techniques - Page 89 - Developer IT

Implementation of ZipCrypto / Zip 2.0 encryption in java

- by gomesla

I'm trying o implement the zipcrypto / zip 2.0 encryption algoritm to deal with encrypted zip files as discussed in http://www.pkware.com/documents/casestudies/APPNOTE.TXT I believe I've followed the specs but just can't seem to get it working. I'm fairly sure the issue has to do with my interpretation of the crc algorithm. The documentation states CRC-32: (4 bytes) The CRC-32 algorithm was generously contributed by David Schwaderer and can be found in his excellent book "C Programmers Guide to NetBIOS" published by Howard W. Sams & Co. Inc. The 'magic number' for the CRC is 0xdebb20e3. The proper CRC pre and post conditioning is used, meaning that the CRC register is pre-conditioned with all ones (a starting value of 0xffffffff) and the value is post-conditioned by taking the one's complement of the CRC residual. Here is the snippet that I'm using for the crc32 public class PKZIPCRC32 { private static final int CRC32_POLYNOMIAL = 0xdebb20e3; private int crc = 0xffffffff; private int CRCTable[]; public PKZIPCRC32() { buildCRCTable(); } private void buildCRCTable() { int i, j; CRCTable = new int[256]; for (i = 0; i <= 255; i++) { crc = i; for (j = 8; j > 0; j--) if ((crc & 1) == 1) crc = (crc >>> 1) ^ CRC32_POLYNOMIAL; else crc >>>= 1; CRCTable[i] = crc; } } private int crc32(byte buffer[], int start, int count, int lastcrc) { int temp1, temp2; int i = start; crc = lastcrc; while (count-- != 0) { temp1 = crc >>> 8; temp2 = CRCTable[(crc ^ buffer[i++]) & 0xFF]; crc = temp1 ^ temp2; } return crc; } public int crc32(int crc, byte buffer) { return crc32(new byte[] { buffer }, 0, 1, crc); } } Below is my complete code. Can anyone see what I'm doing wrong. package org.apache.commons.compress.archivers.zip; import java.io.IOException; import java.io.InputStream; public class ZipCryptoInputStream extends InputStream { public class PKZIPCRC32 { private static final int CRC32_POLYNOMIAL = 0xdebb20e3; private int crc = 0xffffffff; private int CRCTable[]; public PKZIPCRC32() { buildCRCTable(); } private void buildCRCTable() { int i, j; CRCTable = new int[256]; for (i = 0; i <= 255; i++) { crc = i; for (j = 8; j > 0; j--) if ((crc & 1) == 1) crc = (crc >>> 1) ^ CRC32_POLYNOMIAL; else crc >>>= 1; CRCTable[i] = crc; } } private int crc32(byte buffer[], int start, int count, int lastcrc) { int temp1, temp2; int i = start; crc = lastcrc; while (count-- != 0) { temp1 = crc >>> 8; temp2 = CRCTable[(crc ^ buffer[i++]) & 0xFF]; crc = temp1 ^ temp2; } return crc; } public int crc32(int crc, byte buffer) { return crc32(new byte[] { buffer }, 0, 1, crc); } } private static final long ENCRYPTION_KEY_1 = 0x12345678; private static final long ENCRYPTION_KEY_2 = 0x23456789; private static final long ENCRYPTION_KEY_3 = 0x34567890; private InputStream baseInputStream = null; private final PKZIPCRC32 checksumEngine = new PKZIPCRC32(); private long[] keys = null; public ZipCryptoInputStream(ZipArchiveEntry zipEntry, InputStream inputStream, String passwd) throws Exception { baseInputStream = inputStream; // Decryption // ---------- // PKZIP encrypts the compressed data stream. Encrypted files must // be decrypted before they can be extracted. // // Each encrypted file has an extra 12 bytes stored at the start of // the data area defining the encryption header for that file. The // encryption header is originally set to random values, and then // itself encrypted, using three, 32-bit keys. The key values are // initialized using the supplied encryption password. After each byte // is encrypted, the keys are then updated using pseudo-random number // generation techniques in combination with the same CRC-32 algorithm // used in PKZIP and described elsewhere in this document. // // The following is the basic steps required to decrypt a file: // // 1) Initialize the three 32-bit keys with the password. // 2) Read and decrypt the 12-byte encryption header, further // initializing the encryption keys. // 3) Read and decrypt the compressed data stream using the // encryption keys. // Step 1 - Initializing the encryption keys // ----------------------------------------- // // Key(0) <- 305419896 // Key(1) <- 591751049 // Key(2) <- 878082192 // // loop for i <- 0 to length(password)-1 // update_keys(password(i)) // end loop // // Where update_keys() is defined as: // // update_keys(char): // Key(0) <- crc32(key(0),char) // Key(1) <- Key(1) + (Key(0) & 000000ffH) // Key(1) <- Key(1) * 134775813 + 1 // Key(2) <- crc32(key(2),key(1) >> 24) // end update_keys // // Where crc32(old_crc,char) is a routine that given a CRC value and a // character, returns an updated CRC value after applying the CRC-32 // algorithm described elsewhere in this document. keys = new long[] { ENCRYPTION_KEY_1, ENCRYPTION_KEY_2, ENCRYPTION_KEY_3 }; for (int i = 0; i < passwd.length(); ++i) { update_keys((byte) passwd.charAt(i)); } // Step 2 - Decrypting the encryption header // ----------------------------------------- // // The purpose of this step is to further initialize the encryption // keys, based on random data, to render a plaintext attack on the // data ineffective. // // Read the 12-byte encryption header into Buffer, in locations // Buffer(0) thru Buffer(11). // // loop for i <- 0 to 11 // C <- buffer(i) ^ decrypt_byte() // update_keys(C) // buffer(i) <- C // end loop // // Where decrypt_byte() is defined as: // // unsigned char decrypt_byte() // local unsigned short temp // temp <- Key(2) | 2 // decrypt_byte <- (temp * (temp ^ 1)) >> 8 // end decrypt_byte // // After the header is decrypted, the last 1 or 2 bytes in Buffer // should be the high-order word/byte of the CRC for the file being // decrypted, stored in Intel low-byte/high-byte order. Versions of // PKZIP prior to 2.0 used a 2 byte CRC check; a 1 byte CRC check is // used on versions after 2.0. This can be used to test if the password // supplied is correct or not. byte[] encryptionHeader = new byte[12]; baseInputStream.read(encryptionHeader); for (int i = 0; i < encryptionHeader.length; i++) { encryptionHeader[i] ^= decrypt_byte(); update_keys(encryptionHeader[i]); } } protected byte decrypt_byte() { byte temp = (byte) (keys[2] | 2); return (byte) ((temp * (temp ^ 1)) >> 8); } @Override public int read() throws IOException { // // Step 3 - Decrypting the compressed data stream // ---------------------------------------------- // // The compressed data stream can be decrypted as follows: // // loop until done // read a character into C // Temp <- C ^ decrypt_byte() // update_keys(temp) // output Temp // end loop int read = baseInputStream.read(); read ^= decrypt_byte(); update_keys((byte) read); return read; } private final void update_keys(byte ch) { keys[0] = checksumEngine.crc32((int) keys[0], ch); keys[1] = keys[1] + (byte) keys[0]; keys[1] = keys[1] * 134775813 + 1; keys[2] = checksumEngine.crc32((int) keys[2], (byte) (keys[1] >> 24)); } }

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Combining MVVM Light Toolkit and Unity 2.0

- by Alan Cordner

This is more of a commentary than a question, though feedback would be nice. I have been tasked to create the user interface for a new project we are doing. We want to use WPF and I wanted to learn all of the modern UI design techniques available. Since I am fairly new to WPF I have been researching what is available. I think I have pretty much settled on using MVVM Light Toolkit (mainly because of its "Blendability" and the EventToCommand behavior!), but I wanted to incorporate IoC also. So, here is what I have come up with. I have modified the default ViewModelLocator class in a MVVM Light project to use a UnityContainer to handle dependency injections. Considering I didn't know what 90% of these terms meant 3 months ago, I think I'm on the right track. // Example of MVVM Light Toolkit ViewModelLocator class that implements Microsoft // Unity 2.0 Inversion of Control container to resolve ViewModel dependencies. using Microsoft.Practices.Unity; namespace MVVMLightUnityExample { public class ViewModelLocator { public static UnityContainer Container { get; set; } #region Constructors static ViewModelLocator() { if (Container == null) { Container = new UnityContainer(); // register all dependencies required by view models Container .RegisterType<IDialogService, ModalDialogService>(new ContainerControlledLifetimeManager()) .RegisterType<ILoggerService, LogFileService>(new ContainerControlledLifetimeManager()) ; } } /// <summary> /// Initializes a new instance of the ViewModelLocator class. /// </summary> public ViewModelLocator() { ////if (ViewModelBase.IsInDesignModeStatic) ////{ //// // Create design time view models ////} ////else ////{ //// // Create run time view models ////} CreateMain(); } #endregion #region MainViewModel private static MainViewModel _main; /// <summary> /// Gets the Main property. /// </summary> public static MainViewModel MainStatic { get { if (_main == null) { CreateMain(); } return _main; } } /// <summary> /// Gets the Main property. /// </summary> [System.Diagnostics.CodeAnalysis.SuppressMessage("Microsoft.Performance", "CA1822:MarkMembersAsStatic", Justification = "This non-static member is needed for data binding purposes.")] public MainViewModel Main { get { return MainStatic; } } /// <summary> /// Provides a deterministic way to delete the Main property. /// </summary> public static void ClearMain() { _main.Cleanup(); _main = null; } /// <summary> /// Provides a deterministic way to create the Main property. /// </summary> public static void CreateMain() { if (_main == null) { // allow Unity to resolve the view model and hold onto reference _main = Container.Resolve<MainViewModel>(); } } #endregion #region OrderViewModel // property to hold the order number (injected into OrderViewModel() constructor when resolved) public static string OrderToView { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets the OrderViewModel property. /// </summary> public static OrderViewModel OrderViewModelStatic { get { // allow Unity to resolve the view model // do not keep local reference to the instance resolved because we need a new instance // each time - the corresponding View is a UserControl that can be used multiple times // within a single window/view // pass current value of OrderToView parameter to constructor! return Container.Resolve<OrderViewModel>(new ParameterOverride("orderNumber", OrderToView)); } } /// <summary> /// Gets the OrderViewModel property. /// </summary> [System.Diagnostics.CodeAnalysis.SuppressMessage("Microsoft.Performance", "CA1822:MarkMembersAsStatic", Justification = "This non-static member is needed for data binding purposes.")] public OrderViewModel Order { get { return OrderViewModelStatic; } } #endregion /// <summary> /// Cleans up all the resources. /// </summary> public static void Cleanup() { ClearMain(); Container = null; } } } And the MainViewModel class showing dependency injection usage: using GalaSoft.MvvmLight; using Microsoft.Practices.Unity; namespace MVVMLightUnityExample { public class MainViewModel : ViewModelBase { private IDialogService _dialogs; private ILoggerService _logger; /// <summary> /// Initializes a new instance of the MainViewModel class. This default constructor calls the /// non-default constructor resolving the interfaces used by this view model. /// </summary> public MainViewModel() : this(ViewModelLocator.Container.Resolve<IDialogService>(), ViewModelLocator.Container.Resolve<ILoggerService>()) { if (IsInDesignMode) { // Code runs in Blend --> create design time data. } else { // Code runs "for real" } } /// <summary> /// Initializes a new instance of the MainViewModel class. /// Interfaces are automatically resolved by the IoC container. /// </summary> /// <param name="dialogs">Interface to dialog service</param> /// <param name="logger">Interface to logger service</param> public MainViewModel(IDialogService dialogs, ILoggerService logger) { _dialogs = dialogs; _logger = logger; if (IsInDesignMode) { // Code runs in Blend --> create design time data. _dialogs.ShowMessage("Running in design-time mode!", "Injection Constructor", DialogButton.OK, DialogImage.Information); _logger.WriteLine("Running in design-time mode!"); } else { // Code runs "for real" _dialogs.ShowMessage("Running in run-time mode!", "Injection Constructor", DialogButton.OK, DialogImage.Information); _logger.WriteLine("Running in run-time mode!"); } } public override void Cleanup() { // Clean up if needed _dialogs = null; _logger = null; base.Cleanup(); } } } And the OrderViewModel class: using GalaSoft.MvvmLight; using Microsoft.Practices.Unity; namespace MVVMLightUnityExample { /// <summary> /// This class contains properties that a View can data bind to. /// <para> /// Use the <strong>mvvminpc</strong> snippet to add bindable properties to this ViewModel. /// </para> /// <para> /// You can also use Blend to data bind with the tool's support. /// </para> /// <para> /// See http://www.galasoft.ch/mvvm/getstarted /// </para> /// </summary> public class OrderViewModel : ViewModelBase { private const string testOrderNumber = "123456"; private Order _order; /// <summary> /// Initializes a new instance of the OrderViewModel class. /// </summary> public OrderViewModel() : this(testOrderNumber) { } /// <summary> /// Initializes a new instance of the OrderViewModel class. /// </summary> public OrderViewModel(string orderNumber) { if (IsInDesignMode) { // Code runs in Blend --> create design time data. _order = new Order(orderNumber, "My Company", "Our Address"); } else { _order = GetOrder(orderNumber); } } public override void Cleanup() { // Clean own resources if needed _order = null; base.Cleanup(); } } } And the code that could be used to display an order view for a specific order: public void ShowOrder(string orderNumber) { // pass the order number to show to ViewModelLocator to be injected //into the constructor of the OrderViewModel instance ViewModelLocator.OrderToShow = orderNumber; View.OrderView orderView = new View.OrderView(); } These examples have been stripped down to show only the IoC ideas. It took a lot of trial and error, searching the internet for examples, and finding out that the Unity 2.0 documentation is lacking (at best) to come up with this solution. Let me know if you think it could be improved.

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Why does C qicksort function implementation works much slower (tape comparations, tape swapping) than bobble sort function?

