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  • Where can I learn about security and online privacy?

    - by user278457
    I'd really like to start including shopping cart functionality in my projects. At first im content relying on paypal links, but I really want to be learning about specific security threats and how to combat them. Eventually I want to feel comfortable receiving and sending customer credit card details for ecommerce. Obviously this is a common thing on the net but most tutorials and resources are content to say "it's every web developers responsibility to consider security, but we're not going to cover that here/today/ever." so, my question is, where is a good place to learn? And once I've learned, how do I stay abreast of new vulnerabilities as the web evolves?

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  • How to implement User base security not role base in asp.net?

    - by Gaurav
    Hi, I have to implement User base security in my Web project using .Net3.5. Followings are some we need: Roles can be Admin, Manage, Editor, Member etc User can have multiple roles Every roles has its own dynamic menus and restrictions/resources All menus and interface will populate dynamically from Database I heard some where this kind of i.e user base security can be implemented using HashTable but I dont know how is it? Today I came to know that for this kind of work Java people use Interceptor Design patterns. So, how could I do the same in asp.net C#?

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  • .NET HTML Sanitation for rich HTML Input

    - by Rick Strahl
    Recently I was working on updating a legacy application to MVC 4 that included free form text input. When I set up the new site my initial approach was to not allow any rich HTML input, only simple text formatting that would respect a few simple HTML commands for bold, lists etc. and automatically handles line break processing for new lines and paragraphs. This is typical for what I do with most multi-line text input in my apps and it works very well with very little development effort involved. Then the client sprung another note: Oh by the way we have a bunch of customers (real estate agents) who need to post complete HTML documents. Oh uh! There goes the simple theory. After some discussion and pleading on my part (<snicker>) to try and avoid this type of raw HTML input because of potential XSS issues, the client decided to go ahead and allow raw HTML input anyway. There has been lots of discussions on this subject on StackOverFlow (and here and here) but to after reading through some of the solutions I didn't really find anything that would work even closely for what I needed. Specifically we need to be able to allow just about any HTML markup, with the exception of script code. Remote CSS and Images need to be loaded, links need to work and so. While the 'legit' HTML posted by these agents is basic in nature it does span most of the full gamut of HTML (4). Most of the solutions XSS prevention/sanitizer solutions I found were way to aggressive and rendered the posted output unusable mostly because they tend to strip any externally loaded content. In short I needed a custom solution. I thought the best solution to this would be to use an HTML parser - in this case the Html Agility Pack - and then to run through all the HTML markup provided and remove any of the blacklisted tags and a number of attributes that are prone to JavaScript injection. There's much discussion on whether to use blacklists vs. whitelists in the discussions mentioned above, but I found that whitelists can make sense in simple scenarios where you might allow manual HTML input, but when you need to allow a larger array of HTML functionality a blacklist is probably easier to manage as the vast majority of elements and attributes could be allowed. Also white listing gets a bit more complex with HTML5 and the new proliferation of new HTML tags and most new tags generally don't affect XSS issues directly. Pure whitelisting based on elements and attributes also doesn't capture many edge cases (see some of the XSS cheat sheets listed below) so even with a white list, custom logic is still required to handle many of those edge cases. The Microsoft Web Protection Library (AntiXSS) My first thought was to check out the Microsoft AntiXSS library. Microsoft has an HTML Encoding and Sanitation library in the Microsoft Web Protection Library (formerly AntiXSS Library) on CodePlex, which provides stricter functions for whitelist encoding and sanitation. Initially I thought the Sanitation class and its static members would do the trick for me,but I found that this library is way too restrictive for my needs. Specifically the Sanitation class strips out images and links which rendered the full HTML from our real estate clients completely useless. I didn't spend much time with it, but apparently I'm not alone if feeling this library is not really useful without some way to configure operation. To give you an example of what didn't work for me with the library here's a small and simple HTML fragment that includes script, img and anchor tags. I would expect the script to be stripped and everything else to be left intact. Here's the original HTML:var value = "<b>Here</b> <script>alert('hello')</script> we go. Visit the " + "<a href='http://west-wind.com'>West Wind</a> site. " + "<img src='http://west-wind.com/images/new.gif' /> " ; and the code to sanitize it with the AntiXSS Sanitize class:@Html.Raw(Microsoft.Security.Application.Sanitizer.GetSafeHtmlFragment(value)) This produced a not so useful sanitized string: Here we go. Visit the <a>West Wind</a> site. While it removed the <script> tag (good) it also removed the href from the link and the image tag altogether (bad). In some situations this might be useful, but for most tasks I doubt this is the desired behavior. While links can contain javascript: references and images can 'broadcast' information to a server, without configuration to tell the library what to restrict this becomes useless to me. I couldn't find any way to customize the white list, nor is there code available in this 'open source' library on CodePlex. Using Html Agility Pack for HTML Parsing The WPL library wasn't going to cut it. After doing a bit of research I decided the best approach for a custom solution would be to use an HTML parser and inspect the HTML fragment/document I'm trying to import. I've used the HTML Agility Pack before for a number of apps where I needed an HTML parser without requiring an instance of a full browser like the Internet Explorer Application object which is inadequate in Web apps. In case you haven't checked out the Html Agility Pack before, it's a powerful HTML parser library that you can use from your .NET code. It provides a simple, parsable HTML DOM model to full HTML documents or HTML fragments that let you walk through each of the elements in your document. If you've used the HTML or XML DOM in a browser before you'll feel right at home with the Agility Pack. Blacklist based HTML Parsing to strip XSS Code For my purposes of HTML sanitation, the process involved is to walk the HTML document one element at a time and then check each element and attribute against a blacklist. There's quite a bit of argument of what's better: A whitelist of allowed items or a blacklist of denied items. While whitelists tend to be more secure, they also require a lot more configuration. In the case of HTML5 a whitelist could be very extensive. For what I need, I only want to ensure that no JavaScript is executed, so a blacklist includes