reading these files otherwise, and have built some robust C# libraries for doing so. (If you're able to help, I don't care which language you use. It's the principle I'm after here!) The Apple "iPhone OS Enterprise Deployment Guide" states that "Device backups can be stored in encrypted format by selecting the Encrypt iPhone Backup option in the device summary pane of iTunes. Files are encrypted using AES128 with a 256-bit key. The key is stored securely in the iPhone keychain." That's a pretty good clue, and there's some good info here on Stackoverflow on iPhone AES/Rijndael interoperability suggesting a keysize of 128 and CBC mode may be used. Aside from any other obfuscation, a key and initialisation vector (IV)/salt are required. One might assume that the key is a manipulation of the "backup password" that users are prompted to enter by iTunes and passed to "AppleMobileBackup.exe", padded in a fashion dictated by CBC. However, given the reference to the iPhone keychain, I wonder whether the "backup password" might not be used as a password on an X509 certificate or symmetric private key, and that the certificate or private key itself might be used as the key. (AES and the iTunes encrypt/decrypt process is symmetric.) The IV is another matter, and it could be a few things. Perhaps it's one of the keys hard-coded into iTunes, or into the devices themselves. Although Apple's comment above suggests the key is present on the device's keychain, I think this isn't that important. One can restore an encrypted backup to a different device, which suggests all information relevant to the decryption is present in the backup and iTunes configuration, and that anything solely on the device is irrelevant and replacable in this context. So where might be the key be? I've listed paths below from a Windows machine but it's much of a muchness whichever OS we use. The "\appdata\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes\itunesprefs.xml" contains a PList with a "Keychain" dict entry in it. The "\programdata\apple\Lockdown\09037027da8f4bdefdea97d706703ca034c88bab.plist" contains a PList with "DeviceCertificate", "HostCertificate", and "RootCertificate", all of which appear to be valid X509 certs. The same file also appears to contain asymmetric keys "RootPrivateKey" and "HostPrivateKey" (my reading suggests these might be PKCS #7-enveloped). Also, within each backup there are "AuthSignature" and "AuthData" values in the Manifest.plist file, although these appear to be rotated as each file gets incrementally backed up, suggested they're not that useful as a key, unless something really quite involved is being done. There's a lot of misleading stuff out there suggesting getting data from encrypted backups is easy. It's not, and to my knowledge it hasn't been done. Bypassing or disabling the backup encryption is another matter entirely, and is not what I'm looking to do. This isn't about hacking apart the iPhone or anything like that. All I'm after here is a means to extract data (photos, contacts, etc.) from encrypted iTunes backups as I can unencrypted ones. I've tried all sorts of permutations with the information I've put down above but got nowhere. I'd appreciate any thoughts or techniques I might have missed.

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• Debugging matchit plugin in vim (under Cygwin)

  - by system PAUSE

  The "matchit" plugin for vim is supposed to allow you to use the % key to jump between matching start/end tags when editing HTML, as well as /* and */ comment delimiters when editing other kinds of code. I've followed the exact instructions in ":help matchit", but % still doesn't work for me. It seems silly to ask "Why doesn't this work?" so instead I'm asking How can I diagnose the problem? Pointers to references are welcome, but specific vim-plugin-debugging techniques are preferred. Here is the ~/.vim directory: $ ls -ltaGR ~/.vim /cygdrive/y/.vim: total 0 drwxr-xr-x 1 spause 0 Sep 17 13:20 .. drwxr-xr-x 1 spause 0 Sep 16 13:59 doc drwxr-xr-x 1 spause 0 Sep 16 13:58 . drwxr-xr-x 1 spause 0 Sep 16 13:58 plugin /cygdrive/y/.vim/doc: total 24 -rw-r--r-- 1 spause 1961 Sep 16 13:59 tags drwxr-xr-x 1 spause 0 Sep 16 13:59 . -rw-r--r-- 1 spause 19303 Sep 16 13:58 matchit.txt drwxr-xr-x 1 spause 0 Sep 16 13:58 .. /cygdrive/y/.vim/plugin: total 32 drwxr-xr-x 1 spause 0 Sep 16 13:58 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 spause 30714 Sep 16 13:58 matchit.vim drwxr-xr-x 1 spause 0 Sep 16 13:58 . I am running vim 7.2 under Cygwin (installed Fall 2008). cygcheck shows: 1829k 2008/06/12 C:\cygwin\bin\cygwin1.dll Cygwin DLL version info: DLL version: 1.5.25 DLL epoch: 19 DLL bad signal mask: 19005 DLL old termios: 5 DLL malloc env: 28 API major: 0 API minor: 156 Shared data: 4 DLL identifier: cygwin1 Mount registry: 2 Cygnus registry name: Cygnus Solutions Cygwin registry name: Cygwin Program options name: Program Options Cygwin mount registry name: mounts v2 Cygdrive flags: cygdrive flags Cygdrive prefix: cygdrive prefix Cygdrive default prefix: Build date: Thu Jun 12 19:34:46 CEST 2008 CVS tag: cr-0x5f1 Shared id: cygwin1S4 In vim, :set shows: --- Options --- autoindent fileformat=dos shiftwidth=3 background=dark filetype=html syntax=html cedit=^F scroll=24 tabstop=3 expandtab shelltemp textmode viminfo='20,<50,s10,h Notably, the syntax and filetype are both recognized as HTML. (The syntax colouring is just fine.) If additional info is needed, please comment. UPDATE: Per answer by too much php: After trying vim -V1, I had changed my .vimrc to include a line set nocp so the compatible option is not on. :let loadad_matchit loaded_matchit #1 :set runtimepath? runtimepath=~/.vim,/usr/share/vim/vimfiles,/usr/share/vim/vim72,/usr/share/vim/vimfiles/after,~/.vim/after (~ is /cygdrive/y) Per answer by michael: :scriptnames 1: /cygdrive/y/.vimrc 2: /usr/share/vim/vim72/syntax/syntax.vim 3: /usr/share/vim/vim72/syntax/synload.vim 4: /usr/share/vim/vim72/syntax/syncolor.vim 5: /usr/share/vim/vim72/filetype.vim 6: /usr/share/vim/vim72/colors/evening.vim 7: /cygdrive/y/.vim/plugin/matchit.vim 8: /cygdrive/y/.vim/plugin/python_match.vim 9: /usr/share/vim/vim72/plugin/getscriptPlugin.vim 10: /usr/share/vim/vim72/plugin/gzip.vim 11: /usr/share/vim/vim72/plugin/matchparen.vim 12: /usr/share/vim/vim72/plugin/netrwPlugin.vim 13: /usr/share/vim/vim72/plugin/rrhelper.vim 14: /usr/share/vim/vim72/plugin/spellfile.vim 15: /usr/share/vim/vim72/plugin/tarPlugin.vim 16: /usr/share/vim/vim72/plugin/tohtml.vim 17: /usr/share/vim/vim72/plugin/vimballPlugin.vim 18: /usr/share/vim/vim72/plugin/zipPlugin.vim 19: /usr/share/vim/vim72/syntax/html.vim 20: /usr/share/vim/vim72/syntax/javascript.vim 21: /usr/share/vim/vim72/syntax/vb.vim 22: /usr/share/vim/vim72/syntax/css.vim Note that matchit.vim, html.vim, tohtml.vim, css.vim, and javascript.vim are all present. :echo b:match_words E121: Undefined variable: b:match_words E15: Invalid expression: b:match_words Hm, this looks highly relevant. I'm now looking through :help matchit-debug to find out how to fix b:match_words.