- by Artur Mustafin

I'm going to implement a toy tape "mainframe" for a students, showing the quickness of "quicksort" class functions (recursive or not, does not really matters, due to the slow hardware, and well known stack reversal techniques) comparatively to the "bubblesort" function class, so, while I'm clear about the hardware implementation ans controllers, i guessed that quicksort function is much faster that other ones in terms of sequence, order and comparation distance (it is much faster to rewind the tape from the middle than from the very end, because of different speed of rewind). Unfortunately, this is not the true, this simple "bubble" code shows great improvements comparatively to the "quicksort" functions in terms of comparison distances, direction and number of comparisons and writes. So I have 3 questions: Does I have mistaken in my implememtation of quicksort function? Does I have mistaken in my implememtation of bubblesoft function? If not, why the "bubblesort" function is works much faster in (comparison and write operations) than "quicksort" function? I already have a "quicksort" function: void quicksort(float *a, long l, long r, const compare_function& compare) { long i=l, j=r, temp, m=(l+r)/2; if (l == r) return; if (l == r-1) { if (compare(a, l, r)) { swap(a, l, r); } return; } if (l < r-1) { while (1) { i = l; j = r; while (i < m && !compare(a, i, m)) i++; while (m < j && !compare(a, m, j)) j--; if (i >= j) { break; } swap(a, i, j); } if (l < m) quicksort(a, l, m, compare); if (m < r) quicksort(a, m, r, compare); return; } } and the kind of my own implememtation of the "bubblesort" function: void bubblesort(float *a, long l, long r, const compare_function& compare) { long i, j, k; if (l == r) { return; } if (l == r-1) { if (compare(a, l, r)) { swap(a, l, r); } return; } if (l < r-1) { while(l < r) { i = l; j = l; while (i < r) { i++; if (!compare(a, j, i)) { continue; } j = i; } if (l < j) { swap(a, l, j); } l++; i = r; k = r; while(l < i) { i--; if (!compare(a, i, k)) { continue; } k = i; } if (k < r) { swap(a, k, r); } r--; } return; } } I have used this sort functions in a test sample code, like this: #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <math.h> #include <conio.h> long swap_count; long compare_count; typedef long (*compare_function)(float *, long, long ); typedef void (*sort_function)(float *, long , long , const compare_function& ); void init(float *, long ); void print(float *, long ); void sort(float *, long, const sort_function& ); void swap(float *a, long l, long r); long less(float *a, long l, long r); long greater(float *a, long l, long r); void bubblesort(float *, long , long , const compare_function& ); void quicksort(float *, long , long , const compare_function& ); void main() { int n; printf("n="); scanf("%d",&n); printf("\r\n"); long i; float *a = (float *)malloc(n*n*sizeof(float)); sort(a, n, &bubblesort); print(a, n); sort(a, n, &quicksort); print(a, n); free(a); } long less(float *a, long l, long r) { compare_count++; return *(a+l) < *(a+r) ? 1 : 0; } long greater(float *a, long l, long r) { compare_count++; return *(a+l) > *(a+r) ? 1 : 0; } void swap(float *a, long l, long r) { swap_count++; float temp; temp = *(a+l); *(a+l) = *(a+r); *(a+r) = temp; } float tg(float x) { return tan(x); } float ctg(float x) { return 1.0/tan(x); } void init(float *m,long n) { long i,j; for (i = 0; i < n; i++) { for (j=0; j< n; j++) { m[i + j*n] = tg(0.2*(i+1)) + ctg(0.3*(j+1)); } } } void print(float *m, long n) { long i, j; for(i = 0; i < n; i++) { for(j = 0; j < n; j++) { printf(" %5.1f", m[i + j*n]); } printf("\r\n"); } printf("\r\n"); } void sort(float *a, long n, const sort_function& sort) { long i, sort_compare = 0, sort_swap = 0; init(a,n); for(i = 0; i < n*n; i+=n) { if (fmod (i / n, 2) == 0) { compare_count = 0; swap_count = 0; sort(a, i, i+n-1, &less); if (swap_count == 0) { compare_count = 0; sort(a, i, i+n-1, &greater); } sort_compare += compare_count; sort_swap += swap_count; } } printf("compare=%ld\r\n", sort_compare); printf("swap=%ld\r\n", sort_swap); printf("\r\n"); }

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How is font-size not working here?

- by markvgti

Following advice in The 6 Most Important CSS Techniques You Need To Know, I set my body's font-size to 62.5%, the container div's font-size to 1.4 em (slight variation from the article). p.tags and p.published's font-size is set to 1em. However, this doesn't work for me. Both the normal text and text in p.tags and p.published comes out to be the same size (16.8px as computed by Firebug). Can you explain why my code isn't working? I am testing in Firefox 3.6.3. The sample page shown by the author works just fine in the very same browser. I've reproduced the entire page below—apologies for the length of it, but I thought it better to not leave out anything. <html> <head> <title>Title</title> <style type="text/css"> body { font-family: Georgia, "Century Schoolbook", "Times New Roman", Serif; font-size: 62.5%; background-color: #2B3856; /* Dark slate blue */ } h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 { font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, Tahoma, "Sans Serif"; color: #2B3856; margin-top: 2px; } h1 a, h2 a, h3 a, h4 a, h5 a, h6 a { text-decoration: none; color: #2B3856; } h1 a:hover, h2 a:hover, h3 a:hover, h4 a:hover, h5 a:hover, h6 a:hover { text-decoration: underline; } div#container { width: 800px; font-size: 1.4em; margin: 5px auto; background-color: #E3E4FA; /* Lavender */ } #sidebar { width: 200px; float: right; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; } #sidebar div { padding: 0 5px 5px; } #sidebar div.shadowbox { margin-right: 5px; } #content { width: 600px; float: left; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; } #header { /*background-color: white;*/ background-color: #2B3856; /* #E3E4FA; Lavender */ margin-bottom: 5px; height: 100px; } #header h1 { color: #B93B8F; /* Plum */ line-height: 100px; text-align: center; font-size: 45px; } #description { color: #7D1B7E /* Dark Orchid */ } a { text-decoration: underline; color: #153E7E; } a:hover { text-decoration: none; } div#posts { padding: 0px; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px; } div#posts div.post { padding: 5px; margin: 0px 5px 15px 5px; } p.tags, p.published { font-size: 1em; } .shadowbox { background: repeat 0 0 url('http://www.jawsalgorhythmics.com/images/darkness-100x100-10pct.png'); } .justifycenter { text-align: center; } .floatright { float:right; } .floatleft { float: left; } .clearright { clear: right; } .clearleft { clear:left; } .clearboth { clear: both; } .halfsidebarwidth { width: 82px; } </style> </head> <body> <div id="container"> <div id="header"> <h1>Odds 'n Ends</h1> </div>  <div id="sidebar"> <div class="shadowbox"> <br /><p class="justifycenter"><img width="64" height="64" src="{PortraitURL-64}" /></p> <div class="floatleft halfsidebarwidth"><a href="/archive" class="archive">Archives</a></div> <div class="floatleft halfsidebarwidth"><a href="{RSS}" class="rss">RSS</a></div> <div class="clearboth"></div> </div> </div>  <div id="content"> <div id="posts"> <div class="post shadowbox"> <span class="quote"> "It does not matter how slow you go so long as you do not stop." <div class="source">Wisdom of <a href="#" title="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius">Confucius</a></div> </span> <p class="tags">Tags: #<a href="#" title="http://demo.tumblr.com/tagged/wisdom">wisdom</a>  </p> <p class="published">Posted: Nov 08, 2006 at 2:27 pm   <a href="#" title="http://demo.tumblr.com/post/236/it-does-not-matter-how-slow-you-go-so-long-as-you">Permalink</a>   <a href="#" title="http://tumblr.com/xr06k">Short URL</a></p> </div> </div>  </div>  <div class="clearboth"></div> <div id="footer" style="text-align: justify;"> <h1>The footer</h1> </div> </div>  </body> </html>

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Criticize my code, please

- by Micky

Hey, I was applying for a position, and they asked me to complete a coding problem for them. I did so and submitted it, but I later found out I was rejected from the position. Anyways, I have an eclectic programming background so I'm not sure if my code is grossly wrong or if I just didn't have the best solution out there. I would like to post my code and get some feedback about it. Before I do, here's a description of a problem: You are given a sorted array of integers, say, {1, 2, 4, 4, 5, 8, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10, 11, 13 }. Now you are supposed to write a program (in C or C++, but I chose C) that prompts the user for an element to search for. The program will then search for the element. If it is found, then it should return the first index the entry was found at and the number of instances of that element. If the element is not found, then it should return "not found" or something similar. Here's a simple run of it (with the array I just put up): Enter a number to search for: 4 4 was found at index 2. There are 2 instances for 4 in the array. Enter a number to search for: -4. -4 is not in the array. They made a comment that my code should scale well with large arrays (so I wrote up a binary search). Anyways, my code basically runs as follows: Prompts user for input. Then it checks if it is within bounds (bigger than a[0] in the array and smaller than the largest element of the array). If so, then I perform a binary search. If the element is found, then I wrote two while loops. One while loop will count to the left of the element found, and the second while loop will count to the right of the element found. The loops terminate when the adjacent elements do not match with the desired value. EX: 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 The bold 4 is the value the binary search landed on. One loop will check to the left of it, and another loop will check to the right of it. Their sum will be the total number of instances of the the number four. Anyways, I don't know if there are any advanced techniques that I am missing or if I just don't have the CS background and made a big error. Any constructive critiques would be appreciated! #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <string.h> #include <stddef.h> /* function prototype */ int get_num_of_ints( const int* arr, size_t r, int N, size_t* first, size_t* count ); int main() { int N; /* input variable */ int arr[]={1,1,2,3,3,4,4,4,4,5,5,7,7,7,7,8,8,8,9,11,12,12}; /* array of sorted integers */ size_t r = sizeof(arr)/sizeof(arr[0]); /* right bound */ size_t first; /* first match index */ size_t count; /* total number of matches */ /* prompts the user to enter input */ printf( "\nPlease input the integer you would like to find.\n" ); scanf( "%d", &N ); int a = get_num_of_ints( arr, r, N, &first, &count ); /* If the function returns -1 then the value is not found. Else it is returned */ if( a == -1) printf( "%d has not been found.\n", N ); else if(a >= 0){ printf( "The first matching index is %d.\n", first ); printf( "The total number of instances is %d.\n", count ); } return 0; } /* function definition */ int get_num_of_ints( const int* arr, size_t r, int N, size_t* first, size_t* count ) { int lo=0; /* lower bound for search */ int m=0; /* middle value obtained */ int hi=r-1; /* upper bound for search */ int w=r-1; /* used as a fixed upper bound to calculate the number of right instances of a particular value. */ /* binary search to find if a value exists */ /* first check if the element is out of bounds */ if( N < arr[0] || arr[hi] < N ){ m = -1; } else{ /* binary search to find a value, if it exists, within given parameters */ while(lo <= hi){ m = (hi + lo)/2; if(arr[m] < N) lo = m+1; else if(arr[m] > N) hi = m-1; else if(arr[m]==N){ m=m; break; } } if (lo > hi) /* if it doesn't we assign it -1 */ m = -1; } /* If the value is found, then we compute the left and right instances of it */ if( m >= 0 ){ int j = m-1; /* starting with the first term to the left */ int L = 0; /* total number of left instances */ /* while loop computes total number of left instances */ while( j >= 0 && arr[j] == arr[m] ){ L++; j--; } /* There are six possible outcomes of this. Depending on the outcome, we must assign the first index variable accordingly */ if( j > 0 && L > 0 ) *first=j+1; else if( j==0 && L==0) *first=m; else if( j > 0 && L==0 ) *first=m; else if(j < 0 && L==0 ) *first=m; else if( j < 0 && L > 0 ) *first=0; else if( j=0 && L > 0 ) *first=j+1; int h = m + 1; /* starting with the first term to the right */ int R = 0; /* total number of right instances */ /* while loop computes total number of right instances */ /* we fixed w earlier so that it's value does not change */ while( arr[h]==arr[m] && h <= w ){ R++; h++; } *count = (R + L + 1); /* total number of instances stored as value of count */ return *first; /* first instance index stored here */ } /* if value does not exist, then we return a negative value */ else if( m==-1) return -1; }

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Overlapping and Stacking in CSS

- by ApacheCode

Hello, I'm a programmer and learning new techniques in web development. I've ran into a problem if you could look at the link below. http://bailesslaw.com/Bailess_003/bailesHeader/header.html This example I made isnt fixed and it needs to be, which is becoming difficult. This looks fine on here, but when I put those layers on main website, index.html, place this code as the header, the banner moves in the documents position 0,0 . I need these boxes fixed, center page and I cannot get them to do that without messing up the layers order and content. Layer1-rotating images, js causes the rotation Layer2-blue triangle with backdrop effect overlapping layer 1, Layer 3-is a static image with a high z-index Below I including some code, the important part that needs 3 overlapped layers exactly matching in width and height, except it has to be fixed in center 780px wide. Code: <style rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> div#layer1 { border: 1px solid #000; height: 200px; left: 0px; position: fixed; top: 0px; width: 780px; z-index: 1; } div#layer2 { border: 1px solid #000; height: 200px; left: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; width: 780px; z-index: 2; } div#layer3 { border: 1px solid #000000; height: 200px; left: 0px; position: absolute; top: 0px; width: 780px; z-index: 3; } </style> </head> <body class="oneColFixCtr"> <div id="container"> <div id="mainContent"> <div id="layer1"> </div> <div id="layer2"> <div class="slideshow"> <span id="rotating1"> <p class="rotating"> </p> </span> <span id="rotating2"> <p class="rotating"> </p> </span> <span id="rotating3"> <p class="rotating"> </p> </span> <span id="rotating4"> <p class="rotating"> </p> </span> </div> </div> <div id="layer3"> <table width="385" border="0"> <tr> <th width="81" scope="col">   </th> <th width="278" scope="col">   </th> <th width="12" scope="col">   </th> </tr> <tr> <td>   </td> <td> </td> <td>   </td> </tr> <tr> <td>   </td> <td>   </td> <td>   </td> </tr> </table> </div> </div>  </div> </body> </body> </html> CSS: @charset "utf-8"; CSS code: #rotating1 { height: 200px; width: 780px; } #rotating2 { height: 200px; width: 780px; } #rotating3 { height: 200px; width: 780px; } #main { background-repeat: no-repeat; height: 200px; width: 780px; z-index: 100; } #test { width: 780px; z-index: 2; } #indexContent { background-color: #12204d; background-repeat: no-repeat; height: 200px; width: 780px; z-index: 1; } #indexContent p { padding: .5em 2em .5em 2em; text-align: justify; text-indent: 2em; } .rotating { float: right; margin-top: 227px; text-indent: 0px !important; } .clearfix:after { clear: both; content: " "; display: block; font-size: 0; height: 0; visibility: hidden; } .clearfix { display: inline-block; } * html .clearfix { height: 1%; } .clearfix { display: block; }