the obvious <script> tag plus any tag that allows loading of external content including <iframe>, <object>, <embed> and <link> etc. <form>  is also excluded to avoid posting content to a different location. I also disallow <head> and <meta> tags in particular for my case, since I'm only allowing posting of HTML fragments. There is also some internal logic to exclude some attributes or attributes that include references to JavaScript or CSS expressions. The default tag blacklist reflects my use case, but is customizable and can be added to. Here's my HtmlSanitizer implementation:using System.Collections.Generic; using System.IO; using System.Xml; using HtmlAgilityPack; namespace Westwind.Web.Utilities { public class HtmlSanitizer { public HashSet<string> BlackList = new HashSet<string>() { { "script" }, { "iframe" }, { "form" }, { "object" }, { "embed" }, { "link" }, { "head" }, { "meta" } }; /// <summary> /// Cleans up an HTML string and removes HTML tags in blacklist /// </summary> /// <param name="html"></param> /// <returns></returns> public static string SanitizeHtml(string html, params string[] blackList) { var sanitizer = new HtmlSanitizer(); if (blackList != null && blackList.Length > 0) { sanitizer.BlackList.Clear(); foreach (string item in blackList) sanitizer.BlackList.Add(item); } return sanitizer.Sanitize(html); } /// <summary> /// Cleans up an HTML string by removing elements /// on the blacklist and all elements that start /// with onXXX . /// </summary> /// <param name="html"></param> /// <returns></returns> public string Sanitize(string html) { var doc = new HtmlDocument(); doc.LoadHtml(html); SanitizeHtmlNode(doc.DocumentNode); //return doc.DocumentNode.WriteTo(); string output = null; // Use an XmlTextWriter to create self-closing tags using (StringWriter sw = new StringWriter()) { XmlWriter writer = new XmlTextWriter(sw); doc.DocumentNode.WriteTo(writer); output = sw.ToString(); // strip off XML doc header if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(output)) { int at = output.IndexOf("?>"); output = output.Substring(at + 2); } writer.Close(); } doc = null; return output; } private void SanitizeHtmlNode(HtmlNode node) { if (node.NodeType == HtmlNodeType.Element) { // check for blacklist items and remove if (BlackList.Contains(node.Name)) { node.Remove(); return; } // remove CSS Expressions and embedded script links if (node.Name == "style") { if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(node.InnerText)) { if (node.InnerHtml.Contains("expression") || node.InnerHtml.Contains("javascript:")) node.ParentNode.RemoveChild(node); } } // remove script attributes if (node.HasAttributes) { for (int i = node.Attributes.Count - 1; i >= 0; i--) { HtmlAttribute currentAttribute = node.Attributes[i]; var attr = currentAttribute.Name.ToLower(); var val = currentAttribute.Value.ToLower(); span style="background: white; color: green">// remove event handlers if (attr.StartsWith("on")) node.Attributes.Remove(currentAttribute); // remove script links else if ( //(attr == "href" || attr== "src" || attr == "dynsrc" || attr == "lowsrc") && val != null && val.Contains("javascript:")) node.Attributes.Remove(currentAttribute); // Remove CSS Expressions else if (attr == "style" && val != null && val.Contains("expression") || val.Contains("javascript:") || val.Contains("vbscript:")) node.Attributes.Remove(currentAttribute); } } } // Look through child nodes recursively if (node.HasChildNodes) { for (int i = node.ChildNodes.Count - 1; i >= 0; i--) { SanitizeHtmlNode(node.ChildNodes[i]); } } } } } Please note: Use this as a starting point only for your own parsing and review the code for your specific use case! If your needs are less lenient than mine were you can you can make this much stricter by not allowing src and href attributes or CSS links if your HTML doesn't allow it. You can also check links for external URLs and disallow those - lots of options.  The code is simple enough to make it easy to extend to fit your use cases more specifically. It's also quite easy to make this code work using a WhiteList approach if you want to go that route. The code above is semi-generic for allowing full featured HTML fragments that only disallow script related content. The Sanitize method walks through each node of the document and then recursively drills into all of its children until the entire document has been traversed. Note that the code here uses an XmlTextWriter to write output - this is done to preserve XHTML style self-closing tags which are otherwise left as non-self-closing tags. The sanitizer code scans for blacklist elements and removes those elements not allowed. Note that the blacklist is configurable either in the instance class as a property or in the static method via the string parameter list. Additionally the code goes through each element's attributes and looks for a host of rules gleaned from some of the XSS cheat sheets listed at the end of the post. Clearly there are a lot more XSS vulnerabilities, but a lot of them apply to ancient browsers (IE6 and versions of Netscape) - many of these glaring holes (like CSS expressions - WTF IE?) have been removed in modern browsers. What a Pain To be honest this is NOT a piece of code that I wanted to write. I think building anything related to XSS is better left to people who have far more knowledge of the topic than I do. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a tool that worked even closely for me, or even provided a working base. For the project I was working on I had no choice and I'm sharing the code here merely as a base line to start with and potentially expand on for specific needs. It's sad that Microsoft Web Protection Library is currently such a train wreck - this is really something that should come from Microsoft as the systems vendor or possibly a third party that provides security tools. Luckily for my application we are dealing with a authenticated and validated users so the user base is fairly well known, and relatively small - this is not a wide open Internet application that's directly public facing. As I mentioned earlier in the post, if I had my way I would simply not allow this type of raw HTML input in the first place, and instead rely on a more controlled HTML input mechanism like MarkDown or even a good HTML Edit control that can provide some limits on what types of input are allowed. Alas in this case I was overridden and we had to go forward and allow *any* raw HTML posted. Sometimes I really feel sad that it's come this far - how many good applications and tools have been thwarted by fear of XSS (or worse) attacks? So many things that could be done *if* we had a more secure browser experience and didn't have to deal with every little script twerp trying to hack into Web pages and obscure browser bugs. So much time wasted building secure apps, so much time wasted by others trying to hack apps… We're a funny species - no other species manages to waste as much time, effort and resources as we humans do :-) Resources Code on GitHub Html Agility Pack XSS Cheat Sheet XSS Prevention Cheat Sheet Microsoft Web Protection Library (AntiXss) StackOverflow Links: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/341872/html-sanitizer-for-net http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/06/safe-html-and-xss/ http://code.google.com/p/subsonicforums/source/browse/trunk/SubSonic.Forums.Data/HtmlScrubber.cs?r=61© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Security  HTML  ASP.NET  JavaScript   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • (Fluent) NHibernate Security Exception - ReflectionPermission

