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  • Is That REST API Really RPC? Roy Fielding Seems to Think So.

    - by Rich Apodaca
    A large amount of what I thought I knew about REST is apparently wrong - and I'm not alone. This question has a long lead-in, but it seems to be necessary because the information is a bit scattered. The actual question comes at the end if you're already familiar with this topic. From the first paragraph of Roy Fielding's REST APIs must be hypertext-driven, it's pretty clear he believes his work is being widely misinterpreted: I am getting frustrated by the number of people calling any HTTP-based interface a REST API. Today’s example is the SocialSite REST API. That is RPC. It screams RPC. There is so much coupling on display that it should be given an X rating. Fielding goes on to list several attributes of a REST API. Some of them seem to go against both common practice and common advice on SO and other forums. For example: A REST API should be entered with no prior knowledge beyond the initial URI (bookmark) and set of standardized media types that are appropriate for the intended audience (i.e., expected to be understood by any client that might use the API). ... A REST API must not define fixed resource names or hierarchies (an obvious coupling of client and server). ... A REST API should spend almost all of its descriptive effort in defining the media type(s) used for representing resources and driving application state, or in defining extended relation names and/or hypertext-enabled mark-up for existing standard media types. ... The idea of "hypertext" plays a central role - much more so than URI structure or what HTTP verbs mean. "Hypertext" is defined in one of the comments: When I [Fielding] say hypertext, I mean the simultaneous presentation of information and controls such that the information becomes the affordance through which the user (or automaton) obtains choices and selects actions. Hypermedia is just an expansion on what text means to include temporal anchors within a media stream; most researchers have dropped the distinction. Hypertext does not need to be HTML on a browser. Machines can follow links when they understand the data format and relationship types. I'm guessing at this point, but the first two points above seem to suggest that API documentation for a Foo resource that looks like the following leads to tight coupling between client and server and has no place in a RESTful system. GET /foos/{id} # read a Foo POST /foos/{id} # create a Foo PUT /foos/{id} # update a Foo Instead, an agent should be forced to discover the URIs for all Foos by, for example, issuing a GET request against /foos. (Those URIs may turn out to follow the pattern above, but that's beside the point.) The response uses a media type that is capable of conveying how to access each item and what can be done with it, giving rise to the third point above. For this reason, API documentation should focus on explaining how to interpret the hypertext contained in the response. Furthermore, every time a URI to a Foo resource is requested, the response contains all of the information needed for an agent to discover how to proceed by, for example, accessing associated and parent resources through their URIs, or by taking action after the creation/deletion of a resource. The key to the entire system is that the response consists of hypertext contained in a media type that itself conveys to the agent options for proceeding. It's not unlike the way a browser works for humans. But this is just my best guess at this particular moment. Fielding posted a follow-up in which he responded to criticism that his discussion was too abstract, lacking in examples, and jargon-rich: Others will try to decipher what I have written in ways that are more direct or applicable to some practical concern of today. I probably won’t, because I am too busy grappling with the next topic, preparing for a conference, writing another standard, traveling to some distant place, or just doing the little things that let me feel I have I earned my paycheck. So, two simple questions for the REST experts out there with a practical mindset: how do you interpret what Fielding is saying and how do you put it into practice when documenting/implementing REST APIs? Edit: this question is an example of how hard it can be to learn something if you don't have a name for what you're talking about. The name in this case is "Hypermedia as the Engine of Application State" (HATEOAS).

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  • Issues using a Fedex Webservice via WDSL/SOAP

    - by Parris
    Hi Everyone, I downloaded the sample code to request a rate from fedex's website... i placed the WSDL file in the proper location, I have my acct number, password, meter number, and key. When I run the script I get this error: Error in processing transaction. ERROR prof 1000 Authentication Failed The script they give is as follows, and yes i do actually replace the XXX and YYY everywhere it says.: <?php // Copyright 2009, FedEx Corporation. All rights reserved. // Version 7.0.0 require_once('fedex-common.php5'); $newline = "<br />"; //The WSDL is not included with the sample code. //Please include and reference in $path_to_wsdl variable. $path_to_wsdl = "RateService_v7.wsdl"; ini_set("soap.wsdl_cache_enabled", "0"); $client = new SoapClient($path_to_wsdl, array('trace' => 1)); // Refer to http://us3.php.net/manual/en/ref.soap.php for more information $request['WebAuthenticationDetail'] = array('UserCredential' => array('Key' => 'XXX', 'Password' => 'YYY')); // Replace 'XXX' and 'YYY' with FedEx provided credentials $request['ClientDetail'] = array('AccountNumber' => 'XXX', 'MeterNumber' => 'YYY');// Replace 'XXX' with your account and meter number $request['TransactionDetail'] = array('CustomerTransactionId' => ' *** Rate Request v7 using PHP ***'); $request['Version'] = array('ServiceId' => 'crs', 'Major' => '7', 'Intermediate' => '0', 'Minor' => '0'); $request['ReturnTransitAndCommit'] = true; $request['RequestedShipment']['DropoffType'] = 'REGULAR_PICKUP'; // valid values REGULAR_PICKUP, REQUEST_COURIER, ... $request['RequestedShipment']['ShipTimestamp'] = date('c'); $request['RequestedShipment']['ServiceType'] = 'FEDEX_GROUND'; // valid values STANDARD_OVERNIGHT, PRIORITY_OVERNIGHT, FEDEX_GROUND, ... $request['RequestedShipment']['PackagingType'] = 'YOUR_PACKAGING'; // valid values FEDEX_BOX, FEDEX_PAK, FEDEX_TUBE, YOUR_PACKAGING, ... $request['RequestedShipment']['Shipper'] = array('Address' => array( 'StreetLines' => array('10 Fed Ex Pkwy'), // Origin details 'City' => 'Memphis', 'StateOrProvinceCode' => 'TN', 'PostalCode' => '38115', 'CountryCode' => 'US')); $request['RequestedShipment']['Recipient'] = array('Address' => array ( 'StreetLines' => array('13450 Farmcrest Ct'), // Destination details 'City' => 'Herndon', 'StateOrProvinceCode' => 'VA', 'PostalCode' => '20171', 'CountryCode' => 'US')); $request['RequestedShipment']['ShippingChargesPayment'] = array('PaymentType' => 'SENDER', 'Payor' => array('AccountNumber' => 'XXX', // Replace 'XXX' with payor's account number 'CountryCode' => 'US')); $request['RequestedShipment']['RateRequestTypes'] = 'ACCOUNT'; $request['RequestedShipment']['RateRequestTypes'] = 'LIST'; $request['RequestedShipment']['PackageCount'] = '2'; $request['RequestedShipment']['PackageDetailSpecified'] = true; $request['RequestedShipment']['PackageDetail'] = 'INDIVIDUAL_PACKAGES'; // Or PACKAGE_SUMMARY $request['RequestedShipment']['RequestedPackageLineItems'] = array('0' => array('Weight' => array('Value' => 2.0, 'Units' => 'LB'), 'Dimensions' => array('Length' => 10, 'Width' => 10, 'Height' => 3, 'Units' => 'IN')), '1' => array('Weight' => array('Value' => 5.0, 'Units' => 'LB'), 'Dimensions' => array('Length' => 20, 'Width' => 20, 'Height' => 10, 'Units' => 'IN'))); try { $response = $client ->getRates($request); if ($response -> HighestSeverity != 'FAILURE' && $response -> HighestSeverity != 'ERROR') { printRequestResponse($client); } else { echo 'Error in processing transaction.'. $newline. $newline; foreach ($response -> Notifications as $notification) { if(is_array($response -> Notifications)) { echo $notification -> Severity; echo ': '; echo $notification -> Message . $newline; } else { echo $notification . $newline; } } } writeToLog($client); // Write to log file } catch (SoapFault $exception) { printFault($exception, $client); } ?> I am not quite sure why it isn't working, i've read about using a proxy, but I am not quite sure how i would use it in this case? Isn't the point of using SOAP and WSDL to avoid using CURL, Direct Connect type stuff?

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  • How to send mail from ASP.NET with IIS6 SMTP in a dedicated server?

    - by Julio César
    Hi. I'm trying to configure a dedicated server that runs ASP.NET to send mail through the local IIS SMTP server but mail is getting stuck in the Queue folder and doesn't get delivered. I'm using this code in an .aspx page to test: <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" %> <% new System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient("localhost").Send("[email protected]", "[email protected]", "testing...", "Hello, world.com"); %> Then, I added the following to the Web.config file: <system.net> <mailSettings> <smtp> <network host="localhost"/> </smtp> </mailSettings> </system.net> In the IIS Manager I've changed the following in the properties of the "Default SMTP Virtual Server". General: [X] Enable Logging Access / Authentication: [X] Windows Integrated Authentication Access / Relay Restrictions: (o) Only the list below, Granted 127.0.0.1 Delivery / Advanced: Fully qualified domain name = thedomain.com Finally, I run the SMTPDiag.exe tool like this: C:\>smtpdiag.exe [email protected] [email protected] Searching for Exchange external DNS settings. Computer name is THEDOMAIN. Failed to connect to the domain controller. Error: 8007054b Checking SOA for gmail.com. Checking external DNS servers. Checking internal DNS servers. SOA serial number match: Passed. Checking local domain records. Checking MX records using TCP: thedomain.com. Checking MX records using UDP: thedomain.com. Both TCP and UDP queries succeeded. Local DNS test passed. Checking remote domain records. Checking MX records using TCP: gmail.com. Checking MX records using UDP: gmail.com. Both TCP and UDP queries succeeded. Remote DNS test passed. Checking MX servers listed for [email protected]. Connecting to gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com [209.85.199.27] on port 25. Connecting to the server failed. Error: 10060 Failed to submit mail to gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com. Connecting to gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com [209.85.199.114] on port 25. Connecting to the server failed. Error: 10060 Failed to submit mail to gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com. Connecting to alt2.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com [209.85.135.27] on port 25. Connecting to the server failed. Error: 10060 Failed to submit mail to alt2.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com. Connecting to alt2.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com [209.85.135.114] on port 25. Connecting to the server failed. Error: 10060 Failed to submit mail to alt2.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com. Connecting to alt1.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com [209.85.133.27] on port 25. Connecting to the server failed. Error: 10060 Failed to submit mail to alt1.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com. Connecting to alt2.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com [74.125.79.27] on port 25. Connecting to the server failed. Error: 10060 Failed to submit mail to alt2.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com. Connecting to alt2.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com [74.125.79.114] on port 25. Connecting to the server failed. Error: 10060 Failed to submit mail to alt2.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com. Connecting to alt1.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com [209.85.133.114] on port 25. Connecting to the server failed. Error: 10060 Failed to submit mail to alt1.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com. Connecting to gsmtp183.google.com [64.233.183.27] on port 25. Connecting to the server failed. Error: 10060 Failed to submit mail to gsmtp183.google.com. Connecting to gsmtp147.google.com [209.85.147.27] on port 25. Connecting to the server failed. Error: 10051 Failed to submit mail to gsmtp147.google.com. I'm using ASP.NET 2.0, Windows 2003 Server and the IIS that comes with it. Can you tell me what else to change to fix the problem? Thanks @mattlant This is a dedicated server that's why I'm installing the SMTP manually. EDIT: I use exchange so its a little different, but its called a smart host in exchange, but in plain SMTP service config i think its called something else. Cant remember exactly the setting name. Thank you for pointing me at the Smart host field. Mail is getting delivered now. In the Default SMTP Virtual Server properties, the Delivery tab, click Advanced and fill the "Smart host" field with the address that your provider gives you. In my case (GoDaddy) it was k2smtpout.secureserver.net. More info here: http://help.godaddy.com/article/1283

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  • How do I setup ASP.NET MVC 2 with MySQL?

    - by NovaJoe
    Okay, so I'm cheating and not actually a question, but instead making a flat-out post. I know that goes against the grain of Stack Overflow, but this is too valuable not to share. I'm assuming that you have Visual Studio Professional 2008 and access to an instance of MySQL server. This MAY work with VS2008 Web edition, but not at all sure. If you haven't, install MySQL Connector for .NET (6.2.2.0 at the time of this write-up) Optional: install MySQL GUI Tools If you haven't, install MVC 2 RTM, or better yet, use Microsoft's Web Platform Installer. Create an empty MySQL database. If you don't want to access your application with the MySQL root user account (insecure), create a user account and assign the appropriate privileges (outside the scope of this write-up). Create a new MVC 2 application in Visual Studio In the MVC 2 app, reference MySql.Web.dll. It will either be in your GAC, or in the folder that the MySQL Connector installer put it. Modify the connection strings portion of your web.config: <connectionStrings> <remove name="LocalMySqlServer"/> <add name="MySqlMembershipConnection" connectionString="Data Source=[MySql server host name];user id=[user];password=[password];database=[database name];" providerName="MySql.Data.MySqlClient"/> </connectionStrings> Modify the membership portion of your web.config: <membership defaultProvider="MySqlMembershipProvider"> <providers> <clear/> <add name="MySqlMembershipProvider" type="MySql.Web.Security.MySQLMembershipProvider, MySql.Web, Version=6.2.2.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=c5687fc88969c44d" connectionStringName="MySqlMembershipConnection" enablePasswordRetrieval="false" enablePasswordReset="true" requiresQuestionAndAnswer="false" requiresUniqueEmail="true" passwordFormat="Hashed" maxInvalidPasswordAttempts="5" minRequiredPasswordLength="6" minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters="0" passwordAttemptWindow="10" applicationName="/" autogenerateschema="true"/> </providers> </membership> Modify the role manager portion of your web.config: <roleManager enabled="true" defaultProvider="MySqlRoleProvider"> <providers> <clear /> <add connectionStringName="MySqlMembershipConnection" applicationName="/" name="MySqlRoleProvider" type="MySql.Web.Security.MySQLRoleProvider, MySql.Web, Version=6.2.2.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=c5687fc88969c44d" autogenerateschema="true"/> </providers> </roleManager> Modify the profile portion of your web.config: <profile> <providers> <clear/> <add type="MySql.Web.Security.MySQLProfileProvider, MySql.Web, Version=6.2.2.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=c5687fc88969c44d" name="MySqlProfileProvider" applicationName="/" connectionStringName="MySqlMembershipConnection" autogenerateschema="true"/> </providers> </profile> At this point, you ought to be able to run the app and have the default ASP.NET MVC 2 home page come up in your browser. However, it may be a better idea to first run the ASP.NET Web configuration Tool (in Visual Studio top menus: Project - ASP.NET Configuration). Once the tool launches, check out each of the tabs; no errors = all good. The configuration tool Nathan Bridgewater's blog was essential to getting this working. Kudos, Nathan. Look for the "Configuration Tool" heading half way down the page. The public key token on the MySql.web.dll that I've posted here ought not change any time soon. But in case you suspect a bad token string from copying and pasting or whatever, just use the Visual Studio command line to run: "sn -T [Path\to\your.dll]" in order to get the correct public key token. There you have it, ASP.NET MVC 2 running over MySQL. Cheers!

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  • Exalogic 2.0.1 Tea Break Snippets - Scripting Asset Creation