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What's New in ASP.NET 4

- by Navaneeth

The .NET Framework version 4 includes enhancements for ASP.NET 4 in targeted areas. Visual Studio 2010 and Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express also include enhancements and new features for improved Web development. This document provides an overview of many of the new features that are included in the upcoming release. This topic contains the following sections: ASP.NET Core Services ASP.NET Web Forms ASP.NET MVC Dynamic Data ASP.NET Chart Control Visual Web Developer Enhancements Web Application Deployment with Visual Studio 2010 Enhancements to ASP.NET Multi-Targeting ASP.NET Core Services ASP.NET 4 introduces many features that improve core ASP.NET services such as output caching and session state storage. Extensible Output Caching Since the time that ASP.NET 1.0 was released, output caching has enabled developers to store the generated output of pages, controls, and HTTP responses in memory. On subsequent Web requests, ASP.NET can serve content more quickly by retrieving the generated output from memory instead of regenerating the output from scratch. However, this approach has a limitation — generated content always has to be stored in memory. On servers that experience heavy traffic, the memory requirements for output caching can compete with memory requirements for other parts of a Web application. ASP.NET 4 adds extensibility to output caching that enables you to configure one or more custom output-cache providers. Output-cache providers can use any storage mechanism to persist HTML content. These storage options can include local or remote disks, cloud storage, and distributed cache engines. Output-cache provider extensibility in ASP.NET 4 lets you design more aggressive and more intelligent output-caching strategies for Web sites. For example, you can create an output-cache provider that caches the "Top 10" pages of a site in memory, while caching pages that get lower traffic on disk. Alternatively, you can cache every vary-by combination for a rendered page, but use a distributed cache so that the memory consumption is offloaded from front-end Web servers. You create a custom output-cache provider as a class that derives from the OutputCacheProvider type. You can then configure the provider in the Web.config file by using the new providers subsection of the outputCache element For more information and for examples that show how to configure the output cache, see outputCache Element for caching (ASP.NET Settings Schema). For more information about the classes that support caching, see the documentation for the OutputCache and OutputCacheProvider classes. By default, in ASP.NET 4, all HTTP responses, rendered pages, and controls use the in-memory output cache. The defaultProvider attribute for ASP.NET is AspNetInternalProvider. You can change the default output-cache provider used for a Web application by specifying a different provider name for defaultProvider attribute. In addition, you can select different output-cache providers for individual control and for individual requests and programmatically specify which provider to use. For more information, see the HttpApplication.GetOutputCacheProviderName(HttpContext) method. The easiest way to choose a different output-cache provider for different Web user controls is to do so declaratively by using the new providerName attribute in a page or control directive, as shown in the following example: <%@ OutputCache Duration="60" VaryByParam="None" providerName="DiskCache" %> Preloading Web Applications Some Web applications must load large amounts of data or must perform expensive initialization processing before serving the first request. In earlier versions of ASP.NET, for these situations you had to devise custom approaches to "wake up" an ASP.NET application and then run initialization code during the Application_Load method in the Global.asax file. To address this scenario, a new application preload manager (autostart feature) is available when ASP.NET 4 runs on IIS 7.5 on Windows Server 2008 R2. The preload feature provides a controlled approach for starting up an application pool, initializing an ASP.NET application, and then accepting HTTP requests. It lets you perform expensive application initialization prior to processing the first HTTP request. For example, you can use the application preload manager to initialize an application and then signal a load-balancer that the application was initialized and ready to accept HTTP traffic. To use the application preload manager, an IIS administrator sets an application pool in IIS 7.5 to be automatically started by using the following configuration in the applicationHost.config file: <applicationPools> <add name="MyApplicationPool" startMode="AlwaysRunning" /> </applicationPools> Because a single application pool can contain multiple applications, you specify individual applications to be automatically started by using the following configuration in the applicationHost.config file: <sites> <site name="MySite" id="1"> <application path="/" serviceAutoStartEnabled="true" serviceAutoStartProvider="PrewarmMyCache" >  </application> </site> </sites>  <serviceAutoStartProviders> <add name="PrewarmMyCache" type="MyNamespace.CustomInitialization, MyLibrary" /> </serviceAutoStartProviders> When an IIS 7.5 server is cold-started or when an individual application pool is recycled, IIS 7.5 uses the information in the applicationHost.config file to determine which Web applications have to be automatically started. For each application that is marked for preload, IIS7.5 sends a request to ASP.NET 4 to start the application in a state during which the application temporarily does not accept HTTP requests. When it is in this state, ASP.NET instantiates the type defined by the serviceAutoStartProvider attribute (as shown in the previous example) and calls into its public entry point. You create a managed preload type that has the required entry point by implementing the IProcessHostPreloadClient interface, as shown in the following example: public class CustomInitialization : System.Web.Hosting.IProcessHostPreloadClient { public void Preload(string[] parameters) { // Perform initialization. } } After your initialization code runs in the Preload method and after the method returns, the ASP.NET application is ready to process requests. Permanently Redirecting a Page Content in Web applications is often moved over the lifetime of the application. This can lead to links to be out of date, such as the links that are returned by search engines. In ASP.NET, developers have traditionally handled requests to old URLs by using the Redirect method to forward a request to the new URL. However, the Redirect method issues an HTTP 302 (Found) response (which is used for a temporary redirect). This results in an extra HTTP round trip. ASP.NET 4 adds a RedirectPermanent helper method that makes it easy to issue HTTP 301 (Moved Permanently) responses, as in the following example: RedirectPermanent("/newpath/foroldcontent.aspx"); Search engines and other user agents that recognize permanent redirects will store the new URL that is associated with the content, which eliminates the unnecessary round trip made by the browser for temporary redirects. Session State Compression By default, ASP.NET provides two options for storing session state across a Web farm. The first option is a session state provider that invokes an out-of-process session state server. The second option is a session state provider that stores data in a Microsoft SQL Server database. Because both options store state information outside a Web application's worker process, session state has to be serialized before it is sent to remote storage. If a large amount of data is saved in session state, the size of the serialized data can become very large. ASP.NET 4 introduces a new compression option for both kinds of out-of-process session state providers. By using this option, applications that have spare CPU cycles on Web servers can achieve substantial reductions in the size of serialized session state data. You can set this option using the new compressionEnabled attribute of the sessionState element in the configuration file. When the compressionEnabled configuration option is set to true, ASP.NET compresses (and decompresses) serialized session state by using the .NET Framework GZipStreamclass. The following example shows how to set this attribute. <sessionState mode="SqlServer" sqlConnectionString="data source=dbserver;Initial Catalog=aspnetstate" allowCustomSqlDatabase="true" compressionEnabled="true" /> ASP.NET Web Forms Web Forms has been a core feature in ASP.NET since the release of ASP.NET 1.0. Many enhancements have been in this area for ASP.NET 4, such as the following: The ability to set meta tags. More control over view state. Support for recently introduced browsers and devices. Easier ways to work with browser capabilities. Support for using ASP.NET routing with Web Forms. More control over generated IDs. The ability to persist selected rows in data controls. More control over rendered HTML in the FormView and ListView controls. Filtering support for data source controls. Enhanced support for Web standards and accessibility Setting Meta Tags with the Page.MetaKeywords and Page.MetaDescription Properties Two properties have been added to the Page class: MetaKeywords and MetaDescription. These two properties represent corresponding meta tags in the HTML rendered for a page, as shown in the following example: <head id="Head1" runat="server"> <title>Untitled Page</title> <meta name="keywords" content="keyword1, keyword2' /> <meta name="description" content="Description of my page" /> </head> These two properties work like the Title property does, and they can be set in the @ Page directive. For more information, see Page.MetaKeywords and Page.MetaDescription. Enabling View State for Individual Controls A new property has been added to the Control class: ViewStateMode. You can use this property to disable view state for all controls on a page except those for which you explicitly enable view state. View state data is included in a page's HTML and increases the amount of time it takes to send a page to the client and post it back. Storing more view state than is necessary can cause significant decrease in performance. In earlier versions of ASP.NET, you could reduce the impact of view state on a page's performance by disabling view state for specific controls. But sometimes it is easier to enable view state for a few controls that need it instead of disabling it for many that do not need it. For more information, see Control.ViewStateMode. Support for Recently Introduced Browsers and Devices ASP.NET includes a feature that is named browser capabilities that lets you determine the capabilities of the browser that a user is using. Browser capabilities are represented by the HttpBrowserCapabilities object which is stored in the HttpRequest.Browser property. Information about a particular browser's capabilities is defined by a browser definition file. In ASP.NET 4, these browser definition files have been updated to contain information about recently introduced browsers and devices such as Google Chrome, Research in Motion BlackBerry smart phones, and Apple iPhone. Existing browser definition files have also been updated. For more information, see How to: Upgrade an ASP.NET Web Application to ASP.NET 4 and ASP.NET Web Server Controls and Browser Capabilities. The browser definition files that are included with ASP.NET 4 are shown in the following list: •blackberry.browser •chrome.browser •Default.browser •firefox.browser •gateway.browser •generic.browser •ie.browser •iemobile.browser •iphone.browser •opera.browser •safari.browser A New Way to Define Browser Capabilities ASP.NET 4 includes a new feature referred to as browser capabilities providers. As the name suggests, this lets you build a provider that in turn lets you write custom code to determine browser capabilities. In ASP.NET version 3.5 Service Pack 1, you define browser capabilities in an XML file. This file resides in a machine-level folder or an application-level folder. Most developers do not need to customize these files, but for those who do, the provider approach can be easier than dealing with complex XML syntax. The provider approach makes it possible to simplify the process by implementing a common browser definition syntax, or a database that contains up-to-date browser definitions, or even a Web service for such a database. For more information about the new browser capabilities provider, see the What's New for ASP.NET 4 White Paper. Routing in ASP.NET 4 ASP.NET 4 adds built-in support for routing with Web Forms. Routing is a feature that was introduced with ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 and lets you configure an application to use URLs that are meaningful to users and to search engines because they do not have to specify physical file names. This can make your site more user-friendly and your site content more discoverable by search engines. For example, the URL for a page that displays product categories in your application might look like the following example: http://website/products.aspx?categoryid=12 By using routing, you can use the following URL to render the same information: http://website/products/software The second URL lets the user know what to expect and can result in significantly improved rankings in search engine results. the new features include the following: The PageRouteHandler class is a simple HTTP handler that you use when you define routes. You no longer have to write a custom route handler. The HttpRequest.RequestContext and Page.RouteData properties make it easier to access information that is passed in URL parameters. The RouteUrl expression provides a simple way to create a routed URL in markup. The RouteValue expression provides a simple way to extract URL parameter values in markup. The RouteParameter class makes it easier to pass URL parameter values to a query for a data source control (similar to FormParameter). You no longer have to change the Web.config file to enable routing. For more information about routing, see the following topics: ASP.NET Routing Walkthrough: Using ASP.NET Routing in a Web Forms Application How to: Define Routes for Web Forms Applications How to: Construct URLs from Routes How to: Access URL Parameters in a Routed Page Setting Client IDs The new ClientIDMode property makes it easier to write client script that references HTML elements rendered for server controls. Increasing use of Microsoft Ajax makes the need to do this more common. For example, you may have a data control that renders a long list of products with prices and you want to use client script to make a Web service call and update individual prices in the list as they change without refreshing the entire page. Typically you get a reference to an HTML element in client script by using the document.GetElementById method. You pass to this method the value of the id attribute of the HTML element you want to reference. In the case of elements that are rendered for ASP.NET server controls earlier versions of ASP.NET could make this difficult or impossible. You were not always able to predict what id values ASP.NET would generate, or ASP.NET could generate very long id values. The problem was especially difficult for data controls that would generate multiple rows for a single instance of the control in your markup. ASP.NET 4 adds two new algorithms for generating id attributes. These algorithms can generate id attributes that are easier to work with in client script because they are more predictable and that are easier to work with because they are simpler. For more information about how to use the new algorithms, see the following topics: ASP.NET Web Server Control Identification Walkthrough: Making Data-Bound Controls Easier to Access from JavaScript Walkthrough: Making Controls Located in Web User Controls Easier to Access from JavaScript How to: Access Controls from JavaScript by ID Persisting Row Selection in Data Controls The GridView and ListView controls enable users to select a row. In previous versions of ASP.NET, row selection was based on the row index on the page. For example, if you select the third item on page 1 and then move to page 2, the third item on page 2 is selected. In most cases, is more desirable not to select any rows on page 2. ASP.NET 4 supports Persisted Selection, a new feature that was initially supported only in Dynamic Data projects in the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. When this feature is enabled, the selected item is based on the row data key. This means that if you select the third row on page 1 and move to page 2, nothing is selected on page 2. When you move back to page 1, the third row is still selected. This is a much more natural behavior than the behavior in earlier versions of ASP.NET. Persisted selection is now supported for the GridView and ListView controls in all projects. You can enable this feature in the GridView control, for example, by setting the EnablePersistedSelection property, as shown in the following example: <asp:GridView id="GridView2" runat="server" PersistedSelection="true"> </asp:GridView> FormView Control Enhancements The FormView control is enhanced to make it easier to style the content of the control with CSS. In previous versions of ASP.NET, the FormView control rendered it contents using an item template. This made styling more difficult in the markup because unexpected table row and table cell tags were rendered by the control. The FormView control supports RenderOuterTable, a property in ASP.NET 4. When this property is set to false, as show in the following example, the table tags are not rendered. This makes it easier to apply CSS style to the contents of the control. <asp:FormView ID="FormView1" runat="server" RenderTable="false"> For more information, see FormView Web Server Control Overview. ListView Control Enhancements The ListView control, which was introduced in ASP.NET 3.5, has all the functionality of the GridView control while giving you complete control over the output. This control has been made easier to use in ASP.NET 4. The earlier version of the control required that you specify a layout template that contained a server control with a known ID. The following markup shows a typical example of how to use the ListView control in ASP.NET 3.5. <asp:ListView ID="ListView1" runat="server"> <LayoutTemplate> <asp:PlaceHolder ID="ItemPlaceHolder" runat="server"></asp:PlaceHolder> </LayoutTemplate> <ItemTemplate> <% Eval("LastName")%> </ItemTemplate> </asp:ListView> In ASP.NET 4, the ListView control does not require a layout template. The markup shown in the previous example can be replaced with the following markup: <asp:ListView ID="ListView1" runat="server"> <ItemTemplate> <% Eval("LastName")%> </ItemTemplate> </asp:ListView> For more information, see ListView Web Server Control Overview. Filtering Data with the QueryExtender Control A very common task for developers who create data-driven Web pages is to filter data. This traditionally has been performed by building Where clauses in data source controls. This approach can be complicated, and in some cases the Where syntax does not let you take advantage of the full functionality of the underlying database. To make filtering easier, a new QueryExtender control has been added in ASP.NET 4. This control can be added to EntityDataSource or LinqDataSource controls in order to filter the data returned by these controls. Because the QueryExtender control relies on LINQ, but you do not to need to know how to write LINQ queries to use the query extender. The QueryExtender control supports a variety of filter options. The following lists QueryExtender filter options. Term Definition SearchExpression Searches a field or fields for string values and compares them to a specified string value. RangeExpression Searches a field or fields for values in a range specified by a pair of values. PropertyExpression Compares a specified value to a property value in a field. If the expression