    - by PeterEysermans
    I've upgraded an ASP.Net Web application to the latest build of Fluent NHibernate (1.0.0.636) and the newest version of NHibernate (v2.1.2.4000). I've checked a couple of times that the application is running in Full trust. But I keep getting the following error: Security Exception Description: The application attempted to perform an operation not allowed by the security policy. To grant this application the required permission please contact your system administrator or change the application's trust level in the configuration file. Exception Details: System.Security.SecurityException: Request for the permission of type 'System.Security.Permissions.ReflectionPermission, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' failed. Source Error: An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below. Stack Trace: [SecurityException: Request for the permission of type 'System.Security.Permissions.ReflectionPermission, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' failed.] System.Security.CodeAccessSecurityEngine.Check(Object demand, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, Boolean isPermSet) +0 System.Security.CodeAccessPermission.Demand() +54 System.Reflection.Emit.DynamicMethod.PerformSecurityCheck(Type owner, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, Boolean skipVisibility) +269 System.Reflection.Emit.DynamicMethod..ctor(String name, Type returnType, Type[] parameterTypes, Type owner, Boolean skipVisibility) +81 NHibernate.Bytecode.Lightweight.ReflectionOptimizer.CreateDynamicMethod(Type returnType, Type[] argumentTypes) +165 NHibernate.Bytecode.Lightweight.ReflectionOptimizer.GenerateGetPropertyValuesMethod(IGetter[] getters) +383 NHibernate.Bytecode.Lightweight.ReflectionOptimizer..ctor(Type mappedType, IGetter[] getters, ISetter[] setters) +108 NHibernate.Bytecode.Lightweight.BytecodeProviderImpl.GetReflectionOptimizer(Type mappedClass, IGetter[] getters, ISetter[] setters) +52 NHibernate.Tuple.Component.PocoComponentTuplizer..ctor(Component component) +231 NHibernate.Tuple.Component.ComponentEntityModeToTuplizerMapping..ctor(Component component) +420 NHibernate.Tuple.Component.ComponentMetamodel..ctor(Component component) +402 NHibernate.Mapping.Component.BuildType() +38 NHibernate.Mapping.Component.get_Type() +32 NHibernate.Mapping.SimpleValue.IsValid(IMapping mapping) +39 NHibernate.Mapping.RootClass.Validate(IMapping mapping) +61 NHibernate.Cfg.Configuration.ValidateEntities() +220 NHibernate.Cfg.Configuration.Validate() +16 NHibernate.Cfg.Configuration.BuildSessionFactory() +39 FluentNHibernate.Cfg.FluentConfiguration.BuildSessionFactory() in d:\Builds\FluentNH\src\FluentNHibernate\Cfg\FluentConfiguration.cs:93 Anyone had a similar error? I've seach the web / stackoverflow / NHibernate forums but only found people who had a problem when running in medium trust mode, not full trust. I've been developing for several months on this application on this machine with previous versions of Fluent NHibernate and NHibernate. The machine I'm running this on is 64-bit, you never know that this is relevant.