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• Loading PNGs into OpenGL performance issues - Java & JOGL much slower than C# & Tao.OpenGL

  - by Edward Cresswell

  I am noticing a large performance difference between Java & JOGL and C# & Tao.OpenGL when both loading PNGs from storage into memory, and when loading that BufferedImage (java) or Bitmap (C# - both are PNGs on hard drive) 'into' OpenGL. This difference is quite large, so I assumed I was doing something wrong, however after quite a lot of searching and trying different loading techniques I've been unable to reduce this difference. With Java I get an image loaded in 248ms and loaded into OpenGL in 728ms The same on C# takes 54ms to load the image, and 34ms to load/create texture. The image in question above is a PNG containing transparency, sized 7200x255, used for a 2D animated sprite. I realise the size is really quite ridiculous and am considering cutting up the sprite, however the large difference is still there (and confusing). On the Java side the code looks like this: BufferedImage image = ImageIO.read(new File(fileName)); texture = TextureIO.newTexture(image, false); texture.setTexParameteri(GL.GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL.GL_LINEAR); texture.setTexParameteri(GL.GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL.GL_LINEAR); The C# code uses: Bitmap t = new Bitmap(fileName); t.RotateFlip(RotateFlipType.RotateNoneFlipY); Rectangle r = new Rectangle(0, 0, t.Width, t.Height); BitmapData bd = t.LockBits(r, ImageLockMode.ReadOnly, PixelFormat.Format32bppArgb); Gl.glBindTexture(Gl.GL_TEXTURE_2D, tID); Gl.glTexImage2D(Gl.GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, Gl.GL_RGBA, t.Width, t.Height, 0, Gl.GL_BGRA, Gl.GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, bd.Scan0); Gl.glTexParameteri(Gl.GL_TEXTURE_2D, Gl.GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, Gl.GL_LINEAR); Gl.glTexParameteri(Gl.GL_TEXTURE_2D, Gl.GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, Gl.GL_LINEAR); t.UnlockBits(bd); t.Dispose(); After quite a lot of testing I can only come to the conclusion that Java/JOGL is just slower here - PNG reading might not be as quick, or that I'm still doing something wrong. Thanks. Edit2: I have found that creating a new BufferedImage with format TYPE_INT_ARGB_PRE decreases OpenGL texture load time by almost half - this includes having to create the new BufferedImage, getting the Graphics2D from it and then rendering the previously loaded image to it. Edit3: Benchmark results for 5 variations. I wrote a small benchmarking tool, the following results come from loading a set of 33 pngs, most are very wide, 5 times. testStart: ImageIO.read(file) -> TextureIO.newTexture(image) result: avg = 10250ms, total = 51251 testStart: ImageIO.read(bis) -> TextureIO.newTexture(image) result: avg = 10029ms, total = 50147 testStart: ImageIO.read(file) -> TextureIO.newTexture(argbImage) result: avg = 5343ms, total = 26717 testStart: ImageIO.read(bis) -> TextureIO.newTexture(argbImage) result: avg = 5534ms, total = 27673 testStart: TextureIO.newTexture(file) result: avg = 10395ms, total = 51979 ImageIO.read(bis) refers to the technique described in James Branigan's answer below. argbImage refers to the technique described in my previous edit: img = ImageIO.read(file); argbImg = new BufferedImage(img.getWidth(), img.getHeight(), TYPE_INT_ARGB_PRE); g = argbImg.createGraphics(); g.drawImage(img, 0, 0, null); texture = TextureIO.newTexture(argbImg, false); Any more methods of loading (either images from file, or images to OpenGL) would be appreciated, I will update these benchmarks.

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• How to take the snapshot of a IE webpage through a BHO (C#)