    - by The Old Toxophilist
    So far in this series we have looked at creating asset within the EMOC BUI but the Exalogic 2.0.1 installation also provide the Iaas cli as an alternative to most of the common functionality available within EMOC. The IaaS cli interface provides access to the functions that are available to a user logged into the BUI with the CloudUser Role. As such not all functionality is available from the command line interface however having said that the IaaS cli provides all the functionality required to create the Assets within a specific Account (Tenure). Because these action are common and repeatable I decided to wrap the functionality within a simple script that takes a simple input file and creates the Asset. Following the Script through will show us the required steps needed to create the various Assets within an Account and hence I will work through the various functions within the script below describing the steps. You will note from the various steps within the script that it is designed to pause between actions allowing the proceeding action to complete. The reason for this is because we could swamp EMOC with a series of actions and may end up with a situation where we are trying to action a Volume attached before the creation of the vServer and Volume have completed. processAssets() This function simply reads through the passed input file identifying what assets need to be created. An example of the input file can be found below. It can be seen that the input file can be used to create Assets in multiple Accounts during a single run. The order of the entries define the functions that need to be actioned as follows: Input Command Iaas Actions Parameters Production:Connect akm-describe-accounts akm-create-access-key iaas-create-key-pair iaas-describe-vnets iaas-describe-vserver-types iaas-describe-server-templates Username Password Production:Create|vServer iaas-run-vserver vServer Name vServer Type Name Template Name Comma separated list of network names which the vServer will connect to. Comma separated list of IPs for the specified networks. Production:Create|Volume iaas-create-volume Volume Name Volume Size Production:Attach|Volume iaas-attach-volumes-to-vserver vServer Name Comma separated list of volume names Production:Disconnect iaas-delete-key-pair akm-delete-access-key None connectToAccount() It can be seen from the connectToAccount function that before we can execute any Asset creation we must first connect to the appropriate account. To do this we will need the ID associated with the Account. This can be found by executing the akm-describe-accounts cli command which will return a list of all Accounts and there IDs. Once we have the Account ID we generate and Access key using the akm-create-access-key command and then a keypair with the iaas-create-key-pair command. At this point we now have all the information we need to access the specific named account. createVServer() This function simply retrieved the information from the input line and then will create the vServer using the iaas-run-vserver cli command. Reading the function you will notice that it takes the various input names for vServer Type, Template and Networks and converts them into the appropriate IDs. The IaaS cli will not work directly with component names and hence all IDs need to be found. createVolume() Function that simply takes the Volume name and Size then executes the iaas-create-volume command to create the volume. attachVolume() Takes the name of the Volume, which we may have just created, and a Volume then identifies the appropriate IDs before assigning the Volume to the vServer with the iaas-attach-volumes-to-vserver. disconnectFromAccount() Once we have finished connecting to the Account we simply remove the key pair with iaas-delete-key-pair and the access key with akm-delete-access-key although it may be useful to keep this if ssh is required and you do not subsequently modify the sshd information to allow unsecured access. By default the key is required for ssh access when a vServer is created from the command-line. CreateAssets.sh 1 export OCCLI=/opt/sun/occli/bin 2 export IAAS_HOME=/opt/oracle/iaas/cli 3 export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/latest 4 export IAAS_BASE_URL=https://127.0.0.1 5 export IAAS_ACCESS_KEY_FILE=iaas_access.key 6 export KEY_FILE=iaas_access.pub 7 #CloudUser used to create vServers & Volumes 8 export IAAS_USER=exaprod 9 export IAAS_PASSWORD_FILE=root.pwd 10 export KEY_NAME=cli.recreate 11 export INPUT_FILE=CreateAssets.in 12 13 export ACCOUNTS_FILE=accounts.out 14 export VOLUMES_FILE=volumes.out 15 export DISTGRPS_FILE=distgrp.out 16 export VNETS_FILE=vnets.out 17 export VSERVER_TYPES_FILE=vstype.out 18 export VSERVER_FILE=vserver.out 19 export VSERVER_TEMPLATES=template.out 20 export KEY_PAIRS=keypairs.out 21 22 PROCESSING_ACCOUNT="" 23 24 function cleanTempFiles() { 25 rm -f $ACCOUNTS_FILE $VOLUMES_FILE $DISTGRPS_FILE $VNETS_FILE $VSERVER_TYPES_FILE $VSERVER_FILE $VSERVER_TEMPLATES $KEY_PAIRS $IAAS_PASSWORD_FILE $KEY_FILE $IAAS_ACCESS_KEY_FILE 26 } 27 28 function connectToAccount() { 29 if [[ "$ACCOUNT" != "$PROCESSING_ACCOUNT" ]] 30 then 31 if [[ "" != "$PROCESSING_ACCOUNT" ]] 32 then 33 $IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-delete-key-pair --key-name $KEY_NAME --access-key-file $IAAS_ACCESS_KEY_FILE 34 $IAAS_HOME/bin/akm-delete-access-key $AK 35 fi 36 PROCESSING_ACCOUNT=$ACCOUNT 37 IAAS_USER=$ACCOUNT_USER 38 echo "$ACCOUNT_PASSWORD" > $IAAS_PASSWORD_FILE 39 $IAAS_HOME/bin/akm-describe-accounts --sep "|" > $ACCOUNTS_FILE 40 while read line 41 do 42 ACCOUNT_ID=${line%%|*} 43 line=${line#*|} 44 ACCOUNT_NAME=${line%%|*} 45 # echo "Id = $ACCOUNT_ID" 46 # echo "Name = $ACCOUNT_NAME" 47 if [[ "$ACCOUNT_NAME" == "$ACCOUNT" ]] 48 then 49 echo "Found Production Account $line" 50 AK=`$IAAS_HOME/bin/akm-create-access-key --account $ACCOUNT_ID --access-key-file $IAAS_ACCESS_KEY_FILE` 51 KEYPAIR=`$IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-create-key-pair --key-name $KEY_NAME --key-file $KEY_FILE` 52 echo "Connected to $ACCOUNT_NAME" 53 break 54 fi 55 done < $ACCOUNTS_FILE 56 fi 57 } 58 59 function disconnectFromAccount() { 60 $IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-delete-key-pair --key-name $KEY_NAME --access-key-file $IAAS_ACCESS_KEY_FILE 61 $IAAS_HOME/bin/akm-delete-access-key $AK 62 PROCESSING_ACCOUNT="" 63 } 64 65 function getNetworks() { 66 $IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-describe-vnets --sep "|" > $VNETS_FILE 67 } 68 69 function getVSTypes() { 70 $IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-describe-vserver-types --sep "|" > $VSERVER_TYPES_FILE 71 } 72 73 function getTemplates() { 74 $IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-describe-server-templates --sep "|" > $VSERVER_TEMPLATES 75 } 76 77 function getVolumes() { 78 $IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-describe-volumes --sep "|" > $VOLUMES_FILE 79 } 80 81 function getVServers() { 82 $IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-describe-vservers --sep "|" > $VSERVER_FILE 83 } 84 85 function getNetworkId() { 86 while read line 87 do 88 NETWORK_ID=${line%%|*} 89 line=${line#*|} 90 NAME=${line%%|*} 91 if [[ "$NAME" == "$NETWORK_NAME" ]] 92 then 93 break 94 fi 95 done < $VNETS_FILE 96 } 97 98 function getVSTypeId() { 99 while read line 100 do 101 VSTYPE_ID=${line%%|*} 102 line=${line#*|} 103 NAME=${line%%|*} 104 if [[ "$VSTYPE_NAME" == "$NAME" ]] 105 then 106 break 107 fi 108 done < $VSERVER_TYPES_FILE 109 } 110 111 function getTemplateId() { 112 while read line 113 do 114 TEMPLATE_ID=${line%%|*} 115 line=${line#*|} 116 NAME=${line%%|*} 117 if [[ "$TEMPLATE_NAME" == "$NAME" ]] 118 then 119 break 120 fi 121 done < $VSERVER_TEMPLATES 122 } 123 124 function getVolumeId() { 125 while read line 126 do 127 export VOLUME_ID=${line%%|*} 128 line=${line#*|} 129 NAME=${line%%|*} 130 if [[ "$NAME" == "$VOLUME_NAME" ]] 131 then 132 break; 133 fi 134 done < $VOLUMES_FILE 135 } 136 137 function getVServerId() { 138 while read line 139 do 140 VSERVER_ID=${line%%|*} 141 line=${line#*|} 142 NAME=${line%%|*} 143 if [[ "$VSERVER_NAME" == "$NAME" ]] 144 then 145 break; 146 fi 147 done < $VSERVER_FILE 148 } 149 150 function getVServerState() { 151 getVServers 152 while read line 153 do 154 VSERVER_ID=${line%%|*} 155 line=${line#*|} 156 NAME=${line%%|*} 157 line=${line#*|} 158 line=${line#*|} 159 VSERVER_STATE=${line%%|*} 160 if [[ "$VSERVER_NAME" == "$NAME" ]] 161 then 162 break; 163 fi 164 done < $VSERVER_FILE 165 } 166 167 function pauseUntilVServerRunning() { 168 # Wait until the Server is running before creating the next 169 getVServerState 170 while [[ "$VSERVER_STATE" != "RUNNING" ]] 171 do 172 getVServerState 173 echo "$NAME $VSERVER_STATE" 174 if [[ "$VSERVER_STATE" != "RUNNING" ]] 175 then 176 echo "Sleeping......." 177 sleep 60 178 fi 179 if [[ "$VSERVER_STATE" == "FAILED" ]] 180 then 181 echo "Will Delete $NAME in 5 Minutes....." 182 sleep 300 183 deleteVServer 184 echo "Deleted $NAME waiting 5 Minutes....." 185 sleep 300 186 break 187 fi 188 done 189 # Lets pause for a minute or two 190 echo "Just Chilling......" 191 sleep 60 192 echo "Ahhhhh we're getting there......." 193 sleep 60 194 echo "I'm almost at one with the universe......." 195 sleep 60 196 echo "Bong Reality Check !" 197 } 198 199 function deleteVServer() { 200 $IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-terminate-vservers --force --vserver-ids $VSERVER_ID 201 } 202 203 function createVServer() { 204 VSERVER_NAME=${ASSET_DETAILS%%|*} 205 ASSET_DETAILS=${ASSET_DETAILS#*|} 206 VSTYPE_NAME=${ASSET_DETAILS%%|*} 207 ASSET_DETAILS=${ASSET_DETAILS#*|} 208 TEMPLATE_NAME=${ASSET_DETAILS%%|*} 209 ASSET_DETAILS=${ASSET_DETAILS#*|} 210 NETWORK_NAMES=${ASSET_DETAILS%%|*} 211 ASSET_DETAILS=${ASSET_DETAILS#*|} 212 IP_ADDRESSES=${ASSET_DETAILS%%|*} 213 # Get Ids associated with names 214 getVSTypeId 215 getTemplateId 216 # Convert Network Names to Ids 217 NETWORK_IDS="" 218 while true 219 do 220 NETWORK_NAME=${NETWORK_NAMES%%,*} 221 NETWORK_NAMES=${NETWORK_NAMES#*,} 222 getNetworkId 223 if [[ "$NETWORK_IDS" != "" ]] 224 then 225 NETWORK_IDS="$NETWORK_IDS,$NETWORK_ID" 226 else 227 NETWORK_IDS=$NETWORK_ID 228 fi 229 if [[ "$NETWORK_NAME" == "$NETWORK_NAMES" ]] 230 then 231 break 232 fi 233 done 234 # Create vServer 235 echo "About to execute : $IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-run-vserver --name $VSERVER_NAME --key-name $KEY_NAME --vserver-type $VSTYPE_ID --server-template-id $TEMPLATE_ID --vnets $NETWORK_IDS --ip-addresses $IP_ADDRESSES" 236 $IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-run-vserver --name $VSERVER_NAME --key-name $KEY_NAME --vserver-type $VSTYPE_ID --server-template-id $TEMPLATE_ID --vnets $NETWORK_IDS --ip-addresses $IP_ADDRESSES 237 pauseUntilVServerRunning 238 } 239 240 function createVolume() { 241 VOLUME_NAME=${ASSET_DETAILS%%|*} 242 ASSET_DETAILS=${ASSET_DETAILS#*|} 243 VOLUME_SIZE=${ASSET_DETAILS%%|*} 244 # Create Volume 245 echo "About to execute : $IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-create-volume --name $VOLUME_NAME --size $VOLUME_SIZE" 246 $IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-create-volume --name $VOLUME_NAME --size $VOLUME_SIZE 247 # Lets pause 248 echo "Just Waiting 30 Seconds......" 249 sleep 30 250 } 251 252 function attachVolume() { 253 VSERVER_NAME=${ASSET_DETAILS%%|*} 254 ASSET_DETAILS=${ASSET_DETAILS#*|} 255 VOLUME_NAMES=${ASSET_DETAILS%%|*} 256 # Get vServer Id 257 getVServerId 258 # Convert Volume Names to Ids 259 VOLUME_IDS="" 260 while true 261 do 262 VOLUME_NAME=${VOLUME_NAMES%%,*} 263 VOLUME_NAMES=${VOLUME_NAMES#*,} 264 getVolumeId 265 if [[ "$VOLUME_IDS" != "" ]] 266 then 267 VOLUME_IDS="$VOLUME_IDS,$VOLUME_ID" 268 else 269 VOLUME_IDS=$VOLUME_ID 270 fi 271 if [[ "$VOLUME_NAME" == "$VOLUME_NAMES" ]] 272 then 273 break 274 fi 275 done 276 # Attach Volumes 277 echo "About to execute : $IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-attach-volumes-to-vserver --vserver-id $VSERVER_ID --volume-ids $VOLUME_IDS" 278 $IAAS_HOME/bin/iaas-attach-volumes-to-vserver --vserver-id $VSERVER_ID --volume-ids $VOLUME_IDS 279 # Lets pause 280 echo "Just Waiting 30 Seconds......" 281 sleep 30 282 } 283 284 function processAssets() { 285 while read line 286 do 287 ACCOUNT=${line%%:*} 288 line=${line#*:} 289 ACTION=${line%%|*} 290 line=${line#*|} 291 if [[ "$ACTION" == "Connect" ]] 292 then 293 ACCOUNT_USER=${line%%|*} 294 line=${line#*|} 295 ACCOUNT_PASSWORD=${line%%|*} 296 connectToAccount 297 298 ## Account Info 299 getNetworks 300 getVSTypes 301 getTemplates 302 303 continue 304 fi 305 if [[ "$ACTION" == "Create" ]] 306 then 307 ASSET=${line%%|*} 308 line=${line#*|} 309 ASSET_DETAILS=$line 310 if [[ "$ASSET" == "vServer" ]] 311 then 312 createVServer 313 314 continue 315 fi 316 if [[ "$ASSET" == "Volume" ]] 317 then 318 createVolume 319 320 continue 321 fi 322 fi 323 if [[ "$ACTION" == "Attach" ]] 324 then 325 ASSET=${line%%|*} 326 line=${line#*|} 327 ASSET_DETAILS=$line 328 if [[ "$ASSET" == "Volume" ]] 329 then 330 getVolumes 331 getVServers 332 attachVolume 333 334 continue 335 fi 336 fi 337 if [[ "$ACTION" == "Connect" ]] 338 then 339 disconnectFromAccount 340 341 continue 342 fi 343 done < $INPUT_FILE 344 } 345 346 # Should Parameterise this 347 348 while [ $# -gt 0 ] 349 do 350 case "$1" in 351 -a) INPUT_FILE="$2"; shift;; 352 *) echo ""; echo >&2 \ 353 "usage: $0 [-a <Asset Definition File>] (Default is CreateAssets.in)" 354 echo""; exit 1;; 355 *) break;; 356 esac 357 shift 358 done 359 360 361 362 363 processAssets 364 365 echo "**************************************" 366 echo "***** Finished Creating Assets *****" 367 echo "**************************************" 368 CreateAssetsProd.in Production:Connect|exaprod|welcome1 Production:Create|vServer|VS006|VSTProduction|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-otd-prod,vn-prod-web,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.223.13,192.168.0.13,10.117.81.67,172.17.0.14 Production:Create|vServer|VS007|VSTProduction|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-otd-prod,vn-prod-web,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.223.14,192.168.0.14,10.117.81.68,172.17.0.15 Production:Create|vServer|VS008|VSTProduction|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-wls-prod,vn-prod-web,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.225.61,192.168.0.61,10.117.81.61,172.17.0.16 Production:Create|vServer|VS009|VSTProduction|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-wls-prod,vn-prod-web,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.225.62,192.168.0.62,10.117.81.62,172.17.0.17 Production:Create|vServer|VS000|VSTProduction|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-wls-prod,vn-prod-web,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.225.63,192.168.0.63,10.117.81.63,172.17.0.18 Production:Create|vServer|VS001|VSTProduction|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-wls-prod,vn-prod-web,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.225.64,192.168.0.64,10.117.81.64,172.17.0.19 Production:Create|vServer|VS002|VSTProduction|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-wls-prod,vn-prod-web,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.225.65,192.168.0.65,10.117.81.65,172.17.0.20 Production:Create|vServer|VS003|VSTProduction|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-wls-prod,vn-prod-web,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.225.66,192.168.0.66,10.117.81.66,172.17.0.21 Production:Create|Volume|VS006|50 Production:Create|Volume|VS007|50 Production:Create|Volume|VS008|50 Production:Create|Volume|VS009|50 Production:Create|Volume|VS000|50 Production:Create|Volume|VS001|50 Production:Create|Volume|VS002|50 Production:Create|Volume|VS003|50 Production:Attach|Volume|VS006|VS006 Production:Attach|Volume|VS007|VS007 Production:Attach|Volume|VS008|VS008 Production:Attach|Volume|VS009|VS009 Production:Attach|Volume|VS000|VS000 Production:Attach|Volume|VS001|VS001 Production:Attach|Volume|VS002|VS002 Production:Attach|Volume|VS003|VS003 Production:Disconnect Development:Connect|exadev|welcome1 Development:Create|vServer|VS014|VSTDevelopment|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-development,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.224.24,10.117.81.71,172.17.0.24 Development:Create|vServer|VS015|VSTDevelopment|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-development,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.224.25,10.117.81.72,172.17.0.25 Development:Create|vServer|VS016|VSTDevelopment|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-development,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.224.26,10.117.81.73,172.17.0.26 Development:Create|vServer|VS017|VSTDevelopment|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-development,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.224.27,10.117.81.74,172.17.0.27 Development:Create|vServer|VS018|VSTDevelopment|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-development,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.224.28,10.117.81.75,172.17.0.28 Development:Create|vServer|VS019|VSTDevelopment|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-development,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.224.29,10.117.81.76,172.17.0.29 Development:Create|vServer|VS020|VSTDevelopment|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-development,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.224.30,10.117.81.77,172.17.0.30 Development:Create|vServer|VS021|VSTDevelopment|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-development,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.224.31,10.117.81.78,172.17.0.31 Development:Create|vServer|VS022|VSTDevelopment|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-development,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.224.32,10.117.81.79,172.17.0.32 Development:Create|vServer|VS023|VSTDevelopment|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-development,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.224.33,10.117.81.80,172.17.0.33 Development:Create|vServer|VS024|VSTDevelopment|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-development,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.224.34,10.117.81.81,172.17.0.34 Development:Create|vServer|VS025|VSTDevelopment|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-development,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.224.35,10.117.81.82,172.17.0.35 Development:Create|vServer|VS026|VSTDevelopment|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-development,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.224.36,10.117.81.83,172.17.0.36 Development:Create|vServer|VS027|VSTDevelopment|BaseOEL56ServerTemplate|EoIB-development,IPoIB-default,IPoIB-vserver-shared-storage|10.51.224.37,10.117.81.84,172.17.0.37 Development:Create|Volume|VS014|50 Development:Create|Volume|VS015|50 Development:Create|Volume|VS016|50 Development:Create|Volume|VS017|50 Development:Create|Volume|VS018|50 Development:Create|Volume|VS019|50 Development:Create|Volume|VS020|50 Development:Create|Volume|VS021|50 Development:Create|Volume|VS022|50 Development:Create|Volume|VS023|50 Development:Create|Volume|VS024|50 Development:Create|Volume|VS025|50 Development:Create|Volume|VS026|50 Development:Create|Volume|VS027|50 Development:Attach|Volume|VS014|VS014 Development:Attach|Volume|VS015|VS015 Development:Attach|Volume|VS016|VS016 Development:Attach|Volume|VS017|VS017 Development:Attach|Volume|VS018|VS018 Development:Attach|Volume|VS019|VS019 Development:Attach|Volume|VS020|VS020 Development:Attach|Volume|VS021|VS021 Development:Attach|Volume|VS022|VS022 Development:Attach|Volume|VS023|VS023 Development:Attach|Volume|VS024|VS024 Development:Attach|Volume|VS025|VS025 Development:Attach|Volume|VS026|VS026 Development:Attach|Volume|VS027|VS027 Development:Disconnect This entry was originally posted on the The Old Toxophilist Site.

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  • The Windows Store... why did I sign up with this mess again?

    - by FransBouma
    Yesterday, Microsoft revealed that the Windows Store is now open to all developers in a wide range of countries and locations. For the people who think "wtf is the 'Windows Store'?", it's the central place where Windows 8 users will be able to find, download and purchase applications (or as we now have to say to not look like a computer illiterate: <accent style="Kentucky">aaaaappss</accent>) for Windows 8. As this is the store which is integrated into Windows 8, it's an interesting place for ISVs, as potential customers might very well look there first. This of course isn't true for all kinds of software, and developer tools in general aren't the kind of applications most users will download from the Windows store, but a presence there can't hurt. Now, this Windows Store hosts two kinds of applications: 'Metro-style' applications and 'Desktop' applications. The 'Metro-style' applications are applications created for the new 'Metro' UI which is present on Windows 8 desktop and Windows RT (the single color/big font fingerpaint-oriented UI). 'Desktop' applications are the applications we all run and use on Windows today. Our software are desktop applications. The Windows Store hosts all Metro-style applications locally in the store and handles the payment for these applications. This means you upload your application (sorry, 'app') to the store, jump through a lot of hoops, Microsoft verifies that your application is not violating a tremendous long list of rules and after everything is OK, it's published and hopefully you get customers and thus earn money. Money which Microsoft will pay you on a regular basis after customers buy your application. Desktop applications are not following this path however. Desktop applications aren't hosted by the Windows Store. Instead, the Windows Store more or less hosts a page with the application's information and where to get the goods. I.o.w.: it's nothing more than a product's Facebook page. Microsoft will simply redirect a visitor of the Windows Store to your website and the visitor will then use your site's system to purchase and download the application. This last bit of information is very important. So, this morning I started with fresh energy to register our company 'Solutions Design bv' at the Windows Store and our two applications, LLBLGen Pro and ORM Profiler. First I went to the Windows Store dashboard page. If you don't have an account, you have to log in or sign up if you don't have a live account. I signed in with my live account. After that, it greeted me with a page where I had to fill in a code which was mailed to me. My local mail server polls every several minutes for email so I had to kick it to get it immediately. I grabbed the code from the email and I was presented with a multi-step process to register myself as a company or as an individual. In red I was warned that this choice was permanent and not changeable. I chuckled: Microsoft apparently stores its data on paper, not in digital form. I chose 'company' and was presented with a lengthy form to fill out. On the form there were two strange remarks: Per company there can just be 1 (one, uno, not zero, not two or more) registered developer, and only that developer is able to upload stuff to the store. I have no idea how this works with large companies, oh the overhead nightmares... "Sorry, but John, our registered developer with the Windows Store is on holiday for 3 months, backpacking through Australia, no, he's not reachable at this point. M'yeah, sorry bud. Hey, did you fill in those TPS reports yesterday?" A separate Approver has to be specified, which has to be a different person than the registered developer. Apparently to Microsoft a company with just 1 person is not a company. Luckily we're with two people! *pfew*, dodged that one, otherwise I would be stuck forever: the choice I already made was not reversible! After I had filled out the form and it was all well and good and accepted by the Microsoft lackey who had to write it all down in some paper notebook ("Hey, be warned! It's a permanent choice! Written down in ink, can't be changed!"), I was presented with the question how I wanted to pay for all this. "Pay for what?" I wondered. Must be the paper they were scribbling the information on, I concluded. After all, there's a financial crisis going on! How could I forget! Silly me. "Ok fair enough". The price was 75 Euros, not the end of the world. I could only pay by credit card, so it was accepted quickly. Or so I thought. You see, Microsoft has a different idea about CC payments. In the normal world, you type in your CC number, some date, a name and a security code and that's it. But Microsoft wants to verify this even more. They want to make a verification purchase of a very small amount and are doing that with a special code in the description. You then have to type in that code in a special form in the Windows Store dashboard and after that you're verified. Of course they'll refund the small amount they pull from your card. Sounds simple, right? Well... no. The problem starts with the fact that I can't see the CC activity on some website: I have a bank issued CC card. I get the CC activity once a month on a piece of paper sent to me. The bank's online website doesn't show them. So it's possible I have to wait for this code till October 12th. One month. "So what, I'm not going to use it anyway, Desktop applications don't use the payment system", I thought. "Haha, you're so naive, dear developer!" Microsoft won't allow you to publish any applications till this verification is done. So no application publishing for a month. Wouldn't it be nice if things were, you know, digital, so things got done instantly? But of course, that lackey who scribbled everything in the Big Windows Store Registration Book isn't that quick. Can't blame him though. He's just doing his job. Now, after the payment was done, I was presented with a page which tells me Microsoft is going to use a third party company called 'Symantec', which will verify my identity again. The page explains to me that this could be done through email or phone and that they'll contact the Approver to verify my identity. "Phone?", I thought... that's a little drastic for a developer account to publish a single page of information about an external hosted software product, isn't it? On Facebook I just added a page, done. And paying you, Microsoft, took less information: you were happy to take my money before my identity was even 'verified' by this 3rd party's minions! "Double standards!", I roared. No-one cared. But it's the thought of getting it off your chest, you know. Luckily for me, everyone at Symantec was asleep when I was registering so they went for the fallback option in case phone calls were not possible: my Approver received an email. Imagine you have to explain the idiot web of security theater I was caught in to someone else who then has to reply a random person over the internet that I indeed was who I said I was. As she's a true sweetheart, she gave me the benefit of the doubt and assured that for now, I was who I said I was. Remember, this is for a desktop application, which is only a link to a website, some pictures and a piece of text. No file hosting, no payment processing, nothing, just a single page. Yeah, I also thought I was crazy. But we're not at the end of this quest yet. I clicked around in the confusing menus of the Windows Store dashboard and found the 'Desktop' section. I get a helpful screen with a warning in red that it can't find any certified 'apps'. True, I'm just getting started, buddy. I see a link: "Check the Windows apps you submitted for certification". Well, I haven't submitted anything, but let's see where it brings me. Oh the thrill of adventure! I click the link and I end up on this site: the hardware/desktop dashboard account registration. "Erm... but I just registered...", I mumbled to no-one in particular. Apparently for desktop registration / verification I have to register again, it tells me. But not only that, the desktop application has to be signed with a certificate. And not just some random el-cheapo certificate you can get at any mall's discount store. No, this certificate is special. It's precious. This certificate, the 'Microsoft Authenticode' Digital Certificate, is the only certificate that's acceptable, and jolly, it can be purchased from VeriSign for the price of only ... $99.-, but be quick, because this is a limited time offer! After that it's, I kid you not, $499.-. 500 dollars for a certificate to sign an executable. But, I do feel special, I got a special price. Only for me! I'm glowing. Not for long though. Here I started to wonder, what the benefit of it all was. I now again had to pay money for a shiny certificate which will add 'Solutions Design bv' to our installer as the publisher instead of 'unknown', while our customers download the file from our website. Not only that, but this was all about a Desktop application, which wasn't hosted by Microsoft. They only link to it. And make no mistake. These prices aren't single payments. Every year these have to be renewed. Like a membership of an exclusive club: you're special and privileged, but only if you cough up the dough. To give you an example how silly this all is: I added LLBLGen Pro and ORM Profiler to the Visual Studio Gallery some time ago. It's the same thing: it's a central place where one can find software which adds to / extends / works with Visual Studio. I could simply create the pages, add the information and they show up inside Visual Studio. No files are hosted at Microsoft, they're downloaded from our website. Exactly the same system. As I have to wait for the CC transcripts to arrive anyway, I can't proceed with publishing in this new shiny store. After the verification is complete I have to wait for verification of my software by Microsoft. Even Desktop applications need to be verified using a long list of rules which are mainly focused on Metro-style applications. Even while they're not hosted by Microsoft. I wonder what they'll find. "Your application wasn't approved. It violates rule 14 X sub D: it provides more value than our own competing framework". While I was writing this post, I tried to check something in the Windows Store Dashboard, to see whether I remembered it correctly. I was presented again with the question, after logging in with my live account, to enter the code that was just mailed to me. Not the previous code, a brand new one. Again I had to kick my mail server to pull the email to proceed. This was it. This 'experience' is so beyond miserable, I'm afraid I have to say goodbye for now to the 'Windows Store'. It's simply not worth my time. Now, about live accounts. You might know this: live accounts are tied to everything you do with Microsoft. So if you have an MSDN subscription, e.g. the one which costs over $5000.-, it's tied to this same live account. But the fun thing is, you can login with your live account to the MSDN subscriptions with just the account id and password. No additional code is mailed to you. While it gives you access to all Microsoft software available, including your licenses. Why the draconian security theater with this Windows Store, while all I want is to publish some desktop applications while on other Microsoft sites it's OK to simply sign in with your live account: no codes needed, no verification and no certificates? Microsoft, one thing you need with this store and that's: apps. Apps, apps, apps, apps, aaaaaaaaapps. Sorry, my bad, got carried away. I just can't stand the word 'app'. This store's shelves have to be filled to the brim with goods. But instead of being welcomed into the store with open arms, I have to fight an uphill battle with an endless list of rules and bullshit to earn the privilege to publish in this shiny store. As if I have to be thrilled to be one of the exclusive club called 'Windows Store Publishers'. As if Microsoft doesn't want it to succeed. Craig Stuntz sent me a link to an old blog post of his regarding code signing and uploading to Microsoft's old mobile store from back in the WinMo5 days: http://blogs.teamb.com/craigstuntz/2006/10/11/28357/. Good read and good background info about how little things changed over the years. I hope this helps Microsoft make things more clearer and smoother and also helps ISVs with their decision whether to go with the Windows Store scheme or ignore it. For now, I don't see the advantage of publishing there, especially not with the nonsense rules Microsoft cooked up. Perhaps it changes in the future, who knows.