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  • Mirror using apt-mirror and exclud certain sections/categories

    - by Onitlikesonic
    I'm currently using apt-mirror to create a local mirror of the debian repositories. As the mirrored repositories will be used only by machines destined to be headless servers and as an effort to reduce the current mirroring size (around 75GB), categories like games and possibly others will never be needed. How can I go about specifying (on the mirror.list perhaps?) what sections/categories I want to be excluded from the mirroring? Maybe a bit subjective, but apart from games what other sections/categories could be "safely" ignored from the mirroring for my environment purposes? My mirror.list looks as below since all the machines are using precise. # MAIN deb-amd64 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise main restricted universe multiverse deb-i386 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise main restricted universe multiverse # SECURITY deb-amd64 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-security main restricted universe multiverse deb-i386 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-security main restricted universe multiverse Also, what others would you recommend adding to the list to be mirrored for a relatively stable environment? Again I understand this is subjective, just looking for some pointers. Much appreciated in advance

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  • IIS Not Accepting Active Directory Login Credentials

    - by Dale Jay
    I have an ASP.NET web form using Microsoft's boilerplate Active Directory login page, set up exactly as suggested. Windows Authentication is activated on the "Default Website" and "MyWebsite" levels, and Domain\This.User is given "Allow" access to the site. After entering the valid credentials for This.User on the web form, a popup window appears asking me to enter my credentials yet again. Despite entering valid credentials for This.User (after attempting Domain\This.User and This.User formats), it rejects the credentials and returns an unauthorized security headers page (error 401.2). Active Directory user This.User is valid, the IP address of the AD server has been verified and SPN's have been set up for the server. Error Code: 0x80070005 Default Web Site security config: <system.web> <identity impersonate="true" /> <authentication mode="Windows" /> <customErrors mode="Off" /> <compilation debug="true" /> </system.web> Sub web site security <authentication mode="Windows"> <forms loginUrl="~/logon.aspx" timeout="2880" /> </authentication> <authorization> <deny users="?" /> <allow users="*" /> </authorization>

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  • Cost effective way to provide static media content

    - by james
    I'd like to be able to deliver around 50MB of static content, either in about 30 individual files up to 10MB or grouped into 3 compressed files, around 5k to 20k times a day. Ideally I'd like to put some sort of very basic security around providing the data to ensure that a request is from the expected source, but if tossing the security for a big reduction in price is possible then it's an option. Does anyone have any suggestions other than what I've found: Google AppEngine is $0.12/GB & I believe has a file size limit of 10MB so I'd have to break the data up a bit. So a rough calculation would seem to be that this would cost me about $30 to $120 a day. Or I've seen something like what seems to be just public static content delivery with no type of logic capabilities like Usenet.nl at what I think calculates to about $0.025/GB which would cost me about $6 to $25 a day. Any idea if I'm going about these calculations right & if there might be a better option for just static content on a decently high volume delivery? Again some basic security would be great but if cost is greatly reduced without it then I'm up for that.

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  • IE8 HTTPs Download Issue

    - by Jon Egerton
    I have a problem with a system I develop related to IE8 downloading over SSL (ie on sites using https://...) and is described on this MS kb article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/323308 We use the HTTPCacheability.NoCache option as the data being downloaded is sensitive, and is downloaded from a secured site. I don't want that data to be cached on any of the proxies etc that the response passes through back to the client. The article describing the issue details a fix to the client side registry changing a BypassSSLNoCacheCheck setting. I don't want to loosen the system security just for IE8, as the system works fine on anything more upto date. Getting all the clients to apply the hotfix is difficult at best, and impossible at worst. We need to support IE8 in the system, at least for now. So: 1: Does the detailed hotfix have any implications for the security at the browser end in IE8 - does it mean the file will be cached? (in a place other than where the user saves the file). 2: Is there some way I can get these files downloadable with a change at the server end that doesn't break the security side of things?

