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• WebLogic JDBC Use of Oracle Wallet for SSL

  - by Steve Felts

  Introduction Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) can be used to secure the connection between the middle tier “client”, WebLogic Server (WLS) in this case, and the Oracle database server.  Data between WLS and database can be encrypted.  The server can be authenticated so you have proof that the database can be trusted by validating a certificate from the server.  The client can be authenticated so that the database only accepts connections from clients that it trusts. Similar to the discussion in an earlier article about using the Oracle wallet for database credentials, the Oracle wallet can also be used with SSL to store the keys and certificates.  By using it correctly, clear text passwords can be eliminated from the JDBC configuration and client/server configuration can be simplified by sharing the wallet across multiple datasources. There is a very good Oracle Technical White Paper on using SSL with the Oracle thin driver at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/enterprise-edition/wp-oracle-jdbc-thin-ssl-130128.pdf [LINK1].  The link http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/weblogic/index-087556.html [LINK2] describes how to use WebLogic Server with Oracle JDBC Driver SSL. The information in this article is a guide on what steps need to be taken in the variety of available options; use the links above for details. SSL from the driver to the database server is basically turned on by specifying a protocol of “tcps” in the URL.  However, there is a fair amount of setup needed.  Also remember that there is an overhead in performance. Creating the wallets The common use cases are 1. “data encryption and server-only authentication”, requiring just a trust store, or 2. “data encryption and authentication of both tiers” (client and server), requiring a trust store and a key store. It is recommended to use the auto-login wallet type so that clear text passwords are not needed in the datasource configuration to open the wallet.  The store type for an auto-login wallet is “SSO” (Single Sign On), not “JKS” or “PKCS12” as in [LINK2].  The file name is “cwallet.sso”. Wallets are created using the orapki tool.  They need to be created based on the usage (encryption and/or authentication).  This is discussed in detail in [LINK1] in Appendix B or in the Advanced Security Administrator’s Guide of the Database documentation. Database Server Configuration It is necessary to update the sqlnet.ora and listener.ora files with the directory location of the wallet using WALLET_LOCATION.  These files also indicate whether or not SSL_CLIENT_AUTHENTICATION is being used (true or false). The Oracle Listener must also be configured to use the TCPS protocol.  The recommended port is 2484. LISTENER = (ADDRESS_LIST= (ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcps)(HOST=servername)(PORT=2484))) WebLogic Server Classpath The WebLogic Server CLASSPATH must have three additional security files. The files that need to be added to the WLS CLASSPATH are $MW_HOME/modules/com.oracle.osdt_cert_1.0.0.0.jar $MW_HOME/modules/com.oracle.osdt_core_1.0.0.0.jar $MW_HOME/modules/com.oracle.oraclepki_1.0.0.0.jar One way to do this is to add them to PRE_CLASSPATH environment variable for use with the standard WebLogic scripts. Setting the Oracle Security Provider It’s necessary to enable the Oracle PKI provider on the client side.  This can either be done statically by updating the java.security file under the JRE or dynamically by setting it in a WLS startup class using java.security.Security.insertProviderAt(new oracle.security.pki.OraclePKIProvider (), 3); See the full example of the startup class in [LINK2]. Datasource Configuration When creating a WLS datasource, set the PROTOCOL in the URL to tcps as in the following. jdbc:oracle:thin:@(DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcps)(HOST=host)(PORT=port))(CONNECT_DATA=(SERVICE_NAME=myservice))) For encryption and server authentication, use the datasource connection properties: - javax.net.ssl.trustStore=location of wallet file on the client - javax.net.ssl.trustStoreType=”SSO” For client authentication, use the datasource connection properties: - javax.net.ssl.keyStore=location of wallet file on the client - javax.net.ssl.keyStoreType=”SSO” Note that the driver connection properties for the wallet require a file name, not a directory name. Active GridLink ONS over SSL For completeness, there is another SSL usage for WLS datasources.  The communication with the Oracle Notification Service (ONS) for load balancing information and node up/down events can use SSL also. Create an auto-login wallet and use the wallet on the client and server.  The following is a sample sequence to create a test wallet for use with ONS. orapki wallet create -wallet ons -auto_login -pwd ONS_Wallet orapki wallet add -wallet ons -dn "CN=ons_test,C=US" -keysize 1024 -self_signed -validity 9999 -pwd ONS_Wallet orapki wallet export -wallet ons -dn "CN=ons_test,C=US" -cert ons/cert.txt -pwd ONS_Wallet On the database server side, it’s necessary to define the walletfile directory in the file $CRS_HOME/opmn/conf/ons.config and run onsctl stop/start. When configuring an Active GridLink datasource, the connection to the ONS must be defined.  In addition to the host and port, the wallet file directory must be specified.  By not giving a password, a SSO wallet is assumed. Summary To use SSL with the Oracle thin driver without any clear text passwords, use an SSO Oracle Wallet.  SSL support in the Oracle thin driver is available starting in 10g Release 2.

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• A Visual Studio Release Grows in Brooklyn

  - by andrewbrust

  Yesterday, Microsoft held its flagship launch event for Office 2010 in Manhattan.  Today, the Redmond software company is holding a local launch event for Visual Studio (VS) 2010, in Brooklyn.  How come information workers get the 212 treatment and developers are relegated to 718? Well, here’s the thing: the Brooklyn Marriott is actually a great place for an event, but you need some intimate knowledge of New York City to know that.  NBC’s Studio 8H, where the Office launch was held yesterday (and from where SNL is broadcast) is a pretty small venue, but you’d need some inside knowledge to recognize that.  Likewise, while Office 2010 is a product whose value is apparent.  Appreciating VS 2010’s value takes a bit more savvy.  Setting aside its year-based designation, this release of VS, counting the old Visual Basic releases, is the 10th version of the product.  How can a developer audience get excited about an integrated development environment when it reaches double-digit version numbers?  Well, it can be tough.  Luckily, Microsoft sent Jay Schmelzer, a Group Program Manager from the Visual Studio team in Redmond, to come tell the Brooklyn audience why they should be excited. Turns out there’s a lot of reasons.  Support fro SharePoint development is a big one.  In previous versions of VS, that support has been anemic, at best.  Shortage of SharePoint developers is a huge issue in the industry, and this should help.  There’s also built in support for Windows Azure (Microsoft’s cloud platform) and, through a download, support for the forthcoming Windows Phone 7 platform.  ASP.NET MVC, a “close-to-the-metal” Web development option that does away with the Web Forms abstraction layer, has a first-class presence in VS.  So too does jQuery, the Open Source environment that makes JavaScript development a breeze.  The jQuery support is so good that Microsoft now contributes to that Open Source project and offers IntelliSense support for it in the code editor. Speaking of the VS code editor, it now supports multi-monitor setups, zoom-in, and block selection.  If you’re not a developer, this may sound confusing and minute.  I’ll just say that for people who are developers these are little things that really contribute to productivity, and that translates into lower development costs. The really cool demo, though, was around Visual Studio 2010’s new debugging features.  This stuff is hard to showcase, but I believe it’s truly breakthrough technology: imagine being able to step backwards in time to see what might have caused a bug.  Cool?  Now imagine being able to do that, even if you weren’t the tester and weren’t present while the testing was being done.  Then imagine being able to see a video screen capture of what the tester was doing with your app when the bug occurred.  VS 2010 allows all that.  This could be the demise of the IWOMM (“it works on my machine”) syndrome. After the keynote, I asked Schmelzer if any of Microsoft’s competitors have debugging tools that come close to VS 2010’s.  His answer was an earnest “we don’t think so.”  If that’s true, that’s a big deal, and a huge advantage for developer teams who adopt it.  It will make software development much cheaper and more efficient.  Kind of like holding a launch event at the Brooklyn Marriott instead of 30 Rock in Manhattan! VS 2010 (version 10) and Office 2010 (version 14) aren’t the only new product versions Microsoft is releasing right now.  There’s also SQL Server 2008 R2 (version 10.5), Exchange 2010 (version 8, I believe), SharePoint 2010 (version 4) and, of course, Windows 7.  With so many new versions at such levels of maturity, I think it’s fair to say Microsoft has reached middle-age.  How does a company stave off a potential mid-life crisis, especially when with young Turks like Google coming along and competing so fiercely?  Hard to say.  But if focusing on core value, including value that’s hard to play into a sexy demo, is part oft the answer, then Microsoft’s doing OK.  And if some new tricks, like Windows Phone 7, can gain some traction, that might round things out nicely. Are the legacy products old tricks, or are they revised classics?  I honestly don’t know, because it’s the market’s prerogative to pass that judgement.  I can say this though: based on today’s show, I think Microsoft’s been doing its homework.

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• Loosely Coupled Tabs in Java Editor

  - by Geertjan

  One of the NetBeans Platform 7.1 API enhancements is the @MultiViewElement.Registration annotation. That lets you add a new tab to any existing NetBeans editor. Really powerful since I didn't need to change the sources (or even look at the sources) of the Java editor to add the "Visualizer" tab to it, as shown below: Right now, the tab doesn't show anything, that will come in the next blog entry. The point here is to show how to set things up so that you have a new tab in the Java editor, without needing to touch any of the NetBeans IDE sources: And here's the code, take note of the annotation, which registers the JPanel for the "text/x-java" MIME type: import javax.swing.Action; import javax.swing.JComponent; import javax.swing.JPanel; import javax.swing.JToolBar; import org.netbeans.core.spi.multiview.CloseOperationState; import org.netbeans.core.spi.multiview.MultiViewElement; import org.netbeans.core.spi.multiview.MultiViewElementCallback; import org.openide.awt.UndoRedo; import org.openide.loaders.DataObject; import org.openide.util.Lookup; import org.openide.util.NbBundle; import org.openide.windows.TopComponent; @MultiViewElement.Registration(displayName = "#LBL_Visualizer", iconBase = "org/java/vis/icon.gif", mimeType = "text/x-java", persistenceType = TopComponent.PERSISTENCE_NEVER, preferredID = "JavaVisualizer", position = 3000) @NbBundle.Messages({     "LBL_Visualizer=Visualizer" }) public class JavaVisualizer extends JPanel implements MultiViewElement {     private JToolBar toolbar = new JToolBar();     private DataObject obj;     private MultiViewElementCallback mvec;     public JavaVisualizer(Lookup lkp) {         obj = lkp.lookup(DataObject.class);         assert obj != null;     }     @Override     public JComponent getVisualRepresentation() {         return this;     }     @Override     public JComponent getToolbarRepresentation() {         return toolbar;     }     @Override     public Action[] getActions() {         return new Action[0];     }     @Override     public Lookup getLookup() {         return obj.getLookup();     }     @Override     public void componentOpened() {     }     @Override     public void componentClosed() {     }     @Override     public void componentShowing() {     }     @Override     public void componentHidden() {     }     @Override     public void componentActivated() {     }     @Override     public void componentDeactivated() {     }     @Override     public UndoRedo getUndoRedo() {         return UndoRedo.NONE;     }     @Override     public void setMultiViewCallback(MultiViewElementCallback mvec) {         this.mvec = mvec;     }     @Override     public CloseOperationState canCloseElement() {         return CloseOperationState.STATE_OK;     } } It's a fair amount of code, but mostly pretty self-explanatory. The loosely coupled tabs are applicable to all NetBeans editors, not just the Java editor, which is why the "History" tab is now available to all editors throughout NetBeans IDE. In the next blog entry, you'll see the integration of the Visual Library into the panel I embedded in the Java editor.