evaluates to true, the data that is being examined is returned. OrderByExpression Sorts data by a specified column and sort direction. CustomExpression Calls a function that defines custom filter in the page. For more information, see QueryExtenderQueryExtender Web Server Control Overview. Enhanced Support for Web Standards and Accessibility Earlier versions of ASP.NET controls sometimes render markup that does not conform to HTML, XHTML, or accessibility standards. ASP.NET 4 eliminates most of these exceptions. For details about how the HTML that is rendered by each control meets accessibility standards, see ASP.NET Controls and Accessibility. CSS for Controls that Can be Disabled In ASP.NET 3.5, when a control is disabled (see WebControl.Enabled), a disabled attribute is added to the rendered HTML element. For example, the following markup creates a Label control that is disabled: <asp:Label id="Label1" runat="server" Text="Test" Enabled="false" /> In ASP.NET 3.5, the previous control settings generate the following HTML: <span id="Label1" disabled="disabled">Test</span> In HTML 4.01, the disabled attribute is not considered valid on span elements. It is valid only on input elements because it specifies that they cannot be accessed. On display-only elements such as span elements, browsers typically support rendering for a disabled appearance, but a Web page that relies on this non-standard behavior is not robust according to accessibility standards. For display-only elements, you should use CSS to indicate a disabled visual appearance. Therefore, by default ASP.NET 4 generates the following HTML for the control settings shown previously: <span id="Label1" class="aspNetDisabled">Test</span> You can change the value of the class attribute that is rendered by default when a control is disabled by setting the DisabledCssClass property. CSS for Validation Controls In ASP.NET 3.5, validation controls render a default color of red as an inline style. For example, the following markup creates a RequiredFieldValidator control: <asp:RequiredFieldValidator ID="RequiredFieldValidator1" runat="server" ErrorMessage="Required Field" ControlToValidate="RadioButtonList1" /> ASP.NET 3.5 renders the following HTML for the validator control: <span id="RequiredFieldValidator1" style="color:Red;visibility:hidden;">RequiredFieldValidator</span> By default, ASP.NET 4 does not render an inline style to set the color to red. An inline style is used only to hide or show the validator, as shown in the following example: <span id="RequiredFieldValidator1" style"visibility:hidden;">RequiredFieldValidator</span> Therefore, ASP.NET 4 does not automatically show error messages in red. For information about how to use CSS to specify a visual style for a validation control, see Validating User Input in ASP.NET Web Pages. CSS for the Hidden Fields Div Element ASP.NET uses hidden fields to store state information such as view state and control state. These hidden fields are contained by a div element. In ASP.NET 3.5, this div element does not have a class attribute or an id attribute. Therefore, CSS rules that affect all div elements could unintentionally cause this div to be visible. To avoid this problem, ASP.NET 4 renders the div element for hidden fields with a CSS class that you can use to differentiate the hidden fields div from others. The new classvalue is shown in the following example: <div class="aspNetHidden"> CSS for the Table, Image, and ImageButton Controls By default, in ASP.NET 3.5, some controls set the border attribute of rendered HTML to zero (0). The following example shows HTML that is generated by the Table control in ASP.NET 3.5: <table id="Table2" border="0"> The Image control and the ImageButton control also do this. Because this is not necessary and provides visual formatting information that should be provided by using CSS, the attribute is not generated in ASP.NET 4. CSS for the UpdatePanel and UpdateProgress Controls In ASP.NET 3.5, the UpdatePanel and UpdateProgress controls do not support expando attributes. This makes it impossible to set a CSS class on the HTMLelements that they render. In ASP.NET 4 these controls have been changed to accept expando attributes, as shown in the following example: <asp:UpdatePanel runat="server" class="myStyle"> </asp:UpdatePanel> The following HTML is rendered for this markup: <div id="ctl00_MainContent_UpdatePanel1" class="expandoclass"> </div> Eliminating Unnecessary Outer Tables In ASP.NET 3.5, the HTML that is rendered for the following controls is wrapped in a table element whose purpose is to apply inline styles to the entire control: FormView Login PasswordRecovery ChangePassword If you use templates to customize the appearance of these controls, you can specify CSS styles in the markup that you provide in the templates. In that case, no extra outer table is required. In ASP.NET 4, you can prevent the table from being rendered by setting the new RenderOuterTable property to false. Layout Templates for Wizard Controls In ASP.NET 3.5, the Wizard and CreateUserWizard controls generate an HTML table element that is used for visual formatting. In ASP.NET 4 you can use a LayoutTemplate element to specify the layout. If you do this, the HTML table element is not generated. In the template, you create placeholder controls to indicate where items should be dynamically inserted into the control. (This is similar to how the template model for the ListView control works.) For more information, see the Wizard.LayoutTemplate property. New HTML Formatting Options for the CheckBoxList and RadioButtonList Controls ASP.NET 3.5 uses HTML table elements to format the output for the CheckBoxList and RadioButtonList controls. To provide an alternative that does not use tables for visual formatting, ASP.NET 4 adds two new options to the RepeatLayout enumeration: UnorderedList. This option causes the HTML output to be formatted by using ul and li elements instead of a table. OrderedList. This option causes the HTML output to be formatted by using ol and li elements instead of a table. For examples of HTML that is rendered for the new options, see the RepeatLayout enumeration. Header and Footer Elements for the Table Control In ASP.NET 3.5, the Table control can be configured to render thead and tfoot elements by setting the TableSection property of the TableHeaderRow class and the TableFooterRow class. In ASP.NET 4 these properties are set to the appropriate values by default. CSS and ARIA Support for the Menu Control In ASP.NET 3.5, the Menu control uses HTML table elements for visual formatting, and in some configurations it is not keyboard-accessible. ASP.NET 4 addresses these problems and improves accessibility in the following ways: The generated HTML is structured as an unordered list (ul and li elements). CSS is used for visual formatting. The menu behaves in accordance with ARIA standards for keyboard access. You can use arrow keys to navigate menu items. (For information about ARIA, see Accessibility in Visual Studio and ASP.NET.) ARIA role and property attributes are added to the generated HTML. (Attributes are added by using JavaScript instead of included in the HTML, to avoid generating HTML that would cause markup validation errors.) Styles for the Menu control are rendered in a style block at the top of the page, instead of inline with the rendered HTML elements. If you want to use a separate CSS file so that you can modify the menu styles, you can set the Menu control's new IncludeStyleBlock property to false, in which case the style block is not generated. Valid XHTML for the HtmlForm Control In ASP.NET 3.5, the HtmlForm control (which is created implicitly by the <form runat="server"> tag) renders an HTML form element that has both name and id attributes. The name attribute is deprecated in XHTML 1.1. Therefore, this control does not render the name attribute in ASP.NET 4. Maintaining Backward Compatibility in Control Rendering An existing ASP.NET Web site might have code in it that assumes that controls are rendering HTML the way they do in ASP.NET 3.5. To avoid causing backward compatibility problems when you upgrade the site to ASP.NET 4, you can have ASP.NET continue to generate HTML the way it does in ASP.NET 3.5 after you upgrade the site. To do so, you can set the controlRenderingCompatibilityVersion attribute of the pages element to "3.5" in the Web.config file of an ASP.NET 4 Web site, as shown in the following example: <system.web> <pages controlRenderingCompatibilityVersion="3.5"/> </system.web> If this setting is omitted, the default value is the same as the version of ASP.NET that the Web site targets. (For information about multi-targeting in ASP.NET, see .NET Framework Multi-Targeting for ASP.NET Web Projects.) ASP.NET MVC ASP.NET MVC helps Web developers build compelling standards-based Web sites that are easy to maintain because it decreases the dependency among application layers by using the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern. MVC provides complete control over the page markup. It also improves testability by inherently supporting Test Driven Development (TDD). Web sites created using ASP.NET MVC have a modular architecture. This allows members of a team to work independently on the various modules and can be used to improve collaboration. For example, developers can work on the model and controller layers (data and logic), while the designer work on the view (presentation). For tutorials, walkthroughs, conceptual content, code samples, and a complete API reference, see ASP.NET MVC 2. Dynamic Data Dynamic Data was introduced in the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 release in mid-2008. This feature provides many enhancements for creating data-driven applications, such as the following: A RAD experience for quickly building a data-driven Web site. Automatic validation that is based on constraints defined in the data model. The ability to easily change the markup that is generated for fields in the GridView and DetailsView controls by using field templates that are part of your Dynamic Data project. For ASP.NET 4, Dynamic Data has been enhanced to give developers even more power for quickly building data-driven Web sites. For more information, see ASP.NET Dynamic Data Content Map. Enabling Dynamic Data for Individual Data-Bound Controls in Existing Web Applications You can use Dynamic Data features in existing ASP.NET Web applications that do not use scaffolding by enabling Dynamic Data for individual data-bound controls. Dynamic Data provides the presentation and data layer support for rendering these controls. When you enable Dynamic Data for data-bound controls, you get the following benefits: Setting default values for data fields. Dynamic Data enables you to provide default values at run time for fields in a data control. Interacting with the database without creating and registering a data model. Automatically validating the data that is entered by the user without writing any code. For more information, see Walkthrough: Enabling Dynamic Data in ASP.NET Data-Bound Controls. New Field Templates for URLs and E-mail Addresses ASP.NET 4 introduces two new built-in field templates, EmailAddress.ascx and Url.ascx. These templates are used for fields that are marked as EmailAddress or Url using the DataTypeAttribute attribute. For EmailAddress objects, the field is displayed as a hyperlink that is created by using the mailto: protocol. When users click the link, it opens the user's e-mail client and creates a skeleton message. Objects typed as Url are displayed as ordinary hyperlinks. The following example shows how to mark fields. [DataType(DataType.EmailAddress)] public object HomeEmail { get; set; } [DataType(DataType.Url)] public object Website { get; set; } Creating Links with the DynamicHyperLink Control Dynamic Data uses the new routing feature that was added in the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 to control the URLs that users see when they access the Web site. The new DynamicHyperLink control makes it easy to build links to pages in a Dynamic Data site. For information, see How to: Create Table Action Links in Dynamic Data Support for Inheritance in the Data Model Both the ADO.NET Entity Framework and LINQ to SQL support inheritance in their data models. An example of this might be a database that has an InsurancePolicy table. It might also contain CarPolicy and HousePolicy tables that have the same fields as InsurancePolicy and then add more fields. Dynamic Data has been modified to understand inherited objects in the data model and to support scaffolding for the inherited tables. For more information, see Walkthrough: Mapping Table-per-Hierarchy Inheritance in Dynamic Data. Support for Many-to-Many Relationships (Entity Framework Only) The Entity Framework has rich support for many-to-many relationships between tables, which is implemented by exposing the relationship as a collection on an Entity object. New field templates (ManyToMany.ascx and ManyToMany_Edit.ascx) have been added to provide support for displaying and editing data that is involved in many-to-many relationships. For more information, see Working with Many-to-Many Data Relationships in Dynamic Data. New Attributes to Control Display and Support Enumerations The DisplayAttribute has been added to give you additional control over how fields are displayed. The DisplayNameAttribute attribute in earlier versions of Dynamic Data enabled you to change the name that is used as a caption for a field. The new DisplayAttribute class lets you specify more options for displaying a field, such as the order in which a field is displayed and whether a field will be used as a filter. The attribute also provides independent control of the name that is used for the labels in a GridView control, the name that is used in a DetailsView control, the help text for the field, and the watermark used for the field (if the field accepts text input). The EnumDataTypeAttribute class has been added to let you map fields to enumerations. When you apply this attribute to a field, you specify an enumeration type. Dynamic Data uses the new Enumeration.ascx field template to create UI for displaying and editing enumeration values. The template maps the values from the database to the names in the enumeration. Enhanced Support for Filters Dynamic Data 1.0 had built-in filters for Boolean columns and foreign-key columns. The filters did not let you specify the order in which they were displayed. The new DisplayAttribute attribute addresses this by giving you control over whether a column appears as a filter and in what order it will be displayed. An additional enhancement is that filtering support has been rewritten to use the new QueryExtender feature of Web Forms. This lets you create filters without requiring knowledge of the data source control that the filters will be used with. Along with these extensions, filters have also been turned into template controls, which lets you add new ones. Finally, the DisplayAttribute class mentioned earlier allows the default filter to be overridden, in the same way that UIHint allows the default field template for a column to be overridden. For more information, see Walkthrough: Filtering Rows in Tables That Have a Parent-Child Relationship and QueryableFilterRepeater. ASP.NET Chart Control The ASP.NET chart server control enables you to create ASP.NET pages applications that have simple, intuitive charts for complex statistical or financial analysis. The chart control supports the following features: Data series, chart areas, axes, legends, labels, titles, and more. Data binding. Data manipulation, such as copying, splitting, merging, alignment, grouping, sorting, searching, and filtering. Statistical formulas and financial formulas. Advanced chart appearance, such as 3-D, anti-aliasing, lighting, and perspective. Events and customizations. Interactivity and Microsoft Ajax. Support for the Ajax Content Delivery Network (CDN), which provides an optimized way for you to add Microsoft Ajax Library and jQuery scripts to your Web applications. For more information, see Chart Web Server Control Overview. Visual Web Developer Enhancements The following sections provide information about enhancements and new features in Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Web Developer Express. The Web page designer in Visual Studio 2010 has been enhanced for better CSS compatibility, includes additional support for HTML and ASP.NET markup snippets, and features a redesigned version of IntelliSense for JScript. Improved CSS Compatibility The Visual Web Developer designer in Visual Studio 2010 has been updated to improve CSS 2.1 standards compliance. The designer better preserves HTML source code and is more robust than in previous versions of Visual Studio. HTML and JScript Snippets In the HTML editor, IntelliSense auto-completes tag names. The IntelliSense Snippets feature auto-completes whole tags and more. In Visual Studio 2010, IntelliSense snippets are supported for JScript, alongside C# and Visual Basic, which were supported in earlier versions of Visual Studio. Visual Studio 2010 includes over 200 snippets that help you auto-complete common ASP.NET and HTML tags, including required attributes (such as runat="server") and common attributes specific to a tag (such as ID, DataSourceID, ControlToValidate, and Text). You can download additional snippets, or you can write your own snippets that encapsulate the blocks of markup that you or your team use for common tasks. For more information on HTML snippets, see Walkthrough: Using HTML Snippets. JScript IntelliSense Enhancements In Visual 2010, JScript IntelliSense has been redesigned to provide an even richer editing experience. IntelliSense now recognizes objects that have been dynamically generated by methods such as registerNamespace and by similar techniques used by other JavaScript frameworks. Performance has been improved to analyze large libraries of script and to display IntelliSense with little or no processing delay. Compatibility has been significantly increased to support almost all third-party libraries and to support diverse coding styles. Documentation comments are now parsed as you type and are immediately leveraged by IntelliSense. Web Application Deployment with Visual Studio 2010 For Web application projects, Visual Studio now provides tools that work with the IIS Web Deployment Tool (Web Deploy) to automate many processes that had to be done manually in earlier versions of ASP.NET. For example, the following tasks can now be automated: Creating an IIS application on the destination computer and configuring IIS settings. Copying files to the destination computer. Changing Web.config settings that must be different in the destination environment. Propagating changes to data or data structures in SQL Server databases that are used by the Web application. For more information about Web application deployment, see ASP.NET Deployment Content Map. Enhancements to ASP.NET Multi-Targeting ASP.NET 4 adds new features to the multi-targeting feature to make it easier to work with projects that target earlier versions of the .NET Framework. Multi-targeting was introduced in ASP.NET 3.5 to enable you to use the latest version of Visual Studio without having to upgrade existing Web sites or Web services to the latest version of the .NET Framework. In Visual Studio 2008, when you work with a project targeted for an earlier version of the .NET Framework, most features of the development environment adapt to the targeted version. However, IntelliSense displays language features that are available in the current version, and property windows display properties available in the current version. In Visual Studio 2010, only language features and properties available in the targeted version of the .NET Framework are shown. For more information about multi-targeting, see the following topics: .NET Framework Multi-Targeting for ASP.NET Web Projects ASP.NET Side-by-Side Execution Overview How to: Host Web Applications That Use Different Versions of the .NET Framework on the Same Server How to: Deploy Web Site Projects Targeted for Earlier Versions of the .NET Framework