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  • Choosing a CMS to use with backend modules involving haskell and python [on hold]

    - by Butterflycode
    Hi I am trying to decide on a CMS to use for a new project. Security is the most important element of the CMS. I am looking to use a PHP based CMS such as Joomla or Drupal however, PHP has many security flaws which worries me. The data which needs to be secure will be inside a database and relate to account information. I am wondering what is the best way to do this? What I am wanting is a frontend which is made in php/js(joomla) and then I have a backend api which is written in Haskell to handle money transfers ensuring nothing goes wrong. In between the two I want a controller written in perhaps Python or C. I never want the php to touch the database. I want it to relay messages to the controller that's written in python or C and then it inputs to the database, sanitising data etc Am I perhaps thinking too deeply about this? Just wondering if anyone has any ideas on what I should do.... I can't quite explain what the project is as I don't want the idea to be stolen, but it has a lot money transactions involved so security is essential.

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  • Microsoft guarantees the performance of SQL Server

    - by simonsabin
    I have recently been informed that Microsoft will be guaranteeing the performance of SQL Server. Yes thats right Microsoft will guarantee that you will get better performance out of SQL Server that any other competitor system. However on the flip side there are also saying that end users also have to guarantee the performance of SQL Server if they want to use the next release of SQL Server targeted for 2011 or 2012. It appears that a recent recruit Mark Smith from Newcastle, England will be heading a new team that will be making sure you are running SQL Server on adequate hardware and making sure you are developing your applications according to best practices. The Performance Enforcement Team (SQLPET) will be a global group headed by mark that will oversee two other groups the existing Customer Advisory Team (SQLCAT) and another new team the Design and Operation Group (SQLDOG). Mark informed me that the team was originally thought out during Yukon and was going to be an independent body that went round to customers making sure they didn’t suffer performance problems. However it was felt that they needed to wait a few releases until SQL Server was really there. The original Yukon Independent Performance Enhancement Team (YIPET) has now become the SQL Performance Enforcement Team (SQLPET). When challenged about the change from enhancement to enforcement Mark was unwilling to comment. An anonymous source suggested that "..Microsoft is sick of the bad press SQL Server gets for performance when the performance problems are normally down to people developing applications badly and using inadequate hardware..." Its true that it is very easy to install and run SQL, unlike other RDMS systems and the flip side is that its also easy to get into performance problems due to under specified hardware and bad design. Its not yet confirmed if this enforcement will apply to all SKUs or just the high end ones. I would personally welcome some level of architectural and hardware advice service that clients would be able to turn to, in order to justify getting the appropriate hardware at the start of a project and not 1 year in when its often too late.

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  • Office Live add-in 1.5 cannot be installed

    - by wisecarver
    Having trouble with a recent Windows Update that failed to install the Office Live add-in 1.5? This has been driving me nuts on a Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit system for three days. Windows Update would fail, click the “Try again” button and…fail So like I good boy I used http://www.bing.com and have been searching for resolutions. Success! The Microsoft Social forums. http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/officeinstall/thread/4c62e615-a3e5-4cf9-ae6a-5fd870dfb0bc http://support.microsoft...(read more)

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  • Using Microsoft's Chart Controls In An ASP.NET Application: Serializing Chart Data

    In most usage scenarios, the data displayed in a Microsoft Chart control comes from some dynamic source, such as from a database query. The appearance of the chart can be modified dynamically, as well; past installments in this article series showed how to programmatically customize the axes, labels, and other appearance-related settings. However, it is possible to statically define the chart's data and appearance strictly through the control's declarative markup. One of the demos examined in the Getting Started article rendered a column chart with seven columns whose labels and values were defined statically in the <asp:Series> tag's <Points> collection. Given this functionality, it should come as no surprise that the Microsoft Chart Controls also support serialization. Serialization is the process of persisting the state of a control or an object to some other medium, such as to disk. Deserialization is the inverse process, and involves taking the persisted data and recreating the control or object. With just a few lines of code you can persist the appearance settings, the data, or both to a file on disk or to any stream. Likewise, it takes just a few lines of codes to reconstitute a chart from the persisted information. This article shows how to use the Microsoft Chart Control's serialization functionality by examining a demo application that allows users to create custom charts, specifying the data to plot and some appearance-related settings. The user can then save a "snapshot" of this chart, which persists its appearance and data to a record in a database. From another page, users can view these saved chart snapshots. Read on to learn more! Read More >

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  • Ghost Records, Backups, and Database Compression…With a Pinch of Security Considerations