  - by Kapil

  Hi, I am trying to build an IE BHO in C# for taking the snapshot of a webpage loaded in the IE browser. Here is what I'm trying to do: public class ShowToolbarBHO : BandObjectLib.IObjectWithSite { IWebBrowser2 webBrowser = null; public void SetSite (Object site) { ....... if (site != null) { ...... webBrowser = (IWebBrowser2)site; ...... } } } Also, I p/invoke the following COM methods: [Guid("0000010D-0000-0000-C000-000000000046")] [InterfaceTypeAttribute(ComInterfaceType.InterfaceIsIUnknown)] [ComImportAttribute()] public interface IViewObject { void Draw([MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U4)] int dwDrawAspect, int lindex, IntPtr pvAspect, [In] IntPtr ptd, IntPtr hdcTargetDev, IntPtr hdcDraw, [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPStruct)] ref COMRECT lprcBounds, [In] IntPtr lprcWBounds, IntPtr pfnContinue, int dwContinue); int GetColorSet([MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U4)] int dwDrawAspect, int lindex, IntPtr pvAspect, [In] IntPtr ptd, IntPtr hicTargetDev, [Out] IntPtr ppColorSet); int Freeze([MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U4)] int dwDrawAspect, int lindex, IntPtr pvAspect, out IntPtr pdwFreeze); int Unfreeze([MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U4)] int dwFreeze); int SetAdvise([MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U4)] int aspects, [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U4)] int advf, [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Interface)] IAdviseSink pAdvSink); void GetAdvise([MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPArray)] out int[] paspects, [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPArray)] out int[] advf, [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPArray)] out IAdviseSink[] pAdvSink); } [StructLayoutAttribute(LayoutKind.Sequential)] public class COMRECT { public int left; public int top; public int right; public int bottom; public COMRECT() { } public COMRECT(int left, int top, int right, int bottom) { this.left = left; this.top = top; this.right = right; this.bottom = bottom; } } [InterfaceTypeAttribute(ComInterfaceType.InterfaceIsIUnknown)] [ComVisibleAttribute(true)] [GuidAttribute("0000010F-0000-0000-C000-000000000046")] [ComImportAttribute()] public interface IAdviseSink { void OnDataChange([In]IntPtr pFormatetc, [In]IntPtr pStgmed); void OnViewChange([MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U4)] int dwAspect, [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.I4)] int lindex); void OnRename([MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Interface)] object pmk); void OnSave(); void OnClose(); } Now When I take the snapshot: I make a call CaptureWebScreenImage((IHTMLDocument2) webBrowser.document); public static Image CaptureWebScreenImage(IHTMLDocument2 myDoc) { int heightsize = (int)getDocumentAttribute(myDoc, "scrollHeight"); int widthsize = (int)getDocumentAttribute(myDoc, "scrollWidth"); Bitmap finalImage = new Bitmap(widthsize, heightsize); Graphics gFinal = Graphics.FromImage(finalImage); COMRECT rect = new COMRECT(); rect.left = 0; rect.top = 0; rect.right = widthsize; rect.bottom = heightsize; IntPtr hDC = gFinal.GetHdc(); IViewObject vO = myDoc as IViewObject; vO.Draw(1, -1, (IntPtr)0, (IntPtr)0, (IntPtr)0, (IntPtr)hDC, ref rect, (IntPtr)0, (IntPtr)0, 0); gFinal.ReleaseHdc(); gFinal.Dispose(); return finalImage; } I am not getting the image of the webpage. Rather I am getting an image with black background. I am not sure if this is the right way of doing it, but I found over the web that IViewObject::Draw method is used for taking the image of a webpage in IE. I was earlier doing the image capture using the Native PrintWindow() method as mentioned in the following codeproject's page - http://www.codeproject.com/KB/graphics/IECapture.aspx But the image size is humongous! I was trying to see if I can reduce the size by using other techniques. It would be great if someone can point out the mistakes (I am sure there would be many) in my code above. Thanks, Kapil

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• How to take the sanpshot of a IE webpage through a BHO (C#)

  - by Kapil

  Hi, I am trying to build an IE BHO in C# for taking the snapshot of a webpage loaded in the IE browser. Here is what I'm trying to do: public class ShowToolbarBHO : BandObjectLib.IObjectWithSite { IWebBrowser2 webBrowser = null; public void SetSite (Object site) { ....... if (site != null) { ...... webBrowser = (IWebBrowser2)site; ...... } } } Also, I p/invoke the following COM methods: [Guid("0000010D-0000-0000-C000-000000000046")] [InterfaceTypeAttribute(ComInterfaceType.InterfaceIsIUnknown)] [ComImportAttribute()] public interface IViewObject { void Draw([MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U4)] int dwDrawAspect, int lindex, IntPtr pvAspect, [In] IntPtr ptd, IntPtr hdcTargetDev, IntPtr hdcDraw, [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPStruct)] ref COMRECT lprcBounds, [In] IntPtr lprcWBounds, IntPtr pfnContinue, int dwContinue); int GetColorSet([MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U4)] int dwDrawAspect, int lindex, IntPtr pvAspect, [In] IntPtr ptd, IntPtr hicTargetDev, [Out] IntPtr ppColorSet); int Freeze([MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U4)] int dwDrawAspect, int lindex, IntPtr pvAspect, out IntPtr pdwFreeze); int Unfreeze([MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U4)] int dwFreeze); int SetAdvise([MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U4)] int aspects, [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U4)] int advf, [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Interface)] IAdviseSink pAdvSink); void GetAdvise([MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPArray)] out int[] paspects, [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPArray)] out int[] advf, [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPArray)] out IAdviseSink[] pAdvSink); } [StructLayoutAttribute(LayoutKind.Sequential)] public class COMRECT { public int left; public int top; public int right; public int bottom; public COMRECT() { } public COMRECT(int left, int top, int right, int bottom) { this.left = left; this.top = top; this.right = right; this.bottom = bottom; } } [InterfaceTypeAttribute(ComInterfaceType.InterfaceIsIUnknown)] [ComVisibleAttribute(true)] [GuidAttribute("0000010F-0000-0000-C000-000000000046")] [ComImportAttribute()] public interface IAdviseSink { void OnDataChange([In]IntPtr pFormatetc, [In]IntPtr pStgmed); void OnViewChange([MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.U4)] int dwAspect, [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.I4)] int lindex); void OnRename([MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Interface)] object pmk); void OnSave(); void OnClose(); } Now When I take the snapshot: I make a call CaptureWebScreenImage((IHTMLDocument2) webBrowser.document); public static Image CaptureWebScreenImage(IHTMLDocument2 myDoc) { int heightsize = (int)getDocumentAttribute(myDoc, "scrollHeight"); int widthsize = (int)getDocumentAttribute(myDoc, "scrollWidth"); Bitmap finalImage = new Bitmap(widthsize, heightsize); Graphics gFinal = Graphics.FromImage(finalImage); COMRECT rect = new COMRECT(); rect.left = 0; rect.top = 0; rect.right = widthsize; rect.bottom = heightsize; IntPtr hDC = gFinal.GetHdc(); IViewObject vO = myDoc as IViewObject; vO.Draw(1, -1, (IntPtr)0, (IntPtr)0, (IntPtr)0, (IntPtr)hDC, ref rect, (IntPtr)0, (IntPtr)0, 0); gFinal.ReleaseHdc(); gFinal.Dispose(); return finalImage; } I am not getting the image of the webpage. Rather I am getting an image with black background. I am not sure if this is the right way of doing it, but I found over the web that IViewObject::Draw method is used for taking the image of a webpage in IE. I was earlier doing the image capture using the Native PrintWindow() method as mentioned in the following codeproject's page - http://www.codeproject.com/KB/graphics/IECapture.aspx But the image size is humongous! I was trying to see if I can reduce the size by using other techniques. It would be great if someone can point out the mistakes (I am sure there would be many) in my code above. Thanks, Kapil

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• WPF, UserControl, and Commands? Oh my!