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Tip/Trick: Fix Common SEO Problems Using the URL Rewrite Extension

- by ScottGu

Search engine optimization (SEO) is important for any publically facing web-site. A large % of traffic to sites now comes directly from search engines, and improving your site’s search relevancy will lead to more users visiting your site from search engine queries. This can directly or indirectly increase the money you make through your site. This blog post covers how you can use the free Microsoft URL Rewrite Extension to fix a bunch of common SEO problems that your site might have. It takes less than 15 minutes (and no code changes) to apply 4 simple URL Rewrite rules to your site, and in doing so cause search engines to drive more visitors and traffic to your site. The techniques below work equally well with both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC based sites. They also works with all versions of ASP.NET (and even work with non-ASP.NET content). [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] Measuring the SEO of your website with the Microsoft SEO Toolkit A few months ago I blogged about the free SEO Toolkit that we’ve shipped. This useful tool enables you to automatically crawl/scan your site for SEO correctness, and it then flags any SEO issues it finds. I highly recommend downloading and using the tool against any public site you work on. It makes it easy to spot SEO issues you might have in your site, and pinpoint ways to optimize it further. Below is a simple example of a report I ran against one of my sites (www.scottgu.com) prior to applying the URL Rewrite rules I’ll cover later in this blog post: Search Relevancy and URL Splitting Two of the important things that search engines evaluate when assessing your site’s “search relevancy” are: How many other sites link to your content. Search engines assume that if a lot of people around the web are linking to your content, then it is likely useful and so weight it higher in relevancy. The uniqueness of the content it finds on your site. If search engines find that the content is duplicated in multiple places around the Internet (or on multiple URLs on your site) then it is likely to drop the relevancy of the content. One of the things you want to be very careful to avoid when building public facing sites is to not allow different URLs to retrieve the same content within your site. Doing so will hurt with both of the situations above. In particular, allowing external sites to link to the same content with multiple URLs will cause your link-count and page-ranking to be split up across those different URLs (and so give you a smaller page rank than what it would otherwise be if it was just one URL). Not allowing external sites to link to you in different ways sounds easy in theory – but you might wonder what exactly this means in practice and how you avoid it. 4 Really Common SEO Problems Your Sites Might Have Below are 4 really common scenarios that can cause your site to inadvertently expose multiple URLs for the same content. When this happens external sites linking to yours will end up splitting their page links across multiple URLs - and as a result cause you to have a lower page ranking with search engines than you deserve. SEO Problem #1: Default Document IIS (and other web servers) supports the concept of a “default document”. This allows you to avoid having to explicitly specify the page you want to serve at either the root of the web-site/application, or within a sub-directory. This is convenient – but means that by default this content is available via two different publically exposed URLs (which is bad). For example: http://scottgu.com/ http://scottgu.com/default.aspx SEO Problem #2: Different URL Casings Web developers often don’t realize URLs are case sensitive to search engines on the web. This means that search engines will treat the following links as two completely different URLs: http://scottgu.com/Albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx SEO Problem #3: Trailing Slashes Consider the below two URLs – they might look the same at first, but they are subtly different. The trailing slash creates yet another situation that causes search engines to treat the URLs as different and so split search rankings: http://scottgu.com http://scottgu.com/ SEO Problem #4: Canonical Host Names Sometimes sites support scenarios where they support a web-site with both a leading “www” hostname prefix as well as just the hostname itself. This causes search engines to treat the URLs as different and split search rankling: http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx/ http://www.scottgu.com/albums.aspx/ How to Easily Fix these SEO Problems in 10 minutes (or less) using IIS Rewrite If you haven’t been careful when coding your sites, chances are you are suffering from one (or more) of the above SEO problems. Addressing these issues will improve your search engine relevancy ranking and drive more traffic to your site. The “good news” is that fixing the above 4 issues is really easy using the URL Rewrite Extension. This is a completely free Microsoft extension available for IIS 7.x (on Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7 and Windows Vista). The great thing about using the IIS Rewrite extension is that it allows you to fix the above problems *without* having to change any code within your applications. You can easily install the URL Rewrite Extension in under 3 minutes using the Microsoft Web Platform Installer (a free tool we ship that automates setting up web servers and development machines). Just click the green “Install Now” button on the URL Rewrite Spotlight page to install it on your Windows Server 2008, Windows 7 or Windows Vista machine: Once installed you’ll find that a new “URL Rewrite” icon is available within the IIS 7 Admin Tool: Double-clicking the icon will open up the URL Rewrite admin panel – which will display the list of URL Rewrite rules configured for a particular application or site: Notice that our rewrite rule list above is currently empty (which is the default when you first install the extension). We can click the “Add Rule…” link button in the top-right of the panel to add and enable new URL Rewriting logic for our site. Scenario 1: Handling Default Document Scenarios One of the SEO problems I discussed earlier in this post was the scenario where the “default document” feature of IIS causes you to inadvertently expose two URLs for the same content on your site. For example: http://scottgu.com/ http://scottgu.com/default.aspx We can fix this by adding a new IIS Rewrite rule that automatically redirects anyone who navigates to the second URL to instead go to the first one. We will setup the HTTP redirect to be a “permanent redirect” – which will indicate to search engines that they should follow the redirect and use the new URL they are redirected to as the identifier of the content they retrieve. Let’s look at how we can create such a rule. We’ll begin by clicking the “Add Rule” link in the screenshot above. This will cause the below dialog to display: We’ll select the “Blank Rule” template within the “Inbound rules” section to create a new custom URL Rewriting rule. This will display an empty pane like below: Don’t worry – setting up the above rule is easy. The following 4 steps explain how to do so: Step 1: Name the Rule Our first step will be to name the rule we are creating. Naming it with a descriptive name will make it easier to find and understand later. Let’s name this rule our “Default Document URL Rewrite” rule: Step 2: Setup the Regular Expression that Matches this Rule Our second step will be to specify a regular expression filter that will cause this rule to execute when an incoming URL matches the regex pattern. Don’t worry if you aren’t good with regular expressions - I suck at them too. The trick is to know someone who is good at them or copy/paste them from a web-site. Below we are going to specify the following regular expression as our pattern rule: (.*?)/?Default\.aspx$ This pattern will match any URL string that ends with Default.aspx. The "(.*?)" matches any preceding character zero or more times. The "/?" part says to match the slash symbol zero or one times. The "$" symbol at the end will ensure that the pattern will only match strings that end with Default.aspx. Combining all these regex elements allows this rule to work not only for the root of your web site (e.g. http://scottgu.com/default.aspx) but also for any application or subdirectory within the site (e.g. http://scottgu.com/photos/default.aspx. Because the “ignore case” checkbox is selected it will match both “Default.aspx” as well as “default.aspx” within the URL. One nice feature built-into the rule editor is a “Test pattern” button that you can click to bring up a dialog that allows you to test out a few URLs with the rule you are configuring: Above I've added a “products/default.aspx” URL and clicked the “Test” button. This will give me immediate feedback on whether the rule will execute for it. Step 3: Setup a Permanent Redirect Action We’ll then setup an action to occur when our regular expression pattern matches the incoming URL: In the dialog above I’ve changed the “Action Type” drop down to be a “Redirect” action. The “Redirect Type” will be a HTTP 301 Permanent redirect – which means search engines will follow it. I’ve also set the “Redirect URL” property to be: {R:1}/ This indicates that we want to redirect the web client requesting the original URL to a new URL that has the originally requested URL path - minus the "Default.aspx" in it. For example, requests for http://scottgu.com/default.aspx will be redirected to http://scottgu.com/, and requests for http://scottgu.com/photos/default.aspx will be redirected to http://scottgu.com/photos/ The "{R:N}" regex construct, where N >= 0, is called a back-reference and N is the back-reference index. In the case of our pattern "(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$", if the input URL is "products/Default.aspx" then {R:0} will contain "products/Default.aspx" and {R:1} will contain "products". We are going to use this {R:1}/ value to be the URL we redirect users to. Step 4: Apply and Save the Rule Our final step is to click the “Apply” button in the top right hand of the IIS admin tool – which will cause the tool to persist the URL Rewrite rule into our application’s root web.config file (under a <system.webServer/rewrite> configuration section): <configuration> <system.webServer> <rewrite> <rules> <rule name="Default Document" stopProcessing="true"> <match url="(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$" /> <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" /> </rule> </rules> </rewrite> </system.webServer> </configuration> Because IIS 7.x and ASP.NET share the same web.config files, you can actually just copy/paste the above code into your web.config files using Visual Studio and skip the need to run the admin tool entirely. This also makes adding/deploying URL Rewrite rules with your ASP.NET applications really easy. Step 5: Try the Rule Out Now that we’ve saved the rule, let’s try it out on our site. Try the following two URLs on my site: http://scottgu.com/ http://scottgu.com/default.aspx Notice that the second URL automatically redirects to the first one. Because it is a permanent redirect, search engines will follow the URL and should update the page ranking of http://scottgu.com to include links to http://scottgu.com/default.aspx as well. Scenario 2: Different URL Casing Another common SEO problem I discussed earlier in this post is that URLs are case sensitive to search engines on the web. This means that search engines will treat the following links as two completely different URLs: http://scottgu.com/Albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx We can fix this by adding a new IIS Rewrite rule that automatically redirects anyone who navigates to the first URL to instead go to the second (all lower-case) one. Like before, we will setup the HTTP redirect to be a “permanent redirect” – which will indicate to search engines that they should follow the redirect and use the new URL they are redirected to as the identifier of the content they retrieve. To create such a rule we’ll click the “Add Rule” link in the URL Rewrite admin tool again. This will cause the “Add Rule” dialog to appear again: Unlike the previous scenario (where we created a “Blank Rule”), with this scenario we can take advantage of a built-in “Enforce lowercase URLs” rule template. When we click the “ok” button we’ll see the following dialog which asks us if we want to create a rule that enforces the use of lowercase letters in URLs: When we click the “Yes” button we’ll get a pre-written rule that automatically performs a permanent redirect if an incoming URL has upper-case characters in it – and automatically send users to a lower-case version of the URL: We can click the “Apply” button to use this rule “as-is” and have it apply to all incoming URLs to our site. Because my www.scottgu.com site uses ASP.NET Web Forms, I’m going to make one small change to the rule we generated above – which is to add a condition that will ensure that URLs to ASP.NET’s built-in “WebResource.axd” handler are excluded from our case-sensitivity URL Rewrite logic. URLs to the WebResource.axd handler will only come from server-controls emitted from my pages – and will never be linked to from external sites. While my site will continue to function fine if we redirect these URLs to automatically be lower-case – doing so isn’t necessary and will add an extra HTTP redirect to many of my pages. The good news is that adding a condition that prevents my URL Rewriting rule from happening with certain URLs is easy. We simply need to expand the “Conditions” section of the form above We can then click the “Add” button to add a condition clause. This will bring up the “Add Condition” dialog: Above I’ve entered {URL} as the Condition input – and said that this rule should only execute if the URL does not match a regex pattern which contains the string “WebResource.axd”. This will ensure that WebResource.axd URLs to my site will be allowed to execute just fine without having the URL be re-written to be all lower-case. Note: If you have static resources (like references to .jpg, .css, and .js files) within your site that currently use upper-case characters you’ll probably want to add additional condition filter clauses so that URLs to them also don’t get redirected to be lower-case (just add rules for patterns like .jpg, .gif, .js, etc). Your site will continue to work fine if these URLs get redirected to be lower case (meaning the site won’t break) – but it will cause an extra HTTP redirect to happen on your site for URLs that don’t need to be redirected for SEO reasons. So setting up a condition clause makes sense to add. When I click the “ok” button above and apply our lower-case rewriting rule the admin tool will save the following additional rule to our web.config file: <configuration> <system.webServer> <rewrite> <rules> <rule name="Default Document" stopProcessing="true"> <match url="(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$" /> <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" /> </rule> <rule name="Lower Case URLs" stopProcessing="true"> <match url="[A-Z]" ignoreCase="false" /> <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false"> <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" /> </conditions> <action type="Redirect" url="{ToLower:{URL}}" /> </rule> </rules> </rewrite> </system.webServer> </configuration> Try the Rule Out Now that we’ve saved the rule, let’s try it out on our site. Try the following two URLs on my site: http://scottgu.com/Albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx Notice that the first URL (which has a capital “A”) automatically does a redirect to a lower-case version of the URL. Scenario 3: Trailing Slashes Another common SEO problem I discussed earlier in this post is the scenario of trailing slashes within URLs. The trailing slash creates yet another situation that causes search engines to treat the URLs as different and so split search rankings: http://scottgu.com http://scottgu.com/ We can fix this by adding a new IIS Rewrite rule that automatically redirects anyone who navigates to the first URL (that does not have a trailing slash) to instead go to the second one that does. Like before, we will setup the HTTP redirect to be a “permanent redirect” – which will indicate to search engines that they should follow the redirect and use the new URL they are redirected to as the identifier of the content they retrieve. To create such a rule we’ll click the “Add Rule” link in the URL Rewrite admin tool again. This will cause the “Add Rule” dialog to appear again: The URL Rewrite admin tool has a built-in “Append or remove the trailing slash symbol” rule template. When we select it and click the “ok” button we’ll see the following dialog which asks us if we want to create a rule that automatically redirects users to a URL with a trailing slash if one isn’t present: Like within our previous lower-casing rewrite rule we’ll add one additional condition clause that will exclude WebResource.axd URLs from being processed by this rule. This will avoid an unnecessary redirect for happening for those URLs. When we click the “OK” button we’ll get a pre-written rule that automatically performs a permanent redirect if the URL doesn’t have a trailing slash – and if the URL is not processed by either a directory or a file. This will save the following additional rule to our web.config file: <configuration> <system.webServer> <rewrite> <rules> <rule name="Default Document" stopProcessing="true"> <match url="(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$" /> <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" /> </rule> <rule name="Lower Case URLs" stopProcessing="true"> <match url="[A-Z]" ignoreCase="false" /> <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false"> <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" /> </conditions> <action type="Redirect" url="{ToLower:{URL}}" /> </rule> <rule name="Trailing Slash" stopProcessing="true"> <match url="(.*[^/])$" /> <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false"> <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" /> <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" /> <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" /> </conditions> <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" /> </rule> </rules> </rewrite> </system.webServer> </configuration> Try the Rule Out Now that we’ve saved the rule, let’s try it out on our site. Try the following two URLs on my site: http://scottgu.com http://scottgu.com/ Notice that the first URL (which has no trailing slash) automatically does a redirect to a URL with the trailing slash. Because it is a permanent redirect, search engines will follow the URL and update the page ranking. Scenario 4: Canonical Host Names The final SEO problem I discussed earlier are scenarios where a site works with both a leading “www” hostname prefix as well as just the hostname itself. This causes search engines to treat the URLs as different and split search rankling: http://www.scottgu.com/albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx We can fix this by adding a new IIS Rewrite rule that automatically redirects anyone who navigates to the first URL (that has a www prefix) to instead go to the second URL. Like before, we will setup the HTTP redirect to be a “permanent redirect” – which will indicate to search engines that they should follow the redirect and use the new URL they are redirected to as the identifier of the content they retrieve. To create such a rule we’ll click the “Add Rule” link in the URL Rewrite admin tool again. This will cause the “Add Rule” dialog to appear again: The URL Rewrite admin tool has a built-in “Canonical domain name” rule template. When we select it and click the “ok” button we’ll see the following dialog which asks us if we want to create a redirect rule that automatically redirects users to a primary host name URL: Above I’m entering the primary URL address I want to expose to the web: scottgu.com. When we click the “OK” button we’ll get a pre-written rule that automatically performs a permanent redirect if the URL has another leading domain name prefix. This will save the following additional rule to our web.config file: <configuration> <system.webServer> <rewrite> <rules> <rule name="Cannonical Hostname"> <match url="(.*)" /> <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false"> <add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^scottgu\.com$" negate="true" /> </conditions> <action type="Redirect" url="http://scottgu.com/{R:1}" /> </rule> <rule name="Default Document" stopProcessing="true"> <match url="(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$" /> <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" /> </rule> <rule name="Lower Case URLs" stopProcessing="true"> <match url="[A-Z]" ignoreCase="false" /> <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false"> <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" /> </conditions> <action type="Redirect" url="{ToLower:{URL}}" /> </rule> <rule name="Trailing Slash" stopProcessing="true"> <match url="(.*[^/])$" /> <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false"> <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" /> <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" /> <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" /> </conditions> <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" /> </rule> </rules> </rewrite> </system.webServer> </configuration> Try the Rule Out Now that we’ve saved the rule, let’s try it out on our site. Try the following two URLs on my site: http://www.scottgu.com/albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx Notice that the first URL (which has the “www” prefix) now automatically does a redirect to the second URL which does not have the www prefix. Because it is a permanent redirect, search engines will follow the URL and update the page ranking. 4 Simple Rules for Improved SEO The above 4 rules are pretty easy to setup and should take less than 15 minutes to configure on existing sites you already have. The beauty of using a solution like the URL Rewrite Extension is that you can take advantage of it without having to change code within your web-site – and without having to break any existing links already pointing at your site. Users who follow existing links will be automatically redirected to the new URLs you wish to publish. And search engines will start to give your site a higher search relevancy ranking – which will list your site higher in search results and drive more traffic to it. Customizing your URL Rewriting rules further is easy to-do either by editing the web.config file directly, or alternatively, just double click the URL Rewrite icon within the IIS 7.x admin tool and it will list all the active rules for your web-site or application: Clicking any of the rules above will open the rules editor back up and allow you to tweak/customize/save them further. Summary Measuring and improving SEO is something every developer building a public-facing web-site needs to think about and focus on. If you haven’t already, download and use the SEO Toolkit to analyze the SEO of your sites today. New URL Routing features in ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Web Forms 4 make it much easier to build applications that have more control over the URLs that are published. Tools like the URL Rewrite Extension that I’ve talked about in this blog post make it much easier to improve the URLs that are published from sites you already have built today – without requiring you to change a lot of code. The URL Rewrite Extension provides a bunch of additional great capabilities – far beyond just SEO - as well. I’ll be covering these additional capabilities more in future blog posts. Hope this helps, Scott