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  • Using Oracle Proxy Authentication with JPA (eclipselink-Style)

    - by olaf.heimburger
    Security is a very intriguing topic. You will find it everywhere and you need to implement it everywhere. Yes, you need. Unfortunately, one can easily forget it while implementing the last mile. The Last Mile In a multi-tier application it is a common practice to use connection pools between the business layer and the database layer. Connection pools are quite useful to speed database connection creation and to split the load. Another very common practice is to use a specific, often called technical, user to connect to the database. This user has authentication and authorization rules that apply to all application users. Imagine you've put every effort to define roles for different types of users that use your application. These roles are necessary to differentiate between normal users, premium users, and administrators (I bet you will find or already have more roles in your application). While these user roles are pretty well used within your application, once the flow of execution enters the database everything is gone. Each and every user just has one role and is the same database user. Issues? What Issues? As long as things go well, this is not a real issue. However, things do not go well all the time. Once your application becomes famous performance decreases in certain situations or, more importantly, current and upcoming regulations and laws require that your application must be able to apply different security measures on a per user role basis at every stage of your application. If you only have a bunch of users with the same name and role you are not able to find the application usage profile that causes the performance issue, or which user has accessed data that he/she is not allowed to. Another thread to your role concept is that databases tend to be used by different applications and tools. These tools can be developer tools like SQL*Plus, SQL Developer, etc. or end user applications like BI Publisher, Oracle Forms and so on. These tools have no idea of your applications role concept and access the database the way they think is appropriate. A big oversight for your perfect role model and a big nightmare for your Chief Security Officer. Speaking of the CSO, brings up another issue: Password management. Once your technical user account is compromised, every user is able to do things that he/she is not expected to do from the design of your application. Counter Measures In the Oracle world a common counter measure is to use Virtual Private Database (VPD). This restricts the values a database user can see to the allowed minimum. However, it doesn't help in regard of a connection pool user, because this one is still not the real user. Oracle Proxy Authentication Another feature of the Oracle database is Proxy Authentication. First introduced with version 9i it is a quite useful feature for nearly every situation. The main idea behind Proxy Authentication is, to create a crippled database user who has only connect rights. Even if this user is compromised the risks are well understood and fairly limited. This user can be used in every situation in which you need to connect to the database, no matter which tool or application (see above) you use.The proxy user is perfect for multi-tier connection pools. CREATE USER app_user IDENTIFIED BY abcd1234; GRANT CREATE SESSION TO app_user; But what if you need to access real data? Well, this is the primary use case, isn't it? Now is the time to bring the application's role concept into play. You define database roles that define the grants for your identified user groups. Once you have these groups you grant access through the proxy user with the application role to the specific user. CREATE ROLE app_role_a; GRANT app_role_a TO scott; ALTER USER scott GRANT CONNECT THROUGH app_user WITH ROLE app_role_a; Now, hr has permission to connect to the database through the proxy user. Through the role you can restrict the hr's rights the are needed for the application only. If hr connects to the database directly all assigned role and permissions apply. Testing the Setup To test the setup you can use SQL*Plus and connect to your database: $ sqlplus app_user[hr]/abcd1234 Java Persistence API The Java Persistence API (JPA) is a fairly easy means to build applications that retrieve data from the database and put it into Java objects. You use plain old Java objects (POJOs) and mixin some Java annotations that define how the attributes of the object are used for storing data from the database into the Java object. Here is a sample for objects from the HR sample schema EMPLOYEES table. When using Java annotations you only specify what can not be deduced from the code. If your Java class name is Employee but the table name is EMPLOYEES, you need to specify the table name, otherwise it will fail. package demo.proxy.ejb; import java.io.Serializable; import java.sql.Timestamp; import java.util.List; import javax.persistence.Column; import javax.persistence.Entity; import javax.persistence.Id; import javax.persistence.JoinColumn; import javax.persistence.ManyToOne; import javax.persistence.NamedQueries; import javax.persistence.NamedQuery; import javax.persistence.OneToMany; import javax.persistence.Table; @Entity @NamedQueries({ @NamedQuery(name = "Employee.findAll", query = "select o from Employee o") }) @Table(name = "EMPLOYEES") public class Employee implements Serializable { @Column(name="COMMISSION_PCT") private Double commissionPct; @Column(name="DEPARTMENT_ID") private Long departmentId; @Column(nullable = false, unique = true, length = 25) private String email; @Id @Column(name="EMPLOYEE_ID", nullable = false) private Long employeeId; @Column(name="FIRST_NAME", length = 20) private String firstName; @Column(name="HIRE_DATE", nullable = false) private Timestamp hireDate; @Column(name="JOB_ID", nullable = false, length = 10) private String jobId; @Column(name="LAST_NAME", nullable = false, length = 25) private String lastName; @Column(name="PHONE_NUMBER", length = 20) private String phoneNumber; private Double salary; @ManyToOne @JoinColumn(name = "MANAGER_ID") private Employee employee; @OneToMany(mappedBy = "employee") private List employeeList; public Employee() { } public Employee(Double commissionPct, Long departmentId, String email, Long employeeId, String firstName, Timestamp hireDate, String jobId, String lastName, Employee employee, String phoneNumber, Double salary) { this.commissionPct = commissionPct; this.departmentId = departmentId; this.email = email; this.employeeId = employeeId; this.firstName = firstName; this.hireDate = hireDate; this.jobId = jobId; this.lastName = lastName; this.employee = employee; this.phoneNumber = phoneNumber; this.salary = salary; } public Double getCommissionPct() { return commissionPct; } public void setCommissionPct(Double commissionPct) { this.commissionPct = commissionPct; } public Long getDepartmentId() { return departmentId; } public void setDepartmentId(Long departmentId) { this.departmentId = departmentId; } public String getEmail() { return email; } public void setEmail(String email) { this.email = email; } public Long getEmployeeId() { return employeeId; } public void setEmployeeId(Long employeeId) { this.employeeId = employeeId; } public String getFirstName() { return firstName; } public void setFirstName(String firstName) { this.firstName = firstName; } public Timestamp getHireDate() { return hireDate; } public void setHireDate(Timestamp hireDate) { this.hireDate = hireDate; } public String getJobId() { return jobId; } public void setJobId(String jobId) { this.jobId = jobId; } public String getLastName() { return lastName; } public void setLastName(String lastName) { this.lastName = lastName; } public String getPhoneNumber() { return phoneNumber; } public void setPhoneNumber(String phoneNumber) { this.phoneNumber = phoneNumber; } public Double getSalary() { return salary; } public void setSalary(Double salary) { this.salary = salary; } public Employee getEmployee() { return employee; } public void setEmployee(Employee employee) { this.employee = employee; } public List getEmployeeList() { return employeeList; } public void setEmployeeList(List employeeList) { this.employeeList = employeeList; } public Employee addEmployee(Employee employee) { getEmployeeList().add(employee); employee.setEmployee(this); return employee; } public Employee removeEmployee(Employee employee) { getEmployeeList().remove(employee); employee.setEmployee(null); return employee; } } JPA could be used in standalone applications and Java EE containers. In both worlds you normally create a Facade to retrieve or store the values of the Entities to or from the database. The Facade does this via an EntityManager which will be injected by the Java EE container. Here is sample Facade Session Bean for a Java EE container. package demo.proxy.ejb; import java.util.HashMap; import java.util.List; import javax.ejb.Local; import javax.ejb.Remote; import javax.ejb.Stateless; import javax.persistence.EntityManager; import javax.persistence.PersistenceContext; import javax.persistence.Query; import javax.interceptor.AroundInvoke; import javax.interceptor.InvocationContext; import oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleConnection; import org.eclipse.persistence.config.EntityManagerProperties; import org.eclipse.persistence.internal.jpa.EntityManagerImpl; @Stateless(name = "DataFacade", mappedName = "ProxyUser-TestEJB-DataFacade") @Remote @Local public class DataFacadeBean implements DataFacade, DataFacadeLocal { @PersistenceContext(unitName = "TestEJB") private EntityManager em; private String username; public Object queryByRange(String jpqlStmt, int firstResult, int maxResults) { // setSessionUser(); Query query = em.createQuery(jpqlStmt); if (firstResult 0) { query = query.setFirstResult(firstResult); } if (maxResults 0) { query = query.setMaxResults(maxResults); } return query.getResultList(); } public Employee persistEmployee(Employee employee) { // setSessionUser(); em.persist(employee); return employee; } public Employee mergeEmployee(Employee employee) { // setSessionUser(); return em.merge(employee); } public void removeEmployee(Employee employee) { // setSessionUser(); employee = em.find(Employee.class, employee.getEmployeeId()); em.remove(employee); } /** select o from Employee o */ public List getEmployeeFindAll() { Query q = em.createNamedQuery("Employee.findAll"); return q.getResultList(); } Putting Both Together To use Proxy Authentication with JPA and within a Java EE container you have to take care of the additional requirements: Use an OCI JDBC driver Provide the user name that connects through the proxy user Use an OCI JDBC driver To use the OCI JDBC driver you need to set up your JDBC data source file to use the correct JDBC URL. hr jdbc:oracle:oci8:@(DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=localhost)(PORT=1521))(CONNECT_DATA=(SID=XE))) oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver user app_user 62C32F70E98297522AD97E15439FAC0E SQL SELECT 1 FROM DUAL jdbc/hrDS Application Additionally you need to make sure that the version of the shared libraries of the OCI driver match the version of the JDBC driver in your Java EE container or Java application and are within your PATH (on Windows) or LD_LIBRARY_PATH (on most Unix-based systems). Installing the Oracle Database Instance Client software works perfectly. Provide the user name that connects through the proxy user This part needs some modification of your application software and session facade. Session Facade Changes In the Session Facade we must ensure that every call that goes through the EntityManager must be prepared correctly and uniquely assigned to this session. The second is really important, as the EntityManager works with a connection pool and can not guarantee that we set the proxy user on the connection that will be used for the database activities. To avoid changing every method call of the Session Facade we provide a method to set the username of the user that connects through the proxy user. This method needs to be called by the Facade client bfore doing anything else. public void setUsername(String name) { username = name; } Next we provide a means to instruct the TopLink EntityManager Delegate to use Oracle Proxy Authentication. (I love small helper methods to hide the nitty-gritty details and avoid repeating myself.) private void setSessionUser() { setSessionUser(username); } private void setSessionUser(String user) { if (user != null && !user.isEmpty()) { EntityManagerImpl emDelegate = ((EntityManagerImpl)em.getDelegate()); emDelegate.setProperty(EntityManagerProperties.ORACLE_PROXY_TYPE, OracleConnection.PROXYTYPE_USER_NAME); emDelegate.setProperty(OracleConnection.PROXY_USER_NAME, user); emDelegate.setProperty(EntityManagerProperties.EXCLUSIVE_CONNECTION_MODE, "Always"); } } The final step is use the EJB 3.0 AroundInvoke interceptor. This interceptor will be called around every method invocation. We therefore check whether the Facade methods will be called or not. If so, we set the user for proxy authentication and the normal method flow continues. @AroundInvoke public Object proxyInterceptor(InvocationContext invocationCtx) throws Exception { if (invocationCtx.getTarget() instanceof DataFacadeBean) { setSessionUser(); } return invocationCtx.proceed(); } Benefits Using Oracle Proxy Authentification has a number of additional benefits appart from implementing the role model of your application: Fine grained access control for temporary users of the account, without compromising the original password. Enabling database auditing and logging. Better identification of performance bottlenecks. References Effective Oracle Database 10g Security by Design, David Knox TopLink Developer's Guide, Chapter 98

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  • Is Social Media The Vital Skill You Aren’t Tracking?

    - by HCM-Oracle
    By Mark Bennett - Originally featured in Talent Management Excellence The ever-increasing presence of the workforce on social media presents opportunities as well as risks for organizations. While on the one hand, we read about social media embarrassments happening to organizations, on the other we see that social media activities by workers and candidates can enhance a company’s brand and provide insight into what individuals are, or can become, influencers in the social media sphere. HR can play a key role in helping organizations make the most value out of the activities and presence of workers and candidates, while at the same time also helping to manage the risks that come with the permanence and viral nature of social media. What is Missing from Understanding Our Workforce? “If only HP knew what HP knows, we would be three-times more productive.”  Lew Platt, Former Chairman, President, CEO, Hewlett-Packard  What Lew Platt recognized was that organizations only have a partial understanding of what their workforce is capable of. This lack of understanding impacts the company in several negative ways: 1. A particular skill that the company needs to access in one part of the organization might exist somewhere else, but there is no record that the skill exists, so the need is unfulfilled. 2. As market conditions change rapidly, the company needs to know strategic options, but some options are missed entirely because the company doesn’t know that sufficient capability already exists to enable those options. 3. Employees may miss out on opportunities to demonstrate how their hidden skills could create new value to the company. Why don’t companies have that more complete picture of their workforce capabilities – that is, not know what they know? One very good explanation is that companies put most of their efforts into rating their workforce according to the jobs and roles they are filling today. This is the essence of two important talent management processes: recruiting and performance appraisals.  In recruiting, a set of requirements is put together for a job, either explicitly or indirectly through a job description. During the recruiting process, much of the attention is paid towards whether the candidate has the qualifications, the skills, the experience and the cultural fit to be successful in the role. This makes a lot of sense.  In the performance appraisal process, an employee is measured on how well they performed the functions of their role and in an effort to help the employee do even better next time, they are also measured on proficiency in the competencies that are deemed to be key in doing that job. Again, the logic is impeccable.  But in both these cases, two adages come to mind: 1. What gets measured is what gets managed. 2. You only see what you are looking for. In other words, the fact that the current roles the workforce are performing are the basis for measuring which capabilities the workforce has, makes them the only capabilities to be measured. What was initially meant to be a positive, i.e. identify what is needed to perform well and measure it, in order that it can be managed, comes with the unintended negative consequence of overshadowing the other capabilities the workforce has. This also comes with an employee engagement price, for the measurements and management of workforce capabilities is to typically focus on where the workforce comes up short. Again, it makes sense to do this, since improving a capability that appears to result in improved performance benefits, both the individual through improved performance ratings and the company through improved productivity. But this is based on the assumption that the capabilities identified and their required proficiencies are the only attributes of the individual that matter. Anything else the individual brings that results in high performance, while resulting in a desired performance outcome, often goes unrecognized or underappreciated at best. As social media begins to occupy a more important part in current and future roles in organizations, businesses must incorporate social media savvy and innovation into job descriptions and expectations. These new measures could provide insight into how well someone can use social media tools to influence communities and decision makers; keep abreast of trends in fast-moving industries; present a positive brand image for the organization around thought leadership, customer focus, social responsibility; and coordinate and collaborate with partners. These measures should demonstrate the “social capital” the individual has invested in and developed over time. Without this dimension, “short cut” methods may generate a narrow set of positive metrics that do not have real, long-lasting benefits to the organization. How Workforce Reputation Management Helps HR Harness Social Media With hundreds of petabytes of social media data flowing across Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, businesses are tapping technology solutions to effectively leverage social for HR. Workforce reputation management technology helps organizations discover, mobilize and retain talent by providing insight into the social reputation and influence of the workforce while also helping organizations monitor employee social media policy compliance and mitigate social media risk.  There are three major ways that workforce reputation management technology can play a strategic role to support HR: 1. Improve Awareness and Decisions on Talent Many organizations measure the skills and competencies that they know they need today, but are unaware of what other skills and competencies their workforce has that could be essential tomorrow. How about whether your workforce has the reputation and influence to make their skills and competencies more effective? Many organizations don’t have insight into the social media “reach” their workforce has, which is becoming more critical to business performance. These features help organizations, managers, and employees improve many talent processes and decision making, including the following: Hiring and Assignments. People and teams with higher reputations are considered more valuable and effective workers. Someone with high reputation who refers a candidate also can have high credibility as a source for hires.   Training and Development. Reputation trend analysis can impact program decisions regarding training offerings by showing how reputation and influence across the workforce changes in concert with training. Worker reputation impacts development plans and goal choices by helping the individual see which development efforts result in improved reputation and influence.   Finding Hidden Talent. Managers can discover hidden talent and skills amongst employees based on a combination of social profile information and social media reputation. Employees can improve their personal brand and accelerate their career development.  2. Talent Search and Discovery The right technology helps organizations find information on people that might otherwise be hidden. By leveraging access to candidate and worker social profiles as well as their social relationships, workforce reputation management provides companies with a more complete picture of what their knowledge, skills, and attributes are and what they can in turn access. This more complete information helps to find the right talent both outside the organization as well as the right, perhaps previously hidden talent, within the organization to fill roles and staff projects, particularly those roles and projects that are required in reaction to fast-changing opportunities and circumstances. 3. Reputation Brings Credibility Workforce reputation management technology provides a clearer picture of how candidates and workers are viewed by their peers and communities across a wide range of social reputation and influence metrics. This information is less subject to individual bias and can impact critical decision-making. Knowing the individual’s reputation and influence enables the organization to predict how well their capabilities and behaviors will have a positive effect on desired business outcomes. Many roles that have the highest impact on overall business performance are dependent on the individual’s influence and reputation. In addition, reputation and influence measures offer a very tangible source of feedback for workers, providing them with insight that helps them develop themselves and their careers and see the effectiveness of those efforts by tracking changes over time in their reputation and influence. The following are some examples of the different reputation and influence measures of the workforce that Workforce Reputation Management could gather and analyze: Generosity – How often the user reposts other’s posts. Influence – How often the user’s material is reposted by others.  Engagement – The ratio of recent posts with references (e.g. links to other posts) to the total number of posts.  Activity – How frequently the user posts. (e.g. number per day)  Impact – The size of the users’ social networks, which indicates their ability to reach unique followers, friends, or users.   Clout – The number of references and citations of the user’s material in others’ posts.  The Vital Ingredient of Workforce Reputation Management: Employee Participation “Nothing about me, without me.” Valerie Billingham, “Through the Patient’s Eyes”, Salzburg Seminar Session 356, 1998 Since data resides primarily in social media, a question arises: what manner is used to collect that data? While much of social media activity is publicly accessible (as many who wished otherwise have learned to their chagrin), the social norms of social media have developed to put some restrictions on what is acceptable behavior and by whom. Disregarding these norms risks a repercussion firestorm. One of the more recognized norms is that while individuals can follow and engage with other individual’s public social activity (e.g. Twitter updates) fairly freely, the more an organization does this unprompted and without getting permission from the individual beforehand, the more likely the organization risks a totally opposite outcome from the one desired. Instead, the organization must look for permission from the individual, which can be met with resistance. That resistance comes from not knowing how the information will be used, how it will be shared with others, and not receiving enough benefit in return for granting permission. As the quote above about patient concerns and rights succinctly states, no one likes not feeling in control of the information about themselves, or the uncertainty about where it will be used. This is well understood in consumer social media (i.e. permission-based marketing) and is applicable to workforce reputation management. However, asking permission leaves open the very real possibility that no one, or so few, will grant permission, resulting in a small set of data with little usefulness for the company. Connecting Individual Motivation to Organization Needs So what is it that makes an individual decide to grant an organization access to the data it wants? It is when the individual’s own motivations are in alignment with the organization’s objectives. In the case of workforce reputation management, when the individual is motivated by a desire for increased visibility and career growth opportunities to advertise their skills and level of influence and reputation, they are aligned with the organizations’ objectives; to fill resource needs or strategically build better awareness of what skills are present in the workforce, as well as levels of influence and reputation. Individuals can see the benefit of granting access permission to the company through multiple means. One is through simple social awareness; they begin to discover that peers who are getting more career opportunities are those who are signed up for workforce reputation management. Another is where companies take the message directly to the individual; we think you would benefit from signing up with our workforce reputation management solution. Another, more strategic approach is to make reputation management part of a larger Career Development effort by the company; providing a wide set of tools to help the workforce find ways to plan and take action to achieve their career aspirations in the organization. An effective mechanism, that facilitates connecting the visibility and career growth motivations of the workforce with the larger context of the organization’s business objectives, is to use game mechanics to help individuals transform their career goals into concrete, actionable steps, such as signing up for reputation management. This works in favor of companies looking to use workforce reputation because the workforce is more apt to see how it fits into achieving their overall career goals, as well as seeing how other participation brings additional benefits.  Once an individual has signed up with reputation management, not only have they made themselves more visible within the organization and increased their career growth opportunities, they have also enabled a tool that they can use to better understand how their actions and behaviors impact their influence and reputation. Since they will be able to see their reputation and influence measurements change over time, they will gain better insight into how reputation and influence impacts their effectiveness in a role, as well as how their behaviors and skill levels in turn affect their influence and reputation. This insight can trigger much more directed, and effective, efforts by the individual to improve their ability to perform at a higher level and become more productive. The increased sense of autonomy the individual experiences, in linking the insight they gain to the actions and behavior changes they make, greatly enhances their engagement with their role as well as their career prospects within the company. Workforce reputation management takes the wide range of disparate data about the workforce being produced across various social media platforms and transforms it into accessible, relevant, and actionable information that helps the organization achieve its desired business objectives. Social media holds untapped insights about your talent, brand and business, and workforce reputation management can help unlock them. Imagine - if you could find the hidden secrets of your businesses, how much more productive and efficient would your organization be? Mark Bennett is a Director of Product Strategy at Oracle. Mark focuses on setting the strategic vision and direction for tools that help organizations understand, shape, and leverage the capabilities of their workforce to achieve business objectives, as well as help individuals work effectively to achieve their goals and navigate their own growth. His combination of a deep technical background in software design and development, coupled with a broad knowledge of business challenges and thinking in today’s globalized, rapidly changing, technology accelerated economy, has enabled him to identify and incorporate key innovations that are central to Oracle Fusion’s unique value proposition. Mark has over the course of his career been in charge of the design, development, and strategy of Talent Management products and the design and development of cutting edge software that is better equipped to handle the increasingly complex demands of users while also remaining easy to use. Follow him @mpbennett

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  • C#/.NET Fundamentals: Choosing the Right Collection Class