  - by Greg D

  (This question is related to another one, but different enough that I think it warrants placement here.) Here's a (heavily snipped) Window: <Window x:Class="Gmd.TimeTracker2.TimeTrackerMainForm" xmlns:local="clr-namespace:Gmd.TimeTracker2" xmlns:localcommands="clr-namespace:Gmd.TimeTracker2.Commands" x:Name="This" DataContext="{Binding ElementName=This}"> <Window.CommandBindings> <CommandBinding Command="localcommands:TaskCommands.ViewTaskProperties" Executed="HandleViewTaskProperties" CanExecute="CanViewTaskPropertiesExecute" /> </Window.CommandBindings> <DockPanel> <!-- snip stuff --> <Grid> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition /> <RowDefinition Height="Auto" /> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <!-- snip more stuff --> <Button Content="_Create a new task" Grid.Row="1" x:Name="btnAddTask" Click="HandleNewTaskClick" /> </Grid> </DockPanel> </Window> and here's a (heavily snipped) UserControl: <UserControl x:Class="Gmd.TimeTracker2.TaskStopwatchControl" xmlns:local="clr-namespace:Gmd.TimeTracker2" xmlns:localcommands="clr-namespace:Gmd.TimeTracker2.Commands" x:Name="This" DataContext="{Binding ElementName=This}"> <UserControl.ContextMenu> <ContextMenu> <MenuItem x:Name="mnuProperties" Header="_Properties" Command="{x:Static localcommands:TaskCommands.ViewTaskProperties}" CommandTarget="What goes here?" /> </ContextMenu> </UserControl.ContextMenu> <StackPanel> <TextBlock MaxWidth="100" Text="{Binding Task.TaskName, Mode=TwoWay}" TextWrapping="WrapWithOverflow" TextAlignment="Center" /> <TextBlock Text="{Binding Path=ElapsedTime}" TextAlignment="Center" /> <Button Content="{Binding Path=IsRunning, Converter={StaticResource boolToString}, ConverterParameter='Stop Start'}" Click="HandleStartStopClicked" /> </StackPanel> </UserControl> Through various techniques, a UserControl can be dynamically added to the Window. Perhaps via the Button in the window. Perhaps, more problematically, from a persistent backing store when the application is started. As can be seen from the xaml, I've decided that it makes sense for me to try to use Commands as a way to handle various operations that the user can perform with Tasks. I'm doing this with the eventual goal of factoring all command logic into a more formally-defined Controller layer, but I'm trying to refactor one step at a time. The problem that I'm encountering is related to the interaction between the command in the UserControl's ContextMenu and the command's CanExecute, defined in the Window. When the application first starts and the saved Tasks are restored into TaskStopwatches on the Window, no actual UI elements are selected. If I then immediately r-click a UserControl in the Window in an attempt to execute the ViewTaskProperties command, the CanExecute handler never runs and the menu item remains disabled. If I then click some UI element (e.g., the button) just to give something focus, the CanExecute handlers are run with the CanExecuteRoutedEventArgs's Source property set to the UI element that has the focus. In some respect, this behavior seems to be known-- I've learned that menus automat

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• Apply jquery selectbox style on chained selectbox

  - by ktsixit

  Hi all, I have created a pair of chained selectboxes in my page. The second selectbox is filled with a set of values, depending on the first box's selected value. The script that makes the two selectboxes work like this, uses php and javascript. This is the code I'm using: form <select name="continent" tabindex="1" onChange="getCountry(this.value)"> <option value="#">-Select-</option> <option value="Europe">Europe</option> <option value="Asia">Asia</option> </select> <div id="countrydiv"> <select name="country" tabindex="2"> <option></option> </select> </div> <input type="submit" /> </form> javascript code $(document).ready(function() { $('select[name="continent"]').selectbox({debug: true}); $('select[name="country"]').selectbox({debug: true}); }); function getXMLHTTP() { //fuction to return the xml http object var xmlhttp=false; try{ xmlhttp=new XMLHttpRequest(); } catch(e) { try{ xmlhttp= new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP"); } catch(e){ try{ xmlhttp = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP"); } catch(e1){ xmlhttp=false; } } } return xmlhttp; } function getCountry(continentId) { var strURL="findCountry.php?continent="+continentId; var req = getXMLHTTP(); if (req) { req.onreadystatechange = function() { if (req.readyState == 4) { // only if "OK" if (req.status == 200) { document.getElementById('countrydiv').innerHTML=req.responseText; } else { alert("There was a problem while using XMLHTTP:\n" + req.statusText); } } } req.open("GET", strURL, true); req.send(null); } } php code (findCountry.php) <? $continent=intval($_GET['continent']); if ($_GET['continent'] == 'Europe') { ?> <select name="country"> <option value="France">France</option> <option value="Germany">Germany</option> <option value="Spain">Spain</option> <option value="Italy">Italy</option> </select> <? } if ($_GET['continent'] == 'Asia') { ?> <select name="country"> <option value="China">China</option> <option value="India">India</option> <option value="Japan">Japan</option> </select> <? } ?> What I want to do is to apply jquery selectbox styling on these selectboxes. I haven't succeeded in doing that yet. The problem is that jquery is hiding the normal selectbox and is replacing it with a list. Furthermore, after selectbox's content is refreshed, jquery cannot re-construct it into a list. You can take a look of the jquery code here Is there something I can do to combine these techniques? I have tried a million things but nothing worked. Can you please help me?