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• Disaster Recovery Discovery

  - by Rodney Landrum

  Last weekend I joined several of my IT staff on a mission to perform a DR test in our remote CoLo center in a large South East city of the US. Can I be more obtuse? The goal was simple for me as the sole DBA in a throng of Windows, Storage, Network and SAN admins – restore the databases and make them work. There were 4 applications that back ended to 7 SQL Server databases on 4 different SQL Server instances. We would maintain the original server names, but beyond that it was fair game. We had time to prepare so I was able to script out or otherwise automate the recovery process. I used sp_help_revlogin for three of the servers, a bit of a cheat actually because restoring the Master database on the target DR servers was the specified course of action according to the DR procedures ( the caveat “IF REQUIRED” left it open to interpretation. I really wanted to avoid the step of restoring Master for a number of reasons but mainly because I did not want to deal with issues starting SQL Services afterward. Having to account for the location of TempDB and the version conflicts of the resource DBs were just two of the battles I chose not to fight. Not to mention other system database location problems that might arise and prevent SQL from starting.  I was going to have to restore all of the user databases anyway, so I would not really gain any benefit, outside of logins, for taking the time to restore the source Master database over the newly installed one on the fresh server. What I wanted was the ability to restore the Master database as a user database, call it Master_Mine, from a backup on the source system and then use that restored database to script the SQL Logins and passwords on the DR systems. While I did not attempt this on the trip, the thought stuck in my mind and this past week I succeeded at scripting user accounts and passwords using only a restored copy of the Master database. Granted there were several challenges to overcome.  Also, as is usual for any work like this the usual disclaimers apply:  This is not something that I would imagine Microsoft would condone or support and this was really only an experiment for me to learn if it was even possible. While I have tested the process with success, I do not know that I would use this technique in a documented procedure because future updates for SQL Server will render this technique non-functional. I thought at first, incorrectly of course, that I could use sp_help_revlogin on a restored copy of the master database I named Master_Mine.   Since sp_help_revlogin uses system schema objects, sys.syslogins and sys.server_principals, this was not going to work because all results would come from the main Master database. To test this I added a SQL login via SSMS, backed up Master, restored  it as Master_Mine, and then deleted the login.  Even though the test account I created should presumably still be in the Master_Mine database, I should be able to get to it and script out its creation with its password hash so that I would not need to know the password, but any applications that stored that password would not have to be altered in the DR scenario. They would just work as expected. Once I realized that would not work I began looking deeper.  Knowing that sys.syslogins and sys.server_principals are system views, their underlying code should be available with sp_helptext, right? They were. And this led me to discover the two tables sys.sysxlgns and sys.sysprivs, where the data I needed was stored. These tables existed in both the real Master and the restored copy, Master_Mine.  I used this information to tweak the sp_help_revlogin stored procedure to use these tables instead to create the logins cursor used in sp_help_revlogin. For the password hash,  sp_help_revlogin uses the function LoginProperty() which takes a user name and option ‘passwordhash’ to return the hash for the user. Unfortunately, it requires the login to exist in the Master database. This would not work. So another slight modification I had to make was to pull the password hash itself (pwdhash from sys.sysxlgns) into the logins cursor and comment out the section of sp_help_revlogin that uses LoginProperty. Instead, I pass the pwdhash value as the variable @PWD_varbinary to the sp_hexadecimal stored procedure which is also created by and used within the code provided by Microsoft in the link above for sp_help_revlogin. The final challenge: sys.sysxlgns and sys.server_principals are visible only within a Dedicated Administrator Connection (DAC) query window in SSMS or within SQLCDMD.  To open a DAC connection you have to be logged in on the SQL Server itself, via RDP in my case,  and you preface the server name in the query connection with ADMIN:, so that the server connection looks like ADMIN:ServerName. From there you can create the modified stored procedure in the restored copy of a Master database from a source system as whatever name you like, and then run the modified stored procedure. I named my new stored procedure usp_help_revlogin_MyMaster. Upon execution I was happy to see the logins and password hashes that I needed to apply from the source Master database without having to restore over the new Master system database and without the need to access the original server (assuming it was down due to whatever disaster put it in that state). You will note that I am not providing full code samples here of the modifications. I will say that it was a slight bit of work and anyone who needed to do this for whatever reason, could fairly easily roll their own solution with the information provided herein.  My goal, as I said was to prove that this could be done and provide another option if required to ease the burden of getting SQL Servers up and available in an emergency situation where alternatives may be more challenging or otherwise unavailable.  

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• What to do after a servicing fails on TFS 2010

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  What do you do if you run a couple of hotfixes against your TFS 2010 server and you start to see seem odd behaviour? A customer of mine encountered that very problem, but they could not just, or at least not easily, go back a version.   You see, around the time of the TFS 2010 launch this company decided to upgrade their entire 250+ development team from TFS 2008 to TFS 2010. They encountered a few problems, owing mainly to the size of their TFS deployment, and the way they were using TFS. They were not doing anything wrong, but when you have the largest deployment of TFS outside of Microsoft you tend to run into problems that most people will never encounter. We are talking half a terabyte of source control in TFS with over 80 proxy servers. Its certainly the largest deployment I have ever heard of. When they did their upgrade way back in April, they found two major flaws in the product that meant that they had to back out of the upgrade and wait for a couple of hotfixes. KB983504 – Hotfix KB983578 – Patch KB2401992 -Hotfix In the time since they got the hotfixes they have run 6 successful trial migrations, but we are not talking minutes or hours here. When you have 400+ GB of data it takes time to copy it around. It takes time to do the upgrade and it takes time to do a backup. Well, last week it was crunch time with their developers off for Christmas they had a window of opportunity to complete the upgrade. Now these guys are good, but they wanted Northwest Cadence to be available “just in case”. They did not expect any problems as they already had 6 successful trial upgrades. The problems surfaced around 20 hours in after the first set of hotfixes had been applied. The new Team Project Collection, the only thing of importance, had disappeared from the Team Foundation Server Administration console. The collection would not reattach either. It would not even list the new collection as attachable! Figure: We know there is a database there, but it does not This was a dire situation as 20+ hours to repeat would leave the customer over time with 250+ developers sitting around doing nothing. We tried everything, and then we stumbled upon the command of last resort. TFSConfig Recover /ConfigurationDB:SQLServer\InstanceName;TFS_ConfigurationDBName /CollectionDB:SQLServer\instanceName;"Collection Name" -http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff407077.aspx WARNING: Never run this command! Now this command does something a little nasty. It assumes that there really should not be anything wrong and sets about fixing it. It ignores any servicing levels in the Team Project Collection database and forcibly applies the latest version of the schema. I am sure you can imagine the types of problems this may cause when the schema is updated leaving the data behind. That said, as far as we could see this collection looked good, and we were even able to find and attach the team project collection to the Configuration database. Figure: After attaching the TPC it enters a servicing mode After reattaching the team project collection we found the message “Re-Attaching”. Well, fair enough that sounds like something that may need to happen, and after checking that there was disk IO we left it to it. 14+ hours later, it was still not done so the customer raised a priority support call with MSFT and an engineer helped them out. Figure: Everything looks good, it is just offline. Tip: Did you know that these logs are not represented in the ~/Logs/* folder until they are opened once? The engineer dug around a bit and listened to our situation. He knew that we had run the dreaded “tfsconfig restore”, but was not phased. Figure: This message looks suspiciously like the wrong servicing version As it turns out, the servicing version was slightly out of sync with the schema. KB Schema Successful           KB983504 341 Yes   KB983578 344 sort of   KB2401992 360 nope   Figure: KB, Schema table with notation to its success The Schema version above represents the final end of run version for that hotfix or patch. The only way forward The problem was that the version was somewhere between 341 and 344. This is not a nice place to be in and the engineer give us the  only way forward as the removal of the servicing number from the database so that the re-attach process would apply the latest schema. if his sounds a little like the “tfsconfig recover” command then you are exactly right. Figure: Sneakily changing that 3 to a 1 should do the trick Figure: Changing the status and dropping the version should do it Now that we have done that we should be able to safely reattach and enable the Team Project Collection. Figure: The TPC is now all attached and running You may think that this is the end of the story, but it is not. After a while of mulling and seeking expert advice we came to the opinion that the database was, for want of a better term, “hosed”. There could well be orphaned data in there and the likelihood that we would have problems later down the line is pretty high. We contacted the customer back and made them aware that in all likelihood the repaired database was more like a “cut and shut” than anything else, and at the first sign of trouble later down the line was likely to split in two. So with 40+ hours invested in getting this new database ready the customer threw it away and started again. What would you do? Would you take the “cut and shut” to production and hope for the best?

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• How many developers before continuous integration becomes effective for us?

  - by Carnotaurus

  There is an overhead associated with continuous integration, e.g., set up, re-training, awareness activities, stoppage to fix "bugs" that turn out to be data issues, enforced separation of concerns programming styles, etc. At what point does continuous integration pay for itself? EDIT: These were my findings The set-up was CruiseControl.Net with Nant, reading from VSS or TFS. Here are a few reasons for failure, which have nothing to do with the setup: Cost of investigation: The time spent investigating whether a red light is due a genuine logical inconsistency in the code, data quality, or another source such as an infrastructure problem (e.g., a network issue, a timeout reading from source control, third party server is down, etc., etc.) Political costs over infrastructure: I considered performing an "infrastructure" check for each method in the test run. I had no solution to the timeout except to replace the build server. Red tape got in the way and there was no server replacement. Cost of fixing unit tests: A red light due to a data quality issue could be an indicator of a badly written unit test. So, data dependent unit tests were re-written to reduce the likelihood of a red light due to bad data. In many cases, necessary data was inserted into the test environment to be able to accurately run its unit tests. It makes sense to say that by making the data more robust then the test becomes more robust if it is dependent on this data. Of course, this worked well! Cost of coverage, i.e., writing unit tests for already existing code: There was the problem of unit test coverage. There were thousands of methods that had no unit tests. So, a sizeable amount of man days would be needed to create those. As this would be too difficult to provide a business case, it was decided that unit tests would be used for any new public method going forward. Those that did not have a unit test were termed 'potentially infra red'. An intestesting point here is that static methods were a moot point in how it would be possible to uniquely determine how a specific static method had failed. Cost of bespoke releases: Nant scripts only go so far. They are not that useful for, say, CMS dependent builds for EPiServer, CMS, or any UI oriented database deployment. These are the types of issues that occured on the build server for hourly test runs and overnight QA builds. I entertain that these to be unnecessary as a build master can perform these tasks manually at the time of release, esp., with a one man band and a small build. So, single step builds have not justified use of CI in my experience. What about the more complex, multistep builds? These can be a pain to build, especially without a Nant script. So, even having created one, these were no more successful. The costs of fixing the red light issues outweighed the benefits. Eventually, developers lost interest and questioned the validity of the red light. Having given it a fair try, I believe that CI is expensive and there is a lot of working around the edges instead of just getting the job done. It's more cost effective to employ experienced developers who do not make a mess of large projects than introduce and maintain an alarm system. This is the case even if those developers leave. It doesn't matter if a good developer leaves because processes that he follows would ensure that he writes requirement specs, design specs, sticks to the coding guidelines, and comments his code so that it is readable. All this is reviewed. If this is not happening then his team leader is not doing his job, which should be picked up by his manager and so on. For CI to work, it is not enough to just write unit tests, attempt to maintain full coverage, and ensure a working infrastructure for sizable systems. The bottom line: One might question whether fixing as many bugs before release is even desirable from a business prespective. CI involves a lot of work to capture a handful of bugs that the customer could identify in UAT or the company could get paid for fixing as part of a client service agreement when the warranty period expires anyway.