    - by James Michael Hare
    The .NET Base Class Library (BCL) has a wide array of collection classes at your disposal which make it easy to manage collections of objects. While it's great to have so many classes available, it can be daunting to choose the right collection to use for any given situation. As hard as it may be, choosing the right collection can be absolutely key to the performance and maintainability of your application! This post will look at breaking down any confusion between each collection and the situations in which they excel. We will be spending most of our time looking at the System.Collections.Generic namespace, which is the recommended set of collections. The Generic Collections: System.Collections.Generic namespace The generic collections were introduced in .NET 2.0 in the System.Collections.Generic namespace. This is the main body of collections you should tend to focus on first, as they will tend to suit 99% of your needs right up front. It is important to note that the generic collections are unsynchronized. This decision was made for performance reasons because depending on how you are using the collections its completely possible that synchronization may not be required or may be needed on a higher level than simple method-level synchronization. Furthermore, concurrent read access (all writes done at beginning and never again) is always safe, but for concurrent mixed access you should either synchronize the collection or use one of the concurrent collections. So let's look at each of the collections in turn and its various pros and cons, at the end we'll summarize with a table to help make it easier to compare and contrast the different collections. The Associative Collection Classes Associative collections store a value in the collection by providing a key that is used to add/remove/lookup the item. Hence, the container associates the value with the key. These collections are most useful when you need to lookup/manipulate a collection using a key value. For example, if you wanted to look up an order in a collection of orders by an order id, you might have an associative collection where they key is the order id and the value is the order. The Dictionary<TKey,TVale> is probably the most used associative container class. The Dictionary<TKey,TValue> is the fastest class for associative lookups/inserts/deletes because it uses a hash table under the covers. Because the keys are hashed, the key type should correctly implement GetHashCode() and Equals() appropriately or you should provide an external IEqualityComparer to the dictionary on construction. The insert/delete/lookup time of items in the dictionary is amortized constant time - O(1) - which means no matter how big the dictionary gets, the time it takes to find something remains relatively constant. This is highly desirable for high-speed lookups. The only downside is that the dictionary, by nature of using a hash table, is unordered, so you cannot easily traverse the items in a Dictionary in order. The SortedDictionary<TKey,TValue> is similar to the Dictionary<TKey,TValue> in usage but very different in implementation. The SortedDictionary<TKey,TValye> uses a binary tree under the covers to maintain the items in order by the key. As a consequence of sorting, the type used for the key must correctly implement IComparable<TKey> so that the keys can be correctly sorted. The sorted dictionary trades a little bit of lookup time for the ability to maintain the items in order, thus insert/delete/lookup times in a sorted dictionary are logarithmic - O(log n). Generally speaking, with logarithmic time, you can double the size of the collection and it only has to perform one extra comparison to find the item. Use the SortedDictionary<TKey,TValue> when you want fast lookups but also want to be able to maintain the collection in order by the key. The SortedList<TKey,TValue> is the other ordered associative container class in the generic containers. Once again SortedList<TKey,TValue>, like SortedDictionary<TKey,TValue>, uses a key to sort key-value pairs. Unlike SortedDictionary, however, items in a SortedList are stored as an ordered array of items. This means that insertions and deletions are linear - O(n) - because deleting or adding an item may involve shifting all items up or down in the list. Lookup time, however is O(log n) because the SortedList can use a binary search to find any item in the list by its key. So why would you ever want to do this? Well, the answer is that if you are going to load the SortedList up-front, the insertions will be slower, but because array indexing is faster than following object links, lookups are marginally faster than a SortedDictionary. Once again I'd use this in situations where you want fast lookups and want to maintain the collection in order by the key, and where insertions and deletions are rare. The Non-Associative Containers The other container classes are non-associative. They don't use keys to manipulate the collection but rely on the object itself being stored or some other means (such as index) to manipulate the collection. The List<T> is a basic contiguous storage container. Some people may call this a vector or dynamic array. Essentially it is an array of items that grow once its current capacity is exceeded. Because the items are stored contiguously as an array, you can access items in the List<T> by index very quickly. However inserting and removing in the beginning or middle of the List<T> are very costly because you must shift all the items up or down as you delete or insert respectively. However, adding and removing at the end of a List<T> is an amortized constant operation - O(1). Typically List<T> is the standard go-to collection when you don't have any other constraints, and typically we favor a List<T> even over arrays unless we are sure the size will remain absolutely fixed. The LinkedList<T> is a basic implementation of a doubly-linked list. This means that you can add or remove items in the middle of a linked list very quickly (because there's no items to move up or down in contiguous memory), but you also lose the ability to index items by position quickly. Most of the time we tend to favor List<T> over LinkedList<T> unless you are doing a lot of adding and removing from the collection, in which case a LinkedList<T> may make more sense. The HashSet<T> is an unordered collection of unique items. This means that the collection cannot have duplicates and no order is maintained. Logically, this is very similar to having a Dictionary<TKey,TValue> where the TKey and TValue both refer to the same object. This collection is very useful for maintaining a collection of items you wish to check membership against. For example, if you receive an order for a given vendor code, you may want to check to make sure the vendor code belongs to the set of vendor codes you handle. In these cases a HashSet<T> is useful for super-quick lookups where order is not important. Once again, like in Dictionary, the type T should have a valid implementation of GetHashCode() and Equals(), or you should provide an appropriate IEqualityComparer<T> to the HashSet<T> on construction. The SortedSet<T> is to HashSet<T> what the SortedDictionary<TKey,TValue> is to Dictionary<TKey,TValue>. That is, the SortedSet<T> is a binary tree where the key and value are the same object. This once again means that adding/removing/lookups are logarithmic - O(log n) - but you gain the ability to iterate over the items in order. For this collection to be effective, type T must implement IComparable<T> or you need to supply an external IComparer<T>. Finally, the Stack<T> and Queue<T> are two very specific collections that allow you to handle a sequential collection of objects in very specific ways. The Stack<T> is a last-in-first-out (LIFO) container where items are added and removed from the top of the stack. Typically this is useful in situations where you want to stack actions and then be able to undo those actions in reverse order as needed. The Queue<T> on the other hand is a first-in-first-out container which adds items at the end of the queue and removes items from the front. This is useful for situations where you need to process items in the order in which they came, such as a print spooler or waiting lines. So that's the basic collections. Let's summarize what we've learned in a quick reference table.  Collection Ordered? Contiguous Storage? Direct Access? Lookup Efficiency Manipulate Efficiency Notes Dictionary No Yes Via Key Key: O(1) O(1) Best for high performance lookups. SortedDictionary Yes No Via Key Key: O(log n) O(log n) Compromise of Dictionary speed and ordering, uses binary search tree. SortedList Yes Yes Via Key Key: O(log n) O(n) Very similar to SortedDictionary, except tree is implemented in an array, so has faster lookup on preloaded data, but slower loads. List No Yes Via Index Index: O(1) Value: O(n) O(n) Best for smaller lists where direct access required and no ordering. LinkedList No No No Value: O(n) O(1) Best for lists where inserting/deleting in middle is common and no direct access required. HashSet No Yes Via Key Key: O(1) O(1) Unique unordered collection, like a Dictionary except key and value are same object. SortedSet Yes No Via Key Key: O(log n) O(log n) Unique ordered collection, like SortedDictionary except key and value are same object. Stack No Yes Only Top Top: O(1) O(1)* Essentially same as List<T> except only process as LIFO Queue No Yes Only Front Front: O(1) O(1) Essentially same as List<T> except only process as FIFO   The Original Collections: System.Collections namespace The original collection classes are largely considered deprecated by developers and by Microsoft itself. In fact they indicate that for the most part you should always favor the generic or concurrent collections, and only use the original collections when you are dealing with legacy .NET code. Because these collections are out of vogue, let's just briefly mention the original collection and their generic equivalents: ArrayList A dynamic, contiguous collection of objects. Favor the generic collection List<T> instead. Hashtable Associative, unordered collection of key-value pairs of objects. Favor the generic collection Dictionary<TKey,TValue> instead. Queue First-in-first-out (FIFO) collection of objects. Favor the generic collection Queue<T> instead. SortedList Associative, ordered collection of key-value pairs of objects. Favor the generic collection SortedList<T> instead. Stack Last-in-first-out (LIFO) collection of objects. Favor the generic collection Stack<T> instead. In general, the older collections are non-type-safe and in some cases less performant than their generic counterparts. Once again, the only reason you should fall back on these older collections is for backward compatibility with legacy code and libraries only. The Concurrent Collections: System.Collections.Concurrent namespace The concurrent collections are new as of .NET 4.0 and are included in the System.Collections.Concurrent namespace. These collections are optimized for use in situations where multi-threaded read and write access of a collection is desired. The concurrent queue, stack, and dictionary work much as you'd expect. The bag and blocking collection are more unique. Below is the summary of each with a link to a blog post I did on each of them. ConcurrentQueue Thread-safe version of a queue (FIFO). For more information see: C#/.NET Little Wonders: The ConcurrentStack and ConcurrentQueue ConcurrentStack Thread-safe version of a stack (LIFO). For more information see: C#/.NET Little Wonders: The ConcurrentStack and ConcurrentQueue ConcurrentBag Thread-safe unordered collection of objects. Optimized for situations where a thread may be bother reader and writer. For more information see: C#/.NET Little Wonders: The ConcurrentBag and BlockingCollection ConcurrentDictionary Thread-safe version of a dictionary. Optimized for multiple readers (allows multiple readers under same lock). For more information see C#/.NET Little Wonders: The ConcurrentDictionary BlockingCollection Wrapper collection that implement producers & consumers paradigm. Readers can block until items are available to read. Writers can block until space is available to write (if bounded). For more information see C#/.NET Little Wonders: The ConcurrentBag and BlockingCollection Summary The .NET BCL has lots of collections built in to help you store and manipulate collections of data. Understanding how these collections work and knowing in which situations each container is best is one of the key skills necessary to build more performant code. Choosing the wrong collection for the job can make your code much slower or even harder to maintain if you choose one that doesn’t perform as well or otherwise doesn’t exactly fit the situation. Remember to avoid the original collections and stick with the generic collections.  If you need concurrent access, you can use the generic collections if the data is read-only, or consider the concurrent collections for mixed-access if you are running on .NET 4.0 or higher.   Tweet Technorati Tags: C#,.NET,Collecitons,Generic,Concurrent,Dictionary,List,Stack,Queue,SortedList,SortedDictionary,HashSet,SortedSet

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  • Synchronize Data between a Silverlight ListBox and a User Control

    - by psheriff
    One of the great things about XAML is the powerful data-binding capabilities. If you load up a list box with a collection of objects, you can display detail data about each object without writing any C# or VB.NET code. Take a look at Figure 1 that shows a collection of Product objects in a list box. When you click on a list box you bind the current Product object selected in the list box to a set of controls in a user control with just a very simple Binding statement in XAML.  Figure 1: Synchronizing a ListBox to a User Control is easy with Data Binding Product and Products Classes To illustrate this data binding feature I am going to just create some local data instead of using a WCF service. The code below shows a Product class that has three properties, namely, ProductId, ProductName and Price. This class also has a constructor that takes 3 parameters and allows us to set the 3 properties in an instance of our Product class. C#public class Product{  public Product(int productId, string productName, decimal price)  {    ProductId = productId;    ProductName = productName;    Price = price;  }   public int ProductId { get; set; }  public string ProductName { get; set; }  public decimal Price { get; set; }} VBPublic Class Product  Public Sub New(ByVal _productId As Integer, _                 ByVal _productName As String, _                 ByVal _price As Decimal)    ProductId = _productId    ProductName = _productName    Price = _price  End Sub   Private mProductId As Integer  Private mProductName As String  Private mPrice As Decimal   Public Property ProductId() As Integer    Get      Return mProductId    End Get    Set(ByVal value As Integer)      mProductId = value    End Set  End Property   Public Property ProductName() As String    Get      Return mProductName    End Get    Set(ByVal value As String)      mProductName = value    End Set  End Property   Public Property Price() As Decimal    Get      Return mPrice    End Get    Set(ByVal value As Decimal)      mPrice = value    End Set  End PropertyEnd Class To fill up a list box you need a collection class of Product objects. The code below creates a generic collection class of Product objects. In the constructor of the Products class I have hard-coded five product objects and added them to the collection. In a real-world application you would get your data through a call to service to fill the list box, but for simplicity and just to illustrate the data binding, I am going to just hard code the data. C#public class Products : List<Product>{  public Products()  {    this.Add(new Product(1, "Microsoft VS.NET 2008", 1000));    this.Add(new Product(2, "Microsoft VS.NET 2010", 1000));    this.Add(new Product(3, "Microsoft Silverlight 4", 1000));    this.Add(new Product(4, "Fundamentals of N-Tier eBook", 20));    this.Add(new Product(5, "ASP.NET Security eBook", 20));  }} VBPublic Class Products  Inherits List(Of Product)   Public Sub New()    Me.Add(New Product(1, "Microsoft VS.NET 2008", 1000))    Me.Add(New Product(2, "Microsoft VS.NET 2010", 1000))    Me.Add(New Product(3, "Microsoft Silverlight 4", 1000))    Me.Add(New Product(4, "Fundamentals of N-Tier eBook", 20))    Me.Add(New Product(5, "ASP.NET Security eBook", 20))  End SubEnd Class The Product Detail User Control Below is a user control (named ucProduct) that is used to display the product detail information seen in the bottom portion of Figure 1. This is very basic XAML that just creates a text block and a text box control for each of the three properties in the Product class. Notice the {Binding Path=[PropertyName]} on each of the text box controls. This means that if the DataContext property of this user control is set to an instance of a Product class, then the data in the properties of that Product object will be displayed in each of the text boxes. <UserControl x:Class="SL_SyncListBoxAndUserControl_CS.ucProduct"  xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"  xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"  HorizontalAlignment="Left"  VerticalAlignment="Top">  <Grid Margin="4">    <Grid.RowDefinitions>      <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />      <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />      <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />    </Grid.RowDefinitions>    <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>      <ColumnDefinition MinWidth="120" />      <ColumnDefinition />    </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>    <TextBlock Grid.Row="0"               Grid.Column="0"               Text="Product Id" />    <TextBox Grid.Row="0"             Grid.Column="1"             Text="{Binding Path=ProductId}" />    <TextBlock Grid.Row="1"               Grid.Column="0"               Text="Product Name" />    <TextBox Grid.Row="1"             Grid.Column="1"             Text="{Binding Path=ProductName}" />    <TextBlock Grid.Row="2"               Grid.Column="0"               Text="Price" />    <TextBox Grid.Row="2"             Grid.Column="1"             Text="{Binding Path=Price}" />  </Grid></UserControl> Synchronize ListBox with User Control You are now ready to fill the list box with the collection class of Product objects and then bind the SelectedItem of the list box to the Product detail user control. The XAML below is the complete code for Figure 1. <UserControl x:Class="SL_SyncListBoxAndUserControl_CS.MainPage"  xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"  xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"  xmlns:src="clr-namespace:SL_SyncListBoxAndUserControl_CS"  VerticalAlignment="Top"  HorizontalAlignment="Left">  <UserControl.Resources>    <src:Products x:Key="productCollection" />  </UserControl.Resources>  <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot"        Margin="4"        Background="White">    <Grid.RowDefinitions>      <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />      <RowDefinition Height="*" />    </Grid.RowDefinitions>    <ListBox x:Name="lstData"             Grid.Row="0"             BorderBrush="Black"             BorderThickness="1"             ItemsSource="{Binding                   Source={StaticResource productCollection}}"             DisplayMemberPath="ProductName" />    <src:ucProduct x:Name="prodDetail"                   Grid.Row="1"                   DataContext="{Binding ElementName=lstData,                                          Path=SelectedItem}" />  </Grid></UserControl> The first step to making this happen is to reference the Silverlight project (SL_SyncListBoxAndUserControl_CS) where the Product and Products classes are located. I added this namespace and assigned it a namespace prefix of “src” as shown in the line below: xmlns:src="clr-namespace:SL_SyncListBoxAndUserControl_CS" Next, to use the data from an instance of the Products collection, you create a UserControl.Resources section in the XAML and add a tag that creates an instance of the Products class and assigns it a key of “productCollection”.   <UserControl.Resources>    <src:Products x:Key="productCollection" />  </UserControl.Resources> Next, you bind the list box to this productCollection object using the ItemsSource property. You bind the ItemsSource of the list box to the static resource named productCollection. You can then set the DisplayMemberPath attribute of the list box to any property of the Product class that you want. In the XAML below I used the ProductName property. <ListBox x:Name="lstData"         ItemsSource="{Binding             Source={StaticResource productCollection}}"         DisplayMemberPath="ProductName" /> You now need to create an instance of the ucProduct user contol below the list box. You do this by once again referencing the “src” namespace and typing in the name of the user control. You then set the DataContext property on this user control to a binding. The binding uses the ElementName attribute to bind to the list box name, in this case “lstData”. The Path of the data is SelectedItem. These two attributes together tell Silverlight to bind the DataContext to the selected item of the list box. That selected item is a Product object. So, once this is bound, the bindings on each text box in the user control are updated and display the current product information. <src:ucProduct x:Name="prodDetail"               DataContext="{Binding ElementName=lstData,                                      Path=SelectedItem}" /> Summary Once you understand the basics of data binding in XAML, you eliminate a lot code that is otherwise needed to move data into controls and out of controls back into an object. Connecting two controls together is easy by just binding using the ElementName and Path properties of the Binding markup extension. Another good tip out of this blog is use user controls and set the DataContext of the user control to have all of the data on the user control update through the bindings. NOTE: You can download the complete sample code (in both VB and C#) at my website. http://www.pdsa.com/downloads. Choose Tips & Tricks, then "SL – Synchronize List Box Data with User Control" from the drop-down. Good Luck with your Coding,Paul Sheriff ** SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY BLOG READERS **Visit http://www.pdsa.com/Event/Blog for a free eBook on "Fundamentals of N-Tier".

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  • XMI format error loading project on argouml

    - by Tom Brito
    Have anyone experienced this (org.argouml.model.)XmiException opening a project lastest version of argouml? XMI format error : org.argouml.model.XmiException: XMI parsing error at line: 18: Cannot set a multi-value to a non-multivalued reference:namespace If this file was produced by a tool other than ArgoUML, please check to make sure that the file is in a supported format, including both UML and XMI versions. If you believe that the file is legal UML/XMI and should have loaded or if it was produced by any version of ArgoUML, please report the problem as a bug by going to http://argouml.tigris.org/project_bugs.html. System Info: ArgoUML version : 0.30 Java Version : 1.6.0_15 Java Vendor : Sun Microsystems Inc. Java Vendor URL : http://java.sun.com/ Java Home Directory : /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.15/jre Java Classpath : /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.15/jre/lib/deploy.jar Operation System : Linux, Version 2.6.31-20-generic Architecture : i386 User Name : wellington User Home Directory : /home/wellington Current Directory : /home/wellington JVM Total Memory : 34271232 JVM Free Memory : 10512336 Error occurred at : Thu Apr 01 11:21:10 BRT 2010 Cause : org.argouml.model.XmiException: XMI parsing error at line: 18: Cannot set a multi-value to a non-multivalued reference:namespace at org.argouml.model.mdr.XmiReaderImpl.parse(XmiReaderImpl.java:307) at org.argouml.persistence.ModelMemberFilePersister.readModels(ModelMemberFilePersister.java:273) at org.argouml.persistence.XmiFilePersister.doLoad(XmiFilePersister.java:261) at org.argouml.ui.ProjectBrowser.loadProject(ProjectBrowser.java:1597) at org.argouml.ui.LoadSwingWorker.construct(LoadSwingWorker.java:89) at org.argouml.ui.SwingWorker.doConstruct(SwingWorker.java:153) at org.argouml.ui.SwingWorker$2.run(SwingWorker.java:281) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619) Caused by: org.netbeans.lib.jmi.util.DebugException: Cannot set a multi-value to a non-multivalued reference:namespace at org.netbeans.lib.jmi.xmi.XmiSAXReader.startElement(XmiSAXReader.java:232) at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.AbstractSAXParser.startElement(AbstractSAXParser.java:501) at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanStartElement(XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.java:1359) at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl$FragmentContentDriver.next(XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.java:2747) at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentScannerImpl.next(XMLDocumentScannerImpl.java:648) at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanDocument(XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.java:510) at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(XML11Configuration.java:807) at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(XML11Configuration.java:737) at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XMLParser.parse(XMLParser.java:107) at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.AbstractSAXParser.parse(AbstractSAXParser.java:1205) at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.jaxp.SAXParserImpl$JAXPSAXParser.parse(SAXParserImpl.java:522) at javax.xml.parsers.SAXParser.parse(SAXParser.java:395) at org.netbeans.lib.jmi.xmi.XmiSAXReader.read(XmiSAXReader.java:136) at org.netbeans.lib.jmi.xmi.XmiSAXReader.read(XmiSAXReader.java:98) at org.netbeans.lib.jmi.xmi.SAXReader.read(SAXReader.java:56) at org.argouml.model.mdr.XmiReaderImpl.parse(XmiReaderImpl.java:233) ... 7 more Caused by: org.netbeans.lib.jmi.util.DebugException: Cannot set a multi-value to a non-multivalued reference:namespace at org.netbeans.lib.jmi.xmi.XmiElement$Instance.setReferenceValues(XmiElement.java:699) at org.netbeans.lib.jmi.xmi.XmiElement$Instance.resolveAttributeValue(XmiElement.java:772) at org.netbeans.lib.jmi.xmi.XmiElement$Instance. (XmiElement.java:496) at org.netbeans.lib.jmi.xmi.XmiContext.resolveInstanceOrReference(XmiContext.java:688) at org.netbeans.lib.jmi.xmi.XmiElement$ObjectValues.startSubElement(XmiElement.java:1460) at org.netbeans.lib.jmi.xmi.XmiSAXReader.startElement(XmiSAXReader.java:219) ... 22 more ------- Full exception : org.argouml.persistence.XmiFormatException: org.argouml.model.XmiException: XMI parsing error at line: 18: Cannot set a multi-value to a non-multivalued reference:namespace at org.argouml.persistence.ModelMemberFilePersister.readModels(ModelMemberFilePersister.java:298) at org.argouml.persistence.XmiFilePersister.doLoad(XmiFilePersister.java:261) at org.argouml.ui.ProjectBrowser.loadProject(ProjectBrowser.java:1597) at org.argouml.ui.LoadSwingWorker.construct(LoadSwingWorker.java:89) at org.argouml.ui.SwingWorker.doConstruct(SwingWorker.java:153) at org.argouml.ui.SwingWorker$2.run(SwingWorker.java:281) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619) Caused by: org.argouml.model.XmiException: XMI parsing error at line: 18: Cannot set a multi-value to a non-multivalued reference:namespace at org.argouml.model.mdr.XmiReaderImpl.parse(XmiReaderImpl.java:307) at org.argouml.persistence.ModelMemberFilePersister.readModels(ModelMemberFilePersister.java:273) ... 6 more Caused by: org.netbeans.lib.jmi.util.DebugException: Cannot set a multi-value to a non-multivalued reference:namespace at org.netbeans.lib.jmi.xmi.XmiSAXReader.startElement(XmiSAXReader.java:232) at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.AbstractSAXParser.startElement(AbstractSAXParser.java:501) at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanStartElement(XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.java:1359) at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl$FragmentContentDriver.next(XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.java:2747) at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentScannerImpl.next(XMLDocumentScannerImpl.java:648) at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanDocument(XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.java:510) at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(XML11Configuration.java:807) at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(XML11Configuration.java:737) at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.XMLParser.parse(XMLParser.java:107) at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.parsers.AbstractSAXParser.parse(AbstractSAXParser.java:1205) at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.jaxp.SAXParserImpl$JAXPSAXParser.parse(SAXParserImpl.java:522) at javax.xml.parsers.SAXParser.parse(SAXParser.java:395) at org.netbeans.lib.jmi.xmi.XmiSAXReader.read(XmiSAXReader.java:136) at org.netbeans.lib.jmi.xmi.XmiSAXReader.read(XmiSAXReader.java:98) at org.netbeans.lib.jmi.xmi.SAXReader.read(SAXReader.java:56) at org.argouml.model.mdr.XmiReaderImpl.parse(XmiReaderImpl.java:233) ... 7 more Caused by: org.netbeans.lib.jmi.util.DebugException: Cannot set a multi-value to a non-multivalued reference:namespace at org.netbeans.lib.jmi.xmi.XmiElement$Instance.setReferenceValues(XmiElement.java:699) at org.netbeans.lib.jmi.xmi.XmiElement$Instance.resolveAttributeValue(XmiElement.java:772) at org.netbeans.lib.jmi.xmi.XmiElement$Instance. (XmiElement.java:496) at org.netbeans.lib.jmi.xmi.XmiContext.resolveInstanceOrReference(XmiContext.java:688) at org.netbeans.lib.jmi.xmi.XmiElement$ObjectValues.startSubElement(XmiElement.java:1460) at org.netbeans.lib.jmi.xmi.XmiSAXReader.startElement(XmiSAXReader.java:219) ... 22 more the original project was created on argo v0.28.1, and (as I remember) have only use case diagrams. and yes, I'll report at the specified argo website either.. :) But anyone know anything about this exception?