    - by Argenis
      Today Jeffrey Langdon (@jlangdon) posed on #SQLHelp the following questions: So I set to answer his question, and I said to myself: “Hey, I haven’t blogged in a while, how about I blog about this particular topic?”. Thus, this post was born. (If you have never heard of Ghost Records and/or the Ghost Cleanup Task, go see this blog post by Paul Randal) 1) Do ghost records get copied over in a backup? If you guessed yes, you guessed right. The backup process in SQL Server takes all data as it is on disk – it doesn’t crack the pages open to selectively pick which slots have actual data and which ones do not. The whole page is backed up, regardless of its contents. Even if ghost cleanup has run and processed the ghost records, the slots are not overwritten immediately, but rather until another DML operation comes along and uses them. As a matter of fact, all of the allocated space for a database will be included in a full backup. So, this poses a bit of a security/compliance problem for some of you DBA folk: if you want to take a full backup of a database after you’ve purged sensitive data, you should rebuild all of your indexes (with FILLFACTOR set to 100%). But the empty space on your data file(s) might still contain sensitive data! A SHRINKFILE might help get rid of that (not so) empty space, but that might not be the end of your troubles. You might _STILL_ have (not so) empty space on your files! One approach that you can follow is to export all of the data on your database to another SQL Server instance that does NOT have Instant File Initialization enabled. This can be a tedious and time-consuming process, though. So you have to weigh in your options and see what makes sense for you. Snapshot Replication is another idea that comes to mind. 2) Does Compression get rid of ghost records (2008)? The answer to this is no. The Ghost Records/Ghost Cleanup Task mechanism is alive and well on compressed tables and indexes. You can prove this running a simple script: CREATE DATABASE GhostRecordsTest GO USE GhostRecordsTest GO CREATE TABLE myTable (myPrimaryKey int IDENTITY(1,1) PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED,                       myWideColumn varchar(1000) NOT NULL DEFAULT 'Default string value')                         ALTER TABLE myTable REBUILD PARTITION = ALL WITH (DATA_COMPRESSION = PAGE) GO INSERT INTO myTable DEFAULT VALUES GO 10 DELETE myTable WHERE myPrimaryKey % 2 = 0 DBCC TRACEON(2514) DBCC CHECKTABLE(myTable) TraceFlag 2514 will make DBCC CHECKTABLE give you an extra tidbit of information on its output. For the above script: “Ghost Record count = 5” Until next time,   -Argenis

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  • Ghost Records, Backups, and Database Compression…With a Pinch of Security Considerations

    - by Argenis
      Today Jeffrey Langdon (@jlangdon) posed on #SQLHelp the following questions: So I set to answer his question, and I said to myself: “Hey, I haven’t blogged in a while, how about I blog about this particular topic?”. Thus, this post was born. (If you have never heard of Ghost Records and/or the Ghost Cleanup Task, go see this blog post by Paul Randal) 1) Do ghost records get copied over in a backup? If you guessed yes, you guessed right. The backup process in SQL Server takes all data as it is on disk – it doesn’t crack the pages open to selectively pick which slots have actual data and which ones do not. The whole page is backed up, regardless of its contents. Even if ghost cleanup has run and processed the ghost records, the slots are not overwritten immediately, but rather until another DML operation comes along and uses them. As a matter of fact, all of the allocated space for a database will be included in a full backup. So, this poses a bit of a security/compliance problem for some of you DBA folk: if you want to take a full backup of a database after you’ve purged sensitive data, you should rebuild all of your indexes (with FILLFACTOR set to 100%). But the empty space on your data file(s) might still contain sensitive data! A SHRINKFILE might help get rid of that (not so) empty space, but that might not be the end of your troubles. You might _STILL_ have (not so) empty space on your files! One approach that you can follow is to export all of the data on your database to another SQL Server instance that does NOT have Instant File Initialization enabled. This can be a tedious and time-consuming process, though. So you have to weigh in your options and see what makes sense for you. Snapshot Replication is another idea that comes to mind. 2) Does Compression get rid of ghost records (2008)? The answer to this is no. The Ghost Records/Ghost Cleanup Task mechanism is alive and well on compressed tables and indexes. You can prove this running a simple script: CREATE DATABASE GhostRecordsTest GO USE GhostRecordsTest GO CREATE TABLE myTable (myPrimaryKey int IDENTITY(1,1) PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED,                       myWideColumn varchar(1000) NOT NULL DEFAULT 'Default string value')                         ALTER TABLE myTable REBUILD PARTITION = ALL WITH (DATA_COMPRESSION = PAGE) GO INSERT INTO myTable DEFAULT VALUES GO 10 DELETE myTable WHERE myPrimaryKey % 2 = 0 DBCC TRACEON(2514) DBCC CHECKTABLE(myTable) TraceFlag 2514 will make DBCC CHECKTABLE give you an extra tidbit of information on its output. For the above script: “Ghost Record count = 5” Until next time,   -Argenis

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  • Microsoft Silverlight MVP one more time

    - by pluginbaby
    Another wonderful first email of the year… announcing that I’ve just been re-awarded Most Valuable Professional (MVP) by Microsoft for Silverlight. This is my 5th year as an MVP in a row and I am still very honoured and excited! In 2010 I had the pleasure to be involved in many community events around Silverlight, speaking at Microsoft conferences and user groups (doing the launch of the Vancouver Silverlight User Group was fun!), as well as taking part in worldwide conference like MIX Las Vegas and the MVP Summit in Redmond. Also I did new kind of activities in 2010: I wrote questions for the first Microsoft Silverlight certification exam (70-506), and I was Technical reviewer of 3 Silverlight books. I finally started to share more on Twitter @LaurentDuveau. In 2010 the content of this blog was mostly about Silverlight, I expect it to be the same in 2011, plus a touch of Windows Phone as well. I already know that 2011 will be hell of a good year.. I’ll be at the next MVP Summit in Seattle, also speaker at DevTeach which comes back to Montreal (at last!) and have some nice Silverlight trainings plans for France and Tunisia. More than that, my business RunAtServer is healthy (proud of my team!) and I have insane news and a very big surprise coming on that front.... stay tuned! Happy New Year!