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• Agile Testing Days 2012 – My First Conference!

  - by Chris George

  I’d like to give you a bit of background first… so please bear with me! In 1996, whilst studying for my final year of my degree, I applied for a job as a C++ Developer at a small software house in Hertfordshire  After bodging up the technical part of the interview I didn’t get the job, but was offered a position as a QA Engineer instead. The role sounded intriguing and the pay was pretty good so in the absence of anything else I took it. Here began my career in the world of software testing! Back then, testing/QA was often an afterthought, something that was bolted on to the development process and very much a second class citizen. Test automation was rare, and tools were basic or non-existent! The internet was just starting to take off, and whilst there might have been testing communities and resources, we were certainly not exposed to any of them. After 8 years I moved to another small company, and again didn’t find myself exposed to any of the changes that were happening in the industry. It wasn’t until I joined Red Gate in 2008 that my view of testing and software development as a whole started to expand. But it took a further 4 years for my view of testing to be totally blown open, and so the story really begins… In May 2012 I was fortunate to land the role of Head of Test Engineering. Soon after, I received an email with details for the “Agile Testi However, in my new role, I decided that it was time to bite the bullet and at least go to one conference. Perhaps I could get some new ideas to supplement and support some of the ideas I already had.ng Days” conference in Potsdam, Germany. I looked over the suggested programme and some of the talks peeked my interest. For numerous reasons I’d shied away from attending conferences in the past, one of the main ones being that I didn’t see much benefit in attending loads of talks when I could just read about stuff like that on the internet. So, on the 18th November 2012, myself and three other Red Gaters boarded a plane at Heathrow bound for Potsdam, Germany to attend Agile Testing Days 2012. Tutorial Day – “Software Testing Reloaded” We chose to do the tutorials on the 19th, I chose the one titled “Software Testing Reloaded – So you wanna actually DO something? We’ve got just the workshop for you. Now with even less powerpoint!”. With such a concise and serious title I just had to see what it was about! I nervously entered the room to be greeted by tables, chairs etc all over the place, not set out and frankly in one hell of a mess! There were a few people in there playing a game with dice. Okaaaay… this is going to be a long day! Actually the dice game was an exercise in deduction and simplification… I found it very interesting and is certainly something I’ll be using at work as a training exercise! (I won’t explain the game here cause I don’t want to let the cat out of the bag…) The tutorial consisted of several games, exploring different aspects of testing. They were all practical yet required a fair amount of thin king. Matt Heusser and Pete Walen were running the tutorial, and presented it in a very relaxed and light-hearted manner. It was really my first experience of working in small teams with testers from very different backgrounds, and it was really enjoyable. Matt & Pete were very approachable and offered advice where required whilst still making you work for the answers! One of the tasks was to devise several strategies for testing some electronic dice. The premise was that a Vegas casino wanted to use the dice to appeal to the twenty-somethings interested in tech, but needed assurance that they were as reliable and random as traditional dice. This was a very interesting and challenging exercise that forced us to challenge various assumptions, determine/clarify requirements but most of all it was frustrating because the dice made a very very irritating beeping noise. Multiple that by at least 12 dice and I was dreaming about them all that night!! Some of the main takeaways that were brilliantly demonstrated through the games were not to make assumptions, challenge requirements, and have fun testing! The tutorial lasted the whole day, but to be honest the day went very quickly! My introduction into the conference experience started very well indeed, and I would talk to both Matt and Pete several times during the 4 days. Days 1,2 & 3 will be coming soon…  

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• Taking the Plunge - or Dipping Your Toe - into the Fluffy IAM Cloud by Paul Dhanjal (Simeio Solutions)

  - by Greg Jensen

  In our last three posts, we’ve examined the revolution that’s occurring today in identity and access management (IAM). We looked at the business drivers behind the growth of cloud-based IAM, the shortcomings of the old, last-century IAM models, and the new opportunities that federation, identity hubs and other new cloud capabilities can provide by changing the way you interact with everyone who does business with you. In this, our final post in the series, we’ll cover the key things you, the enterprise architect, should keep in mind when considering moving IAM to the cloud. Invariably, what starts the consideration process is a burning business need: a compliance requirement, security vulnerability or belt-tightening edict. Many on the business side view IAM as the “silver bullet” – and for good reason. You can almost always devise a solution using some aspect of IAM. The most critical question to ask first when using IAM to address the business need is, simply: is my solution complete? Typically, “business” is not focused on the big picture. Understandably, they’re focused instead on the need at hand: Can we be HIPAA compliant in 6 months? Can we tighten our new hire, employee transfer and termination processes? What can we do to prevent another password breach? Can we reduce our service center costs by the end of next quarter? The business may not be focused on the complete set of services offered by IAM but rather a single aspect or two. But it is the job – indeed the duty – of the enterprise architect to ensure that all aspects are being met. It’s like remodeling a house but failing to consider the impact on the foundation, the furnace or the zoning or setback requirements. While the homeowners may not be thinking of such things, the architect, of course, must. At Simeio Solutions, the way we ensure that all aspects are being taken into account – to expose any gaps or weaknesses – is to assess our client’s IAM capabilities against a five-step maturity model ranging from “ad hoc” to “optimized.” The model we use is similar to Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) developed by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University. It’s based upon some simple criteria, which can provide a visual representation of how well our clients fair when evaluated against four core categories: ·         Program Governance ·         Access Management (e.g., Single Sign-On) ·         Identity and Access Governance (e.g., Identity Intelligence) ·         Enterprise Security (e.g., DLP and SIEM) Often our clients believe they have a solution with all the bases covered, but the model exposes the gaps or weaknesses. The gaps are ideal opportunities for the cloud to enter into the conversation. The complete process is straightforward: 1.    Look at the big picture, not just the immediate need – what is our roadmap and how does this solution fit? 2.    Determine where you stand with respect to the four core areas – what are the gaps? 3.    Decide how to cover the gaps – what role can the cloud play? Returning to our home remodeling analogy, at some point, if gaps or weaknesses are discovered when evaluating the complete impact of the proposed remodel – if the existing foundation wouldn’t support the new addition, for example – the owners need to decide if it’s time to move to a new house instead of trying to remodel the old one. However, with IAM it’s not an either-or proposition – i.e., either move to the cloud or fix the existing infrastructure. It’s possible to use new cloud technologies just to cover the gaps. Many of our clients start their migration to the cloud this way, dipping in their toe instead of taking the plunge all at once. Because our cloud services offering is based on the Oracle Identity and Access Management Suite, we can offer a tremendous amount of flexibility in this regard. The Oracle platform is not a collection of point solutions, but rather a complete, integrated, best-of-breed suite. Yet it’s not an all-or-nothing proposition. You can choose just the features and capabilities you need using a pay-as-you-go model, incrementally turning on and off services as needed. Better still, all the other capabilities are there, at the ready, whenever you need them. Spooling up these cloud-only services takes just a fraction of the time it would take a typical organization to deploy internally. SLAs in the cloud may be higher than on premise, too. And by using a suite of software that’s complete and integrated, you can dramatically lower cost and complexity. If your in-house solution cannot be migrated to the cloud, you might consider using hardware appliances such as Simeio’s Cloud Interceptor to extend your enterprise out into the network. You might also consider using Expert Managed Services. Cost is usually the key factor – not just development costs but also operational sustainment costs. Talent or resourcing issues often come into play when thinking about sustaining a program. Expert Managed Services such as those we offer at Simeio can address those concerns head on. In a cloud offering, identity and access services lend to the new paradigms described in my previous posts. Most importantly, it allows us all to focus on what we're meant to do – provide value, lower costs and increase security to our respective organizations. It’s that magic “silver bullet” that business knew you had all along. If you’d like to talk more, you can find us at simeiosolutions.com.

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• Summit reflections

  - by Rob Farley

  So far, my three PASS Summit experiences have been notably different to each other. My first, I wasn’t on the board and I gave two regular sessions and a Lightning Talk in which I told jokes. My second, I was a board advisor, and I delivered a precon, a spotlight and a Lightning Talk in which I sang. My third (last week), I was a full board director, and I didn’t present at all. Let’s not talk about next year. I’m not sure there are many options left. This year, I noticed that a lot more people recognised me and said hello. I guess that’s potentially because of the singing last year, but could also be because board elections can bring a fair bit of attention, and because of the effort I’ve put in through things like 24HOP... Yeah, ok. It’d be the singing. My approach was very different though. I was watching things through different eyes. I looked for the things that seemed to be working and the things that didn’t. I had staff there again, and was curious to know how their things were working out. I knew a lot more about what was going on behind the scenes to make various things happen, and although very little about the Summit was actually my responsibility (based on not having that portfolio), my perspective had moved considerably. Before the Summit started, Board Members had been given notebooks – an idea Tom (who heads up PASS’ marketing) had come up with after being inspired by seeing Bill walk around with a notebook. The plan was to take notes about feedback we got from people. It was a good thing, and the notebook forms a nice pair with the SQLBits one I got a couple of years ago when I last spoke there. I think one of the biggest impacts of this was that during the first keynote, Bill told everyone present about the notebooks. This set a tone of “we’re listening”, and a number of people were definitely keen to tell us things that would cause us to pull out our notebooks. PASSTV was a new thing this year. Justin, the host, featured on the couch and talked a lot of people about a lot of things, including me (he talked to me about a lot of things, I don’t think he talked to a lot people about me). Reaching people through online methods is something which interests me a lot – it has huge potential, and I love the idea of being able to broadcast to people who are unable to attend in person. I’m keen to see how this medium can be developed over time. People who know me will know that I’m a keen advocate of certification – I've been SQL certified since version 6.5, and have even been involved in creating exams. However, I don’t believe in studying for exams. I think training is worthwhile for learning new skills, but the goal should be on learning those skills, not on passing an exam. Exams should be for proving that the skills are there, not a goal in themselves. The PASS Summit is an excellent place to take exams though, and with an attitude of professional development throughout the event, why not? So I did. I wasn’t expecting to take one, but I was persuaded and took the MCM Knowledge Exam. I hadn’t even looked at the syllabus, but tried it anyway. I was very tired, and even fell asleep at one point during it. I’ll find out my result at some point in the future – the Prometric site just says “Tested” at the moment. As I said, it wasn’t something I was expecting to do, but it was good to have something unexpected during the week. Of course it was good to catch up with old friends and make new ones. I feel like every time I’m in the US I see things develop a bit more, with more and more people knowing who I am, who my staff are, and recognising the LobsterPot brand. I missed being a presenter, but I definitely enjoyed seeing many friends on the list of presenters. I won’t try to list them, because there are so many these days that people might feel sad if I don’t mention them. For those that I managed to see, I was pleased to see that the majority of them have lifted their presentation skills since I last saw them, and I happily told them as much. One person who I will mention was Paul White, who travelled from New Zealand to his first PASS Summit. He gave two sessions (a regular session and a half-day), packed large rooms of people, and had everyone buzzing with enthusiasm. I spoke to him after the event, and he told me that his expectations were blown away. Paul isn’t normally a fan of crowds, and the thought of 4000 people would have been scary. But he told me he had no idea that people would welcome him so well, be so friendly and so down to earth. He’s seen the significance of the SQL Server community, and says he’ll be back. It’ll be good to see him there. Will you be there too?