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• File Fix-it codegolf (GCJ 2010 1B-A)

  - by KirarinSnow

  Last year (2009), the Google Code Jam featured an interesting problem as the first problem in Round 1B: Decision Tree As the problem seemed tailored for Lisp-like languages, we spontaneously had an exciting codegolf here on SO, in which a few languages managed to solve the problem in fewer characters than any Lisp variety, using quite a number of different techniques. This year's Round 1B Problem A (File Fix-it) also seems tailored for a particular family of languages, Unix shell scripts. So continuing the "1B-A tradition" would be appropriate. :p But which language will end up with the shortest code? Let us codegolf and see! Problem description (adapted from official page): You are given T test cases. Each test case contains N lines that list the full path of all directories currently existing on your computer. For example: /home/awesome /home/awesome/wheeeeeee /home/awesome/wheeeeeee/codegolfrocks /home/thecakeisalie Next, you are given M lines that list the full path of directories you would like to create. They are in the same format as the previous examples. You can create a directory using the mkdir command, but you can only do so if the parent directory already exists. For example, to create the directories /pyonpyon/fumufumu/yeahyeah and /pyonpyon/fumufumu/yeahyeahyeah, you would need to use mkdir four times: mkdir /pyonpyon mkdir /pyonpyon/fumufumu mkdir /pyonpyon/fumufumu/yeahyeah mkdir /pyonpyon/fumufumu/yeahyeahyeah For each test case, return the number of times you have to call mkdir to create all the directories you would like to create. Input Input consists of a text file whose first line contains the integer T, the number of test cases. The rest of the file contains the test cases. Each test case begins with a line containing the integers N and M, separated by a space. The next N lines contain the path of each directory currently existing on your computer (not including the root directory /). This is a concatenation of one or more non-empty lowercase alphanumeric strings, each preceded by a single /. The following M lines contain the path of each directory you would like to create. Output For each case, print one line containing Case #X: Y, where X is the case number and Y is the solution. Limits 1 = T = 100. 0 = N = 100. 1 = M = 100. Each path contains at most 100 characters. Every path appears only once in the list of directories already on your computer, or in the list of desired directories. However, a path may appear on both lists, as in example case #3 below. If a directory is in the list of directories already on your computer, its parent directory will also be listed, with the exception of the root directory /. The input file is at most 100,000 bytes long. Example Larger sample test cases may be downloaded here. Input: 3 0 2 /home/sparkle/pyon /home/sparkle/cakes 1 3 /z /z/y /z/x /y/y 2 1 /moo /moo/wheeeee /moo Output: Case #1: 4 Case #2: 4 Case #3: 0 Code Golf Please post your shortest code in any language that solves this problem. Input and output may be handled via stdin and stdout or by other files of your choice. Please include a disclaimer if your code has the potential to modify or delete existing files when executed. Winner will be the shortest solution (by byte count) in a language with an implementation existing prior to the start of Round 1B 2010.

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• TripleDES in Perl/PHP/ColdFusion

  - by Seidr

  Recently a problem arose regarding hooking up an API with a payment processor who were requesting a string to be encrypted to be used as a token, using the TripleDES standard. Our Applications run using ColdFusion, which has an Encrypt tag - that supports TripleDES - however the result we were getting back was not what the payment processor expected. First of all, here is the resulting token the payment processor were expecting. AYOF+kRtg239Mnyc8QIarw== And below is the snippet of ColdFusion we were using, and the resulting string. <!--- Coldfusion Crypt (here be monsters) ---> <cfset theKey="123412341234123412341234"> <cfset theString = "username=test123"> <cfset strEncodedEnc = Encrypt(theString, theKey, "DESEDE", "Base64")> <!--- resulting string(strEncodedEnc): tc/Jb7E9w+HpU2Yvn5dA7ILGmyNTQM0h ---> As you can see, this was not returning the string we were hoping for. Seeking a solution, we ditched ColdFusion for this process and attempted to reproduce the token in PHP. Now I'm aware that various languages implement encryption in different ways - for example in the past managing encryption between a C# application and PHP back-end, I've had to play about with padding in order to get the two to talk, but my experience has been that PHP generally behaves when it comes to encryption standards. Anyway, on to the PHP source we tried, and the resulting string. /* PHP Circus (here be Elephants) */ $theKey="123412341234123412341234"; $theString="username=test123"; $strEncodedEnc=base64_encode(mcrypt_ecb (MCRYPT_3DES, $theKey, $theString, MCRYPT_ENCRYPT)); /* resulting string(strEncodedEnc): sfiSu4mVggia8Ysw98x0uw== */ As you can plainly see, we've got another string that differs from both the string expected by the payment processor AND the one produced by ColdFusion. Cue head-against-wall integration techniques. After many to-and-fro communications with the payment processor (lots and lots of reps stating 'we can't help with coding issues, you must be doing it incorrectly, read the manual') we were finally escalated to someone with more than a couple of brain-cells to rub together, who was able to step back and actually look at and diagnose the issue. He agreed, our CF and PHP attempts were not resulting in the correct string. After a quick search, he also agreed that it was not neccesarily our source, but rather how the two languages implemented their vision of the TripleDES standard. Coming into the office this morning, we were met by an email with a snippet of source code, in Perl. This is was the code they were directly using on their end to produce the expected token. #!/usr/bin/perl # Perl Crypt Calamity (here be...something) use strict; use CGI; use MIME::Base64; use Crypt::TripleDES; my $cgi = CGI->new(); my $param = $cgi->Vars(); $param->{key} = "123412341234123412341234"; $param->{string} = "username=test123"; my $des = Crypt::TripleDES->new(); my $enc = $des->encrypt3($param->{string}, $param->{key}); $enc = encode_base64($enc); $enc =~ s/\n//gs; # resulting string (enc): AYOF+kRtg239Mnyc8QIarw== So, there we have it. Three languages, three implementations of what they quote in the documentation as TripleDES Standard Encryption, and three totally different resulting strings. My question is, from your experience of these three languages and their implementations of the TripleDES algorithm, have you been able to get any two of them to give the same response, and if so what tweaks to the code did you have to make in order to come to the result? I understand this is a very drawn out question, but I wanted to give clear and precise setting for each stage of testing that we had to perform. I'll also be performing some more investigatory work on this subject later, and will post any findings that I come up with to this question, so that others may avoid this headache.