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  • Magic Mouse for Windows 7 (Touch Mouse)

    - by samsudeen
    Microsoft has unveiled the launch of the new product named “Touch Mouse” at the on going Consumer Electronic show (CES). This mouse allows us to do the normal mouse functions such as  Click, flick, scroll and swipe easily without using any buttons.The features of this mouse is similar to the “Magic Mouse” from Apple hence we can call this as “Microsoft’s Magic Mouse”. This mouse is designed specially for “Windows 7″ to expose the touch features of the OS as per the Microsoft’s below statement Touch Mouse brings a new dimension to Windows 7. By quickly responding to single finger gestures, it speeds up everyday tasks that are already fast in Windows 7: scrolling, panning, paging forward and back, docking, minimizing/ maximizing, showing desktop, and more. Touch Mouse also provides elegant touch functionality to non-touch Windows 7 PCs, so you can enjoy dynamic touch sensitivity at a fraction of the cost of a new PC. The below video clip explains the “Touch Mouse” features using the “Windows 7″ operating system   Touch Mouse This mouse will be launched only in June at an estimated price of $80. You can find more details about the “Touch Mouse” at the below  Microsoft web site. http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/touch-mouse/ This article titled,Magic Mouse for Windows 7 (Touch Mouse), was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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  • Using Microsoft's Chart Controls In An ASP.NET Application: Serializing Chart Data

    In most usage scenarios, the data displayed in a Microsoft Chart control comes from some dynamic source, such as from a database query. The appearance of the chart can be modified dynamically, as well; past installments in this article series showed how to programmatically customize the axes, labels, and other appearance-related settings. However, it is possible to statically define the chart's data and appearance strictly through the control's declarative markup. One of the demos examined in the Getting Started article rendered a column chart with seven columns whose labels and values were defined statically in the <asp:Series> tag's <Points> collection. Given this functionality, it should come as no surprise that the Microsoft Chart Controls also support serialization. Serialization is the process of persisting the state of a control or an object to some other medium, such as to disk. Deserialization is the inverse process, and involves taking the persisted data and recreating the control or object. With just a few lines of code you can persist the appearance settings, the data, or both to a file on disk or to any stream. Likewise, it takes just a few lines of codes to reconstitute a chart from the persisted information. This article shows how to use the Microsoft Chart Control's serialization functionality by examining a demo application that allows users to create custom charts, specifying the data to plot and some appearance-related settings. The user can then save a "snapshot" of this chart, which persists its appearance and data to a record in a database. From another page, users can view these saved chart snapshots. Read on to learn more! Read More >

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  • MVPs and the Community

    - by andyleonard
    Introduction Earlier this month, David Woods decided to drop his MVP award . The move inspired some interesting comments and discussion among MVPs. David's points are: MVP Expertise Microsoft Technology Products Microsoft "Listens" Cost-Benefits for an MVP MVP Expertise After mentioning he's encountered MVPs who are not experts, David states: "The way you get in is by contributing to the community." Honestly, I don't know the specifics of how someone becomes a Microsoft MVP . And I'm ok with that....(read more)

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  • SQL SERVER – Download Microsoft SQL Server Compact 4.0 SP1

    - by pinaldave
    Microsoft SQL Server Compact 4.0 is a free, embedded database that software developers can use for building ASP.NET websites and Windows desktop applications. SQL Server Compact 4.0 is the default database for Microsoft WebMatrix. For enhanced development and debugging capabilities, including designer support, Visual Studio can be used to develop ASP.NET web applications and websites using SQL Server Compact 4.0. Enabled to work in the medium or partial trust environments in the web servers, and can be easily deployed along with the website to the third party website hosting service providers. SQL Server CE 4.0 also provides stronger data security with the use of the SHA2 encryption algorithms for encrypting the databases. Latest version also supports T-SQL syntax enhancement by adding support for OFFSET and FETCH that can be used to write paging queries. Used with ADO.NET Entity Framework, SQL Server Compact now supports the columns that have server generated keys like identity, rowguid etc. and the code-first programming model. SQL Server Compact 4.0 is freely redistributable under a redistribution license agreement. SQL Server Compact 3.5 and SQL Server Compact 4.0 can be installed and work side by side on a desktop. Download Microsoft SQL Server Compact 4.0 SP1 Here are my earlier article on SQL Server CE Difference Between SQL Server Compact Edition (CE) and SQL Server Express Edition SQL SERVER – CE – 3 Links to Performance Tuning Compact Edition SQL SERVER – CE – List of Information_Schema System Tables SQL SERVER – Server Side Paging in SQL Server CE (Compact Edition) SQL SERVER – CE – Samples Database for SQL CE 4.0 Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Download, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • Call for Abstracts Now Open for Microsoft ASP.NET Connections (Closing April 26)