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• Cloud Computing Forces Better Design Practices

  - by Herve Roggero

  Is cloud computing simply different than on premise development, or is cloud computing actually forcing you to create better applications than you normally would? In other words, is cloud computing merely imposing different design principles, or forcing better design principles?  A little while back I got into a discussion with a developer in which I was arguing that cloud computing, and specifically Windows Azure in his case, was forcing developers to adopt better design principles. His opinion was that cloud computing was not yielding better systems; just different systems. In this blog, I will argue that cloud computing does force developers to use better design practices, and hence better applications. So the first thing to define, of course, is the word “better”, in the context of application development. Looking at a few definitions online, better means “superior quality”. As it relates to this discussion then, I stipulate that cloud computing can yield higher quality applications in terms of scalability, everything else being equal. Before going further I need to also outline the difference between performance and scalability. Performance and scalability are two related concepts, but they don’t mean the same thing. Scalability is the measure of system performance given various loads. So when developers design for performance, they usually give higher priority to a given load and tend to optimize for the given load. When developers design for scalability, the actual performance at a given load is not as important; the ability to ensure reasonable performance regardless of the load becomes the objective. This can lead to very different design choices. For example, if your objective is to obtains the fastest response time possible for a service you are building, you may choose the implement a TCP connection that never closes until the client chooses to close the connection (in other words, a tightly coupled service from a connectivity standpoint), and on which a connection session is established for faster processing on the next request (like SQL Server or other database systems for example). If you objective is to scale, you may implement a service that answers to requests without keeping session state, so that server resources are released as quickly as possible, like a REST service for example. This alternate design would likely have a slower response time than the TCP service for any given load, but would continue to function at very large loads because of its inherently loosely coupled design. An example of a REST service is the NO-SQL implementation in the Microsoft cloud called Azure Tables. Now, back to cloud computing… Cloud computing is designed to help you scale your applications, specifically when you use Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings. However it’s not automatic. You can design a tightly-coupled TCP service as discussed above, and as you can imagine, it probably won’t scale even if you place the service in the cloud because it isn’t using a connection pattern that will allow it to scale [note: I am not implying that all TCP systems do not scale; I am just illustrating the scalability concepts with an imaginary TCP service that isn’t designed to scale for the purpose of this discussion]. The other service, using REST, will have a better chance to scale because, by design, it minimizes resource consumption for individual requests and doesn’t tie a client connection to a specific endpoint (which means you can easily deploy this service to hundreds of machines without much trouble, as long as your pockets are deep enough). The TCP and REST services discussed above are both valid designs; the TCP service is faster and the REST service scales better. So is it fair to say that one service is fundamentally better than the other? No; not unless you need to scale. And if you don’t need to scale, then you don’t need the cloud in the first place. However, it is interesting to note that if you do need to scale, then a loosely coupled system becomes a better design because it can almost always scale better than a tightly-coupled system. And because most applications grow overtime, with an increasing user base, new functional requirements, increased data and so forth, most applications eventually do need to scale. So in my humble opinion, I conclude that a loosely coupled system is not just different than a tightly coupled system; it is a better design, because it will stand the test of time. And in my book, if a system stands the test of time better than another, it is of superior quality. Because cloud computing demands loosely coupled systems so that its underlying service architecture can be leveraged, developers ultimately have no choice but to design loosely coupled systems for the cloud. And because loosely coupled systems are better… … the cloud forces better design practices. My 2 cents.

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• No More NCrunch For Me

  - by Steve Wilkes

  When I opened up Visual Studio this morning, I was greeted with this little popup: NCrunch is a Visual Studio add-in which runs your tests while you work so you know if and when you've broken anything, as well as providing coverage indicators in the IDE and coverage metrics on demand. It recently went commercial (which I thought was fair enough), and time is running out for the free version I've been using for the last couple of months. From my experiences using NCrunch I'm going to let it expire, and go about my business without it. Here's why. Before I start, let me say that I think NCrunch is a good product, which is to say it's had a positive impact on my programming. I've used it to help test-drive a library I'm making right from the start of the project, and especially at the beginning it was very useful to have it run all my tests whenever I made a change. The first problem is that while that was cool to start with, it’s recently become a bit of a chore. Problems Running Tests NCrunch has two 'engine modes' in which it can run tests for you - it can run all your tests when you make a change, or it can figure out which tests were impacted and only run those. Unfortunately, it became clear pretty early on that that second option (which is marked as 'experimental') wasn't really working for me, so I had to have it run everything. With a smallish number of tests and while I was adding new features that was great, but I've now got 445 tests (still not exactly loads) and am more in a 'clean and tidy' mode where I know that a change I'm making will probably only affect a particular subset of the tests. With that in mind it's a bit of a drag sitting there after I make a change and having to wait for NCrunch to run everything. I could disable it and manually run the tests I know are impacted, but then what's the point of having NCrunch? If the 'impacted only' engine mode worked well this problem would go away, but that's not what I found. Secondly, what's wrong with this picture? I've got 445 tests, and NCrunch has queued 455 tests to run. So it's queued duplicate tests - in this quickly-screenshotted case 10, but I've seen the total queue get up over 600. If I'm already itchy waiting for it to run all my tests against a change I know only affects a few, I'm even itchier waiting for it to run a lot of them twice. Problems With Code Coverage NCrunch marks each line of code with a dot to say if it's covered by tests - a black dot says the line isn't covered, a red dot says it's covered but at least one of the covering tests is failing, and a green dot means all the covering tests pass. It also calculates coverage statistics for you. Unfortunately, there's a couple of flaws in the coverage. Firstly, it doesn't support ExcludeFromCodeCoverage attributes. This feature has been requested and I expect will be included in a later release, but right now it doesn't. So this: ...is counted as a non-covered line, and drags your coverage statistics down. Hmph. As well as that, coverage of certain types of code is missed. This: ...is definitely covered. I am 100% absolutely certain it is, by several tests. NCrunch doesn't pick it up, down go my coverage statistics. I've had NCrunch find genuinely uncovered code which I've been able to remove, and that's great, but what's the coverage percentage on this project? Umm... I don't know. Conclusion None of these are major, tool-crippling problems, and I expect NCrunch to get much better in future releases. The current version has some great features, like this: ...that's a line of code with a failing test covering it, and NCrunch can run that failing test and take me to that line exquisitely easily. That's awesome! I'd happily pay for a tool that can do that. But here's the thing: NCrunch (currently) costs $159 (about £100) for a personal licence and $289 (about £180) for a commercial one. I'm not sure which one I'd need as my project is a personal one which I'm intending to open-source, but I'm a professional, self-employed developer, but in any case - that seems like a lot of money for an imperfect tool. If it did everything it's advertised to do more or less perfectly I'd consider it, but it doesn't. So no more NCrunch for me.

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• Is it feasible and useful to auto-generate some code of unit tests?

  - by skiwi

  Earlier today I have come up with an idea, based upon a particular real use case, which I would want to have checked for feasability and usefulness. This question will feature a fair chunk of Java code, but can be applied to all languages running inside a VM, and maybe even outside. While there is real code, it uses nothing language-specific, so please read it mostly as pseudo code. The idea Make unit testing less cumbersome by adding in some ways to autogenerate code based on human interaction with the codebase. I understand this goes against the principle of TDD, but I don't think anyone ever proved that doing TDD is better over first creating code and then immediatly therafter the tests. This may even be adapted to be fit into TDD, but that is not my current goal. To show how it is intended to be used, I'll copy one of my classes here, for which I need to make unit tests. public class PutMonsterOnFieldAction implements PlayerAction { private final int handCardIndex; private final int fieldMonsterIndex; public PutMonsterOnFieldAction(final int handCardIndex, final int fieldMonsterIndex) { this.handCardIndex = Arguments.requirePositiveOrZero(handCardIndex, "handCardIndex"); this.fieldMonsterIndex = Arguments.requirePositiveOrZero(fieldMonsterIndex, "fieldCardIndex"); } @Override public boolean isActionAllowed(final Player player) { Objects.requireNonNull(player, "player"); Hand hand = player.getHand(); Field field = player.getField(); if (handCardIndex >= hand.getCapacity()) { return false; } if (fieldMonsterIndex >= field.getMonsterCapacity()) { return false; } if (field.hasMonster(fieldMonsterIndex)) { return false; } if (!(hand.get(handCardIndex) instanceof MonsterCard)) { return false; } return true; } @Override public void performAction(final Player player) { Objects.requireNonNull(player); if (!isActionAllowed(player)) { throw new PlayerActionNotAllowedException(); } Hand hand = player.getHand(); Field field = player.getField(); field.setMonster(fieldMonsterIndex, (MonsterCard)hand.play(handCardIndex)); } } We can observe the need for the following tests: Constructor test with valid input Constructor test with invalid inputs isActionAllowed test with valid input isActionAllowed test with invalid inputs performAction test with valid input performAction test with invalid inputs My idea mainly focuses on the isActionAllowed test with invalid inputs. Writing these tests is not fun, you need to ensure a number of conditions and you check whether it really returns false, this can be extended to performAction, where an exception needs to be thrown in that case. The goal of my idea is to generate those tests, by indicating (through GUI of IDE hopefully) that you want to generate tests based on a specific branch. The implementation by example User clicks on "Generate code for branch if (handCardIndex >= hand.getCapacity())". Now the tool needs to find a case where that holds. (I haven't added the relevant code as that may clutter the post ultimately) To invalidate the branch, the tool needs to find a handCardIndex and hand.getCapacity() such that the condition >= holds. It needs to construct a Player with a Hand that has a capacity of at least 1. It notices that the capacity private int of Hand needs to be at least 1. It searches for ways to set it to 1. Fortunately it finds a constructor that takes the capacity as an argument. It uses 1 for this. Some more work needs to be done to succesfully construct a Player instance, involving the creation of objects that have constraints that can be seen by inspecting the source code. It has found the hand with the least capacity possible and is able to construct it. Now to invalidate the test it will need to set handCardIndex = 1. It constructs the test and asserts it to be false (the returned value of the branch) What does the tool need to work? In order to function properly, it will need the ability to scan through all source code (including JDK code) to figure out all constraints. Optionally this could be done through the javadoc, but that is not always used to indicate all constraints. It could also do some trial and error, but it pretty much stops if you cannot attach source code to compiled classes. Then it needs some basic knowledge of what the primitive types are, including arrays. And it needs to be able to construct some form of "modification trees". The tool knows that it needs to change a certain variable to a different value in order to get the correct testcase. Hence it will need to list all possible ways to change it, without using reflection obviously. What this tool will not replace is the need to create tailored unit tests that tests all kinds of conditions when a certain method actually works. It is purely to be used to test methods when they invalidate constraints. My questions: Is creating such a tool feasible? Would it ever work, or are there some obvious problems? Would such a tool be useful? Is it even useful to automatically generate these testcases at all? Could it be extended to do even more useful things? Does, by chance, such a project already exist and would I be reinventing the wheel? If not proven useful, but still possible to make such thing, I will still consider it for fun. If it's considered useful, then I might make an open source project for it depending on the time. For people searching more background information about the used Player and Hand classes in my example, please refer to this repository. At the time of writing the PutMonsterOnFieldAction has not been uploaded to the repo yet, but this will be done once I'm done with the unit tests.

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• C#: Does an IDisposable in a Halted Iterator Dispose?