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  • Stored Procedures with SSRS? Hmm… not so much

    - by Rob Farley
    Little Bobby Tables’ mother says you should always sanitise your data input. Except that I think she’s wrong. The SQL Injection aspect is for another post, where I’ll show you why I think SQL Injection is the same kind of attack as many other attacks, such as the old buffer overflow, but here I want to have a bit of a whinge about the way that some people sanitise data input, and even have a whinge about people who insist on using stored procedures for SSRS reports. Let me say that again, in case you missed it the first time: I want to have a whinge about people who insist on using stored procedures for SSRS reports. Let’s look at the data input sanitisation aspect – except that I’m going to call it ‘parameter validation’. I’m talking about code that looks like this: create procedure dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomdate datetime) as begin     /* First check that @eomdate is a valid date */     if isdate(@eomdate) != 1     begin         select 'Please enter a valid date' as ErrorMessage;         return;     end     /* Then check that time has passed since @eomdate */     if datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) < 5     begin         select 'Sorry - EOM is not complete yet' as ErrorMessage;         return;     end         /* If those checks have succeeded, return the data */     select SalesPersonID, count(*) as NumSales, sum(TotalDue) as TotalSales     from Sales.SalesOrderHeader     where OrderDate >= dateadd(month,-1,@eomdate)         and OrderDate < @eomdate     group by SalesPersonID     order by SalesPersonID; end Notice that the code checks that a date has been entered. Seriously??!! This must only be to check for NULL values being passed in, because anything else would have to be a valid datetime to avoid an error. The other check is maybe fair enough, but I still don’t like it. The two problems I have with this stored procedure are the result sets and the small fact that the stored procedure even exists in the first place. But let’s consider the first one of these problems for starters. I’ll get to the second one in a moment. If you read Jes Borland (@grrl_geek)’s recent post about returning multiple result sets in Reporting Services, you’ll be aware that Reporting Services doesn’t support multiple results sets from a single query. And when it says ‘single query’, it includes ‘stored procedure call’. It’ll only handle the first result set that comes back. But that’s okay – we have RETURN statements, so our stored procedure will only ever return a single result set.  Sometimes that result set might contain a single field called ErrorMessage, but it’s still only one result set. Except that it’s not okay, because Reporting Services needs to know what fields to expect. Your report needs to hook into your fields, so SSRS needs to have a way to get that information. For stored procs, it uses an option called FMTONLY. When Reporting Services tries to figure out what fields are going to be returned by a query (or stored procedure call), it doesn’t want to have to run the whole thing. That could take ages. (Maybe it’s seen some of the stored procedures I’ve had to deal with over the years!) So it turns on FMTONLY before it makes the call (and turns it off again afterwards). FMTONLY is designed to be able to figure out the shape of the output, without actually running the contents. It’s very useful, you might think. set fmtonly on exec dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson '20030401'; set fmtonly off Without the FMTONLY lines, this stored procedure returns a result set that has three columns and fourteen rows. But with FMTONLY turned on, those rows don’t come back. But what I do get back hurts Reporting Services. It doesn’t run the stored procedure at all. It just looks for anything that could be returned and pushes out a result set in that shape. Despite the fact that I’ve made sure that the logic will only ever return a single result set, the FMTONLY option kills me by returning three of them. It would have been much better to push these checks down into the query itself. alter procedure dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomdate datetime) as begin     select SalesPersonID, count(*) as NumSales, sum(TotalDue) as TotalSales     from Sales.SalesOrderHeader     where     /* Make sure that @eomdate is valid */         isdate(@eomdate) = 1     /* And that it's sufficiently past */     and datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) >= 5     /* And now use it in the filter as appropriate */     and OrderDate >= dateadd(month,-1,@eomdate)     and OrderDate < @eomdate     group by SalesPersonID     order by SalesPersonID; end Now if we run it with FMTONLY turned on, we get the single result set back. But let’s consider the execution plan when we pass in an invalid date. First let’s look at one that returns data. I’ve got a semi-useful index in place on OrderDate, which includes the SalesPersonID and TotalDue fields. It does the job, despite a hefty Sort operation. …compared to one that uses a future date: You might notice that the estimated costs are similar – the Index Seek is still 28%, the Sort is still 71%. But the size of that arrow coming out of the Index Seek is a whole bunch smaller. The coolest thing here is what’s going on with that Index Seek. Let’s look at some of the properties of it. Glance down it with me… Estimated CPU cost of 0.0005728, 387 estimated rows, estimated subtree cost of 0.0044385, ForceSeek false, Number of Executions 0. That’s right – it doesn’t run. So much for reading plans right-to-left... The key is the Filter on the left of it. It has a Startup Expression Predicate in it, which means that it doesn’t call anything further down the plan (to the right) if the predicate evaluates to false. Using this method, we can make sure that our stored procedure contains a single query, and therefore avoid any problems with multiple result sets. If we wanted, we could always use UNION ALL to make sure that we can return an appropriate error message. alter procedure dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomdate datetime) as begin     select SalesPersonID, count(*) as NumSales, sum(TotalDue) as TotalSales, /*Placeholder: */ '' as ErrorMessage     from Sales.SalesOrderHeader     where     /* Make sure that @eomdate is valid */         isdate(@eomdate) = 1     /* And that it's sufficiently past */     and datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) >= 5     /* And now use it in the filter as appropriate */     and OrderDate >= dateadd(month,-1,@eomdate)     and OrderDate < @eomdate     group by SalesPersonID     /* Now include the error messages */     union all     select 0, 0, 0, 'Please enter a valid date' as ErrorMessage     where isdate(@eomdate) != 1     union all     select 0, 0, 0, 'Sorry - EOM is not complete yet' as ErrorMessage     where datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) < 5     order by SalesPersonID; end But still I don’t like it, because it’s now a stored procedure with a single query. And I don’t like stored procedures that should be functions. That’s right – I think this should be a function, and SSRS should call the function. And I apologise to those of you who are now planning a bonfire for me. Guy Fawkes’ night has already passed this year, so I think you miss out. (And I’m not going to remind you about when the PASS Summit is in 2012.) create function dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomdate datetime) returns table as return (     select SalesPersonID, count(*) as NumSales, sum(TotalDue) as TotalSales, '' as ErrorMessage     from Sales.SalesOrderHeader     where     /* Make sure that @eomdate is valid */         isdate(@eomdate) = 1     /* And that it's sufficiently past */     and datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) >= 5     /* And now use it in the filter as appropriate */     and OrderDate >= dateadd(month,-1,@eomdate)     and OrderDate < @eomdate     group by SalesPersonID     union all     select 0, 0, 0, 'Please enter a valid date' as ErrorMessage     where isdate(@eomdate) != 1     union all     select 0, 0, 0, 'Sorry - EOM is not complete yet' as ErrorMessage     where datediff(day,@eomdate,sysdatetime()) < 5 ); We’ve had to lose the ORDER BY – but that’s fine, as that’s a client thing anyway. We can have our reports leverage this stored query still, but we’re recognising that it’s a query, not a procedure. A procedure is designed to DO stuff, not just return data. We even get entries in sys.columns that confirm what the shape of the result set actually is, which makes sense, because a table-valued function is the right mechanism to return data. And we get so much more flexibility with this. If you haven’t seen the simplification stuff that I’ve preached on before, jump over to http://bit.ly/SimpleRob and watch the video of when I broke a microphone and nearly fell off the stage in Wales. You’ll see the impact of being able to have a simplifiable query. You can also read the procedural functions post I wrote recently, if you didn’t follow the link from a few paragraphs ago. So if we want the list of SalesPeople that made any kind of sales in a given month, we can do something like: select SalesPersonID from dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomonth) order by SalesPersonID; This doesn’t need to look up the TotalDue field, which makes a simpler plan. select * from dbo.GetMonthSummaryPerSalesPerson(@eomonth) where SalesPersonID is not null order by SalesPersonID; This one can avoid having to do the work on the rows that don’t have a SalesPersonID value, pushing the predicate into the Index Seek rather than filtering the results that come back to the report. If we had joins involved, we might see some of those being simplified out. We also get the ability to include query hints in individual reports. We shift from having a single-use stored procedure to having a reusable stored query – and isn’t that one of the main points of modularisation? Stored procedures in Reporting Services are just a bit limited for my liking. They’re useful in plenty of ways, but if you insist on using stored procedures all the time rather that queries that use functions – that’s rubbish. @rob_farley

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  • What's the best name for a non-mutating "add" method on an immutable collection?

    - by Jon Skeet
    Sorry for the waffly title - if I could come up with a concise title, I wouldn't have to ask the question. Suppose I have an immutable list type. It has an operation Foo(x) which returns a new immutable list with the specified argument as an extra element at the end. So to build up a list of strings with values "Hello", "immutable", "world" you could write: var empty = new ImmutableList<string>(); var list1 = empty.Foo("Hello"); var list2 = list1.Foo("immutable"); var list3 = list2.Foo("word"); (This is C# code, and I'm most interested in a C# suggestion if you feel the language is important. It's not fundamentally a language question, but the idioms of the language may be important.) The important thing is that the existing lists are not altered by Foo - so empty.Count would still return 0. Another (more idiomatic) way of getting to the end result would be: var list = new ImmutableList<string>().Foo("Hello"); .Foo("immutable"); .Foo("word"); My question is: what's the best name for Foo? EDIT 3: As I reveal later on, the name of the type might not actually be ImmutableList<T>, which makes the position clear. Imagine instead that it's TestSuite and that it's immutable because the whole of the framework it's a part of is immutable... (End of edit 3) Options I've come up with so far: Add: common in .NET, but implies mutation of the original list Cons: I believe this is the normal name in functional languages, but meaningless to those without experience in such languages Plus: my favourite so far, it doesn't imply mutation to me. Apparently this is also used in Haskell but with slightly different expectations (a Haskell programmer might expect it to add two lists together rather than adding a single value to the other list). With: consistent with some other immutable conventions, but doesn't have quite the same "additionness" to it IMO. And: not very descriptive. Operator overload for + : I really don't like this much; I generally think operators should only be applied to lower level types. I'm willing to be persuaded though! The criteria I'm using for choosing are: Gives the correct impression of the result of the method call (i.e. that it's the original list with an extra element) Makes it as clear as possible that it doesn't mutate the existing list Sounds reasonable when chained together as in the second example above Please ask for more details if I'm not making myself clear enough... EDIT 1: Here's my reasoning for preferring Plus to Add. Consider these two lines of code: list.Add(foo); list.Plus(foo); In my view (and this is a personal thing) the latter is clearly buggy - it's like writing "x + 5;" as a statement on its own. The first line looks like it's okay, until you remember that it's immutable. In fact, the way that the plus operator on its own doesn't mutate its operands is another reason why Plus is my favourite. Without the slight ickiness of operator overloading, it still gives the same connotations, which include (for me) not mutating the operands (or method target in this case). EDIT 2: Reasons for not liking Add. Various answers are effectively: "Go with Add. That's what DateTime does, and String has Replace methods etc which don't make the immutability obvious." I agree - there's precedence here. However, I've seen plenty of people call DateTime.Add or String.Replace and expect mutation. There are loads of newsgroup questions (and probably SO ones if I dig around) which are answered by "You're ignoring the return value of String.Replace; strings are immutable, a new string gets returned." Now, I should reveal a subtlety to the question - the type might not actually be an immutable list, but a different immutable type. In particular, I'm working on a benchmarking framework where you add tests to a suite, and that creates a new suite. It might be obvious that: var list = new ImmutableList<string>(); list.Add("foo"); isn't going to accomplish anything, but it becomes a lot murkier when you change it to: var suite = new TestSuite<string, int>(); suite.Add(x => x.Length); That looks like it should be okay. Whereas this, to me, makes the mistake clearer: var suite = new TestSuite<string, int>(); suite.Plus(x => x.Length); That's just begging to be: var suite = new TestSuite<string, int>().Plus(x => x.Length); Ideally, I would like my users not to have to be told that the test suite is immutable. I want them to fall into the pit of success. This may not be possible, but I'd like to try. I apologise for over-simplifying the original question by talking only about an immutable list type. Not all collections are quite as self-descriptive as ImmutableList<T> :)

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  • Debugging cucumber/gem dependencies

    - by mobmad
    How do you debug and fix gem errors like below? Although the below case is very specific, I'm also looking for solution to related problems like "gem already activated [...]", and resources to gem management/debugging. mycomputer:projectfolder username$ cucumber features Using the default profile... WARNING: No DRb server is running. Running features locally: /Users/username/.gem/ruby/1.8/gems/rails-2.3.5/lib/rails/gem_dependency.rb:119:Warning: Gem::Dependency#version_requirements is deprecated and will be removed on or after August 2010. Use #requirement can't activate , already activated ruby-hmac-0.4.0 (Gem::Exception) /Users/username/.gem/ruby/1.8/gems/rails-2.3.5/lib/rails/gem_dependency.rb:101:in `specification' /Users/username/.gem/ruby/1.8/gems/rails-2.3.5/lib/rails/plugin/locator.rb:81:in `plugins' /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `inject' /Users/username/.gem/ruby/1.8/gems/rails-2.3.5/lib/rails/plugin/locator.rb:81:in `each' /Users/username/.gem/ruby/1.8/gems/rails-2.3.5/lib/rails/plugin/locator.rb:81:in `inject' /Users/username/.gem/ruby/1.8/gems/rails-2.3.5/lib/rails/plugin/locator.rb:81:in `plugins' /Users/username/.gem/ruby/1.8/gems/rails-2.3.5/lib/rails/plugin/loader.rb:109:in `locate_plugins' /Users/username/.gem/ruby/1.8/gems/rails-2.3.5/lib/rails/plugin/loader.rb:108:in `map' /Users/username/.gem/ruby/1.8/gems/rails-2.3.5/lib/rails/plugin/loader.rb:108:in `locate_plugins' /Users/username/.gem/ruby/1.8/gems/rails-2.3.5/lib/rails/plugin/loader.rb:32:in `all_plugins' /Users/username/.gem/ruby/1.8/gems/rails-2.3.5/lib/rails/plugin/loader.rb:22:in `plugins' /Users/username/.gem/ruby/1.8/gems/rails-2.3.5/lib/rails/plugin/loader.rb:53:in `add_plugin_load_paths' /Users/username/.gem/ruby/1.8/gems/rails-2.3.5/lib/initializer.rb:294:in `add_plugin_load_paths' /Users/username/.gem/ruby/1.8/gems/rails-2.3.5/lib/initializer.rb:136:in `process' /Users/username/.gem/ruby/1.8/gems/rails-2.3.5/lib/initializer.rb:113:in `send' /Users/username/.gem/ruby/1.8/gems/rails-2.3.5/lib/initializer.rb:113:in `run' /Users/username/Documents/projectfolder.0/sites/projectfolder/config/environment.rb:9 /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `gem_original_require' /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `polyglot_original_require' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/polyglot-0.2.9/lib/polyglot.rb:70:in `require' ./features/support/env.rb:12 /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/spork-0.7.5/lib/spork.rb:23:in `prefork' ./features/support/env.rb:9 /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `gem_original_require' /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `polyglot_original_require' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/polyglot-0.2.9/lib/polyglot.rb:70:in `require' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/cucumber-0.4.4/bin/../lib/cucumber/rb_support/rb_language.rb:124:in `load_code_file' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/cucumber-0.4.4/bin/../lib/cucumber/step_mother.rb:84:in `load_code_file' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/cucumber-0.4.4/bin/../lib/cucumber/step_mother.rb:76:in `load_code_files' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/cucumber-0.4.4/bin/../lib/cucumber/step_mother.rb:75:in `each' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/cucumber-0.4.4/bin/../lib/cucumber/step_mother.rb:75:in `load_code_files' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/cucumber-0.4.4/bin/../lib/cucumber/cli/main.rb:47:in `execute!' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/cucumber-0.4.4/bin/../lib/cucumber/cli/main.rb:24:in `execute' /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/cucumber-0.4.4/bin/cucumber:8 /usr/bin/cucumber:19:in `load' /usr/bin/cucumber:19 And this is the output from gem list actionmailer (2.3.5, 2.2.2, 1.3.6) actionpack (2.3.5, 2.2.2, 1.13.6) actionwebservice (1.2.6) activerecord (2.3.5, 2.2.2, 1.15.6) activeresource (2.3.5, 2.2.2) activesupport (2.3.5, 2.2.2, 1.4.4) acts_as_ferret (0.4.4, 0.4.3) adamwiggins-rest-client (1.0.4) aslakhellesoy-webrat (0.4.4.1) aslakjo-comatose (2.0.5.12) authlogic (2.1.3) authlogic-oid (1.0.4) builder (2.1.2) capistrano (2.5.17, 2.5.2) cgi_multipart_eof_fix (2.5.0) configuration (1.1.0) cucumber (0.4.4) cucumber-rails (0.3.0) daemons (1.0.10) database_cleaner (0.5.0) diff-lcs (1.1.2) dnssd (1.3.1, 0.6.0) fakeweb (1.2.8) fastthread (1.0.7, 1.0.1) fcgi (0.8.8, 0.8.7) ferret (0.11.6) gem_plugin (0.2.3) gemcutter (0.4.1) heroku (1.8.0) highline (1.5.2, 1.5.0) hoe (2.5.0) hpricot (0.8.2, 0.6.164) json (1.2.2) json_pure (1.2.2) launchy (0.3.5) libxml-ruby (1.1.3, 1.1.2) linecache (0.43) log4r (1.1.5) mime-types (1.16) mongrel (1.1.5) mysql (2.8.1) needle (1.3.0) net-scp (1.0.2, 1.0.1) net-sftp (2.0.4, 2.0.1, 1.1.1) net-ssh (2.0.20, 2.0.4, 1.1.4) net-ssh-gateway (1.0.1, 1.0.0) nifty-generators (0.3.2) nokogiri (1.4.1) oauth (0.3.6) oniguruma (1.1.0) plist (3.1.0) polyglot (0.2.9) rack (1.1.0, 1.0.1) rack-test (0.5.3) rails (2.3.5, 2.2.2, 1.2.6) rake (0.8.7, 0.8.3) RedCloth (4.2.2, 4.1.1) rest-client (1.4.0) rspec (1.3.0) rspec-rails (1.3.2) ruby-activeldap (0.8.3.1) ruby-debug-base (0.10.3) ruby-debug-ide (0.4.9) ruby-hmac (0.4.0) ruby-net-ldap (0.0.4) ruby-openid (2.1.7, 2.1.2) ruby-yadis (0.3.4) rubyforge (2.0.4) rubygems-update (1.3.6) rubynode (0.1.5) rubyzip (0.9.4) sanitize (1.2.0) sequel (3.0.0) sinatra (0.9.2) spork (0.7.5) sqlite3-ruby (1.2.5, 1.2.4) taps (0.2.26) term-ansicolor (1.0.4) termios (0.9.4) textpow (0.10.1) thor (0.9.9) treetop (1.4.2) twitter4r (0.3.2, 0.3.1) ultraviolet (0.10.2) webrat (0.7.0) will_paginate (2.3.12) xmpp4r (0.5, 0.4)

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  • std::basic_stringstream<unsigned char> won't compile with MSVC 10

    - by Michael J
    I'm trying to get UTF-8 chars to co-exist with ANSI 8-bit chars. My strategy has been to represent utf-8 chars as unsigned char so that appropriate overloads of functions can be used for the two character types. e.g. namespace MyStuff { typedef uchar utf8_t; typedef std::basic_string<utf8_t> U8string; } void SomeFunc(std::string &s); void SomeFunc(std::wstring &s); void SomeFunc(MyStuff::U8string &s); This all works pretty well until I try to use a stringstream. std::basic_ostringstream<MyStuff::utf8_t> ostr; ostr << 1; MSVC Visual C++ Express V10 won't compile this: c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 10.0\vc\include\xlocmon(213): warning C4273: 'id' : inconsistent dll linkage c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 10.0\vc\include\xlocnum(65) : see previous definition of 'public: static std::locale::id std::numpunct<unsigned char>::id' c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 10.0\vc\include\xlocnum(65) : while compiling class template static data member 'std::locale::id std::numpunct<_Elem>::id' with [ _Elem=Tk::utf8_t ] c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 10.0\vc\include\xlocnum(1149) : see reference to function template instantiation 'const _Facet &std::use_facet<std::numpunct<_Elem>>(const std::locale &)' being compiled with [ _Facet=std::numpunct<Tk::utf8_t>, _Elem=Tk::utf8_t ] c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 10.0\vc\include\xlocnum(1143) : while compiling class template member function 'std::ostreambuf_iterator<_Elem,_Traits> std::num_put<_Elem,_OutIt>:: do_put(_OutIt,std::ios_base &,_Elem,std::_Bool) const' with [ _Elem=Tk::utf8_t, _Traits=std::char_traits<Tk::utf8_t>, _OutIt=std::ostreambuf_iterator<Tk::utf8_t,std::char_traits<Tk::utf8_t>> ] c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 10.0\vc\include\ostream(295) : see reference to class template instantiation 'std::num_put<_Elem,_OutIt>' being compiled with [ _Elem=Tk::utf8_t, _OutIt=std::ostreambuf_iterator<Tk::utf8_t,std::char_traits<Tk::utf8_t>> ] c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 10.0\vc\include\ostream(281) : while compiling class template member function 'std::basic_ostream<_Elem,_Traits> & std::basic_ostream<_Elem,_Traits>::operator <<(int)' with [ _Elem=Tk::utf8_t, _Traits=std::char_traits<Tk::utf8_t> ] c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 10.0\vc\include\sstream(526) : see reference to class template instantiation 'std::basic_ostream<_Elem,_Traits>' being compiled with [ _Elem=Tk::utf8_t, _Traits=std::char_traits<Tk::utf8_t> ] c:\users\michael\dvl\tmp\console\console.cpp(23) : see reference to class template instantiation 'std::basic_ostringstream<_Elem,_Traits,_Alloc>' being compiled with [ _Elem=Tk::utf8_t, _Traits=std::char_traits<Tk::utf8_t>, _Alloc=std::allocator<uchar> ] . c:\program files\microsoft visual studio 10.0\vc\include\xlocmon(213): error C2491: 'std::numpunct<_Elem>::id' : definition of dllimport static data member not allowed with [ _Elem=Tk::utf8_t ] Any ideas? ** Edited 19 June 2012 ** OK, I've gotten closer to understanding this, but not how to solve it. As we all know, static class variables get defined twice: once in the class definition and once outside the class definition which establishes storage space. e.g. // in .h file class CFoo { // ... static int x; }; // in .cpp file int CFoo::x = 42; Now in the VC10 headers we get something like this: template<class _Elem> class numpunct : public locale::facet { // ... _CRTIMP2_PURE static locale::id id; // ... } When the header is included in an application, _CRTIMP2_PURE is defined as __declspec(dllimport), which means that the variable is imported from a dll. Now the header also contains the following template<class _Elem> locale::id numpunct<_Elem>::id; Note the absence of the __declspec(dllimport) qualifier. i.e. The class declaration says that the static linkage of the id variable is in the dll, but for the general case, it gets declared outside the dll. For the known cases, there are specialisations. template locale::id numpunct<char>::id; template locale::id numpunct<wchar_t>::id; These are protected by #ifs so that they are only included when building the DLL. They are excluded otherwise. i.e. the char and wchar_t versions of numpunct ARE inside the dll So we have the class definition saying that id's storage is in the DLL, but that is only true for the char and wchar_t specialisations, meaning that my unsigned char version is doomed. :-( The only way forward that I can think of is to create my own specialisation: basically copying it from the header file and fixing it. This raises many issues. Anybody have a better idea?