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26 Days: Countdown to Oracle OpenWorld 2012

- by Michael Snow

Welcome to our countdown to Oracle OpenWorld! Oracle OpenWorld 2012 is just around the corner. In less than 26 days, San Francisco will be invaded by an expected 50,000 people from all over the world. Here on the Oracle WebCenter team, we’ve all been working to help make the experience a great one for all our WebCenter customers. For a sneak peak – we’ll be spending this week giving you a teaser of what to look forward to if you are joining us in San Francisco from September 30th through October 4th. We have Oracle WebCenter sessions covering all topics imaginable. Take a look and use the tools we provide to build out your schedule in advance and reserve your seats in your favorite sessions. That gives you plenty of time to plan for your week with us in San Francisco. If unfortunately, your boss denied your request to attend - there are still some ways that you can join in the experience virtually On-Demand. This year - we are expanding even more up North of Market Street and will be taking over Union Square as well. Check out this map of San Francisco to get a sense of how much of a footprint Oracle OpenWorld has grown to this year. With so much to see and so many sessions to learn from - its no wonder that people get excited. Add to that a good mix of fun and all of the possible WebCenter sessions you could attend - you won't want to sleep at all to take full advantage of such an opportunity. We'll also have our annual WebCenter Customer Appreciation reception - stay tuned this week for some more info on registration to make sure you'll be able to join us. If you've been following the America's Cup at all and believe in EXTREME PERFORMANCE you'll definitely want to take a look at this video from last year's OpenWorld Keynote. 12.00 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-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Important OpenWorld Links: Attendee / Presenters Toolkit Oracle Schedule Builder WebCenter Sessions (listed in the catalog under Fusion Middleware as "Portals, Sites, Content, and Collaboration" ) Oracle Music Festival - AMAZING Line up!! Oracle Customer Appreciation Night -LOOK HERE!! Oracle OpenWorld LIVE On-Demand Here are all the WebCenter sessions broken down by day for your viewing pleasure. Monday, October 1st CON8885 - Simplify CRM Engagement with Contextual Collaboration Are your sales teams disconnected and disengaged? Do you want a tool for easily connecting expertise across your organization and providing visibility into the complete sales process? Do you want a way to enhance and retain organization knowledge? Oracle Social Network is the answer. Attend this session to learn how to make CRM easy, effective, and efficient for use across virtual sales teams. Also learn how Oracle Social Network can drive sales force collaboration with natural conversations throughout the sales cycle, promote sales team productivity through purposeful social networking without the noise, and build cross-team knowledge by integrating conversations with CRM and other business applications. CON8268 - Oracle WebCenter Strategy: Engaging Your Customers. Empowering Your Business Oracle WebCenter is a user engagement platform for social business, connecting people and information. Attend this session to learn about the Oracle WebCenter strategy, and understand where Oracle is taking the platform to help companies engage customers, empower employees, and enable partners. Business success starts with ensuring that everyone is engaged with the right people and the right information and can access what they need through the channel of their choice—Web, mobile, or social. Are you giving customers, employees, and partners the best-possible experience? Come learn how you can! ¶ HOL10208 - Add Social Capabilities to Your Enterprise Applications Oracle Social Network enables you to add real-time collaboration capabilities into your enterprise applications, so that conversations can happen directly within your business systems. In this hands-on lab, you will try out the Oracle Social Network product to collaborate with other attendees, using real-time conversations with document sharing capabilities. Next you will embed social capabilities into a sample Web-based enterprise application, using embedded UI components. Experts will also write simple REST-based integrations, using the Oracle Social Network API to programmatically create social interactions. ¶ CON8893 - Improve Employee Productivity with Intuitive and Social Work Environments Social technologies have already transformed the ways customers, employees, partners, and suppliers communicate and stay informed. Forward-thinking organizations today need technologies and infrastructures to help them advance to the next level and integrate social activities with business applications to deliver a user experience that simplifies business processes and enterprise application engagement. Attend this session to hear from an innovative Oracle Social Network customer and learn how you can improve productivity with intuitive and social work environments and empower your employees with innovative social tools to enable contextual access to content and dynamic personalization of solutions. ¶ CON8270 - Oracle WebCenter Content Strategy and Vision Oracle WebCenter provides a strategic content infrastructure for managing documents, images, e-mails, and rich media files. With a single repository, organizations can address any content use case, such as accounts payable, HR onboarding, document management, compliance, records management, digital asset management, or Website management. In this session, learn about future plans for how Oracle WebCenter will address new use cases as well as new integrations with Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Applications, leveraging your investments by making your users more productive and error-free. ¶ CON8269 - Oracle WebCenter Sites Strategy and Vision Oracle’s Web experience management solution, Oracle WebCenter Sites, enables organizations to use the online channel to drive customer acquisition and brand loyalty. It helps marketers and business users easily create and manage contextually relevant, social, interactive online experiences across multiple channels on a global scale. In this session, learn about future plans for how Oracle WebCenter Sites will provide you with the tools, capabilities, and integrations you need in order to continue to address your customers’ evolving requirements for engaging online experiences and keep moving your business forward. ¶ CON8896 - Living with SharePoint SharePoint is a popular platform, but it’s not always the best fit for Oracle customers. In this session, you’ll discover the technical and nontechnical limitations and pitfalls of SharePoint and learn about Oracle alternatives for collaboration, portals, enterprise and Web content management, social computing, and application integration. The presentation shows you how to integrate with SharePoint when business or IT requirements dictate and covers cloud-based (Office 365) and on-premises versions of SharePoint. Presented by a former Microsoft director of SharePoint product management and backed by independent customer research, this session will prepare you to answer the question “Why don’t we just use SharePoint for that?’ the next time it comes up in your organization. ¶ CON7843 - Content-Enabling Enterprise Processes with Oracle WebCenter Organizations today continually strive to automate business processes, reduce costs, and improve efficiency. Many business processes are content-intensive and unstructured, requiring ad hoc collaboration, and distributed in nature, requiring many approvals and generating huge volumes of paper. In this session, learn how Oracle and SYSTIME have partnered to help a customer content-enable its enterprise with Oracle WebCenter Content and Oracle WebCenter Imaging 11g and integrate them with Oracle Applications. ¶ CON6114 - Tape Robotics’ Newest Superhero: Now Fueled by Oracle Software For small, midsize, and rapidly growing businesses that want the most energy-efficient, scalable storage infrastructure to meet their rapidly growing data demands, Oracle’s most recent addition to its award-winning tape portfolio leverages several pieces of Oracle software. With Oracle Linux, Oracle WebLogic, and Oracle Fusion Middleware tools, the library achieves a higher level of usability than previous products while offering customers a familiar interface for management, plus ease of use. This session examines the competitive advantages of the tape library and how Oracle software raises customer satisfaction. Learn how the combination of Oracle engineered systems, Oracle Secure Backup, and Oracle’s StorageTek tape libraries provide end-to-end coverage of your data. ¶ CON9437 - Mobile Access Management With more than five billion mobile devices on the planet and an increasing number of users using their own devices to access corporate data and applications, securely extending identity management to mobile devices has become a hot topic. This session focuses on how to extend your existing identity management infrastructure and policies to securely and seamlessly enable mobile user access. CON7815 - Customer Experience Online in Cloud: Oracle WebCenter Sites, Oracle ATG Apps, Oracle Exalogic Oracle WebCenter Sites and Oracle’s ATG product line together can provide a compelling marketing and e-commerce experience. When you couple them with the extreme performance of Oracle Exalogic, you’ll see unmatched scalability that provides you with a true cloud-based solution. In this session, you’ll learn how running Oracle WebCenter Sites and ATG applications on Oracle Exalogic delivers both a private and a public cloud experience. Find out what it takes to get these systems working together and delivering engaging Web experiences. Even if you aren’t considering Oracle Exalogic today, the rich Web experience of Oracle WebCenter, paired with the depth of the ATG product line, can provide your business full support, from merchandising through sale completion. ¶ CON8271 - Oracle WebCenter Portal Strategy and Vision To innovate and keep a competitive edge, organizations need to leverage the power of agile and responsive Web applications. Oracle WebCenter Portal enables you to do just that, by delivering intuitive user experiences for enterprise applications to drive innovation with composite applications and mashups. Attend this session to learn firsthand from customers how Oracle WebCenter Portal extends the value of existing enterprise applications, business processes, and content; delivers a superior business user experience; and maximizes limited IT resources. ¶ CON8880 - The Connected Customer Experience Begins with the Online Channel There’s a lot of talk these days about how to connect the customer journey across various touchpoints—from Websites and e-commerce to call centers and in-store—to provide experiences that are more relevant and engaging and ultimately gain competitive edge. Doing it all at once isn’t a realistic objective, so where do you start? Come to this session, and hear about three steps you can take that can help you begin your journey toward delivering the connected customer experience. You’ll hear how Oracle now has an integrated digital marketing platform for your corporate Website, your e-commerce site, your self-service portal, and your marketing and loyalty campaigns, and you’ll learn what you can do today to begin executing on your customer experience initiatives. ¶ GEN11451 - General Session: Building Mobile Applications with Oracle Cloud With the prevalence of smart mobile devices, companies are facing an increased demand to provide access to data and applications from new channels. However, developing applications for mobile devices poses some unique challenges. Come to this session to learn how Oracle addresses these challenges, offering a simpler way to develop and deploy cross-device mobile applications. See how Oracle Cloud enables you to access applications, data, and services from mobile channels in an easier way. CON8272 - Oracle Social Network Strategy and Vision One key way of increasing employee productivity is by bringing people, processes, and information together—providing new social capabilities to enable business users to quickly correspond and collaborate on business activities. Oracle WebCenter provides a user engagement platform with social and collaborative technologies to empower business users to focus on their key business processes, applications, and content in the context of their role and process. Attend this session to hear how the latest social capabilities in Oracle Social Network are enabling organizations to transform themselves into social businesses. --- Tuesday, October 2nd HOL10194 - Enterprise Content Management Simplified: Oracle WebCenter Content’s Next-Generation UI Regardless of the nature of your business, unstructured content underpins many of its daily functions. Whether you are working with traditional presentations, spreadsheets, or text documents—or even with digital assets such as images and multimedia files—your content needs to be accessible and manageable in convenient and intuitive ways to make working with the content easier. Additionally, you need the ability to easily share documents with coworkers to facilitate a collaborative working environment. Come to this session to see how Oracle WebCenter Content’s next-generation user interface helps modern knowledge workers easily manage personal and enterprise documents in a collaborative environment.