  - by James Michael Hare

  If that sounds confusing, let me give you an example. Let's say you expose a method to read a database of products, and instead of returning a List<Product> you return an IEnumerable<Product> in iterator form (yield return). This accomplishes several good things: The IDataReader is not passed out of the Data Access Layer which prevents abstraction leak and resource leak potentials. You don't need to construct a full List<Product> in memory (which could be very big) if you just want to forward iterate once. If you only want to consume up to a certain point in the list, you won't incur the database cost of looking up the other items. This could give us an example like: 1: // a sample data access object class to do standard CRUD operations. 2: public class ProductDao 3: { 4: private DbProviderFactory _factory = SqlClientFactory.Instance 5:  6: // a method that would retrieve all available products 7: public IEnumerable<Product> GetAvailableProducts() 8: { 9: // must create the connection 10: using (var con = _factory.CreateConnection()) 11: { 12: con.ConnectionString = _productsConnectionString; 13: con.Open(); 14:  15: // create the command 16: using (var cmd = _factory.CreateCommand()) 17: { 18: cmd.Connection = con; 19: cmd.CommandText = _getAllProductsStoredProc; 20: cmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure; 21:  22: // get a reader and pass back all results 23: using (var reader = cmd.ExecuteReader()) 24: { 25: while(reader.Read()) 26: { 27: yield return new Product 28: { 29: Name = reader["product_name"].ToString(), 30: ... 31: }; 32: } 33: } 34: } 35: } 36: } 37: } The database details themselves are irrelevant. I will say, though, that I'm a big fan of using the System.Data.Common classes instead of your provider specific counterparts directly (SqlCommand, OracleCommand, etc). This lets you mock your data sources easily in unit testing and also allows you to swap out your provider in one line of code. In fact, one of the shared components I'm most proud of implementing was our group's DatabaseUtility library that simplifies all the database access above into one line of code in a thread-safe and provider-neutral way. I went with my own flavor instead of the EL due to the fact I didn't want to force internal company consumers to use the EL if they didn't want to, and it made it easy to allow them to mock their database for unit testing by providing a MockCommand, MockConnection, etc that followed the System.Data.Common model. One of these days I'll blog on that if anyone's interested. Regardless, you often have situations like the above where you are consuming and iterating through a resource that must be closed once you are finished iterating. For the reasons stated above, I didn't want to return IDataReader (that would force them to remember to Dispose it), and I didn't want to return List<Product> (that would force them to hold all products in memory) -- but the first time I wrote this, I was worried. What if you never consume the last item and exit the loop? Are the reader, command, and connection all disposed correctly? Of course, I was 99.999999% sure the creators of C# had already thought of this and taken care of it, but inspection in Reflector was difficult due to the nature of the state machines yield return generates, so I decided to try a quick example program to verify whether or not Dispose() will be called when an iterator is broken from outside the iterator itself -- i.e. before the iterator reports there are no more items. So I wrote a quick Sequencer class with a Dispose() method and an iterator for it. Yes, it is COMPLETELY contrived: 1: // A disposable sequence of int -- yes this is completely contrived... 2: internal class Sequencer : IDisposable 3: { 4: private int _i = 0; 5: private readonly object _mutex = new object(); 6:  7: // Constructs an int sequence. 8: public Sequencer(int start) 9: { 10: _i = start; 11: } 12:  13: // Gets the next integer 14: public int GetNext() 15: { 16: lock (_mutex) 17: { 18: return _i++; 19: } 20: } 21:  22: // Dispose the sequence of integers. 23: public void Dispose() 24: { 25: // force output immediately (flush the buffer) 26: Console.WriteLine("Disposed with last sequence number of {0}!", _i); 27: Console.Out.Flush(); 28: } 29: } And then I created a generator (infinite-loop iterator) that did the using block for auto-Disposal: 1: // simply defines an extension method off of an int to start a sequence 2: public static class SequencerExtensions 3: { 4: // generates an infinite sequence starting at the specified number 5: public static IEnumerable<int> GetSequence(this int starter) 6: { 7: // note the using here, will call Dispose() when block terminated. 8: using (var seq = new Sequencer(starter)) 9: { 10: // infinite loop on this generator, means must be bounded by caller! 11: while(true) 12: { 13: yield return seq.GetNext(); 14: } 15: } 16: } 17: } This is really the same conundrum as the database problem originally posed. Here we are using iteration (yield return) over a large collection (infinite sequence of integers). If we cut the sequence short by breaking iteration, will that using block exit and hence, Dispose be called? Well, let's see: 1: // The test program class 2: public class IteratorTest 3: { 4: // The main test method. 5: public static void Main() 6: { 7: Console.WriteLine("Going to consume 10 of infinite items"); 8: Console.Out.Flush(); 9:  10: foreach(var i in 0.GetSequence()) 11: { 12: // could use TakeWhile, but wanted to output right at break... 13: if(i >= 10) 14: { 15: Console.WriteLine("Breaking now!"); 16: Console.Out.Flush(); 17: break; 18: } 19:  20: Console.WriteLine(i); 21: Console.Out.Flush(); 22: } 23:  24: Console.WriteLine("Done with loop."); 25: Console.Out.Flush(); 26: } 27: } So, what do we see? Do we see the "Disposed" message from our dispose, or did the Dispose get skipped because from an "eyeball" perspective we should be locked in that infinite generator loop? Here's the results: 1: Going to consume 10 of infinite items 2: 0 3: 1 4: 2 5: 3 6: 4 7: 5 8: 6 9: 7 10: 8 11: 9 12: Breaking now! 13: Disposed with last sequence number of 11! 14: Done with loop. Yes indeed, when we break the loop, the state machine that C# generates for yield iterate exits the iteration through the using blocks and auto-disposes the IDisposable correctly. I must admit, though, the first time I wrote one, I began to wonder and that led to this test. If you've never seen iterators before (I wrote a previous entry here) the infinite loop may throw you, but you have to keep in mind it is not a linear piece of code, that every time you hit a "yield return" it cedes control back to the state machine generated for the iterator. And this state machine, I'm happy to say, is smart enough to clean up the using blocks correctly. I suspected those wily guys and gals at Microsoft engineered it well, and I wasn't disappointed. But, I've been bitten by assumptions before, so it's good to test and see. Yes, maybe you knew it would or figured it would, but isn't it nice to know? And as those campy 80s G.I. Joe cartoon public service reminders always taught us, "Knowing is half the battle...". Technorati Tags: C#,.NET

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• Oracle Flashback Technologies - Overview

  - by Sridhar_R-Oracle

  Oracle Flashback Technologies - IntroductionIn his May 29th 2014 blog, my colleague Joe Meeks introduced Oracle Maximum Availability Architecture (MAA) and discussed both planned and unplanned outages. Let’s take a closer look at unplanned outages. These can be caused by physical failures (e.g., server, storage, network, file deletion, physical corruption, site failures) or by logical failures – cases where all components and files are physically available, but data is incorrect or corrupt. These logical failures are usually caused by human errors or application logic errors. This blog series focuses on these logical errors – what causes them and how to address and recover from them using Oracle Database Flashback. In this introductory blog post, I’ll provide an overview of the Oracle Database Flashback technologies and will discuss the features in detail in future blog posts. Let’s get started. We are all human beings (unless a machine is reading this), and making mistakes is a part of what we do…often what we do best!  We “fat finger”, we spill drinks on keyboards, unplug the wrong cables, etc.  In addition, many of us, in our lives as DBAs or developers, must have observed, caused, or corrected one or more of the following unpleasant events: Accidentally updated a table with wrong values !! Performed a batch update that went wrong - due to logical errors in the code !! Dropped a table !! How do DBAs typically recover from these types of errors? First, data needs to be restored and recovered to the point-in-time when the error occurred (incomplete or point-in-time recovery).  Moreover, depending on the type of fault, it’s possible that some services – or even the entire database – would have to be taken down during the recovery process.Apart from error conditions, there are other questions that need to be addressed as part of the investigation. For example, what did the data look like in the morning, prior to the error? What were the various changes to the row(s) between two timestamps? Who performed the transaction and how can it be reversed?  Oracle Database includes built-in Flashback technologies, with features that address these challenges and questions, and enable you to perform faster, easier, and convenient recovery from logical corruptions. HistoryFlashback Query, the first Flashback Technology, was introduced in Oracle 9i. It provides a simple, powerful and completely non-disruptive mechanism for data verification and recovery from logical errors, and enables users to view the state of data at a previous point in time.Flashback Technologies were further enhanced in Oracle 10g, to provide fast, easy recovery at the database, table, row, and even at a transaction level.Oracle Database 11g introduced an innovative method to manage and query long-term historical data with Flashback Data Archive. The 11g release also introduced Flashback Transaction, which provides an easy, one-step operation to back out a transaction. Oracle Database versions 11.2.0.2 and beyond further enhanced the performance of these features. Note that all the features listed here work without requiring any kind of restore operation.In addition, Flashback features are fully supported with the new multi-tenant capabilities introduced with Oracle Database 12c, Flashback Features Oracle Flashback Database enables point-in-time-recovery of the entire database without requiring a traditional restore and recovery operation. It rewinds the entire database to a specified point in time in the past by undoing all the changes that were made since that time.Oracle Flashback Table enables an entire table or a set of tables to be recovered to a point in time in the past.Oracle Flashback Drop enables accidentally dropped tables and all dependent objects to be restored.Oracle Flashback Query enables data to be viewed at a point-in-time in the past. This feature can be used to view and reconstruct data that was lost due to unintentional change(s) or deletion(s). This feature can also be used to build self-service error correction into applications, empowering end-users to undo and correct their errors.Oracle Flashback Version Query offers the ability to query the historical changes to data between two points in time or system change numbers (SCN) Oracle Flashback Transaction Query enables changes to be examined at the transaction level. This capability can be used to diagnose problems, perform analysis, audit transactions, and even revert the transaction by undoing SQLOracle Flashback Transaction is a procedure used to back-out a transaction and its dependent transactions.Flashback technologies eliminate the need for a traditional restore and recovery process to fix logical corruptions or make enquiries. Using these technologies, you can recover from the error in the same amount of time it took to generate the error. All the Flashback features can be accessed either via SQL command line (or) via Enterprise Manager.  Most of the Flashback technologies depend on the available UNDO to retrieve older data. The following table describes the various Flashback technologies: their purpose, dependencies and situations where each individual technology can be used.   Example Syntax Error investigation related:The purpose is to investigate what went wrong and what the values were at certain points in timeFlashback Queries  ( select .. as of SCN | Timestamp )   - Helps to see the value of a row/set of rows at a point in timeFlashback Version Queries  ( select .. versions between SCN | Timestamp and SCN | Timestamp)  - Helps determine how the value evolved between certain SCNs or between timestamps Flashback Transaction Queries (select .. XID=)   - Helps to understand how the transaction caused the changes.Error correction related:The purpose is to fix the error and correct the problems,Flashback Table  (flashback table .. to SCN | Timestamp)  - To rewind the table to a particular timestamp or SCN to reverse unwanted updates Flashback Drop (flashback table ..  to before drop )  - To undrop or undelete a table Flashback Database (flashback database to SCN  | Restore Point )  - This is the rewind button for Oracle databases. You can revert the entire database to a particular point in time. It is a fast way to perform a PITR (point-in-time recovery). Flashback Transaction (DBMS_FLASHBACK.TRANSACTION_BACKOUT(XID..))  - To reverse a transaction and its related transactions Advanced use cases Flashback technology is integrated into Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) and Oracle Data Guard. So, apart from the basic use cases mentioned above, the following use cases are addressed using Oracle Flashback. Block Media recovery by RMAN - to perform block level recovery Snapshot Standby - where the standby is temporarily converted to a read/write environment for testing, backup, or migration purposes Re-instate old primary in a Data Guard environment – this avoids the need to restore an old backup and perform a recovery to make it a new standby. Guaranteed Restore Points - to bring back the entire database to an older point-in-time in a guaranteed way. and so on..I hope this introductory overview helps you understand how Flashback features can be used to investigate and recover from logical errors.  As mentioned earlier, I will take a deeper-dive into to some of the critical Flashback features in my upcoming blogs and address common use cases.