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, January 13, 2011

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, January 13, 2011Popular ReleasesMVC Music Store: MVC Music Store v2.0: This is the 2.0 release of the MVC Music Store Tutorial. This tutorial is updated for ASP.NET MVC 3 and Entity Framework Code-First, and contains fixes and improvements based on feedback and common questions from previous releases. The main download, MvcMusicStore-v2.0.zip, contains everything you need to build the sample application, including A detailed tutorial document in PDF format Assets you will need to build the project, including images, a stylesheet, and a pre-populated databas...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts v3.6.7 GA Released: Hi, Today we are releasing Visifire 3.6.7 GA with the following feature: * Inlines property has been implemented in Title. Also, this release contains fix for the following bugs: * In Column and Bar chart DataPoint’s label properties were not working as expected at real-time if marker enabled was set to true. * 3D Column and Bar chart were not rendered properly if AxisMinimum property was set in x-axis. You can download Visifire v3.6.7 here. Cheers, Team VisifireFluent Validation for .NET: 2.0: Changes since 2.0 RC Fix typo in the name of FallbackAwareResourceAccessorBuilder Fix issue #7062 - allow validator selectors to work against nullable properties with overriden names. Fix error in German localization. Better support for client-side validation messages in MVC integration. All changes since 1.3 Allow custom MVC ModelValidators to be added to the FVModelValidatorProvider Support resource provider for custom property validators through the new IResourceAccessorBuilder ...EnhSim: EnhSim 2.3.2 ALPHA: 2.3.1 ALPHAThis release supports WoW patch 4.03a at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Quick update to ...ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome, jQuery Ajax helpers (controls): 1.6: A rich set of helpers (controls) that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. These helpers include Autocomplete, AjaxDropdown, Lookup, Confirm Dialog, Popup Form, Popup and Pager new stuff: paging for the lookup lookup with multiselect changes: the css classes used by the framework where renamed to be more standard the lookup controller requries an item.ascx (no more ViewData["structure"]), and LookupList action renamed to Search all the...pwTools: pwTools: Changelog v1.0 base release??????????: All-In-One Code Framework ??? 2011-01-12: 2011???????All-In-One Code Framework(??) 2011?1??????!!http://i3.codeplex.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=1code&DownloadId=128165 ?????release?,???????ASP.NET, AJAX, WinForm, Windows Shell????13?Sample Code。???,??????????sample code。 ?????:http://blog.csdn.net/sjb5201/archive/2011/01/13/6135037.aspx ??,??????MSDN????????????。 http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/zh-CN/codezhchs/threads ?????????????????,??Email ????patterns & practices – Enterprise Library: Enterprise Library 5.0 - Extensibility Labs: This is a preview release of the Hands-on Labs to help you learn and practice different ways the Enterprise Library can be extended. Learning MapCustom exception handler (estimated time to complete: 1 hr 15 mins) Custom logging trace listener (1 hr) Custom configuration source (registry-based) (30 mins) System requirementsEnterprise Library 5.0 / Unity 2.0 installed SQL Express 2008 installed Visual Studio 2010 Pro (or better) installed AuthorsChris Tavares, Microsoft Corporation ...Orchard Project: Orchard 1.0: Orchard Release Notes Build: 1.0.20 Published: 1/12/2010 How to Install OrchardTo install the Orchard tech preview using Web PI, follow these instructions: http://www.orchardproject.net/docs/Installing-Orchard.ashx Web PI will detect your hardware environment and install the application. --OR-- Alternatively, to install the release manually, download the Orchard.Web.1.0.20.zip file. The zip contents are pre-built and ready-to-run. Simply extract the contents of the Orchard folder from ...Umbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.6.1: The Umbraco 4.6.1 (codename JUNO) release contains many new features focusing on an improved installation experience, a number of robust developer features, and contains nearly 200 bug fixes since the 4.5.2 release. Getting Started A great place to start is with our Getting Started Guide: Getting Started Guide: http://umbraco.codeplex.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?DownloadId=197051 Make sure to check the free foundation videos on how to get started building Umbraco sites. They're ...Google URL Shortener API for .NET: Google URL Shortener API v1: According follow specification: http://code.google.com/apis/urlshortener/v1/reference.htmlStyleCop for ReSharper: StyleCop for ReSharper 5.1.14986.000: A considerable amount of work has gone into this release: Features: Huge focus on performance around the violation scanning subsystem: - caching added to reduce IO operations around reading and merging of settings files - caching added to reduce creation of expensive objects Users should notice condsiderable perf boost and a decrease in memory usage. Bug Fixes: - StyleCop's new ObjectBasedEnvironment object does not resolve the StyleCop installation path, thus it does not return the ...SQL Monitor - tracking sql server activities: SQL Monitor 3.1 beta 1: 1. support alert message template 2. dynamic toolbar commands depending on functionality 3. fixed some bugs 4. refactored part of the code, now more stable and more clean upFacebook C# SDK: 4.2.1: - Authentication bug fixes - Updated Json.Net to version 4.0.0 - BREAKING CHANGE: Removed cookieSupport config setting, now automatic. This download is also availible on NuGet: Facebook FacebookWeb FacebookWebMvcHawkeye - The .Net Runtime Object Editor: Hawkeye 1.2.5: In the case you are running an x86 Windows and you installed Release 1.2.4, you should consider upgrading to this release (1.2.5) as it appears Hawkeye is broken on x86 OS. I apologize for the inconvenience, but it appears Hawkeye 1.2.4 (and probably previous versions) doesn't run on x86 Windows (See issue http://hawkeye.codeplex.com/workitem/7791). This maintenance release fixes this broken behavior. This release comes in two flavors: Hawkeye.125.N2 is the standard .NET 2 build, was compile...Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 2.0 (January 2011): Another release build for daily use; it contains many new features, enhanced compatibility with latest PHP opensource applications and several issue fixes. To improve the performance of your application using MySQL, please use Managed MySQL Extension for Phalanger. Changes made within this release include following: New features available only in Phalanger. Full support of Multi-Script-Assemblies was implemented; you can build your application into several DLLs now. Deploy them separately t...AutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.5.3: A message will be displayed when there's an update available Shows a list of recent mastery files in the Editor Tab (requested by quite a few people) Updater: Update information is now scrollable Added a buton to launch AutoLoL after updating is finished Updated the UI to match that of AutoLoL Fix: Detects and resolves 'Read Only' state on Version.xmlTweetSharp: TweetSharp v2.0.0.0 - Preview 7: Documentation for this release may be found at http://tweetsharp.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=UserGuide&referringTitle=Documentation. Note: This code is currently preview quality. Preview 7 ChangesFixes the regression issue in OAuth from Preview 6 Preview 6 ChangesMaintenance release with user reported fixes Preview 5 ChangesMaintenance release with user reported fixes Third Party Library VersionsHammock v1.0.6: http://hammock.codeplex.com Json.NET 3.5 Release 8: http://json.codeplex.comExtended WPF Toolkit: Extended WPF Toolkit - 1.3.0: What's in the 1.3.0 Release?BusyIndicator ButtonSpinner ChildWindow ColorPicker - Updated (Breaking Changes) DateTimeUpDown - New Control Magnifier - New Control MaskedTextBox - New Control MessageBox NumericUpDown RichTextBox RichTextBoxFormatBar - Updated .NET 3.5 binaries and SourcePlease note: The Extended WPF Toolkit 3.5 is dependent on .NET Framework 3.5 and the WPFToolkit. You must install .NET Framework 3.5 and the WPFToolkit in order to use any features in the To...Ionics Isapi Rewrite Filter: 2.1 latest stable: V2.1 is stable, and is in maintenance mode. This is v2.1.1.25. It is a bug-fix release. There are no new features. 28629 29172 28722 27626 28074 29164 27659 27900 many documentation updates and fixes proper x64 build environment. This release includes x64 binaries in zip form, but no x64 MSI file. You'll have to manually install x64 servers, following the instructions in the documentation.New Projects4chan: Project for educational purposesAE.Net.Mail - POP/IMAP Client: C# POP/IMAP client libraryAlmathy: Application communautaire pour le partage de données basée sur le protocole XMPP. Discussion instantanée, mail, échange de données, travaux partagés. Développée en C#, utilisant les Windows Forms.AMK - Associação Metropolitana de Kendo: Projeto do site versão 2011 da Associação Metropolitana de Kendo. O site contará com: - Cadastro de atletas e eventos; - Controle de cadastro junto a CBK e histórico de graduações; - Calendário de treinos; Será desenvolvido usando .NET, MVC2, Entity Framework, SQL Server, JQueryAzke: New: Azke is a portal developed with ASP.NET MVC and MySQL. Old: Azke is a portal developed with ASP.net and MySQL.BuildScreen: A standalone Windows application to displays project build statuses from TeamCity. It can be used on a large screen for the whole development team to watch their build statuses as well as on a developer machine.CardOnline: CardOnline GameLobby GameCAudioEndpointVolume: The CAudioEndpointVolume implements the IAudioEndpointVolume Interface to control the master volume in Visual Basic 6.0 for Windows Vista and later operating systems.Cloudy - Online Storage Library: The goal of Cloudy is to be an online storage library to enable access for the most common storage services : DropBox, Skydrive, Google Docs, Azure Blob Storage and Amazon S3. It'll work in .NET 3.5 and up, Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 (WP7).ContentManager: Content Manger for SAP Kpro exports the data pool of a content-server by PHIOS-Lists (txt-files) into local binary files. Afterwards this files can be imported in a SAP content-repository . The whole List of the PHIOS Keys can also be downloaded an splitted in practical units.CSWFKrad: private FrameworkDiego: Diegodoomhjx_javalib: this is my lib for the java project.Eve Planetary Interaction: Eve Planetary InteractionEventWall: EventWall allows you to show related blogposts and tweets on the big screen. Just configure the hashtag and blog RSS feeds and you're done.Google URL Shortener API for .NET: Google URL Shortener API for .NET is a wrapper for the Google Project below: http://code.google.com/apis/urlshortener/v1/reference.html With Google URL Shortener API, you may shorten urls and get some analytics information about this. It's developer in C# 4.0 and VS2010. HtmlDeploy: A project to compile asp's Master page into pure html files. The idea is to use jQuery templating to do all the "if" and "for" when it comes to generating html output. Inventory Management System: Inventory Management System is a Silverlight-based system. It aims to manage and control the input raw material activites, output of finished goods of a small inventory.koplamp kapot: demo project voor AzureMSAccess SVN: Access SVN adds to Microsoft Access (MS Access) support for SVN Source controlMultiConvert: console based utility primary to convert solid edge files into data exchange formats like *.stp and *.dxf. It's using the API of the original software and can't be run alone. The goal of this project is creating routines with desired pre-instructions for batch conversionsNGN Image Getter: Nationalgeographic has really stunning photos! They allow to download them via website. This program automates that process.OOD CRM: Project CRM for Object Oriented Development final examsOpen NOS Client: Open NOS Rest ClientopenEHR.NET: openEHR.NET is a C# implementation of openEHR (http://openehr.org) Reference Model (RM) and Archetype Model (AM) specifications (Release 1.0.1). It allows you to build openEHR applications by composing RM objects, validate against AM objects and serialise to/from XML.OpenGL Flow Designer: OpenGL Flow Designer allows writing pseudo-C code to build OpenGL pipeline and preview results immediately.Orchard Translation Manager: An Orchard module that aims at facilitating the creation and management of translations of the Orchard CMS and its extensions.pwTools: A set of tools for viewing/editing some perfect world client/server filesServerStatusMobile: Server availability monitoring application for windows mobile 6.5.x running on WVGA (480x800) devices. Supports autorun, vibration & notification when server became unavailable, text log files for each server. .NET Compact Framework 3.5 required for running this applicationSimple Silverlight Multiple File Uploader: The project allows you to achieve multiple file uploading in Silverlight without complex, complicated, or third-party applications. In just two core classes, it's very simple to understand, use, and extend. Snos: Projet Snos linker Snes multi SupportT-4 Templates for ASP.NET Web Form Databound Control Friendly Logical Layers: This open source project includes a set of T-4 templates to enable you to build logical layers (i.e. DAL/BLL) with just few clicks! The logical layers implemented here are based on Entity Framework 4.0, ASP.NET Web Form Data Bound control friendly and fully unit testable.The Media Store: The Media StoreUM: source control for the um projecturBook - Your Address Book Manager: urBook is and Address Book Manager that can merge all your contacts on all web services you use with your phone contacts to have one consistent Address Book for all your contacts and to update back your web services contacts with the one consistent address bookWindows Phone Certificate Installer: Helps install Trusted Root Certificates on Windows Phone 7 to enable SSL requests. Intended to allow developers to use localhost web servers during development without requiring the purchase of an SSL certificate. Especially helpful for ws-trust secured web service development.

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  • Why isn't TextBox.Text in WPF animatable?

    - by cplotts
    Ok, I have just run into something that is really catching me off-guard. I was helping a fellow developer with a couple of unrelated questions and in his project he was animating text into some TextBlock(s). So, I went back to my desk and recreated the project (in order to answer his questions), but I accidentally used TextBox instead of TextBlock. My text wasn't animating at all! (A lot of help, I was!) Eventually, I figured out that his xaml was using TextBlock and mine was using TextBox. What is interesting, is that Blend wasn't creating key frames when I was using TextBox. So, I got it to work in Blend using TextBlock(s) and then modified the xaml by hand, converting the TextBlock(s) into TextBox(es). When I ran the project, I got the following error: InvalidOperationException: '(0)' Storyboard.TargetProperty path contains nonanimatable property 'Text'. Well, it seems as if Blend was smart enough to know that ... and not generate the key frames in the animation (it would just modify the value directly on the TextBox). +1 for Blend. So, the question became: why isn't TextBox.Text animatable? The usual answer is that the particular property you are animating isn't a DependencyProperty. But, this isn't the case, TextBox.Text is a DependencyProperty. So, now I am bewildered! Why can't you animate TextBox.Text? Let me include some xaml to illustrate the problem. The following xaml works ... but uses TextBlock(s). <Window xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" x:Class="TextBoxTextQuestion.MainWindow" x:Name="Window" Title="MainWindow" Width="640" Height="480" > <Window.Resources> <Storyboard x:Key="animateTextStoryboard"> <StringAnimationUsingKeyFrames Storyboard.TargetProperty="(TextBlock.Text)" Storyboard.TargetName="textControl"> <DiscreteStringKeyFrame KeyTime="0:0:1" Value="Goodbye"/> </StringAnimationUsingKeyFrames> </Storyboard> </Window.Resources> <Window.Triggers> <EventTrigger RoutedEvent="FrameworkElement.Loaded"> <BeginStoryboard Storyboard="{StaticResource animateTextStoryboard}"/> </EventTrigger> </Window.Triggers> <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot"> <StackPanel Orientation="Vertical" HorizontalAlignment="Center" VerticalAlignment="Center"> <TextBlock x:Name="textControl" Text="Hello" FontFamily="Calibri" FontSize="32"/> <TextBlock Text="World!" Margin="0,25,0,0" FontFamily="Calibri" FontSize="32"/> </StackPanel> </Grid> </Window> The following xaml does not work and uses TextBox.Text: <Window xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" x:Class="TextBoxTextQuestion.MainWindow" x:Name="Window" Title="MainWindow" Width="640" Height="480" > <Window.Resources> <Storyboard x:Key="animateTextStoryboard"> <StringAnimationUsingKeyFrames Storyboard.TargetProperty="(TextBox.Text)" Storyboard.TargetName="textControl"> <DiscreteStringKeyFrame KeyTime="0:0:1" Value="Goodbye"/> </StringAnimationUsingKeyFrames> </Storyboard> </Window.Resources> <Window.Triggers> <EventTrigger RoutedEvent="FrameworkElement.Loaded"> <BeginStoryboard Storyboard="{StaticResource animateTextStoryboard}"/> </EventTrigger> </Window.Triggers> <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot"> <StackPanel Orientation="Vertical" HorizontalAlignment="Center" VerticalAlignment="Center"> <TextBox x:Name="textControl" Text="Hello" FontFamily="Calibri" FontSize="32"/> <TextBox Text="World!" Margin="0,25,0,0" FontFamily="Calibri" FontSize="32"/> </StackPanel> </Grid> </Window>

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  • MVVM in Task-It

    As I'm gearing up to write a post about dynamic XAP loading with MEF, I'd like to first talk a bit about MVVM, the Model-View-ViewModel pattern, as I will be leveraging this pattern in my future posts. Download Source Code Why MVVM? Your first question may be, "why do I need this pattern? I've been using a code-behind approach for years and it works fine." Well, you really don't have to make the switch to MVVM, but let me first explain some of the benefits I see for doing so. MVVM Benefits Testability - This is the one you'll probably hear the most about when it comes to MVVM. Moving most of the code from your code-behind to a separate view model class means you can now write unit tests against the view model without any knowledge of a view (UserControl). Multiple UIs - Let's just say that you've created a killer app, it's running in the browser, and maybe you've even made it run out-of-browser. Now what if your boss comes to you and says, "I heard about this new Windows Phone 7 device that is coming out later this year. Can you start porting the app to that device?". Well, now you have to create a new UI (UserControls, etc.) because you have a lot less screen real estate to work with. So what do you do, copy all of your existing UserControls, paste them, rename them, and then start changing the code? Hmm, that doesn't sound so good. But wait, if most of the code that makes your browser-based app tick lives in view model classes, now you can create new view (UserControls) for Windows Phone 7 that reference the same view model classes as your browser-based app. Page state - In Silverlight you're at some point going to be faced with the same issue you dealt with for years in ASP.NET, maintaining page state. Let's say a user hits your Products page, does some stuff (filters record, etc.), then leaves the page and comes back later. It would be best if the Products page was in the same state as when they left it right? Well, if you've thrown away your view (UserControl or Page) and moved off to another part of the UI, when you come back to Products you're probably going to re-instantiate your view...which will put it right back in the state it was when it started. Hmm, not good. Well, with a little help from MEF you can store the state in your view model class, MEF will keep that view model instance hanging around in memory, and then you simply rebind your view to the view model class. I made that sound easy, but it's actually a bit of work to properly store and restore the state. At least it can be done though, which will make your users a lot happier! I'll talk more about this in an upcoming blog post. No event handlers? Another nice thing about MVVM is that you can bind your UserControls to the view model, which may eliminate the need for event handlers in your code-behind. So instead of having a Click handler on a Button (or RadMenuItem), for example, you can now bind your control's Command property to a DelegateCommand in your view model (I'll talk more about Commands in an upcoming post). Instead of having a SelectionChanged event handler on your RadGridView you can now bind its SelectedItem property to a property in your view model, and each time the user clicks a row, the view model property's setter will be called. Now through the magic of binding we can eliminate the need for traditional code-behind based event handlers on our user interface controls, and the best thing is that the view model knows about everything that's going on...which means we can test things without a user interface. The brains of the operation So what we're seeing here is that the view is now just a dumb layer that binds to the view model, and that the view model is in control of just about everything, like what happens when a RadGridView row is selected, or when a RadComboBoxItem is selected, or when a RadMenuItem is clicked. It is also responsible for loading data when the page is hit, as well as kicking off data inserts, updates and deletions. Once again, all of this stuff can be tested without the need for a user interface. If the test works, then it'll work regardless of whether the user is hitting the browser-based version of your app, or the Windows Phone 7 version. Nice! The database Before running the code for this app you will need to create the database. First, create a database called MVVMProject in SQL Server, then run MVVMProject.sql in the MVVMProject/Database directory of your downloaded .zip file. This should give you a Task table with 3 records in it. When you fire up the solution you will also need to update the connection string in web.config to point to your database instead of IBM12\SQLSERVER2008. The code One note about this code is that it runs against the latest Silverlight 4 RC and WCF RIA Services code. Please see my first blog post about updating to the RC bits. Beta to RC - Part 1 At the top of this post is a link to a sample project that demonstrates a sample application with a Tasks page that uses the MVVM pattern. This is a simplified version of how I have implemented the Tasks page in the Task-It application. Youll notice that Tasks.xaml has very little code to it. Just a TextBlock that displays the page title and a ContentControl. <StackPanel>     <TextBlock Text="Tasks" Style="{StaticResource PageTitleStyle}"/>     <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource StandardSpacerStyle}"/>     <ContentControl x:Name="ContentControl1"/> </StackPanel> In List.xaml we have a RadGridView. Notice that the ItemsSource is bound to a property in the view model class call Tasks, SelectedItem is bound to a property in the view model called SelectedItem, and IsBusy is bound to a property in the view model called IsLoading. <Grid>     <telerikGridView:RadGridView ItemsSource="{Binding Tasks}" SelectedItem="{Binding SelectedItem, Mode=TwoWay}"                                  IsBusy="{Binding IsLoading}" AutoGenerateColumns="False" IsReadOnly="True" RowIndicatorVisibility="Collapsed"                IsFilteringAllowed="False" ShowGroupPanel="False">         <telerikGridView:RadGridView.Columns>             <telerikGridView:GridViewDataColumn Header="Name" DataMemberBinding="{Binding Name}" Width="3*"/>             <telerikGridView:GridViewDataColumn Header="Due" DataMemberBinding="{Binding DueDate}" DataFormatString="{}{0:d}" Width="*"/>         </telerikGridView:RadGridView.Columns>     </telerikGridView:RadGridView> </Grid> In Details.xaml we have a Save button that is bound to a property called SaveCommand in our view model. We also have a simple form (Im using a couple of controls here from Silverlight.FX for the form layout, FormPanel and Label simply because they make for a clean XAML layout). Notice that the FormPanel is also bound to the SelectedItem in the view model (the same one that the RadGridView is). The two form controls, the TextBox and RadDatePicker) are bound to the SelectedItem's Name and DueDate properties. These are properties of the Task object that WCF RIA Services creates. <StackPanel>     <Button Content="Save" Command="{Binding SaveCommand}" HorizontalAlignment="Left"/>     <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource StandardSpacerStyle}"/>     <fxui:FormPanel DataContext="{Binding SelectedItem}" Style="{StaticResource FormContainerStyle}">         <fxui:Label Text="Name:"/>         <TextBox Text="{Binding Name, Mode=TwoWay}"/>         <fxui:Label Text="Due:"/>         <telerikInput:RadDatePicker SelectedDate="{Binding DueDate, Mode=TwoWay}"/>     </fxui:FormPanel> </StackPanel> In the code-behind of the Tasks control, Tasks.xaml.cs, I created an instance of the view model class (TasksViewModel) in the constructor and set it as the DataContext for the control. The Tasks page will load one of two child UserControls depending on whether you are viewing the list of tasks (List.xaml) or the form for editing a task (Details.xaml). // Set the DataContext to an instance of the view model class var viewModel = new TasksViewModel(); DataContext = viewModel;   // Child user controls (inherit DataContext from this user control) List = new List(); // RadGridView Details = new Details(); // Form When the page first loads, the List is loaded into the ContentControl. // Show the RadGridView first ContentControl1.Content = List; In the code-behind we also listen for a couple of the view models events. The ItemSelected event will be fired when the user clicks on a record in the RadGridView in the List control. The SaveCompleted event will be fired when the user clicks Save in the Details control (the form). Here the view model is in control, and is letting the view know when something needs to change. // Listeners for the view model's events viewModel.ItemSelected += OnItemSelected; viewModel.SaveCompleted += OnSaveCompleted; The event handlers toggle the view between the RadGridView (List) and the form (Details). void OnItemSelected(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) {     // Show the form     ContentControl1.Content = Details; }   void OnSaveCompleted(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) {     // Show the RadGridView     ContentControl1.Content = List; } In TasksViewModel, we instantiate a DataContext object and a SaveCommand in the constructor. DataContext is a WCF RIA Services object that well use to retrieve the list of Tasks and to save any changes to a task. Ill talk more about this and Commands in future post, but for now think of the SaveCommand as an event handler that is called when the Save button in the form is clicked. DataContext = new DataContext(); SaveCommand = new DelegateCommand(OnSave); When the TasksViewModel constructor is called we also make a call to LoadTasks. This sets IsLoading to true (which causes the RadGridViews busy indicator to appear) and retrieves the records via WCF RIA Services.         public LoadOperation<Task> LoadTasks()         {             // Show the loading message             IsLoading = true;             // Get the data via WCF RIA Services. When the call has returned, called OnTasksLoaded.             return DataContext.Load(DataContext.GetTasksQuery(), OnTasksLoaded, false);         } When the data is returned, OnTasksLoaded is called. This sets IsLoading to false (which hides the RadGridViews busy indicator), and fires property changed notifications to the UI to let it know that the IsLoading and Tasks properties have changed. This property changed notification basically tells the UI to rebind. void OnTasksLoaded(LoadOperation<Task> lo) {     // Hide the loading message     IsLoading = false;       // Notify the UI that Tasks and IsLoading properties have changed     this.OnPropertyChanged(p => p.Tasks);     this.OnPropertyChanged(p => p.IsLoading); } Next lets look at the view models SelectedItem property. This is the one thats bound to both the RadGridView and the form. When the user clicks a record in the RadGridView its setter gets called (set a breakpoint and see what I mean). The other code in the setter lets the UI know that the SelectedItem has changed (so the form displays the correct data), and fires the event that notifies the UI that a selection has occurred (which tells the UI to switch from List to Details). public Task SelectedItem {     get { return _selectedItem; }     set     {         _selectedItem = value;           // Let the UI know that the SelectedItem has changed (forces it to re-bind)         this.OnPropertyChanged(p => p.SelectedItem);         // Notify the UI, so it can switch to the Details (form) page         NotifyItemSelected();     } } One last thing, saving the data. When the Save button in the form is clicked it fires the SaveCommand, which calls the OnSave method in the view model (once again, set a breakpoint to see it in action). public void OnSave() {     // Save the changes via WCF RIA Services. When the save is complete, call OnSaveCompleted.     DataContext.SubmitChanges(OnSaveCompleted, null); } In OnSave, we tell WCF RIA Services to submit any changes, which there will be if you changed either the Name or the Due Date in the form. When the save is completed, it calls OnSaveCompleted. This method fires a notification back to the UI that the save is completed, which causes the RadGridView (List) to show again. public virtual void OnSaveCompleted(SubmitOperation so) {     // Clear the item that is selected in the grid (in case we want to select it again)     SelectedItem = null;     // Notify the UI, so it can switch back to the List (RadGridView) page     NotifySaveCompleted(); } Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • Designing for the future