¶ CON8877 - Develop a Mobile Strategy with Oracle WebCenter: Engage Customers, Employees, and Partners Mobile technology has gone from nice-to-have to a cornerstone of user engagement. Mobile access enables users to have information available at their fingertips, enabling them to take action the moment they make a decision, interact in the moment of convenience, and take advantage of new service offerings in their preferred channels. All your employees have your mobile applications in their pocket; now what are you going to do? It is a critical step for companies to think through what their employees, customers, and partners really need on their devices. Attend this session to see how Oracle WebCenter enables you to better engage your customers, employees, and partners by providing a unified experience across multiple channels. ¶ CON9447 - Enabling Access for Hundreds of Millions of Users How do you grow your business by identifying, authenticating, authorizing, and federating users on the Web, leveraging social identity and the open source OAuth protocol? How do you scale your access management solution to support hundreds of millions of users? With social identity support out of the box, Oracle’s access management solution is also benchmarked for 250-million-user deployment according to real-world customer scenarios. In this session, you will learn about the social identity capability and the 250-million-user benchmark testing of Oracle Access Manager and Oracle Adaptive Access Manager running on Oracle Exalogic and Oracle Exadata. ¶ HOL10207 - Build an Intranet Portal with Oracle WebCenter In this hands-on lab, you’ll work with Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle WebCenter Content to build out an enterprise portal that maximizes the productivity of teams and individual contributors. Using browser-based tools, you’ll manage site resources such as page styles, templates, and navigation. You’ll edit content stored in Oracle WebCenter Content directly from your portal. You’ll also experience the latest features that promote collaboration, social networking, and personal productivity. ¶ CON2906 - Get Proactive: Best Practices for Maintaining Oracle Fusion Middleware You chose Oracle Fusion Middleware products to help your organization deliver superior business results. Now learn how to take full advantage of your software with all the great tools, resources, and product updates you’re entitled to through Oracle Support. In this session, Oracle product experts provide proven best practices to help you work more efficiently, plan and prepare for upgrades and patching more effectively, and manage risk. Topics include configuration management tools, remote diagnostics, My Oracle Support Community, and My Oracle Support Lifecycle Advisors. New users and Oracle Fusion Middleware experts alike are guaranteed to leave with fresh ideas and practical, easy-to-implement next steps. ¶ CON8878 - Oracle WebCenter’s Cloud Strategy: From Social and Platform Services to Mashups Cloud computing represents a paradigm shift in how we build applications, automate processes, collaborate, and share and in how we secure our enterprise. Additionally, as you adopt cloud-based services in your organization, it’s likely that you will still have many critical on-premises applications running. With these mixed environments, multiple user interfaces, different security, and multiple datasources and content sources, how do you start evolving your strategy to account for these challenges? Oracle WebCenter offers a complete array of technologies enabling you to solve these challenges and prepare you for the cloud. Attend this session to learn how you can use Oracle WebCenter in the cloud as well as create on-premises and cloud application mash-ups. ¶ CON8901 - Optimize Enterprise Business Processes with Oracle WebCenter and Oracle BPM Do you have business processes that span multiple applications? Are you grappling with how to have visibility across these business processes; how to manage content that is associated with these processes; and, most importantly, how to model and optimize these business processes? Attend this session to hear how Oracle WebCenter and Oracle Business Process Management provide a unique set of integrated solutions to provide a composite application dashboard across these business processes and offer a solution for content-centric business processes. ¶ CON8883 - Deliver Engaging Interfaces to Oracle Applications with Oracle WebCenter Critical business processes live within enterprise applications, and application users need to manage and execute these processes as effectively as possible. Oracle provides a comprehensive user engagement platform to increase user productivity and optimize overall processes within Oracle Applications—Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle’s Siebel, PeopleSoft, and JD Edwards product families—and third-party applications. Attend this session to learn how you can integrate these applications with Oracle WebCenter to deliver composite application dashboards to your end users—whether they are your customers, partners, or employees—for enhanced usability and Web 2.0–enabled enterprise portals.¶ Wednesday, October 3rd CON8895 - Future-Ready Intranets: How Aramark Re-engineered the Application Landscape There are essential techniques and technologies you can use to deliver employee portals that garner higher productivity, improve business efficiency, and increase user engagement. Attend this session to learn how you can leverage Oracle WebCenter Portal as a user engagement platform for bringing together business process management, enterprise content management, and business intelligence into a highly relevant and integrated experience. Hear how Aramark has leveraged Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle WebCenter Content to deliver a unified workspace providing simpler navigation and processing, consolidation of tools, easy access to information, integrated search, and single sign-on. ¶ CON8886 - Content Consolidation: Save Money, Increase Efficiency, and Eliminate Silos Organizations are looking for ways to save money and be more efficient. With content in many different places, it’s difficult to know where to look for a document and whether the document is the most current version. With Oracle WebCenter, content can be consolidated into one best-of-breed repository that is secure, scalable, and integrated with your business processes and applications. Users can find the content they need, where they need it, and ensure that it is the right content. This session covers content challenges that affect your business; content consolidation that can lead to savings in storage and administration costs and can lower risks; and how companies are realizing savings. ¶ CON8911 - Improve Online Experiences for Customers and Partners with Self-Service Portals Are you able to provide your customers and partners an easy-to-use online self-service experience? Are you processing high-volume transactions and struggling with call center bottlenecks or back-end systems that won’t integrate, causing order delays and customer frustration? Are you looking to target content such as product and service offerings to your end users? This session shares approaches to providing targeted delivery as well as strategies and best practices for transforming your business by providing an intuitive user experience for your customers and partners. ¶ CON6156 - Top 10 Ways to Integrate Oracle WebCenter Content This session covers 10 common ways to integrate Oracle WebCenter Content with other enterprise applications and middleware. It discusses out-of-the-box modules that provide expanded features in Oracle WebCenter Content—such as enterprise search, SOA, and BPEL—as well as developer tools you can use to create custom integrations. The presentation also gives guidance on which integration option may work best in your environment. ¶ HOL10207 - Build an Intranet Portal with Oracle WebCenter In this hands-on lab, you’ll work with Oracle WebCenter Portal and Oracle WebCenter Content to build out an enterprise portal that maximizes the productivity of teams and individual contributors. Using browser-based tools, you’ll manage site resources such as page styles, templates, and navigation. You’ll edit content stored in Oracle WebCenter Content directly from your portal. You’ll also experience the latest features that promote collaboration, social networking, and personal productivity. ¶ CON7817 - Migration to Oracle WebCenter Imaging 11g Customers today continually strive to automate business processes, reduce costs, and improve efficiency. The accounts payable process—which is often distributed in nature, requires many approvals, and generates huge volumes of paper invoices—is automated by many customers. In this session, learn how Oracle and SYSTIME have partnered to help a customer migrate its existing Oracle Imaging and Process Management Release 7.6 to the latest Oracle WebCenter Imaging 11g and integrate it with Oracle’s JD Edwards family of products. ¶ CON8910 - How to Engage Customers Across Web, Mobile, and Social Channels Whether on desktops at the office, on tablets at home, or on mobile phones when on the go, today’s customers are always connected. To engage today’s customers, you need to make the online customer experience connected and consistent across a host of devices and multiple channels, including Web, mobile, and social networks. Managing this multichannel environment can result in lots of headaches without the right tools. Attend this session to learn how Oracle WebCenter Sites solves the challenge of multichannel customer engagement. ¶ HOL10206 - Oracle WebCenter Sites 11g: Transforming the Content Contributor Experience Oracle WebCenter Sites 11g makes it easy for marketers and business users to contribute to and manage Websites with the new visual, contextual, and intuitive Web authoring interface. In this hands-on lab, you will create and manage content for a sports-themed Website, using many of the new and enhanced features of the 11g release. ¶ CON8900 - Building Next-Generation Portals: An Interactive Customer Panel Discussion Social and collaborative technologies have changed how people interact, learn, and collaborate, and providing a modern, social Web presence is imperative to remain competitive in today’s market. Can your business benefit from a more collaborative and interactive portal environment for employees, customers, and partners? Attend this session to hear from Oracle WebCenter Portal customers as they share their strategies and best practices for providing users with a modern experience that adapts to their needs and includes personalized access to content in context. The panel also addresses how customers have benefited from creating next-generation portals by migrating from older portal technologies to Oracle WebCenter Portal. ¶ CON9625 - Taking Control of Oracle WebCenter Security Organizations are increasingly looking to extend their Oracle WebCenter portal for social business, to serve external users and provide seamless access to the right information. In particular, many organizations are extending Oracle WebCenter in a business-to-business scenario requiring secure identification and authorization of business partners and their users. This session focuses on how customers are leveraging, securing, and providing access control to Oracle WebCenter portal and mobile solutions. You will learn best practices and hear real-world examples of how to provide flexible and granular access control for Oracle WebCenter deployments, using Oracle Platform Security Services and Oracle Access Management Suite product offerings. ¶ CON8891 - Extending Social into Enterprise Applications and Business Processes Oracle Social Network is an extensible social platform that enables contextual collaboration within enterprise applications and business processes, providing relevant data from across various enterprise systems in one place. Attend this session to see how an Oracle Social Network customer is integrating multiple applications—such as CRM, HCM, and business processes—into Oracle Social Network and Oracle WebCenter to enable individuals and teams to solve complex cross-organizational business problems more effectively by utilizing the social enterprise. ¶ Thursday, October 4th CON8899 - Becoming a Social Business: Stories from the Front Lines of Change What does it really mean to be a social business? How can you change our organization to embrace social approaches? What pitfalls do you need to avoid? In this lively panel discussion, customer and industry thought leaders in social business explore these topics and more as they share their stories of the good, the bad, and the ugly that can happen when embracing social methods and technologies to improve business success. Using moderated questions and open Q&A from the audience, the panel discusses vital topics such as the critical factors for success, the major issues to avoid, how to gain senior executive support for social efforts, how to handle undesired behavior, and how to measure business impact. It takes a thought-provoking look at becoming a social business from the inside. ¶ CON6851 - Oracle WebCenter and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition to Create Vendor Portals Large manufacturers of grocery items routinely find themselves depending on the inventory management expertise of their wholesalers and distributors. Inventory costs can be managed more efficiently by the manufacturers if they have better insight into the inventory levels of items carried by their distributors. This creates a unique opportunity for distributors and wholesalers to leverage this knowledge into a revenue-generating subscription service. Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition and Oracle WebCenter Portal play a key part in enabling creation of business-managed business intelligence portals for vendors. This session discusses one customer that implemented this by leveraging Oracle WebCenter and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition. ¶ CON8879 - Provide a Personalized and Consistent Customer Experience in Your Websites and Portals Your customers engage with your company online in different ways throughout their journey—from prospecting by acquiring information on your corporate Website to transacting through self-service applications on your customer portal—and then the cycle begins again when they look for new products and services. Ensuring that the customer experience is consistent and personalized across online properties—from branding and content to interactions and transactions—can be a daunting task. Oracle WebCenter enables you to speak and interact with your customers with one voice across your Websites and portals by providing an integrated platform for delivery of self-service and engagement that unifies and personalizes the online experience. Learn more in this session. ¶ CON8898 - Land Mines, Potholes, and Dirt Roads: Navigating the Way to ECM Nirvana Ten years ago, people were predicting that by this time in history, we’d be some kind of utopian paperless society. As we all know, we’re not there yet, but are we getting closer? What is keeping companies from driving down the road to enterprise content management bliss? Most people understand that using ECM as a central platform enables organizations to expedite document-centric processes, but most business processes in organizations are still heavily paper-based. Many of these processes could be automated and improved with an ECM platform infrastructure. In this panel discussion, you’ll hear from Oracle WebCenter customers that have already solved some of these challenges as they share their strategies for success and roads to avoid along your journey. ¶ CON8908 - Oracle WebCenter Portal: Creating and Using Content Presenter Templates Oracle WebCenter Portal applications use task flows to display and integrate content stored in the Oracle WebCenter Content server. Among the most flexible task flows is Content Presenter, which renders various types of content on an Oracle WebCenter Portal page. Although Oracle WebCenter Portal comes with a set of predefined Content Presenter templates, developers can create their own templates for specific rendering needs. This session shows the lifecycle of developing Content Presenter task flows, including how to create, package, import, modify at runtime, and use such templates. In addition to simple examples with Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) UI elements to render the content, it shows how to use other UI technologies, CSS files, and JavaScript libraries. ¶ CON8897 - Using Web Experience Management to Drive Online Marketing Success Every year, the online channel becomes more imperative for driving organizational top-line revenue, but for many companies, mastering how to best market their products and services in a fast-evolving online world with high customer expectations for personalized experiences can be a complex proposition. Come to this panel discussion, and hear directly from online marketers how they are succeeding today by using Web experience management to drive marketing success, using capabilities such as targeting and optimization, user-generated content, mobile site publishing, and site visitor personalization to deliver engaging online experiences. ¶ CON8892 - Oracle’s Journey to Social Business Social business is a revolution, one that is causing rapidly accelerating change in how companies and customers engage with one another and how employees work together. Oracle’s goal in becoming a social business is to create a socially connected organization in which working collaboratively across geographical locations, lines of business, and management chains is second nature, enabling innovative solutions to business challenges. We can achieve this by connecting the right people, finding the right content, communicating with the right people, collaborating at the right time, and building the right communities in the right context—all ready in the CLOUD. Attend this session to see how Oracle is transforming itself into a social business. ¶ ------------ If you've read all the way to the end here - we are REALLY looking forward to seeing you in San Francisco.