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• WebSphere Application Server EJB Optimization

  - by Chris Aldrich

  We are working on developing a Java EE based application. Our application is Java 1.5 compatible and will be deployed to WAS ND 6.1.0.21 with EBJ 3.0 and Web Services feature packs. The configuration is currently one cell with two clusters. Each cluster will have two nodes. Our application, or our system, as I should rather say, comes in two or three parts. Part 1: An ear deployed to one cluster that contains 3rd party vendor code combined with customization code. Their code is EJB 2.0 compliant and has a lot of Remote Home interfaces. Part 2: An ear deployed to the same cluster as the first ear. This ear contains EBJ 3's that make calls into the EJB 2's supplied by the vendor and the custom code. These EJB 3's are used by the JSF UI also packaged with the EAR, and some of them are also exposed as web services (JAX-WS 2.0 with SOAP 1.2 compliance) for other clients. Part 3: There may be other services that do not depend on our vendor/custom code app. These services will be EJB 3.0's and web services that are deployed to the other cluster. Per a recommendation from some IBM staff on site here, communication between nodes in a cluster can be EJB RMI. But if we are going across clusters and/or other cells, then the communication should be web services. That said, some of us are wondering about performance and optimizing communication for speed of our applications that will use our web services and EJB's. Right now most EJB's are exposed as remote. (and our vendor set theirs up that way, rather than also exposing local home interfaces). We are wondering if WAS does any optimizations between apps in the same node/cluster node space. If two apps are installed in the same area and they call each other via remote home interface, is WAS smart enough to make it a local home interface call? Are their other optimization techniques? Should we consider them? Should we not? What are the costs/benefits? Here is the question from one of our team members as sent in their email: The question is: Supposing we develop our EJBs as remote EJBs, where our UI controller code is talking to our EXT java services via EJB3...what are our options for performance optimization when both the EJB server and client are running in the same container? As one point of reference, google has given me some oooooold websphere performance tuning documentation from 2000 that explains a tuning configuration you can set to enable Call By Reference for EJB communication when they're in the same application server JVM. It states the following: Because EJBs are inherently location independent, they use a remote programming model. Method parameters and return values are serialized over RMI-IIOP and returned by value. This is the intrinsic RMI "Call By Value" model. WebSphere provides the "No Local Copies" performance optimization for running EJBs and clients (typically servlets) in the same application server JVM. The "No Local Copies" option uses "Call By Reference" and does not create local proxies for called objects when both the client and the remote object are in the same process. Depending on your workload, this can result in a significant overhead savings. Configure "No Local Copies" by adding the following two command line parameters to the application server JVM: * -Djavax.rmi.CORBA.UtilClass=com.ibm.CORBA.iiop.Util * -Dcom.ibm.CORBA.iiop.noLocalCopies=true CAUTION: The "No Local Copies" configuration option improves performance by changing "Call By Value" to "Call By Reference" for clients and EJBs in the same JVM. One side effect of this is that the Java object derived (non-primitive) method parameters can actually be changed by the called enterprise bean. Consider Figure 16a: Also, we will also be using Process Server 6.2 and WESB 6.2 as well in the future. Any ideas? recommendations? Thanks

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• How to write a bison grammer for WDI?

  - by Rizo

  I need some help in bison grammar construction. From my another question: I'm trying to make a meta-language for writing markup code (such as xml and html) wich can be directly embedded into C/C++ code. Here is a simple sample written in this language, I call it WDI (Web Development Interface): /* * Simple wdi/html sample source code */ #include <mySite> string name = "myName"; string toCapital(string str); html { head { title { mySiteTitle; } link(rel="stylesheet", href="style.css"); } body(id="default") { // Page content wrapper div(id="wrapper", class="some_class") { h1 { "Hello, " + toCapital(name) + "!"; } // Lists post ul(id="post_list") { for(post in posts) { li { a(href=post.getID()) { post.tilte; } } } } } } } Basically it is a C source with a user-friendly interface for html. As you can see the traditional tag-based style is substituted by C-like, with blocks delimited by curly braces. I need to build an interpreter to translate this code to html and posteriorly insert it into C, so that it can be compiled. The C part stays intact. Inside the wdi source it is not necessary to use prints, every return statement will be used for output (in printf function). The program's output will be clean html code. So, for example a heading 1 tag would be transformed like this: h1 { "Hello, " + toCapital(name) + "!"; } // would become: printf("<h1>Hello, %s!</h1>", toCapital(name)); My main goal is to create an interpreter to translate wdi source to html like this: tag(attributes) {content} = <tag attributes>content</tag> Secondly, html code returned by the interpreter has to be inserted into C code with printfs. Variables and functions that occur inside wdi should also be sorted in order to use them as printf parameters (the case of toCapital(name) in sample source). Here are my flex/bison files: id [a-zA-Z_]([a-zA-Z0-9_])* number [0-9]+ string \".*\" %% {id} { yylval.string = strdup(yytext); return(ID); } {number} { yylval.number = atoi(yytext); return(NUMBER); } {string} { yylval.string = strdup(yytext); return(STRING); } "(" { return(LPAREN); } ")" { return(RPAREN); } "{" { return(LBRACE); } "}" { return(RBRACE); } "=" { return(ASSIGN); } "," { return(COMMA); } ";" { return(SEMICOLON); } \n|\r|\f { /* ignore EOL */ } [ \t]+ { /* ignore whitespace */ } . { /* return(CCODE); Find C source */ } %% %start wdi %token LPAREN RPAREN LBRACE RBRACE ASSIGN COMMA SEMICOLON CCODE QUOTE %union { int number; char *string; } %token <string> ID STRING %token <number> NUMBER %% wdi : /* empty */ | blocks ; blocks : block | blocks block ; block : head SEMICOLON | head body ; head : ID | ID attributes ; attributes : LPAREN RPAREN | LPAREN attribute_list RPAREN ; attribute_list : attribute | attribute COMMA attribute_list ; attribute : key ASSIGN value ; key : ID {$$=$1} ; value : STRING {$$=$1} /*| NUMBER*/ /*| CCODE*/ ; body : LBRACE content RBRACE ; content : /* */ | blocks | STRING SEMICOLON | NUMBER SEMICOLON | CCODE ; %% I am having difficulties on defining a proper grammar for the language, specially in splitting WDI and C code . I just started learning language processing techniques so I need some orientation. Could someone correct my code or give some examples of what is the right way to solve this problem?