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• Developing Mobile Applications: Web, Native, or Hybrid?

  - by Michelle Kimihira

  Authors: Joe Huang, Senior Principal Product Manager, Oracle Mobile Application Development Framework  and Carlos Chang, Senior Principal Product Director The proliferation of mobile devices and platforms represents a game-changing technology shift on a number of levels. Companies must decide not only the best strategic use of mobile platforms, but also how to most efficiently implement them. Inevitably, this conversation devolves to the developers, who face the task of developing and supporting mobile applications—not a simple task in light of the number of devices and platforms. Essentially, developers can choose from the following three different application approaches, each with its own set of pros and cons. Native Applications: This refers to apps built for and installed on a specific platform, such as iOS or Android, using a platform-specific software development kit (SDK).  For example, apps for Apple’s iPhone and iPad are designed to run specifically on iOS and are written in Xcode/Objective-C. Android has its own variation of Java, Windows uses C#, and so on.  Native apps written for one platform cannot be deployed on another. Native apps offer fast performance and access to native-device services but require additional resources to develop and maintain each platform, which can be expensive and time consuming. Mobile Web Applications: Unlike native apps, mobile web apps are not installed on the device; rather, they are accessed via a Web browser.  These are server-side applications that render HTML, typically adjusting the design depending on the type of device making the request.  There are no program coding constraints for writing server-side apps—they can be written in Java, C, PHP, etc., it doesn’t matter.  Instead, the server detects what type of mobile browser is pinging the server and adjusts accordingly. For example, it can deliver fully JavaScript and CSS-enabled content to smartphone browsers, while downgrading gracefully to basic HTML for feature phone browsers. Mobile apps work across platforms, but are limited to what you can do through a browser and require Internet connectivity. For certain types of applications, these constraints may not be an issue. Oracle supports mobile web applications via ADF Faces (for tablets) and ADF Mobile browser (Trinidad) for smartphone and feature phones. Hybrid Applications: As the name implies, hybrid apps combine technologies from native and mobile Web apps to gain the benefits each. For example, these apps are installed on a device, like their pure native app counterparts, while the user interface (UI) is based on HTML5.  This UI runs locally within the native container, which usually leverages the device’s browser engine.  The advantage of using HTML5 is a consistent, cross-platform UI that works well on most devices.  Combining this with the native container, which is installed on-device, provides mobile users with access to local device services, such as camera, GPS, and local device storage.  Native apps may offer greater flexibility in integrating with device native services.  However, since hybrid applications already provide device integrations that typical enterprise applications need, this is typically less of an issue.  The new Oracle ADF Mobile release is an HTML5 and Java hybrid framework that targets mobile app development to iOS and Android from one code base. So, Which is the Best Approach? The short answer is – the best choice depends on the type of application you are developing.  For instance, animation-intensive apps such as games would favor native apps, while hybrid applications may be better suited for enterprise mobile apps because they provide multi-platform support. Just for starters, the following issues must be considered when choosing a development path. Application Complexity: How complex is the application? A quick app that accesses a database or Web service for some data to display?  You can keep it simple, and a mobile Web app may suffice. However, for a mobile/field worker type of applications that supports mission critical functionality, hybrid or native applications are typically needed. Richness of User Interactivity: What type of user experience is required for the application?  Mobile browser-based app that’s optimized for mobile UI may suffice for quick lookup or productivity type of applications.  However, hybrid/native application would typically be required to deliver highly interactive user experiences needed for field-worker type of applications.  For example, interactive BI charts/graphs, maps, voice/email integration, etc.  In the most extreme case like gaming applications, native applications may be necessary to deliver the highly animated and graphically intensive user experience. Performance: What type of performance is required by the application functionality?  For instance, for real-time look up of data over the network, mobile app performance depends on network latency and server infrastructure capabilities.  If consistent performance is required, data would typically need to be cached, which is supported on hybrid or native applications only. Connectivity and Availability: What sort of connectivity will your application require? Does the app require Web access all the time in order to always retrieve the latest data from the server? Or do the requirements dictate offline support? While native and hybrid apps can be built to operate offline, Web mobile apps require Web connectivity. Multi-platform Requirements: The terms “consumerization of IT” and BYOD (bring your own device) effectively mean that the line between the consumer and the enterprise devices have become blurred. Employees are bringing their personal mobile devices to work and are often expecting that they work in the corporate network and access back-office applications.  Even if companies restrict access to the big dogs: (iPad, iPhone, Android phones and tablets, possibly Windows Phone and tablets), trying to support each platform natively will require increasing resources and domain expertise with each new language/platform. And let’s not forget the maintenance costs, involved in upgrading new versions of each platform.   Where multi-platform support is needed, Web mobile or hybrid apps probably have the advantage. Going native, and trying to support multiple operating systems may be cost prohibitive with existing resources and developer skills. Device-Services Access:  If your app needs to access local device services, such as the camera, contacts app, accelerometer, etc., then your choices are limited to native or hybrid applications.   Fragmentation: Apple controls Apple iOS and the only concern is what version iOS is running on any given device.   Not so Android, which is open source. There are many, many versions and variants of Android running on different devices, which can be a nightmare for app developers trying to support different devices running different flavors of Android.  (Is it an Amazon Kindle Fire? a Samsung Galaxy?  A Barnes & Noble Nook?) This is a nightmare scenario for native apps—on the other hand, a mobile Web or hybrid app, when properly designed, can shield you from these complexities because they are based on common frameworks.  Resources: How many developers can you dedicate to building and supporting mobile application development?  What are their existing skills sets?  If you’re considering native application development due to the complexity of the application under development, factor the costs of becoming proficient on a each platform’s OS and programming language. Add another platform, and that’s another language, another SDK. On the other side of the equation, Web mobile or hybrid applications are simpler to make, and readily support more platforms, but there may be performance trade-offs. Conclusion This only scratches the surface. However, I hope to have suggested some food for thought in choosing your mobile development strategy.  Do your due diligence, search the Web, read up on mobile, talk to peers, attend events. The development team at Oracle is working hard on mobile technologies to help customers extend enterprise applications to mobile faster and effectively.  To learn more on what Oracle has to offer, check out the Oracle ADF Mobile (hybrid) and ADF Faces/ADF Mobile browser (Web Mobile) solutions from Oracle.   Additional Information Blog: ADF Blog Product Information on OTN: ADF Mobile Product Information on Oracle.com: Oracle Fusion Middleware Follow us on Twitter and Facebook Subscribe to our regular Fusion Middleware Newsletter

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• PASS: Election Changes for 2011

  - by Bill Graziano

  Last year after the election, the PASS Board created an Election Review Committee.  This group was charged with reviewing our election procedures and making suggestions to improve the process.  You can read about the formation of the group and review some of the intermediate work on the site – especially in the forums. I was one of the members of the group along with Joe Webb (Chair), Lori Edwards, Brian Kelley, Wendy Pastrick, Andy Warren and Allen White.  This group worked from October to April on our election process.  Along the way we: Interviewed interested parties including former NomCom members, Board candidates and anyone else that came forward. Held a session at the Summit to allow interested parties to discuss the issues Had numerous conference calls and worked through the various topics I can’t thank these people enough for the work they did.  They invested a tremendous number of hours thinking, talking and writing about our elections.  I’m proud to say I was a member of this group and thoroughly enjoyed working with everyone (even if I did finally get tired of all the calls.) The ERC delivered their recommendations to the PASS Board prior to our May Board meeting.  We reviewed those and made a few modifications.  I took their recommendations and rewrote them as procedures while incorporating those changes.  Their original recommendations as well as our final document are posted at the ERC documents page.  Please take a second and read them BEFORE we start the elections.  If you have any questions please post them in the forums on the ERC site. (My final document includes a change log at the end that I decided to leave in.  If you want to know which areas to pay special attention to that’s a good start.) Many of those recommendations were already posted in the forums or in the blogs of individual ERC members.  Hopefully nothing in the ERC document is too surprising. In this post I’m going to walk through some of the key changes and talk about what I remember from both ERC and Board discussions.  I’ll pay a little extra attention to things the Board changed from the ERC.  I’d also encourage any of the Board or ERC members to blog their thoughts on this. The Nominating Committee will continue to exist.  Personally, I was curious to see what the non-Board ERC members would think about the NomCom.  There was broad agreement that a group to vet candidates had value to the organization. The NomCom will be composed of five members.  Two will be Board members and three will be from the membership at large.  The only requirement for the three community members is that you’ve volunteered in some way (and volunteering is defined very broadly).  We expect potential at-large NomCom members to participate in a forum on the PASS site to answer questions from the other PASS members. We’re going to hold an election to determine the three community members.  It will be closer to voting for Summit sessions than voting for Board members.  That means there won’t be multiple dedicated emails.  If you’re at all paying attention it will be easy to participate.  Personally I wanted it easy for those that cared to participate but not overwhelm those that didn’t care.  I think this strikes a good balance. There’s also a clause that in order to be considered a winner in this NomCom election, you must receive 10 votes.  This is something I suggested.  I have no idea how popular the NomCom election is going to be.  I just wanted a fallback that if no one participated and some random person got in with one or two votes.  Any open slots will be filled by the NomCom chair (usually the PASS Immediate Past President).  My assumption is that they would probably take the next highest vote getters unless they were throwing flames in the forums or clearly unqualified.  As a final check, the Board still approves the final NomCom. The NomCom is going to rank candidates instead of rating them.  This has interesting implications.  This was championed by another ERC member and I’m hoping they write something about it.  This will really force the NomCom to make decisions between candidates.  You can’t just rate everyone a 3 and be done with it.  It may also make candidates appear further apart than they actually are.  I’m looking forward talking with the NomCom after this election and getting their feedback on this. The PASS Board added an option to remove a candidate with a unanimous vote of the NomCom.  This was primarily put in place to handle people that lied on their application or had a criminal background or some other unusual situation and we figured it out. We list an explicit goal of three candidate per open slot. We also wanted an easy way to find the NomCom candidate rankings from the ballot.  Hopefully this will satisfy those that want a broad candidate pool and those that want the NomCom to identify the most qualified candidates. The primary spokesperson for the NomCom is the committee chair.  After the issues around the election last year we didn’t have a good communication plan in place.  We should have and that was a failure on the part of the Board.  If there is criticism of the election this year I hope that falls squarely on the Board.  The community members of the NomCom shouldn’t be fielding complaints over the election process.  That said, the NomCom is ranking candidates and we are forcing them to rank some lower than others.  I’m sure you’ll each find someone that you think should have been ranked differently.  I also want to highlight one other change to the process that we started last year and isn’t included in these documents.  I think the candidate forums on the PASS site were tremendously helpful last year in helping people to find out more about candidates.  That gives our members a way to ask hard questions of the candidates and publicly see their answers. This year we have two important groups to fill.  The first is the NomCom.  We need three people from our membership to step up and fill this role.  It won’t be easy.  You will have to make subjective rankings of your fellow community members.  Your actions will be important in deciding who the future leaders of PASS will be.  There’s a 50/50 chance that one of the people you interview will be the President of PASS someday.  This is not a responsibility to be taken lightly. The second is the slate of candidates.  If you’ve ever thought about running for the Board this is the year.  We’ve never had nine candidates on the ballot before.  Your chance of making it through the NomCom are higher than in any previous year.  Unfortunately the more of you that run, the more of you that will lose in the election.  And hopefully that competition will mean more community involvement and better Board members for PASS. Is this the end of changes to the election process?  It isn’t.  Every year that I’ve been on the Board the election process has changed.  Some years there have been small changes and some years there have been large changes.  After this election we’ll look at how the process worked and decide what steps to take – just like we do every year.