    - by plitwin
    We are putting out a call for abstracts to present at the Fall 2010 Microsoft ASP.NET Connections conference in Las Vegas, Nov 9-13 2009. The due date for submissions is April 26, 2010. For submitting sessions, please use this URL: http://www.deeptraining.com/devconnections/abstracts Please keep the abstracts under 200 words each and in one paragraph. No bulleted items and line breaks, and please use a spell-checker. Do not email abstracts, you need to use the web-based tool to submit them. Please submit at least 3 abstracts, but it would help your chances of being selected if you submitted 5 or more abstracts. Also, you are encouraged to suggest all-day pre or post conference workshops as well. We need to finalize the conference content and the tracks layout in just a few short weeks, so we need your abstracts by April 26th. No exceptions will be granted on late submissions! Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):* ASP.NET Webforms* ASP.NET AJAX* ASP.NET MVC* Dynamic Data* Anything else related to ASP.NET For Fall 2010, we are having a seperate Silverlight conference where you can submit abstracts for Silverlight and Windows 7 Phone Development. In fact, you can use the same URL to submit sessions to Microsoft ASP.NET Connections, Silverlight Connections, Visual Studio Connections, or SQL Server Connections. The URL again is:http://www.deeptraining.com/devconnections/abstracts Please realize that while we want a lot of the new and the cool, it's also okay to propose sessions on the more mundane "real world" stuff as it pertains to ASP.NET. What you will get if selected:* $500 per regular conference talk.* Compensation for full-day workshops ranges from $500 for 1-20 attendees to $2500 for 200+ attendees.* Coach airfare and hotel stay paid by the conference.* Free admission to all of the co-located conferences* Speaker party* The adoration of attendees* etc. Your continued suport of Microsoft ASP.NET Connections and the other DevConnections conferences is appreciated. Good luck and thank you,Paul LitwinMicrosoft ASP.NET Conference Chair

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  • SQL Server for the Oracle DBA Links

    - by BuckWoody
    I do a presentation (and a class) called "SQL Server for the Oracle DBA". It's a non-marketing overview that gives you the basics of working with SQL Server if you're already familiar wtih how Oracle works. This class and these links DO NOT help you with "Why should I use Oracle/SQL Server instead of Oracle/SQL Server" - I'll assume you're already there, and if not, there are LOTS of sites to help you make that decision. Although these links might contain slight marketing slants (I don't control them) I've tried to get the best links I can. Feel free to comment here to add more/better links. As such, these aren't links that help you work with Oracle - they are links to help you work with SQL Server. Some of them contain more information than you actually need, others don't have near enough. Taken together (and with the class) you're able to get done what you need to do. "Practical SQL Server for Oracle Professionals" - A Microsoft Whitepaper, probably the best place to get started: http://download.microsoft.com/download/6/9/d/69d1fea7-5b42-437a-b3ba-a4ad13e34ef6/SQLServer2008forOracle.docx Free Training: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/dd548020.aspx Classroom training (will cost you): http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/course.aspx?ID=50068A&locale=en-us Terminology Differences: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2383466/oracle_and_sql_server_basic_terminology.html Datatype mapping between Oracle and SQL Server: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms151817.aspx The "other" direction - can still be useful for the Oracle professional to see the other side: http://blog.benday.com/archive/2008/10/23/23195.aspx Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • Microsoft MVP Award &ndash; Data Platform Development

    - by Dane Morgridge
    For those who don't already know, yesterday I received my first Microsoft MVP Award in Data Platform Development.  With less than 5,000 MVPs in the world overall and about 20 in the Data Platform category, saying I am honored would be an understatement.  From the first time I spoke at a code camp, I was totally hooked and have had a blast travelling around the east coast speaking at code camps and users groups.  I'd like to take the time to thank Dani Diaz (@danidiaz) for the nomination and everyone who supported me, especially my wife Lisa for letting me travel and speak as much as I have and putting up with me for late nights and such.  Roska Digital, my employer, also deserves a shout out for supporting me and giving me the necessary time off to get to speaking engagements.  With any luck, the next year will be at least as fun if not more than the last one has.  I hope to see you at a code camp or user group meeting soon! I would also like to send a congratulations to the other new Philly Area MVPs: John Angelini (@johnangelini) & Ned Ames (@nedames) You can find out more about the Microsoft MVP Award at https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/

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