    - by Dennis Vroegop
    User interfaces and user experience design is a fast moving field. It’s something that changes pretty quick: what feels fresh today will look outdated tomorrow. I remember the day I first got a beta version of Windows 95 and I felt swept away by the user interface of the OS. It felt so modern! If I look back now, it feels old. Well, it should: the design is 17 years old which is an eternity in our field. Of course, this is not limited to UI. Same goes for many industries. I want you to think back of the cars that amazed you when you were in your teens (if you are in your teens then this may not apply to you). Didn’t they feel like part of the future? Didn’t you think that this was the ultimate in designs? And aren’t those designs hopelessly outdated today (again, depending on your age, it may just be me)? Let’s review the Win95 design: And let’s compare that to Windows 7: There are so many differences here, I wouldn’t even know where to start explaining them. The general feeling however is one of more usability: studies have shown Windows 7 is much easier to understand for new users than the older versions of Windows did. Of course, experienced Windows users didn’t like it: people are usually afraid of changes and like to stick to what they know. But for new users this was a huge improvement. And that is what UX design is all about: make a product easier to use, with less training required and make users feel more productive. Still, there are areas where this doesn’t hold up. There are plenty examples of designs from the past that are still fresh today. But if you look closely at them, you’ll notice some subtle differences. This differences are what keep the designs fresh. A good example is the signs you’ll find on the road. They haven’t changed much over the years (otherwise people wouldn’t recognize them anymore) but they have been changing gradually to reflect changes in traffic. The same goes for computer interfaces. With each new product or version of a product, the UI and UX is changed gradually. Every now and then however, a bigger change is needed. Just think about the introduction of the Ribbon in Microsoft Office 2007: the whole UI was redesigned. A lot of old users (not in age, but in times of using older versions) didn’t like it a bit, but new users or casual users seem to be more efficient using the product. Which, of course, is exactly the reason behind the changes. I believe that a big engine behind the changes in User Experience design has been the web. In the old days (i.e. before the explosion of the internet) user interface design in Windows applications was limited to choosing the margins between your battleship gray buttons. When the web came along, and especially the web 2.0 where the browsers started to act more and more as application platforms, designers stepped in and made a huge impact. In the browser, they could do whatever they wanted. In the beginning this was limited to the darn blink tag but gradually people really started to think about UX. Even more so: the design of the UI and the whole experience was taken away from the developers and put into the hands of people who knew what they were doing: UX designers. This caused some problems. Everyone who has done a web project in the early 2000’s must have had the same experience: the designers give you a set of Photoshop files and tell you to translate it to HTML. Which, of course, is very hard to do. However, with new tooling and new standards this became much easier. The latest version of HTML and CSS has taken the responsibility for the design away from the developers and placed them in the capable hands of the designers. And that’s where that responsibility belongs, after all, I don’t want a designer to muck around in my c# code just as much as he or she doesn’t want me to poke in the sites style definitions. This change in responsibilities resulted in good looking but more important: better thought out user interfaces in websites. And when websites became more and more interactive, people started to expect the same sort of look and feel from their desktop applications. But that didn’t really happen. Most business applications still have that battleship gray look and feel. Ok, they may use a different color but we’re not talking colors here but usability. Now, you may not be able to read the Dutch captions, but even if you did you wouldn’t understand what was going on. At least, not when you first see it. You have to scan the screen, read all the labels, see how they are related to the other elements on the screen and then figure out what they do. If you’re an experienced user of this application however, this might be a good thing: you know what to do and you get all the information you need in one single screen. But for most applications this isn’t the case. A lot of people only use their computer for a limited time a day (a weird concept for me, but it happens) and need it to get something done and then get on with their lives. For them, a user interface experience like the above isn’t working. (disclaimer: I just picked a screenshot, I am not saying this is bad software but it is an example of about 95% of the Windows applications out there). For the knowledge worker, this isn’t a problem. They use one or two systems and they know exactly what they need to do to achieve their goal. They don’t want any clutter on their screen that distracts them from their task, they just want to be as efficient as possible. When they know the systems they are very productive. The point is, how long does it take to become productive? And: could they be even more productive if the UX was better? Are there things missing that they don’t know about? Are there better ways to achieve what they want to achieve? Also: could a system be designed in such a way that it is not only much more easy to work with but also less tiring? in the example above you need to switch between the keyboard and mouse a lot, something that we now know can be very tiring. The goal of most applications (being client apps or websites on any kind of device) is to provide information. Information is data that when given to the right people, on the right time, in the right place and when it is correct adds value for that person (please, remember that definition: I still hear the statement “the information was wrong” which doesn’t make sense: data can be wrong, information cannot be). So if a system provides data, how can we make sure the chances of becoming information is as high as possible? A good example of a well thought-out system that attempts this is the Zune client. It is a very good application, and I think the UX is much better than it’s main competitor iTunes. Have a look at both: On the left you see the iTunes screenshot, on the right the Zune. As you notice, the Zune screen has more images but less chrome (chrome being visuals not part of the data you want to show, i.e. edges around buttons). The whole thing is text oriented or image oriented, where that text or image is part of the information you need. What is important is big, what’s less important is smaller. Yet, everything you need to know at that point is present and your attention is drawn immediately to what you’re trying to achieve: information about music. You can easily switch between the content on your machine and content on your Zune player but clicking on the image of the player. But if you didn’t know that, you’d find out soon enough: the whole UX is designed in such a way that it invites you to play around. So sooner or later (probably sooner) you’d click on that image and you would see what it does. In the iTunes version it’s harder to find: the discoverability is a lot lower. For inexperienced people the Zune player feels much more natural than the iTunes player, and they get up to speed a lot faster. How does this all work? Why is this UX better? The answer lies in a project from Microsoft with the codename (it seems to be becoming the official name though) “Metro”. Metro is a design language, based on certain principles. When they thought about UX they took a good long look around them and went out in search of metaphors. And they found them. The team noticed that signage in streets, airports, roads, buildings and so on are usually very clear and very precise. These signs give you the information you need and nothing more. It’s simple, clearly understood and fast to understand. A good example are airport signs. Airports can be intimidating places, especially for the non-experienced traveler. In the early 1990’s Amsterdam Airport Schiphol decided to redesign all the signage to make the traveller feel less disoriented. They developed a set of guidelines for signs and implemented those. Soon, most airports around the world adopted these ideas and you see variations of the Dutch signs everywhere on the globe. The signs are text-oriented. Yes, there are icons explaining what it all means for the people who can’t read or don’t understand the language, but the basic sign language is text. It’s clear, it’s high-contrast and it’s easy to understand. One look at the sign and you know where to go. The only thing I don’t like is the green sign pointing to the emergency exit, but since this is the default style for emergency exits I understand why they did this. If you look at the Zune UI again, you’ll notice the similarities. Text oriented, little or no icons, clear usage of fonts and all the information you need. This design language has a set of principles: Clean, light, open and fast Content, not chrome Soulful and alive These are just a couple of the principles, you can read the whole philosophy behind Metro for Windows Phone 7 here. These ideas seem to work. I love my Windows Phone 7. It’s easy to use, it’s clear, there’s no clutter that I do not need. It works for me. And I noticed it works for a lot of other people as well, especially people who aren’t as proficient with computers as I am. You see these ideas in a lot other places. Corning, a manufacturer of glass, has made a video of possible usages of their products. It’s their glimpse into the future. You’ll notice that a lot of the UI in the screens look a lot like what Microsoft is doing with Metro (not coincidentally Corning is the supplier for the Gorilla glass display surface on the new SUR40 device (or Surface v2.0 as a lot of people call it)). The idea behind this vision is that data should be available everywhere where you it. Systems should be available at all times and data is presented in a clear and light manner so that you can turn that data into information. You don’t need a lot of fancy animations that only distract from the data. You want the data and you want it fast. Have a look at this truly inspiring video that made: This is what I believe the future will look like. Of course, not everything is possible, or even desirable. But it is a nice way to think about the future . I feel very strongly about designing applications in such a way that they add value to the user. Designing applications that turn data into information. Applications that make the user feel happy to use them. So… when are you going to drop the battleship-gray designs? Tags van Technorati: surface,design,windows phone 7,wp7,metro

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  • Windows 2008 RenderFarm Service: CreateProcessAsUser "Session 0 Isolation" and OpenGL

    - by holtavolt
    Hello, I have a legacy Windows server service and (spawned) application that works fine in XP-64 and W2K3, but fails on W2K8. I believe it is because of the new "Session 0 isolation " feature. (Note: As a StackOverflow newbie I'm being limited to one link in this post, so you'll need to scroll to bottom to lookup the links for '' items)* Consequently, I'm looking for code samples/security settings mojo that let you create a new process from a windows service for Windows 2008 Server such that I can restore (and possibly surpass) the previous behavior. I need a solution that: Creates the new process in a non-zero session to get around session-0 isolation restrictions (no access to graphics hardware from session 0) - the official MS line on this is: Because Session 0 is no longer a user session, services that are running in Session 0 do not have access to the video driver. This means that any attempt that a service makes to render graphics fails. Querying the display resolution and color depth in Session 0 reports the correct results for the system up to a maximum of 1920x1200 at 32 bits per pixel. The new process gets a windows station/desktop (e.g. winsta0/default) that can be used to create windows DCs. I've found a solution (that launches OK in an interactive session) for this here: *(Starting an Interactive Client Process in C++ - 2) The windows DC, when used as the basis for an *(OpenGL DescribePixelFormat enumeration - 3), is able to find and use the hardware-accelerated format (on a system appropriately equipped with OpenGL hardware.) Note that our current solution works OK on XP-64 and W2K3, except if a terminal services session is running (VNC works fine.) A solution that also allowed the process to work (i.e. run with OpenGL hardware acceleration even when a terminal services session is open) would be fanastic, although not required. I'm stuck at item #1 currently, and although there are some similar postings that discuss this (like *(this -4), and *(this - 5) - they are not suitable solutions, as there is no guarantee of a user session logged in already to "take" a session id from, nor am I running from a LocalSystem account (I'm running from a domain account for the service, for which I can adjust the privileges of, within reason, although I'd prefer to not have to escalate priorities to include SeTcbPrivileges.) For instance - here's a stub that I think should work, but always returns an error 1314 on the SetTokenInformation call (even though the AdjustTokenPrivileges returned no errors) I've used some alternate strategies involving "LogonUser" as well (instead of opening the existing process token), but I can't seem to swap out the session id. I'm also dubious about using the WTSActiveConsoleSessionId in all cases (for instance, if no interactive user is logged in) - although a quick test of the service running with no sessions logged in seemed to return a reasonable session value (1). I’ve removed error handling for ease of reading (still a bit messy - apologies) //Also tried using LogonUser(..) here OpenProcessToken(GetCurrentProcess(), TOKEN_QUERY | TOKEN_ADJUST_PRIVILEGES | TOKEN_ADJUST_SESSIONID | TOKEN_ADJUST_DEFAULT | TOKEN_ASSIGN_PRIMARY | TOKEN_DUPLICATE, &hToken) GetTokenInformation( hToken, TokenSessionId, &logonSessionId, sizeof(DWORD), &dwTokenLength ) DWORD consoleSessionId = WTSGetActiveConsoleSessionId(); /* Can't use this - requires very elevated privileges (LOCAL only, SeTcbPrivileges as well) if( !WTSQueryUserToken(consoleSessionId, &hToken)) ... */ DuplicateTokenEx(hToken, (TOKEN_QUERY | TOKEN_ADJUST_PRIVILEGES | TOKEN_ADJUST_SESSIONID | TOKEN_ADJUST_DEFAULT | TOKEN_ASSIGN_PRIMARY | TOKEN_DUPLICATE), NULL, SecurityIdentification, TokenPrimary, &hDupToken)) // Look up the LUID for the TCB Name privilege. LookupPrivilegeValue(NULL, SE_TCB_NAME, &tp.Privileges[0].Luid)) // Enable the TCB Name privilege in the token. tp.PrivilegeCount = 1; tp.Privileges[0].Attributes = SE_PRIVILEGE_ENABLED; if (!AdjustTokenPrivileges(hDupToken, FALSE, &tp, sizeof(TOKEN_PRIVILEGES), NULL, 0)) { DisplayError("AdjustTokenPrivileges"); ... } if (GetLastError() == ERROR_NOT_ALL_ASSIGNED) { DEBUG( "Token does not have the necessary privilege.\n"); } else { DEBUG( "No error reported from AdjustTokenPrivileges!\n"); } // Never errors here DEBUG(LM_INFO, "Attempting setting of sessionId to: %d\n", consoleSessionId ); if (!SetTokenInformation(hDupToken, TokenSessionId, &consoleSessionId, sizeof(DWORD))) *** ALWAYS FAILS WITH 1314 HERE *** All the debug output looks fine up until the SetTokenInformation call - I see session 0 is my current process session, and in my case, it's trying to set session 1 (the result of the WTSGetActiveConsoleSessionId). (Note that I'm logged into the W2K8 box via VNC, not RDC) So - a the questions: Is this approach valid, or are all service-initiated processes restricted to session 0 intentionally? Is there a better approach (short of "Launch on logon" and auto-logon for the servers?) Is there something wrong with this code, or a different way to create a process token where I can swap out the session id to indicate I want to spawn the process in a new session? I did try using LogonUser instead of OpenProcessToken, but that didn't work either. (I don't care if all spawned processes share the same non-zero session or not at this point.) Any help much appreciated - thanks! (You need to replace the 'zttp' with 'http' - StackOverflow restriction on one link in my newbie post) 2: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa379608(VS.85).aspx 3: http://www.opengl.org/resources/faq/technical/mswindows.htm 4: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2237696/creating-a-process-in-a-non-zero-session-from-a-service-in-windows-2008-server 5: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1602996/how-can-i-lauch-a-process-which-has-a-ui-from-windows-service

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  • problem with my texture coordinates on a square.

    - by Evan Kimia
    Im very new to OpenGL ES, and have been doing a tutorial to build a square. The square is made, and now im trying to map a 256 by 256 image onto it. The problem is, im only seeing a very zoomed in portion of this bitmap; Im fairly certain my texture coords are whats wrong here. Thanks! package se.jayway.opengl.tutorial; import java.io.IOException; import java.io.InputStream; import java.nio.ByteBuffer; import java.nio.ByteOrder; import java.nio.FloatBuffer; import java.nio.ShortBuffer; import javax.microedition.khronos.opengles.GL10; import android.content.Context; import android.graphics.Bitmap; import android.graphics.BitmapFactory; import android.opengl.GLUtils; public class Square { // Our vertices. private float vertices[] = { -1.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, // 0, Top Left -1.0f, -1.0f, 0.0f, // 1, Bottom Left 1.0f, -1.0f, 0.0f, // 2, Bottom Right 1.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, // 3, Top Right }; //Our texture. private float texture[] = { 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, }; // The order we like to connect them. private short[] indices = { 0, 1, 2, 0, 2, 3 }; // Our vertex buffer. private FloatBuffer vertexBuffer; // Our index buffer. private ShortBuffer indexBuffer; //texture buffer. private FloatBuffer textureBuffer; //Our texture pointer. private int[] textures = new int[1]; public Square() { // a float is 4 bytes, therefore we multiply the number if // vertices with 4. ByteBuffer vbb = ByteBuffer.allocateDirect(vertices.length * 4); vbb.order(ByteOrder.nativeOrder()); vertexBuffer = vbb.asFloatBuffer(); vertexBuffer.put(vertices); vertexBuffer.position(0); // a float is 4 bytes, therefore we multiply the number of // vertices with 4. ByteBuffer tbb = ByteBuffer.allocateDirect(texture.length * 4); vbb.order(ByteOrder.nativeOrder()); textureBuffer = tbb.asFloatBuffer(); textureBuffer.put(texture); textureBuffer.position(0); // short is 2 bytes, therefore we multiply the number if // vertices with 2. ByteBuffer ibb = ByteBuffer.allocateDirect(indices.length * 2); ibb.order(ByteOrder.nativeOrder()); indexBuffer = ibb.asShortBuffer(); indexBuffer.put(indices); indexBuffer.position(0); } /** * This function draws our square on screen. * @param gl */ public void draw(GL10 gl) { // Counter-clockwise winding. gl.glFrontFace(GL10.GL_CCW); // Enable face culling. gl.glEnable(GL10.GL_CULL_FACE); // What faces to remove with the face culling. gl.glCullFace(GL10.GL_BACK); //Bind our only previously generated texture in this case gl.glBindTexture(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, textures[0]); // Enabled the vertices buffer for writing and to be used during // rendering. gl.glEnableClientState(GL10.GL_VERTEX_ARRAY); //Enable texture buffer array gl.glEnableClientState(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_COORD_ARRAY); // Specifies the location and data format of an array of vertex // coordinates to use when rendering. gl.glVertexPointer(3, GL10.GL_FLOAT, 0, vertexBuffer); gl.glTexCoordPointer(2, GL10.GL_FLOAT, 0, textureBuffer); gl.glDrawElements(GL10.GL_TRIANGLES, indices.length, GL10.GL_UNSIGNED_SHORT, indexBuffer); // Disable the vertices buffer. gl.glDisableClientState(GL10.GL_VERTEX_ARRAY); //Disable the texture buffer. gl.glDisableClientState(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_COORD_ARRAY); // Disable face culling. gl.glDisable(GL10.GL_CULL_FACE); } /** * Load the textures * * @param gl - The GL Context * @param context - The Activity context */ public void loadGLTexture(GL10 gl, Context context) { //Get the texture from the Android resource directory InputStream is = context.getResources().openRawResource(R.drawable.test); Bitmap bitmap = null; try { //BitmapFactory is an Android graphics utility for images bitmap = BitmapFactory.decodeStream(is); } finally { //Always clear and close try { is.close(); is = null; } catch (IOException e) { } } //Generate one texture pointer... gl.glGenTextures(1, textures, 0); //...and bind it to our array gl.glBindTexture(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, textures[0]); //Create Nearest Filtered Texture gl.glTexParameterf(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL10.GL_NEAREST); gl.glTexParameterf(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL10.GL_LINEAR); //Different possible texture parameters, e.g. GL10.GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE gl.glTexParameterf(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL10.GL_REPEAT); gl.glTexParameterf(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL10.GL_REPEAT); //Use the Android GLUtils to specify a two-dimensional texture image from our bitmap GLUtils.texImage2D(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, bitmap, 0); //Clean up bitmap.recycle(); } }

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  • EF Code First to SQL Azure