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• Unlocking Productivity

  - by Michael Snow

  Unlocking Productivity in Life Sciences with Consolidated Content Management by Joe Golemba, Vice President, Product Management, Oracle WebCenter As life sciences organizations look to become more operationally efficient, the ability to effectively leverage information is a competitive advantage. Whether data mining at the drug discovery phase or prepping the sales team before a product launch, content management can play a key role in developing, organizing, and disseminating vital information. The goal of content management is relatively straightforward: put the information that people need where they can find it. A number of issues can complicate this; information sits in many different systems, each of those systems has its own security, and the information in those systems exists in many different formats. Identifying and extracting pertinent information from mountains of farflung data is no simple job, but the alternative—wasted effort or even regulatory compliance issues—is worse. An integrated information architecture can enable health sciences organizations to make better decisions, accelerate clinical operations, and be more competitive. Unstructured data matters Often when we think of drug development data, we think of structured data that fits neatly into one or more research databases. But structured data is often directly supported by unstructured data such as experimental protocols, reaction conditions, lot numbers, run times, analyses, and research notes. As life sciences companies seek integrated views of data, they are typically finding diverse islands of data that seemingly have no relationship to other data in the organization. Information like sales reports or call center reports can be locked into siloed systems, and unavailable to the discovery process. Additionally, in the increasingly networked clinical environment, Web pages, instant messages, videos, scientific imaging, sales and marketing data, collaborative workspaces, and predictive modeling data are likely to be present within an organization, and each source potentially possesses information that can help to better inform specific efforts. Historically, content management solutions that had 21CFR Part 11 capabilities—electronic records and signatures—were focused mainly on content-enabling manufacturing-related processes. Today, life sciences companies have many standalone repositories, requiring different skills, service level agreements, and vendor support costs to manage them. With the amount of content doubling every three to six months, companies have recognized the need to manage unstructured content from the beginning, in order to increase employee productivity and operational efficiency. Using scalable and secure enterprise content management (ECM) solutions, organizations can better manage their unstructured content. These solutions can also be integrated with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems or research systems, making content available immediately, in the context of the application and within the flow of the employee’s typical business activity. Administrative safeguards—such as content de-duplication—can also be applied within ECM systems, so documents are never recreated, eliminating redundant efforts, ensuring one source of truth, and maintaining content standards in the organization. Putting it in context Consolidating structured and unstructured information in a single system can greatly simplify access to relevant information when it is needed through contextual search. Using contextual filters, results can include therapeutic area, position in the value chain, semantic commonalities, technology-specific factors, specific researchers involved, or potential business impact. The use of taxonomies is essential to organizing information and enabling contextual searches. Taxonomy solutions are composed of a hierarchical tree that defines the relationship between different life science terms. When overlaid with additional indexing related to research and/or business processes, it becomes possible to effectively narrow down the amount of data that is returned during searches, as well as prioritize results based on specific criteria and/or prior search history. Thus, search results are more accurate and relevant to an employee’s day-to-day work. For example, a search for the word "tissue" by a lab researcher would return significantly different results than a search for the same word performed by someone in procurement. Of course, diverse data repositories, combined with the immense amounts of data present in an organization, necessitate that the data elements be regularly indexed and cached beforehand to enable reasonable search response times. In its simplest form, indexing of a single, consolidated data warehouse can be expected to be a relatively straightforward effort. However, organizations require the ability to index multiple data repositories, enabling a single search to reference multiple data sources and provide an integrated results listing. Security and compliance Beyond yielding efficiencies and supporting new insight, an enterprise search environment can support important security considerations as well as compliance initiatives. For example, the systems enable organizations to retain the relevance and the security of the indexed systems, so users can only see the results to which they are granted access. This is especially important as life sciences companies are working in an increasingly networked environment and need to provide secure, role-based access to information across multiple partners. Although not officially required by the 21 CFR Part 11 regulation, the U.S. Food and Drug Administraiton has begun to extend the type of content considered when performing relevant audits and discoveries. Having an ECM infrastructure that provides centralized management of all content enterprise-wide—with the ability to consistently apply records and retention policies along with the appropriate controls, validations, audit trails, and electronic signatures—is becoming increasingly critical for life sciences companies. Making the move Creating an enterprise-wide ECM environment requires moving large amounts of content into a single enterprise repository, a daunting and risk-laden initiative. The first key is to focus on data taxonomy, allowing content to be mapped across systems. The second is to take advantage new tools which can dramatically speed and reduce the cost of the data migration process through automation. Additional content need not be frozen while it is migrated, enabling productivity throughout the process. The ability to effectively leverage information into success has been gaining importance in the life sciences industry for years. The rapid adoption of enterprise content management, both in operational processes as well as in scientific management, are clear indicators that the companies are looking to use all available data to be better informed, improve decision making, minimize risk, and increase time to market, to maintain profitability and be more competitive. As more and more varieties and sources of information are brought under the strategic management umbrella, the ability to divine knowledge from the vast pool of information is increasingly difficult. Simple search engines and basic content management are increasingly unable to effectively extract the right information from the mountains of data available. By bringing these tools into context and integrating them with business processes and applications, we can effectively focus on the right decisions that make our organizations more profitable. More Information Oracle will be exhibiting at DIA 2012 in Philadelphia on June 25-27. Stop by our booth 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;} (#2825) to learn more about the advantages of a centralized ECM strategy and see the Oracle WebCenter Content solution, our 21 CFR Part 11 compliant content management platform.

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• Facebook Oauth Logout

  - by Derek Troy-West

  I have an application that integrates with Facebook using Oauth 2. I can authorize with FB and query their REST and Graph APIs perfectly well, but when I authorize an active browser session is created with FB. I can then log-out of my application just fine, but the session with FB persists, so if anyone else uses the browser they will see the previous users FB account (unless the previous user manually logs out of FB also). The steps I take to authorize are: Call [LINK: graph.facebook.com/oauth/authorize?client_id...] This step opens a Facebook login/connect window if the user's browser doesn't already have an active FB session. Once they log-in to facebook they redirect to my site with a code I can exchange for an oauth token. Call [LINK: graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?client_id..] with the code from (1) Now I have an Oauth Token, and the user's browser is logged into my site, and into FB. I call a bunch of APIs to do stuff: i.e. [LINK: graph.facebook.com/me?access_token=..] Lets say my user wants to log out of my site. The FB terms and conditions demand that I perform Single Sign Off, so when the user logs out of my site, they also are logged out of Facebook. There are arguments that this is a bit daft, but I'm happy to comply if there is any way of actually achieving that. I have seen suggestions that: A. I use the Javascript API to logout: FB.Connect.logout(). Well I tried using that, but it didn't work, and I'm not sure exactly how it could, as I don't use the Javascript API in any way on my site. The session isn't maintained or created by the Javascript API so I'm not sure how it's supposed to expire it either. B. Use [LINK: facebook.com/logout.php]. This was suggested by an admin in the Facebook forums some time ago. The example given related to the old way of getting FB sessions (non-oauth) so I don't think I can apply it in my case. C. Use the old REST api expireSession or revokeAuthorization. I tried both of these and while they do expire the Oauth token they don't invalidate the session that the browser is currently using so it has no effect, the user is not logged out of Facebook. I'm really at a bit of a loose end, the Facebook documentation is patchy, ambiguous and pretty poor. The support on the forums is non-existant, at the moment I can't even log in to the facebook forum, and aside from that, their own FB Connect integration doesn't even work on the forum itself. Doesn't inspire much confidence. Ta for any help you can offer. Derek ps. Had to change HTTPS to LINK, not enough karma to post links which is probably fair enough.

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• Integrating POP3 client functionality into a C# application?

  - by flesh

  I have a web application that requires a server based component to periodically access POP3 email boxes and retrieve emails. The service then needs to process the emails which will involve: Validating the email against some business rules (does it contain a valid reference in the subject line, which user sent the mail, etc.) Analysing and saving any attachments to disk Take the email body and attachment details and create a new item in the database Or update an existing item where the reference matches the incoming email subject line What is the best way to approach this? I really don't want to have to write a POP3 client from scratch, but I need to be able to customize the processing of emails. Ideally I would be able to plug in some component that does the access and retrieval for me, returning arrays of attachments, body text, subject line, etc. ready for my processing... [ UPDATE: Reviews ] OK, so I have spent a fair amount of time looking into (mainly free) .NET POP3 libraries so I thought I'd provide a short review of some of those mentioned below and a few others: Pop3.net - free - works OK, very basic in terms of functionality provided. This is pretty much just the POP3 commands and some base64 encoding, but it's very straight forward - probably a good introduction Pop3 Wizard - commercial / some open source code - couldn't get this to build, missing DLLs, I wouldn't bother with this C#Mail - free - works well, comes with Mime parser and SMTP client, however the comments are in Japanese (not a big deal) and it didn't work with SSL 'out of the box' - I had to change the SslStream constructor after which it worked no problem OpenPOP - free - hasn't been updated for about 5 years so it's current state is .NET 1.0, doesn't support SSL but that was no problem to resolve - I just replaced the existing stream with an SslStream and it worked. Comes with Mime parser. Of the free libraries, I'd go for C#Mail or OpenPOP. I looked at a few commercial libraries: Chillkat, Rebex, RemObjects, JMail.net. Based on features, price and impression of the company I would probably go for Rebex and may in the future if my requirements change or I run into production issues with either of C#Mail or OpenPOP. In case anyone's needs it, this is the replacement SslStream constructor that I used to enable SSL with C#Mail and OpenPOP: SslStream stream = new SslStream(clientSocket.GetStream(), false, delegate(object sender, X509Certificate cert, X509Chain chain, SslPolicyErrors errors) { return true; });

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• iPhone MapKit problems: viewForAnnotation inconsistently setting pinColor?

  - by blackkettle

  Hi, I'm trying setup a map that displays different pin colors depending on the type/class of the location in question. I know this is a pretty common thing to do, but I'm having trouble getting the viewForAnnotation delegate to consistently update/set the pin color. I have a showThisLocation function that basically cycles through a list of AddressAnnotations and then based on the annotation class (bus stop, hospital, etc.) I set an if( myClass == 1){ [defaults setObject:@"1" forKey:@"currPinColor"]; [defaults synchronize]; NSLog(@"Should be %@!", [defaults objectForKey:@"currPinColor"]); } else if( myClass ==2 ){ [defaults setObject:@"2" forKey:@"currPinColor"]; [defaults synchronize]; NSLog(@"Should be %@!", [defaults objectForKey:@"currPinColor"]); } [_mapView addAnnotation:myCurrentAnnotation]; then my viewForAnnotation delegate looks like this, - (MKAnnotationView *) mapView:(MKMapView *)mapView viewForAnnotation:(id )annotation { if( annotation == mapView.userLocation ){ return nil; } NSUserDefaults *defaults = [NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults]; MKPinAnnotationView *annView = nil; annView = (MKPinAnnotationView*)[mapView dequeueReusableAnnotationViewWithIdentifier:@"currentloc"]; if( annView == nil ){ annView = [[MKPinAnnotationView alloc] initWithAnnotation:annotation reuseIdentifier:@"currentloc"]; } annView.pinColor = [defaults integerForKey:@"currPinColor"]; NSLog(@"Pin color: %d", [defaults integerForKey:@"currPinColor"]); annView.animatesDrop=TRUE; annView.canShowCallout = YES; annView.calloutOffset = CGPointMake(-5, 5); return annView; } The problem is that, although the NSLog statements in the "if" block always confirm that the color has been set, the delegate sometimes but not always ends up with the correct color. I've also noticed that what generally happens is that the first search for a new location will set all pins to the last color in the "if" block, but search for the same location again will set the pins to the correct color. I suspect I am not supposed to usen NSUserDefaults in this way, but I also tried to create my own subclass for MKAnnotation which included an additional property "currentPinColor", and while this allowed me to set the "currentPinColor", when I tried to access the "currentPinColor from the delegate method, the compiler complained that it didn't know anything about "currentPinColor in connection with MKAnnotation. Fair enough I guess, but then I tried to revise the delegate method, - (MKAnnotationView *) mapView:(MKMapView *)mapView viewForAnnotation:(id )annotation instead of the default - (MKAnnotationView *) mapView:(MKMapView *)mapView viewForAnnotation:(id )annotation at which point the compiler complained that it didn't know anything about the protocol for MyCustomMKAnnotation in this delegate context. What is the proper way to set the delegate method and/or MyCustomMKAnnotation, or what is the appropriate way to achieve consistent pinColor settings. I'm just about out of ideas for things to try here.