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• Ajax and using responseXML

  - by Banderdash

  Hello, I have a XML file that looks like this: <response> <library name="My Library"> <book id="1" checked-out="1"> <authors> <author>David Flanagan</author> </authors> <title>JavaScript: The Definitive Guide</title> <isbn-10>0596101996</isbn-10> </book> <book id="2" checked-out="1"> <authors> <author>John Resig</author> </authors> <title>Pro JavaScript Techniques (Pro)</title> <isbn-10>1590597273</isbn-10> </book> <book id="3" checked-out="0"> <authors> <author>Erich Gamma</author> <author>Richard Helm</author> <author>Ralph Johnson</author> <author>John M. Vlissides</author> </authors> <title>Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software</title> <isbn-10>0201633612</isbn-10> </book> ... </library> </response> I'm using a simple JS script to, on click show all the titles of the books: <script type="text/javascript"> function loadXMLDoc() { if (window.XMLHttpRequest) {// code for IE7+, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari xmlhttp=new XMLHttpRequest(); } else {// code for IE6, IE5 xmlhttp=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP"); } xmlhttp.onreadystatechange=function() { if (xmlhttp.readyState==4 && xmlhttp.status==200) { xmlDoc=xmlhttp.responseXML; var txt=""; x=xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("title"); for (i=0;i<x.length;i++) { txt=txt + x[i].childNodes[0].nodeValue + "<br />"; } document.getElementById("checkedIn").innerHTML=txt; } } xmlhttp.open("GET","ajax-response-data.xml",true); xmlhttp.send(); } </script> This works fine, as you can see here: http://clients.pixelbleed.net/ajax-test/ What I'd like to do is have the results post, on page load (not on click) into two separate DIV's depending on checked-out variable in the XML. So <book id="#" checked-out="1"> would post to the checkedIn div, <book id="#" checked-out="0"> posts to a checkedOut div. Also want to display the title and the author--would love any ideas as best method for accomplishing this. Apologize in advanced for the newbieness of my query.

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• CSS: move a "float:right" element to top (to align with the first element of the list)

  - by Patrick

  hi, I've a sequence of elements and the last one has css "float:left". I would like to display it at the same height of the first element and not on the bottom of the list. (I cannot change the html code, so it is the last in the list). At the same time, I would like to keep it on the right. How can I make it wich CSS ? thanks Code: <div class="field field-type-text field-field-year"> <div class="field-items"> <div class="field-item odd"> <div class="field-label-inline-first"> Year:&nbsp;</div> 2009 </div> </div> </div> <div class="field field-type-text field-field-where"> <div class="field-items"> <div class="field-item odd"> <div class="field-label-inline-first"> Where:&nbsp;</div> Musée Rath, Geneva </div> </div> </div> <div class="field field-type-text field-field-when"> <div class="field-items"> <div class="field-item odd"> <div class="field-label-inline-first"> When:&nbsp;</div> 25.8 – 27.9.2009 </div> </div> </div> <div class="field field-type-text field-field-editor"> <div class="field-items"> <div class="field-item odd"> <div class="field-label-inline-first"> Editor:&nbsp;</div> Blabla Blabla </div> </div> </div> <div class="field field-type-text field-field-material"> <div class="field-items"> <div class="field-item odd"> <div class="field-label-inline-first"> Material/techniques:&nbsp;</div> contemporary art installations </div> </div> </div> <div class="field field-type-text field-field-dimension"> <div class="field-items"> <div class="field-item odd"> <div class="field-label-inline-first"> Dimension:&nbsp;</div> 2 floors in a neoclassical building </div> </div> </div> <div class="field field-type-text field-field-artists"> <div class="field-items"> <div class="field-item odd"> <div class="field-label-inline-first"> Artists:&nbsp;</div> Blablablabla balbalbalbalba </div> </div> </div> .field-field-year, .field-field-where, .field-field-when, .field-field-editor, .field-field-material, .field-field-dimension { width:300px; } .field-field-artists { width:400px; float:right; clear:right; top-margin: -200px; }

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• IE7 is making my life miserable! Getting gaps between html table columns (w/ colspan) with css togg

  - by Art Peterson

  Copy/paste this html code snippet and try it out in IE7. When you toggle the hidden columns it leaves a gap between the columns. In Firefox it works fine, the columns touch when minimized. Haven't tried IE8 yet, would be curious to hear how it works there. Any ideas? I've tried a bunch of things in the CSS like table-layout:fixed but no luck. Note: Not looking for a different toggling method because the table I'm really dealing with is 50+ columns wide and 4000+ rows so looping/jquery techniques are too slow. Here's the code - if someone can re-post a working version of it I'll instantly give them the check and be forever in your debt! <DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"> <html> <head> <script> function toggle() { var tableobj = document.getElementById("mytable"); if (tableobj.className == "") { tableobj.className = "hide1 hide2"; } else { tableobj.className = ""; } } </script> <style> table { border-collapse: collapse; } td, th { border: 1px solid silver; } .hide1 .col1 { display: none; } .hide2 .col2 { display: none; } </style> </head> <body> <input type="button" value="toggle" onclick="toggle();" /> <table id="mytable"> <tr> <th>A</th> <th colspan="2">B</th> <th colspan="2" class="col1">B1</th> <th colspan="2">C</th> <th colspan="2" class="col2">C1</th> </tr> <tr> <td>123</td> <td>456</td> <td>789</td> <td class="col1">123</td> <td class="col1">456</td> <td>789</td> <td>123</td> <td class="col2">456</td> <td class="col2">789</td> </tr> </table> </body> </html>

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• Recommended integration mechanism for bi-directional, authenticated, encrypted connection in C clien

  - by rcampbell

  Let me first give an example. Imagine you have a single server running a JVM application. This server keeps a collection of N equations, once for each client: Client #1: 2x Client #2: 1 + y Client #3: z/4 This server includes an HTTP interface so that random visitors can type https://www.acme.com/client/3 int their browsers and see the latest evaluated result of z/4. The tricky part is that either the client or the server may change the variable value at any time, informing the other party immediately. More specifically, Client #3 - a C app - can initially tell the server that z = 20. An hour later that same client informs the server that z = 23. Likewise the server can later inform the client that z = 28. As caf pointed out in the comments, there can be a race condition when values are changed by the client and server simultaneously. The solution would be for both client and server to send the operation performed in their message, which would need to be executed by the other party. To keep things simple, let's limit the operations to (commutative) addition, allowing us to disregard message ordering. For example, the client seeds the server with z = 20: server:z=20, client:z=20 server sends {+3} message (so z=23 locally) & client sends {-2} message (so z=18 locally) at the exact same time server receives {-2} message at some point, adds to his local copy so z=21 client receives {+3} message at some point, adds to his local copy so z=21 As long as all messages are eventually evaluated by both parties, the correct answer will eventually be given to the users of the client and server since we limited ourselves to commutative operations (addition of 3 and -2). This does mean that both client and server can be returning incorrect answers in the time it takes for messages to be exchanged and processed. While undesirable, I believe this is unavoidable. Some possible implementations of this idea include: Open an encrypted, always on TCP socket connection for communication Pros: no additional infrastructure needed, client and server know immediately if there is a problem (disconnect) with the other party, fairly straightforward (except the the encryption), native support from both JVM and C platforms Cons: pretty low-level so you end up writing a lot yourself (protocol, delivery verification, retry-on-failure logic), probably have a lot of firewall headaches during client app installation Asynchronous messaging (ex: ActiveMQ) Pros: transactional, both C & Java integration, free up the client and server apps from needing retry logic or delivery verification, pretty straightforward encryption, easy extensibility via message filters/routers/etc Cons: need additional infrastructure (message server) which must never fail, Database or file system as asynchronous integration point Same pros/cons as above but messier RESTful Web Service Pros: simple, possible reuse of the server's existing REST API, SSL figures out the encryption problem for you (maybe use RSA key a la GitHub for authentication?) Cons: Client now needs to run a C HTTP REST server w/SSL, client and server need retry logic. Axis2 has both a Java and C version, but you may be limited to SOAP. What other techniques should I be evaluating? What real world experiences have you had with these mechanisms? Which do you recommend for this problem and why?