    - by Predrag Pejic
    I am using EF Code First to create a database on local .\SQLEXPRESS. Among others. I have these 2 classes: public class Shop { public int ShopID { get; set; } [Required(AllowEmptyStrings = false, ErrorMessage = "You must enter a name!")] [MaxLength(25, ErrorMessage = "Name must be 25 characters or less")] public string Name { get; set; } [Required(AllowEmptyStrings = false, ErrorMessage = "You must enter an address!")] [MaxLength(30, ErrorMessage = "Address must be 30 characters or less")] public string Address { get; set; } [Required(AllowEmptyStrings = false, ErrorMessage = "You must enter a valid city name!")] [MaxLength(30, ErrorMessage = "City name must be 30 characters or less")] public string City { get; set; } [Required(AllowEmptyStrings = false, ErrorMessage = "You must enter a phone number!")] [MaxLength(14, ErrorMessage = "Phone number must be 14 characters or less")] public string Phone { get; set; } [MaxLength(100, ErrorMessage = "Description must be 50 characters or less")] public string Description { get; set; } [Required(AllowEmptyStrings = false, ErrorMessage = "You must enter a WorkTime!")] public DateTime WorkTimeBegin { get; set; } [Required(AllowEmptyStrings = false, ErrorMessage = "You must enter a WorkTime!")] public DateTime WorkTimeEnd { get; set; } public DateTime? SaturdayWorkTimeBegin { get; set; } public DateTime? SaturdayWorkTimeEnd { get; set; } public DateTime? SundayWorkTimeBegin { get; set; } public DateTime? SundayWorkTimeEnd { get; set; } public int ShoppingPlaceID { get; set; } public virtual ShoppingPlace ShoppingPlace { get; set; } public virtual ICollection<Category> Categories { get; set; } } public class ShoppingPlace { [Key] public int ShopingplaceID { get; set; } [Required(AllowEmptyStrings = false, ErrorMessage = "You must enter a name!")] [MaxLength(25, ErrorMessage = "Name must be 25 characters or less")] public string Name { get; set; } [Required(AllowEmptyStrings = false, ErrorMessage = "You must enter an address!")] [MaxLength(50, ErrorMessage = "Address must be 50 characters or less")] public string Address { get; set; } [Required(AllowEmptyStrings = false, ErrorMessage = "You must enter a city name!")] [MaxLength(30, ErrorMessage = "City must be 30 characters or less")] public string City { get; set; } [Required(AllowEmptyStrings = false, ErrorMessage = "You must enter a valid phone number!")] [MaxLength(14, ErrorMessage = "Phone number must be 14 characters or less")] public string Phone { get; set; } public int ShoppingCenterID { get; set; } public virtual ShoppingCenter ShoppingCenter { get; set; } public virtual ICollection<Shop> Shops { get; set; } } and a method in DbContext: modelBuilder.Entity<Item>() .HasRequired(p => p.Category) .WithMany(a => a.Items) .HasForeignKey(a => a.CategoryID) .WillCascadeOnDelete(false); modelBuilder.Entity<Category>() .HasRequired(a => a.Shop) .WithMany(a => a.Categories) .HasForeignKey(a => a.ShopID) .WillCascadeOnDelete(false); modelBuilder.Entity<Shop>() .HasOptional(a => a.ShoppingPlace) .WithMany(a => a.Shops) .HasForeignKey(a => a.ShoppingPlaceID) .WillCascadeOnDelete(false); modelBuilder.Entity<ShoppingPlace>() .HasOptional(a => a.ShoppingCenter) .WithMany(a => a.ShoppingPlaces) .HasForeignKey(a => a.ShoppingCenterID) .WillCascadeOnDelete(false); Why I can't create Shop without creating and populating ShopingPlace. How to achieve that? EDIT: Tried with: modelBuilder.Entity<Shop>() .HasOptional(a => a.ShoppingPlace) .WithOptionalPrincipal(); modelBuilder.Entity<ShoppingPlace>() .HasOptional(a => a.ShoppingCenter) .WithOptionalPrincipal(); and it passed, but what is the difference? And why in SQL Server i am allowed to see ShoppingPlaceID and ShoppingPlace_ShopingPlaceID when in the case of Item and Category i see only one?

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  • Metro: Understanding CSS Media Queries

    - by Stephen.Walther
    If you are building a Metro style application then your application needs to look great when used on a wide variety of devices. Your application needs to work on tiny little phones, slates, desktop monitors, and the super high resolution displays of the future. Your application also must support portable devices used with different orientations. If someone tilts their phone from portrait to landscape mode then your application must still be usable. Finally, your Metro style application must look great in different states. For example, your Metro application can be in a “snapped state” when it is shrunk so it can share screen real estate with another application. In this blog post, you learn how to use Cascading Style Sheet media queries to support different devices, different device orientations, and different application states. First, you are provided with an overview of the W3C Media Query recommendation and you learn how to detect standard media features. Next, you learn about the Microsoft extensions to media queries which are supported in Metro style applications. For example, you learn how to use the –ms-view-state feature to detect whether an application is in a “snapped state” or “fill state”. Finally, you learn how to programmatically detect the features of a device and the state of an application. You learn how to use the msMatchMedia() method to execute a media query with JavaScript. Using CSS Media Queries Media queries enable you to apply different styles depending on the features of a device. Media queries are not only supported by Metro style applications, most modern web browsers now support media queries including Google Chrome 4+, Mozilla Firefox 3.5+, Apple Safari 4+, and Microsoft Internet Explorer 9+. Loading Different Style Sheets with Media Queries Imagine, for example, that you want to display different content depending on the horizontal resolution of a device. In that case, you can load different style sheets optimized for different sized devices. Consider the following HTML page: <!DOCTYPE html> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>U.S. Robotics and Mechanical Men</title> <link href="main.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> <!-- Less than 1100px --> <link href="medium.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="(max-width:1100px)" /> <!-- Less than 800px --> <link href="small.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="(max-width:800px)" /> </head> <body> <div id="header"> <h1>U.S. Robotics and Mechanical Men</h1> </div> <!-- Advertisement Column --> <div id="leftColumn"> <img src="advertisement1.gif" alt="advertisement" /> <img src="advertisement2.jpg" alt="advertisement" /> </div> <!-- Product Search Form --> <div id="mainContentColumn"> <label>Search Products</label> <input id="search" /><button>Search</button> </div> <!-- Deal of the Day Column --> <div id="rightColumn"> <h1>Deal of the Day!</h1> <p> Buy two cameras and get a third camera for free! Offer is good for today only. </p> </div> </body> </html> The HTML page above contains three columns: a leftColumn, mainContentColumn, and rightColumn. When the page is displayed on a low resolution device, such as a phone, only the mainContentColumn appears: When the page is displayed in a medium resolution device, such as a slate, both the leftColumn and the mainContentColumns are displayed: Finally, when the page is displayed in a high-resolution device, such as a computer monitor, all three columns are displayed: Different content is displayed with the help of media queries. The page above contains three style sheet links. Two of the style links include a media attribute: <link href="main.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> <!-- Less than 1100px --> <link href="medium.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="(max-width:1100px)" /> <!-- Less than 800px --> <link href="small.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="(max-width:800px)" /> The main.css style sheet contains default styles for the elements in the page. The medium.css style sheet is applied when the page width is less than 1100px. This style sheet hides the rightColumn and changes the page background color to lime: html { background-color: lime; } #rightColumn { display:none; } Finally, the small.css style sheet is loaded when the page width is less than 800px. This style sheet hides the leftColumn and changes the page background color to red: html { background-color: red; } #leftColumn { display:none; } The different style sheets are applied as you stretch and contract your browser window. You don’t need to refresh the page after changing the size of the page for a media query to be applied: Using the @media Rule You don’t need to divide your styles into separate files to take advantage of media queries. You can group styles by using the @media rule. For example, the following HTML page contains one set of styles which are applied when a device’s orientation is portrait and another set of styles when a device’s orientation is landscape: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8" /> <title>Application1</title> <style type="text/css"> html { font-family:'Segoe UI Semilight'; font-size: xx-large; } @media screen and (orientation:landscape) { html { background-color: lime; } p.content { width: 50%; margin: auto; } } @media screen and (orientation:portrait) { html { background-color: red; } p.content { width: 90%; margin: auto; } } </style> </head> <body> <p class="content"> Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna. </p> </body> </html> When a device has a landscape orientation then the background color is set to the color lime and the text only takes up 50% of the available horizontal space: When the device has a portrait orientation then the background color is red and the text takes up 90% of the available horizontal space: Using Standard CSS Media Features The official list of standard media features is contained in the W3C CSS Media Query recommendation located here: http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-mediaqueries/ Here is the official list of the 13 media features described in the standard: · width – The current width of the viewport · height – The current height of the viewport · device-width – The width of the device · device-height – The height of the device · orientation – The value portrait or landscape · aspect-ratio – The ratio of width to height · device-aspect-ratio – The ratio of device width to device height · color – The number of bits per color supported by the device · color-index – The number of colors in the color lookup table of the device · monochrome – The number of bits in the monochrome frame buffer · resolution – The density of the pixels supported by the device · scan – The values progressive or interlace (used for TVs) · grid – The values 0 or 1 which indicate whether the device supports a grid or a bitmap Many of the media features in the list above support the min- and max- prefix. For example, you can test for the min-width using a query like this: (min-width:800px) You can use the logical and operator with media queries when you need to check whether a device supports more than one feature. For example, the following query returns true only when the width of the device is between 800 and 1,200 pixels: (min-width:800px) and (max-width:1200px) Finally, you can use the different media types – all, braille, embossed, handheld, print, projection, screen, speech, tty, tv — with a media query. For example, the following media query only applies to a page when a page is being printed in color: print and (color) If you don’t specify a media type then media type all is assumed. Using Metro Style Media Features Microsoft has extended the standard list of media features which you can include in a media query with two custom media features: · -ms-high-contrast – The values any, black-white, white-black · -ms-view-state – The values full-screen, fill, snapped, device-portrait You can take advantage of the –ms-high-contrast media feature to make your web application more accessible to individuals with disabilities. In high contrast mode, you should make your application easier to use for individuals with vision disabilities. The –ms-view-state media feature enables you to detect the state of an application. For example, when an application is snapped, the application only occupies part of the available screen real estate. The snapped application appears on the left or right side of the screen and the rest of the screen real estate is dominated by the fill application (Metro style applications can only be snapped on devices with a horizontal resolution of greater than 1,366 pixels). Here is a page which contains style rules for an application in both a snap and fill application state: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="utf-8" /> <title>MyWinWebApp</title> <style type="text/css"> html { font-family:'Segoe UI Semilight'; font-size: xx-large; } @media screen and (-ms-view-state:snapped) { html { background-color: lime; } } @media screen and (-ms-view-state:fill) { html { background-color: red; } } </style> </head> <body> <p class="content"> Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas porttitor congue massa. Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo magna eros quis urna. </p> </body> </html> When the application is snapped, the application appears with a lime background color: When the application state is fill then the background color changes to red: When the application takes up the entire screen real estate – it is not in snapped or fill state – then no special style rules apply and the application appears with a white background color. Querying Media Features with JavaScript You can perform media queries using JavaScript by taking advantage of the window.msMatchMedia() method. This method returns a MSMediaQueryList which has a matches method that represents success or failure. For example, the following code checks whether the current device is in portrait mode: if (window.msMatchMedia("(orientation:portrait)").matches) { console.log("portrait"); } else { console.log("landscape"); } If the matches property returns true, then the device is in portrait mode and the message “portrait” is written to the Visual Studio JavaScript Console window. Otherwise, the message “landscape” is written to the JavaScript Console window. You can create an event listener which triggers code whenever the results of a media query changes. For example, the following code writes a message to the JavaScript Console whenever the current device is switched into or out of Portrait mode: window.msMatchMedia("(orientation:portrait)").addListener(function (mql) { if (mql.matches) { console.log("Switched to portrait"); } }); Be aware that the event listener is triggered whenever the result of the media query changes. So the event listener is triggered both when you switch from landscape to portrait and when you switch from portrait to landscape. For this reason, you need to verify that the matches property has the value true before writing the message. Summary The goal of this blog entry was to explain how CSS media queries work in the context of a Metro style application written with JavaScript. First, you were provided with an overview of the W3C CSS Media Query recommendation. You learned about the standard media features which you can query such as width and orientation. Next, we focused on the Microsoft extensions to media queries. You learned how to use –ms-view-state to detect whether a Metro style application is in “snapped” or “fill” state. You also learned how to use the msMatchMedia() method to perform a media query from JavaScript.

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  • Read XML Files using LINQ to XML and Extension Methods

    - by psheriff
    In previous blog posts I have discussed how to use XML files to store data in your applications. I showed you how to read those XML files from your project and get XML from a WCF service. One of the problems with reading XML files is when elements or attributes are missing. If you try to read that missing data, then a null value is returned. This can cause a problem if you are trying to load that data into an object and a null is read. This blog post will show you how to create extension methods to detect null values and return valid values to load into your object. The XML Data An XML data file called Product.xml is located in the \Xml folder of the Silverlight sample project for this blog post. This XML file contains several rows of product data that will be used in each of the samples for this post. Each row has 4 attributes; namely ProductId, ProductName, IntroductionDate and Price. <Products>  <Product ProductId="1"           ProductName="Haystack Code Generator for .NET"           IntroductionDate="07/01/2010"  Price="799" />  <Product ProductId="2"           ProductName="ASP.Net Jumpstart Samples"           IntroductionDate="05/24/2005"  Price="0" />  ...  ...</Products> The Product Class Just as you create an Entity class to map each column in a table to a property in a class, you should do the same for an XML file too. In this case you will create a Product class with properties for each of the attributes in each element of product data. The following code listing shows the Product class. public class Product : CommonBase{  public const string XmlFile = @"Xml/Product.xml";   private string _ProductName;  private int _ProductId;  private DateTime _IntroductionDate;  private decimal _Price;   public string ProductName  {    get { return _ProductName; }    set {      if (_ProductName != value) {        _ProductName = value;        RaisePropertyChanged("ProductName");      }    }  }   public int ProductId  {    get { return _ProductId; }    set {      if (_ProductId != value) {        _ProductId = value;        RaisePropertyChanged("ProductId");      }    }  }   public DateTime IntroductionDate  {    get { return _IntroductionDate; }    set {      if (_IntroductionDate != value) {        _IntroductionDate = value;        RaisePropertyChanged("IntroductionDate");      }    }  }   public decimal Price  {    get { return _Price; }    set {      if (_Price != value) {        _Price = value;        RaisePropertyChanged("Price");      }    }  }} NOTE: The CommonBase class that the Product class inherits from simply implements the INotifyPropertyChanged event in order to inform your XAML UI of any property changes. You can see this class in the sample you download for this blog post. Reading Data When using LINQ to XML you call the Load method of the XElement class to load the XML file. Once the XML file has been loaded, you write a LINQ query to iterate over the “Product” Descendants in the XML file. The “select” portion of the LINQ query creates a new Product object for each row in the XML file. You retrieve each attribute by passing each attribute name to the Attribute() method and retrieving the data from the “Value” property. The Value property will return a null if there is no data, or will return the string value of the attribute. The Convert class is used to convert the value retrieved into the appropriate data type required by the Product class. private void LoadProducts(){  XElement xElem = null;   try  {    xElem = XElement.Load(Product.XmlFile);     // The following will NOT work if you have missing attributes    var products =         from elem in xElem.Descendants("Product")        orderby elem.Attribute("ProductName").Value        select new Product        {          ProductId = Convert.ToInt32(            elem.Attribute("ProductId").Value),          ProductName = Convert.ToString(            elem.Attribute("ProductName").Value),          IntroductionDate = Convert.ToDateTime(            elem.Attribute("IntroductionDate").Value),          Price = Convert.ToDecimal(elem.Attribute("Price").Value)        };     lstData.DataContext = products;  }  catch (Exception ex)  {    MessageBox.Show(ex.Message);  }} This is where the problem comes in. If you have any missing attributes in any of the rows in the XML file, or if the data in the ProductId or IntroductionDate is not of the appropriate type, then this code will fail! The reason? There is no built-in check to ensure that the correct type of data is contained in the XML file. This is where extension methods can come in real handy. Using Extension Methods Instead of using the Convert class to perform type conversions as you just saw, create a set of extension methods attached to the XAttribute class. These extension methods will perform null-checking and ensure that a valid value is passed back instead of an exception being thrown if there is invalid data in your XML file. private void LoadProducts(){  var xElem = XElement.Load(Product.XmlFile);   var products =       from elem in xElem.Descendants("Product")      orderby elem.Attribute("ProductName").Value      select new Product      {        ProductId = elem.Attribute("ProductId").GetAsInteger(),        ProductName = elem.Attribute("ProductName").GetAsString(),        IntroductionDate =            elem.Attribute("IntroductionDate").GetAsDateTime(),        Price = elem.Attribute("Price").GetAsDecimal()      };   lstData.DataContext = products;} Writing Extension Methods To create an extension method you will create a class with any name you like. In the code listing below is a class named XmlExtensionMethods. This listing just shows a couple of the available methods such as GetAsString and GetAsInteger. These methods are just like any other method you would write except when you pass in the parameter you prefix the type with the keyword “this”. This lets the compiler know that it should add this method to the class specified in the parameter. public static class XmlExtensionMethods{  public static string GetAsString(this XAttribute attr)  {    string ret = string.Empty;     if (attr != null && !string.IsNullOrEmpty(attr.Value))    {      ret = attr.Value;    }     return ret;  }   public static int GetAsInteger(this XAttribute attr)  {    int ret = 0;    int value = 0;     if (attr != null && !string.IsNullOrEmpty(attr.Value))    {      if(int.TryParse(attr.Value, out value))        ret = value;    }     return ret;  }   ...  ...} Each of the methods in the XmlExtensionMethods class should inspect the XAttribute to ensure it is not null and that the value in the attribute is not null. If the value is null, then a default value will be returned such as an empty string or a 0 for a numeric value. Summary Extension methods are a great way to simplify your code and provide protection to ensure problems do not occur when reading data. You will probably want to create more extension methods to handle XElement objects as well for when you use element-based XML. Feel free to extend these extension methods to accept a parameter which would be the default value if a null value is detected, or any other parameters you wish. NOTE: You can download the complete sample code at my website. http://www.pdsa.com/downloads. Choose “Tips & Tricks”, then "Read XML Files using LINQ to XML and Extension Methods" from the drop-down. Good Luck with your Coding,Paul D. Sheriff  

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  • Curious about IObservable? Here’s a quick example to get you started!

    - by Roman Schindlauer
    Have you heard about IObservable/IObserver support in Microsoft StreamInsight 1.1? Then you probably want to try it out. If this is your first incursion into the IObservable/IObserver pattern, this blog post is for you! StreamInsight 1.1 introduced the ability to use IEnumerable and IObservable objects as event sources and sinks. The IEnumerable case is pretty straightforward, since many data collections are already surfacing as this type. This was already covered by Colin in his blog. Creating your own IObservable event source is a little more involved but no less exciting – here is a primer: First, let’s look at a very simple Observable data source. All it does is publish an integer in regular time periods to its registered observers. (For more information on IObservable, see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd990377.aspx ). sealed class RandomSubject : IObservable<int>, IDisposable {     private bool _done;     private readonly List<IObserver<int>> _observers;     private readonly Random _random;     private readonly object _sync;     private readonly Timer _timer;     private readonly int _timerPeriod;       /// <summary>     /// Random observable subject. It produces an integer in regular time periods.     /// </summary>     /// <param name="timerPeriod">Timer period (in milliseconds)</param>     public RandomSubject(int timerPeriod)     {         _done = false;         _observers = new List<IObserver<int>>();         _random = new Random();         _sync = new object();         _timer = new Timer(EmitRandomValue);         _timerPeriod = timerPeriod;         Schedule();     }       public IDisposable Subscribe(IObserver<int> observer)     {         lock (_sync)         {             _observers.Add(observer);         }         return new Subscription(this, observer);     }       public void OnNext(int value)     {         lock (_sync)         {             if (!_done)             {                 foreach (var observer in _observers)                 {                     observer.OnNext(value);                 }             }         }     }       public void OnError(Exception e)     {         lock (_sync)         {             foreach (var observer in _observers)             {                 observer.OnError(e);             }             _done = true;         }     }       public void OnCompleted()     {         lock (_sync)         {             foreach (var observer in _observers)             {                 observer.OnCompleted();             }             _done = true;         }     }       void IDisposable.Dispose()     {         _timer.Dispose();     }       private void Schedule()     {         lock (_sync)         {             if (!_done)             {                 _timer.Change(_timerPeriod, Timeout.Infinite);             }         }     }       private void EmitRandomValue(object _)     {         var value = (int)(_random.NextDouble() * 100);         Console.WriteLine("[Observable]\t" + value);         OnNext(value);         Schedule();     }       private sealed class Subscription : IDisposable     {         private readonly RandomSubject _subject;         private IObserver<int> _observer;           public Subscription(RandomSubject subject, IObserver<int> observer)         {             _subject = subject;             _observer = observer;         }           public void Dispose()         {             IObserver<int> observer = _observer;             if (null != observer)             {                 lock (_subject._sync)                 {                     _subject._observers.Remove(observer);                 }                 _observer = null;             }         }     } }   So far, so good. Now let’s write a program that consumes data emitted by the observable as a stream of point events in a Streaminsight query. First, let’s define our payload type: class Payload {     public int Value { get; set; }       public override string ToString()     {         return "[StreamInsight]\tValue: " + Value.ToString();     } }   Now, let’s write the program. First, we will instantiate the observable subject. Then we’ll use the ToPointStream() method to consume it as a stream. We can now write any query over the source - here, a simple pass-through query. class Program {     static void Main(string[] args)     {         Console.WriteLine("Starting observable source...");         using (var source = new RandomSubject(500))         {             Console.WriteLine("Started observable source.");             using (var server = Server.Create("Default"))             {                 var application = server.CreateApplication("My Application");                   var stream = source.ToPointStream(application,                     e => PointEvent.CreateInsert(DateTime.Now, new Payload { Value = e }),                     AdvanceTimeSettings.StrictlyIncreasingStartTime,                     "Observable Stream");                   var query = from e in stream                             select e;                   [...]   We’re done with consuming input and querying it! But you probably want to see the output of the query. Did you know you can turn a query into an observable subject as well? Let’s do precisely that, and exploit the Reactive Extensions for .NET (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/devlabs/ee794896.aspx) to quickly visualize the output. Notice we’re subscribing “Console.WriteLine()” to the query, a pattern you may find useful for quick debugging of your queries. Reminder: you’ll need to install the Reactive Extensions for .NET (Rx for .NET Framework 4.0), and reference System.CoreEx and System.Reactive in your project.                 [...]                   Console.ReadLine();                 Console.WriteLine("Starting query...");                 using (query.ToObservable().Subscribe(Console.WriteLine))                 {                     Console.WriteLine("Started query.");                     Console.ReadLine();                     Console.WriteLine("Stopping query...");                 }                 Console.WriteLine("Stopped query.");             }             Console.ReadLine();             Console.WriteLine("Stopping observable source...");             source.OnCompleted();         }         Console.WriteLine("Stopped observable source.");     } }   We hope this blog post gets you started. And for bonus points, you can go ahead and rewrite the observable source (the RandomSubject class) using the Reactive Extensions for .NET! The entire sample project is attached to this article. Happy querying! Regards, The StreamInsight Team

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