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• Star Rating widget for jQuery UI

  - by Roger

  I was introduced to the Star Rating widget for jQuery UI: http://orkans-tmp.22web.net/star_rating/ I was originally using this one: http://www.fyneworks.com/jquery/star-rating/ Is there any difference between using the two? Well trying to use the jquery UI one, I can't get the input buttons to show up as stars. I have these js and css files included: <script src="jquery-1.3.2.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="jquery-ui-1.7.2.custom.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="ui.stars.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <link href="ui.stars.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" /> And for my code, simply: <form> Rating: <span id="stars-cap"></span> <div id="stars-wrapper1"> <input type="radio" name="newrate" value="1" title="Very poor" /> <input type="radio" name="newrate" value="2" title="Poor" /> <input type="radio" name="newrate" value="3" title="Not that bad" /> <input type="radio" name="newrate" value="4" title="Fair" /> <input type="radio" name="newrate" value="5" title="Average" checked="checked" /> <input type="radio" name="newrate" value="6" title="Almost good" /> <input type="radio" name="newrate" value="7" title="Good" /> <input type="radio" name="newrate" value="8" title="Very good" /> <input type="radio" name="newrate" value="9" title="Excellent" /> <input type="radio" name="newrate" value="10" title="Perfect" /> </div> </form> All the files and images are in the same folder. I've never used jquery UI before, so I'm not sure if all I need is that file. I'm not sure if it needs it either, the other star rating plugin I was using didn't require it. Anyone know what I'm missing anything?

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• .htaccess blocking images on some internal pages

  - by jethomas

  I'm doing some web design for a friend and I noticed that everywhere else on her site images will load fine except for the subdirectory I'm working in. I looked in her .htaccess file and sure enough it is setup to deny people from stealing her images. Fair Enough, except the pages i'm working on are in her domain and yet I still get the 403 error. I'm pasting the .htaccess contents below but I replaced the domain names with xyz, 123 and abc. So specifically the page I'm on (xyz.com/DesignGallery.asp) pulls images from (xyz.com/machform/data/form_1/files) and it results in a forbidden error. RewriteEngine on <Files 403.shtml> order allow,deny allow from all </Files> RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://xyz.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://xyz.com/machform/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://xyz.com/machform/data/form_1/files/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://xyz.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://abc.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://abc.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://abc.xyz.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://abc.xyz.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://123.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://123.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://123.xyz.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://123.xyz.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.xyz.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.xyz.com/machform/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.xyz.com/machform/$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.xyz.com/machform/data/form_1/files/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.xyz.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.abc.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.abc.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.abc.xyz.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.abc.xyz.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.123.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.123.com$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.123.xyz.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.123.xyz.com$ [NC] RewriteRule .*\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|bmp)$ - [F,NC] deny from 69.49.149.17 RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.*$ RewriteRule ^vendors\.html$ "http\:\/\/www\.xyz\.com\/Design_Gallery_1\.htm" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.*$ RewriteRule ^vendors\.asp$ "http\:\/\/www\.xyz\.com\/Design_Gallery_1\.htm" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.*$ RewriteRule ^ArtGraphics\.html$ "http\:\/\/www\.xyz\.com\/Art_Gallery_1\.htm" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.*$ RewriteRule ^ArtGraphics\.asp$ "http\:\/\/www\.xyz\.com\/Art_Gallery_1\.htm" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.*$ RewriteRule ^Gear\.asp$ "http\:\/\/www\.xyz\.com\/Gear_Gallery_1\.htm" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.*$ RewriteRule ^Gear\.html$ "http\:\/\/www\.xyz\.com\/Gear_Gallery_1\.htm" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.*$ RewriteRule ^NewsletterSign\-Up\.html$ "http\:\/\/www\.xyz\.com\/Newsletter\.htm" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.*$ RewriteRule ^NewsletterSign\-Up\.asp$ "http\:\/\/www\.xyz\.com\/Newsletter\.htm" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.*$ RewriteRule ^KidzStuff\.html$ "http\:\/\/www\.xyz\.com\/KidzStuff1\.htm" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.*$ RewriteRule ^KidzStuff\.asp$ "http\:\/\/www\.xyz\.com\/KidzStuff1\.htm" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.*$ RewriteRule ^Vendors\.html$ "http\:\/\/www\.xyz\.com\/Design_Gallery_1\.htm" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^.*$ RewriteRule ^Vendors\.asp$ "http\:\/\/www\.xyz\.com\/Design_Gallery_1\.htm" [R=301,L]

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• Automatically generate table of function pointers in C.

  - by jeremytrimble

  I'm looking for a way to automatically (as part of the compilation/build process) generate a "table" of function pointers in C. Specifically, I want to generate an array of structures something like: typedef struct { void (*p_func)(void); char * funcName; } funcRecord; /* Automatically generate the lines below: */ extern void func1(void); extern void func2(void); /* ... */ funcRecord funcTable[] = { { .p_func = &func1, .funcName = "func1" }, { .p_func = &func2, .funcName = "func2" } /* ... */ }; /* End automatically-generated code. */ ...where func1 and func2 are defined in other source files. So, given a set of source files, each of which which contain a single function that takes no arguments and returns void, how would one automatically (as part of the build process) generate an array like the one above that contains each of the functions from the files? I'd like to be able to add new files and have them automatically inserted into the table when I re-compile. I realize that this probably isn't achievable using the C language or preprocessor alone, so consider any common *nix-style tools fair game (e.g. make, perl, shell scripts (if you have to)). But Why? You're probably wondering why anyone would want to do this. I'm creating a small test framework for a library of common mathematical routines. Under this framework, there will be many small "test cases," each of which has only a few lines of code that will exercise each math function. I'd like each test case to live in its own source file as a short function. All of the test cases will get built into a single executable, and the test case(s) to be run can be specified on the command line when invoking the executable. The main() function will search through the table and, if it finds a match, jump to the test case function. Automating the process of building up the "catalog" of test cases ensures that test cases don't get left out (for instance, because someone forgets to add it to the table) and makes it very simple for maintainers to add new test cases in the future (just create a new source file in the correct directory, for instance). Hopefully someone out there has done something like this before. Thanks, StackOverflow community!

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• Doctrine CodeIgniter MySQL CRUD errors

  - by 01010011

  Hi, I am using CI + Doctrine + MySQL and I am getting the following CRUD errors: (1) When trying to create a new record in the database with this code: $book_title = 'The Peloponnesian War'; $b = new Book(); $b-title = $book_title; $b-price = 10.50; $b-save(); I get this error: Fatal error: Uncaught exeption 'Doctrine_Connection_Mysql_Exception' with message 'SQLSTATE[42S22]: Column not found: 1054 Unknown column 'title' in 'field list' in ... (2) When trying to fetch a record from the database and display on my view page with this code: $book_title = 'The Peloponnesian War'; $title = $book_title; $search_results = Doctrine::getTable('Book')-findOneByTitle($title); echo $search_results-title; (in view file) I get this error: Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'Doctrine_Connection_Mysql_Exception' with message 'SQLSTATE[45S22]: Column not found: 1054 Unknown column 'b.id' in 'field list" in ... And finally, when I try to update a record as follows: $book_title = 'The Peloponnesian War'; $title = $book_title; $u = Doctrine::getTable('Book')-find($title); $u-title = $title; $u-save(); I get a similar error: Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'Doctrine_Connection_Mysql_Exception' with message 'SQLSTATE[42S22]: Column not found: 1054 Unknown column 'b.id' in 'field list''in ... Here is my Doctrine_Record model: class Book extends Doctrine_Record{ public function setTableDefinition() { $this->hasColumn('book_id'); $this->hasColumn('isbn10','varchar',20); $this->hasColumn('isbn13','varchar',20); $this->hasColumn('title','varchar',100); $this->hasColumn('edition','varchar',20); $this->hasColumn('author_f_name','varchar',20); $this->hasColumn('author_m_name','varchar',20); $this->hasColumn('author_l_name','varchar',20); $this->hasColumn('cond','enum',null, array('values' => array('as new','very good','good','fair','poor'))); $this->hasColumn('price','decimal',8, array('scale' =>2)); $this->hasColumn('genre','varchar',20); } public function setUp() { $this->setTableName('Book'); //$this->actAs('Timestampable'); } Any assistance will be really appreciated. Thanks in advance.

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• Can a View Controller manage more than 1 nib based view?

  - by Hugo Brynjar

  I have a VC controlling a screen of content that has 2 modes; a normal mode and an edit mode. Can I create a single VC with 2 views, each from separate nibs? In many situations on the iphone, you have a VC which controls an associated view. Then on a button press or other event, a new VC is loaded and its view becomes the top level view etc. But in this situation, I have 2 modes that I want to use the same VC for, because they are closely related. So I want a VC which can swap in/out 2 views. As per here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/863321/iphone-how-to-load-a-view-using-a-nib-file-created-with-interface-builder/2683153#2683153 I have found that I can load a VC with an associated view from a nib and then later on load a different view from another nib and make that new view the active view. NSArray *nibObjects = [[NSBundle mainBundle] loadNibNamed:@"EditMode" owner:self options:nil]; UIView *theEditView = [nibObjects objectAtIndex:0]; self.editView = theEditView; [self.view addSubview:theEditView]; The secondary nib has outlets wired up to the VC like the primary nib. When the new nib is loaded, the outlets are all connected up fine and everything works nicely. Unfortunately when this edit view is then removed, there doesn't seem to be any elegant way of getting the outlets hooked up again to the (normal mode) view from the original nib. Nib loading and outlet setting seems a once only thing. So, if you want to have a VC that swaps in/out 2 views without creating a new VC, what are the options? 1) You can do everything in code, but I want to use nibs because it makes creating the UI simpler. 2) You have 1 nib for your VC and just hide/show elements using the hidden property of UIView and its subclasses. 3) You load a new nib as described above. This is fine for the new nib, but how do you sort the outlets when you go back to the original nib. 4) Give up and accept having a 1:1 between VCs and nibs. There is a nib for normal mode, a nib for edit mode and each mode has a VC that subclasses a common superclass. In the end, I went with 4) and it works, but requires a fair amount of extra work, because I have a model class that I instantiate in normal mode and then have to pass to the edit mode VC because both modes need access to the model. I'm also using NSTimer and have to start and stop the timer in each mode. It is because of all this shared functionality that I wanted a single VC with 2 nibs in the first place.

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