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Java Cloud Service Integration to REST Service

- by Jani Rautiainen

Service (JCS) provides a platform to develop and deploy business applications in the cloud. In Fusion Applications Cloud deployments customers do not have the option to deploy custom applications developed with JDeveloper to ensure the integrity and supportability of the hosted application service. Instead the custom applications can be deployed to the JCS and integrated to the Fusion Application Cloud instance. This series of articles will go through the features of JCS, provide end-to-end examples on how to develop and deploy applications on JCS and how to integrate them with the Fusion Applications instance. In this article a custom application integrating with REST service will be implemented. We will use REST services provided by Taleo as an example; however the same approach will work with any REST service. In this example the data from the REST service is used to populate a dynamic table. Pre-requisites Access to Cloud instance In order to deploy the application access to a JCS instance is needed, a free trial JCS instance can be obtained from Oracle Cloud site. To register you will need a credit card even if the credit card will not be charged. To register simply click "Try it" and choose the "Java" option. The confirmation email will contain the connection details. See this video for example of the registration.Once the request is processed you will be assigned 2 service instances; Java and Database. Applications deployed to the JCS must use Oracle Database Cloud Service as their underlying database. So when JCS instance is created a database instance is associated with it using a JDBC data source.The cloud services can be monitored and managed through the web UI. For details refer to Getting Started with Oracle Cloud. JDeveloper JDeveloper contains Cloud specific features related to e.g. connection and deployment. To use these features download the JDeveloper from JDeveloper download site by clicking the "Download JDeveloper 11.1.1.7.1 for ADF deployment on Oracle Cloud" link, this version of JDeveloper will have the JCS integration features that will be used in this article. For versions that do not include the Cloud integration features the Oracle Java Cloud Service SDK or the JCS Java Console can be used for deployment. For details on installing and configuring the JDeveloper refer to the installation guideFor details on SDK refer to Using the Command-Line Interface to Monitor Oracle Java Cloud Service and Using the Command-Line Interface to Manage Oracle Java Cloud Service. Access to a local database The database associated with the JCS instance cannot be connected to with JDBC. Since creating ADFbc business component requires a JDBC connection we will need access to a local database. 3rd party libraries This example will use some 3rd party libraries for implementing the REST service call and processing the input / output content. Other libraries may also be used, however these are tested to work. Jersey 1.x Jersey library will be used as a client to make the call to the REST service. JCS documentation for supported specifications states: Java API for RESTful Web Services (JAX-RS) 1.1 So Jersey 1.x will be used. Download the single-JAR Jersey bundle; in this example Jersey 1.18 JAR bundle is used. Json-simple Jjson-simple library will be used to process the json objects. Download the JAR file; in this example json-simple-1.1.1.jar is used. Accessing data in Taleo Before implementing the application it is beneficial to familiarize oneself with the data in Taleo. Easiest way to do this is by using a RESTClient on your browser. Once added to the browser you can access the UI: The client can be used to call the REST services to test the URLs and data before adding them into the application. First derive the base URL for the service this can be done with: Method: GET URL: https://tbe.taleo.net/MANAGER/dispatcher/api/v1/serviceUrl/<company name> The response will contain the base URL to be used for the service calls for the company. Next obtain authentication token with: Method: POST URL: https://ch.tbe.taleo.net/CH07/ats/api/v1/login?orgCode=<company>&userName=<user name>&password=<password> The response includes an authentication token that can be used for few hours to authenticate with the service: { "response": { "authToken": "webapi26419680747505890557" }, "status": { "detail": {}, "success": true } } To authenticate the service calls navigate to "Headers -> Custom Header": And add a new request header with: Name: Cookie Value: authToken=webapi26419680747505890557 Once authentication token is defined the tool can be used to invoke REST services; for example: Method: GET URL: https://ch.tbe.taleo.net/CH07/ats/api/v1/object/candidate/search.xml?status=16 This data will be used on the application to be created. For details on the Taleo REST services refer to the Taleo Business Edition REST API Guide. Create Application First Fusion Web Application is created and configured. Start JDeveloper and click "New Application": Application Name: JcsRestDemo Application Package Prefix: oracle.apps.jcs.test Application Template: Fusion Web Application (ADF) Configure Local Cloud Connection Follow the steps documented in the "Java Cloud Service ADF Web Application" article to configure a local database connection needed to create the ADFbc objects. Configure Libraries Add the 3rd party libraries into the class path. Create the following directory and copy the jar files into it: <JDEV_USER_HOME>/JcsRestDemo/lib Select the "Model" project, navigate "Application -> Project Properties -> Libraries and Classpath -> Add JAR / Directory" and add the 2 3rd party libraries: Accessing Data from Taleo To access data from Taleo using the REST service the 3rd party libraries will be used. 2 Java classes are implemented, one representing the Candidate object and another for accessing the Taleo repository Candidate Candidate object is a POJO object used to represent the candidate data obtained from the Taleo repository. The data obtained will be used to populate the ADFbc object used to display the data on the UI. The candidate object contains simply the variables we obtain using the REST services and the getters / setters for them: Navigate "New -> General -> Java -> Java Class", enter "Candidate" as the name and create it in the package "oracle.apps.jcs.test.model". Copy / paste the following as the content: import oracle.jbo.domain.Number; public class Candidate { private Number candId; private String firstName; private String lastName; public Candidate() { super(); } public Candidate(Number candId, String firstName, String lastName) { super(); this.candId = candId; this.firstName = firstName; this.lastName = lastName; } public void setCandId(Number candId) { this.candId = candId; } public Number getCandId() { return candId; } public void setFirstName(String firstName) { this.firstName = firstName; } public String getFirstName() { return firstName; } public void setLastName(String lastName) { this.lastName = lastName; } public String getLastName() { return lastName; } } Taleo Repository Taleo repository class will interact with the Taleo REST services. The logic will query data from Taleo and populate Candidate objects with the data. The Candidate object will then be used to populate the ADFbc object used to display data on the UI. Navigate "New -> General -> Java -> Java Class", enter "TaleoRepository" as the name and create it in the package "oracle.apps.jcs.test.model". Copy / paste the following as the content (for details of the implementation refer to the documentation in the code): import com.sun.jersey.api.client.Client; import com.sun.jersey.api.client.ClientResponse; import com.sun.jersey.api.client.WebResource; import com.sun.jersey.core.util.MultivaluedMapImpl; import java.io.StringReader; import java.util.ArrayList; import java.util.Iterator; import java.util.List; import java.util.Map; import javax.ws.rs.core.MediaType; import javax.ws.rs.core.MultivaluedMap; import oracle.jbo.domain.Number; import org.json.simple.JSONArray; import org.json.simple.JSONObject; import org.json.simple.parser.JSONParser; /** * This class interacts with the Taleo REST services */ public class TaleoRepository { /** * Connection information needed to access the Taleo services */ String _company = null; String _userName = null; String _password = null; /** * Jersey client used to access the REST services */ Client _client = null; /** * Parser for processing the JSON objects used as * input / output for the services */ JSONParser _parser = null; /** * The base url for constructing the REST URLs. This is obtained * from Taleo with a service call */ String _baseUrl = null; /** * Authentication token obtained from Taleo using a service call. * The token can be used to authenticate on subsequent * service calls. The token will expire in 4 hours */ String _authToken = null; /** * Static url that can be used to obtain the url used to construct * service calls for a given company */ private static String _taleoUrl = "https://tbe.taleo.net/MANAGER/dispatcher/api/v1/serviceUrl/"; /** * Default constructor for the repository * Authentication details are passed as parameters and used to generate * authentication token. Note that each service call will * generate its own token. This is done to avoid dealing with the expiry * of the token. Also only 20 tokens are allowed per user simultaneously. * So instead for each call there is login / logout. * * @param company the company for which the service calls are made * @param userName the user name to authenticate with * @param password the password to authenticate with. */ public TaleoRepository(String company, String userName, String password) { super(); _company = company; _userName = userName; _password = password; _client = Client.create(); _parser = new JSONParser(); _baseUrl = getBaseUrl(); } /** * This obtains the base url for a company to be used * to construct the urls for service calls * @return base url for the service calls */ private String getBaseUrl() { String result = null; if (null != _baseUrl) { result = _baseUrl; } else { try { String company = _company; WebResource resource = _client.resource(_taleoUrl + company); ClientResponse response = resource.type(MediaType.APPLICATION_FORM_URLENCODED_TYPE).get(ClientResponse.class); String entity = response.getEntity(String.class); JSONObject jsonObject = (JSONObject)_parser.parse(new StringReader(entity)); JSONObject jsonResponse = (JSONObject)jsonObject.get("response"); result = (String)jsonResponse.get("URL"); } catch (Exception ex) { ex.printStackTrace(); } } return result; } /** * Generates authentication token, that can be used to authenticate on * subsequent service calls. Note that each service call will * generate its own token. This is done to avoid dealing with the expiry * of the token. Also only 20 tokens are allowed per user simultaneously. * So instead for each call there is login / logout. * @return authentication token that can be used to authenticate on * subsequent service calls */ private String login() { String result = null; try { MultivaluedMap<String, String> formData = new MultivaluedMapImpl(); formData.add("orgCode", _company); formData.add("userName", _userName); formData.add("password", _password); WebResource resource = _client.resource(_baseUrl + "login"); ClientResponse response = resource.type(MediaType.APPLICATION_FORM_URLENCODED_TYPE).post(ClientResponse.class, formData); String entity = response.getEntity(String.class); JSONObject jsonObject = (JSONObject)_parser.parse(new StringReader(entity)); JSONObject jsonResponse = (JSONObject)jsonObject.get("response"); result = (String)jsonResponse.get("authToken"); } catch (Exception ex) { throw new RuntimeException("Unable to login ", ex); } if (null == result) throw new RuntimeException("Unable to login "); return result; } /** * Releases a authentication token. Each call to login must be followed * by call to logout after the processing is done. This is required as * the tokens are limited to 20 per user and if not released the tokens * will only expire after 4 hours. * @param authToken */ private void logout(String authToken) { WebResource resource = _client.resource(_baseUrl + "logout"); resource.header("cookie", "authToken=" + authToken).post(ClientResponse.class); } /** * This method is used to obtain a list of candidates using a REST * service call. At this example the query is hard coded to query * based on status. The url constructed to access the service is: * <_baseUrl>/object/candidate/search.xml?status=16 * @return List of candidates obtained with the service call */ public List<Candidate> getCandidates() { List<Candidate> result = new ArrayList<Candidate>(); try { // First login, note that in finally block we must have logout _authToken = "authToken=" + login(); /** * Construct the URL, the resulting url will be: * <_baseUrl>/object/candidate/search.xml?status=16 */ MultivaluedMap<String, String> formData = new MultivaluedMapImpl(); formData.add("status", "16"); JSONArray searchResults = (JSONArray)getTaleoResource("object/candidate/search", "searchResults", formData); /** * Process the results, the resulting JSON object is something like * this (simplified for readability): * * { * "response": * { * "searchResults": * [ * { * "candidate": * { * "candId": 211, * "firstName": "Mary", * "lastName": "Stochi", * logic here will find the candidate object(s), obtain the desired * data from them, construct a Candidate object based on the data * and add it to the results. */ for (Object object : searchResults) { JSONObject temp = (JSONObject)object; JSONObject candidate = (JSONObject)findObject(temp, "candidate"); Long candIdTemp = (Long)candidate.get("candId"); Number candId = (null == candIdTemp ? null : new Number(candIdTemp)); String firstName = (String)candidate.get("firstName"); String lastName = (String)candidate.get("lastName"); result.add(new Candidate(candId, firstName, lastName)); } } catch (Exception ex) { ex.printStackTrace(); } finally { if (null != _authToken) logout(_authToken); } return result; } /** * Convenience method to construct url for the service call, invoke the * service and obtain a resource from the response * @param path the path for the service to be invoked. This is combined * with the base url to construct a url for the service * @param resource the key for the object in the response that will be * obtained * @param parameters any parameters used for the service call. The call * is slightly different depending whether parameters exist or not. * @return the resource from the response for the service call */ private Object getTaleoResource(String path, String resource, MultivaluedMap<String, String> parameters) { Object result = null; try { WebResource webResource = _client.resource(_baseUrl + path); ClientResponse response = null; if (null == parameters) response = webResource.header("cookie", _authToken).get(ClientResponse.class); else response = webResource.queryParams(parameters).header("cookie", _authToken).get(ClientResponse.class); String entity = response.getEntity(String.class); JSONObject jsonObject = (JSONObject)_parser.parse(new StringReader(entity)); result = findObject(jsonObject, resource); } catch (Exception ex) { ex.printStackTrace(); } return result; } /** * Convenience method to recursively find a object with an key * traversing down from a given root object. This will traverse a * JSONObject / JSONArray recursively to find a matching key, if found * the object with the key is returned. * @param root root object which contains the key searched for * @param key the key for the object to search for * @return the object matching the key */ private Object findObject(Object root, String key) { Object result = null; if (root instanceof JSONObject) { JSONObject rootJSON = (JSONObject)root; if (rootJSON.containsKey(key)) { result = rootJSON.get(key); } else { Iterator children = rootJSON.entrySet().iterator(); while (children.hasNext()) { Map.Entry entry = (Map.Entry)children.next(); Object child = entry.getValue(); if (child instanceof JSONObject || child instanceof JSONArray) { result = findObject(child, key); if (null != result) break; } } } } else if (root instanceof JSONArray) { JSONArray rootJSON = (JSONArray)root; for (Object child : rootJSON) { if (child instanceof JSONObject || child instanceof JSONArray) { result = findObject(child, key); if (null != result) break; } } } return result; } } Creating Business Objects While JCS application can be created without a local database, the local database is required when using ADFbc objects even if database objects are not referred. For this example we will create a "Transient" view object that will be programmatically populated based the data obtained from Taleo REST services. Creating ADFbc objects Choose the "Model" project and navigate "New -> Business Tier : ADF Business Components : View Object". On the "Initialize Business Components Project" choose the local database connection created in previous step. On Step 1 enter "JcsRestDemoVO" on the "Name" and choose "Rows populated programmatically, not based on query": On step 2 create the following attributes: CandId Type: Number Updatable: Always Key Attribute: checked Name Type: String Updatable: Always On steps 3 and 4 accept defaults and click "Next". On step 5 check the "Application Module" checkbox and enter "JcsRestDemoAM" as the name: Click "Finish" to generate the objects. Populating the VO To display the data on the UI the "transient VO" is populated programmatically based on the data obtained from the Taleo REST services. Open the "JcsRestDemoVOImpl.java". Copy / paste the following as the content (for details of the implementation refer to the documentation in the code): import java.sql.ResultSet; import java.util.List; import java.util.ListIterator; import oracle.jbo.server.ViewObjectImpl; import oracle.jbo.server.ViewRowImpl; import oracle.jbo.server.ViewRowSetImpl; // --------------------------------------------------------------------- // --- File generated by Oracle ADF Business Components Design Time. // --- Tue Feb 18 09:40:25 PST 2014 // --- Custom code may be added to this class. // --- Warning: Do not modify method signatures of generated methods. // --------------------------------------------------------------------- public class JcsRestDemoVOImpl extends ViewObjectImpl { /** * This is the default constructor (do not remove). */ public JcsRestDemoVOImpl() { } @Override public void executeQuery() { /** * For some reason we need to reset everything, otherwise * 2nd entry to the UI screen may fail with * "java.util.NoSuchElementException" in createRowFromResultSet * call to "candidates.next()". I am not sure why this is happening * as the Iterator is new and "hasNext" is true at the point * of the execution. My theory is that since the iterator object is * exactly the same the VO cache somehow reuses the iterator including * the pointer that has already exhausted the iterable elements on the * previous run. Working around the issue * here by cleaning out everything on the VO every time before query * is executed on the VO. */ getViewDef().setQuery(null); getViewDef().setSelectClause(null); setQuery(null); this.reset(); this.clearCache(); super.executeQuery(); } /** * executeQueryForCollection - overridden for custom java data source support. */ protected void executeQueryForCollection(Object qc, Object[] params, int noUserParams) { /** * Integrate with the Taleo REST services using TaleoRepository class. * A list of candidates matching a hard coded query is obtained. */ TaleoRepository repository = new TaleoRepository(<company>, <username>, <password>); List<Candidate> candidates = repository.getCandidates(); /** * Store iterator for the candidates as user data on the collection. * This will be used in createRowFromResultSet to create rows based on * the custom iterator. */ ListIterator<Candidate> candidatescIterator = candidates.listIterator(); setUserDataForCollection(qc, candidatescIterator); super.executeQueryForCollection(qc, params, noUserParams); } /** * hasNextForCollection - overridden for custom java data source support. */ protected boolean hasNextForCollection(Object qc) { boolean result = false; /** * Determines whether there are candidates for which to create a row */ ListIterator<Candidate> candidates = (ListIterator<Candidate>)getUserDataForCollection(qc); result = candidates.hasNext(); /** * If all candidates to be created indicate that processing is done */ if (!result) { setFetchCompleteForCollection(qc, true); } return result; } /** * createRowFromResultSet - overridden for custom java data source support. */ protected ViewRowImpl createRowFromResultSet(Object qc, ResultSet resultSet) { /** * Obtain the next candidate from the collection and create a row * for it. */ ListIterator<Candidate> candidates = (ListIterator<Candidate>)getUserDataForCollection(qc); ViewRowImpl row = createNewRowForCollection(qc); try { Candidate candidate = candidates.next(); row.setAttribute("CandId", candidate.getCandId()); row.setAttribute("Name", candidate.getFirstName() + " " + candidate.getLastName()); } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); } return row; } /** * getQueryHitCount - overridden for custom java data source support. */ public long getQueryHitCount(ViewRowSetImpl viewRowSet) { /** * For this example this is not implemented rather we always return 0. */ return 0; } } Creating UI Choose the "ViewController" project and navigate "New -> Web Tier : JSF : JSF Page". On the "Create JSF Page" enter "JcsRestDemo" as name and ensure that the "Create as XML document (*.jspx)" is checked. Open "JcsRestDemo.jspx" and navigate to "Data Controls -> JcsRestDemoAMDataControl -> JcsRestDemoVO1" and drag & drop the VO to the "<af:form> " as a "ADF Read-only Table": Accept the defaults in "Edit Table Columns". To execute the query navigate to to "Data Controls -> JcsRestDemoAMDataControl -> JcsRestDemoVO1 -> Operations -> Execute" and drag & drop the operation to the "<af:form> " as a "Button": Deploying to JCS Follow the same steps as documented in previous article"Java Cloud Service ADF Web Application". Once deployed the application can be accessed with URL: https://java-[identity domain].java.[data center].oraclecloudapps.com/JcsRestDemo-ViewController-context-root/faces/JcsRestDemo.jspx The UI displays a list of candidates obtained from the Taleo REST Services: Summary In this article we learned how to integrate with REST services using Jersey library in JCS. In future articles various other integration techniques will be covered.

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