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• how can udp data can passed through RS232 in ansi c?

  - by moon

  i want to transmit and receive data on RS232 using udp and i want to know about techniques which allow me to transmit and receive data on a faster rate and also no lose of data is there? thanx in advance. i have tried but need improvements if possible #include <stdio.h> #include <dos.h> #include<string.h> #include<conio.h> #include<iostream.h> #include<stdlib.h> #define PORT1 0x3f8 void main() { int c,ch,choice,i,a=0; char filename[30],filename2[30],buf; FILE *in,*out; clrscr(); while(1){ outportb(PORT1+0,0x03); outportb(PORT1+1,0); outportb(PORT1+3,0x03); outportb(PORT1+2,0xc7); outportb(PORT1+4,0x0b); cout<<"\n==============================================================="; cout<<"\n\t*****Serial Communication By BADR-U-ZAMAN******\nCommunication between two computers By serial port"; cout<<"\nPlease select\n[1]\tFor sending file \n[2]\tFor receiving file \n[3]\tTo exit\n"; cout<<"=================================================================\n"; cin>>choice; if(choice==1) { strcpy(filename,"C:\\TC\\BIN\\badr.cpp"); cout<<filename; for(i=0;i<=strlen(filename);i++) outportb(PORT1,filename[i]); in=fopen(filename,"r"); if (in==NULL) { cout<<"cannot open a file"; a=1; } if(a!=1) cout<<"\n\nFile sending.....\n\n"; while(!feof(in)) { buf=fgetc(in); cout<<buf; outportb(PORT1,buf); delay(5); } } else { if(choice==3) exit(0); i=0; buf='a'; while(buf!=NULL) { c=inportb(PORT1+5); if(c&1) { buf=inportb(PORT1); filename2[i]=buf; i++; } } out=fopen(filename2,"t"); cout<<"\n Filename received:"<<filename[2]; cout<<"\nReading from the port..."; cout<<"writing to file"<<filename2; do { c=inportb(PORT1+5); if(c&1) { buf=inportb(PORT1); cout<<buf; fputc(buf,out); delay(5); } if(kbhit()) { ch=getch(); } }while(ch!=27); } getch(); } }

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• urllib2 misbehaving with dynamically loaded content

  - by Sheena

  Some Code headers = {} headers['user-agent'] = 'User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:16.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/16.0' headers['Accept'] = 'text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8' headers['Accept-Language'] = 'en-gb,en;q=0.5' #headers['Accept-Encoding'] = 'gzip, deflate' request = urllib.request.Request(sURL, headers = headers) try: response = urllib.request.urlopen(request) except error.HTTPError as e: print('The server couldn\'t fulfill the request.') print('Error code: {0}'.format(e.code)) except error.URLError as e: print('We failed to reach a server.') print('Reason: {0}'.format(e.reason)) else: f = open('output/{0}.html'.format(sFileName),'w') f.write(response.read().decode('utf-8')) A url http://groupon.cl/descuentos/santiago-centro The situation Here's what I did: enable javascript in browser open url above and keep an eye on the console disable javascript repeat step 2 use urllib2 to grab the webpage and save it to a file enable javascript open the file with browser and observe console repeat 7 with javascript off results In step 2 I saw that a whole lot of the page content was loaded dynamically using ajax. So the HTML that arrived was a sort of skeleton and ajax was used to fill in the gaps. This is fine and not at all surprising Since the page should be seo friendly it should work fine without js. in step 4 nothing happens in the console and the skeleton page loads pre-populated rendering the ajax unnecessary. This is also completely not confusing in step 7 the ajax calls are made but fail. this is also ok since the urls they are using are not local, the calls are thus broken. The page looks like the skeleton. This is also great and expected. in step 8: no ajax calls are made and the skeleton is just a skeleton. I would have thought that this should behave very much like in step 4 question What I want to do is use urllib2 to grab the html from step 4 but I cant figure out how. What am I missing and how could I pull this off? To paraphrase If I was writing a spider I would want to be able to grab plain ol' HTML (as in that which resulted in step 4). I dont want to execute ajax stuff or any javascript at all. I don't want to populate anything dynamically. I just want HTML. The seo friendly site wants me to get what I want because that's what seo is all about. How would one go about getting plain HTML content given the situation I outlined? To do it manually I would turn off js, navigate to the page and copy the html. I want to automate this. stuff I've tried I used wireshark to look at packet headers and the GETs sent off from my pc in steps 2 and 4 have the same headers. Reading about SEO stuff makes me think that this is pretty normal otherwise techniques such as hijax wouldn't be used. Here are the headers my browser sends: Host: groupon.cl User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:16.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/16.0 Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8 Accept-Language: en-gb,en;q=0.5 Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate Connection: keep-alive Here are the headers my script sends: Accept-Encoding: identity Host: groupon.cl Accept-Language: en-gb,en;q=0.5 Connection: close Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8 User-Agent: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:16.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/16.0 The differences are: my script has Connection = close instead of keep-alive. I can't see how this would cause a problem my script has Accept-encoding = identity. This might be the cause of the problem. I can't really see why the host would use this field to determine the user-agent though. If I change encoding to match the browser request headers then I have trouble decoding it. I'm working on this now... watch this space, I'll update the question as new info comes up

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

  - by user331465

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

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